The idea of this thread comes from three sources:
- the idea that Paizo might avoid choosing between 3.x and 4E and produce dual-statted products in the future,
- my desire to still be able to make use of most of my 3.x books if/when I decide to switch to 4E, and,
- a question given as an example in the recent thread "Is this board really how Paizo wants to be represented?", where someone indicated that they might eventually wonder how Pathfinder adventures could be updated to 4E.
It seems clear to me that updating a module from 3.x to 4E will not simply amount to re-statting the NPCs and monsters, mainly for two reasons (there might be more):
- 1. First, some elements of the game world disappeared/were replaced with others (spell schools, spell memorization, racial fluff, planes, ...) and a conversion might mean that deeper changes in the adventure are required.
For example, forewarning/preparation seems less important in 4E than in 3.x: in 3.x, if you were warned that you would most likely face a red dragon the next day, you would modify your whole spell selection with that in mind. Since spell selection is mostly gone (there seems to remain some of it, with the level 1 wizard being able to choose 1 daily power/spell out of 2), preparation/forewarning seems to be less of a factor.
Another example is the eladrin's encounter teleport-like power ... if one of the PCs can teleport at 1st level, I can see that this might change completely some low level adventure (allowing the eladrin to teleport through a wall and thus enter the guarded complex, or teleport to an otherwise-hardly-accessible guard post [imagine guard posts flanking the entrance hall, with murder holes in the walls for example], ...)
- 2. Second, 4E's power level is very different from 3.x's (level 1 PCs are much more powerful, and so are level 1 monsters; and adventurers are supposed to deal with more encounters each day than in 3.x).
For example, attacks by a horde of low-level critters on a group of "commoners" might be much more deadly in 4E than in 3.x. Consider for example a goblin raid on a peaceful town ... if lowly goblins are as powerful as 1st level 4E characters, this encounter will be much more deadly for the commoners than in 3.x.
Another example: should dungeons be re-worked to take into consideration the fact that, in 4E, adventurers can keep going on longer than in 3E? Does that make new dungeon options available and/or close options that used to be available?
All this makes me think that 3.x to 4E conversions will not be trivial (no surprise here - that's what WotC announced). To some extent, I guess that this also means that dual-statted products are most likely not a valid option for the future, because it would amount to actually construct the product/adventure twice and not simply to re-stat monsters.
Have you already thought about those conversions? I know it's half-guess-work till we know for sure all the 4E rules, but I believe that we can already start thinking about it. Comments and opinons welcome!
There are some things that could be dual-edition (or systemless). like, GameMastery Item Cards and Map Tiles (a la Compleat Encounter).
I don't think a company needs to totally convert to a new system. Is it totally unfeasable to put out products for two different games?
It didn't prove a good idea for Guardians of Order, but they were splitting their own system in two (somewhat like WotC is doing). Paizo on the other hand doesn't need to run a dog in that race.
It was stated early on that converting PCs from 3e to 4e isn´t probably worth bothering by some designer. I guess from what I´ve seen until now that dual-statting adventures is even harder, due to the seemingly big differences between D&D3 (or earlier) and D&D4. My guess is that no company would bother publishing dual statted adventures, as this might be too hard to juggle. I think we won´t see any dual-stat adventures, and conversions only fan-made, if at all.
Stefan
I'm pretty sure there'll be fan conversions aplenty available, in either direction. I'd certainly be happy to contribute to such a project.
Indeed, yes. No matter what the GSL says, private users will certainly want and try to convert adventures between 3.x and 4E.
I'm really wondering what that conversion will mean though. Will adventures have to be built with different principles in mind?
Will encounters and strings of encounters need to be modified in some way ? I would guess that the answer is yes, but, more interestingly, is it possible to state a few rules of thumb to help with such conversion or will it all have to be done by trial and error / by relying on your experience.
Also, would it be possible to somehow relate the 4E monster level/XP with the 3.X CR system? From what I have seen, it seems to me that the level 1-30 range of 4E corresponds to a smaller ranger in 3.x (maybe something like CR 4-16).
I would guess that a book presenting such "rules of thumb" to help convert modules between adventures would be an interesting product ... if the GSL allows, naturally.
