4th to 5th Edition Converters - What has been your experience?

Tony Vargas said:

I'm not sure about that second sentence. Anyway, unless I'm missing something something, yeah, that's a 2e-ism, but not particularly Empowerment related.

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I was contrasting with Basic here.

"The Return of the 3 Pillars(!)" was one of the clarion calls of 5e development. Exploration was especially invoked.

They could have gone with the Basic version of exploration mediated by tight play procedures and a neutral referee:

- Exploration Turns @ 10 minutes:120 movement, 1 in 6 will be rest, check for Wandering Monsters every 2 turns, if yes, roll table and then encounter distance (etc).

Instead they again went with the AD&D 2e fantasy world psuedo-physics/ecology simulator mediated by GM discretion (simultaneously managing the role of lead storyteller...which is certainly not neutral!). As far as I can tell, you just end up with all the ecology stuff and the GM discretion advice about triggering random encounters (contrast with Basic) on page 85.

Again, "GM empowerment." Not for me, I find Basic a million times more empowering. But if you're looking for the AD&D 2e experience, it empowers that GMing role and table aesthetic.

Balesir said:

Except 4e had Artifacts, to cover just this "need". It seems that some GMs got stuck on the "magic item" term, though - just as some players found class names to be a sticking point.

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Yeah. This happened a lot with 4e. I had said many times that 4e was powerfully modular because it legitimately contained obvious dials and levers that predictably did what you wanted:

- Change xp budget or up-level for deadliness.
- Use Disease Track to simulate injuries or long term conditions.
- Use Alternate Advancement and Artifacts for "GM is in charge of magic items".
- Use Companion Characters for Retainers/Hirelings (and they actually interface with the xp budget system!).
- Rather than using the "subjective DC" system intended for closed-scene-based 4e, there was an entirely usable "objective DC" system that could be used for serial exploration.

Just to name a few. Unfortunately the "4e only allows for a narrow playstyle" meme trampled the barn door, fled far into the night, long, long ago and their was no wrangling her (despite the efforts of many to do so).

Manbearcat said:

I was contrasting with Basic here.

"The Return of the 3 Pillars(!)" was one of the clarion calls of 5e development. Exploration was especially invoked.

They could have gone with the Basic version of exploration mediated by tight play procedures and a neutral referee:

- Exploration Turns @ 10 minutes:120 movement, 1 in 6 will be rest, check for Wandering Monsters every 2 turns, if yes, roll table and then encounter distance (etc).

Instead they again went with the AD&D 2e fantasy world psuedo-physics/ecology simulator mediated by GM discretion (simultaneously managing the role of lead storyteller...which is certainly not neutral!). As far as I can tell, you just end up with all the ecology stuff and the GM discretion advice about triggering random encounters (contrast with Basic) on page 85.

Again, "GM empowerment." Not for me, I find Basic a million times more empowering. But if you're looking for the AD&D 2e experience, it empowers that GMing role and table aesthetic.



Yeah. This happened a lot with 4e. I had said many times that 4e was powerfully modular because it legitimately contained obvious dials and levers that predictably did what you wanted:

- Change xp budget or up-level for deadliness.
- Use Disease Track to simulate injuries or long term conditions.
- Use Alternate Advancement and Artifacts for "GM is in charge of magic items".
- Use Companion Characters for Retainers/Hirelings (and they actually interface with the xp budget system!).
- Rather than using the "subjective DC" system intended for closed-scene-based 4e, there was an entirely usable "objective DC" system that could be used for serial exploration.

Just to name a few. Unfortunately the "4e only allows for a narrow playstyle" meme trampled the barn door, fled far into the night, long, long ago and their was no wrangling her (despite the efforts of many to do so).

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Yeah, I ran a perfectly good (several actually) dungeon crawls just using 4e verbatim, as an example. Yes, it lacks a framework for random wandering monsters, but that was mostly there to thwart constant hit-and-run entering and leaving the dungeon to achieve 5 minute workdays. Given there's no class that thrives on such in 4e, and the system is instead designed to reward perseverance (at least up to a point) it was a bit different, but it works perfectly well. Instead of focusing on the whole dungeon as a giant puzzle you focus on "the story of what happens when you explore" in which you pretty much skip past the dull boring endless tramping around testing doors and hallways for traps, and get on to the "oh, gosh, we just fell down a chute and now we're lost!" part.

Quite flexible, just approaches various genre considerations from a slightly different angle than classic D&D. Heck, you can always reintroduce 'wandering' monsters. I had several, but the secret was they were actually preordained encounters.

AbdulAlhazred said:

Heck, you can always reintroduce 'wandering' monsters. I had several, but the secret was they were actually preordained encounters.

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Yup, those are the best. That's how I've been using 'random' encounters in 3e, as well, i.e. roll for encounters when preparing for a session, fleshing them out, and making sure they integrate well, rather than rolling for them during the session.

