D&D 4E Converting Adventures to 4e

[UHF]

Folks,

I'm sort of struggling converting adventures from older or other editions of D&D. I have to say that I don't like what WOTC has come out with, but I like what I see elsewhere.

I want to know if anyone else has done some conversions and what their experience was.


I suppose I prefer an old school style of game with 4e style action. I'm not keen on dungeon crawls, and I'm not keen on Skill Challenges. I find that a lot of adventures that I like offer more open exploration and role playing opportunities, and this is what I really want.


Out of interest I started converting and running the Freeport Trilogy. My first run of Death In Freeport was a blast. I found that the story line was very compelling, along with the fact that much of the decision making was thrust on the PCs, made it more enjoyable. The players got up the those crazy antics that I remember when I was younger. In fact the players were clamoring for more sessions.

On the down side, I've found converting the Trilogy to be quite difficult. I made Death in Freeport too difficult, and Terror too easy. I'm, now staring down Madness a little nervously. (The role playing session where the 5 adventurers questioned the 18 individuals at the Lighthouse Ball went extremely well though.)

Converting modules butts up against a lot differences between games.
Random Encounters don't really fit 4e. (Perhaps these could be Mook Encounters of EL+0 or EL-1. You know keep the ball rolling.) A few might be prepared, but maybe toss the whole 'random' thing.
Pace... namely damage isn't permanent in 4e. Hit points come back the next day. So hitting the right pace and allowing for wider exploration is difficult.
General differences in the games...
Terrain is barely discussed.

Has anyone had any experience with converting adventures to 4e? Got any tips or advice?

 

[Morrus]

Well, we converted from the 3.5 version to 4E. What we found is that you don't end up with a conversion, you need to to pretty much a complete rewrite (the plot and fluff stays the same, but every encounter and mechanic has to be be completely rewritten - 4E works differently to 3.5, and an encounter which works well in 3.5 does not necessarily do so in 4E, and vice versa).

 

[samuraiko]

I found much the same thing. I'm currently running a 4e group through the Pathfinder Darkmoon Vale adventures. The fluff and setting are fine, even fun. But I've had to completely redesign the encounters and such. The timing and spacing on them doesn't make much sense. 4e has a very different balance to it. Still worth it if the setting and plot are good though. None of this is to say that it's been a difficult conversion, just a little time consuming.

 

[Obergnom]

I just finished running the first chapter of Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil in 4e. The conversion did not take me long, but I would agree, it was not a strait forward conversion.

It helps alot to figure out the level the adventure would run at in 4e. Otherwise you have to change the level of a lot of creatures.

I figured out the monster groups that would make a 4e encounter, I guessed its relative difficulty (3e's CR did not work as well aus 4e Encounter Level, there is some guess work involved) and I rebuild the encounter using creatures that fit the original but are not necessary the same.

It took me about 4 hours to do that for what resulted in 15 encounters. Some of them were just for atmosphere (appr. Level -2) others were really difficult (level +2). This material lasted for 7 sessions, I think the time was well spend.

 

[Goonalan]

I always find it easier to keep the plot as is, or as close to as you can...

Convert the bad guys, particularly the big bad guys with cool powers and/or abilities already present, or else find the nearest creature to them, or any 4e creature you want to use as a base for the build and then make them special.

Then get rid of/combine small encounters, or ones that do not do anything, have no value to the plot/narrative etc. I'd much rather have the PCs fight one difficult fight with 30+ Minions rather than three middling encounters that do nothing to move the story on.

Minions are the thing, when I build an encounter I always figure each non-minion for level +/- 1 so if it's too tough I can readjust, I also always have 10 or so Minions ready to go, or even a non-Minion to drop in.

If the PCs are taking a beating then the guards fight/flee when bloodied, or else I have an NPC (there's always one in the plot somewhere) ready to come and save their asses.

The only thing I sometimes get wrong is the Solo's but with the threat of extra Minions, or indeed the addition of a non-Minion or two then those encounters seem to work okay.

I'd be interested to see anything you've done for the Freeport Trilogy, one of my favourites from the previous edition, I may have to have a go at that one myself...

 

[UHF]

Thanks... all. This is all good to hear. (So its not just me.)

