| 17 people marked this as a favorite. |
Hey there, here is a conversion of X2 Castle Amber (Moldvay, Tom. TSR, 1981). Note: This is a re-imagined version, rather than a straight conversion.
Here is the file -> X2 Castle Amber
I recommend you right click the link and select "save as" to get the file; Otherwise, your browser may display a cached version.
This one took a little longer than I wanted. I moved over to Adobe InDesign and Photoshop which took me a little while to learn well enough to produce the document. While my original plan was to reproduce all of the maps, the time requirement was high so I did the West Wing and Averoigne then used the old cut and paste method for the rest of the maps until I'm inspired to re-do them. I went for a sepia look to the document to help pull the artwork together. I don't know why, but the Castlevania artwork seemed to work with the Ambers. Hopefully, this will get some use out there or inspire others to make their own conversions.
Release Notes: Added bookmarks to the PDF. Some of the backgrounds are turned around, will fix in the future. Did a little QA but it's never enough, let me know where you see glaring issues.
Enjoy!
~D
Other Conversions Available
A Paladin in Hell - This is unfinished as of the date of this post;
A1 Slave Pits of the Undercity
G2 Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl
I2 Tomb of the Lizard King
|
All I can say is Wow. I loved your SD conversion back in the day but this is incredible.
Thank you...
And I love Castle Amber. Have run it several times in the old 1st edition days.
How about the Lost City and the Prequel from Dungeon Magazine?
End the Temple of Elemental Evil... And the Return...
And...........
Is this list all those you have done so far?
Sadly, yes. Next up, finishing A Paladin in Hell.
Always interested in any others folks can think of. I occasionally look over at the H-series on the shelf, then shudder and turn reluctantly away.
~D
Brilliant work! Do you plan on following up the A series (Stockade, etc)? The font is a nice touch, btw.
Is this list all those you have done so far?Sadly, yes. Next up, finishing A Paladin in Hell.
Always interested in any others folks can think of. I occasionally look over at the H-series on the shelf, then shudder and turn reluctantly away.
~D
Great work! My list in order would be
1/ White Plume Mountain
2/ The Lost City
3/ Dwellers of the Forbidden City
4/ Pharaoh
5/ Secret of Bone Hill
6/ Palace of the Silver Princess
7/ Rahasia
Hey there, here is a conversion of X2 Castle Amber (Moldvay, Tom. TSR, 1981). Note: This is a re-imagined version, rather than a straight conversion.
Here is the file -> X2 Castle Amber [ooc][74.25MB]
Great Scott! This is amazingly fine work.
This is one of my favorite modules. I discovered the works of Roger Zelazny (the inspiration of the Amber family) and Clark Ashton Smith (inspiration for the 2nd half of the module).
Might you want to convert Dungeonland and the Land Beyond the Magic Mirror next?
|
|
1/ White Plume Mountain
2/ The Lost City
3/ Dwellers of the Forbidden City
4/ Pharaoh
5/ Secret of Bone Hill
6/ Palace of the Silver Princess
7/ Rahasia
I love Rahasia (although the motivation for the module could use some work). And the Black Opal Eye which is the follow on module.
I did not like the why of being there but I loved the modules themselves.
Incredible awesomeness. Thanks daemonslye.
Thanks for this, Daemonslye. I've just skimmed through it and its fantastic work. I can remember it being reviewed and talked about in the old days, although I never had it in my collection.
|
|
Holy crow, daemonslye. I'd only looked at your conversion of Paladin in Hell, which I was very impressed by, but this document... it's a thing of beauty. You may have been out of touch for a while, but you've clearly not been slacking on the conversations.
Bravo, sir! Now I just have to print and bind this bad boy, so that I can peruse it at my leisure.
Thank you very much.
Oh, and if you're still taking requests, here's a challenge for you: Tegel Manor.
dotted.....
What does that mean?
|
What does that mean?dotted.....
Posting in a thread so that the thread then has a dot next to it (as well as listing the number of new posts).
And daemonslye, EXCELLENT work! A1 and G2 are both parts of my favorite 1ed module runs. Looking forward to more!
Would love to see a conversion of Village of Hommlet (it was always a great generic intro module for any campaign).
