Carrion Crown / Cult of Undeath

Cult of Undeath is a rather radical reworking of the Carrion Crown; so radical, in fact, that its genesis as the Carrion Crown isn't super obvious, much like Star Wars as filmed doesn't really resemble The Hidden Fortress anymore (although earlier drafts of the screenplay did so more.) Now, if I wanted to run it a little bit more as written, what would I need to do? Or what would I want to do, at least? Listening (again) to the Hideous Laughter podcast and actually doing a bit more with my 5e group has made me feel more charitable towards actual D&D. More or less. I'd still rather run Cult of Undeath as I earlier described, but realistically, nobody else is going to be as interested in that as I would be.

Let me make a list.

Firstly, the adventure path is way too long. 15 levels, or whatever it is, is twice as much as I want. And I don't know how many hours that converts to, but "common wisdom" according to the internet is that 200 hours is a reasonable time for an entire AP. We play 3-4 hour sessions, so that would come to 50-67 sessions. If we're lucky we play twice a month (sometimes less frequently) meaning that that is, at best, over two years to finish, but realistically probably as much as twice that and maybe even more than that. Not only do I think closer to 100 hours is a more reasonable time, but I also don't want to go higher than about 7th level at the most either. I can certainly cut a lot of material and shorten the thing by ~50% in terms of runtime, but shortening the levels is a bit more finicky; I'll have to end up making a great number of changes to the monsters and encounters and NPCs to make that work. Which is fine; there's no chance that I'm running this in Pathfinder 1e, as it was originally published anyway, I'll probably end up running it as a handwavy on the fly 5e conversion. Which is kinda funny, as I don't actually know the rules for 5e very well. I've been playing for some months, but I've mostly been playing as a 3e player and accepting correction or direction when that leads me astray. Honestly, that hasn't happened too much. I think handwavy on the fly conversion is certainly possible between these two systems, as long as you're not to spergy about rules. I most certainly am not, nor would I tolerate spergy rules-lawyering at my table anyway.

Secondly, there's some great Paizo horror elements that aren't part of the Carrion Crown adventure path, but are honestly even better in most respects that what the Carrion Crown did. Both, curiously, by Richard Pett as writer. I mean, of course, the stand-alone module "Carrion Hill", a Lovecraftian module that works very well and was originally written for 5e. If "Wake of the Watcher", chapter 4 of Carrion Crown is supposed to be a kind of "reverse Innsmouth", then Carrion Hill is clearly a "Dunwich Horror" pastiche. In most respects, I like it better as a "Lovecraftian chapter" than "Wake of the Watcher", and I'd be likely to read the two of them, think about how to combine them, but focusing more on "Carrion Hill" rather than "Wake of the Watcher." Similarly, although I like the intro haunted house adventure of Carrion Crown well enough, the same theme is explored even better in "The Skinsaw Murders" way back in Rise of the Runelords, literally the second adventure path chapter that Paizo did as part of their post-D&D run. I'd probably look to combine Harrowstone and Foxglove Manor, including the murders taking place around town, the ghoul farms sequence, both of which are brilliant, and then maybe lean a bit more into Harrowstone when you go to the actual haunted house. Which probably won't be a prison full of half a dozen serial killer boss ghosts, because that feels very video-gamey in its structure. 

That said, even though I'm running it more like Skinsaw than like Haunting of Harrowstone, I do want the whole Professor Lorrimor's funeral set-up.

I also want to mix in the whole mistaken identity caper from "Enemy in Shadows", the first chapter of the iconic Warhammer FRP campaign. If this seems like a lot going on front-loaded in a campaign that's already too long and complicated, that's because much of the later parts of Carrion Crown are going to be significantly trimmed due to... them not really working very well, honestly. For instance:

Thirdly, although I raved about Richard Pett's entries in these other modules, he also penned the second part of Carrion Crown. I think it's a reasonably well done module, so I can't fault Pett for this, I don't think, but the entire premise just doesn't work for me. Putting a monster on trial is kind of silly to begin with, and then making the monster a relatable "good guy" who's being framed maybe is supposed to be some kind of "subverting expectations" move, but it absolutely doesn't work for me. Not even a little, tiny bit. Yes, yes... subverting expectations might be overdoing it, because I realize of course that this is a significant theme, simplified to the point of false binary dumbness, of the Frankenstein novel, but I absolutely cannot go with it. That said, many of the encounters that the PCs are meant to have while investigating the Beast's guilt (or not, in this case) are still great encounters. The context in which they happen needs to be completely changed though.

Fourth, if "the monster is a nice guy, it's the white male Christian southerners who are the real monsters" problem wasn't kind of obnoxious already (I know I'm exaggerating, but y'know. I don't care) in the Frankenstein adventure, they go ahead and repeat the same themes in the werewolf chapter (#3) and the vampire chapter (#5) meaning that those entire modules are questionable for use, at best. While cutting two entire modules out certainly works towards my goals of trimming the whole campaign by ~50%, it's not really a great solution either, honestly. But those modules are going to be dramatically cut back, and much of what they "need" to accomplish will be folded into another module that I already have. Plot beats, or story discoveries, or whatever, can be divorced somewhat from the action that surrounds them, especially when the action that surrounds them is often somewhat gratuitous or superfluous anyway. Maybe taking another page from "The Enemy Within", the Whispering Tyrant and the "wake up the ancient dark lord" trope can be more localized, like it is in Bogenhafn. There's nothing wrong with scaling back the scope of these high fantasy epics into something more horror and sword & sorcery-like, and a lich waking up and consuming a decent sized town or medieval-scale city is certainly sufficient stakes for the tens of thousands of people who live there. It also worked for Wisburg, the German(ic?—this was before the German Unification, but I have no idea where exactly it's supposed to be, as it's not a real city as near as I can tell. Austria, possibly, since Transylvania would have been part of the Austrian Empire at the time.) from the various versions of Nosferatu. Save the whole world is tired and tropy in D&D anyway, as far as I'm concerned. 

Anyway, I need to reexamine the modules (it's been too long since I've read them, but listening to an actual play podcast only has me 20-25% or so into the second module so far). I've also been leapfrogging that with an Enemy Within podcast, but even aside from that, I've been wanting to borrow elements of that for some time. Turning the Purple Hand Tzeentch cult into a Whispering Way undead cult shouldn't be too much of a stretch.