[Freeport] Non-Green Ronin Products to Use in Freeport

[Nate Christen]

Along similar lines to a previous post, I'd like to start a thread in which people can recommend non-Green Ronin material that works well with a Freeport campaign. To start, I'll recommend a couple of free adventures from the Wizards of the Coast website, "Wreck Ashore" and "The Sea Witch;" they can be downloaded at <http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/oa/20030530b&page=1>.

-Nate

[timemrick]

Freeport is heavily influenced by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, other Cthulhu Mythos fiction, and the Call of Cthulhu RPG (1981-present, Chaosium; six editions and myriad supplements). If you want to learn more about Yig, serpent people, the Yellow Sign, and the Crawling Chaos, there's a wealth of source material there.

d20 Freeport players may wish to track down the Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying Game (AKA d20 Cthulhu; 2002, Wizards of the Coast; further support by Chaosium). This d20 version of CoC will save you a lot of conversion work, but be aware that it's v.3.0-based, and diverges from standard D&D in a number of places (most notably the magic system and the lack of classes).

For D&D 4e, I've found the following articles with Cthulhu Mythos material:

"Shadows of the Deep" and "The Stars are Right!" (Level Up #2, July 2009; Goodman Games): Deep Ones, shoggoths, and a short adventure to use them in.

"Lovecraftian Gods" (Kobold Quarterly #13, Spring 2010; Open Design): Information on the cults of Azathoth, Nyarlathotep, and Yog-Sothoth. (Open Design has produced other Cthulhu material for 4e and Pathfinder, but this is the only one I own.)

[mxyzplk]

I'm on my second "Freeport plus other stuff mized together" campaign...

I often use classic 3e adventures from Atlas Games (Maiden Voyage) and Green Ronin's "Bleeding Edge" series.

Paizo's Second Darkness and Savage Tide adventure paths have good stuff, as does the new Serpent's Skull one which has a huge serpent man tie-in. You could use the first Serpent's Skull adventure as a campaign-starter and then have it lead to Freeport rather than the jungles.

Sinister Adventures' "Indulgences" are good, leading up to the long-delayed release of Razor Coast which will be perfect.

Citybook III, Port O' Call and By Land or By Sea: En Route III (or something like that, not sure of the numbers) for locales and encounters.

Open Design's "Sunken Empires" and the Paizo adventures "Treasure of Chimera Cove" and "From Shore to Sea".

[Nate Christen]

...as does the new Serpent's Skull one which has a huge serpent man tie-in. You could use the first Serpent's Skull adventure as a campaign-starter and then have it lead to Freeport rather than the jungles.

I saw that listed in the Paizo catalog and was wondering about it. Are these the same kind of serpent folk introduce in the Freeport Trilogy?

-Nate

[mxyzplk]

...as does the new Serpent's Skull one which has a huge serpent man tie-in. You could use the first Serpent's Skull adventure as a campaign-starter and then have it lead to Freeport rather than the jungles.

I saw that listed in the Paizo catalog and was wondering about it. Are these the same kind of serpent folk introduce in the Freeport Trilogy?

-Nate

Heh, well it depends.

Rules answer - No, they are bigger and tougher, like CR4. My answer - when I ran the Freeport Trilogy for Pathfinder I replaced all the serpentfolk in there with the big kinds, and in my game world the Freeport serpent folk and the Golarion Darklands serpent folk are the same. They're mostly the same in concept - there's civilized and barbaric versions, they can change self, et cetera. Just beefier.

One of my biggest problems with the FT, in fact, was how wussy the serpentfolk are. Even in 3e, but especially in 3.5e, any 1 HD humanoid is meat - in volume - for even a first level party. God forbid they get to level 2 or 3 before they start getting into them.

My PCs had a real hard time with these new, buffer serpentfolk at level 2, but then they were quite manageable at level 3.

