Quote from: JeffB on March 06, 2021, 10:48:01 AM

Quote from: SHARK on March 06, 2021, 05:34:01 AM

Quote from: JeffB on March 05, 2021, 08:48:19 AM
When I ran 5E, other than the adventure in the Starter Set, I always used O/TSR modules-most of the 5E "Adventure path" rehash material is pretty piss-poor. ToA is OK, but they even screwed up Saltmarsh.

Greetings!

Hi there, Jeff! I'm interested in your perspective on the 5E "Adventure Path" rehash. How are these materials piss-poor in your view? What aspects have disappointed you so thoroughly?

Secondly, what do you think WOTC did so poorly with Saltmarsh? What should they have done to improve and make a better Saltmarsh?

Semper Fidelis,
SHARK

Put simply, most of the 5E APs,are previous ideas (already done to death through the editions) with a twist and planted into the Forgotten Realms. Dragonlance. Giants series. Ravenloft. Temple of Elemental Evil.  Vault of the Drow, etc.   Same old villains and tropes, up the Epic-ness.

As for Saltmarsh i particular- essentially they have decided to ignore a  bunch of GH canon and moreso than cannon, just verisimilitude based on the "laws of the setting" I discussed this at length elsewhere, so I'll just C&P something from the discussion I had over at ODD74, when someone said  the book was focused on Saltmarsh itself, and not necc GH proper.

QuoteThis is absolutely true, but the book is very much about a town in the world of GH, and talks quite a bit things that are uniquely Greyhawk


Keoland (where Saltmarsh is located) and it's King.
The Scarlet Brotherhood.
The Sea Princes
The Greyhawk Wars
Greyahwk Deities like Obad-Hai
Many major geographical areas (hool marshes for example)


As an example of bad- we have this gem

We have a Tiefling running around town. Wait, what?

Hard stop.

A Tiefling running around Saltmarsh?

In a setting that fought a horrific major war against an Evil demigod and his legions of demons.

Demons which another major NPC of the setting had banished through the use of a major artifact. This drastically reduced the power of the evil demi god's hold in a large chunk of the setting Which allowed the good nations of the setting to re-take and re-settle areas. Millions of innocents died in just this part of entire world conflict and these nations pledged eternal war on the evil demigod.

Keoland (where Saltmarsh is located), a good nation was allied against that Demigod through it's pact with other nations. And fought it's own battles in the war.

This Tiefling is in Saltmarsh, selling (cursed) magic items and in turn buying FISH for the Demigod.

FISH To send back to the Demigod's nation.

Even if we totally ignore the fact that the evil demigod's nation is 1000s of miles away and not easily and directly reached by land or waterway.... we'll also have to ignore that the evil demi god's capital lies upon the 2nd largest body of freshwater on the continent..

Oh, we will also have to ignore that the evil demigod's northern border is a vast ocean...

So ignoring all those irrelevant facts...

How would a Tiefling, especially one who is depicted as very demonic, manage to get all that fish back and forth navigating the waterways through 1000s of miles through the good nations that fought against her master without getting her flipping head chopped off by any number of people who have pledged to destroy that demigod and all involved?

Crap design work.

It's the same type of idiocy that placed a Tiefling in Hommlett hanging around in the open and up to no good in the 4E conversion. WTF.


Yes it's just a stupid game about make believe elves and faeries. But at least have some respect for verisimilitude of the creator's own god bless-ed setting. It's as bad as Disney Star Wars. I can't tell if WOTC is stupid, lazy, ignorant or all three combined when it comes to campaign settings.

Hope that helps explain my feelings.

That's awful, but it's easily removed.  Surely if that's the scale of additions it would be easier to just use the 5e version already converted?

Quote from: S'mon on March 05, 2021, 10:58:15 AM

Quote from: JeffB on March 05, 2021, 08:48:19 AM
When I ran 5E, other than the adventure in the Starter Set, I always used O/TSR modules-most of the 5E "Adventure path" rehash material is pretty piss-poor. ToA is OK, but they even screwed up Saltmarsh.