Jhaelen said:

Yup, those are the best. That's how I've been using 'random' encounters in 3e, as well, i.e. roll for encounters when preparing for a session, fleshing them out, and making sure they integrate well, rather than rolling for them during the session.

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Yeah, if I roll at all. I mean there's nothing wrong with a little random dice action to kick you into gear, but I tend to get my own ideas after I roll once or twice and things rarely end up much like what the dice said. However, my early 4e wilderness area has a whole set of random encounter tables. Its just that each one simply names a setpiece that I can pull out and drop in. Terrain is going to be variable anywhere, so any of them will work, and its divided up into 2-3 sections so each area has a basic theme. Whenever things seemed to be in need of a little action, I'd just drop one in. Maybe the story arc seemed to be wandering a little and the players didn't look too up to come up with a direction to go in, so a hill giant just happened to drop by for lunch! Fill up a half hour of table time and get in some amusing action, maybe spin things off in a slightly different direction, etc.

Balesir said:

Except 4e had Artifacts, to cover just this "need". It seems that some GMs got stuck on the "magic item" term, though - just as some players found class names to be a sticking point.

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Not the same issue at all. It's not that 5e has DM-moderated 'just better' magic items, as well as make/buy items as a component of player-designed 'builds,' it's that it has DM-moderated items instead of[i/] make/buy items.

It's DM empowerment, but, IMHO, one thing 5e got wrong was building for DM empowerment as if 'empowerment' were 0-sum. That, in order to empower DMs they had to disenfranchise players.

Manbearcat said:

"The Return of the 3 Pillars(!)" was one of the clarion calls of 5e development. Exploration was especially invoked.

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It guess it's a little odd to 'return' to something you just made up. In that sense, I guess 4e 'returned to Class Roles' and 3e 'returned to system mastery.'

They could have gone with the Basic version of exploration mediated by tight play procedures and a neutral referee:

- Exploration Turns @ 10 minutes:120 movement, 1 in 6 will be rest, check for Wandering Monsters every 2 turns, if yes, roll table and then encounter distance (etc).

Instead they again went with the AD&D 2e fantasy world psuedo-physics/ecology simulator mediated by GM discretion (simultaneously managing the role of lead storyteller...which is certainly not neutral!).

Click to expand...

DM discretion or DM judgment is a foundation for the brand of DM Empowerment offered by 5e, yes.

Yeah. This happened a lot with 4e. ...
Just to name a few. Unfortunately the "4e only allows for a narrow playstyle" meme trampled the barn door, fled far into the night, long, long ago and their was no wrangling her (despite the efforts of many to do so).

Click to expand...

The way I explained it at the time was that 4e didn't seem to "support" certain playstyles because it no longer forced or over-rewarded those styles. They still worked, they were just no longer subsidized, so you weren't guaranteed that everyone would be accepting of the way you were accustomed to leveraging the game in your favor. It was a very narrow-minded and self-serving complaint, yet because it could be phrased as wanting 'more playstyles supported,' it sounded politically correct and gained traction. And 5e was based on servicing the phrasing of the complaint as much as the reality of it, so ...

... if you're looking for the AD&D 2e experience, it empowers that GMing role and table aesthetic.

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Tony Vargas said:

Not the same issue at all. It's not that 5e has DM-moderated 'just better' magic items, as well as make/buy items as a component of player-designed 'builds,' it's that it has DM-moderated items instead of[i/] make/buy items.

It's DM empowerment, but, IMHO, one thing 5e got wrong was building for DM empowerment as if 'empowerment' were 0-sum. That, in order to empower DMs they had to disenfranchise players.


It guess it's a little odd to 'return' to something you just made up. In that sense, I guess 4e 'returned to Class Roles' and 3e 'returned to system mastery.'


DM discretion or DM judgment is a foundation for the brand of DM Empowerment offered by 5e, yes.

The way I explained it at the time was that 4e didn't seem to "support" certain playstyles because it no longer forced or over-rewarded those styles. They still worked, they were just no longer subsidized, so you weren't guaranteed that everyone would be accepting of the way you were accustomed to leveraging the game in your favor. It was a very narrow-minded and self-serving complaint, yet because it could be phrased as wanting 'more playstyles supported,' it sounded politically correct and gained traction. And 5e was based on servicing the phrasing of the complaint as much as the reality of it, so ...

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Maybe we've all beaten this horse enough here...

Suffice it to say that the very different sorts of agenda between 4e and 5e makes conversions difficult (just like converting classic D&D modules, 1e, 2e, whatever was also often difficult). No doubt SOME adventures will convert. I SUSPECT its not so hard to convert 4e->5e, but going the other way will be pretty tough. The only official 5e module I've experienced much of is Phandelver. Some of it is probably pretty straightforward, but I'd expect on the DM side of the screen there are a few issues. There's also some stylistic things, like it would probably make most sense to just abstract the regional map into an SC framework of some sort in a 4e version of the adventure. That might be something like the PCs set a goal for overland travel, and maybe they get where they're headed, and maybe they get to somewhere else, depending on which information they uncover. That is I'd think that various locations would be "enabled" depending on what the characters have learned. Actually getting to them without running into OTHER locations that you maybe didn't want to find, that could be an SC, with location discovery being a sort of uber-SC, something like that. This would remove the wilderness hexcrawl aspect and turn it into a series of transition scenes and vignettes.

