I’m in the process of fitting Reavers of Harkenwold into my Eberron campaign, and it’s a lot of fun to separate the elements that work perfectly within the world from the ones that don’t, and create new Eberron-unique stuff to fill in the gaps. Has anyone else run or played an adventure that originated in another campaign setting? How did it go?
Yeah I’ve encountered those things as well. Even in Reavers of Harkenwold, which a lot of folks consider the best adventure arc in 4e, there’s a sidequest that’s basically “If you want us noble woods-dwelling elves to help you, please go kill that bunch of goblins, our hated enemy.” I changed that entire section to have a group of nomadic shifters instead of elves, and they want you to help them restore a sacred site of theirs that had been desecrated (no combat involved). But other times I’ve replaced “orcs” or “goblins” etc with dolgrims, wights, or even “bandits” of all types.
But yeah in general, I’ve found the majority of pre-written adventures (even Eberron ones) to be either unusable or only worth stealing a few NPCs or concepts. It’s really satisfying though when you can make them work with just a couple of changes.