Eberron...Deserts of Desolation?

[Primitive Screwhead]

Greetings all, I have recently started an Eberron Campaign, and the party is still 1st level and feeling out the world. I re-acquired a copy of the Deserts of Desolation modules, which I very much enjoyed running the first time around many moons ago.

I was thinking it might be entertaining to twist the story into an Eberron tale, and figured I should get some other views on it before I got too deep {and laid too many adventure hooks}.

My basic concept is to alter the story line as follows:

6 Shards, 2 of each, were going to be used at the end of the Demon/Dragon war by the Delkyr to bind Xoriat to Eberron. A group of Heroes destroyed their Eldritch Machine and scattered the Shards amonst the great leaders of the Dhakaani. Years passed, and some of the Shards, being powerful in themselves, were used to Bind nasty beings {The Efreet} and other uses.
Fast forward to the present. A Delkyr have convinced an Elder Brain that reforming the Eldritch Machine a good idea. That Elder Brain, reasoning that Illithids and Aberrations could not simply scour the face of Khorvaire for the Shards, planted myths and legends about. Then encouraged a group of 'controlable' characters to seek out the great power of the combined Shards. {Encouraged by setting an agent to seek a piece of this legend while overseeing raids on Brelandish farmers.. and in the aftermath of his death, the party 'discovers' a journal detailing powers of the Shards and hint at where they might be found. Interesting side effect of the party being occasionally assisted by the forces they will eventually fight to the death....}

The rest of the tale winds pretty much as in the module, with the party attempting to use the powers of the Shards to undo the damage they cause by releasing the Efreet. Dhakaani replace the Dervishes, Halfing Dragon Riders replace the other desert inhabitants. A Dragon fills the role of the Djinn.. and I am not sure what to use in place of the Efreet. The fallen Dhakaani Empire buried in the Sword Desert replace the half-Egyptian backdrop of temples and ruins.

Added onto the end is an adventure into the Mournland/Demon Wastes {?} to destroy the newly built Eldritch Machine.

Anyway.. I come seeking thoughts and opinions. Primarily, do you think this adventure is worth the effort of converting. And second, what sorts of conversions do you think fit the spirit of the Deserts and Eberron.

Also, how could other factions be brought into play without crowding the simplicity of the storyline.

I appreciate your comments! {besides the ones about my sanity level for even contemplating this!} The party is currently 1st level, so I have some time to work on this.

 

[Wycen]

This Eldritch Machine. Is that part of the Desert of Desolation series? And is that X-4 and X-5? It has been so long I barely remember. This is probably why you aren't getting many responses.

 

[Arc]

I don't know the modules... but this sounds really, really cool. Are these available as old TSR pdfs still? If they were, I'd be tempted to grab them and do a conversion myself, I've been looking for a module or two to run while my current DM takes a break. I want to get back into the DMing game... but I've found I don't have the time/skill/practice to plan out and stat out more than a session ahead, and my metaplots quickly fall to pieces.

Let us know how this works, I'm certainly interested in the results.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Original Plots

THe original series was based on the story of a great Mage named Martek who temporarily defeated, and imprisoned, an Efreet. Knowing the Efreet would escape in a thousand years or so, he set up a prophecy that leads the group to uncover the Efreet, a Djinn (used to battle the efreet while Martek recovers), and resurect Martek at the proper time to compmletely defeat the Efreet.

Changing this to Eberron means changing some of the basic premises. Using the backdrop of the invasion of Xoriat and the twisted plots driven by the Delkyr in their attempt to finish the battle they never stopped fighting.
Also, instead of the big finale being the party watching someone else 'save the day', I feel its better to provide the final challange to the party. Hence the use of an Eldritch Machine that is drawing Xoriat closer. With the plane closer, the {Efreet} gains power in its battle against the freindly Dragon. This provides tension as the player, who cannot defeat the {Efreet} alone, have to destroy the Machine before the Dragon is slain.
End result, Xoriat remains remote, the Delkyr continue plotting, a major portion o fthe Illthids are damaged/destroyed, and the party is known the world over as Dragon Freinds and fulfillers of Draconic Prophecy.

I have no problem with the major overview conversion... but the modules were good because they delved deep into the culture and politics of the land, even if the party did not. Converting this culture to fit the Eberron world is my goal.

The modules are not available as PDF, and I have not heard of any 3.5 conversion. Part of my goal in posting here is to find out if anyone else has done any conversion work for me to plagarize.

Arc, this would not be a short term deal, its 6 major adventure area's split up by miles of desert. My first running of the campaign was 6 months worth of every weekend games.

Wycen.. your right, I am probably showing my age with the knowledge of the campaign
Oh well.

 

[Celebrim]

The modules are not available as PDF, and I have not heard of any 3.5 conversion. Part of my goal in posting here is to find out if anyone else has done any conversion work for me to plagarize..

