Return to the Barrier Peaks: Prep Work, Part 1

[This blog post is based on a lengthy post I made to the LEGO Dungeons & Dragons Facebook group in February 2018.]

I've always wanted to try running the classic AD&D Dungeon Module S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks again. As I posted here a while back, I started running it back in the 2nd Edition era, but we only got through one or two sessions before the game and the group fell apart.

SPOILER ALERT: Friends who might ever want to play this adventure with me should turn back now.

Converting the adventure to D&D v.3.5 or Pathfinder would require more extensive rules for tech and creatures, and thus quickly bog down the game in too much crunch for my taste. So I plan to use D&D 5E, which is relatively rules-light and captures the feel of earlier editions well. I've found a couple of 5E conversion guides on DM's Guild, which will help with the mechanics. (Those links are gathered at the end of this post.) And I will definitely use LEGO to build minis for it, and share them here! I've built several of the creatures in the past, just for fun, so I can refine those models rather than start completely from scratch.

However, the maps are going to be a royal pain to render into battle maps as we play, even if I just draw them on an easel pad like I do for my other games. It's a huge dungeon (6 levels, with each one a 540 ft. diameter circle), so the original maps use 10-foot squares. I'm working on copying them to 5-foot squares on graph paper so that I don't have to convert distances as I'm running it. (On a 1/5" grid, this takes six 8.5" x 11" sheets per level!) There is also a lot of empty space on the maps, so I will almost certainly draw the map for them on graph paper as the PCs explore, and only draw rooms at miniatures scale when they find something to fight.

The original maps, at 1 square = 10 feet

Levels I-III rendered into 1 square = 5 feet.

Levels IV-VI rendered into 1 square = 5 feet

There are a couple areas that I might render in LEGO at a 1 stud = 5 feet scale, like the huge, open habitat level (which would be 2.5 feet across even at that scale).

Level IV: the habitat level

This is a long-term project, because I want to finish running Tales from the Yawning Portal first, which will help my family improve our mastery of the 5E rules. But I'll be tinkering with it until then, and will post updates here from time to time.

Related Links

Dungeon Masters Guild now offers Expedition to the Barrier Peaks in PDF form, as well as two products that provide D&D Fifth Edition conversion notes for it:

• Classic Modules Today: S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks
• See also: Using Classic Modules Today Conversions
• S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks Conversion (5e) 

The Daemons & Death Rays blog (by Brian Rubenfeld) has numerous articles converting monsters and other mechanics from the adventure to 5E.