Keep on the Shadowfell as a 1e adventure

[Lanefan]

WARNING - KotS SPOILERS AHEAD...

Well, the experiment is underway: can Keep on the Shadowfell work as a 1e adventure and if so how much work does it take to accomplish?

The prep. work:

Surprisingly little. I converted all the monsters, of course, in most cases simply substituting HD for the listed level (minions became 1/2 HD or 1-1 HD creatures with a few h.p. each). A few of the more significant monsters gained a few HD along the way - Whatsisname the Fat, for example (Goblin boss based in room 4, level 1) became a 5HD annoyance mainly to emphasize his boss-hood. Obviously, they lost all their funky abilities e.g. shift. Most other things I'm leaving pretty much as is, and I'll see how it goes, except Kalarel is much more mobile than the original module has him be (he even goes outdoors on occasion!). And I put a reference to Sir Keegan outside by the entrance as there had been no other introduction to him elsewhere.

Preparation was made much easier also by my being able to drop the Kobold lair and other outside encounters; I'm just running the main dungeon area.

I renamed the adventure "Shadowhaunt Temple" as my game does not use the Shadowfell concept. And the place is run by Ares instead of Orcus...in all respects the same idea but it's a Greek-based setting and Ares as the main foe fits better.

The in-game background:

Party is 10 mostly 1st-level characters going in, with one 2nd and one 3rd; the 3rd is a Druid (we call 'em Nature Clerics) whose curing helps survivability immensely. Their previous adventure was to take out the base camp of a local petty warlord named Krykos; this led to Shadowhaunt in a number of ways:
1. Krykos' spiritual advisor was an Ares Cleric; party found a note from Kalarel demanding more slaves to sacrifice (and also blocked arrival of some slaves thus Kalarel is - they hope - still waiting);
2. While exploring forest around Krykos' camp, they found a trail leading south, 5 miles along it were two skulls on poles with signs saying "Keep out" in the name of Kalarel;
3. During the Krykos adventure, the party lost a man captured when they had to flee from a badly-done attack on the camp; on later capturing the camp, they learned from prisoners that the captive was given over to Kalarel.
So, 3 great big hooks.

The results so far:

They've cleared out the Goblin area (rooms 1-4 level 1) on three attempts, retreating well clear of the temple after each try.

Typical for this party, the minor opponents proved an enormous headache while the major ones gave little trouble. Whatsisname the Fat, for example, badly hurt a couple of characters but went down quite easily once he was blinded by a "Light" spell, yet the few Goblins (called Knill in my game) at the entry caused all kinds of grief the first time the party ventured down the stairs.

The only death so far, however, came from an in-party brawl. Love potions were involved.

They also completely wasted Splug - they left him in his cell, gave him food enough for one day, then forgot about him while resting for 3 days. Now they've gone off to rest again. Poor Splug.

The adventure has had one unexpected side effect: a party that at the outset couldn't get along - to the point of in-party murder - last session drafted and signed a party charter of conduct, and elected a leader; largely (I think) because the players realize this adventure has enough teeth that if they don't get it together they'll be TPKed.

If you want to read all the gory (and occasionally silly) details, go here:

Decast Adventure Log

I'll update this thread occasionally with conversion notes and things I can't put in the game log.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

Quick update here: in short, for those interested in the conversion aspect there's not much to say since last time.

Splug eventually died in his cell. The party still haven't got back to him, and it's been something like 25 days now.

The Ochre Jelly in the cave maze caused them no end of trouble - I toned down its hit points etc. but kept the ongoing acid damage (this freaked 'em out) until the victim or a helper spent a round washing it off. They still lost two party members and almost lost two more. After this, they went back to town to get one of their dead raised (the other was melted far beyond what a simple raise could handle) and have since made two abortive attempts to return to the adventure, each getting stalled on or before entry.

We ended tonight's session with them back at the dungeon just heading down the entry stairs...with luck, there'll be more to update next time.

Lanefan

 

[the Jester]

Thanks for the updates- I'm always interested in retro-conversions like this.

 

[Lanefan]

Further update...

They went back in and had a grand old time with the Kruthiks...so far this has been probably the best battle in terms of playing out in the game as well as it looked like it would on paper. (and one character found *all* the pit traps the hard way, though each time someone else had gone ahead and missed them!). The Kruthiks were trivially easy to convert.

They then found the Blue Slime. This was tougher to convert, as I wanted to keep its abilities e.g. stench while at the same time not making it a TPK waiting to happen. End result worked out OK, and were the players ever surprised when this "slime" charged up the stairs after them as they retreated!

Then downstairs, straight into lots of Zombies (easy to convert - the minions become normal 1e Zombies and the better ones gain a second fist attack per round and some extra h.p.) and skeletons (again, trivial to convert; the warriors just get a few more HD).

The glyphs on the floor (which really don't need conversion at all except to put a hard duration (I used d4+1 rounds) on the fear effect) caused no end of headache. I didn't realize until actually playing it that of course fleeing in panic from one glyph was likely to cause you to run over another...ouch!

Oh, and they met Keegan's corpse - they didn't fight it, so I ran it about 95% as written.

