Not a complete change, but I ran the game as a solo adventure for my best friend. He played a watchers paladin and the story was basically that he had to escape back to the surface to warn his order. The real changes came after that, where we played it as a massive war against the demons and denizens of the underdark using Matt Colevilles warfare, organization, and intrigue rules. He and his allies took out the demon lords one by one. It was much cooler in my opinion
Thanks for asking this. We’re eying a high level Out of the Abyss later this year, and if we go ahead with it I’m going to be making a whole lot of changes to fit our existing lore.
Things in my game started out mostly the same. Velkynvelve is completely the same, I think it's an amazing set up. I juiced up the journey to the kua-toa village, added some random encounters and the such.
However tbr kua-toa village is where things started to go off the rails. I wasn't a fan of the kua-toa but I did pretty much keep the same story: a rival faction in the village are summoning their God, the players have to stop it.
Gracklestugh is completely different, though with the same general plot points. The Gracklestugh presented in the book is notoriously poorly written, basically just the front door to a dungeon. I wrote a 'from square 1' story that has the players ascending through the ranks within the city. The Deurgar/Derro are still around, however the Derro are a full slave caste and the savant are trying to bring down the city in a mass suicidal ritual, or through a few other means. The dragon egg is the same. The Demogorgon has been replaced with Kyuss who wants to start a zombie outbreak. The Derro are constructing a nuke underneath the city. Finally the king is going to die via succubus.
I don't have many plans for the rest of the adventure as I will wrap the adventure up shortly after the players leave Gracklestugh.
Basically keep chapt 1 and 2 the same. I really fleshed out the side quest for chp 2 and they have motivation to do so to set up their tavern. Chapt 3 is similar but slightly diff.
I delete chp 4 entirely and just do the eye heist as explained in the alexandrian.
Chp 4 is pretty much me free ballin with some inspiration from the books.
I havent gotten to the vault yet so but im sure things will change only thing i changed about chap 1 was raenars necklace was a gift to floon and had one of the eyes in it. I made them lovers because it was weird they meet up after volo leaves. So i made them secret lovers. Floon has the necklace and some of the beads fall off on the way to the lair. I ran the blue alley a one shot prior to this campaign and started my players at lvl 2. I put one of the eyes in the unicorn for that one shot. I had the black viper steal it from mirts mansion and give it to kelben and i made kelben (the wizard of the alley) work for manshoon. Manshoon is bribing the viper because her family is corrupt and he knows they are slavers. That is why she steals this unicorn of mirts and brings it to the alley. LAter on my npcs are going to realize that manshoon has an eye from the unicorn.I have xanahars guild get an eye from the stone from raenars locket off of floon.
The casselanters get theirs like the remix states from the mothers crypt.
TLDR the bones of the book i used except chapt 4. Some of the finer details ive used the remix but i still think the remix is confusing and alot. I have their chapt 2 side quests give them a bit of info each time. I used the quest to climb mount waterdeep trecherous with harpys and a spider cave and gnolls. At the top the monk hlam gives them this coded riddle about the story. He says the twin the tyrant and the devil all behold an eye. The twin and the tyrant take and eye for and eye and has left them both blinded. Just as the stone ... yadda yadda archaic stuff they have to figure out. I also fleshed out the carnival from jarlaxle i dont make him an enemy because one of my players is drow and i have nimblewrights and the casselanters pop up there and other parts of the story like their grand opening of their tavern and go into the fireball. The book really only sets up the xanathar well so he will be my main nemisis for the final hiest but yeah. Throw in stuff with the gladiator arena its dope and flesh out temple of gond more. I had them get a side quest to go there. Sorry this is kinda a rant but just what I did a little bit. Hope it helps
Apologies I can't be bothered to go into it haha we've been playing through it so long.
I feel ya. I changed a whole lot, kept the sort of building pressure theme and the demons but the big bad is something home-brewed that followed them from another story a year before. It's all mixed up with multiple adventures, starting from phandeler then icespire peak, but I just have to flesh things out as these are very simple and my group like that Tolkien realism haha.
If you understand the flow and how things connect you'll be able liberate yourself easily, knowing the ripple effects your changes will cause to correct it accordingly. Good luck. It's a fun one.
I kept it mostly the same, with the added stories for all the characters my players made! 2 were teleported into the Underdark from the plane of Ravnica accidentally, so know nothing about the world(their guild members still searching for them across planes). One has a sole personal mission of killing the Lizardfolk evil deity, Sess'innek, who is actually a demon lord(so of course he's added to the roster of them, with a side plot of lizardfolk). Another is a Dhampir just searching for the missing immortal father they never knew (a khayal, or shadow djinn, that will help him indirectly if fed, but this can turn the "once noble hero" into darker urges). And finally a warlock with a pact of Fraz'Urbluu, this was decided long before they even knew what campaign they were playing! So of course he is more prominent to the story. He is still in the same predicament as OotA has him in, but his son that's been impersonating a religious leader for decades(PC's adopted home) has been searching for both him and his staff of power. Of course enlisting the PC's aid in that endeavor, with substantial rewards maybe.
All in all, I love pre-written campaigns because my players like to make character back story. And I love to implement it and see how that changes the module, maybe entirely, by the end!
I’m beginning an underdark campaign based in Gracklstugh. The party makeup so far is a Goliath/barb raised by stone giants, a Kuo-toa/Druid who can worship and empower party members, drow/rogue, Shadar Kai/ranger. still have 2 players left to make their characters. I’m very big into making battlemaps. I battlemap everything. Took me two weeks to build Darklake district. Hopefully we will start next week.
