Shade said:
Yeah, we can probably do that.
Yay! It might still be worth getting a couple of things (like that last Horde monster and the remaining oozes) out of the way to keep the first page of Monster Talk uncluttered.
Shade said:
We held off on creating threads for Spelljammer, Birthright, and Ravenloft due to those settings having active official fansites. Beyond the Moons seemed especially on par to finish up all the unconverted Spelljammer critters.
I've not really followed the Birthright and Ravenloft communities, but they did seem to be pretty cool, when I surfed by collecting URLs.
Birthright has their own forums, and I think that helps make the conversion process a lot easier. (It seems to work well here.) WotC have recently merged all of their out of print setting forums into one uberforum. I'm not sure if this will hurt Birthright.net (by lowering its profile) or help it (by driving WotC forum members over to Birthright.net). It might be worth keeping an eye on them to see what their activity does.
Ravenloft fans must have had a ego boost (and maybe - for some - a bit of disapointment) when the setting was licenced out by WotC. However, I think that the original official Ravenloft site has closed down and become an archive of what it used to be. However, there are a few other good unofficial Ravenloft fan websites. Ravenloft
might need a bit of help if those other websites are not able to pull the conversion community into one place.
Shade said:
I believe we ended up with Mystara and Planescape threads due to the lack of serious monster conversion sections at the time of their creations. Since then, both official sites have ramped up production, though.
Ignoring things like popularity of individual settings, I think that both those settings are excellent choices.
Mystara is so old school, that it really has a link to the roots of D&D. So converting missing Mystara monsters is like restoring the Globe Theatre. Even if people prefer later campaign settings, they are liking things built on top of Mystara. So many of these monsters should fit in well with later campaign settings.
Planescape is tied in with the planes. So you get a collection of creatures with the Elemental and Outsider subtype. Planescape is a "transitive" campaign setting that can link to any other campaign setting(s), so despite the fact it came pretty late in 2nd edition, its monsters should transplant well to most other campaign settings.
So despite the fact I'm a big SJ fan, I do think your two choices gave better "value for money" on a monster by monster basis.
Spelljammer is also a "transitive" campaign setting, so many of its monsters should work anywhere. However, some of them are designed more for space than the atmosphere of planets. Some of them might work ok as airborn creatures, but a few of them are likely to be much less useful on the ground.
If you do start this thread, it might be better for us to tackle the "groundling" monsters before the "wildspace" monsters. And any "phlogiston" monsters should wait until last.
Shade said:
Regardless, we can pretty much convert anything we want.
At the moment you can. But eventually you will convert all the cool monsters and there won't be so much choice of what to do.
But it would be very satifying to see this get done before 5th edition comes onto the shelves.
