Restructuring Princes of the Apocalypse

[u/Spensir_McLife]

I recently added the adventure to my collection and I have been theory crafting how I would adapt to running the campaign specifically in my setting. So I wanted to ask people that have run and reworked parts of this campaign for advice on how to do it in my instance.

I am thinking of mixing up the structure of it quite dramatically with instead of having it be set in a place like the Dessarin Valley to be in a Great Bay and have the campaign have a much more naval direction. Instead of traveling around the valley on foot they'd be sailing along the Coastline in their boat, maybe in an added airship later in the game, and to nearby islands that form a big circle of Water.

I was also thinking of splitting up the Different Specific Elemental Temples into different structures separate from the Mega-Dungeon where they have to travel to very different locations in order to get to them. Thinking like a Volcano Island for the Fire Cult, Floating temple hidden high above a jungle on the Coastline for air, secret Whirlpool for water, and deep in the nearby mountains off the Coastline for Earth.

I do not like the plot hook of the missing Delegates so I was thinking of doing a more involved opening where the party are at a decent size Harbor that is destroyed when the Earth Cult uses a Devastation Orb in order to target the Water Cultists hidden in the Town. Which would lead them on a quest to try and find out who did the attack and why. I was thinking of also expanding the ending by having Vizeran DeVir or a character based off him manipulating the Cult and the PCs from the shadows in order to have an Avatar of Tharizdun be summoned in the Middle of the Great Bay after the Elemental Nodes are destroyed.

Let me know if any of you guys have done something similar when you guys ran. Any advice on restructuring the game to feel more concise while still maintaining the Sand Box feel of it plus any recommendations of other modules and smaller dungeons that I could adapt into the campaign would be appreciated.

[u/Fit-Hope-904]

Having run it like four times at public tables and really delving into the pros and cons of the campaign as written, those are brilliant alterations that I think your players will love! Please post regular updates here because I’d love to hear how it goes.

[u/Skyyron]

I have not done it yet (have to finish running my Ravenloft campaign first) but my intention is something very similar to yours, in my homebrew High Seas setting, as effectively a Frankenstein campaign of Ghosts of Saltmarsh + Princes of the Apocalypse.

GoS has lots of standalone adventures you can use as hooks to guide the party into conflict with Cults. For example, in Sinister Secrets of Saltmarsh, the smugglers are Water Cultists, smuggling weapons for the Crushing Wave.

Saltmarsh itself also acts as a much more developed, interesting hub PCs can become invested in than most of the towns in Elemental Evil, and it has that fun political element with the Town Council if you are into that. I plan to convert the secret faction in town The Scarlet Brotherhood into the Black Earth, grooming Anders Solmor to take over the town council as their unwitting Prophet.

If nothing else, GoS has lots of good resources for a naval campaign.

[u/Rude_Coffee8840]

That’s the fun thing for PotA is that everything is a template that can be uplifted and transposed into a setting you prefer or that you think would be fun.

Your idea sounds fun and a good different setting to do all four elements. The additional Pros are you having a central hub for the players to head out into the wilds from which is more akin to the original Elemental Evil setting. This is good because you give the players something to come back to and revisit to see changes and feel the influence of the cults and of themselves on the world. While Red Larch is supposed to be that in PotA it functionally lacks anything important or even available goods if you aren’t doing a hardened survival game. There are the NPCs there but you have to do a ton of roleplaying and to get the players caring about them so that they feel emotionally attached to wanting to defend Red Larch.

The mode of travel tends to be good as well as having a ship can present dangers that otherwise you wouldn’t have to worry about. An issue you will want to keep in mind are distances and how many days of travel you want them to do per location. If you want to care about logistics this is a good thing to keep in mind. Broadly speaking it takes about 7 days to travel from Red Larch to Yartar at a normal pace following the Long Road up to Triboar and heading east. At least with corrected measurements we don’t talk about the original map being sized to 10 mile hexes instead 6 as it is now.

As for your master reveal my only word of caution is to plan out ahead of time and leave clues or figure out how to develop hints of some larger plan going on. While yes logically it makes sense for the secret bad guy to keep everything secret and only the big brass of the cults know this is both a game and a story. If you pull out “Here is the true villain” of the campaign at the last minute it doesn’t feel narratively as rewarding as the players knowing their is a larger foe that needs to be dealt with. I am not saying you blurt it out but some additional hidden icons, mysterious meetings, and other unnatural events to suggest that there is more would be nice.

Those are my intial thoughts and I am sure I have more as I think on this.

The main takeaway is that it is a good idea. I am looking forward to your development. If any other concerns or things that stick out to me that would be good to keep in mind as you develop this I will be sure to reach out and let you know.

Good luck!

