D&D 5E Converting Old Adventures

[Gus L]

So maybe, in order to run the old adventures, you need to force a playstyle change back toward room-by-room exploration and combat avoidance and away from set-piece scenes and staged encounters.

Sounds like a positive development to me.

I don't know about a good thing. Many people enjoy the contemporary play style and it's not my place to say they should enjoy the one I like instead.

But for me the main issue is the mechanics of 5E don't work very well dungeon crawling, even as they manage to preempt the areas where exploration mechanics slot in best. Second, one is faced with changed player expectations. Lastly, while both of these could theoretically be changed, and presumably someone has the time and mental energy to play through complex exploration and complex combat, older adventures will still require redesign, because the means of handling these things in older simpler rulesets are different.

At a certain point I think it's better to either play an adventure in the system it's designed for or take its core ideas and rewrite it oneself for the system one is using.

I also fully accept that some people can or believe they can make these changes on the fly because of their experience at running games, but I'll say after decades of running D&D and some reasonable successes as an adventure designer, I haven't personally managed it in a way that's satisfying to me or my players, and I don't think I'm alone in that.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It wouldn’t be too difficult to talk your way through the G series, especially since in 5e giants are no longer always evil. What would Picard do?

Would make them rather short though.

But if you do choose to fight, they are dull and repetitive. In 1st edition a couple of giants could be dispatched in a few minutes real time, whereas in later editions each fight would take around half an hour (or 3 hours in 3rd edition). Hence the imperative to have a smaller number of set piece battles instead of a constant stream of trash mobs.

 

[James Gasik]

I don't know about a good thing. Many people enjoy the contemporary play style and it's not my place to say they should enjoy the one I like instead.

But for me the main issue is the mechanics of 5E don't work very well dungeon crawling, even as they manage to preempt the areas where exploration mechanics slot in best. Second, one is faced with changed player expectations. Lastly, while both of these could theoretically be changed, and presumably someone has the time and mental energy to play through complex exploration and complex combat, older adventures will still require redesign, because the means of handling these things in older simpler rulesets are different.

At a certain point I think it's better to either play an adventure in the system it's designed for or take its core ideas and rewrite it oneself for the system one is using.

I also fully accept that some people can or believe they can make these changes on the fly because of their experience at running games, but I'll say after decades of running D&D and some reasonable successes as an adventure designer, I haven't personally managed it in a way that's satisfying to me or my players, and I don't think I'm alone in that.

I don't know if I can really pull this off, I tried running a string of old Dungeon adventures in a 3.5 game and it went mostly well. But when I tried to run White Plume Mountain in 4e, it was pretty much a disaster; none of the fights were particularly challenging despite my best efforts, and 4e really didn't support exploration the same way 1e did, as 1e relied more on player skill than PC abilities- most PC's didn't have exploration abilities. So you poke and prod and carefully examine things, and maybe the DM asks for an ability check here and there, but ultimately, it came down to the decisions, you, the player made.

In modern games we have clearly defined skills to notice things and gather information, and you might get a character who has a Feat like Observant or Dungeon Delver that really trivializes ever needing to carry around a 11' pole (if you know, you know). No one has to carry around torches or a bullseye lantern and have to worry about how much light they're bringing- even if you don't have light or dancing lights at will, the existence of continual flame means that someone is selling everburning torches, which, not actually being hot, could be hung on a belt loop or something for permanent hands-free light.

You could try and houserule the stuffing out of the modern game to bring back that old school feel, but at that point, you'd be better off just playing the old game, lol.

(I'm not bringing up Darkvision as a problem, as it has obvious disadvantages for exploration, and in some ways is worse than the old infravision. I'm not one of those people who misses low-light vision, because it was just as trivial to have light sources in 3e, and it was always a mess when you had some people who could see 20' and others who can see 40' with the same light source).

But I have all these old great adventures laying around, and I can't stand most new adventures. Not much I can point to, just, they just don't do it for me. So I'm stuck making my own or mining the past.

Now, the definition of insanity being apt here, I know this probably won't work out very well, but after spending a year and a half exploring a megadungeon where a good 75% of the time I had no idea what I was doing and there were simply no explanations for WTF was even going on, and the rest of the time was being savagely beat up by deadly encounters, I feel I can't do any worse, lol.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

well. But when I tried to run White Plume Mountain in 4e, it was pretty much a disaster; none of the fights were particularly challenging despite my best efforts, and 4e really didn't support exploration the same way 1e

4e is very much it’s own thing. 5e is much closer to 1st edition, I didn’t have any trouble running White Plume Mountain in that.

But it also depends on the adventure. Some are much easier to convert than others.

 

[Voadam]

No one has to carry around torches or a bullseye lantern and have to worry about how much light they're bringing- even if you don't have light or dancing lights at will, the existence of continual flame means that someone is selling everburning torches, which, not actually being hot, could be hung on a belt loop or something for permanent hands-free light.

