Forked Thread: 1E Resurgence? - 1e modules as 4e adventures?

thedungeondelver · Oct 27, 2008

neuronphaser said:
Similar experience but different: I looked at C&C and thought it was neat but too backwards. However, it led me to find Castle Zagyg, which in turn has gotten me on a Greyhawk kick. I also nabbed some old modules (Temple of Elemental Evil, Tegel Manor, etc.) and plan to do it all up for 4E because I like the ruleset and I'm more than happy to just wing the conversion to a degree.

Currently starting with 4e Rappan Athuk, but I'll definitely have opportunity to start using the Greyhawk stuff soon.

How, other than story and basic (and I mean very basic, like the shape of the maps and little else) would that even work? Hoards of deadly monsters are reduced to "minions" of one hit point - I mean, a 4th or 5th level party could work through Room #11 in G1 THE STEADING OF THE HILL GIANT CHIEF in maybe ... five rounds? Less? with the host of at-will powers and etcetera.

This isn't a slam on the newest D&D, but I'm genuinely curious to know exactly how you could even begin to economically (time and preparation wise) use older modules with what is basically an entirely different game. I mean we all mine different products for resources - I've cribbed stuff from THE FANTASY TRIP for AD&D, and so forth, but only in the "well that's a neat map/plot" sense."

Frostmarrow · Oct 27, 2008

thedungeondelver said:
Forked from: 1E Resurgence?

How, other than story and basic (and I mean very basic, like the shape of the maps and little else) would that even work? Hoards of deadly monsters are reduced to "minions" of one hit point - I mean, a 4th or 5th level party could work through Room #11 in G1 THE STEADING OF THE HILL GIANT CHIEF in maybe ... five rounds? Less? with the host of at-will powers and etcetera.

This isn't a slam on the newest D&D, but I'm genuinely curious to know exactly how you could even begin to economically (time and preparation wise) use older modules with what is basically an entirely different game. I mean we all mine different products for resources - I've cribbed stuff from THE FANTASY TRIP for AD&D, and so forth, but only in the "well that's a neat map/plot" sense."

It looks easy to me. You know what level the characters are and you know what kind of monsters the room contains. Then simply stat up the monsters, according to budget, and throw in the signature moves of the monster in question. With experience it could be done on the fly.

ExploderWizard · Oct 27, 2008

thedungeondelver said:
Forked from: 1E Resurgence?

How, other than story and basic (and I mean very basic, like the shape of the maps and little else) would that even work? Hoards of deadly monsters are reduced to "minions" of one hit point - I mean, a 4th or 5th level party could work through Room #11 in G1 THE STEADING OF THE HILL GIANT CHIEF in maybe ... five rounds? Less? with the host of at-will powers and etcetera.

This isn't a slam on the newest D&D, but I'm genuinely curious to know exactly how you could even begin to economically (time and preparation wise) use older modules with what is basically an entirely different game. I mean we all mine different products for resources - I've cribbed stuff from THE FANTASY TRIP for AD&D, and so forth, but only in the "well that's a neat map/plot" sense."

IMHO the only reason such adventures would be used is for that "classic" name recognition to boost sales. Even if the same plots and encounter setups were used it would have a completely different feel.

I remember converting adventures from 1E to 3E changing in feel unless the rules of the game were altered to fit the adventure (thus not so much a conversion). The differences between 1E and 4E are even larger so the amount of material that is really convertible is less.

Obryn · Oct 27, 2008

I looked into this in detail. In the end, it didn't look like it'd be too tough; the recommendation that kind of broke my mental block about it was to break up the dungeon levels into encounter areas rather than individual rooms. You'd need to do some re-scaling, probably, but it's no more difficult than a 1e->3e conversion would be.

As for minions and the like, they're what you make of them, really.

Still, it's more work than I wanted to do, and I wanted to do something different for my once-a-month game.

-O

Mister Doug · Oct 27, 2008

thedungeondelver said:
Forked from: 1E Resurgence?

How, other than story and basic (and I mean very basic, like the shape of the maps and little else) would that even work? Hoards of deadly monsters are reduced to "minions" of one hit point - I mean, a 4th or 5th level party could work through Room #11 in G1 THE STEADING OF THE HILL GIANT CHIEF in maybe ... five rounds? Less? with the host of at-will powers and etcetera.

This isn't a slam on the newest D&D, but I'm genuinely curious to know exactly how you could even begin to economically (time and preparation wise) use older modules with what is basically an entirely different game. I mean we all mine different products for resources - I've cribbed stuff from THE FANTASY TRIP for AD&D, and so forth, but only in the "well that's a neat map/plot" sense."