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OP Quote:Have you already thought about those conversions? I know it's half-guess-work till we know for sure all the 4E rules, but I believe that we can already start thinking about it. Comments and opinons welcome!
Obviously, good story content is good story content, and many fine folks have that in droves so it should be used. So yes, I've already started thinking about these types of conversions. Heck, my adled brain is considering running Palace of the Silver Princess in 4E, just for fun. Who'd be up for that?
In most ways, 4E is just another RPG coming out. So alot of the work that you're talking about is the same sort of thing I would do if I were running using True 20 or Microlite20 or something "not quite DnD but close".
As far as the crunchy bits like the number/toughness of the monsters I'd do like I always do and play the adventure as written. I'd substitute the 4E version of the particular monster in as necessary, or find something close enough. If it was something unique to the adventure I'd approximate the stats enough to run it like I usually do.
Then as we progressed I'd substitute in more or less monsters depending upon how it was going for the players. This isn't unique to 4E it's like I always do anyway. Similarly I can usually adjust a DC on the fly if I believe that it's either low/high for the system in use. Once I started to get a "feel" for this I'd be able to adjust on the fly at the time by sticking in a couple more grunts or lowering the bosses HP by a few here or there. I do this for poorly written adventures as well. :-)
You touch on the pacing and I believe that might be one of the more difficult issues to tackle. A good designer puts in breaks to give the group time to recover, get back spells, level up, etc. With the new system those breaks may come at different times so as a DM I'd have to be a bit more flexible about that and make it "work" within the context of the adventure.
Now, alot of this comes from experience, especially thanks to the fine folks at Paizo and years spent converting adventures out of Dungeon magazine. I ran the Mere of Dead Men (the real first AP, btw! ;-) ) from Dungeon mags in 3.5 just awhile ago and did most of the conversions on the fly. After a while you just get a "feel" for how things should convert to another system.
I have adequate faith in the tenacity and geekiness of the folks on these boards to provide all sorts of suggestions to use as well.
-Pete
I'm pretty sure there'll be fan conversions aplenty available, in either direction. I'd certainly be happy to contribute to such a project.
I may not be some big ol' game designer, but I can certainly e-mail somebody else who is working on a conversion formula and then claim partial credit. Does that count?
Actually, a month or so ago, a couple of WotC folks came to these boards, and clarified that while converting PCs from 3.5 to 4E is complex, converting adventures is actually reasonably easy. The reasons given were that:
1) PCs have a lot of specific abilities in either edition which don't track directly across to same-level, same-class abilities in the other edition, so PCs must be re-created from the core concept rather than just plug-and-play updated.
2) Creating monsters to fill a needed role in an adventure is fairly quick and simple; and most new monsters in Paizo adventures have abilities which are well-defined enough that you can simply add them as the special powers of a new monster as you set it up. So adventure conversion ends up being a lot faster than many of us have feared.
They also shared with us that several groups at WotC HQ are running Pathfinder adventures for their 4E playtesting, sometimes converting things somewhat on-the-fly, other times needing minimal preparation.
So I'm optimistic that those of us eager to switch to 4E will be able to put together useful conversions fairly quickly. And I fully expect we'll be sharing them with one another, either in the forums here or at DMTools.
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Based on everything I've heard, converting will be close to trivial. You might have to bump power on single monsters for 4e to have elite templates or boss templates or be bigger or whatever mechanic exists (see black dragon from DDXP). One might not be able to use the vanilla versions of monsters based on name alone (i.e. "ogre" from 3e might be equivalent to an "ogre hulking mauler" in 4e), but it looks like the 4e MM is going to be providing 2+ version of every monster. Anyway, doing the conversion shouldn't be more difficult than adapting a 3e adventure to a group whose power level is somewhat higher or lower than expected.
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Thought I would try kicking it off. I will try to create something similar to a vanilla 3e gnoll using 4e stat sheet.
Gnoll Reference
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Initiative +0 --- Senses Perception +4; low-light vision
HP 22 Bloodied 11
AC 13 Fort 15 Ref 12 Will 12
Speed 7
<|>Battleaxe (Standard at will) Weapon
___+5 vs. AC; 1d8+3 damage, or 1d8+5 while bloodied; see also pack attack;
Pack Attack
___The gnoll warrior deals an extra 5 damage on melee attacks
___ against an enemy that has two or more of the warrior's
___allies adjacent to it.
Alignment Chaotic evil --- Languages Abyssal, Common
Skills Intimidate +3;
I really don't know how the abilities and gear work together, if they do at all. Thus the I am not doing that part. :)
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Thought I would try kicking it off. I will try to create something similar to a vanilla 3e gnoll using 4e stat sheet.
