third party modules in FG

[hawkwind]

There are quite a few Third party modules from AAW and legendary Games, Has any bidy run or played in any of them and would like to report back on how they found them?

[Gwydion]

Hey, hawkwind. I ran Crow's Rest Island and Crypt of the Sun Lord so far. I'll be starting Devil of Dark Wood tonight with my group. So far the feedback has been really positive. Crow's Rest is a good, short adventure with a pretty cool story. I thought it was good for a new party (new to 5e and D&D for some) and for me as a new DM. I played as a teenager back in the 80's and have recently picked it back up with 5e and decided to try my hand as a DM.

Crypt of the Sun Lord took us a few sessions and they really enjoyed that one as well. Fair number of traps/cool features and some pretty nice treasure if your party finds it! Only gripe at all I had was there isn't a ton of variety in the monsters and I really enhanced the maps with some kits I purchased. Most of the crypt rooms are the same with no "extra" features in them. I added in altars, cobwebs, etc.. and really spruced it up. The players loved it.

I'll let you know how Devil of Dark Wood goes. The story looks pretty cool. Once again I used some outside maps to liven up the town of Rybalka. The maps that come with the module are pretty generic and aren't really conducive for putting tokens on. I am going to use them (the inn, hunters cabin, thirsty serpent tavern) but I also added my own maps for the library and added a couple other shops to make the town come alive a bit more. I'm saving my better tavern maps for the taverns in POTA as I will be starting that with the group in another couple sessions.

Hope this helps. Feel free to PM me with any other questions.

[hawkwind]

Thanks for that reply, much appreciated

[Seya]

The crows rest adventure line is great. The Rybalka setting from adventureaweek.com is very useful also.

[hawkwind]

great thanks for that, anyone tried any of the legendary games modules?

[damned]

Im looking at running either Curse of Strahd or a Legendary Games story arc.
The players are currently leaning towards CoS although some have played Ravenloft so LG might get the nod...

[Zacchaeus]

great thanks for that, anyone tried any of the legendary games modules?

The Legendary Games modules are all fantastic :)

[Gwydion]

I started Devil of Dark Wood with the group last night. It was actually a cool change of pace as we went for 3 hrs and most all of it was roleplaying in the village. We did get to a werewolf battle which was pretty cool, but the party rolled such great initiatives it went better than I expected for them! I added in a magic shop in the village with a halfling sorcerer who happened to have spells for the magic users in the party that come with the elemental evil companion. (I gave them the option to swap out one cantrip and/or one 1st level spell with the new elemental evil spell additions). I'm using that to tie into POTA. But I digress!

They definitely enjoyed the night and we should wrap this one up next session. There are several NPC's in Devil of Dark Wood that you can really add color to and make come to life. That was definitely fun for me and the party.

The only legendary games module I have so far is Into the Feyweald. I'm working to get my daughters (10 and 8) into roleplaying and I purchased that module to run them through when we have some time this summer when they are not with friends and they are looking for something different to do with dad! It looks cool for younger players. I'm anxious to run them through it.

[timdog88]

Are you planning on converting the whole legendary planet AP? I am looking at running that soon

[Zacchaeus]

Yes, that is the plan but I have no timeline for you as to when I'll get the stuff from the publisher.

[BlueDrake]

I ran the first 2 Trail of the Apprentice modules from Legendary Games. My group enjoyed both of them and are waiting for the next one in the series to be released.

@Gwydion - These are also good adventures for beginners/kids. There are sidebars that specifically address running the game for younger players.

[Zacchaeus]

A little mix up has caused the delay in getting part 3 of the Trail of the Apprentice out. Should be cleared up soon.
Once I get back from GenCon I'll see what the position is with part 4.

[Talyn]

I went back and forth for a long time on the Legendary Games ones. They looked really cool then I read the bit about them being geared toward kids which kinda turned me off initially. But since I've become a fan of Zacchaeus I nabbed the first one in the trilogy. Just a matter of someday finding time off in common with my RPG friends to actually try to run it. But I can vouch for its quality, both from LG and from Zacc's conversion.