It's bad enough that I prefer using Pathfinder stuff converted to 5e, over most of the official 5e stuff. The official Roll20 conversion of 5e Forge of Fury I'm running is decent though, finally got nice maps - the maps in Tales from the Yawning Portal are godawful.

My favorite style was Mike Schley's -- I wish they used his kind of mapping for all the adventures. (the kind in LMOP)

5e adventures are campaign modules. Not "adventure paths". We've been over this ground before.

I use AD&D, and B/X material all the time for my 5e games.  I almost never run anything as-written but instead use pieces of adventures, maps from one, a plot from another, NPC's/Villans from a third source.  All these I mix with later 5e published adventures. 

For example: I am running a Ghosts of Saltmarsh game, but I have set the town in The Moonsheas in Forgotten Realms.  The fat Iuz-worshipping tierfling is now a preistess of Umberlee, who harvests gear from shipwrecks. 

I ran Sinister Secret and ditched the whole Lizard-Man vs. Sahuagin thing, and instead made the baddies the Slave Lords, now the PC's have a ship and are contending with the    Pirate Lord Feetla and his crew.  I stick in other adventures from "Ghosts", but sprinkle in  the Naga from N1.

The ship from U1, the "Sea Ghost, actually had a ghost on her who was the former captain, murdered by his crew.  He was predisposed to like the PC's since they killedthe muntineers, and told them where to find a map to the Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan.

Quote from: Omega on March 06, 2021, 10:32:42 PM
Alot of people say that of the Tyranny of Dragons set too. But its fairly open to how you approach it. Problem is it presents alot of stuff as if they should or even will happen. Jettison that and just use the stuff as a guide in case the party does follow the course, or adapt as they veer off.

Example. The PCs are "supposed" to join a merchant trek and spy on the cult. Instead my players continued theur guise from before of pretending to be cult members and followed this through all the way to the cults swamp base, and then beyond. If things happened that were "supposed to happen" then that was only because the players themselves veered the course that way before promptly going back off and proceeding in their own way.

Do that with any of the 5e modues when they start to sound too linear.

I did a very similar thing with the first half of Tyranny when running Hoard of the Dragon Queen. We zoomed way in and slowed down the timeline. We still did the caravan, and hit all of the locations, but it felt a lot more organic. I also brought horror elements into the cult. I want to say we were able to get 10-12 months out of Hoard.

Something like B/X or Lamentations would run really well with that module.

Quote from: TJS on March 07, 2021, 02:16:24 AM

Quote from: JeffB on March 06, 2021, 10:48:01 AM

Quote from: SHARK on March 06, 2021, 05:34:01 AM

Quote from: JeffB on March 05, 2021, 08:48:19 AM
When I ran 5E, other than the adventure in the Starter Set, I always used O/TSR modules-most of the 5E "Adventure path" rehash material is pretty piss-poor. ToA is OK, but they even screwed up Saltmarsh.

Greetings!

Hi there, Jeff! I'm interested in your perspective on the 5E "Adventure Path" rehash. How are these materials piss-poor in your view? What aspects have disappointed you so thoroughly?

Secondly, what do you think WOTC did so poorly with Saltmarsh? What should they have done to improve and make a better Saltmarsh?

Semper Fidelis,
SHARK

Put simply, most of the 5E APs,are previous ideas (already done to death through the editions) with a twist and planted into the Forgotten Realms. Dragonlance. Giants series. Ravenloft. Temple of Elemental Evil.  Vault of the Drow, etc.   Same old villains and tropes, up the Epic-ness.

As for Saltmarsh i particular- essentially they have decided to ignore a  bunch of GH canon and moreso than cannon, just verisimilitude based on the "laws of the setting" I discussed this at length elsewhere, so I'll just C&P something from the discussion I had over at ODD74, when someone said  the book was focused on Saltmarsh itself, and not necc GH proper.