Gnoll Reference
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Initiative +0 --- Senses Perception +4; low-light vision
HP 22 Bloodied 11
AC 13 Fort 15 Ref 12 Will 12
Speed 7
<|>Battleaxe (Standard at will) Weapon
___+5 vs. AC; 1d8+3 damage, or 1d8+5 while bloodied; see also pack attack;
Pack Attack
___The gnoll warrior deals an extra 5 damage on melee attacks
___ against an enemy that has two or more of the warrior's
___allies adjacent to it.
Alignment Chaotic evil --- Languages Abyssal, Common
Skills Intimidate +3;I really don't know how the abilities and gear work together, if they do at all. Thus the I am not doing that part. :)
This looks really good, actually. I like that you kept the pack attack, that seemed to be common throughout all the gnoll's listed on that sheet. It would make sense that the lowest level gnoll would have just that ability. It keeps their flavor as well. The HP and and ac looks about right.
I believe the exp for 1st level monsters is a base 100xp, so his xp would be 100.
I believe the lower level xp progression for standard monsters was:
1st 100
2nd 125
3rd 150
4th 175
5th 200
6th 250
7th 300
8th 350
9th 400
10th 500
11th 600
12th 700
-Pete
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This looks really good, actually. I like that you kept the pack attack, that seemed to be common throughout all the gnoll's listed on that sheet. It would make sense that the lowest level gnoll would have just that ability. It keeps their flavor as well. The HP and and ac looks about right.
I believe the exp for 1st level monsters is a base 100xp, so his xp would be 100.
I believe the lower level xp progression for standard monsters was:
1st 100
2nd 125
3rd 150
4th 175
5th 200
6th 250
7th 300
8th 350
9th 400
10th 500
11th 600
12th 700-Pete
I had no idea what the xp was, so thanks! I was basing it more on 2e knowledge than 3e, I guess. I think having the themed attacks is actually a pretty cool idea (that I've seen in DDM, I believe). Something I might backport to 3e.
Yeah, I did this mainly because I wanted to do something related to 4e that wasn't reading mean stuff. :) Think I'll do a giant centipede next.
Just the other day I was thinking about digging up my Crown of the Kobold King and seeing how hard it would be to convert to 4e - I mean, we actually have a bunch of information on kobolds already, and it's nice and low level which is the range we can play in...
Would probably be pretty dealable to do the first Runelords module, too.
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Just the other day I was thinking about digging up my Crown of the Kobold King and seeing how hard it would be to convert to 4e - I mean, we actually have a bunch of information on kobolds already, and it's nice and low level which is the range we can play in...
Would probably be pretty dealable to do the first Runelords module, too.
Any pictures of the stats for kobolds that you know of?
Alternately, text stats?Hollow's Last Hope would probably be a good place to start. It's the first GM mod, and also very short.
If you poke around on enworld you can get the stats for
Kobold Minions
Kobold Skirmishers
Kobold Slingers
Kobold Archers
Kobold Dragonshields
Kobold Wyrmpriests
That's a lot of kobold loving :)
Here is a post on EN World that contains a link to every 4e monster released so far (though some monsters are incomplete).
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Here is a post on EN World that contains a link to every 4e monster released so far (though some monsters are incomplete).
Sweet. Thanks!
Also, thanks, Keith!
Hmm, there are a bunch of errors in the stats from the minis (characterized by the ???s for XP, especially) - stuff like 'encounter; recharge 6' for abilities, elite creatures that don't have an action point or saving throw bonus, and a bunch of other things. Also 'cone X' all over the place, and I don't believe that term exists in D&D anymore (blast X is the term). But, eh well, can't expect much from something taken from the back of miniatures cards.
