Re-Skinning Adventures in D&D

I am currently in the situation where I promised a friend to do a small campaign to showcase how TTRPGs work for their partner. After asking them what they would prefer as a system and a setting we came to the conclusion that they wanted something like D&D and that a setting named Myranor (a side setting of The Dark Eye) was interesting to them. Recently a setting specific version of the D&D rules has been crowdfunded and it fits quite well. The problem is that I have little experience in running D&D and it does not really suit my taste most of the time. I am not really a fan of rules heavy games and also not ones with long drawn out combats. But a promise is a promise. 

So I have follow-up problems now. First they need characters and from experience creating Myranor characters if you know the Lore and D&D rules somewhat still takes me two hours if I use the books. They have basically no experience in creating D&D characters or in the setting. So I just guided them through creating characters on DND-Beyond and we will adapt the characters with a bit of re-imagining while using the standard rules. The second problem is that I need pre-written adventures that are scaled for beginners and are balanced enough. In my experience getting the balance right is the main work when crafting D&D adventures and it also takes a lot of time, which I don’t have at the moment. 

After looking around for adventures that fit the bill I noticed that most were created for 4 to 6 players … I only have two. That can be fixed at higher levels but the characters they have (1st Level) already might prove too complicated, so leveling is not an option before the start. Then I remembered the sidekick rules from D&D I read somewhere. I found them in the D&D Essentials Kit – box set. I also flipped through the adventure booklet and found a reasonable campaign for beginners, that is somewhat sandboxy (I am definitely a Sandbox GM). Better yet the premise, a Dragon swoops in and as a consequence Orcs Attack felt like it could be easily rewritten to fit an idea I had earlier for a story in Myranor. 

So first lets take a look at the corner of Myranor I want to set my story in and what elements I want to convey. They found the Pardir Jungle interesting, an area where humanoid panthers and humanoid chameleons live in a jungle filled with ruins from earlier times together with all the horrible and wonderfull animals and monsters of a fantasy world jungle. Currently the humans from the Second Imperium (a state similar to a huge version of the Roman Empire which is ruled by mages) are trying to excavate ruins in the jungle. All that is only the backdrop for the real story, an invasion attempt by a state of the undead, the Drydal. This is a state where the leaders have sent all the life energy of their country and themselves to a shackled god of selfishness and betrayal to free him. They already have a few feelers in the Pardir Jungle and now they want to capture another region.

On this backdrop I want to take the skeleton of “The Dragon of Icespire Peak” and rewrite it for my story. So what is the summary of Icespire Peak? If you still want to play it, stop here !!!

Ok, still here I see. As you wish. So in Icespire Peak the heroes arrive in a frontier town and currently there is uproar because dragon sightings have increased and people at the edges of the regions where the dragon seems to reside are being attacked by Orcs. So the adventurers are sent by the townsmaster to various locations to warn people and request help in protecting the town from the dragon. As they do this they are being attacked by Orcs that have been displaced by the dragon and are searching for a new home. In the various small areas the players visit, there are dangers unconnected to the larger plot and occasionally the overarching plot comes to the forefront. Later the fight against the Orcs and the consequences of the Dragon attacks are more the focus and finally the heroes can track the Dragon to its lair for a final confrontation. There are potentially friendly NPCs from the dwarves, gnomes and some human ranchers. Oh and if you have only one or two PCs there is a list of easy to play sidekicks for the players. 

So how do I change the story to my Drydalanian Invasion? First: The dragon is replaced with a dark, necromantic version that could come from Draydalan. Second: the Orcs are replaced by the ghoul & giant rat army of the Draydal. The gnomes become magic using, dog to horse sized, spiders named Smarantans. The dwarves technically could stay dwarves, as such exist in Myranor but I will change them to G’Rolmur, a kind of kobold (the european fey-like version, not the D&D kind). Also I will introduce the Chameleon like Schingwa as living in symbiosis with the Smarantan spiders. 

