Conversions

[Wolfthulhu]

I am thinking of running a campaign using mostly 2nd edition Dungeon Magazine adventures from the first four years or so of the magazine. Has anyone had ant experience converting older edition modules to 3.5?
I'm looking for advice or pointers to keep me from making any horrible mistakes. (and make the process as painless as possible for me.)

I've also been looking for a setting to base it in. I could probably draw my own map, but the cosmology and politics are more than I care to spend time on. Suggestions are appreciated!

[Stebehil]

What do you want to know?

In terms of rules, just exchange the 2nd Ed rules and creatures to 3.5, but watch out for discrepancies in terms of power - e.g., dragons are stronger in 3.5 than in 2e, and other creatures may be similar. You should carefully compare the level of the adventure and the challenges therein to find problems.

For settings, there are a lot out there. If you can find a copy of the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer, thats the "default" setting in a nutshell, and you can use any generic fantasy adventure there.

Forgotten Realms may be another good choice for a generic fantasy setting, it has a lot of material published - which may be good or bad, depending on your point of view.

Otherwise, there is something for every taste, but you have to know what you want.

Stefan

[DmRrostarr]

I have done quite a few conversions of 1st ed and 2nd edition modules/dungeon adventures to 3.5. For the most part I have had few problems other than the old creature not making its appearance in the new edition.

The best advice I can give you is create a matrix with the creature from the 1st/2nd ed and put the CR beside it from the current version. You will find that the CRs will not be consistant in most cases. Figure out the most common CR or the one you can live with in the adventure and change out the ones that are out of whack or advance them to catch up in the new edition.

[Wolfthulhu]

We already have one campaign running in Greyhawk and I don't want to create any continuity issues otherwise I would use it. I did find a nice third party setting that I think will work out great.

DmRrostarr wrote:

The best advice I can give you is create a matrix with the creature from the 1st/2nd ed and put the CR beside it from the current version. You will find that the CRs will not be consistant in most cases. Figure out the most common CR or the one you can live with in the adventure and change out the ones that are out of whack or advance them to catch up in the new edition.

Sounds simple enough. Thanks for the advice.

[literati]

I might add - make sure the 2nd ed module is decent to begin with. I recently converted a 2nd ed module to 3.5 (spent a good deal of time with the conversion, too), only to find out that the module wasn't all that good to begin with. I don't want to say which module, but it was set in Ravenloft.

3.x and 2nd ed are different creatures, and the expectations from players are not quite the same. The module I tried to convert was very heavy handed, very leading, and since my entire group (except for me) was raised playing 3.x, they found it unsatisfying. 10 years ago, it wowed a group I ran it for. This group found it frustrating and annoying.

I loved 2nd ed - I plan on running a modded "Faction Wars" for this group soon, as I think it's open ended enough for them to enjoy it. But be careful, and consider the group. Even though I loved "The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth" 20 years ago, that doesn't mean the current RPGer will (although I think they might...).

DD

[houstonderek]

if you do creature for creature conversions from 1e/2e to 3x, you may have to look at the party level and adjust it. for instance, if you do a straight adjustment of G1 - steading of the hill giant chief, you'd probably have to increase the party level to 10-13 instead of the recommended 7-11. once you start adding feats, skills and other 3x stuff to 1/2e builds, it tends to amp up the CR of the encounters.

[Rezdave]

literati wrote:

make sure the 2nd ed module is decent to begin with.

I think this should almost go without saying :-)

I routinely convert older adventures and also run my groups through mash-ups that might include a mix of editions. You always have to start with a good story, though, and then go from there.

That said, it's pretty much just a matter of using current edition monsters and adjusting CRs / ELs as necessary by upgrading, downgrading or swapping.

The only tricky area is in terms of Skills-based encounters and Challenges that have 3rd Edition rules but no older Edition corollary, or else the relative difficulty of those non-combat tasks changed significantly between editions.

I'm sorry I can't think of any examples off the top of my head, but these are the kinds of things that sneak up on you. Traps, social encounters and so forth. Sometimes the current Skills system means a simple roll gets the PCs out of a sticky situation where in older editions the Players were expected to use their heads and design a plan for which there were no simple mechanics other than, "fine ... that will work." Other times, traps or challenges were meant to be simple but some fluke of the 3rd Ed. system makes them difficult or impossible.

Like I said, these things will sneak up on you if you don't read carefully. A few times I've simply removed encounters and challenges or had to re-frame the plot a bit to sidestep such issues.

Still, it's doable and well worth while for a good story.

Personally, I really like 3rd Edition and enjoy the conversions. I also find that developing full stats for NPCs from older adventures really helps bring them to life with more developed backgrounds and motivations, but that's just me.

Good Luck,

Rez

[Rezdave]

literati wrote:

3.x and 2nd ed are different creatures, and the expectations from players are not quite the same.

Ahhh ... just read this in more detail.

I have to in some ways disagree with this statement, although Literati is absolutely correct in the core statement that you must evaluate the desires/expectations of your group and design with them in mind.