Those hit points really look all over the map in particular for the mini cards - yeah, I'm just not going to trust those stats. The gnolls, chuul, choker, gricks, grell, kobolds, hobgoblins, boneshard, flaming skeleton, skeleton warriors, shadarkai, human mage, human bandit, human guard, black dragon... a few others... those were actually gotten from stats from the Con... a bunch of others were gotten from the delve and are... so-so. I actually heard WotC say they were old and out of date and hoped people didn't copy them out of the con. But the mini cards (assuming they're copied in anywhere close to right) look really crazy.
I just skimmed the document this afternoon, but I noticed that alot of the incomplete stat blocks were from mini-cards.
I think that conversion guides may be the answer to healing the edition rift plaguing the D&D community.
It will actually really help with conversions if people were interested in converting both ways. 3.5 players could help 4.0 players and vice-versa.
I know my players and I will be staying 3.5, but we will definitely be converting 4e things we like. When we convert something, I will try to make it available.
I think that conversion guides may be the answer to healing the edition rift plaguing the D&D community.
It will actually really help with conversions if people were interested in converting both ways. 3.5 players could help 4.0 players and vice-versa.
I know my players and I will be staying 3.5, but we will definitely be converting 4e things we like. When we convert something, I will try to make it available.
A lot of people generously contribute their own work on these boards so I wouldn't be surprised to see people posting conversions one way or another regardless of which way Paizo goes. So if I stick with 3.5 and Paizo switches I'm not really very worried, although it may change which products I buy.
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Here's my take on the Tatzlwyrm from D0. I think it may be too tough. I don't have a good feel for how much more damage 4e characters dish up.
I tried to up the damage such that this guy would be a challenge by himself.
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Initiative +7 --- Senses Perception +5; darkvision; low-light vision
HP 45 Bloodied 22
AC 17 Fort 15 Ref 17 Will 12
Immune sleep, poison
Speed 6
_B_Bite (Standard at will) Weapon
___+6 vs. AC; 1d6+6 damage and the target is grabbed (until escape).
___A target trying to escape the grab takes a -4 penalty to the check.
_P_Poison Gasp (Standard at will)
___Grabbed target only. +6 vs. Fort; 1d6+6 damage and the target is stunned (save ends)
_R_Rake (minor at will)
___Grabbed target only. +5 vs. AC; 2d2+6.
_>_Pounce (standard; encounter)
___+9 vs. AC; 2d6+10 damage and target is grabbed (until escape).
___A target trying to escape the grab takes a -4 penalty to the check.
Alignment N --- Languages Draconic, Common
Skills Stealth +10; Athletics +10
Again, I really don't know how the abilities and gear work together.
One of the things I'm wondering about is the idea of monster numbers. It seems to me that one of the design goals for 4E is to increase the number of monsters that tend to be in an encounter. If the average number of monsters increases then their is something of an issue during conversions. When converting from 3.X to 4th you'd be generally making encounters that where a little to easy while conversions from 4th to 3.5 would generally create encounters that where to hard.
An example of this was done in a WotC post in which the designer stated that he started the campaign off by having a lady enter an Inn chased by a couple of zombies. The players kill the zombies and race to the door expecting to see a few more - where upon they are somewhat shocked to find 27 zombies shambling toward the Inn. Now if I convert an adventure from 4th to 3.5 and have the first encounter be 27 zombies I'm likely to kill the entire party.
Hence one of the things we may have to judge when we get our hands on the books is whether or not we want to go with pure conversions that input the monsters on a one for one basis.
Or, alternatively we could try to go with spiritual conversions and monsters are added or subtracted in order to meet each systems balancing mechanisms. So would we change 4E adventures so that they provide roughly 4 encounters of the appropreate EL and work out how much experience a 3.5 section of the adventure was worth and make sure that it fit the XP total for a 4E adventuring party.
One of the key conversion points will not be 'Okay, this CR 2 monster to this 2nd level monster' but 'Well, this CR 2 monster to this 2nd level artillery, these 2 2nd level soldiers, and this 2nd level skirmisher' Etc.
One of the things I'm wondering about is the idea of monster numbers. It seems to me that one of the design goals for 4E is to increase the number of monsters that tend to be in an encounter. If the average number of monsters increases then their is something of an issue during conversions. When converting from 3.X to 4th you'd be generally making encounters that where a little to easy while conversions from 4th to 3.5 would generally create encounters that where to hard.