So coming to the details: I need a town that can stand in for Phandalin. This should be a mixed town of explorers and natives, a merchant outpost maybe. So lets pay homage and call it “Ph’an Kha’leng”, sounds roughly like the original and also like a Pardir place name. Lets say it is a trading post of the house Phraisopos, a house that primarily focuses on magic of biology and mechanics. Maybe there is one or two NPC Mage (or Optimates) in the town. The rest is filled with local guides, trade representatives and workers. But there is definitely a lack of people to do irregular jobs, so our adventurers fit right in. Maybe they have a connection to the Optimate House. 

The first three original adventure jobs are: 1) Warn a healer living alone that trouble is coming and to come to the town for safety. 2) Warn a few archeologists working in an old dwarven temple and get any magical trinkets that could help from there. 3) Go to the gnome town and get magical tools from them. 

So 1) can stay mostly the same. We replace the human midwife and potion maker living in a Windmill with a Schingwa Animist (nature magician that calls spirits into themselves) that lives in a tree house on a small hill clearing in the jungle. The monster attacking should be dangerous to the party and intelligent so multiple solutions, like diplomacy, are options. We replace them with a Maru (a crocodile man) whose swamp town was destroyed in the first attack of the Draydal. He is a prince of his people and how the heroes treat him might change how other Maru will treat them and with whom they will ally. But at the moment he is hungry beyond reason and will do anything to sate himself. 

2) Becomes warning a couple of archaeologists, a Phraisopos honorate (an administrative title for non-mages among Optimate Houses)) and his G’Rolmur helper. They are searching the remains of an old temple of the Shintr (an old species of cobra-headed snake people). The temple was primarily devoted to cristalomancy, as the original adventure has a couple of references to gems. Originally the adventure features Ochre Jellies, I am tempted to keep that even though it is not setting native. Maybe I will find something else or at least give it a different name. At the end the temple gets attacked by the Orcs in the original. So here we have our first meeting with the Draydal. A small shock troop of Ghouls and “Hetz-Ratten” (roughly translates to chaser rats) attacks. Here we have to change the stats for the original monsters. Ghouls in D&D have a paralysing effect that the draydalan ghouls do not, they however get health from damaging enemies (this is from older non-D&D editions). So I use the normal stat block of Ghouls and replace the paralysis effect with them gaining temporary hit points when they deal necrotic damage. This means each attack they can gain up to one d6 in hp but it is capped at 6 at a time. Also I will remove their multi attack ability. The rats are less problematic as they are described in the monster book for Myranor. Basically they are less deadly wolves that give people the poisoned state upon being damaged by them. Originally the adventure calls for one Orc per PC and sidekick, I will use one Ghoul and two Hetzratten per duo of PC and Sidekick, in the case they want only one or three sidekicks I will add or subtract another Hetzratte. 

And 3) the town of Gnomegarde will become a treetop town of Schingwa next to a Smarantan spider-den in an elevated cave. In the original there is a disguised assassin (no spoilers) in the town and has killed a few gnomes and frightened one of the kings to madness. Here we will have a similar situation but the assassin will have the goal of setting the two species against each other. The Draydal could have summoned a shapechanger demon, I believe there are a couple variants in the setting. The queen of spiders has taken the chieftain of the Schingwa hostage after they have telepathically witnessed a Schingwa destroying some spider eggs, while the shapechanger roams about trying to find victims to fan the flames. Both sides are on edge and might believe the heroes to be on the other side. I will have to make up some stat blocks for Smarantan males, females and the queen. For the Schingwa I can use usual stat blocks for NPCs with the PC species adjustments for Schingwa from the Myranor players guide. 

This is definitely a good start and I have a few sessions to refit the next three adventures from Icespire Peak. I hope this example of how I am reskinning an adventure gives a few ideas and maybe if you have some good ideas yourself feel free to leave a comment.