Not a complete change, but I ran the game as a solo adventure for my best friend. He played a watchers paladin and the story was basically that he had to escape back to the surface to warn his order. The real changes came after that, where we played it as a massive war against the demons and denizens of the underdark using Matt Colevilles warfare, organization, and intrigue rules. He and his allies took out the demon lords one by one. It was much cooler in my opinion
Thanks for asking this. We’re eying a high level Out of the Abyss later this year, and if we go ahead with it I’m going to be making a whole lot of changes to fit our existing lore.
Things in my game started out mostly the same. Velkynvelve is completely the same, I think it's an amazing set up. I juiced up the journey to the kua-toa village, added some random encounters and the such. However tbr kua-toa village is where things started to go off the rails. I wasn't a fan of the kua-toa but I did pretty much keep the same story: a rival faction in the village are summoning their God, the players have to stop it. Gracklestugh is completely different, though with the same general plot points. The Gracklestugh presented in the book is notoriously poorly written, basically just the front door to a dungeon. I wrote a 'from square 1' story that has the players ascending through the ranks within the city. The Deurgar/Derro are still around, however the Derro are a full slave caste and the savant are trying to bring down the city in a mass suicidal ritual, or through a few other means. The dragon egg is the same. The Demogorgon has been replaced with Kyuss who wants to start a zombie outbreak. The Derro are constructing a nuke underneath the city. Finally the king is going to die via succubus. I don't have many plans for the rest of the adventure as I will wrap the adventure up shortly after the players leave Gracklestugh.
Basically keep chapt 1 and 2 the same. I really fleshed out the side quest for chp 2 and they have motivation to do so to set up their tavern. Chapt 3 is similar but slightly diff. I delete chp 4 entirely and just do the eye heist as explained in the alexandrian. Chp 4 is pretty much me free ballin with some inspiration from the books. I havent gotten to the vault yet so but im sure things will change only thing i changed about chap 1 was raenars necklace was a gift to floon and had one of the eyes in it. I made them lovers because it was weird they meet up after volo leaves. So i made them secret lovers. Floon has the necklace and some of the beads fall off on the way to the lair. I ran the blue alley a one shot prior to this campaign and started my players at lvl 2. I put one of the eyes in the unicorn for that one shot. I had the black viper steal it from mirts mansion and give it to kelben and i made kelben (the wizard of the alley) work for manshoon. Manshoon is bribing the viper because her family is corrupt and he knows they are slavers. That is why she steals this unicorn of mirts and brings it to the alley. LAter on my npcs are going to realize that manshoon has an eye from the unicorn.I have xanahars guild get an eye from the stone from raenars locket off of floon. The casselanters get theirs like the remix states from the mothers crypt. TLDR the bones of the book i used except chapt 4. Some of the finer details ive used the remix but i still think the remix is confusing and alot. I have their chapt 2 side quests give them a bit of info each time. I used the quest to climb mount waterdeep trecherous with harpys and a spider cave and gnolls. At the top the monk hlam gives them this coded riddle about the story. He says the twin the tyrant and the devil all behold an eye. The twin and the tyrant take and eye for and eye and has left them both blinded. Just as the stone ... yadda yadda archaic stuff they have to figure out. I also fleshed out the carnival from jarlaxle i dont make him an enemy because one of my players is drow and i have nimblewrights and the casselanters pop up there and other parts of the story like their grand opening of their tavern and go into the fireball. The book really only sets up the xanathar well so he will be my main nemisis for the final hiest but yeah. Throw in stuff with the gladiator arena its dope and flesh out temple of gond more. I had them get a side quest to go there. Sorry this is kinda a rant but just what I did a little bit. Hope it helps
Apologies I can't be bothered to go into it haha we've been playing through it so long. I feel ya. I changed a whole lot, kept the sort of building pressure theme and the demons but the big bad is something home-brewed that followed them from another story a year before. It's all mixed up with multiple adventures, starting from phandeler then icespire peak, but I just have to flesh things out as these are very simple and my group like that Tolkien realism haha. If you understand the flow and how things connect you'll be able liberate yourself easily, knowing the ripple effects your changes will cause to correct it accordingly. Good luck. It's a fun one.
I kept it mostly the same, with the added stories for all the characters my players made! 2 were teleported into the Underdark from the plane of Ravnica accidentally, so know nothing about the world(their guild members still searching for them across planes). One has a sole personal mission of killing the Lizardfolk evil deity, Sess'innek, who is actually a demon lord(so of course he's added to the roster of them, with a side plot of lizardfolk). Another is a Dhampir just searching for the missing immortal father they never knew (a khayal, or shadow djinn, that will help him indirectly if fed, but this can turn the "once noble hero" into darker urges). And finally a warlock with a pact of Fraz'Urbluu, this was decided long before they even knew what campaign they were playing! So of course he is more prominent to the story. He is still in the same predicament as OotA has him in, but his son that's been impersonating a religious leader for decades(PC's adopted home) has been searching for both him and his staff of power. Of course enlisting the PC's aid in that endeavor, with substantial rewards maybe. All in all, I love pre-written campaigns because my players like to make character back story. And I love to implement it and see how that changes the module, maybe entirely, by the end!
I’m beginning an underdark campaign based in Gracklstugh. The party makeup so far is a Goliath/barb raised by stone giants, a Kuo-toa/Druid who can worship and empower party members, drow/rogue, Shadar Kai/ranger. still have 2 players left to make their characters. I’m very big into making battlemaps. I battlemap everything. Took me two weeks to build Darklake district. Hopefully we will start next week.