Yes, that is one of the "features" of 4E that I think converters will need to keep in mind. That, and also the related feature that, in 4E, monsters have specific roles and I get the impression that a basic encounter should mix up monsters of various roles to make them more powerful.
What I mean is this: in 3.5, you could have a good encounter with 3 melee monsters, or with 3 ranged monsters. In 4E, it seems that the default encounter would mix both melee monsters and ranged monsters; and that configuration would naturally make the ranged monsters more powerful (since, basically, they get to add the melee monsters' hit points to theirs: the melee monsters will prevent characters from reaching the ranged ones).
This kind of observations leads me to think that there will be more than just converting stats, but that whole encounters might have to be re-built/re-thought. Perhaps that will be relatively trivial, as a poster said, perhaps that will be very complex. I'm still unsure about it.
Perhaps, as a poster suggested above, it would be easier to start working on an example module and see how it would go?
As a side note, thanks for all the thought-stimulating answers! Keep them coming!
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Man, I am so sick of the negativity on this board! Just because someone wants to say something positive about 4E, that's no excuse for a massive pile-on of 4E haters to come in here and start throwing insults and threadjacking and... and...
...oh wait. None of that is happening. But I was told that was impossible!
[Note: more substantive post to follow. But I thought this point should be made.]
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I don't have much to offer in terms of actual conversion ideas, since I haven't been following the release information closely enough to feel comfortable making any suggestions, but it seems to me that Paizo's general attitude toward adventure design might make conversion easier than it would first appear.
If we can take Burnt Offerings as a representative sample, out of 30 combat encounters, 18 include multiple opponents, including some with numbers as high as 8, 9, or 10 bad guys. A number of the solo opponents are singular for reasons that seem to have more to do with dramatic impact than tactical considerations: these include
This suggests that Paizo's likely to provide encounters that flow more smoothly into the 4E model of encounter design than "default" 3E is assumed to do.
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If we can take Burnt Offerings as a representative sample, out of 30 combat encounters, 18 include multiple opponents, including some with numbers as high as 8, 9, or 10 bad guys. A number of the solo opponents are singular for reasons that seem to have more to do with dramatic impact than tactical considerations: these include ** spoiler omitted **
This suggests that Paizo's likely to provide encounters that flow more smoothly into the 4E model of encounter design than "default" 3E is assumed to do.
I also have been thinking about this. Red Hand of Doom is another adventure that will convert well.
As to your spoiler...
I'm not convinced having single opponent fights is a problem. Assuming the DMG/MM provide good guidelines for how to "bump" a monster to be an elite/solo encounter, one could mostly ignore encounter counts and just make single monsters tougher cookies by giving them bloodied abilities (per the dragon), weird minor actions, etc. We'll know in a couple months, I guess. :)
It does look like it won't necessarily require changing numbers as much, but I'd suggest avoiding just making a lot of elite and solo critters when we do come across the single monsters. The multi-opponent fights are just more tactically interesting, while single ones will quickly turn into 'do the same thing over and over'. It's okay to use sparingly, but not too often.
Last night I created threads for Burnt Offerings and Kobold King so that spoiler-laden conversions can happen in them. I just started with some generic things to get the ball rolling. I'll admit that someone who has actually run them would probably be able to offer more to the discussion, but I'll still poke at them as time permits.
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It does look like it won't necessarily require changing numbers as much, but I'd suggest avoiding just making a lot of elite and solo critters when we do come across the single monsters. The multi-opponent fights are just more tactically interesting, while single ones will quickly turn into 'do the same thing over and over'. It's okay to use sparingly, but not too often.
Has there been any talk of situational exception abilities? That is, if I have a creature in a vat of acid, is there going to be guidance for abilities that function only in the vat of acid and only not in the vat of acid? I forget the name of them, but there are some green dragon spawn in Red Hand of Doom that were fairly forgettable... until you put them near water. Generally speaking, I think just putting single creatures in interesting environments helps a lot.
(Seven Swords of Sin Spoiler)
Anothering thing to remember about upgrading lone 3.5e monsters to 4e elites and solos is that you're going to encourage players to burn through their daily powers faster than what is probably necessary given the flow of the story.
In many cases, I do think combining some of the encounters (even staggered out a couple rounds) will work well.