I had issues with the boss fight in Death In Freeport. The cultist (won't use his name here) was supposed be able to do so many things that I set the combat way too hard. I also had the cultist beef up his troops (ala Healing Word, etc.), so it worked, just a little too well.

So, I feel that many of my issues came from trying to ram rod the original 3.0 design concepts into 4e. Much of which was based on 3.0 reality, and not 4e. For instance, the cultist was supposed use a silent Alarm spell. This I was more or less able to replicate. However, the cultist was supposed be able to teleport into the temple. That's an 8th level ritual... maybe he has a scroll... but all rituals take 10 minutes. Technically, adventurers can clear a dungeon in that time...

On the other hand, the Yellow Shields was a work of art. It was a 3D battle field. The bosses had to deal with an angry corsair, and a hyper aggressive monk. While the rogue climbed a wall and shoved the crossbowman off. The rest of the 'shields' ran (seems logical if you bosses drop on turn 2, as well as literally one of your pals).


One annoying issue I had was that the players were 'good' at stuff. The Artificer was able to 'see' the arcane eyes for the Alarm spell. Has anyone had any issues or have any advice on skill issues?


Goonalan: For the Madness in Freeport lighthouse ball, which was all roleplaying (5 adventurers on 18 other guests), I provided the players with a list of the participants, and drew a map showing who was where with whom. To get the ball rolling, I had one councilor start an argument about the ball with villain, and other guests started asking the players about the lighthouse. I found this to a much more fulfilling experience than a 4e skill challenge.

Morrus: Post more about Zeitgeist! I WANT MORE STEAM PUNK!

 

[OnlineDM]

I've "converted" the Gates of Firestorm Peak to 4th Edition. I put that in quotes because what I actually did was send my players in a homebrew campaign underground, knowing that I wanted them to encounter duergar... but I had no idea what I wanted things with the duergar to be like.

I asked on EN World for suggestions of adventures that used duergar, and the Gates of Firestorm Peak was mentioned more than once. I bought it and read through it and used it as inspiration for my current game.

I agree with the other posters that the encounters really need to be completely re-written. I also found that the 2e style dungeon was just way bigger than what I wanted. I was only using the first half of the adventure (the duergar part, not the Far Realm part), but even that had WAY too many rooms and battles and traps and so on.

I did like using the flavor of the older adventure with the 4e mindset. I'm using more traps than most 4e adventures, but that's intentional - I was going for an old-school feel. Also, some of the bad guys can do things that 4e monsters don't do at the same level, like the duergar being able to Enlarge as 6th-level monsters - but I said screw it, that's fine. Giant duergar, no problem.

It's definitely more of an art than a science, but if you can embrace your inner artist you can have a lot of fun. Older adventures have a very different style than published 4e adventures, and I've found that to be refreshing. If the adventure says that a monster can do something that would require a time-consuming ritual scroll for a 4e character... well, the monster can do it anyway! Don't be unfair to your players, but don't forget that 4e monsters don't follow the same rules that apply to players. I think it's fine to let your cultist teleport into the temple. Poof, he's there! Monster magic!

Embrace the awesomeness that is older-style adventures in a 4e game. I'm having fun with it so far.

 

[moxcamel]

I admittedly haven't done a lot of converting, but for the few adventures I have converted, I just treat everything that is not plot and fluff as black boxes. I rip the "black box" out of the existing encounter, I look to see what's accomplished in the encounter, and then build my own replacement from scratch, retaining whatever it is about the encounter that makes it work.

For non-combat encounters, I try to see if it would make sense as a skill challenge. These situations are often harder to translate than combat encounters, and will take the most time.

The hardest things to convert are going to be "hard-coded" parts of the campaign setting. For example if you're trying to convert a Dark Sun adventure to your non-Dark Sun setting. You're then faced with either just ignoring it ("the bad guy isn't a defiler, he's just a very naughty boy!"), adapting the mechanic into your campaign (bad guy practices some ancient arcane form of magic that is literally defiling the landscape) or replacing it with something else that fits a little better into your world.

 

[Goonalan]

I've "converted" the Gates of Firestorm Peak to 4th Edition. I put that in quotes because what I actually did was send my players in a homebrew campaign underground, knowing that I wanted them to encounter duergar... but I had no idea what I wanted things with the duergar to be like.

I asked on EN World for suggestions of adventures that used duergar, and the Gates of Firestorm Peak was mentioned more than once. I bought it and read through it and used it as inspiration for my current game.

