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hawkwind
May 19th, 2019, 12:31
I have converted the module from this site coinsandscrolls.blogspot.com
Its meant as a @trainer@ dungeon for new players and DM's
The original is system neutral old school friendly so it shpould be fairly easy to convert this module to any D20 fantasy game like 5e , 13th age or castles and Crusades. I started doing it for Celestian's free adnd rules set but it opens fine in the new 2e set

Dr0W
May 19th, 2019, 18:57
Thanks

Topdecker
May 26th, 2019, 15:30
Appreciate it!

Culdraug
May 28th, 2019, 22:59
Thanks!!!

celestian
June 26th, 2019, 17:19
Got a chance to check this out finally. Good stuff!

Thanks for doing this.

hawkwind
June 26th, 2019, 19:25
Got a chance to check this out finally. Good stuff!

Thanks for doing this.
It is a great little adventure, I'm running it for bunch of 11 year olds at our local library using Black Hack 2e for rules.

Gwydion
June 26th, 2019, 19:55
Yes! Much appreciated. I'm looking for a starter adventure to dip my toe into DM'ing AD&D and this just might be the ticket! Appreciate you doing this.

pablomaz
July 12th, 2019, 02:21
Thanks, my friend!

galfaroth2000
July 18th, 2019, 16:54
Thanks a lot.

Grommit57
July 21st, 2019, 22:17
Thanks You.

dmkevin
July 21st, 2019, 23:17
Thank you for creating this!

hawkwind
July 22nd, 2019, 22:51
The credit should really go to the author Skerples for writing such a fine adventure and releasing it for free, He has another adventure which just out which isn't free but is really good https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/276115/Magical-Murder-Mansion in a old school sort of way
, I'm currently DMing it with a bunch of kids and they are loving it

Yehudah
July 23rd, 2019, 09:52
I have converted the module from this site coinsandscrolls.blogspot.com
Its meant as a @trainer@ dungeon for new players and DM's
The original is system neutral old school friendly so it shpould be fairly easy to convert this module to any D20 fantasy game like 5e , 13th age or castles and Crusades. I started doing it for Celestian's free adnd rules set but it opens fine in the new 2e set

thanks very much.

pollux
October 20th, 2019, 17:45
Any reason this is exported as read-only? MoonWizard (an FG dev) recommends that adventures be exported with read-only set to false: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?43486-Module-Export-questions&p=386925&viewfull=1#post386925 presumably so that folks can hack/edit the story entries and other things easily to customize the adventure.

My own interest in getting read-only disabled is that I'd like to be able to run this adventure in 5e. So I tried to export just the stories and images (which are ruleset agnostic) without exporting the NPC's, encounters, items, and parcels (which are ruleset dependent). I'm unable to export any of the read-only entries. The original PDF is CC BY-NC-SA so there shouldn't be any copyright reason to prevent people from hacking/re-exporting.

Any chance of getting this updated to remove the read-only flag?

AegisPrime
October 20th, 2019, 20:36
Any chance of getting this updated to remove the read-only flag?

It's just a .zip file - rename the .mod to .zip and load the db.xml into a text editor - remove all the static="true" entries (so <tomboftheserpentking static="true"> becomes <tomboftheserpentking> etc.)

Or just replace the db.xml in the .zip with the one below ;)

Trenloe
October 20th, 2019, 20:47
My own interest in getting read-only disabled is that I'd like to be able to run this adventure in 5e. So I tried to export just the stories and images (which are ruleset agnostic) without exporting the NPC's, encounters, items, and parcels (which are ruleset dependent). I'm unable to export any of the read-only entries. The original PDF is CC BY-NC-SA so there shouldn't be any copyright reason to prevent people from hacking/re-exporting.
Removing the read-only flag would not allow you to export into another module. You can only export campaign data into a module. Make copies of the entries from the module you want to export - to make a copy drag/drop the entry in the campaign data list window (you can make a copy even if it is read-only), this will make an editable copy of the entry in your campaign. You can then export the copied entries from your campaign database.

pollux
October 20th, 2019, 22:34
remove all the static="true" entries

Ah, cool. I figured there must be an XML edit to do this, but I searched for "read", "readonly", and similar variants and wasn't able to google it. Thanks.

Trenloe
October 20th, 2019, 22:41
Ah, cool. I figured there must be an XML edit to do this, but I searched for "read", "readonly", and similar variants and wasn't able to google it. Thanks.
You'll still need to make copies of the records into the campaign database if you want to export to a module - you have to do this whether the module is read-only or not. See my post above (#16).

Or you could use the community Universal Modules extension by @damned to load the module directly into your 5E campaign: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?41034-Universal-Module-Extension

pollux
October 20th, 2019, 22:41
Removing the read-only flag would not allow you to export into another module. You can only export campaign data into a module.

Oh drag, I see that now. I found 2 editable story entries that I though were accidentally left read/write by the author, but in fact these were story-entries that I inadvertently generated when playing with a story template. There's just a lot of stuff to drag around using this strategy, but I get that's a sensible behavior for modules in general which are not all open-licensed.

I guess 2 bits of feedback for the author then are:

1. That it would be better to disable read-only for adventure modules in general, irrespective of my export problem. Editing story entries and encounters in-place is common for adventures.

2. And it might be cool to have a variant with just stories and images, since they're ruleset agnostic. I realize that leaves a lot of the convenience of a full-conversion on the table, but with a system-agnostic adventure like this... that's the ideal starting point when adapting for a new ruleset.

But I have the info I need to hack around things at this point. Thanks all for your help.