QuoteThis is absolutely true, but the book is very much about a town in the world of GH, and talks quite a bit things that are uniquely Greyhawk


Keoland (where Saltmarsh is located) and it's King.
The Scarlet Brotherhood.
The Sea Princes
The Greyhawk Wars
Greyahwk Deities like Obad-Hai
Many major geographical areas (hool marshes for example)


As an example of bad- we have this gem

We have a Tiefling running around town. Wait, what?

Hard stop.

A Tiefling running around Saltmarsh?

In a setting that fought a horrific major war against an Evil demigod and his legions of demons.

Demons which another major NPC of the setting had banished through the use of a major artifact. This drastically reduced the power of the evil demi god's hold in a large chunk of the setting Which allowed the good nations of the setting to re-take and re-settle areas. Millions of innocents died in just this part of entire world conflict and these nations pledged eternal war on the evil demigod.

Keoland (where Saltmarsh is located), a good nation was allied against that Demigod through it's pact with other nations. And fought it's own battles in the war.

This Tiefling is in Saltmarsh, selling (cursed) magic items and in turn buying FISH for the Demigod.

FISH To send back to the Demigod's nation.

Even if we totally ignore the fact that the evil demigod's nation is 1000s of miles away and not easily and directly reached by land or waterway.... we'll also have to ignore that the evil demi god's capital lies upon the 2nd largest body of freshwater on the continent..

Oh, we will also have to ignore that the evil demigod's northern border is a vast ocean...

So ignoring all those irrelevant facts...

How would a Tiefling, especially one who is depicted as very demonic, manage to get all that fish back and forth navigating the waterways through 1000s of miles through the good nations that fought against her master without getting her flipping head chopped off by any number of people who have pledged to destroy that demigod and all involved?

Crap design work.

It's the same type of idiocy that placed a Tiefling in Hommlett hanging around in the open and up to no good in the 4E conversion. WTF.


Yes it's just a stupid game about make believe elves and faeries. But at least have some respect for verisimilitude of the creator's own god bless-ed setting. It's as bad as Disney Star Wars. I can't tell if WOTC is stupid, lazy, ignorant or all three combined when it comes to campaign settings.

Hope that helps explain my feelings.

That's awful, but it's easily removed.  Surely if that's the scale of additions it would be easier to just use the 5e version already converted?

I really hate how the quoting works here.  Walls of text , and hard to snip pieces out. 

That was just one example above There is a lot of added material- and some of it I like, but as far as Greyhawk verisimilitude goes, they failed in many other ways than that.

The person who started the thread on another board (whom I believe is a member here too) was wondering if it was worth his while to pick up GoS or just use his 1E module, and the convo bloomed from there.  Classic Modules today is available for a few bucks on Drive Thru and has conversions for the entire U series without all the extraneous info re: the town, factions battling it out inside the town, altering the plot to incorporate the extra adventures from Dungeon Magazine, etc. So if you just want to play U1-3 using 5E, IMO that is the better route. FWIW , I am not a fan of U2 and U3, and instead have always used U1 as the lead in to the Slavers series of adventures.

Quote from: Svenhelgrim on March 07, 2021, 07:00:07 AM
I ran Sinister Secret and ditched the whole Lizard-Man vs. Sahuagin thing, and instead made the baddies the Slave Lords

Great minds...

Quote from: Omega on March 06, 2021, 10:32:42 PM

Quote from: TobiasP on March 06, 2021, 01:59:18 AM
Thanks for the tips. I've started a 5th Campaign using the Storm Kind's Thunder adventure path and am finding it to be very railroady. Thinking of maneuvering the players elsewhere.

Alot of people say that of the Tyranny of Dragons set too. But its fairly open to how you approach it. Problem is it presents alot of stuff as if they should or even will happen. Jettison that and just use the stuff as a guide in case the party does follow the course, or adapt as they veer off.

