My CoC d20 remix was designed with a specific purpose in mind. To run a Halloween one-shot (possibly with some spill over into subsequent sessions). While I could have mixed in goodies from other horror systems, I also wanted to stick to being able to run from 1 book more or less.
However, when it came to the adventure itself, I had no such constraint. I wanted to run something that skewed more "spooky" horror instead of weird/cosmic horror. To meet this goal, I chose the adventure Falls Run by James Wyatt in Dungeon #67. I chose this one for a number of reasons. First, I had run a version it before in an 1890s game. In setting that game up I had done a lot of work to get into the content of the adventure, so my work was half done. Second, The adventure starts with a packed train in an isolated area. This would make it very easy to get all the different characters together and into the action, which is handy for a one-shot. Third, I just really like it!
As an aside, I also adapted the introductory adventures from the Masque of the Red Death boxed set "Red Jack" and "Red Tide". The former is a better adventure for a small group and I was not sure how many people would be attending yet. The latter would be a good continuation in case folks wanted to make a mini campaign out of it. Plus I was already in the mindset to do conversions, so why not.
As I noted, for Falls Run, I had already done an adaptation. So my typical work of taking what is in the module and typing it into relevant info and bullet points was mostly done. Adventures (especially of that era) were written in a more narrative format (understandably) which can make finding the info you need in the hubbub of running a game troublesome.
In this case, I created a starting paragraph to set the mood, a quick timetable of the inciting "spooky" events. Then a quick bullet point list of info on the town, townsfolk, and their relations. Finally I set up a couple of call outs for important details, info so I don't forget it, and can easily reference it as the player's start to take actions. At it's heart, this module is a mystery, so it is good to make sure you have all the parts in the right place.
That having been done year's ago, only needed slight modifications, so I only needed to put in stat blocks. with my homebrew they are much simpler than the ones I made years ago, but those old d20 blocks did server as a nice baseline for power/balance. The hardest part is the spell system. The adventure features a cabal that dables in magic. The CoC system is very different than the traditional D&D system and has different spells. Perhaps, I should have just "hand waved" it and used the original spells, but I wanted to play fair by the players. So I dug around to find the closest CoC equivalent. I did not worry about the cabal's Sanity loss when casting, they are all already a bit "crazy".
The other tricky point ended up being assigning Sanity Loss for encountering given phenomena. Again, I pulled the closest equivalent from the CoC book. However, in hindsight, I think these values were too low (especially for a 1 shot). If I do it again, I would either bump them up, or forgo the save to lessen the effect.
Since this was going to be an online video chat based game, the final step was collecting images to show on screen to set the tone. The module itself has a few illustrations, and the internet was able to provide photographs of the area (not quite from the same era, but close enough given the pace of change in Appalachia between the 1890s and 1920s.)
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