I have actually read somewhere on the forums here that what you speak of happens quite often and even particularly succesfully. Can't find the thread now but people who have done it spoke highly of it.
I'm currently converting serpents skull to DCC. It's relatively painless (part of the beauty of old school games being the minimal preparation required if you're prepared to wing it and your players regard that as the dm's job).
I've converted RotRL to Swords and Wizardry (though haven't actually run it). I generally just sub in the appropriate monster (possibly tweaked as necessary) and often add a bunch of minions - earlier games focussing on hordes of enemies more than "solo" monsters, in my experience.
Traps require the most work I find. I prefer coming up with a mechanism for disarming them and like to make that method discoverable in some way. Modern games often subsume that into a DC to find it and a DC to disarm.
For skills, I just eyeball the DCs and rely pretty heavily on stat checks (roll 2d10 and get under your stat to succeed with difficult tests imposing a positive modifier and helpful factors a negative one). If your character has a plausible reason for having the required skill, you can give it a go (particularly stretched cases may well have a +1 penalty).
|
The group I DM just finished Rise of the Runelords using 2nd edition and it worked great.
The conversion process was a little more involved as there are a few encounters with creatures that aren't in 2nd edition.
I found the biggest challenge was deciding how to handle XP and the pacing of level advancement. I finally decided that I wanted the campaign to end at 12th level which meant leveling twice per book. So I just awarded XP to keep on that pace. I was pleasantly surprised at how well this worked. I was really worried about moving from the 3rd book to the 4th book and having the encounter difficulty jump from Ogres to Stone Giants as the characters went from about 6th level to 7th level. There were some rough moments but with some smart play and a few henchmen, the party made it through.
The other issue was treasure, particularly magic-items. Both the quantity and converting some of the types.
Next up is Age of Worms also using 2nd edition. It is going to be epic!
Hiya.
A bit late to the party, but I am ("was"...'ish...on hold) running Second Darkness using the Dark Dungeons BECMI retro-clone. Dirt simple, really. I use my "common language" method of conversion for the most part. That is, if it says "6 goblins", I use 6 goblins...I don't bother 'converting' PF numbers into DD numbers. Spells, magic items, etc...I just use the description of what I know of PF and just use that or substitute a similar DD spell (e.g., "Grease"...just use the description/purpose of the PF entry and ignore/wing any specific 'numbers'). The players got up to the point where they were just meeting with the elves fighting in the ruined elf city when one player wanted to try something else (RPG system) after dieing.
I also ran the first and second books of Age of Worms. We tried it with different systems to see the differences and whatnot. The systems I ran those with were: BECMI, Powers & Perils, Marvel Super Heroes Advanced (the FASERIP one), and Hackmaster 4e. I have 'conversion' notes for running that AP with Star Frontiers as well...all converted over to sci-fi goodness, with Kyuss being a pawn of the Sathar, the kid-ghost being a hologram recording, the Queen of Chaos being the "Star-Mother" of the Sathar, Wind Dukes were aliens fighting against the Sathar, Dragotha got converted into a corrupt Sathar juggernaut ship that was in orbit around the planet, etc... I'm actually quite proud of that little conversion. :)
I've run the first module of Savage Tide AP using my own home-brew system (called "Fantasy Elements"), that is based on the old Darkurthe Legends RPG. It ran pretty well, actually. However, once characters/NPC's hit higher than about 8th level or so I found FE didn't convert well. I had to do a 'diminishing returns' type thing where the higher level a D&D NPC was, the more I had to reduce it's capabilities. Oh well... That said, I'm working on a conversion of the ST AP to fit in and use Call of Cthulhu (original, Chaosium version). I made Sasserine into San Francisco as a starting point. I plan on having the Isle of Dread be somewhere near-ish to Hawaii. Lots of ideas for that one! :)
In general, I've found that using the AP's for a system other than PF/3e seems to work much better. I don't have to worry about power levels and whatnot, and can focus on presenting the meat of the story to the players without them having to meta-game think "Oh, we're 3rd level, and those are 6 ogres...we should run".
^_^
Paul L. Ming
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
...Paul L. Ming
You know, I've always read your name as "pee-emm-ing" (like private messaging, or something).
It's strangely jarring to read where it really came from. :p
|
You might try converting something smaller first and giving it a whirl before jumping into an entire AP. Maybe a single module or a linked series (like Price of Immortality or Falcons Hollow). That will give you a testbed and give you an idea of the workload (or allow you to adjust the workload).
-Skeld