Example. The PCs are "supposed" to join a merchant trek and spy on the cult. Instead my players continued theur guise from before of pretending to be cult members and followed this through all the way to the cults swamp base, and then beyond. If things happened that were "supposed to happen" then that was only because the players themselves veered the course that way before promptly going back off and proceeding in their own way.

Do that with any of the 5e modues when they start to sound too linear.

That's what I've been doing so far. It's easy within individual adventures. But the overall campaign structure feels like it's all headed in one direction. So I'm going to try to branch things out a bit. The suggestion of having a map with a bunch of adventures on it makes sense. I haven't run D&D in ~10 years so this is all really helpful.

Quote from: S'mon on March 05, 2021, 03:51:45 AM
I've not used 5e D&D for a genre-shift like Stars Without Number. I thought about it, but probably better to use Esper Genesis if I wanted a full-on SF game. Esper Genesis is a nice conversion of 5e D&D to space opera (in the tone of Farscape or Guardians of the Galaxy, not so much military SF or Star Trek), the free quickstart alone has plenty of material for years of play.

I have idly thought about using core 5e D&D rules for an Urban Fantasy setting, Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Dark Conspiracy  - probably just Human Tiefling & Half-Elf PCs to begin with, with a default activity of monster-hunt-of-the-week.  It might not take much more work than setting up a regular D&D sandbox game, and I could use plenty of published D&D scenarios - especially those with a more horror tone - but right now I'm fully focused on Faerun Adventures.

Thanks for the recommendation for Esper Genesis. I was thinking of running something like Dune where it's half Fantasy and half Sci-Fi, so I think D&D could work but it's also very helpful to have a Sci-Fi rules set.

Have you seen any other "Genre shift" 5th edition content around that is worth using? Most of what I've seen is pure fantasy, or else not just not very good.

Quote from: TobiasP on March 07, 2021, 04:15:03 PM
The suggestion of having a map with a bunch of adventures on it makes sense. I haven't run D&D in ~10 years so this is all really helpful.

I think "have a map with a bunch of adventures on it" is always the best advice! Even in a linear setup, seeing the map will help free your mind to see other possibilities, other connections.

Quote from: TobiasP on March 07, 2021, 04:35:35 PM
Have you seen any other "Genre shift" 5th edition content around that is worth using? Most of what I've seen is pure fantasy, or else not just not very good.

Nothing much comes to mind.

Googling turns up this article that looks decent https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/579-adapting-other-genres-to-d-d

Edit: By contrast there are tons of great OSR genre-shift games, mostly S&W based. Sword & Planet, Urban Fantasy, SF, zombie horror, super-heroes et al in abundance.

Checking drivethru I found

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/258895/Spaceships-and-Starwyrms-Core-Sourcebook?src=hottest_filtered&filters=330_0_45326_0_0

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/193074/Mists-of-Akuma-Eastern-Fantasy-Noir-Steampunk-for-5E?src=hottest_filtered&filters=330_0_45326_0_0

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/270384/Entromancy-A-Cyberpunk-Fantasy-RPG?src=hottest_filtered&filters=330_0_45326_0_0

& sort-of https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/294821/The-Silence-of-Hollowind-PinUp-Adventures?src=hottest_filtered&filters=330_0_45326_0_0

Quote from: TobiasP on March 07, 2021, 04:35:35 PM

Quote from: S'mon on March 05, 2021, 03:51:45 AM
I've not used 5e D&D for a genre-shift like Stars Without Number. I thought about it, but probably better to use Esper Genesis if I wanted a full-on SF game. Esper Genesis is a nice conversion of 5e D&D to space opera (in the tone of Farscape or Guardians of the Galaxy, not so much military SF or Star Trek), the free quickstart alone has plenty of material for years of play.