You can have environmental hazards - one of the example games at DDXP had
1) Pressure plates that shot harpoons at people
2) Kobolds pushing boulders on chains at people that could potentially knock you into a pit
3) A boulder that ran around a track
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Anothering thing to remember about upgrading lone 3.5e monsters to 4e elites and solos is that you're going to encourage players to burn through their daily powers faster than what is probably necessary given the flow of the story.
I hadn't considered that. I guess if you wanted to "teach" 4e players a little 3e conservation principle, you could ignore this. :D
Anyway, this is a great argument for going in the opposite direction I was.
This is from the Burnt Offerings conversion thread. I'm moving it here becuase my commentary really is about conversions in general and not about RotRLs in particular.
I haven't run any RotRL, but I've thought about the attack on Sandpoint. I think it would be fun to have the gobos find some enlarge potions. Hilarious shenanigans ensue. :D I'm imagining the big ones suddenly turning on the little ones to get back at them for past transgressions.
As for converting, you could probably base an enlarged goblin on the gnoll stats and just add in the goofy qualities like falling on their own sword with a 1.
I've argued above that we need to decide whether we want to make a 'spiritual' versus a 'pure' conversion pretty much prior to actually doing a conversion. However I think this idea moves outside of each model. Whats being suggested here is more is something that simply is not part of an adventure. This is basically an enhancement. You take an idea that you like and add it to the module. I generally don't feel this sort of thing has any place in a conversion. A conversion is not really the place to show off our good ideas - though if we went with some kind of a Wiki model we could have a place that includes good ideas. They should not be part of the core product however.
Now I say generally and I can see some exceptions to this kind of a rule of thumb. If its decided to go with a 'spiritual' model then part and parcel of that idea is to showcase some of what 4E can do.
So a 'pure' conversion would replace the goblins in the raid on Sandpoint with 4E equivalents. A 'spiritual' conversion would concede that Paizo reinvented goblins in RotRL and we would try to emulate that. One thing that 4E can do is easily replace one monsters ability with something else. So in the raid on Sandpoint we see goblins using fire but they also, somewhat comically, have a tendency to light themselves on fire.
Well if we want to showcase what 4E can do with monsters in this regard we'd probably want to create 'Pazio style' Goblins. Give them some kind of a cool fire using ability. Include in the ability some mechanism so that if they roll poorly then, oops, they light themselves on fire.
Now we'd need the actual books to figure out how the mechanics of this are going to work. Once we have these books we can figure out the mechanics of adding the Goblins Playing with Fire special ability to their stat block.
Another exception I can think of, if we went with a spiritual conversion, would be something almost akin to errata. That is additions to the adventure that where not in the original text but are designed to fix problems have been discussed on the message boards as being a problem for multiple groups.
While this is similar to an enhancement the design goals are different. Here we would essentially be taking advantage of what amounted to a second look at the product now that we have feed back. The idea would not be to add our cool ideas to the adventure but to repair or fix some aspect of the adventure that was felt to be broken by those that played through them.
In particular good fixs might be material that was added, on the message boards, by the adventure's authour or James Jacobs.
I'm good with picking up errata, and with changing things to get the appropriate encounter with the new edition... but I don't really see a need to do things like add enlarge potion drinking goblins.
Funny you should mention goblins playing with fire, since Goblin Pyros was my monster for the day and I took a similar line of thought, though not quite the same.
Another thing that will help a lot is for people to think of "Flavor" vs. "Strict" conversions.
Some things will NOT convert directly, or APPEAR to but then don't work the same (I've seen this a lot with 3.0 and 2E conversions more than anywhere else - but also used to do a lot of HERO to and from AD&D conversions back in the day and first learned about this there, and 1E/2E to HackMaster conversions hit this "snag" a lot too) - look at how the encounter is supposed to run based on specific Feat/Skill/Power selections and flavor text (including Tactical notes) and figure out what new abilities are needed to reflect that; don't worry about the actual stats until you know the mechanics first, then back-figure to keep the feel of the encounter (and scenario) as close as absolutely possible
This is an excellent point, and one that can easily be forgotten. What might help with this is the inclusion of occasional "Conversion Notes" (like the "Designer Notes" in many recent Paizo adventures) where the person offering the conversion explains why certain choices were made, and what important elements of the scene are assisted by that choice.
