Should we convert monsters from 4th edition?

[Big Mac]

OK, here is a question. (I'm not sure if the answer to this question will be "42" ), but here goes:

Should the Creature Catalogue finish converting OD&D monsters, AD&D monsters and update 3.0 conversions and then shut up shop?

or

Should the Creature Catalogue finish the conversions and the overhall conversions and then move into the "retro-conversion" business?

Echohawk is finding 4e monsters that were never invented during 3e. I'm sure there will be more new monsters when 4.5e or 5e or whatever comes out.

I'm sure that some people would love to import the best 4th edition ideas into their 3rd edition game (just as I'm sure that AD&D fans and OD&D fans would love to see a retro Creature Catalogue alternative that gives them more old school monsters to play with).

But this sort of thing would make the Creature Catalogue a project that never ends. (And I'm not sure if there would be any sort of legal problems with retro conversions.)

So I'm going to throw down the ultimate question and see if the CC management can give me a provisional answer.

Is this a good idea or am I crazy to suggest it?

[freyar]

Well, I'm not "management," but...

First off, I think we've got a ways to go with our conversions yet. And then there could be 3.5 and Pathfinder updates of things. That's not to say that there aren't some potentially interesting 4e monsters to retro-convert, just that it's not a pressing issue. What's probably more trouble is legal stuff. My understanding of the conversion agreement was that you can convert mechanically all the older edition stuff to 3e as OGC as long as you don't reproduce copyrighted text. I don't know how WotC's as yet unreleased fansite policy would look on back-conversion of 4e stuff, though.

[Shade]

Yeah, I wouldn't want to test WOTC's legal team...they seem much more picky about their content nowadays.

I'm not too worried about "closing up shop". Even once we get through all the remaining unconverted creatures, we could always update famous NPCs or branch out into creating our own creatures.

I can't speak for everyone, but I'm personally very keen on Pathfinder, and probably will want to branch out to conversions to that system. I'm not sure if those would be appropriate alongside the Creature Catalogue conversions, so we might need to start a sister site when the time comes.

And of course, by the time we finish, 5e might be here, and the climate may be more favorable again.

[Big Mac]

I wouldn't want to go against WotC's legal team either. It could potentially cause the rest of the conversions to get pulled.

I'm interested in Pathfinder RPG. I can see myself moving totally to 3.5 and importing Pathfinder and 3.0 material as house rules.

So I think it would be great to finish 3.5 and then get Pathfinder RPG stuff started. Ideally, it would be really cool if Creature Catalog had all three stats available for every monster, but I think that might be too much work.

Have you attracted a fan artist yet? It would be great if you could get a collection of OGC fan "portraits" for every monster in the Creature Catalog. If you had them, they could be applied to 3.0, 3.5 or Pathfinder versions of the same monster.

And it would be nice, when the collection of conversions is more complete, to put out compilation PDFs that have a cover, an introduction, a "logical" set or subset of monsters and an index of those monsters as well as any 3.5 monsters that Echohawk has found in official non-OGC sources. (You could, for example put out a "Creature Catalog Converts: Monsters of Maztica" or a "Creature Catalog Converts: Monsters of The Horde" PDF with the conversions you already have. And very soon, you could do a "Creature Catalog Converts: Oozes")

I think that PDFs like that would be something I would be wanting to send over to a Print on Demand (PoD) company and have with my RPG rulebook collection.