Does the Old Crown work in D&D 5e?

Well, I’ve rounded out 250 posts already. Yay!

In celebration, let’s go back to the start, and consider some ideas for converting my years-long-rpg-baby the Old Crown setting to 5e D&D.

This is a question I’ve been mulling over for a few years. The Old Crown began as a D&D setting, and sort of evolved several times, through a series of different rules sets. I don’t know if D&D rules even fit anymore, but this is sort of a thinking-out-loud post.

Ok, what’s first? Races?

There’s a bunch of different stuff going on in the Old Crown – humans yes, but the Wildfolk and Beastkin evolved out of elves and goblins, the Lizardfolk are a version of dragonborn but also kobolds, and the Gargants evolved from orcs and goliaths.
Now, the races have become radically different – Wildfolk are plant people of several different subraces, Lizardfolk have gone from two races to one with a couple of different traits and histories – but I think they’ve stayed relatively playable from a rules perspective. It’s easy to come up with ideas to replace the dragonborn breath weapon and kobold pack tactics with something emphasising the strong/agile aspects of the two subraces, but it’s slightly less easy to work out the racial abilities of the Wildfolk – I guess a speak with plants ability similar to the Firbolg, maybe a slight boost to hit points or hit point recovery from photosynthesis.
I don’t think I have any truly wild options for races that I’ll have trouble working out rules for. The monkey-like Hanu, the bat/fox Darklings (though I’m still debating if they’re a race or a political group of other races), and possibly the Toadfolk will be the most difficult to work with.

Next- classes?

Ok, classes will be the main issue. I’ll have to re-write a lot of stuff, and come up with a lot of new subclasses. Barbarians, fighters, rogues, rangers, most wizards and druids, and maybe monks all look pretty safe.
Paladins, with their Oath abilities, will be a natural fit for the Oathed as a class – but the Oathed also represent Clerics and even Druids in game terms.
Warlocks are reasonably usable but will require tweaking and work on patrons. Razir, in both instalments, is actually a pretty safe bet for a Warlock (based on where I saw his story going – I’ll get back to it eventually) but he might also have an Oathed element and a lot of his normal life is given over to his dealings with a secret cult – more on that shortly.
Sorcerers are doable and might be a way to fit the witchblood into the D&D rules, but I’d need to sit down and write out what I want the group to be able to do and what the classes would also achieve. It’s entirely possible that writing a new class is the next step, but that’s a lot of work again.

Backgrounds? Well, as I mentioned there about cults, there’s plenty of things to choose from here, things that would also work as factions. But also, if witchblood is a class, then can it be a background? Are all seawitches a background, or is that a subclass of witchblood/Sorcerer?
This is where everything starts to break down, in case you were wondering.

And the deterioration is probably a good place to stop for now.