D&D 5E Running Old School adventures for 5e

[thorgrit]

So far the only older adventures I've modified to run in 5e have been Eberron. I started with The Forgotten Forge from the back of the 3.5 setting book, then proceeded directly to Shadows of the Last War. I was prepping to run the next one, Whispers of the Vampire's Blade, when Real Life intervened and that group more or less disbanded. I injected some Eberron flavor into The Sunless Citadel (the first WotC 3.0 adventure) and ran that for my current group. Its followup, The Forge of Fury, I lost interest in converting while we rotated DMs. (I've run more from both those series, but for different editions/systems.)

I was planning on converting half of Expedition to Castle Ravenloft (the 3.5 adventure), cutting out or handwaving gratuitous combat scenes, some extraneous stuff, and looking to the original I6 Ravenloft for inspiration. (Setting it in Eberron, because that's what I do, following suggestions in EtCR.) It wasn't going to be my turn to DM for a while, so I was mainly just looking to prepare battlemats for the castle, when Curse of Strahd was announced. I would've just used it as a third source to plumb for ideas to put in my mishmash, but one of my players surprised me by buying the book himself and the players wanting to run the whole thing from level 1.

 

[ccs]

Our Fri night 5e game has been running for nearly a year now. We get an average of about 3.5 hours pf play each week.

* It started off with a party of 5 (+ a few extra people who'd drop in for a session or three) being sent off to confer with the druids in N2: The Forest Oracle.


* Upon returning from that, the remaining two characters went and explored C3: The Lost Isle of Castanimir.


*Eventually they escaped and found themselves stranded on a jungle island home to a tribe of cannibals and a ruined temple to some forgotten bat god (Module #1 "Souls for Smugglers Shiv" from the Serpents Skull PF AP)
Here we were joined by 4! new players.
This adventure ended with a near TPK and only 1 of the new characters escaped the island - aboard a pirate ship.
(I had had thoughts of running the Skull & Shackles PF AP at this point - but most of the group weren't enthused about a pirate adventure. So I went with a different plan) The others rolled up new lv1 characters & the surviving PC was given the option: Keep your character, but lose a % roll of all your loot as you escape from the pirates. OR roll up a new 1st lv character like everyone else. He kept his character, rolled %dice, and lost most of his loot

* The next week we began module B2: The Keep on the Borderlands. The party was placed randomly on a battle grid of the Caves of Chaos valley floor - and every other square was filed with either a random allied NPC, or monster. Roll inititive. The players had no idea wy they were fighting, or even who. The fight continued until all the PCs were unconscious. Then they woke up amongst the carnage hurs later, looted the battlefield & began exploring/exterminating the caves.

*One of the bits of loot salvaged from the mass battle was a letter from Rahasia (module B7).
So when they'd mopped up the evil priests hiding in cave K, off they went to save the most beautifull elf maid in the land. They damned near botched it up, and only a few good rolls on their end saved the day.

* And now they've headed west, met up with a paladin (another new player has joined) & become involved in a slightly modified Aerie of the Crow God (Dungeon Crawl Classics #5)

 

[Herobizkit]

I ran 3.0's premier adventure, The Sunless Citadel, with minimal futzing. It helps that it's a very strong and well-organized adventure with the right amount of seasoning.

 

[JonnyP71]

L2 - The Assassins Knot.

While my group have loved the story/subterfuge focus of the adventure I would have to say that from my point of view, the ease with which 5E characters are able to work out if someone is telling the truth has made the adventure much simpler than it would have been playing with 1e/2e rules. They were able to exonerate the 3 key suspects pretty much straight away - would someone who is innocent really object to being asked questions while under the effect of a Zone of Truth? They also got lucky with a few key Insight rolls - Insight didn't exist in 1E!

But it has made for an enjoyable 3 sessions of play.

I'm looking at using X2 - Castle Amber next - but I'm not overly enamoured with the conversion notes available on DMs Guild as I feel the use of 'standard' 5E creatures in place of those listed in the original module means that it loses a lot of its quirkiness. The conversion feels a little lazy, and I'd have preferred it to have stayed closer to the old school original, rather than sell out to so many of the 5E ideals.


Kudos to those who've already posted saying they've used the U and UK series in 5E. U1/UK2/UK3/UK4 are THE best lower level AD&D 1E modules in my opinion and get woefully overlooked by those 'best-of' lists which seem to trot out the same tired old nonsense again and again.

 

[Sacrosanct]

A0-4, which went pretty well
KotBL of course
Castle Amber which also went well
Palace of the Silver Princess
Ghost Tower of Inverness
G1-3 Giants series which was absolutely deadly, but they managed to mostly survive it.
I3 and I4, Desert of Desolation first two. Never got around to the third one.

I DM'd all of these, mostly during they playtest and early release days. Conversion was super easy, and I did 95% of it on the fly as we were adventuring.

 

[Shiroiken]

I ran the Sentinel and the Guantlet duing the playtest (as well as Keep on the Borderlands). For full 5E, I've ran the Temple of Elemental Evil, the Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun, and the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. At some point I plan to run a mini-campaign of the Desert of Desolation series.

 

[JeffB]

Not that I consider it old school, but I ran TSC during the playtest.

I ran Night of the Walking Dead (ravenloft) and "the Temple", in Temple, Tower, & Tomb ( tpk very quickly, so not sure that counts ) Ive run some OSR adventures- Tomb of RaKos the Undying, The Gibbering Tower, and The Black Monastery.

 

[Ancalagon]

Keep on the Borderlands (C)
Isle of Dread (B+)
White Plume Mountain (A)
Ravenloft (A+)
Tomb of Horrors (N/A)
Gates of Firestorm Peak (F)
Undermountain (D-)

Hello

I have Gates of Firestorm Peak and I was considering it a bit... why an F? Is it that it doesn't convert well, or that you think it's not a good adventure?

 

[ExploderWizard]

I started my Greyhawk campaign in the village of Hommlet. From there it was a mix of home brew stuff along with The Haunted Keep module from Dragonsfoot.

The campaign then moved to Verbobonc. The PCs were questing for ancient tomes with valuable lore including secrets that would enable them to defeat the pair of nasty CR 23 vampires who are seizing control of the city. Their quest led them into the Gnarley forest for one of the tomes which I placed in the 3E Goodman Games module The Mysterious Tower. The party then returned to the city and explored the sewers and other home brew content.

The final tome they need is reputed to be in Iggwilv's hoard so they are about to start module S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.

So far I have used material from several editions i this campaign and it has all worked fairly well.

 

[DeanP]

I'm running Against the Giants. We've completed Steading of the Hill Giant King and are on Glacial Rift. I'm running it with characters who are 15-16th level and have a few NPCs with them. I'm using the numbers found in the encounters but using 5e stats.