I have idly thought about using core 5e D&D rules for an Urban Fantasy setting, Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Dark Conspiracy  - probably just Human Tiefling & Half-Elf PCs to begin with, with a default activity of monster-hunt-of-the-week.  It might not take much more work than setting up a regular D&D sandbox game, and I could use plenty of published D&D scenarios - especially those with a more horror tone - but right now I'm fully focused on Faerun Adventures.

Thanks for the recommendation for Esper Genesis. I was thinking of running something like Dune where it's half Fantasy and half Sci-Fi, so I think D&D could work but it's also very helpful to have a Sci-Fi rules set.

Have you seen any other "Genre shift" 5th edition content around that is worth using? Most of what I've seen is pure fantasy, or else not just not very good.

I'm a fan of Ultramodern5: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/302992/Ultramodern5-REDUX-5th-Edition

Quote from: TobiasP on March 07, 2021, 04:35:35 PM

Have you seen any other "Genre shift" 5th edition content around that is worth using? Most of what I've seen is pure fantasy, or else not just not very good.

There was a now deleted WOTC forum thread on converting Gamma World to 5e.
There is also an incomplete UA article over on WOTC for an Urban Arcana setting conversion. A friend used it a little and is still hoping for more some day.

Probably would not be too hard to convert the original Buck Rogers RPG to 5e as it was pseudo-cross compatible with 2e and Gamma World at the time.

Quote from: JeffB on March 06, 2021, 10:48:01 AM


As for Saltmarsh i particular- essentially they have decided to ignore a  bunch of GH canon and moreso than cannon, just verisimilitude based on the "laws of the setting" I discussed this at length elsewhere, so I'll just C&P something from the discussion I had over at ODD74, when someone said  the book was focused on Saltmarsh itself, and not necc GH proper.

QuoteThis is absolutely true, but the book is very much about a town in the world of GH, and talks quite a bit things that are uniquely Greyhawk


Keoland (where Saltmarsh is located) and it's King.
The Scarlet Brotherhood.
The Sea Princes
The Greyhawk Wars
Greyahwk Deities like Obad-Hai
Many major geographical areas (hool marshes for example)


As an example of bad- we have this gem

We have a Tiefling running around town. Wait, what?

Hard stop.

A Tiefling running around Saltmarsh?

In a setting that fought a horrific major war against an Evil demigod and his legions of demons.

Demons which another major NPC of the setting had banished through the use of a major artifact. This drastically reduced the power of the evil demi god's hold in a large chunk of the setting Which allowed the good nations of the setting to re-take and re-settle areas. Millions of innocents died in just this part of entire world conflict and these nations pledged eternal war on the evil demigod.

Keoland (where Saltmarsh is located), a good nation was allied against that Demigod through it's pact with other nations. And fought it's own battles in the war.

This Tiefling is in Saltmarsh, selling (cursed) magic items and in turn buying FISH for the Demigod.

FISH To send back to the Demigod's nation.

Even if we totally ignore the fact that the evil demigod's nation is 1000s of miles away and not easily and directly reached by land or waterway.... we'll also have to ignore that the evil demi god's capital lies upon the 2nd largest body of freshwater on the continent..

Oh, we will also have to ignore that the evil demigod's northern border is a vast ocean...

So ignoring all those irrelevant facts...

How would a Tiefling, especially one who is depicted as very demonic, manage to get all that fish back and forth navigating the waterways through 1000s of miles through the good nations that fought against her master without getting her flipping head chopped off by any number of people who have pledged to destroy that demigod and all involved?

Crap design work.

It's the same type of idiocy that placed a Tiefling in Hommlett hanging around in the open and up to no good in the 4E conversion. WTF.


Yes it's just a stupid game about make believe elves and faeries. But at least have some respect for verisimilitude of the creator's own god bless-ed setting. It's as bad as Disney Star Wars. I can't tell if WOTC is stupid, lazy, ignorant or all three combined when it comes to campaign settings.

Hope that helps explain my feelings.

This is exactly why I disliked it as well. It's as if the folks at WotC have never actually played the game before... They certainly have no regard for established lore.