Guide to Converting T1 - Village of Hommlet (first part of Temple of Elemental Evil) to D&D Next

For those interested in running T1 - Village of Hommlet, I'm about 4/5 done with my conversion (only have about 10 entries from the village itself to transcribe and update). Unfortunately, the way I wrote it makes it doubly bad if I share it - I followed the copywrited material too closely copying many descriptions word-for-word and it's a derivative work so sharing is a violation of the Playtest Agreement. So don't ask me to share because I won't.

However, I can make the work easier for people following in my footsteps. I've tried to write this specifically so that it makes absolutely no sense if you don't have both the module and playtest material, and to make sure it doesn't contain any direct information from either one. It does contain spoilers, so if you want to play in T1 completely clean, I'd avoid it.

I'm only noting when I've changed something. Many of the monsters can be swapped out directly, though you may want to play with the numbers of them for balance since I haven't playtested this yet. I'm also explaining my logic when I do something that seems...not in keeping with either the original monster or the original adventure so you know why I did what I did. I tried to match XP values to hopefully get a similar challenge, but I also made a few judgement calls.

Village: Use Humans for everyone, but give militia members +1 to hit and damage and give anyone with class levels an additional +2 to hit and damage. Make note of who has what weapons to fix AC and damage dice. I made full stats for the traders, though, because they're not really like any of the others. A bit of logic in how they're built will make it very easy to convert them though. Same goes for the druid and a few of the other NPCs.

Moathouse

Area 1. Replace the frogs with stirges. There's just nothing in the playtest material that works as well, and if you follow my logic of making stirges mosquitoes from hell rather than semi-sentient vampire bats, it works very well.

Area 4. Use the stats for the bugbear here, but add climb and jump speeds. Makes the spider non-poisonous but it should still give the group a nice fight.

Area 7. Brigands are reskinned goblins, Captain Aide is hobgoblin.

Area 12. The snake I created completely from scratch as there was nothing that would work. I'd suggest playing around with the Owlbear's stats since this encounter's supposed to reflect the idea of "Oops, wrong turn! RUN AWAY!" based on the original.

Area 16. Fire beetle is the closest I could find, but I'd recommend using a pair of them to make up for the challenge. Or you can use another flock of stirges.

Area 17. Reskinned gnoll with some of the abilities shuffled around a bit.

Area 18. Grey oozes. It was that or a gelatinous cube, which seemed too much.

Area 30. Created the giant crawfish (I'm from Southeast Texas...it's not a "crayfish" you yankees!) from scratch based off boosting a skeleton's stats to about the level of the kobold chieftain to reflect the hardened shell.

Area 31. Reskinned skeletons with a paralysis attack instead of the resistance to piercing/slashing, but you can just use them straight and it'll still fit mostly. Or you can put a wright or two in here instead of the group of ghouls.

Area 33. Gnolls for the guards, bugbears for the sergeants.

Area 34. Kobold chieftain with the AC and damage numbers fiddled with a bit to match the gear.

Area 35. Lareth is just straight up the Dark Priest. Make his chambers a bit bigger and use his brazier instead of the altar for the writhing darkness attack thingy he has.

I'd highly recommend toning the treasure waaaay down if you're wanting to run this as a campaign as the amount of gold the group can get is insane compared to other adventures, especially if they load up every little trinket they find to haul back to Hommlet. I'd also replenish the monsters in various rooms regularly if the group keeps going in and coming back rather than pushing straight through, but either tactic would have drawbacks. Lareth isn't stupid and he should be played that way. He'd notice if his ogre's suddenly dead and come up with another way to protect his lair, if he doesn't outright abandon it for greener pastures.

I also did a lot of work converting all the searching randomness into ability/skill checks, but I can't think of a way to post those without violating one of the two rules I mentioned above. Shouldn't be too hard to adjust on the fly though.

As I said, what I've got so far is only a rough draft and I haven't gotten a chance to playtest it. Numbers of monsters in the encounters hasn't changed from the original, so there's a good chance it could be incredibly deadly. If anyone has any notes or questions as to why I did something I did, please let me know. I'm hoping to run this soon as a treat for some out-of-town friends when I visit them in a couple of weeks, and I'd like to have the kinks hammered out by then.