wizarddog

With my 3.5 Brooding City fallen to the wayside, I spent a good few months running a 4e on the two players I have left. The seriousness of the campaign is not the same (mostly on my part) and I have used a converted 1e module and Thunderspiral labyrinth (raised in level) as the adventuring tales so far. As far as 3.5 is concerned, I currently run the Dark City PbP which covers a lot of stuff in the world.

That said, I did have few good adventure plots left over from Brooding city that I never finished, including the Sandman arc. Since the premise and the plot is still pretty good (IMO) I plan to write the 4e heros into the adventure--basically continuing where the others last left the adventure.

The premiss of the old adventure was based on the old Sandman Short story and I used several characters from it to make the plot. The villains included Professor Splanztia who provides the expertise on reanimating life, Doctor Coppelicus, originally from the Clockwork of Nirvana Mechanus who posses a barometer and archivist, and the sandman, a Vrock that abducts children to harvest their eyes for Coppelicu's creations. The three work with the Lady Gevan, one of the Masters that has taken over the city (see the details of Brooding City). The four have been creating effigies of prominent Lord's heirs in planning to send them to other nations and infiltrate those cities, expanding the Master's Plans. In the original adventure, the resistance were searching for a young man called Nathaniel who had uncovered their plot. They got as far as infiltrating Professor Spalanzi's mansion.

Several factors have to be considered for this game.
1) Players have a reason to travel to City.
How I plan to do that is part of the Villain's plot has begun and the heros interrupt the scheme by discovering the first effigy in another City State. They are asked to investigate the origin of the creature and begin the trek to the Brooding city (Currently using the name Blacksand--inhabitants of the brooding City simply call it The City)

2) The players will be higher level.
I expect the players to have reached the paragon level by the time they get here. It simply means the villains are powerful while the everyday citizens and guards are not so. A bit different than in the Brooding city where everything is quite dangerous. As such, simple guardsman will never be able to stop such powerful PC's from doing anything if they wish. The foes the PC's fight will be much more powerful in perspective. To also emphasize the PC/monster power, most citizens will be minions.

3) The restriction on weapons and armor placed on Brooding City PC's can't be enforced on these players.
They will appears as Diplomats and given the authority to carry arms and weapons. However, the sight of arms and magic will make it difficult for them to garner any support from the local authority.

4) The Clock Work Nirvana of Mechanus.
It normally does not exist in 4e. In this case, it will be Mechanus and I continue to use the outerplanes in 3.5 and all the material regarding them.

5) The Outcome
In this case, the slaying of Lady Gevan is where the adventure ends, unless the player's want to continue slaying the creatures of the City. But I don't want to run a 4e version of the Brooding city. As some described 4e, it is more about heroic stories and The Brooding City runs a darker tone. Once the players defeat the Mindflayer, they must leave the city and continue on their way.

So for the next few weeks I will be updating the adventure for 4e. Should be fun.