"Madness" has four parts listed, but two of them are actually quite similar and run together, and only are split by kind of fiat, and because it makes the four parts roughly equal in size that way. I see if as fundamentally a three part module, with a longer and mostly frustrating middle act. The first act is a soiree held by the corrupt Sea Lord to honor the PCs, but also to entrap them and frame them. It's mostly a roleplaying opportunity, where they get to wear nice things and hang out with important people in the palace, sniping at each other, getting information, and looking for clues. It's also meant to be tense, because by this point, the PCs already know that at least some of the people that they have to tolerate during this section are corrupt. This part of the module, and the way that it was written, reminds me strongly of a similar event in Warhammer's famous Enemy Within campaign, in the "Power Behind the Throne" module, and I can't believe that that wasn't deliberate. In fact, in many ways the Freeport Trilogy reminds me of the Enemy Within campaign, although clearly smaller in scope and more D&D-ish rather than embracing it's differences, as Warhammer did. Graeme Davis very explicitly said that Enemy Within was written with the directive of being a Call of Cthulhu scenario in a D&D-like fantasy setting, and it feels like it. The Freeport Trilogy, on the other hand, feels very much like a D&D scenario in D&D that pays some superficial lip service to Yog-Sothothery. Sometimes second-hand, as here where it's imitating the most famous Warhammer campaign explicity.
If I were to ever run Freeport in Shadow of Old Night (which I should start calling SoON so I don't have to always type that. Or Old Night, or something at least that's shorter...) I'd probably look for some inspiration for stuff to flesh it out by trawling through my Cubicle 7 Enemy Within Director's Cut books. They went a little woke as part of their "remaster", but mostly in an ambient rather than overt sense (making lots of originally male characters female; stuff like that) but there's still loads of great material there.
The next two parts are two connected and back to back dungeon crawls. The PCs are meant to infiltrate first a haunted semi-flooded cave on the coast where some pirate treasure is hidden, and which connects to the second; the old serpent temple, which of course is also haunted. Not only do I not like dungeon crawls at all, but I also don't like the sympathetic "friendly" ghost monsters of some of the snakes, I hate the riddles and traps and randomness of many of the monsters present, and I also hate the MacGuffin angle; find the Yig McGuffin which will banish the Unspeakable One MacGuffin that the bad guys are using. I don't mind the idea of caves on the shore of some cliffs that you have to watch the timing of because of the tides. That's a whole Pirates of the Caribbean (the original ride from the 60s) angle that's pretty cool, and is a cool environment. But there's way too much of it here, and they don't even focus on the sea caves and tides all that much, instead focusing on traps and crap.
The final part is the confrontation with the Sea Lord and his cronies in his big, finished lighthouse where they're trying to summon Hastur (never named, but c'mon, it's obviously him). I don't like the substitute the magical Hastur crystal for the healing Yig crystal angle, but a climactic confrontation in the lighthouse is, of course, inevitable.
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So, how would I change this module to make it fit? To make it more overtly dark, Lovecraftian and all that, the monsters have to all be monstrous. There can't be any friendly, sympathetic or nice ones. Rather than an artifact from the evil serpent god who surprise! he isn't really all that evil that saves you from the other evil Lovecraftian god, I think a summoning ritual (not unlike the call deity spell from the d20 Call of Cthulhu book) can be used to summon a different alien monstrosity to drag the one that the Sea Lord summoned away from the earth to fight in the Far Realm. Or whatever.
The massive confrontation therefore becomes a fight with two different summoning parties each trying to get their Elder Evil summoned. The cost will be tremendous; most of the PCs, the NPCs fighting, and maybe even many people in the city itself, even if shrouded in thick fog, will find the experience terrifying in the extreme, and will lose sanity like it's going out of style. The disruption to the day to day will be tremendous as cases of people going insane, and many of them not really recovering, will spike, and even people who do recover and suppress their memories of what happened, (and like I said, even if it's hidden in thick fog) it will be a devastating thing to the city, and there will almost certainly be lingering impacts for quite a long time to go in the campaign overall; NPCs that are suddenly gone, new ones that have resettled from the mainland or elsewhere, political and social upheaval, etc.
If I do swap the serpent people and the Unspeakable One for my ratmen and .... the Horned Rat, or whatever equivalent I come up with, maybe I can still use the snake people as the alternate. PCs have to summon something more like Sertrous from the Elder Evils book or Ydersius from the Serpent's Skull adventure path. Or maybe it's just Dagon, who's already both Lovecraftian and D&Dish at the same time in equal measure.
I dunno; that's just a vague attempt to see how I could make it work. I do also like keeping the snake theme and maybe borrowing the signs and portents from the Sertrous chapter of Elder Evils to make the creepiness increase. Although I'm sure I could adapt those to rats too.
It's also worth noting that the Freeport Trilogy starts out for 1st level characters, but ends them around 7th or so level, if I remember correctly. In keeping with the way I run, my games will be more like a Lovecraftian game where lots of leveling up and getting powerful simply isn't a feature; the whole trilogy could be run in the Old Night system at 1st level, or maybe letting them get to 2nd, but then keeping them there for a long time. I would think that even if I adapt literally all of the Freeport adventures into a Corsair Coast campaign, the entirety of all of the adventures wouldn't get them past level 5 or so in my system. But my system is fundamentally different, and has a different tone. Although I kept levels, it's supposed to feel more like level-less games like the BRP Call of Cthulhu, but with mechanics that are more familiar in many respects to D&D.
Anyway, here's the updated list. I've already also read Focus on Freeport, which I have all combined in a single pdf instead of the original 2-4 pages pdfs, so it's equivalent to a slim but not tiny game book (about 62 pages). Then I have to read a physical book again in the form of Hell in Freeport. Focus on Freeport went really fast. Many of the Focus posts were integrated into the Freeport Trilogy omnibus as it is, so they're duplicates of what I've already read. I doubt that there'll be any reason to review it, other than a few minor comments here. Most of the mechanics, prestige classes, etc. aren't worth reviewing, but there are a few other things. Falthar's Curios is an interesting location, and the Deus Ex Machina, although kind of a silly premise (stealing cleric's holy symbols?) can be adapted to any interesting rooftop chase. Then there's a silly mini-dungeon, and finally it ends with a rather ridiculous premise. A rooftop chase and a minor guild of thieves and their hideout isn't a bad idea, but this particular mini-adventure needs a little work to not be silly. That said, my memory is that I'm entering the sillier phase of Freeport for at least some of the next few products before it remembers to play it a bit more straight if the horror angle wants to be taken seriously.
The ones that are not repeats seem to be pretty minor. A new monster, or prestige class, or NPC, or location around town. Useful stuff, especially if you use the 3e system, but not essential. Quite a few prestige classes, as it turns out. Hell in Freeport had a lot of Hell related prestige classes over two entire Focus articles, for instance. But they're not so flavorful that they warrant attempting to convert.
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