They're now just heading downstairs* to the Hobgoblins - again, easy to convert; doubly so as Hobgies in my world are quite different from the stereotype anyway. If the party bother to talk to these guys (unlikely) I'll use these Hob's to set up a small Hob-related story arc I've got in mind for quite some time in the future.

* - the one problem I've found thus far with the module as written is that *nowhere* does it say or show just how long that stairway is; so I guessed at 30'. Fortunately, nothing else really has to line up from one deck to the next, I'd have bigger problems if it did.

I've started work on converting the rest of the lower-deck monsters; so far the only headache I've hit are the Corruption Corpses - the fleshy bits they throw regrow themselves, according to the module, yet they don't have regeneration - which seems extremely odd. But if I give them regen. they'll be too tough; they're bad enough now, and I expect this to be a very dangerous encounter particularly if they get stuck in there by the arrival of the other occupant of said halls. I might change things such that what they throw is some sort of slime they exude (which behaves just like the flesh) to get around that inconsistency.

Will update again once there's more to report.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

Guess I'd better update this, huh - it's only been 2 months...

I've started work on converting the rest of the lower-deck monsters; so far the only headache I've hit are the Corruption Corpses - the fleshy bits they throw regrow themselves, according to the module, yet they don't have regeneration - which seems extremely odd. But if I give them regen. they'll be too tough; they're bad enough now, and I expect this to be a very dangerous encounter particularly if they get stuck in there by the arrival of the other occupant of said halls. I might change things such that what they throw is some sort of slime they exude (which behaves just like the flesh) to get around that inconsistency.

What I ended up doing was having them just "disarm" themselves and throw 'em; the arms grew back right away but the creatures didn't otherwise regenerate. Party did OK in that encounter.

In fact, the harder the encounters got, the better the party did. They only lost one PC in the cathedral (area 18) and none at all in the final battle!

So, they're done now.

My thoughts on the conversion from 4e to 1e in general:

With exceptions noted below, the basic monsters were really easy to convert: just look in the MM for the equivalent, and add a few levels if justified. for example, the Hobgoblins at the start of level 2 were mostly 1 HD grunts (replacing minions), but some had levels and two were significant - the Chieftain became an F-5 and the Warcaster...well, he got me thinking, and the best I could do with him was make him an unusually tough MU-4. A few other things, such as the Corruption Corpses, also made me think a bit; but no real trouble in the end.

KotS is clearly written to showcase all the neat new 4e inventions such as shifting and sliding and bad effects that wear off relatively quickly. As such, straight removal of all the forced movement effects (which I did) made a few of the set-piece encounters much less exciting. It also made the final battle less dangerous, as PCs couldn't be shifted or slid into reach of the Thing.

The statue traps in area 16 were a biznitch to convert. I had to severely bend some rules to allow the big one to get any effect at all out of its sweep attack, and the dragon statues breathed gusts of wind to explain their pushback effect. That said, the statue room was one of the few places my players seemed really impressed with the design ideas of the dungeon.

The Clerics in areas 18 and 19 were tough to convert. I just left them as their level (thus Kalarel became an 8th-level Cleric) and gave them spells to suit, but both were disappointing and Kalarel in particular could have done with some more magic toys. I turned his Rod into a really nasty weapon (ongoing damage is not usually a feature of 1e).

The little dark halfling-sized undead from area 18 was also a tough one to figure.

Thoughts on the module itself:

To work by 1e standards it needs more treasure, period. I threw in various bits e.g. Kalarel's Rod, etc., and for a big adventure the end result worked out as about an average haul. This is particularly important in my campaign as I use training rules; training don't come cheap, and most of the PCs bumped during the adventure and thus need training now.

The module is quite good for leaving the DM free to make stuff up but quite bad for not bothering to warn one when it is doing so. An example is the blood-producing altar in area 18. How can the PCs stop the flow? What happens if holy water is poured in, as my PCs did? Is the blood recycled from the drains out of area 19, and if so where's the pump? Etc. Just a couple of extra lines of text here would have been *really* useful!

The final encounter write-up suffers from a severe lack of space, and thus information. Kalarel is referred to as having a "shadowform" ability that is never described. His amulet is referred to as being how he gets from his altar to the runed circle, but what is it and how does it work? (had the party got their hands on it I'd have made it a 1 x / week amulet of Dimension Door, but Kalarel got dragged through the rift when he died; so much for that) And the write-up on the Thing is woefully inadequate...I realized this about the same time I realized my players were seriously considering an all-out missile-based attack on it! How many h.p. worth of damage, for example, does it take to break a tentacle that is hauling someone in? How many h.p. does it have overall? And what are its stats if the rift gets opened and it actually comes through?

And most annoying of all, what are the PCs supposed to do to close the bloody rift?! Or do they kill Kalarel and just leave it there, half-open and ready for the next bad guy to come along and finish. (what I did here is put in a bunch of holes, some around the altar and some around the rift opening, designed to fit the ten dragon statues taken from the Bahamut temple altars - placing the statues in the holes closes the rift. For fun, I also placed a couple of rows of skulls hanging from the pillars by the altar; there were two missing - these of the last two sacrifices needed to fully open the rift. Can you believe it came down to a race between two PCs, one hanging skulls and one placing dragon statues, neither really knowing what they were doing; and the dragon-placer won by one segment!!!)

Still, a fun exercise.

Lanefan