Wow - Thanks for all the comments; I really convert these modules for you folks. (Plus it's fun and I am learning some new tools)
I went ahead and updated the PDF in the link above, fixing a few minor things (spelling, fonts, italics, added the sword to kill the green man, fixed the apple strudel, toned down some pics; formatting, etc.);
@Dryder: Ah, no. I only did the map for the West Wing and the map for Averoigne. I photoshopped a number of images (mostly cropping and adding a sepia tone, although others got a more radical treatment) found here and there on the web to give the module a little life. It is pretty hard to maintain a consistent look and feel when selecting (non-custom-ordered) artwork, so this is one of the harder parts of the whole thing.
I'll start thinking on the next one; Here is the request pool so far (and I know others have asked for the H-series and other modules but those threads have run off the page).
A Paladin in Hell 6 x
Complete A Series 3 x
Lost City 2 x
Rahasia 2
Black Opal Eye 1
Dungeonland 1
Dwellers of the Forbidden City 1
Land Beyond the Magic Mirror 1
Palace of the Silver Princess 1
Pharaoh 1
Secret of Bone Hill 1
Steading of the Hill Giant Chief 1
Tegel Manor 1
Village of Hommlet 1 x
(an x means I'm looking closer at it; I like adventures with a little room for maneuvering around the story; all of the above have that to a degree.)
~D
I've just skimmed through this - and am totally stunned. I'm about to go and delete the conversion I've been doing of X2 - I couldn't do anything even remotely up to this standard, either content-wise OR appearance wise.
I'm going back to naughts and crosses - I know I can put together the game board for that.
Reggie
BTW - My vote is for B4 - another old time favourite of mine!
Tegel Manor, or the Desert of Desolation would make me so happy.
Up to you though, dude.
I tend to kinda grab stuff here and there from these things; neat to see somebody do something complete with them.
Another vote for the Lost City - make mine Moldvay!
I read through the whole module. Aside from some minor spelling errors and some odd mechanics (mostly from the original module), it looks to me like professional work.
On the mechanics side, and I fully understand these are being inherited from the original module, there are numerous "no save, no spell resistance, permanent" things that can happen to the characters. Sometimes with no chance of them even having a clue as to what would happen.
I especially liked the major NPC stat blocks. Excellent job on pathfinder-izing them but keeping the original intent of the author (like some have ranks in summoner, witch, etc).
The ghost feast in Area 4: Dining Room has some effects that appear to be permanent. No mention is made of how to undo them (like the Wheat Bread on a failed save). Are they curses? The last one mentions it is a DC 22 curse but they others don't. The whole encounter could use the haunt mechanic too.
In area 35. The Ballroom, Little Ape is missing the equipment section of his stat block. (I remember he had a Murlynd's Spoon).
In area 38. The Card Room, Cards 7 and 9 don't give a duration or mention a saving throw.
In part 6, Room 46, the letter squares, there is no mention if the Lunacy is a curse that can be broken. It seems to imply it is permanent. What happens if the PC do not step on any of the tiles? (By climbing the wall, jumping, or flying over them). I always had an issue with this in the original module, as there is nothing that gives a clue as to what the correct thing to do here.
@darth_borehd: Thanks very much - When you are too close to something, you really miss things right in front of you. I keep seeing minor spelling/grammer issues, but totally missed the discrepancies you found. I will fix these and repost soon.
I have been playing with some formats and pulled out some of my old modules mentioned above I don't have scans for. I'm pretty sure which module I'm doing next.
Thanks much,
~D
|
|
Some great work here; I second the appreciation for not restricting yourself to the NPC classes presented in the original BECMI text.
One of the biggest issues, when translating older adventures, is the assumed rate of xp gain.*
Have you calculated how many levels could theoretically be gained, and is the intention to use the slow xp track, or would even that be too generous?
Then again, given that so many of the encounters are with badass NPCs, maybe it's unlikely the PCs would actually be able to beat them in a fight. More likely they would have to carry out some BS and flattery, in which case, I'd suspect the GM would have to be very careful about handing out xp for 'defeating' the encounters, if 'defeating' them only consists of 'manage not to get slain, on a whim'.
