Amongst my many little projects I'm converting the Falcon Trilogy (Greyhawk) and Warlock of the Stonecrowns (Birthright).
Anyone else converting or already converted any 1e-3.x adventures?
How far have you got and what if any changes have you made?
oooh... what other Birthright goodness have you tried to convert?
I take it Realms spells are ripe for ritual conversion. About the bloodlines, well those can be tricky.
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Amongst my many little projects I'm converting the Falcon Trilogy (Greyhawk) and Warlock of the Stonecrowns (Birthright).
Anyone else converting or already converted any 1e-3.x adventures?
How far have you got and what if any changes have you made?
oooh... what other Birthright goodness have you tried to convert?
I take it Realms spells are ripe for ritual conversion. About the bloodlines, well those can be tricky.
I'm working on the entire setting. In the spirit of going 4E I've moved the timeline forward 100 years and had a small RSE resulting in the seperation of the Shadow Realm into the Feywild and the Shadowfell.
I've also either retconned or come up with an explanation for the racial differences and new races.
Realm spells are easy enough, just bigger more expensive rituals with a source component
With regards to bloodlines my RSE will either remove/destroy all above tainted bloodlines (these only existing to allow nonelven Wizards & Realm magic) except those Awnshegh and Ershegh powerful enough to survive it.
Honestly I loved BR but hated bloodlines, I never felt the setting needed it. That said I may work on the mechanic, but probably not till I see what they do with Spellscars and Dragonmarks.
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With regards to bloodlines my RSE will either remove/destroy all above tainted bloodlines (these only existing to allow nonelven Wizards & Realm magic) except those Awnshegh and Ershegh powerful enough to survive it.
Honestly I loved BR but hated bloodlines, I never felt the setting needed it. That said I may work on the mechanic, but probably not till I see what they do with Spellscars and Dragonmarks.
Probably a bit odd quoting myself but I've just had a brainfart or a decent idea and I need to get it down before I forget.
I loathed the way bloodlines were done in BR but using the 4E rules I can definitely see them done as a series of feats either special Channel divinity feats available to blooded characters or and I'm leaning towards this a series of multi-class feats with a special Paragon/Multi-class class(?) at 10th level. Darn really need the FR players guide, guess I'll have to wait till Sept to see this idea realised.
Do you think I need an intro feat? Something to represent tainted? Or shall I just let the PC's be able to choose tainted (1st level only)with it having no mechanical effect except making them eligible for the feats and for nonelven casters to be wizards?
cool.
Another Birthright fan.
I toyed around with the idea of doing some conversions as well. I was going to set it about 100 yrs into the future as well. Was thinking of having a huge war (the Gorgon finally goes all out), the resulting dark ages and the present is when the heroes are just now starting to put the realms back together. That way you get the points of light feel and don't have to worry about as much of the NPC's and such.
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In the conversions I have done (some Dungeon mag stuff, Crown of the Kobold King, In Search of the Unknown) I have found it is easier to take a look at is trying to be achieved in the mod and convert from there. It is easier to convert the "spirit" of an adventure than use a strict "line for line" conversion.
So, I read the adventure thoroughly, really study the map, and then proceed to break the adventure down into encounter areas that seem to make logical sense based on my reading. I then re-examine the encounters found in those areas and re-build those from the ground up.
What I have found is that many of the encounters in earlier editions are somewhat static compared to what 4e assumes. I try to intergrate some interactive environmental elements to keep things interesting. Even if that simply means adding a few areas of difficult terrain. I have found that many Paizo adventures already have some interesting terrain features built right in. If it seems appropriate I will also add a trap or hazard. Of course earlier edition adventures (especially 3.x mods) don't assume the sheer number of combatants that 4e does. So, oftentimes, you need to add more creatures to the mix.
For special villains I find it easier to create an NPC using the guidelines in the DMG and simply add the racial details.
Sometimes I need to make a lot of changes and other times the changes are somewhat minimal. Either way, I try to make sure the storyline remains pretty close to the original.
In all cases conversions haven't taken too much time. I have run into the occasional issue with a disparity between creature levels in 4e and their CR in 3.x. But this hasn't been anything I haven't been able to tackle rather quickly. In the end, this is nothing like the issues I had converting 1e mods to 3.x rules. There were points where the assumed levels would have changed dramatically during the conversion process. I haven't experienced quite the same thing with 4e.