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Hi, I thought there might be a thread about this elsewhere, but can't seem to find one. I was wondering if there was any sort of online forum for converting adventures from the 1st and 2nd editons to 3.5. There seem to be a few things at enworld and on WOTC's downloads page on their website, but not much in the way of discussion. It seems to be a copyright issue, making changes to someone else's published work. I don't want to challenge that, but if you just want to make some conversions to run an adventure with your own group, is there anywhere to swap ideas? Especially things like calculating encounter levels, adjusting treasures, and monsters that don't seem to have any 3rd ed. stats anywhere. Oh, and deciding on a character level for the adventure and ensuring that the encounters are appropriate. I'm mostly interested in old Dungeon adventures, as I have a lot of old magazines but few published modules.
If you'd like to discuss specific conversions, these are the adventures that I've converted so far:
"Dragon's Delve" by Chris Perkins/Dungeon #62 (for 6th-7th lvl characters)
"Khazefryn" by Felix Douglas/Dungeon #81 (12th-13th lvl)
"The Scar" by Ray Winninger/Dungeon #80 (1st lvl)
I am also currently working on the following adventures:
"Divisions of the Mind" by Charles C. Reed/Dungeon #81
"Ashtar's Temple" by DeAnna Ferguson/Dungeon #81
"The Akriloth" by Matthew G. Adkins/Dungeon #79
"Prism Keep" by Rich Baker/Dungeon #45
"Dragon Mountain" by Colin McComb & Paul Lidberg
Any recommendations about how to convert the above? Or has your group played any of these adventures? What parts of the module worked, what didn't? Any requests for adventures you'd like to see updated? I keep thinking why let all this good material go to waste, and I'd really like to use at least some of these in a future campaign. I find it's a real challenge to create a balanced adventure, while staying true to the feel of the original. I often end up changing one element substantially in order to make other elements work. I'd like to hear if you've had any similar experiences.
I like the way you think, CrazyHedgeHog...
I have stacks of old adventures (1E, 2E, Dungeon and otherwise), and hate the thought of these awesome adventures passing into history because of some simple statisitics.
I have also converted a number of old adventures for my campaigns, including:
Isle of the Abbey (Dungeon 34)
Last of the Iron House (Dungeon 39)
The Dark Place (Dungeon 49)
North of Narborel (Dungeon 49)
Keep for Sale (Dungeon 79)
Bad Seeds (Dungeon 79)
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The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh
Danger at Dunwater
The Final Enemy
Ravager of Time
The Temple of Elemental Evil
I don't really know what the legality of this issue is, (perhaps one of the Wiz-Os can straighten this out). I think there are standards that must be upheld if you create a conversion that you plan to openly distribute, but I could (and probably am) wrong about this...
That was one of my questions in the thread "Legal Questions" I started a few days ago.
Details about that are found here.
If I understood that right, you are only allowed to convert to 3.5 and republish the game mechanics of the adventure, and you are not allowed to change anything in the adventure itself. And Dungeon is a magazine published by Wizards.com as they have taken over publishing rights from TSR, so it would apply to dungeon, too.
That this leads to countless problems with the internal consistency of the adventures is no surprise, as in former editions it was much trickier to balance encounters, and as a result, old adventures are not as balanced as newer ones. This isn´t neccesarily a bad thing, but I encountered problems while running converted adventures that lead me to change a lot in these converted adventures to avoid TPK or waay too easy encounters. I used part one and two of the Slavers series and X2 Castle Amber, all downloaded from EN world. The conversions there are in compliance with wizards conversion agreement linked above.
Stefan
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That was one of my questions in the thread "Legal Questions" I started a few days ago.
Details about that are found here.Yeah, I came across that conversion agreement before. I totally agree with the need to protect copyright by doing that, but it really seems to throw a spanner in the works, as you say staying strictly true to the original text can create all kinds of problems in terms of balanced encounters. I was just wondering if there was a forum for DMs to just swap ideas for doing their own conversions, discussing how to bring a particular situation/plot to 3.5 and making it work, etc. Temple of Elemental Evil? I'll have to take a look at that one. And I haven't tried downloading any of the old modules from enworld either, I'll have a look. I've always wanted to do a campaign running ToEE or Queen of the Spiders, then following up with RtToEE or Against the Giants, with the players playing the next generation of heroes, sorta like the Dragonlance series.