Worldmaker's page

I emphatically suggest you keep playing your old rules, and try Pathfinder 2 when you're ready to start a new campaign! Good luck!

Heh.

Someone on Facebook suggested that the best way to convert characters from P1E to P2E was to stack all the P1E characters into a single pile, douse them with lighter fluid, set a match to them, and then start over fresh building new characters from scratch.

I'm beginning to see his point.

Thanks for the advice and for listening to me vent.

Just to clarify for those who were agog at the longevity of the campaign, my group and I started playing D&D way back in October of 1976. Donnie was DM, and he stayed in that spot until his passing (from Leukemia) in early 1981. I took over as DM and have been in the big chair ever since.

Out of the eight original players (Donnie, me, and six others) four are still a part of my group. We lost one to the military, we lost two to college, and we lost the last to unfortunate circumstances (Dan was a cop, and he was shot and killed on duty; quite coincidentally, his death happened on September 11, 2001.) The people who stepped into their shoes were either friends or children of original players, including one of my sons. The youngest of the "new kids" has been with the group since the early 2000s.

The game takes place in my own homebrew campaign world (information for which now fills a literal wall of bookshelves and filing cabinets). The players ran the same characters every week, for about six hours each weekend, from 1981 until their characters got too high a level for it to be feasible, and then switched to new characters who were often children or apprentices or friends of the old ones. They've done that three times now.

In that manner, we've continued the continuity of the campaign since 1981, with older characters showing up as NPCs (for example, one of the local kings used to be a PC paladin, while the sage the group regularly visits was the original party wizard).

I'm beginning to find myself wondering if its worth bothering.

By which I mean converting my current ongoing campaign (which has been ongoing since 1981, and which survived the transitions from 1E to 2E to 3.0 and 3.5 to Pathfinder...

Now, its natural that with a campaign of this advanced age and complexity we've accumulated a lot of "extras." House rules, third party material, things adapted from other settings, other rules systems, and so on. In prior conversions all of this stuff was pretty easily done when it came to conversion.

Somehow this time its been a struggle. We've got feats that no longer exist in the game, we've got spells that are gone, we've got entire races and classes that are no longer around.

The players were looking to switch to the new rules, but right now its looking like we're all going to take a pass on it just because of the daunting nature of the conversion.

Don't get me wrong, we think the new rules are an improvement in many ways, but so much of the new rules are utterly incompatible with the old ones -- and cannot seem to ever be reconciled, that I am wondering.

Am I alone in this feeling? I hope not.

My homebrew world has close to 60 gods, but they cover the entire world, are worshiped by almost everyone, and never worshiped en masse by anyone (meaning that if you go to Kingdom A -- where they worship 15 of the 60 gods -- and then to Kingdom B -- where they also worship 15 of the 60 gods -- odds are they only overlap in half the cases.

In addition, the names are not always consistent, but its always the same god.

There are independent religions, but most of them fall into "religious philosophies that don't worship actual deities", are part of the entire "deified demons/devils" problem, are actually "small gods" (local spirits that aren't worshiped outside their immediate areas), or are considered fringe cults.

65. You've heard of an interesting adventuring opportunity only a few days march from here, but its too big for you to take on alone. So, seeking possible partners in this venture, you enter the likely-looking tavern and sit down. You gaze across the tavern-goers, and while it is obvious that most are just the simple townsfolk there for a meal or to have a flagon of ale, there are a handful of people in the crowd who, like you, were meant for greater things.

One by one, you all gather at the same table. These others, too, have heard of the opportunity for adventure...

(It suddenly occurred to me that the cliche'd "You all meet in a tavern" campaign start wasn't on the list, and I couldn't resist.

66. Movie Rip-Off #1: Just this morning, you were chained to a wall in the king's dungeon. Your crime didn't matter, really, because there was only one punishment: death. You were merely waiting your appointment with the headsman.

But then, something unexpected: several guards came into your cell, unchained you, and dragged you into the king's throne room, along with several others you recognize as fellow prisoners.. The king, it seemed, needed you and your "compatriots" to perfom a secret mission that had every chance of being a suicide mission. Those who survived and made it safe home would be pardoned of their crimes and be rewarded handsomely.

Some hoodoo priest said some words over you, telling you that a curse would descend upon you if you tried to run. And the Captain of the King's guard would accompany you, just to make sure...

58. The PCs have grown up knowing each other, and are old friends... which isn't hard considering there's only a couple dozen people in their one-horse logging/farming/mining/insert industry here town. None of them want to die being crushed by falling timber/of old age all too early/from the blacklung/insert hard way to die here. And then one day an adventuring company passes through the village, dripping gold coins and tales of adventure everywhere they go. A few weeks after the adventurers have left, one of the PCs gets a great idea: adventuring can't be any harder than logging/farming/mining/insert town's industry here, can it?

59. A black-painted galley from an unknown land, with black sails and oars, bearing strange sigils on its sails and disturbing decoration on its woodwork, and manned by a hundred dead-eyed, strangely dressed slaves, captain by cruel-looking, equally strangely dressed, deathly pale officers, pulls into the city's harbor. The Captain of the vessel and his lieutenant visit each merchant in the city, buying resupply and cargo for their journey to where the gods only know. They pay for everything they purchase with gold coins the side of tea-saucers and rubies the size of a hen's egg. Thieves who attempt to raid the ship while it is tied to the docks are found the next day skinned and hanging from the rooftops of nearby buildings.

And then the galley is gone. But various important personages want the thing tracked back to the land of its origin, for trade or possible conquest. Your party has been hired to undertake this task...