My experience in 1e was that every 5th level PC cleric would cast the permanent 0 gp cost continual light spell from the PH on stones or such and torch tracking was done from that point on. Also most magic swords glowed and made torches optional that way as well.

1e DMG page 165: "Most swords (and all daggers) of magical nature shed light when drawn from their scabbard (see ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, PLAYERS HANDBOOK, THE ADVENTURE, Light). The sole exceptions are the Flame Tongue, Frost Brand, Holy Avenger, Life Stealing, and Sharpness swords, and these will be dealt with individually."

 

[Voadam]

See, we don't really find that to be a fulfilling goal. We'll kill monsters, sure, but not just because they're big and dumb.

The actual G series set up is that "Giants have been raiding the lands of men in large bands, with giants of different sorts in these marauding groups. Death and destruction have been laid heavily upon every place these monsters have visited. This has caused great anger in high places, for life and property loss means failure of the vows of noble rulers to protect the life and goods of each and every subject - and possible lean times for the rulers as well as the ruled. Therefore, a party of the bravest and most powerful adventurers has been assembled and given the charge to punish the miscreant giants."

So it is not just because they are big and dumb and exist, it is because they are raiding and causing death and destruction and the party is on a military mission counter raid against the raiders.

That may still not to be to some's taste, but the morals are not just fight non-us people because they are not us.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It wouldn’t be too difficult to talk your way through the G series, especially since in 5e giants are no longer always evil. What would Picard do?

Would make them rather short though.

But if you do choose to fight, they are dull and repetitive. In 1st edition a couple of giants could be dispatched in a few minutes real time, whereas in later editions each fight would take around half an hour (or 3 hours in 3rd edition). Hence the imperative to have a smaller number of set piece battles instead of a constant stream of trash mobs.

Fast combats are a virtue of the TSR editions.

 

[Micah Sweet]

My experience in 1e was that every 5th level PC cleric would cast the permanent 0 gp cost continual light spell from the PH on stones or such and torch tracking was done from that point on. Also most magic swords glowed and made torches optional that way as well.

1e DMG page 165: "Most swords (and all daggers) of magical nature shed light when drawn from their scabbard (see ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, PLAYERS HANDBOOK, THE ADVENTURE, Light). The sole exceptions are the Flame Tongue, Frost Brand, Holy Avenger, Life Stealing, and Sharpness swords, and these will be dealt with individually."

Sure, but until you have a 5th level cleric...Remember that in 1e you had to earn XP, and most if it was going to come from treasure brought back to civilization from the wild. How many torch-laden expeditions is that before your cleric is 5th level (if they even survive that long)?

 

[Voadam]

Sure, but until you have a 5th level cleric...Remember that in 1e you had to earn XP, and most if it was going to come from treasure brought back to civilization from the wild. How many torch-laden expeditions is that before your cleric is 5th level (if they even survive that long)?

It is going to vary but torches are generally a fairly low level thing for beginning parties in AD&D.

How long before a group finds a single +1 dagger or +1 sword all of which glow with magical light? A group will generally want to hold onto at least one magical weapon rather than sell it at the local magic shop (if there is one) to turn it into gold for xp so that they have at least a chance to do any damage at all against things like shadows and gargoyles.

 

[Faolyn]

The actual G series set up is that "Giants have been raiding the lands of men in large bands, with giants of different sorts in these marauding groups. Death and destruction have been laid heavily upon every place these monsters have visited. This has caused great anger in high places, for life and property loss means failure of the vows of noble rulers to protect the life and goods of each and every subject - and possible lean times for the rulers as well as the ruled. Therefore, a party of the bravest and most powerful adventurers has been assembled and given the charge to punish the miscreant giants."

So it is not just because they are big and dumb and exist, it is because they are raiding and causing death and destruction and the party is on a military mission counter raid against the raiders.

That may still not to be to some's taste, but the morals are not just fight non-us people because they are not us.

That was in response to Lanefan, who basically said "don't worry about it; they exist to be killed," which is not sufficient motivation for us, nor is it something our table finds realistic.

But IIRC, we wanted to find out why they were raiding. Mind you, I was a player, not the GM, so I didn't read the module, but I don't recall there ever being a real explanation for their acts beyond "they're evil and that's what they do." Which, as I said, is not something we find realistic. If there was an explanation--maybe it was in a later module--we either didn't learn it or it was (IMO) so uninspired that I've forgotten. This was in the Before Times, so my memory of it is pretty sketchy.

And also, we wanted to ally ourselves with their slaves--which we did--but I recall the GM saying that the module didn't really expect that, since the slaves were (mostly? entirely?) orcs.

But mostly, we didn't like the lack of roleplaying. It was really just combat, or sneaking around trying to avoid combat. Very little chance for us to develop our characters or interact with NPCs, unless we forced it.