This statement (taken in full context within the post) seems to imply that in 3rd Edition there is more "role-playing" while 1st/2nd Editions were more "hack & slash". I find this ironic because my immediately preceding post links to another thread drawn from a yet-older blog about how 3rd Edition will be the death of D&D because it is power-based and will destroy all the good RP from 2nd Edition and devolve it into a hack-n-slash game.

You just can't win.

It is unquestionably true that the oldest adventures were pointless dungeon-crawls and hack-n-slash railroads, but largely this is from the simulationist/miniature-warfare roots of D&D in Chainmail. When I first got the game in the 5th grade, B1 - Search of the Unknown was terribly exciting and different every time, but before long as both the game and I matured it became pointless without the effort of a good back-story.

There were plenty of 1st and 2nd Edition groups that were heavy into Role-Playing (some of my greatest gaming experiences were diceless RP encounters in this period, including once talking the DM out of lynching my PC when he had "already decided you were dead ... I mean, I had [i]decided[i]").

Yet, we also have a series of very popular products from a 3rd-party publisher that unabashedly claim to deliver "3rd Edition Rules, 1st Edition Flavor."

Clearly there is room for both RP and H&S in any edition.

I think Literati oversimplified this. Nevertheless, the advise to evaluate your group and choose/tailor the adventure to the intermix of your and their desires and expectations is decidedly accurate.

FWIW,

Rez

[EATERoftheDEAD]

I, like others, frequently convert older edition modules to 3.5 regularly. I always make sure I read the adventure beginning to end because no matter what rules set you use the flow of the adventure won't change. If the module sucks it doesn't matter what rules you play it under.

Then I write my encounter by encounter notes and make any changes I want to the adventure. This is something I do with current rules adventures too so it's no big deal to me. Quite often the notes are something like 'replace monster X with monster X' or 'Soandso NPC is a race X instead of a race X'. You get the idea.

Once I have the outline written down I just swap out the monsters for the new rules versions. If there is no equivalent or the CR seems too high I just find something else that I like or fits the same theme. I don't have a formula or anything, I just create a similar encounter that i think is cool.

For example, I was converting the Ravenloft Grand Conjunction series to 3.5 and was working on the first adventure Night of the Walking Dead. Near the beginning there is an encounter in a swamp with some giant frogs. There was no equivalent for the encounter so I built an encounter with some dire frogs that worked out to EL 2. I probably could have custom built some giant frogs but I didn't want to put that much work into it and I was able to build an encounter for a 1st level party that fit the same theme and tone.

I am already thinking of my first 4E game. I plan on using Temple of Elemental Evil for Heroic tier, Scourge of the Slave Lords for Paragon, and Queen of the Spiders for Epic. That will require a bit of conversion but I enjoy doing it.

There are lots of great adventures for previous editions or even other game lines. Converting adventures is not difficult no matter what you're playing. I convert previous edition Shadowrun adventures for my SR4 side game too. In the past I have converted Call of Cthulhu to Hunter the Reckoning and 1st Ed D&D to Shadowrun. The possibilities are endless.

[Jeremy Mac Donald]

literati wrote:

I might add - make sure the 2nd ed module is decent to begin with. I recently converted a 2nd ed module to 3.5 (spent a good deal of time with the conversion, too), only to find out that the module wasn't all that good to begin with. I don't want to say which module, but it was set in Ravenloft.

3.x and 2nd ed are different creatures, and the expectations from players are not quite the same. The module I tried to convert was very heavy handed, very leading, and since my entire group (except for me) was raised playing 3.x, they found it unsatisfying. 10 years ago, it wowed a group I ran it for. This group found it frustrating and annoying.

I loved 2nd ed - I plan on running a modded "Faction Wars" for this group soon, as I think it's open ended enough for them to enjoy it. But be careful, and consider the group. Even though I loved "The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth" 20 years ago, that doesn't mean the current RPGer will (although I think they might...).

DD

While I can understand you not wanting to hurt any ones feelings I'd love to know what you converted so that I can take a second look myself should I choose to use it for a conversion. Almost every adventure I've run has been a conversion of one kind or another - so any module that made you go WoW but then flopped in a later edition is of interest to me.

Consider spilling the beans a public service.

[Jeremy Mac Donald]

Rezdave wrote:

The only tricky area is in terms of Skills-based encounters and Challenges that have 3rd Edition rules but no older Edition corollary, or else the relative difficulty of those non-combat tasks changed significantly between editions.

You have to watch out for the reverse as well. I did a conversion of Tallows Deep and found that I was really stumped in adjudicating what happens when the dam is released and the players are blind sided by a wall of water. 3.5 has rules for swimming across a river and such but nothing that really handles be jumped by a river. Now its certainly not impossible to work your way around this but I essentially had to create rules to make this encounter work.

In 3.5 keep the rules simple. Compared to 1st/2nd edition characters, 3,5 characters tend to have a lot of magic at their disposal. They will usually side step any hazard coming toward them. So there is not a lot of point in making really detailed rules for the circumstances just to never use them.

In 4E you'll want to go the opposite direction. Compared to 1st/2nd edition characters, 4E characters find it extremely difficult to utilize magic to avoid a hazard. Players get stuff like fly for, like, one round at some really high level. Teleport is quite rare etc. Basically characters are stuck on the ground so its important to work out what exactly will happen and what skills will come into play at what DCs.