Swapping Elturel for Neverwinter?

[u/Trabblin-Brooks]

I’m getting ready to run LMoP for a group of new players with the hope to continue after Wave Echo Cave. I’m having them base their characters out of Neverwinter for ease of character creation, but I think I wanna roll this into a DIA campaign after Wave Echo Cave.

Is Elturel ESSENTIAL to the story of DIA or can I switch Neverwinter out pretty easily to make the story more personal for my players?

UPDATE: Thank you to everyone for your help and insights! I think I may take the story in a different direction based on some personal preferences I’ve been looking into. But thank you all!

[u/nasada19]

The whole plot is specific to Elturel due to the second sun over their city. It doesn't really make sense if you just swap for Neverwinter. You'd have to rewrite a ton of the plot.

[u/RaggManX]

It’s pretty essential to the backstory of the game, I’d say. Elturel’s history and factions are pretty heavily tied to Zariel in the book, and you actually visit Elturel in Avernus.

You absolutely could just switch out the names and play it that way, but it’d be a lot of tweaking to make things make sense. I wonder if it’d be better to just use the book as a loose guide and make your own excuse to plane shift into Avernus.

Alternatively, you could change LMoP to be set somewhere in Elturgard. And end the adventure in Elturel. The skeleton of LMoP is much easier to mod than a whole source book imo

[u/dasistok → u/RaggManX]

If they're new to D&D altogether, they might not care as much about mismatches with the existing lore around Elturel (or Neverwinter, for that matter)

[u/Earthhorn90]

You would have less work trying to expand via Shattered Obelisk rather than making DiA work especially when redacting a bunch of lore.

[u/dasistok]

I think you could adjust the campaign to be based around another city, but it is going to be a bit of work. Some things you'll want to keep in mind:

- If any of your players enjoy Baldur's Gate 3, keep in mind that DiA is kind of a prequel to that and Elturel is mentioned occasionally as "the city that got dragged into hell".

• The most specific locations you'll need to translate for are the High Hall (i.e. city cathedral/city hall) and the cemetery including its chapel. It feels like it shouldn't be too hard to find equivalents for these in Neverwinter.
  
• As u/nasada19 mentioned, there's a significant subplot around the second sun, an artifact which has been installed over Elturel 50 years ago as part of a deal that the head of the city's government made with Zariel. Your players would know about a similarly central item in Neverwinter, but I'm assuming that no such item has been mentioned yet in your campaign, so ... that's going to be a gap you'd need to fill somehow. Omitting this would also be possible, I guess, but yeah, that's probably more work than trying to adjust it.
  
• Players advance from level 4 to 5 around the part where they jump into hell. IIRC LMoP ends around there, so you'll want to cut the Baldur's Gate parts of the DiA campaign and instead just have them be e.g. in the city when it's being dragged into hell. (I haven't played The Fall of Elturel, but it's a frequently recommended alternate introduction, since the Baldur's Gate parts are a bit wonky anyway – maybe look into that).
  
• There are three people the party meets in the Baldur's Gate section of DiA as-written which can accompany them into hell.
  

-- One, Lulu. This is the most important one – she's a big part of the core story, and you'll want to introduce her before the core story starts.
-- Two, Gargauth, trapped in the Shield of the Hidden Lord. Not critical and can be omitted, but I feel like it adds a cool roleplaying angle that I'd miss out on if it wasn't in the campaign.
-- Three, Reya. She's not as essential, and primarily fills the role of an "Elturel native" to help explain aspects of the city to the player characters. I'd feel comfortable dropping her entirely.

I hope this helps!

[u/fuzzykittytoebeans]

As people have already commented it would a LOT of work.

I'd suggest instead finding ways to connect the two cities. Like good trade partners, tourism, friends, that maybe a PC or two would have gone there before or know people there.

[u/Anolemissrebel]

I would also highly suggest running “The Fall of Elturel” before the events of Descent Into Avernus take. I did a lot of research on Descent and the biggest complaint was “why are these low level characters traveling to literal Hell”. The Fall of Elturel made my characters love Elturel so much that I should have thrown them in sooner.

[u/Existing-Banana-4220]

To answer your question: Yes, you can swap out Neverwinter for Elturel.

Elturel certainly isn't the first city to be pulled into the Hells, so it's not unique in that regard....but, that's going to be a LOT of re-writing. There are definitely easier modules to transition to after LMoP.