Note that in general, something of CR X in D&D 3.0 is effectively CR X-1 in 3.5 and CR X-2 in Pathfinder. So "horde of 1 HD humanoids" is lunchmeat anywhere above level 1.

[timemrick]

One of my biggest problems with the FT, in fact, was how wussy the serpentfolk are. Even in 3e, but especially in 3.5e, any 1 HD humanoid is meat - in volume - for even a first level party. God forbid they get to level 2 or 3 before they start getting into them.

I just wanted to chime with a tangential thought here: If any GMs are using the serpent people as presented in the Freeport Trilogy and the d20 Freeport Companion and find 1st-level warriors to be too weak a challenge, then simply add another level or two to the warrior stat block (the easiest fix), or change the warrior to a PC class, such as a fighter or barbarian.

(Note that although they're monstrous humanoids, serpent people follow the same rules as 1 HD humanoid races: they're built using class levels rather than monster HD.)

FWIW, in the Trilogy, the party only meets 1st-level serpent people during Death in Freeport, when they're assumed to be 1st-level themselves. After that, all the serpent people they face are more advanced (and are usually PC classes rather than warriors).

[Nate Christen]

One thing I found, while running adventures set in Freeport at local game days, is that, when I made a party of pre-generated characters, the serpent folk bard was a nice addition. That gave some nice extra abilities to a character that specializes in interaction, while not making the character more powerful than other PC's.

-Nate

[timemrick]

In my original 3.0 run of the Freeport Trilogy, one of the PCs (an elf sorcerer) was slain in the Temple of Yig. When the party paid to have him brought back, I ran a short scene for his disembodied spirit instead of just saying "poof, you're alive again." He was faced with a number of pedestals, each with a different object on it. He chose the egg, so got the nasty shock of waking up as a serpent person. (Other choices would have returned him as his original race, or a talking cat, or something else--it was the Dreamlands, after all.)

[buckyball]

Some classic modules I have, that I am using include: Treasure Hunt, The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh and Danger at Dunwater. These are old AD&D modules set on the coast. I also have The city state of Tarantis module from Judges Guild. I am thinking Tarantis could be an adversary to the city state of Freeport.

buc

[Nate Christen]

Good call on the U Series modules; I'd add U3, The Final Enemy to that. Those were some of the more groundbreaking modules, in my opinion, for having a storyline that was easy to follow and fun, too.

-Nate

[havard]

In my old campaign I used good old X1 Isle of Dread, sending the PCs on a treasure hunting quest from Freeport to the Isle duking it out with Dinosaurs, crazed natives and a bit of inserted betrayal from crew members to retain that traditional Freeport flavour

Havard

[mxyzplk]

In my old campaign I used good old X1 Isle of Dread, sending the PCs on a treasure hunting quest from Freeport to the Isle duking it out with Dinosaurs, crazed natives and a bit of inserted betrayal from crew members to retain that traditional Freeport flavour

Havard

I will note that the Savage Tide Adventure Path is pirates + the Isle of Dread, revamped for 3.5 and turned into an epic adventure.

And now there's a new Open Design set of adventures for Freeport in the offing I see! Woot!

[Nate Christen]

Another adventure that comes to mind, if people have access to old issues of Dungeon magazine, is one called "The Matchmakers." It involves nobles from two houses who are in love, and the PC's are called in to help make that happen. Given the number of families from which to choose in Freeport, I think this one could be a good fit.

-Nate

[Sangrolu]

I adapted "The Nightmare Closet" in Goodman Games' "The Adventure Continues" to good effect, and it has a horror style feel in a small manor that fits easily in Freeport.

With a few name changes, 0one Games urban adventure "A Pound of Flesh" could work really well and fit both the horror and gritty urban feel of Freeport.

http://enworld.rpgnow.com/product_info. ... s_id=58340

[Nate Christen]

For those who haven't seen it, there's an excellent series of maps available free for download from the WotC website; you can scroll through a list, including a few sets of deckplans from the Stormwrack book.

<http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/arch/mw>

-Nate