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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5428258" data-attributes="member: 42582">I stipulated at the start of the campaign that every PC must have a backstory reason to be ready to fight goblins. As a result we got a youthful dwarf who (to his shame) had never seen a goblin, and was off to prove himself; a middle-aged pastry chef and wizard whose town had been destroyed by goblins; and an elf and half-elf whose village had been raided by goblins. A couple of sessions in we also got a paladin (of the Raven Queen, but still seeing himself as bound by duty to look after ordinary people). This made the early parts of the module easy to motivate -fight goblins, rescue prisoners etc.I'm not using the Hutakaans (sp?) but instead minotaurs as the ancient empire, because this ties better into 4e mythology (including Thunderspire Labyrinth). I've also built into the history the idea that the dwarves were once under the tutelage of the minotaurs, which has helped engage the player of the dwarf as he learns more about the real history of his people.I've also linked the slaver group to a devilish cult (from the 4e Dungeon adventure Heathen) and have also linked in Vecna and Torog via the magic-user who is the main enemy. This mythological stuff helps with engaging several of the PCs (eg the wizard/chef started out as an initiate of the Raven Queen (cleric multi-class) but has since retrained as an Inovker linked to Erathis, Ioun and Vecna also). And I've also got a Rod of Seven Parts plot in there, which ties in some of the abyss/chaos elements of minotaurs and Thunderspire Labyrinth, Erathis (because the Rod is a weapon of law) and 4e history (because, as they are discovering, the history of Nerath seems to have been linked to some parts of the Rod).It's a long time since I've run a module without doing this sort of work to link it into the camaign.The goblins converted pretty easily - in that I looked at the number of goblins, the shape of the map/terrain, and put in an equivalent number of 4e goblins (including minions) with the right sorts of roles to make a good encounter.With some of the later encounters, like the tombs and the ruins, I've played a bit more fast-and-loose, putting in monsters that capture the general feel/theme (eg corruption corpses rather than the wyrds that the module uses), or adding in a few more monsters to make a better encounter (eg in the gelatinous cube encounter in the ruins, I also added in a spider pit inspired by a thread on ENworld about using spiders and webs in three dimensions). Again, this fits with the general way I use a module - to get some basic ideas, some maps, a bit of background and feel. Once I've got that, I'm pretty happy to fold, spindle, mutilate and incorporate - both in prep and as I go along - in order to get something that plays well at the table.</blockquote>

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