I agree with the other posters that the encounters really need to be completely re-written. I also found that the 2e style dungeon was just way bigger than what I wanted. I was only using the first half of the adventure (the duergar part, not the Far Realm part), but even that had WAY too many rooms and battles and traps and so on.

I did like using the flavor of the older adventure with the 4e mindset. I'm using more traps than most 4e adventures, but that's intentional - I was going for an old-school feel. Also, some of the bad guys can do things that 4e monsters don't do at the same level, like the duergar being able to Enlarge as 6th-level monsters - but I said screw it, that's fine. Giant duergar, no problem.

It's definitely more of an art than a science, but if you can embrace your inner artist you can have a lot of fun. Older adventures have a very different style than published 4e adventures, and I've found that to be refreshing. If the adventure says that a monster can do something that would require a time-consuming ritual scroll for a 4e character... well, the monster can do it anyway! Don't be unfair to your players, but don't forget that 4e monsters don't follow the same rules that apply to players. I think it's fine to let your cultist teleport into the temple. Poof, he's there! Monster magic!

Embrace the awesomeness that is older-style adventures in a 4e game. I'm having fun with it so far.

That's another good one and worth mentioning again, I found a good deal of the work had already been done for me by just going through the various Dragon/Dungeon (and 3rd Party) stuff. I do this all the time even when I play 4e adventures, if there are meaner and more interesting boss creatures in other places then I just swap them out or else combine the two, I've done this with several of my big bads in an adventure I'm running.

Other things I've done is build the bad guys in the CB and just turn them into Elites or Solos, as needed- makes for powered up big bad guys.

Reading back through older edition adventures then traps have started to reappear in my scenarios, they're good at dishing out damage, if well constructed and good for keeping the XP down- a good trap spend encounter can replace a drag out combat encounter, take less time to play out and still do a ton of damage and/or satisfy the players needs.

I've also replaced densely populated areas in previous edition adventures with skill challenges, I stole the idea from HS1, which I've just DMed my VT group through. The players moving around the ruined Goblin controlled city and staying hidden- avoiding fights with failures on the challenge reflected in increased difficulty of planned encounters.

I also use 'events' to replace the masses of encounters in older editions, you can crank up the tension by having the bad guys also fighting off other invaders, being subject to internal politics- factions etc. Or even magical/natural phenomena- earth tremors etc. Which as a by-product also place the PCs on the back foot, a few showy encounters in which multiple groups of bad guys get massacred, crushed et al by some other force or natural disaster can really light a fire under the PCs.

Likewise the factions thing can turn combat into roleplay and effectively get the PCs to take on some unpleasant bedfellows- I've had my players lead an Orc Slave rebellion against the Duergar, convert a Shadar-kai Witch in to a postmistress- with Orc postmen (that was a particularly strange day).

Had leader type intelligent undead/Goblins side with the PCs in order to improve their individual goals- which have dramatic effects later on in the campaign...

What I'm saying, and sorry if I'm teaching you to suck eggs, but the multitude of combat encounters can become something more- opportunities to show the story, complicate the plot, or add impetus.

Cheers PDR

 

[ChristianLindke]

3rd edition was built for 13 encounters to equal 1 character level increase, earlier editions had no hard coded encounter to level ratio (but limited advancement to one level per session), and 4e is built for 8 encounters per level.

When I am adapting adventures, like the old B1-9 series, I find that the adventures that are more narrative translate extremely well. For example, THE VEILED SOCIETY has relatively few encounters, a scene or two perfectly suited to skill challenges, and the encounters are balanced for an exciting conflict.

KEEP ON THE BORDERLANDS with the Caves of Chaos is a different beast entirely. As a sandbox adventure, players can go anywhere and some of the encounters are "huge" and others are too small for 4e encounter design on a 1 for 1 basis. You can take two approaches with this kind of adventure. You can do what Chris Sims did and focus on one of the storylines offered in the original module to make an adventure that uses the backdrop., or you can create something like the Chaos Scar material in Dungeon Online. Either approach works, it just depends on whether you want narrative or sandbox.

I find that narrative adventures are the easiest to translate and that dungeon crawls, with their multiple encounters from systems that didn't have an encounter to level ratio design element, to be the most difficult.