Trenloe
October 20th, 2019, 22:43
2. And it might be cool to have a variant with just stories and images, since they're ruleset agnostic.
Use the Universal Module extension. https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?41034-Universal-Module-Extension

pollux
October 20th, 2019, 22:44
Or you could use the community Universal Modules extension by @damned to load the module directly into your 5E campaign: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?41034-Universal-Module-Extension

I feel like this is kind of asking for trouble, though, right? The NPC's and items are going to be specific to the 2E ruleset and create problems and errors in my 5e campaign, won't they? I haven't messed with that module much, but I have had corrupted campaigns before which was making me want to import only the very safe subset of content into my non 2E campaign.

pollux
October 20th, 2019, 22:45
Or you could use the community Universal Modules extension by @damned to load the module directly into your 5E campaign: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?41034-Universal-Module-Extension

I feel like this is kind of asking for trouble, though, right? The NPC's and items are going to be specific to the 2E ruleset and create problems and errors in my 5e campaign, won't they? I haven't messed with that module much, but I have had corrupted campaigns before which was making me want to import only the very safe subset of content into my non 2E campaign.

Trenloe
October 20th, 2019, 22:47
I feel like this is kind of asking for trouble, though, right? The NPC's and items are going to be specific to the 2E ruleset and create problems and errors in my 5e campaign, won't they? I haven't messed with that module much, but I have had corrupted campaigns before which was making me want to import only the very safe subset of content into my non 2E campaign.
Just don't open the stuff that won't work.

And, as the module is read-only, you're not going to get any changed data and no campaign data changes or corruption even if you do open stuff that doesn't work.

If you've had campaign corruption before - are you using any cloud sync/backups on your FG data directories?

pollux
October 20th, 2019, 22:58
Just don't open the stuff that won't work.

And, as the module is read-only, you're not going to get any changed data and no campaign data changes or corruption even if you do open stuff that doesn't work.

Interesting. You've given me some stuff to think about. Enabling cross-ruleset modules globally still feels like a big hammer to handle a single module conversion, but I do follow what you're saying. I'll think about my options.


If you've had campaign corruption before - are you using any cloud sync/backups on your FG data directories?

I am well aware of the concurrent filesystem access issue you're getting at with this question. There's a detailed troubleshooting thread in my post history that includes several other immortals and a dev, and we didn't get to the bottom of it. I am not using cloud backup software, though. In the end I had to re-create my campaign from scratch, which was viable as it was pretty young. And I now have meticulous backups that are "safe" in that they don't cause concurrent access to the FG data dir and I haven't had a problem since that thread.

Trenloe
October 20th, 2019, 23:02
And I now have meticulous backups that are "safe" in that they don't cause concurrent access to the FG data dir and I haven't had a problem since that thread.
Cool.

hawkwind
October 21st, 2019, 09:18
i have regularly used 5e modules in the Rolemaster rule set though I hacked a beta version of the rule set i had been given access to to modify to access official 5e material,all i needed to do was to add fresh combat encounters and NPC's for Rolemaster. Any way I attach a copy of the module with the read only access removed. Could i ask that if someone does produce a 5e version of this adventure they share it please

hawkwind
October 21st, 2019, 09:20
77 downloads, that's more than any official module I have been involved in has sold!

hawkwind
October 22nd, 2019, 23:10
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/291914/Tomb-of-the-Serpent-Kings-5e-converted

pollux
October 23rd, 2019, 05:12
Hey folks, I adapted this to open in any ruleset by stripping out the resources that are ruleset specific.

Here's a changelog:


Exported from a CoreRPG campaign. I don't think this makes any difference in the result, but many d20 systems are build on CoreRPG so it seemed to be the best starting point for a module targeting broad ruleset compatibility.
Removed all NPC's
Removed all items
Removed all encounters, and links to them from stories
Removed all parcels, and links to them from stories
001.0001 Expanded the conversion notes
001.0013 Fixed extra line-break
001.0017 Italicized lesson
001.0019 Fixed extra line-break
001.0021 Fixed extra line-breaks
001.0026 Fixed extra line-break
001.0034 Put lesson into its own paragraph and italicized


Here's some oddities I noticed while going through the module, nothing particularly of consequence but FYI in case Hawkwind didn't already notice them:

The PDF is called "Tomb of the Serpent Kings", note the plural. The module uses the singular in the module filename, and in various categories.
The name of the story category doesn't match the image/table category name (those two do match).
001.009 Links to the skeleton jelly encounter when the text calls for a plain old skeleton.
001.0034 has a typo: "scarifice smoke tra", both "sacrifice" and "trap" are mis-spelled.


I considered a 5e adaptation, but decided against it for the following reasons:


It's a lot more work, obviously. This was purely removing content. Integrating with 5E would involve creating new versions of all the stuff I ripped out.
This ruleset agnostic module opens in a 5E campaign just fine. Obviously it forgoes a lot of automation and integration, but players can have their 5E character sheets and the DM can run NPC's without automation like a pen and paper campaign.
The story text is really good at filling in the bits I ripped out. Each monster already had a story-entry describing it's abilities. All the encounters and parcels are well described in the room text, so running the adventure without automation feels quite natural.
Thinking about keeping the AD&D 2E and CoreRPG variants in sync gives me a bit of a headache. I see now why Trenloe suggests just using the universal module extension. There's no mechanism at all for keeping the story entries in sync between Hawkwind's 2E dev campaign and my CoreRPG dev campaign. I'd have to diff the db.xml files in each new module release from Hawkwind and hand-copy the edits. Adding a deeply integrated 5E dev campaign into the mix makes that problem even worse.

RESmeCUE
March 25th, 2022, 02:04
Thank you for taking the time to post this.

I downloaded the file but I have a question.

When I pull it up in FGU the player's map and the DM's map are exactly the same. Am I missing something here?

Thanks in advance...

kylemahaney
November 26th, 2022, 17:03
This has unicode issues with FG Unity.