*Rant on the changing paradigms from oldschool to new: When running a module in 1st Edition, the expectation was that you'd probably gain one level, if you did the whole thing, maybe two, if it were one of the thicker ones. Given that expectation, the writers could set the challenges of any part of the mod, confident that the PCs who encountered them would be in the right league to handle them.
That being the case, and along with other issues such as a much lower WBL assumption, it made little sense for PCs to expend their limited resources attacking the rank and file. All that you would achieve, would be to hurl yourselves in several waves of diminishing returns, crashing on the rocks of the ever-growing defences.
Better tactics would be to look for a way in, bypass the outer defences, do over the surprised BBEG, and escape/fight your way out past the leaderless minions with most of your resources intact.
That seemed to fly out the window in 3E; the faster rate of progression meant writers had to set challenges of quickly escalating ECL; the resulting disparity in ECL heavily implied the encounters shouldn't/couldn't be done in any other order, nor could they be missed, else the PCs would be 'behind the curve'. Because the BBEG is way out of the league of the PCs who first come to his entrance hall, he isn't allowed to face them, but must make excuses why he remains incommunicado for the whole scenario, till the PCs ping their level-meter.
Tactics have to be abandoned, in favour of metagaming; intelligent play that should be its own reward (not waking the guards) is now seen as crippling the party, so artificial methods have to be adopted (giving full xp for sneaking past a sleeping guard who couldn't make a DC0 Perception check).
Where once we tried to emulate 'Where Eagles Dare', we are now pressured if we try to deviate from 'Kick in the Door, Wake Every Foe, Follow the Follow the Follow the Follow the, Follow Our Leroy Jenkins'.
Incredible, sir. Very well done indeed.
Master Arminas
Is this list all those you have done so far?Always interested in any others folks can think of.
~D
Wonderful work.
My votes about future conversion are
1. A Paladin in Hell
2. Complete A Series
3. Steading of the Hill Giant Chief
@uriel: I put in there 8th level - but, it's a hard 8th level for sure and groups trying to la machine their way through will run out of resources quickly. I haven't play tested it and the CRs are high - looking at the encounters, I think 8th level - with normal magic and 20-25 point buy should be ok. The npcs are generally magic poor (maybe I should adjust their cr for this).
@galvatron: give me a few days to get some fixes up first. I think lulu.com can do this but maybe need to leave out a page or two...
~D
Awesome job man! I can't wait to run this for my group. A question, what are my options for printing this thing? Are there still online places that will print/bind PDF documents and ship them to you at home? I would love to get a good binding job done for this. Thanks again!
I find its too expensive to have it printed professionally like lulu. I just print them, use my three-hole punch and put it in a slim binder.
Very, very impressive work! I'd like to throw in a vote for Pathfinderizing "Rahasia."
And your scope of artwork is impressive. I think I saw Cronos the World Hydra from the Castle Age game!
Awesome job man! I can't wait to run this for my group. A question, what are my options for printing this thing? Are there still online places that will print/bind PDF documents and ship them to you at home? I would love to get a good binding job done for this. Thanks again!
You could try printme1.com
@snorter: Good feedback; Assuming four 8th level, medium progression and only a few random encounters, PCs wont gain a level until the Dungeon. Even so, if I were DM'ing, I'd encourage five PCs of 8th level. Experienced PCs will find much of the combats easy, but the Castle is more about roleplaying (and the random encounters can be used to spice things up). I'm using this EL/CR calculator.
@snorter: Here is the original image for Marie-Helen: CLICK HERE
@darth_borehd: I made the edits. After reviewing the CRs, I need to provide more direction on XP gained so I'll do that soon.
Thanks again everyone, I'm compiling the materials for the next one and doing some research.
~D
Great work! My list in order would be
6/ Palace of the Silver Princess
Which one? The original orange cover with the questionable pictures or the "cleaned-up" green cover one?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Wow! Havent posted on these forums in ages, but this is awesome enough to bring me back! :)
I'd love to see more BECMI era modules done in this style. The only thing I miss from the module is a reference to Mystara. I dont mind that it is set in Golarion, but a nod to my favorite setting which grew from these modules would have been nice :)
Silver Princess would be very cool, as would Lost City.
-Havard
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
A conversion of The Mud Sorcerers Tomb would be awesomesauce!
