We switched over for a few reasons. The big one was time. The 4E conversions were taking way too long for me to do.
The second was the rules. 4E is quite balanced, but in our opinion, it's TOO balanced. Every class felt like it was the same thing, just a collection of "powers". That and all the fights degenerated into a simple hit points race.
So we decided to switch to Pathfinder, which is a lot easier to convert from.
I'd actually love to see the correctly sized maps from the 1st two adventures also, if you don't mind posting them. I'm planning on some AoW here soon myself.
I would love all of the maps you have. I've been slowly accumulating a collection of Savage Tide maps, although 'perfectly sized' is not a description I'd use.
So I've used these maps, with a grid imposed as my players maps for this adventure. While I found they were, of course, really pretty they also tended to be very dark. Around the game table my players tended to have difficulty picking out images and often did not have a good idea what they where looking at.
If you have a white table top and are using a projector they'll probably be great and if you are so lucky as to have some kind of TV display that your actually playing on again I think they will be excellent. They certainly look reasonably shiny on a computer screen but the light from the computer itself is helping a lot. I suspect if you have a really well lit gaming area, i.e. its very bright, it'll otherwise be fine.
However if your playing more in a standard dining room or basement type setup and your printing these out on paper you should probably do some brightness and contrast work in Gimp or Photoshop first to try and help your players be able to actually see what the deal is.
Another issue is that, while Sodden Hold's upper level lines up very well to a grid, I simply have not been able to do that with the lower level - I don't believe it was created with a consistent scale. I eventually had to erase all the pretty blue mirrors in the mirror maze and then do a fair bit of reworking of the map to get something that was actually usable at a game table. Bright red lines showing legal squares, that sort of thing. By the time I was done with this it was something that one could game with but it was no longer nearly so pretty. I'm not at all sure that what I got out of it, after I marked it up so heavily, was worth the time and effort to make it usable.
Finally the cartographer did not understand the relationship between room D8 and D9. Its drawn inaccurately (and in fact misled me while I was trying to understand that relationship).
Yes I noticed the same thing. The map was pretty but I had to fudge a few of the rooms on the lower level of sodden hold as well, and adjust the grid mid-game to make it more user friendly.
I'll be going back to using the dungeon maps for Xyrzog's caverns and the remaining adventures.
I also used Cisticola maps, plus a few I made and some of his I modified: Take a look at this gallery
Heh.
Apparently I already did. I pulled a map off the internet to show the layout of Blackwall Keep when I ran it some months back and it appears it was you map I showed to my players. Thanks btw.