D&D 5E Treasure Hunt/ Rise of Heroes, Keep Borderlands, Isle Dread: Experiences

[not-so-newguy]

I'd like to run the following modules using 5e for my home group:




Treasure Hunt


OR


Rise of Heroes


The Keep on The Borderlands
The Isle of Dread




I'd like to know your experiences with these. If you DMed any of them, how did you modify them? Or did you just wing it?


My Situation:


Our long time group (aka my family) is now scattered across northern California, but we still make the effort to play some DnD now and then. When we meet, we make it a weekend playing 8-10 hours the first day and 4-6 hours the second. This has resulted in some great times, but also in some dismal disappointments.




Normally I like to homebrew, but the fact that we meet only several times a year has proven too much for me. It's hard to keep the campaign fresh in my mind and maintain game continuity. So I decided to go with old school modules.




I've never played Treasure Hunt, but my early DnD life was spent on Keep on The Borderlands and Isle of Dread. I plan on the "some time passes" trope between adventures. I understand that this heavy handed style isn't to most people's tastes, but I can see our group having a blast with these adventures.

Note: i know the spacing is off. Sorry I'm struggling with my kindle for some reason

 

[Mouseferatu]

I'm currently running a highly modified KotB. Right now, the PCs are thinking up ways to get the humanoids in the caves fighting each other, and/or discovering and sabotaging the humanoid tribes' food sources.

So I guess the only advice I have right now is, whatever you expect the PCs to do when they realize there are multiple factions in the caves, they'll do something else

 

[not-so-newguy]

Yaaay, my thread won't die in absolute obscurity.

There's an abundance of experiences, ideas and maps found by googling KotB. To a lesser extent Isle of Dread. Unfortunately, very little on Treasure Hunt and Rise of Heroes. Most people don't want to start at zero level (a 1st level PC is quite squishy). OTOH, I find as a player that I discover most of who my character is through actual play, even if I write a detailed backstory. I like the fact that you discover your class by decisions made within the adventure. Though I'd still allow PCs to choose their class in the end. A DM trying to enforce specific choices on a character would be ridiculous.

As far as the Caves of Chaos, I plan on replacing the evil cult with the cult of Beltar. (A Greyhawk goddess that fits well with the adventure). I will also replace the name of the area from "Caves of Chaos" to "Beltar's Gauntlet." The basic premise is that Beltar uses the area to "train the faithful." The Orcs will be reskinned as feral humans known as the Unholy (name needs work). The only mechanical difference between Orcs and The Unholy is that the feral humans speak common rather than orcish.

The cult somehow compels the goblinoids (bribing the leaders most likely) to stick around and fight the Unholy on a regular basis. The cultist stand back in judgement as the the humans and goblinoids fight it out. When the fight is done, a cultist may deem an Unholy as worthy of becoming a cultist. Some will be judged as unworthy of their own skin and be butchered on the spot. I will probably use one of these battles as an "introductory scene" to the Caves of Chaos ...errrr... Beltar's Gauntlet.

Right now, the PCs are thinking up ways to get the humanoids in the caves fighting each other, and/or discovering and sabotaging the humanoid tribes' food sources.

There's a surprising lack of access to water too! Especially for those living higher up. Also, no latrines.

 

[Mouseferatu]

So, one of the things I modified is, I vastly increased the size of the valley. By multiple orders of magnitude. And it's STILL too small to "realistically" support that many separate tribes. (I have the Hidden Temple creating food for the orcs and bugbears, and all the tribes occasionally hunt beyond the valley.)

Latrine-wise, I made Cave G a sort of neutral ground, and opened up a second entrance--a vertical shaft, rather than a cave. I also removed the owlbear and replaced it with more oozes. So the tribes all basically use it as a dumping ground.

 

[recon35]

This is exactly what our group did for our "secondary" campaign. I ran Treasure Hunt. There were four characters, including Melisana, the provided NPC. Each character had their background skills and racial abilities, except the varient human whose feat didn't manifest until 1st level. They could use whatever weapons but no proficiency bonus. The group liked it because they thought more about how to approach each encounter, and there was a sound reason for this disparate group to be together. I left the magic weapons "as is" due to their small group size. As they escaped the island, each became "marked" with the sign of the island's goddess (Freya in this case) and I handed over to another to run KotB.
We are about halfway through the Caves, and have done all of the other encounters. While we are leaving the magic as is, I would suggest, as have others in other threads, seriously reducing the amount of gold awarded. We are also using the xp earned as opposed to the milestone method, and will be 5th-6th level once we finish.

 

[not-so-newguy]

This is exactly what our group did for our "secondary" campaign. I ran Treasure Hunt. There were four characters, including Melisana, the provided NPC. Each character had their background skills and racial abilities, except the varient human whose feat didn't manifest until 1st level. They could use whatever weapons but no proficiency bonus. The group liked it because they thought more about how to approach each encounter, and there was a sound reason for this disparate group to be together. I left the magic weapons "as is" due to their small group size. As they escaped the island, each became "marked" with the sign of the island's goddess (Freya in this case) and I handed over to another to run KotB.
We are about halfway through the Caves, and have done all of the other encounters. While we are leaving the magic as is, I would suggest, as have others in other threads, seriously reducing the amount of gold awarded. We are also using the xp earned as opposed to the milestone method, and will be 5th-6th level once we finish.

Nice!

I'm hoping the party of six PCs will be 3-4 level when they're finished with KotB.

Does the group plan to go through Isle of Dread? I plan for the goddess to make her reappearance then. Depends how the PCs react to her in Treasure Hunt.

 

[Cyan Wisp]

Isle of Dread brings back fond memories. I presume you mean X1 from BECMI D&D (or did they update it?)

I loved that the premise was to "explore the island". It was very open and sandboxy. Apart from a few keyed areas, though, it seems to mostly serve as an experimental module for DMs to play around with the (then new) wilderness rules - exploration, hex-mapping, random encounters, getting lost, sailing, weather, running away from freakin' dinosaurs, etc.

I reckon your party could spend a lot of time there, but you'd probably want to drop all sorts of home-brewed scenarios around the place to beef up the material.

 

[Celtavian]

I'm running KotB right now. I've changed very little. I used the cultist and adept out of the back of the MM for the temple area priests and adepts. I rewrote the evil priest in the temple as a Legendary Creature Evil High Priest. I made the temple a living place with lair actions. I rewrote a the torturer hobgoblins giving them different weapons and slightly more hit points and strength. Other than that, I pretty much pulled all the monsters from the MM. I was impressed that 5E was so classic that I could run a classic module like Keep on the Borderlands without excessive modification. It made it seem like the MM was made to run KotB.

 

[recon35]

We won't use Isle as we traveled inland to the Keep and will ultimately do the G series, so probably won't return to the coast.