Capsule reviews of the HPE series so far...

[Aenghus]

I'm running the core modules as well, with elements from Dungeon. I modify all the adventures I run anyway, to better suit my group and setting.

I'm running in a somewhat modified 4e Forgotten Realms - the major relevant change being the Raven Queen replaces the lacklustre Kelemvor, who retired shortly after Mystra's death. Shar and the Raven Queen are too close for comfort, but I'm treating this as a feature rather than a bug.

The earlier conversions for the core modules in 4e swapped references to Orcus with references to Shar, but this gets increasingly difficult with time.

H1 - I ran this with the FR changes, and tried to add roleplaying opportunities

H2 - This was easier to get roleplaying opportunities. I tried to introduce the BBEG earlier so the party would work up a good hate for him.

H3 - I wanted the PCs to be connected and invested in the setting (Cormyr in my case) so I broke this up, used parts of it and also ran Fort Dolor from Dungeon.

P1 - I placed Moonstair to the west of Cormyr in between the Farsea Marshes and the Marsh of Tun. I expanded the Eladrin city and gave the party a mansion and a small percentage in planar trade between Celduilon and Moonstair to invest them in the region.

P2 - The party, now in good repute with the kingdom of Cormyr, were sent to deal with the undead threat in the underdark. They were sufficiently trusted by the Mages of Saruun that they worked as a good secondary hook to the adventure. They established fair relations with the Necromancer and the warriors, and rejected the offer from the Drow priestesses. I added more backstory for the keeper to give more options for my relatively heroic party.

P3- I added hooks and backstory links, and removed a lot of combat encounters to reduce the grind. The party were send to recover the soul of the assassinated Crown Prince Irvel of Cormyr. The party ended up making a deal with Varun, who was getting worried about the increasing appetite of the shadow dragon (which I renamed Shadraxil to be the same as the shadow dragon way back in H1 as per the FR conversion. The omitted material means the party finished this module at 19th level, but I have other material to put in now - in the meantime King Foril has died, and Ezoured is next in line, with shadowy support from the Empire of Netheril.

 

[pemerton]

H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth
Looks great, and solves a lot of pacing problems by splitting the adventure up into four or five mini-adventures: I appreciate that. Unfortunately, the main home base didn't get used enough in play by the PCs, causing them to be disassociated with the people they're trying to help, and the maths problems with the soldier duergar (which were also resistant to the wizard's main fire attack) made too many of the combats grindy. It'd play better now the wizard has more options.

The big bad isn't quite built up to enough, IMO.

I've run two sections of this - the Chamber of Eyes, and the Well of Demons. I ignored the Mages of Saruun, the 7-pillared hall and the overall dungeon geograpy, and incorporated these into an overall Night's Dark Terror campaign (but using minotaurs in place of the Hutakaans (sp?) as the ancient race).

I found that the WotC encounters, as written, didn't really make full use of the potential of the maps, so I made some changes, as discussed here.

To build up the big bad wizard, I merged him with the main antagonist of Night's Dark Terror (the wizard Golthar) and have had various run-ins, preludes etc. I envisage running the final tower showdown with Paldemar/Gothar at about 14th level (using the higher-level Norker stats from the MM3 plus suitable upgrades to Paldemar and to the bronze warders).

(The PCs in my game reached a deal with the duergar to redeem the slaves for cash, so there is not going to be an assault on the Horned Hold for some time yet, if at all.)

P2 Demon Queen's Enclave
The highlight of the series, with great potential for roleplaying which became a lot of actual roleplaying.

I bought this at a discount a couple of weeks ago. My party includes a paladin of the Raven Queen, a cleric-ranger of the Raven Queen, a wizard-invoker of Erathis, Ioun and Vecna, and a drow chaos sorcerer who is a member of a secret society of Corellon worshippers dedicated to undoing the sundering of the elves. So while I'm not quite sure how this will be worked in yet, I envisage being able to get something interesting out of it!

(And I'm hoping to be able to run a version of G2 set in the Feywild somewhere around 17th level, so P2 looks like it might offer some good bridging material for that.)

 

[S'mon]

I'm running in a somewhat modified 4e Forgotten Realms - the major relevant change being the Raven Queen replaces the lacklustre Kelemvor, who retired shortly after Mystra's death. Shar and the Raven Queen are too close for comfort, but I'm treating this as a feature rather than a bug.

The earlier conversions for the core modules in 4e swapped references to Orcus with references to Shar, but this gets increasingly difficult with time.

I'd think it might make more sense to replace Raven Queen with Shar, keep Orcus and having him seek to take over Shar's domain of Night, magic etc. Although I guess the player reaction is likely o be "Why should we care?", unless you tone down Shar's supposed Evil-ness. I'm not really sure why Realms cosmology requires Shar to be Evil, anyway.

Or sticking closest to Realmscore, I guess replace Raven Queen with Kelemvor and it all works fine, and is black & white.

 

[Aenghus]

I'd think it might make more sense to replace Raven Queen with Shar, keep Orcus and having him seek to take over Shar's domain of Night, magic etc. Although I guess the player reaction is likely o be "Why should we care?", unless you tone down Shar's supposed Evil-ness. I'm not really sure why Realms cosmology requires Shar to be Evil, anyway.

Or sticking closest to Realmscore, I guess replace Raven Queen with Kelemvor and it all works fine, and is black & white.

I considered replacing the Raven Queen with Shar, but Shar is a Greater god and has been the dark sister of and eternal rival to bright Selune since the setting first came out. (The creation myth is that Shar and Selune created Faerun between them, and then the goddess Mystryl (who was reborn as Mystra)). Shar isn't personal death, she's the embodiment of entropy, being not just dead but dead and forgotten, striving to bring about the end of everything in the fullness of time. I have no problem seeing her as evil.

So for my purposes she's not a good opponent for PCs to strive against in an epic campaign as she's not really touchable by them, nor is any greater god. I like sticking to canon when possible.

And I always disliked Kelemvor anyway as being particularly wussy as a death god, and based on an emo cursed fighter in an awful set of novels (IMO).

What I have done is working for me.