I can also see the use of "Conversion Options" sidebars/addendums, where we can include ideas for adjusting the encounter, even when those ideas aren't quite true to the original text. This is how someone could introduce ideas that came out of the messageboards, or even their own creative additions such as the Enlarge potions mentioned above, but it would make it clear what was part of the original and what was added.
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This is from the Burnt Offerings conversion thread. I'm moving it here becuase my commentary really is about conversions in general and not about RotRLs in particular.
I haven't run any RotRL, but I've thought about the attack on Sandpoint. I think it would be fun to have the gobos find some enlarge potions. Hilarious shenanigans ensue. :D I'm imagining the big ones suddenly turning on the little ones to get back at them for past transgressions.
As for converting, you could probably base an enlarged goblin on the gnoll stats and just add in the goofy qualities like falling on their own sword with a 1.
I've argued above that we need to decide whether we want to make a 'spiritual' versus a 'pure' conversion pretty much prior to actually doing a conversion. However I think this idea moves outside of each model. Whats being suggested here is more is something that simply is not part of an adventure. This is basically an enhancement. You take an idea that you like and add it to the module. I generally don't feel this sort of thing has any place in a conversion. A conversion is not really the place to show off our good ideas - though if we went with some kind of a Wiki model we could have a place that includes good ideas. They should not be part of the core product however.
I agree with you completely. My suggestion would have been better placed in a "Spice up your goblin raid!" thread in the RotRL forums. At least it brought the issue to light, though!
As volunteer conversions, we're not as limited by space so having lots of options for people sounds great.
The sidebar/addenda idea is a darned good one - could even provide both types of conversion that way, for the DM to "mix and match" the style that fits his game...
I too agree with side bars and design notes. I mean who does not love side bars and design notes? I'd be a little concerned about trying to create a conversion that was both a pure and a spiritual (or strict vs. flavour - since we mean the same thing by this) one at the same time however.
I strongly suspect that what the vast majority of us will want to do is make the 'flavourful' or 'spiritual' version of the conversion in any case. It creates the best product (we don't end up trying to shove square pegs into round holes) and it allows us to show off the coolest features of 4E. Plus, so far, everyone that has chimed in on the issue seems to feel that we ought to go this way.
As volunteer conversions, we're not as limited by space so having lots of options for people sounds great.
We are going to, at some point, get Lisa and the gang to spell out exactly what we are and are not allowed to write in our conversions.
I suspect that we'd personally love to go whole hog on this but I don't believe we would be allowed to do that. We have to create a product that is both usable to a 4th Edition DM and yet also requires that DM to have bought the adventure in question.
It may simply be a matter of how we write about things. If I where to do this at home without IP considerations I'd probably literally rewrite the text and use bold red text to indicate the changes I have made. But we may not be able to do that because we create a full fledged product that could be used by a player that never bought the adventure path. So our presentation - even just to each other, is going to have to be considered.
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If the excitement is there for "spiritual" conversions of the source material, that is probably where it will end up. Always easier to get stuff when people are excited about it, right?
I agree that use of sidebars would be keen both as a "why this is a good fit for 4e" and a "here's a way to change it up to make it closer to the original".
As for encouraging the purchase of modules and referencing them, all (afaik) the Pathfinders and Modules have easy reference numbers (e.g. B1, C2, etc.) and I'm guessing a good way to go about it might be something like this:
Section Q2
Original: 3 Goblin Donkey Riders & 5 Abyssal Donkeys
Update:
Goblin Donkey Rider
Level 4 Skirmisher
<stuff>
<abilities>
Exploding Donkey
M +4 vs Armor When rider is slain, donkey explodes to spite the party for 3d6 donkey damage.
<more stuff>
Sidebar
You might want to make the abyssal donkey more of a threat. Here are stats for an Abyssal Donkey. Remove Exploding Donkey ability from Goblin Donkey Rider and increase the to hit on his spirited donkey corraling to +8 from +6.
<Abyssal Donkey stats>
Just my take on how things might be handled.
Abyssal Donkey is copyright 2007 janxious. Do not look at, poke, or ridicule abyssal donkeys. They're not nice.