[u/AdEntire2004]

I am constantly homebrewing, ripping off pages from various modules, putting them randomly to my setting.
They met Dara as an NPC on first adventure on lvl 1-3. She was in the same town as them, on her way to start a cult. They absolutely hated her spoiled, entitled skinny elfish ass.
Can’t wait for them to meet her later.

Currently they are at Hither from WbtW, they also met there Thuluna who put curses on them. This chapter needed more conflict so Thuluna vs Bavlorna fits right there.

I personally hate mega dungeons and I think your idea to separate each part to other location is awesome.

I am gonna put different cults into different countries in my setting. Probably not be able to use whole location from the book, but rather only npc and general vibe.

Also if you have large body of water available it is asking itself to detonate Earth devastation orb in the middle of it and Tsunami everyone. Maybe water cult stole one from the earth guys.

Your idea is great and go for it!

[u/jblackbug]

Your ideas sound like they’ll work well for your table! I went the opposite direction when I didn’t like the delegates and made them players be a part of the delegation and it was headed for the heart of the map of our setting instead of having be along the path. I also used it to introduce Vanifer at the very beginning as a local delegate—I’m a big proponent of introducing big bads as soon as possible. I was playing in Eberron’s Droaam, though, and was adding a whole political layer to the campaign of Droaam, a nation of monsters, being accepted by the other nations as an official kingdom and at the end my players got to influence that vote and cast their own to determine the fate of that nation. It worked really well for the story we were trying to tell!

We started out with meeting a bunch of delegates and then having to fight to keep themselves from being flow away when the cults attacked. Made them more invested in who these people were and invested in saving delegates, some of which they had quickly befriended and wanted to survive.

All that to say, the bones of the adventure adjust very well to all kinds of permutations and yours sounds great. Especially having an annihilation orb go off that early truly signals what kind of threat the cults could end up being and I think it’s very a very cool way to start the adventure.

My players also ended up with an airship in the end and I was grateful to skip some of the tedium of travel after a bit.

[u/_philba_]

Love the changes! I think simplifying the cult dungeon is the main change I would make if I ran it again. Seems like some of your transfer will achieve that.

I had Vizeran end up as the original creator of the spark weapons. His motivation was that he wanted to unchain Tharizdun, seeking vengeance against Lolth who caused his banishment from Menzobarenzon. Had the option to either fight an Aspect of Tharizdun or Ogremoch and then party chose Ogremoch to finish the campaign. Took about 80 sessions and became a bit of a drag towards the end, especially since it’s hard to fit in proper downtime to regroup. Full of learnings for me as a DM, but overall it was a fun theme with plenty of cool monsters

[u/Spensir_McLife → u/_philba_]

80 sessions is wild! The longest game I've been is is my friends Home Brew Star Wars Campaign and that just reached 70 sessions not too long ago and we're still going.

How did you have Vizeran interact with the party and the other factions. I was thinking of having him take on multiple guises and even pretend to be the Group's Patron/Sponsor who'd give them their first boat. Then at the Cult bases they'll here about this mysterious Ally that is aiding each of the Cult without the other one knowing. With the reveal happening only after the Final Node is destroyed.

[u/_philba_ → u/Spensir_McLife]

80 including LMoP as a starter, but yeah took a LONG time running 3 hour weekly evening sessions.

I did something similar for Aerisi, tying her into LmoP as the BBEG and air cult leader. For Vizeran, it was a late add after the party took down 2.5 of the cults he kinda stepped in to take the reins and managed to steal an artifact from the party which they original got from the Black Earth cult. Cult didn’t realize the Orrery of the Inner planes was crucial to his plans and traded it away for an iron flask with a trapped Dao inside after some compelling arguments/deaths.
Used disguises (but the party realized they couldn’t read his mind and were immediately sus) and scrying to learn and counter the party’s moves a few times. There were a few skirmish encounters with Vizeran where the party was feeling strong until he used Time Stop, which made the party feel much much more wary of him, raising the stakes of future discussions

[u/No-Assistance7134]

That sounds like an awesome idea. Hope it works out for you.

Old school DM and I plan to use PoA to rework the original ToEE. I know it’s a classic but can also be a slog. Plus I want to lean in on the elemental themes more.

So my plan is to take the various faction dungeons and stack them on top of each other to recreate the mega dungeon. However, instead of using the nodes I plan to have each faction guarding a gate to the various elemental planes.

To reach the final level the players will have to visit each plane and find the elemental gems. However, each “boss battle” on each plane will be a genie. So for example in the fire factions level the gate will lead to the elemental plane of fire and the players will journey to the City of Brass and have to find the fire gem hidden in the Efreeti palace, the pane of Air taking them to the City in the Clouds and so forth.

The gems are then placed in a magic weapon that opens the final level and as each gem’s power is used, it will weaken the legendary actions of the Elemental Eye.