[Zacchaeus]

The adventures might be a little less dark than some but they're not really children only.

incidentally I drew up some extra maps for the third instalment so someone remind me to put them up on the forums next week. ;)

[Talyn]

Were you also going to do the Pathfinder versions, or does SmiteWorks only have a 5E license from Legendary?

[Nickademus]

Were you also going to do the Pathfinder versions, or does SmiteWorks only have a 5E license from Legendary?

For 5e:
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/store/?sys=17&pub=34&typ=-1&search=&sort=1

No PF in the Store.

[Zacchaeus]

I'm not doing Pathfinder stuff, but I don't think it's limited to just 5e

[Talyn]

Ah shame, it might sell? Who knows. Figured since you already had the content done and would probably only have to swap out monster stats...

[Nickademus]

5e is designed completely differently than 3.5e/PF. You can't just swap out assets.

[Talyn]

It's just a scenario not rules, though. So far the handful of PF/5E shared scenarios I've looked it, that's exactly what they do is swap out one ruleset's stats for the other. I haven't dug down deep so maybe there's little bits of specific-ness hidden in there somewhere.

[Nickademus]

So far the handful of PF/5E shared scenarios I've looked it, that's exactly what they do is swap out one ruleset's stats for the other.

That can lead to imbalanced material (and party wipes). WotC's conversion guidelines can be found here (https://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/DnD_Conversions_1.0.pdf). As for converting PF encounters to 5e, the guide instructs modifying for difficulty (because 5e has a completely different balance of CR):

Use the encounter as written to decide on its monster composition in fifth edition. Then use the monsters’ challenge ratings, as described in the Monster Manual, along with the “Creating Encounters” section in chapter 3 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide, to modify the encounter to the desired difficulty.

Going from 5e back to PF would be harder due to how much 5e shaves off of the content. I doubt Zacc wants to do that.

EDIT: Though, I don't know why you wouldn't just use the PF versions of the adventures anyway. Just manually make the FG module from the pdfs (or hardcovers).

[damned]

A little mix up has caused the delay in getting part 3 of the Trail of the Apprentice out. Should be cleared up soon.
Once I get back from GenCon I'll see what the position is with part 4.

Woot! Off to GenCon? Have fun Zacchaeus :)

[Zacchaeus]

Indeed, off to GenCon.

And to answer the above the earlier Legendary Games adventures were converted from PFS but the latest ones have had parallel development since they are all being released pretty much at the same time for both PFS and 5e. Incidentally I have nothing to do with their conversion from PFS to 5e. I'm not doing the PFS versions of the FG mod since I am not familiar with the PFS system.

[hawkwind]

Thanks for the feedback I went and got all the |Thule material which is excellent apart from there seems to be no way of dropping the character narratives on to the character sheet and tou can't cut an paste them as well!

[Talyn]

I don't know why you wouldn't just use the PF versions of the adventures anyway. Just manually make the FG module from the pdfs (or hardcovers).

Because the actual adventure itself -- all the story text, the characters, blahblah are all the same. It makes more sense if the work has already been done once for either that person to just take what he's done and make the Pathfinder monster changes or share the source code (for lack of a better term) with someone else for dual credit and the new person can make the Pathfinder monster changes. That would hold true of pretty much any shared system content like the stuff Frog God puts out that has both 5E and PF editions. The content is the same, only the ruleset-specific stuff and statblocks change and it makes way more sense logically and efficiently to only convert the content on the larger scale once, then make the smaller ruleset changes for each set.

Not that I'm volunteering to be Person #2. I have enough on my plate and while I'd love to get my hands on doing some official 5E stuff (and some PF) stuff someday, today is not most definitely not that day. :)

[Zacchaeus]

I don't think it is necessarily as easy as all that. I can probably par5e the entire story text for the 5e adventure a lot faster than I can read through a pfs text file, whilst comparing it to the 5e version and extracting the stuff which doesn't belong and adding that which is added. The longest time is actually spent creating the module in FG once the text and npcs are done in par5e. So I don't actually see any real time saving.