Inspired to take on Undermountain…

So I am currently running a Pathfinder game. We just finished the first ‘official’ Pathfinder module ‘Crypt of the Everflame’ and now the sequel set to release this month won’t be out until December. No fear here, I decided to adopt the ‘Crown of the Kobold King’ 3.5 module to the new rule set and plan to move onto ‘Entombed with the Pharaohs’ after that.

So what then? I wanted to do something big, something classic. I perused the list of mods from Paizo and none seemed to peak my interest at levels beyond 5 or 6. I reviewed the 2004 Dungeon Magazine top 30 D&D adventures and fell upon the ‘Ruins of Undermountain’ at number 17 and got stuck there. I hemmed and hawed over it. Should I do it? I checked the reviews on Amazon for the ‘Ruins of Undermountain’ and ‘Expedition to Undermountain’ 3.5 adaptation and decided to look at Ruins. Expedition had a rating of 2.6 out of 5 stars while Ruins had 5 stars out of 5.

Still undecided, I happened upon this tid-bit of writing by Ed Greenwood:

“Using Undermountain as an ‘endless dungeon’ existing in a limbo, or placing it in another, already- developed campaign setting is easily done; while created with the Realms, Halaster’s lair is complete enough for use on any plane or planet.”

This inspired me to move forward and I decided I will run my group through Undermountain. Sure, it will require quite a bit of conversion work to the Pathfinder rule set but this will be incredible and fun.

I reviewed the Undermountain material and I have decided on this set of ground rules for the conversion:

1. The Ruins were designed for 6-8 players but I plan to convert it to a 4-6 player and a 6-8 player setting.
2. Attempt to keep the original Ruins premises as much as possible. In other words, if the Ruins campaign book says you don’t get a save then YOU DON’T GET A SAVE. That magic item you had, it was disintegrated!
3. In order to play the conversion, the required materials for a GM would be the Pathfinder Core Rule book and the Bestiary. For a player, just the Core Rule book would be necessary. If there are materials outside of these, I will build them myself or find a free online resource.

So I have a couple questions for you:
1. Would anyone else be interested in using the converted material? Or at least play testing it?
2. What should be the setting of Undermountain in the Pathfinder rules? A city in Golarian? Somewhere else? In my opinion, the players will go through a portal to get into the dungeon or into Waterdeep at least. That would be Halaster’s style and pretty easy to implement.

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