3e Conversions

Leopold · Mar 13, 2002

Wolfspider said:
Is this work worth it? Is it worth the hard work and the risk that the rules will be changed again on down the road?

yes i feel that this work will pay off in the end if all we have to do is add a few lines and insert the OGL mention. Granted the monsters have to be gone over with a fine tooth comb and see what goes withwhat

Morrus · Mar 13, 2002

As David Wise is leaving, questions on this can be addressed to Mary-Elizabeth Allen (maryliz@wizards.com).

EricNoah · Mar 13, 2002

Henry said:
Eric, I can imagine that this is DOUBLY hard on you - it was the main reason you started your site in the first place, and is why Morrus still kept up with it!

Yes but oddly enough as times changed and my role changed it became the least important (to me) part of my site. The Errata Center and keeping up with news certainly grew to take a more important role in my mind.

I think WotC could have bought themselves some good grace and made this all logistically doable if they

a) had dropped Morrus a line and asked him to look for files that clearly went over the line (some of the module conversions DID have a lot more than just stats converted) and have those yanked until they can be fixed,

b) had a "grandfather clause" indicating that whatever is up there is up there and that's fine (except of course for the ones that had more than stats converted, as in "a" above), the new rules are for *future conversion efforts*,

and c) didn't entangle fan creations/conversions with the d20 license and/or OGL.

If I were Morrus and were in this position, I'd just say "screw it, conversion library's closed" and forget about it. Someone else at some other site will pick up that slack if they have a lot of spare time on their hands; or more likely conversions will become things traded under the table or in ones and twos on a variety of websites.

NeghVar · Mar 13, 2002

If I were Morrus and were in this position, I'd just say "screw it, conversion library's closed" and forget about it. Someone else at some other site will pick up that slack if they have a lot of spare time on their hands; or more likely conversions will become things traded under the table or in ones and twos on a variety of websites

How about a compromise? Looks to me as if there are several volunteers here that could head up a 1E/2E conversion document site. They could contact the original conversion authors and work with them to bring the docs up to speed with the new requirements? And can proofread and then post new conversions that meet the guidelines.

That way Morrus does not need to have the headache of maintaining it himself, and the fans still have access to the conversions?

Any comments?

Psion · Mar 13, 2002

Hmmm... this whole "convert your own creatures" bit is opening a whole cannery of worms.

Ideally the thing to do would be pool our effort on converted creatures so we don't create/convert the same creature over and over again. Such a reference does exist already... the creature catalog. But that effort is threatened itself in two directions:

Scott was talking about taking it offline so necromancer can sell it.
It itself is a conversion and probably falls under these rules.
[/list=1]

I had a undermountain conversion brewing. I had been crossing many items off of my "to convert list" as various FR stuff came out. Alas, I guess it gets to stay on the back burner even longer now, as I have no intention of adding all that work again.

Morrus · Mar 13, 2002

EricNoah said:
a) had dropped Morrus a line and asked him to look for files that clearly went over the line (some of the module conversions DID have a lot more than just stats converted) and have those yanked until they can be fixed,

AV did do that, actually - in a way. He pointed out some items that were clearly over the top (a few weeks back), and I quietly removed them (and some others I found) at the time. However, I did not guess this was coming - although in retrospect, I should have figured it out.

Leopold · Mar 13, 2002

NeghVar said:
How about a compromise? Looks to me as if there are several volunteers here that could head up a 1E/2E conversion document site. They could contact the original conversion authors and work with them to bring the docs up to speed with the new requirements? And can proofread and then post new conversions that meet the guidelines.

That way Morrus does not need to have the headache of maintaining it himself, and the fans still have access to the conversions?

Any comments?

We would have to get access to it first to convert it over to be 'legal'. Since morrus locked it down and locked us out we are SOL. I wouldn't mind helping in that if possible and I could ask others on the pcgen team if they want to assist the community in this.

BUT (and it's a big but) we would need access to the conversion library and then some time to make the conversions legal. I think a 90day morritorium would be good here as it will give us sufficent time to get allot of that stuff up and out and allow someone to download the files and put them in a repository for people to look at, modify, and resend out with the new legal code.

90 days is enough to download everything enmass, get it organized and gather volunteers to help do this.

If this is an acceptable alternative I would be willing to speak to whomever I can regarding this. Morrus is there anyway you can put in a word at the WOTC folk or should we contact them directly?

Morrus · Mar 13, 2002

EricNoah said:
b) had a "grandfather clause" indicating that whatever is up there is up there and that's fine (except of course for the ones that had more than stats converted, as in "a" above), the new rules are for *future conversion efforts.

I will ask for this, of course. I imagine that a compromise can be reached.

smetzger · Mar 13, 2002

EricNoah said:
If I were Morrus and were in this position, I'd just say "screw it, conversion library's closed" and forget about it. Someone else at some other site will pick up that slack if they have a lot of spare time on their hands; or more likely conversions will become things traded under the table or in ones and twos on a variety of websites.

I would be willing to do a master page that had links to all converted material. Individual authors would still need to have a site to actually put the document. This would work similar to my Adventure Guide that has links to download all the adventures.

Gish Makai · Mar 13, 2002

Wait a minute.....

If I find a creature from 1e or 2e and want to convert it...what the heck do I hafta include? This seems silly but is it that you cannot post your conversions of these creatures on the web?