Adventure mash-up challenge!

[Halivar]

So I've gotta a little obsessed with "Jaquaying the dungeon", and I've been thinking about how to apply those general principals to adventure design, in general, to change linear adventure paths into proper sand-boxes. I've also been inspired by Sly Flourish's "The Lazy Dungeon Master", which has a section on mashing up genres and stories. I figured it would be a fun exercise to try mashing up published adventures and Jaquaying them to make proper sand boxes out of them.

The Challenge

Take two published D&D adventures from different eras, and tie them together with multiple strands of plot.

Here's my idea:

Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle (5E) + N5: Under Illefarn (1E)

Both adventures take place in Daggerford, and both include Yellowknife, the reclusive and mysterious mage. Other than that, the adventures are separated by over 100 years, and the cast of characters is completely different (but all the last names are the same, naturally). N5 is actually a series of mini-adventures set around Daggerford, so it is easily repurposed to serve the main plot behind GoDSC.

The connection: Time travel. The red wizard that is caught and hung in GoDSC had a very specific mission: with the help of a powerful (and expensive) chronomancy ritual, go back in time to the arrival of the keys to the area, find and kill the cultists, and take the keys. His hanging discharges the ritual chaotically, affecting the party members in an unpredictable way: each night they roll a percentile, with a 50% chance of awaking in the past (Under Illefarn). Unfortunately, the keys in that time have already been placed, and a powerful ward protects them that will not weaken for another 100 years (during the time of GoDSC). The earthquake in N5 is caused by the wild temporal magic, and the corrupted waters of that occur after should hamper efforts in GoDSC as the future is changed by its curse.

Two points of concurrence are Yellowknife and Lord Floshin.

Yellowknife has returned in GoDSC after a 100 year absence after N5. Connect the adventures by making him a powerful diviner who is aware of the the time-travelling party, and always speaks as if he is unsurprised by their presence. Not just a source of spells any longer, you can safely throw away N5's note that he is "full of advice...but not much real help."

Lord Floshin in GoDSC is the son of the elven Lord Floshin in N5; replace much of the party's interaction with Floshin the Elder in N5 with the younger (as a lad). Unlike Yellowknife, he should be quite surprised to meet them in GoDSC, long before the party's time-travelling adventures.

The only thing left is hooking in the three "militia" adventures in N5. Possibly you can have the party begin GoDSC as militiamen, or you can have them join up in N5, or even treat them as independent agents in a pre-militia Daggerford.

Be sure to note changes made to locals in N5; these should persist into GoDSC.

 

[Celebrim]

The connection:[/B] Time travel.

I'd prefer not to go there. Instead, I prefer the more sandbox approach of, "There is more than one thing going on at any given time."

Beyond that, I feel that time travel is likely to serve as a linear corridor between two otherwise separated 'dungeons'. I can imagine more complex cross connections, but not one that particularly give the players lots of freedom without creating paradoxes.

Beyond that, I have - on the basis of long Star Trek fandom - come to the conclusion that the laziest possible plot you can have is time travel.

 

[Halivar]

Beyond that, I have - on the basis of long Star Trek fandom - come to the conclusion that the laziest possible plot you can have is time travel.

Ah, but that's the beauty of it; it's so cliche that no one ever uses it. Ever, at least IMHXP.

 

[Celebrim]

Ah, but that's the beauty of it; it's so cliche that no one ever uses it. Ever, at least IMHXP.

They tried to do a very similar mashup in I10: The House on Gryphon Hill. IMO, it didn't work very well.

 

[the Jester]

Ah, but that's the beauty of it; it's so cliche that no one ever uses it. Ever, at least IMHXP.

I have, but never with a published adventure.

My contribution to the topic at hand:

Expedition to the Barrier Peaks + Gates of Firestorm Peak.

SPOILERS for both modules, and I'm uptight about that, so here's everything in spoiler blocks:

[sblock]EttBP is a weird dungeon with a metal door that turns out to be a crashed section of a spaceship. tGoFSP is a duergar dungeon corrupted by the influence of the Far Realms, hidden behind impregnable gates that only open every 27 years (IIRC), when a comet or something flies overhead.

The connection: The dungeon in tGoFSP actually leads into the ship in EttBP. The nephilium- a translucent metal in FSP- is actually a superstrong plastic, and the whole upper levels have been taken by the duergar, who "mine" nephilium from the crashed ship's components. In doing so, they've compromised many systems containing weird energies and blown a hole open that leads to the Far Realms intermittently, allowing various unwholesome things- the mind flayer and intellect devourer in BP, the mutant trolls and gibberlings in FSP- through.[/sblock]

 

[Halivar]

snipped for spoilers

[sblock=Spoiler Question]Duergar with blaster rifles and power armor? Could be RBDM moment.[/sblock]

 

[the Jester]

[sblock=Spoiler Question]Duergar with blaster rifles and power armor? Could be RBDM moment.[/sblock]

That's more of a comment than a question, but yes, yes it could.

[sblock]Better still: psychically invisible, enlarged duergar with blaster rifles and power armor.[/sblock]

 

[Halivar]

Also, Far Realms = time to pull out the ol' Jester's Insane Chaos Chart. It's like campaign crack.

 

[Yora]

I am currently running a blend of Against the Cult of the Reptile God, Queen with Burning Eyes (which is almost a remake of the first one), and Depths of Rage.
The party explores a cave in which they find the corpses of three adventurers and then get trapped by an earthquake (Depths of Rage). They work their way back out and get approached by an agent of a secretive organization who has traced a group of thieves to this caves who have something that belongs to her (Queen with Burning Eyes). She just hired the party to find the base of the bandits (Reptile God), who murdered the adventurers in the cave, who had been working for the agent.

After that, the campaign continues with a mix of The Disappearance of Harold the Hedge Mage and Raiders of the Black Ice.
The disappearance of one of the PCs teacher brings the party to his home, where they pick up the trail of a group of bandits and find their camp (Hedge Mage). In the camp, they free some slaves, who tell them that the bandits bought them from a group of raiders, who are just now on their way back to their base with the rest of their captives (Black Ice).
Getting the freed captive back home without any supplied in the middle of badlands, while more barbarians are out to recapture them will be an additional adventure in it's own right.

The story with the agent of the secret organization will then continue later with The Thorian from Mass Effect and Cruicible of Chaos blended into one.

 

[knightemplar]

N1 Under Illefarn and the encounter with Redeye the Lizardman Cleric, who was a 7th level cleric. He had awoken Sakatha the vampiric Lizard King in I2 Tomb of Lizard King and they were trying to unite all the lizard man tribes in the area against the humans. The party had just finished the Illefarn adventure and were about level 4-5.

I did wind up changing the start, since most of the party were familiar with the Baron's family.