After having used homebrew campaign worlds for my entire D&D life, I found myself at a point where life wasn’t really allowing me the time for building out complex (and internally consistent) situations for my players. I mentioned to my players that I was considering running a module and asked for their input. One of my players bought me Waterdeep: Dragon Heist (we play on Roll20, so it was the digital version).

Interestingly, neither he nor I really knew much about the module. We definitely didn’t realize it was a low combat, high RP campaign, which is not the norm for this group of dice rollers and monster killers! And then there’s the Waterdeep tie-in.

I’ll be honest, I am not a Forgotten Realms fan. Oh, when it first came out I enjoyed them – Moonshae, Icewind Dale, Maztica, and (of course) the Dark Elf Trilogy. But as time went on and all sorts of lore got built, meh. I lost interest.

But I’m not here to yuck anyone’s yum, as the kids say. To each their own. What I am here to write about is the process I went through to relocate W:DH to another world. In this case, the setting from Blades in the Dark (BitD): Doskvol.

I only recently found some friends willing to try BitD and, as I immersed myself in the rules, I found I really liked the setting. That playing group, however, has been constrained by life events such that we’ve only played one session. And I wanted more!

Enter Doskvol: Dragon Heist.

Now, I don’t claim to have a monopoly on adapting worlds. There’s no One True Way™ of doing so. But by sharing how I approached it, perhaps it will give you ideas on how to do the same to meet your own needs. Maybe you’ll think “that’s exactly how I DON’T want to do it!”

Before I get to that, though, I do want to point out some resources I used for W:DH.

First is Justin Alexander’s site: The Alexandrian. I imagine most D&D DMs, and many RPG-ers in general, know about the work Justin does, but just in case you don’t, here are the basics. He analyzed W:DH, found it lacking, and developed an amazing remix that really helped my own campaign out. If you’re considering running this module, particularly in the default setting, I strongly encourage you to check it out, and throw a few dollars at his Patreon for his efforts.

For Doskvol, rather than recreate all the lore here, I’ll direct you to the Blades in the Dark website and DrivethruRPG for the actual ruleset. I will also direct you to an incredible and useful set of detailed maps from Old Dog Game.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming: Changing Worlds.

I decided to start big. Deities.

Faerun has an absolute crapton of deities. Doskvol does not. Aside from a bunch of demons and undead, the only real mention of religion is the Church of the Ecstasy of the Flesh. And so I have to create just enough deities to support my players. 

I knew there was going to be a druid, and so I needed something to support that. Given Doskvol is a cramped city surrounded by the Deathlands, I made these druids concerned with both maintaining some nature within the city (particularly food sources) and trying to restore health to the Deathlands by establishing small, magical oases. I roughly equated them to the Emerald Enclave faction to support some of the faction quest options.

I also connected Asmodeus (to support the Cassalanter’s story) to the Church of the Ecstasy of the Flesh, which purports to value the positive life energy found in all mortal beings, but secretly sees devils and demons as the perfection of life – undying and powerful.

Looking through W:DH, the various wards of the city are referenced heavily and help the players understand where certain events are happening and which factions have influence there. I needed to map Waterdeep wards to Doskvol districts and then place key locations within. I chose to use the following:

Waterdeep	Doskvol
Castle Ward	Whitecrown
Dock Ward	The Docks Crow’s Foot Silkshore Barrowcleft
South Ward	Charterhall Coalridge
North Ward	Six Towers
Sea Ward	Brightstone
Field Ward	Dunslough Charhollow
Trades Ward	Nightmarket
City of the Dead	The Lost District

As to Doskvol institutions, I only really tweaked things as I went, trying not to over-engineer a solution. The biggest one for me was Doskvol Academy. With one of my players playing a wizard, it was a natural fit to make the Academy the Imperium’s top wizard school. Run by Headmistress Vajra Safahr, this gave one player a strong connection to a potential faction, and they used it to marvelous effect.

Speaking of factions, I really needed to make a lot of adjustments here.

The whole Zhentarim angle just didn’t work for me, but I needed a serious faction to replace them. Fortunately, Bazso Baz and the Lampblacks arrived for duty. I still liked the idea of a criminal underground run by a paranoid beholder, so I made tweaks to Xanathar, giving him a new name and changing his organization to the Ten Eyes. Establishing conflict between the Lampblacks and the Ten Eyes was easy, as their territories had some overlap. The gang war related to the Stone and Eyes of Golorr just amped that up nicely.

Jarlaxle was another challenge. I like my Drow old school. Drizzt was an outlier and made for a great story, but further watering down the Drow just doesn’t interest me. In Doskvol lore, the Unity War ended just recently and Skovlan lost. In my D&D-ification of Doskvol, I had determined that Skovlan was natively orc and half-orc. I further decided there was a small number of snake people (reskinned yuan-ti) that were mutations from the Cataclysm that were trying to find acceptance within society.

Captain Zardoz Zord, therefore, became an alter ego for Vashti Kaa, a politically powerful yuan-ti from Skovlan trying to find sympathizers that will support Skovlan independence. He used his Hat of Disguise to appear as a half-orc, and the illusion magic on the ships were retained pretty much as written. The Unity War also allowed me to tie in to the actual gold dragons, which I will get to in a bit.

For the remainder of the factions – the Cassalanters and the Gralhunds – I was able to keep them pretty much as is (as defined in the Alexandrian Remix rather than the original module). The Blue Coats took the place of the Waterdeep City Watch – a bit more corrupt, to keep with the Doskvol theme – but otherwise there to prevent the party from going full murder-hobo in the streets. I mentioned my party is used to high combat campaigns. I needed some in-world controls to mitigate those instincts.

Finally, the plot itself needed some remapping. At a high level, I decided the original embezzlement was related to the Unity War. Doskvol had many Skovlan sympathizers that provided significant funds to provide support. It was these funds that were stolen and hidden and are the target of this whole campaign. Neverember, the Lord Governor of Doskvol at the time, was arrested at the war’s conclusion and imprisoned in the capital, with Laeral Silverhand installed as the new Lady Governor. Thus, Vashti Kaa (aka Captain Zord) will have great interest in that gold if/when he learns of it.

The other faction’s primary interest is simply acquiring gold to further their own power moves in the city. The Cassalanters, of course, maintain their desire to resolve the contract with Asmodeus and save the souls of their two children. I decided to make Vajra Safahr a Skovlan sympathizer and someone who will ally with Vashti, though this didn’t really develop until the players started getting involved and taking sides.

The campaign being pretty dynamic, there were many tweaks still to be made as the game progressed but, with the above changes already in place, I had a much better feel for how to make those changes and maintain the internal consistency my brain needs.

I started at the top with big, general concepts and worked down from there until I had just enough comfort with the scenario that I knew I could adapt things easily as the players interacted with the campaign. This probably goes for any RPG, but I find it helpful to only hold onto the plot loosely to remain flexible. If something hasn’t happened yet, it’s not a fact of your world and can be changed as the players make their decision. It gives them a hand in building the world. For some game systems, such as BitD, this is core to the rule system. This is not as forward in D&D.

If you found this useful, let me know!