4e adventures for older D&D

bagger245 · Jun 23, 2009

The adventured layout for 4e is nice to my eyes and eventhough 4e isn't my game system of choice, I am attracted to run the adventures such as Scales of War. Anyone here has experience using the adventures for older D&D systems such as 2nd ed or BD&D? I dont really want to convert all the monsters stat by stat, I will just use the equivalent. Just wanted to know if there are people doing the same thing as I am going to.

Mythmere1 · Jun 23, 2009

bagger245 said:
The adventured layout for 4e is nice to my eyes and eventhough 4e isn't my game system of choice, I am attracted to run the adventures such as Scales of War. Anyone here has experience using the adventures for older D&D systems such as 2nd ed or BD&D? I dont really want to convert all the monsters stat by stat, I will just use the equivalent. Just wanted to know if there are people doing the same thing as I am going to.

At the moment, there's so much new material being produced for 0e, 1e, and Basic (and Swords & Wizardry, OSRIC, etc) that I can't even read it all. So I haven't thought of looking at 4e. What I have seen of 4e supplemental material seems more flavorful than the 3e material produced by WotC (which is the main factor, since the stats aren't useful). On the other hand, the maps are still a bit too small for early D&D, because you'd blow through that many rooms in a heartbeat.

Dice4Hire · Jun 23, 2009

I have been using 4E monsters in 3.5 pretty effectively so far. I give them half hit pioints, and add a dice of damage tothe creatures if they are level 6 or above. SO far it has been fun as the monsters are a lot easier to run and have some cool abilities. There are adjustments that need to be made, especially daze, but not a whole lot.

As for 1E and 2E I havn't played them in so long I really cannot remember how combat works there, sorry.

Lanefan · Jun 23, 2009

Here be Keep on the Shadowfell spoilers:

I ran Keep on the Shadowfell (just the main dungeon part) in 1e and it wasn't too bad. The upper level and first part of the lower deck were a long slog, but the last few encounters were true classics.

Converting the monsters is dirt-easy. Converting the statue traps was the only mechanical conversion that gave me any grief at all, and even that wasn't much. I also threw in some extra treasure, as the adventure as written is rather light on such...this too is trivially easy to mess with.

Converting the overall story line is a bit tougher. 4e kind of expects the party is going to wade all the way through the dungeon in one or maybe two days worth of adventuring, as the characters recharge so quickly. Even ignoring all the trips back to town, my 1e group took something like 10-12 adventuring days; which means anything on any sort of a timeline (e.g. Kalarel completing the open-the-gate ritual) needs to either be changed or dropped outright or be made malleable enough that the party at least have a chance to get there.

And as with all canned modules, there's some key elements that you need to add in yourself, particularly in regards to the very last room once the final battle is over: How can the half-open gate be closed? What if the party is too slow arriving? What happens if they try to take on the Thing? (my party at one point had me thinking they were about to charge through the gate and do exactly this) And so on.

Lanefan

bagger245 · Jun 23, 2009

Totally forgot about the adventureing period of 4e vs AD&D parties... I guess I have to tweak any time sensitive events to cater to the long duration of dungeoncrawl for AD&D PCs.

Mustrum_Ridcully · Jun 23, 2009

bagger245 said:
Totally forgot about the adventureing period of 4e vs AD&D parties... I guess I have to tweak any time sensitive events to cater to the long duration of dungeoncrawl for AD&D PCs.

I think one trick might be to make the PCs important for the conclusion of the time sensitive event. They might just not know it.

For example, in KotS, what takes Kalarel so long to finish the ritual? Maybe it is because the PCs have stolen the artifact he needs from the Dragon Grave? Or maybe the Portal will only open if a worthy sacrifice is made, and the PCs are exactly that?

Mythmere1 · Jun 23, 2009

bagger245 said:
Totally forgot about the adventureing period of 4e vs AD&D parties... I guess I have to tweak any time sensitive events to cater to the long duration of dungeoncrawl for AD&D PCs.

Yeah, I forgot about that too. Which means my previous concern (not enough rooms in map to accommodate faster combat rules) probably isn't as much of a problem. Interesting.

Ariosto · Jun 23, 2009

Mythmere, I think those are two different problems.

Recovery of resources (spells, hit points, etc.) need not take significant real time; it's the time in the imagined world that counts.

On the other hand, encounters that take much longer in game time -- setting aside rules for rests, one may have combat rounds representing a minute each rather than six seconds -- might be resolved more quickly in real time (three, four or more per hour rather than one or two).

w_earle_wheeler · Jun 23, 2009

For what it's worth, I superimposed Keep on the Shadowfell with Keep on the Borderlands, with the Shadowfell Keep taking the place of the Borderlands Keep (as if it had been lost in a war some time ago) and the Borderlands Keep inhabitants transplanted to Winterhaven.

Quasqueton and the Caverns of Chaos also fit nicely in the Nentir Vale.