D&D 4E 4e conversion of Desert of Desolation?

[DNH]

One of my players recently suggested that I might try to do a 4e conversion of Desert of Desolation (an old adventure series that we played several times back in the day but never really got very far). I still have the book and maps and everything but I was wondering if anyone has been here before me, done some work, could provide some advice. Anything like that.

Any thoughts (or links)?

Thanks.

 

[Kralin Thornberry]

One of my players recently suggested that I might try to do a 4e conversion of Desert of Desolation (an old adventure series that we played several times back in the day but never really got very far). I still have the book and maps and everything but I was wondering if anyone has been here before me, done some work, could provide some advice. Anything like that.

Any thoughts (or links)?

Thanks.

I started to try to convert it, but found out that I basically had to go back and rewrite every encounter to balance it. Encounters then weren't "balanced" per se, and (as an example), there is an encounter with some giant spiders (maybe 2, can't recall of the top of my head), and just going with what is there, most of the fights would be "cake walks" for a balanced party.

And some of the creatures are not level appropriate. I think the efreet (who would be a noble) is way to high a level to be appropriate. That and it's only 1, which could make it (if stun/daze/immobilize, etc) too easy a fight for the right party.

If you do, I would suggest using masterplan and the monster builder to add/modify creatures to appropriate levels.

That being said, I may take another stab at it.

 

[DNH]

Good call on using Masterplan. I use that to plan and manage my current overall campaign (though I use a VTT - Fantasy Grounds 2 - for actual play) but honestly hadn't thought of it for this conversion project.

 

[Kralin Thornberry]

Good call on using Masterplan. I use that to plan and manage my current overall campaign (though I use a VTT - Fantasy Grounds 2 - for actual play) but honestly hadn't thought of it for this conversion project.

I was toying around with using it for my Dark Sun game, but scrapped it when I realized that some of the stuff just didn't "jive" very well with the setting. I've noticed that my players aren't really that into the Dark Sun game (every combat encounter is deadly, and it's beginning to "grind" on them), so maybe I'll just start to convert it and just run a Desert of Desolation mini-campaign.

 

[Odysseus]

I ran the first two modules as Paragon tier adventures. And I did have some difficulty converting them. It ran pretty well, with quite a bit of improv.
With the conversion. I had to start each encounter from scratch , thinking about why the monster is there for, should it be a brute or a skirmisher etc. Once you do that its easy to find something in the monster builder you can reskin.

 

[skwyd]

I've been planning on making this conversion myself. And I do plan on setting it in Dark Sun. However, I will be taking many liberties with the original story to make it fit better for my needs.

I plan on running it as an epic tier campaign. And I will be modifying the overall story arc to make the prophecy of Martek and adapting it to be about the resurrection of a long dead god. I figured that since the heroes are of epic level, their actions should have an effect on the world itself.

I had recently adapted the Slave Lords series of adventures into a paragon tier campaign set in Eberron. When I started to convert the first module, I was trying to convert each encounter more or less exactly as it had been written from 1e to 4e. I realized that some of the encounters didn't really seem to make sense. And others just didn't fit. Plus, if I had made each and every encounter a level appropriate encounter, the game sessions would end up taking much longer and the campaign would have stretched out much longer than it did. As it stands, we ran through it in about one year (playing only every other weekend and missing a few sessions due to life getting in the way).

But taking what I learned, I plan on either either eliminating less important encounters entirely or turning them into a role-play encounter. Some of the traps don't translate well into 4e so I will likely make them a skill challenge based encounter. I will also likely modify some of the easier encounters to include a terrain-based or environment-based hindrance to the players.

Personally, I'm looking forward to the last module in the series where the characters will be in Martek's tomb and they get to travel to basically other demi-planes. It should be a lot of fun.

I guess the overall point I'm making is that, in my experience, I've found that it is better to take the overall theme of the story and the general plot line and use that to guide a conversion to 4e because an encounter-by-encounter approach just doesn't seem to work out.

 

[the Jester]

There are some of the encounters converted in (IIRC) Open Grave.