Experience converting modules old and new


4th Edition

Sovereign Court

So we've seen a lot of talk concerning the conversion of adventure paths, but not as much about the appropriation of modules.

I recently ran the Retribution adventure by Raging Swan, and thoroughly enjoyed it, leaving me to wonder what other modules might be good to convert.

I've been eying some of the older modules as well, and I imagine them to be even easier to convert than newer products, especially in paring down treasures. What do you all think? Any experiences with classic modules?

Shadow Lodge

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Lorathorn wrote:

So we've seen a lot of talk concerning the conversion of adventure paths, but not as much about the appropriation of modules.

I recently ran the Retribution adventure by Raging Swan, and thoroughly enjoyed it, leaving me to wonder what other modules might be good to convert.

I've been eying some of the older modules as well, and I imagine them to be even easier to convert than newer products, especially in paring down treasures. What do you all think? Any experiences with classic modules?

Bump, sounds like stuff I be interested in.


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I've converted several of the old TSR modules, such as Tomb of Horrors, Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, White Plume Mountain and Ghost Tower of Inverness. I primarily re-do the treasure and then expand upon some of the chambers that I felt were weak in what they offer. I usually end up with about 10 pages of notes for each adventure.

Sovereign Court

About how long does it take you to prepare those notes?

Grand Lodge RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

Haven't converted any modules, but I'm working on converting an old TurboGrafx AD&D adventure (Order of the Griffon). Just opened recruitment for PbP, if anyone's interested.

Sovereign Court

Neat. I didn't even know that such a thing existed.


Lorathorn wrote:
About how long does it take you to prepare those notes?

It took maybe 4-6 hours, I'm guessing though because its been a few years since I have done it. I was taking 1st edition modules and revamping them for 3.5 edition. At first I started re-rolling treasure completely, keeping the magic as is unless it was to generous for the new edition. I'd re-roll all the coins, gems and jewelry. Later on I decided to see what the maximum allowable for a treasure type was in 3.5 and just downsized it so that it fit its parameters. This was a more generous method in regards to treasure but more expedient. Much of this time was adding details to certain rooms that lacked.

I would think a full 1st edition module could be done in 4 hours or so if your just looking at treasure.

Sovereign Court

That's not bad. It does strike the balance between just making up an adventure whole cloth. I've had a lot of luck with Raging Swan stuff, which needs very little conversion as it is... usually just monster adjustments. Their encounter rewards tend to be very sparse, but accurate to 5th edition's design conceit.

I am itching to buy some of the older modules, such as keep on the borderlands and the like, and try them out.

I would like to try Tomb of Horrors, though I believe that it would be more of a "one shot" situation with brand new characters, since I wouldn't want to derail my current campaign with a bunch of deaths. It'd be interesting to see if my players are up to the challenge.


When I did Tomb of Horrors I downplayed some of the traps so the PCs had a more reasonable chance of success. Then I tied it in with the arcing plotline that my campaign was taking.

Sovereign Court

How much tweaking was that? No instadeath, I imagine?


Yea I made the saving throws fairer, plus I think some of the rules had changed to allow for an easier time making it through.


Lorathorn wrote:
Any experiences with classic modules?

I converted White Plume mountain on a lark, something to keep in my back pocket for a one-off or pick up game. It took maybe an hour or so, and three pages of (poorly) handwritten notes. I think the adventure was originally listed for levels 4-10, I narrowed that down to 5-7 for conversion purposes.


I converted Night of the Walking Dead. I copied the full text out of the PDF into a word file, so it took kind of a long time to get it formatted correctly.

The most time consuming part of the conversion (once formatting was done, that was a B) was designing a zombie lord.

Sadly the game I was running only made it through the end of Part 2, so I didn't get to test the final encounter.

Sovereign Court

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I have a few "back pocket" converted adventures as well. It's saved my butt more than a few times. FH-Death, it's cool to know that you are doing that work. I'm excited to see more 5th edition material from you.


Lorathorn wrote:
I have a few "back pocket" converted adventures as well. It's saved my butt more than a few times. FH-Death, it's cool to know that you are doing that work. I'm excited to see more 5th edition material from you.

Can't tell you how gratifying it is to hear that, I shall endeavor to exceed your expectations!

A note on Night of the Walking Dead — I did that one for my own personal use. There's no way I can convert an old TSR/WotC adventure in a professional sense at the moment.

As far as upcoming 5e work, I'm doing the 5e conversion for the Legendary Planet Adventure Path from Legendary Games, and as I've mentioned in another thread, some big stuff for Kobold Press that isn't quite officially announced just yet.

-Dan Dillon (Death of the Four Horsemen Writing Team)

Sovereign Court

Amazing. I figured you were talking about conversions for your own game, but it's good to see you sharpening your 5e senses all the same.


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So I'm just going to drop these Pathfinder->5e conversions here:

Stolen Lands
The Dragon's Demand
Haunting of Harrowstone
Hollow's Last Hope

Grab them if you want them, modify them for you as you see fit.


Interesting issue presented by the conversion from PF to 5E for Rise of the Runelords:

Spires of Xin-Shalast:
Because of how vampires work in 5E, there's no easy way for the party to kill the Hidden Beast once he retreats into his "coffin", since the only thing that kills them is sunlight or running water. Dimension Door is limited to the size of the caster (which the large beast is too big for, and good luck squeezing a large creature into the Beast's coffin with him in any case) and Teleport is incredibly risky without a circle to target even before you get into the wonkiness of Xin-Shalast and those spells. Clerics don't have Sunbeam, for some reason, so no using a Gaseous Form spell to get in and nuke him that way. Granted they could have a Wizard or a Druid, but my party doesn't have either of those.

The party seriously debated whether they could dig their way to the surface to let the sun in or if there was an underground river nearby they could re-route into the Beast's lair. They ended up settling for using Gaseous Form to enter his coffin and staking the Beast to keep him paralyzed, hoping no one else was going to bother to move the 10 tons of stone over him to release him.

The players actually asked me if this counts as another boss getting away (they've had several escape) and I told them that I didn't think not undertaking massive environmental engineering should count against them.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

Our DM:

Replaced it with some kind of weird monster that could use invisibility and mirror image and possibly project image. I think he purposely made it a bad pun by literally being a hidden beast!


No, that's how it's written in the AP.

Spoiler:
It's a vampiric decapus sorcerer with a ring of invisibility. Though for my game I made the invisibility innate to circumvent the concentration mechanic and to make it more interesting.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

Spoiler:

I think ours had a ring, too. At least, we now have a ring of invisibility in the party treasure.


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Dustin Ashe wrote:

So I'm just going to drop these Pathfinder->5e conversions here:

Stolen Lands
The Dragon's Demand
Haunting of Harrowstone
Hollow's Last Hope

Grab them if you want them, modify them for you as you see fit.

Thank you! I was really hoping for some 5e conversions from people who know enough about Pathfinder to do it right. Would love to see more if you do them.

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