[Posted this at the FFG forum, but I thought there might be a little more crossover appeal between D&D and EotE here.]
So this is a little ways back, right when the Edge of the Empire full game was just coming out. I had started a D&D 4E campaign. We were playing Reavers of Harkenwold, a really good, semi-sandbox adventure that came in the 4E DM’s Kit, and things were going well as the players were really invested in the story, but the game was just a little too mechanical and the players were not really getting enough narrative control for my taste. Not a swipe at 4E in particular, as I think it is still my favorite version of D&D.
Enter Edge of the Empire.
One game night, we had a couple of people out, so we tried out the Edge of the Empire Beginner’s game. We absolutely loved the system, and played the beginner game and Long Arm of the Hutt the following few sessions. We really got into the dual axes of success and advantage, and really enjoyed figuring out what the narrative results meant.
When we finished that, we didn’t really want to lose all the great characters and storylines of the D&D game we had developed so far, but I just couldn’t see going back to the old system. So, I got it in my head I would do a conversion. I started small, by only converting the characters we had in use in order to avoid getting overwhelmed with the scope of creating everything. I have attached an examples of a character sheets (note: there are images in the character sheet files that I am not claiming to have created or own, we just downloaded them to paste into the character sheets as portraits).
Anyway, I made several talent trees and spells as needed, and it worked really well. We had a blast finishing up that campaign and the new system worked out better than I could have hoped.
After that campaign finished, we played a Star Wars campaign, then wanted to go back to fantasy, so I worked to expand the conversion I had previously started. We decided to play a campaign based on the old Dungeon Magazine adventure, The Rat Trap, by Tim Ide, as it provided a wonderful urban setting that we could use.
Here is a link to the video I created for my players to introduce the campaign:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxUTXhu-XPR6bUQ3LWJkdjI5c0U/view?usp=sharing
(Again, this was made for my group’s use and the images and music were not created by me, just compiled and edited to be used for this presentation)
Anyway, I finished the draft of the conversion rules, and we are using this campaign to really try to playtest them, and so far, it has worked well, so I thought I would share my experiences and the rules. I have also attached a few character sheets from the new campaign as examples.
In the attached Conversion pdf, you will find:
Races, p 1: Conversion rules for seven D&D fantasy species
Career Skills matrix, p. 2: Lists the career skills for seven careers and 21 specializations
Talent Trees p. 3-24: Contains 22 Talent trees, three for each of the seven careers, and one universal talent tree (the Guild Training Specialization, as this campaign deals a lot with Thieves Guilds)
Arcane, Divine, and Primal spells- p. 25-48: Contains 8 Arcane spell schools, 10 Divine Domains, and 4 Primal Evocations, as well as a list of Rituals.
Arms and Equipment p. 49-51: Contains Armor, Weapons, and Equipment converted from 4E (note: starting characters get 100GP).
I am looking for any feedback of these rules, and would love to hear any experiences people have if they try them out.
Thanks!
So this is a little ways back, right when the Edge of the Empire full game was just coming out. I had started a D&D 4E campaign. We were playing Reavers of Harkenwold, a really good, semi-sandbox adventure that came in the 4E DM’s Kit, and things were going well as the players were really invested in the story, but the game was just a little too mechanical and the players were not really getting enough narrative control for my taste. Not a swipe at 4E in particular, as I think it is still my favorite version of D&D.
Enter Edge of the Empire.
One game night, we had a couple of people out, so we tried out the Edge of the Empire Beginner’s game. We absolutely loved the system, and played the beginner game and Long Arm of the Hutt the following few sessions. We really got into the dual axes of success and advantage, and really enjoyed figuring out what the narrative results meant.
When we finished that, we didn’t really want to lose all the great characters and storylines of the D&D game we had developed so far, but I just couldn’t see going back to the old system. So, I got it in my head I would do a conversion. I started small, by only converting the characters we had in use in order to avoid getting overwhelmed with the scope of creating everything. I have attached an examples of a character sheets (note: there are images in the character sheet files that I am not claiming to have created or own, we just downloaded them to paste into the character sheets as portraits).
Anyway, I made several talent trees and spells as needed, and it worked really well. We had a blast finishing up that campaign and the new system worked out better than I could have hoped.
After that campaign finished, we played a Star Wars campaign, then wanted to go back to fantasy, so I worked to expand the conversion I had previously started. We decided to play a campaign based on the old Dungeon Magazine adventure, The Rat Trap, by Tim Ide, as it provided a wonderful urban setting that we could use.
Here is a link to the video I created for my players to introduce the campaign:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxUTXhu-XPR6bUQ3LWJkdjI5c0U/view?usp=sharing
(Again, this was made for my group’s use and the images and music were not created by me, just compiled and edited to be used for this presentation)
Anyway, I finished the draft of the conversion rules, and we are using this campaign to really try to playtest them, and so far, it has worked well, so I thought I would share my experiences and the rules. I have also attached a few character sheets from the new campaign as examples.
In the attached Conversion pdf, you will find:
Races, p 1: Conversion rules for seven D&D fantasy species
Career Skills matrix, p. 2: Lists the career skills for seven careers and 21 specializations
Talent Trees p. 3-24: Contains 22 Talent trees, three for each of the seven careers, and one universal talent tree (the Guild Training Specialization, as this campaign deals a lot with Thieves Guilds)
Arcane, Divine, and Primal spells- p. 25-48: Contains 8 Arcane spell schools, 10 Divine Domains, and 4 Primal Evocations, as well as a list of Rituals.
Arms and Equipment p. 49-51: Contains Armor, Weapons, and Equipment converted from 4E (note: starting characters get 100GP).
I am looking for any feedback of these rules, and would love to hear any experiences people have if they try them out.
Thanks!
I've been pondering how to do my own fantasy hack of FFG Star Wars and this is really good. Mind if I steal this for my own perusing of ideas? I doubt that I will actually create anything, but if I have any ideas I'll definitely shoot them your way.
