D&D 5E Princes of the Apocalypse in Greyhawk

[meomwt]

It's great that the new Prices of the Apocalypse adventure book has notes for playing the scenario on Greyhawk. What riles me is that, given that the book has a lot of "gazetteer" entries about the FR (default setting for the adventure), without buying the book, I can't tell how much of that would be dead filler in a Greyhawk campaign, or how much could actually be ported.

Given just how much space the World Conversion notes take up (about eight pages, I think I read in one review), it's the sort of article which would have made more sense as an on-line piece. If nothing else, it would advertise the book and the potential for use elsewhere than FR to DM's of Greyhawk, Eberron, Dragonlance &c., so that they could decide whether to invest in it.

 

[Zelc]

I haven't read it /that/ carefully, but I think you'll be fine. The book has a lot of factoids about Forgotten Realms: some information about the various cities and man-made features, and some stuff about the history of the area. AFAICT none of that's really necessary for the campaign. You could easily plop the whole region into whatever world you want and it'd probably work. If you really care, you could change the names of the places and of the historical empires. You don't even need to change the town descriptions, although you can if you want.

The most Forgotten Realms thing which ties into the campaign is the factions, and the conversion document has suggestions for substituting factions from different worlds. You don't even have to use factions so I don't think it's a problem.

 

[Luz]

It wouldn't take a lot of work to port this into GH, which is what I plan to do. As suggested in the module, Red Larch becomes Hommlet and the Dessarin Valley becomes the eastern Kron Hills. Most of the surrounding locations can be fitted into GH, or not at all if it doesn't suit your needs. Personally, I will probably remove some of the additional towns as I feel Hommlet and Nulb give the PCs plenty to do, but will keep all the extra dungeon/adventure sites.

Honestly, a GH fan can really enjoy the best of both worlds here. Start the campaign running the Village of Hommlet as is (if you don't mind the conversion work), then once the party is ready to tackle the temple use the material from Princes of the Apocalypse. In between you can leave hooks for them to check out some of the other adventure locations, they're not necessary but it would be a shame not to use them. They really help flesh out the region as well as unify the party if they belong to factions.

 

[meomwt]

It wouldn't take a lot of work to port this into GH, which is what I plan to do. As suggested in the module, Red Larch becomes Hommlet and the Dessarin Valley becomes the eastern Kron Hills. Most of the surrounding locations can be fitted into GH, or not at all if it doesn't suit your needs. Personally, I will probably remove some of the additional towns as I feel Hommlet and Nulb give the PCs plenty to do, but will keep all the extra dungeon/adventure sites.

Honestly, a GH fan can really enjoy the best of both worlds here. Start the campaign running the Village of Hommlet as is (if you don't mind the conversion work), then once the party is ready to tackle the temple use the material from Princes of the Apocalypse. In between you can leave hooks for them to check out some of the other adventure locations, they're not necessary but it would be a shame not to use them. They really help flesh out the region as well as unify the party if they belong to factions.

And there's the rub... my PC's are running round Hommlet right now, as I frantically try to keep one step ahead of them converting Temple of Elemental Evil up to 5th Ed. Trying to shoe-horn PotA into that space now would certainly not work.

See - right there I know that right now, it won't fit what I'm doing and where I'm doing it. Glad I didn't shell out £30+ to find that out!

 

[Zelc]

Depends on what you want, really. To me, it sounds like you don't want to buy the book, which is fine .

If you don't want to convert the cities, you could just take the dungeons. The cities aren't necessary at all, but you'd probably need a different hook to get them to the dungeons.

 

[Luz]

And there's the rub... my PC's are running round Hommlet right now, as I frantically try to keep one step ahead of them converting Temple of Elemental Evil up to 5th Ed. Trying to shoe-horn PotA into that space now would certainly not work.

See - right there I know that right now, it won't fit what I'm doing and where I'm doing it. Glad I didn't shell out £30+ to find that out!

The original Temple of Elemental Evil is a great dungeon and if that is what you're set on doing then your players will likely have a blast. I ran it twice back in the day and, although neither party survived, they all really enjoyed it. As an alternative temple, you could easily use the material from Princes of the Apocalypse to save you from all that frantic conversion work. Of course, this would change the villains, unless you somehow retrofit Iuz and Zuggtmoy into the new one. Not saying one is better than the other, but converting the original temple is an enormous task. This would save you a lot of work.

 

[transtemporal]

Change the placenames, maybe change some of the races, boom! Done.

What would be nice though is a digital version of the map without placenames so you can plonk your own ones in, so you're not constantly saying "Dessarin Valley" when you meant to say "East Kron Hills" *hint hint Mike*.

 

[meomwt]

Depends on what you want, really. To me, it sounds like you don't want to buy the book, which is fine .

Based on what I've heard in the Reviews here, I was kind of keen to get it. If I want to play this in my version of Greyhawk, it will mean reconfiguring, because "my" Hommlet and surrounding area won't have "their" elemental dungeons in it. And that might mean more work to port things about than I have time for at the moment.

 

[Warunsun]

I have only heard great things about this module so far but I don't have it yet since my local game store didn't order any. However, I will be converting it to Greyhawk. I set up factions in my campaign before it started and most of them are based in the Domain of Greyhawk/Free City so Hommlet and the Kron Hills aren't far. Hopefully, I can stretch them to work.

I have run the classic Temple of Elemental Evil over my years three times under three different editions I might add. I love it. But by now every player I have has played it except one (but one did it twice). I also ran and enjoyed Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil and even converted the Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun over to 3rd edition with more connection to the Elemental Evil storyline. Converting the classic temple to 5th edition shouldn't be difficult at all. Also, spring-boarding from the T1-Hommlet/Moat-house section to Princes of the Apocalypse would probably be a breeze. But I agree that having the same player characters playing the full Temple of Elemental Evil and Princes of the Apocalypse probably wouldn't work out since they cover the same level range basically just like you really can't do Temple of Elemental Evil and Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil with the same PCs.

Anyway, I highly recommend the first two modules (Temple, Return) and am hopeful the new one is awesome as well.

 

[DEFCON 1]

See - right there I know that right now, it won't fit what I'm doing and where I'm doing it. Glad I didn't shell out £30+ to find that out!

Why on earth would you have bought it sight unseen to begin with?