You do know that minions aren't the only monsters, right? And they are used at the DM's discretion, right? Minions are there to make book-keeping easier but retain a credible threat, for an effect similar to 1e's rules about fighters fighting creatures with less than one hit die, only having it feel more epic and have some slight chance of danger to the PC, since minions have to hit rolls that might actually harm the PC.

Cribbing maps, plots, and general gist of the scenario seems reasonable, and making 4e encounters deadly actually isn't a problem if you build the encounters assuming 4e is your rule system, and that encounters are to be built to be challenging in that system. You wear down healing surges instead of hit points, and at wills do a lot less damage than encounter and daily powers, so wearing down the heroes through prolonged combat is fairly reasonable, especially if you have ways to tie up or put down their strikers while hitting them hard enough to eat through their healing surges.

Economically, you pull up the maps, the plots, and the general encounter elements, figure out the level of the party, and stat out something similar. That sounds pretty economical to me. The hard part is re-imagining the maps to fit the free-flowing encounter area idea rather than room-by-room exploration. And that doesn't strike me as very hard at all. If you can handle tactics on the fly so that your villains and heroes jockey for control of choke-points and tactical advantage, your notes can be pretty simple.

timbannock · Oct 27, 2008

thedungeondelver said:
How, other than story and basic (and I mean very basic, like the shape of the maps and little else) would that even work?

This isn't a slam on the newest D&D, but I'm genuinely curious to know exactly how you could even begin to economically (time and preparation wise) use older modules with what is basically an entirely different game.

In about 5 minutes I did this for Rappan Athuk; it took about 10 times as long just to type up all of this compared to what I actually did for work on the conversion. This is found at the Necromancer forums @ -SPOILERS-Rappan Athuk 4e - Rappan Athuk - Modules - Necromancer Games - Message Board - Yuku

yours_truly said:
I just did up a little spreadsheet to write down what monsters are where and at what CR/EL, and then mirrored to that is what the 4e conversion might be (if it already exists, or notes on what might need to be built). There's a lot of unique critters in RA:RE, but I think a few encounters can easily have some of the 'standard' 4e monsters tossed in to get a little extra mileage out of the 4e Monster Manual.

But just to show how dead simple SOME of this could be, here's my view of the GROUND LEVEL: THE MAUSOLEUM.

***
Encounter 1 = normal rats, dire rats and some wererats (random numbers of each) for up to an EL 4 encounter.

So, I decided to just go with the high end (I can subtract if I want to later); I did up an EL 4 encounter in 4E rules that looks very much the same: 3 Rat Swarms, 2 Dire Rats, and 2 Wererats. That's 875 XP, or exactly an EL 4 encounter for five PCs in Fourth Edition.

***
Encounter 2 = green guardian gargoyles, 8 of them in fact, for what is supposed to be an EL 10 encounter.

This one is harder. The green guardians in 3.5E are CR 4 creatures, and there's a slew of them (8, as mentioned). In 4E, they are a level 9 creature (well, a standard gargoyle in 4e is). So I looked in the suggested encounters on the Gargoyle page and saw one that was EL 9 that contained Galeb Duhr Earthbreakers.

So, I just changed the encounter to 3 gargoyles and 3 galeb duhr earthbreakers, which is a total of 2250 XP, or just in-between an EL 9 and EL 10 encounter in 4E.

***
Finally, Encounter 3 = Black Skeleton and a little death trap for an EL 9 encounter.

This one was very "non-4E-ish" in that it's a single monster with an accompanying trap. Boooooring in 4E [edit - the "single monster" part is what's boring, if it's not a solo on cool terrain]. So, to get an EL 9 encounter in 4E, I decided to grab a trap of level 8 (the Flame Jet) which is the same CR as the trap in the RA:RE book, and then threw in a couple different skeletons: 4 Boneshard Skeletons and 4 Blazing Skeletons. That's a total of 1950 XP, which is just 50 points shy of a Level 9 encounter for 5 PCs in Fourth Edition.

***
That's just an example of what can be done. It took me about 5 minutes to do up (it took me like 10 times as long to type all this junk out here, ironically), and the only work I think I would really have to do is maybe change up that Flame Jet trap to something that more closely models the trap listed in RA:RE, but use the appropriate level-based damage and such equal to the Flame Jet so it's balanced at that CR (in 3.5E speak). Bam! That's it.

Oh, and over at the C&C forums and here as well, I believe, Treebore or someone who posts where he does has been running Castle Zagyg in 4e and has been pretty much doing it all on the fly. Perhaps I'm misquoting slightly, but that's how I remember the posts reading.