The Mine is a bit sprawling and yet fairly sparsely populated. I seem to recall that some of the situations were a bit simple, but maybe with careful choices of opponents they could all work as 4e encounters. Certainly some of them were fairly decent, and none were outright BAD. Still, probably not mostly a verbatim conversion.

Think about the other way though, KotS would be a perfectly feasible, if dull, 5e adventure. The combats would still be a little much, but they'd probably go faster. Otherwise nothing would really change.

AbdulAlhazred said:

Maybe we've all beaten this horse enough here...

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I resent being called a horse.

Suffice it to say that the very different sorts of agenda between 4e and 5e makes conversions difficult (just like converting classic D&D modules, 1e, 2e, whatever was also often difficult). No doubt SOME adventures will convert. I SUSPECT its not so hard to convert 4e->5e, but going the other way will be pretty tough.

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I've converted some modules from classic -> 5e, from classic -> 4e (and Essentials) and from 4e (and Essentials) -> to 5e. Hm... and from 3.5/PF -> 5e. Not meticulously, just running them under the target system, with no more prep work than I'd do for a regular adventure (in 4e, not much; in 5e, none). Classic (be it 1e/2e, or Basic or even 0 D&D) -> 5e or 4e/E works fine, there wasn't really a whole lot to classic modules and you can fill in the blanks, modern systems can handle the old stuff, because that's what the system's been doing forever. 3.x/4e -> 5e was harder. There's just more to modern editions and 5e isn't always up to taking on the challenges, hand-waving/DM-judgment can be required. But, then, DM judgment is always required with 5e.

Think about the other way though, KotS would be a perfectly feasible, if dull, 5e adventure. The combats would still be a little much, but they'd probably go faster. Otherwise nothing would really change.

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Resulted in near-TPK when I tried it (much soft-peddling and fudging and intentionally bad tactics ensued). Just. Too. Many. Kobolds. Bounded Accuracy can't handle fights like that at such low level. Twisting Halls was even worse.

Tony Vargas said:

Not the same issue at all. It's not that 5e has DM-moderated 'just better' magic items, as well as make/buy items as a component of player-designed 'builds,' it's that it has DM-moderated items instead of make/buy items.

It's DM empowerment, but, IMHO, one thing 5e got wrong was building for DM empowerment as if 'empowerment' were 0-sum. That, in order to empower DMs they had to disenfranchise players.

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Quite so - I should feel excited about this (as either a player or a GM) why, exactly?

Balesir said:

Quite so - I should feel excited about this (as either a player or a GM) why, exactly?

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As I noted earlier, I think one of the things that 4e generally got slammed for was the idea that the important thing was fun at the table rather than the DM being in charge. One of the big problems D&D has in terms of growing is that being the DM either takes a special mindset or it sucks. 4e? You can throw an encounter together in a few minutes. Other systems? If you do that, you really need to know your group or it will be a walk or TPK.

I think the way that 1e-3e+5e compensate that is by creating artificial tension in the form of gotcha powers. Which if they work, tend to leave a player not doing a whole lot for the rest of the combat. Which is why 5e emphasizes speed of combat. Have lots of little combats, have some gotcha powers, maybe a monster rolls well, and then a PC gets warped for a round or two. But because martials have so few complexity dials, that round goes quickly.

Which makes it a really odd system for me - I find 4e's tools for DMs very empowering - not having to spend 8 hours writing up an advanced Archmage(which happened in IUZ8-02. Twice...) is a boon...

Tony Vargas said:

I resent being called a horse.

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Of course!

Resulted in near-TPK when I tried it (much soft-peddling and fudging and intentionally bad tactics ensued). Just. Too. Many. Kobolds. Bounded Accuracy can't handle fights like that at such low level. Twisting Halls was even worse.

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Mmmmm, yeah, that is a point. Its like 4e minions can be trivial or a real menace, but if you translate weak monsters into 5e they always come down on the 'menace' side of the coin. While its true that high level 5e monsters work OK as a sort of 'solo' in some respects things get pretty skewed with the weaker ones, particularly for low level PCs. I really think that KotS would be best approached as being a level 3 adventure in 5e.

I'm not sure what you do about things like the kobold lair. I guess the only really viable answer is that the players have to be given some sort of tool that short-circuit the whole fight. Something that will scare away most of the kobolds, or fool them into leaving the area, or allowing you to sneak past, etc. Amusingly the 4e version of the module would have been better if an SC had been provided to allow for that sort of thing as well, so its not like really a totally 5e issue, just that 5e has a unique way of manifesting it.