I've converted I3: Pyramid to what I believe is a rather good standard, but I've never posted it here because the restrictions on what you can offically do in a coversion are just too freakin' harsh. Even though it would be impossible to even get much an idea about what the module about much less play it from my conversion notes, they still don't officially meet the standard because I had to add some material on the traps/minor artifacts to bring them up to 3rd edition clarity, fix and try to interpret some typos in my copy of the module, scale an encounter or two to make it reasonable for 3rd edition, and do some gamist magic to convert the NPC's into real characers rather than 1st edition monster entries. None of that fits within the strict letter of the law. More the fool TSR, because they'd probably sell more PDF's if people could see some good conversions.

If you contact me over the weekend I'll let you have my work.

I've never converted I4 or I5 because I got so angry when I got to actually reading the conversion policy that I gave up. It was a heck of alot of work converting I3 in a professional manner, and if I can't even get geek cred by sharing it with the community I don't see the point. I will say that looking ahead, your biggest difficulty is going to be with the climax of I4, and the more rapid character level progression in 3rd edition. However you do it, the converted Effreet is either going to be weak enough as to not fit the role assigned to him as a land threatening enemy, or else he's just going to be able to overwhelm a party of 9th level characters. There is an in game mechanism for making that encounter MUCH easier, but there is no gaurantee that the player's will figure it out. If they don't, the final encounter goes from rough to TPK.

The other problem with trying to convert all three ahead of time is figuring out just how many levels the PC's gain in each module. The original modules assume 1-2 levels, but in third edition it could potentially be 3 or even 4 (on the assumption that the party will face off against at least 16-20 challenges per module). That means that the latter modules will need extra balancing to ensure they are neither too tough nor too easy.

 

[Jupp]

I know it sounds a bit cheesy but for the sake of sanity i would lower the XP awards for the players to counter the faster leveling in 3.x. This will save you lots of headaches because you do not have to worry about your party leveling too fast and running into game balance problems.

Anyway those modules (I3-5) are some of the best adventures released in that time, IMNSHO. One wonders what happend to the developers that they released something like Dragonlance later on :/

 

[Celebrim]

I know it sounds a bit cheesy but for the sake of sanity i would lower the XP awards for the players to counter the faster leveling in 3.x. This will save you lots of headaches because you do not have to worry about your party leveling too fast and running into game balance problems.

It doesn't sound cheesy at all. I prefer slower leveling as a player and a DM. In both cases, I feel that fast leveling doesn't give me enough time to savor the abilities of the players. As a player, I want to use my stuff for a while before getting new stuff. As a DM, I want the players to use thier stuff against a varied set of encounters for a while before they get new stuff. Either way, the new stuff just comes to fast.

But I think that settling on some slower leveling rate isn't going to solve the problem of XP per encounter. The problem is that its a first edition module and the effective CR of first edition monsters is very different than thier third edition CR's . In first edition, a party of 10th level characters could reasonably take on most anything in the monster manual. The same is very much not true for 3rd edition. I'm not saying that there are ancient red dragons in the module (that's an extreme case), but I am saying that balancing is a delicate issue in conversion. Making a particular challenge as tough as it was supposed to be originally requires a delicate hand sometimes. Not knowing exactly how much a party is going to level up only makes it worse, because conceivably a party could be punished for playing well and avoiding most encounters and taking a direct route to the end of the module - with the result of them not getting enough XP to face what you have planned next.

I think fudging some story awards is probably the best way to handle it, but I haven't tried the conversion of I4 or run the I3 conversion (any gamers in south Lousiana?) so I'm not confident of anything at this point.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

XP Awards..

Celebrim: If the boards email deal didn't work... I would love to see your conversions. Email direct to linte_draug at comcast dot net. Thanks!


I have always used, how to say it... umm... plot driven advancements. My players don't track XP on thier own, and most of them wouldn't be able to figure it all out anyway. So I get to tell them when they level. That will make the balancing portion a bit easier.

I also prefer a slower advancement rate, once they are out of the Levels of Death (1st and 2nd) and start having more abilities to play with.


I was thinking that the replacement Djinn would be a Dragon and the replacement Efreet would be either a Delkyr/Demon or an evil Dragon. Either way, my intent is that these two characters are always fighting off-screen, with an occasional close brush. Kindof the feel of 'Saving Private Ryan' where a huge war is happening in the background but the main characters have chances to relax. This is also a tension/plot driving device as the Efreet can keep them on the right track and pressed for time, while the Djinn can ease the pressure and give them a breather.

Also, since it wont be a 'pure' conversion, more like a translation, I will have some latitude for making balance adjustments as needed.

 

[cmanos]

+Desert of Desolation is one of my favorite mod series. Eberronis my favorite campaign seting. I tink it can be done and can be done justice. I like your ideas for things so far and am very interestedin hearing more.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Conversion I3

Celebrim... Thanks! That file looks great. I have not had a chance to get into the details, but I like what you did. This makes the translation much easier to do....and makes me wish I could be as organized

I like the Dervish Pretige class, very well done.

Thought it best to recognize the quality work in public