In the PDF age all adventures should be compatible with all editions

[Janx]

the OP's core assumption is that the product is a PDF.

PDFs require layout by a human to adjust for page breaks, etc. MS Word invariably puts the page break in the wrong spot.

Stat blocks vary in size from edition to edition.

This means, that assuming we had a macro to indicate where the CR 4 Orc encounter stat block goes, it might take 2" is 1E, and 7" in 3e of space.

Since much of that space is variable by nature of the content, not the edition, that makes it even harder to format with a human looking at it.

The idea has merit, but a PDF is the wrong spot for it.

Give me an PC-based adventure "running" app that helps me GM from the screen, and this concept would fly a lot farther.

 

[Hussar]

Y'know, Janx, perhaps an html document would be the better way to go.

Write up the adventure, sans statblocks, and then just hyperlink to the appropriate statblock as you work through the adventure. Have some sort of toggle setting where you set the edition of the adventure and off you go.

 

[GregoryOatmeal]

the OP's core assumption is that the product is a PDF.

PDFs require layout by a human to adjust for page breaks, etc. MS Word invariably puts the page break in the wrong spot.

Stat blocks vary in size from edition to edition.

This means, that assuming we had a macro to indicate where the CR 4 Orc encounter stat block goes, it might take 2" is 1E, and 7" in 3e of space.

Since much of that space is variable by nature of the content, not the edition, that makes it even harder to format with a human looking at it.

The idea has merit, but a PDF is the wrong spot for it.

Give me an PC-based adventure "running" app that helps me GM from the screen, and this concept would fly a lot farther.

I'm actually a professional cartographer (electric engineering and business strategy maps - not gaming) and I've used publishing software so I have a lot of experience with visual layouts and budgeting space. These are good points and the app is a great idea.

The most realistic approach in PDF form is probably to use a format similar to the early 3.0 modules like Sunless Citadel and Forge of Fury (I don't know how long they ran with this - 3.5 modules may be the same before the adaptation of the delve format). In that format the monsters are statted at the end of the book - so you read the situation then you flip to page 31 or so for the monster crunch. It seems like a lot more flexible template than the old 4E delve for the designers to work with (since their if you have to add another paragraph in the revision process it could spill into the encounter space in the next page). If you just have a list of monster numbers at the end it really doesn't matter it's two or ten pages. Also it would probably be a seperate hyperlinked PDF for each edition conversion rather than 10 pages of stats for every edition all in one place.

You could probably leave the "primary/current" edition monsters in the meat of the book for those that don't like flipping to the back. So essentially you could publish a module like they do now and just add three optional pages or so of PDF crunch for converting it to a different edition. Again it all comes down to efficiently providing the most utility for the largest market possible.

 

[GregoryOatmeal]

It's kind of disingenuous to imply that Monopoly players aren't divided by changes to the same extent because there are not changes to the same extent, without even addressing the idea that there are also fundamental differences between the play experience of a board game and a highly personalized RPG that plays out over years of a campaign. If Monopoly started out as a game where players named their own properties, and were able to carry their money and hotels from session to session, it would be a more relevant comparison. And I somewhat suspect that players would be divided by changes in the game that didn't let them carry their hard-earned hotels and railroads from one session to the next.

Wrong thread yo. It's really easy to run that analogy off the tracks but it misses the original point of the whole discussion (that popular games don't see constant major and controversial revisions. People in that thread have noted the same thing about roleplaying games similar to D&D)

 

[GregoryOatmeal]

This is a good list

1. Base party assumptions. 4 PC's for 3e, 5 for 4e and 6-8 for AD&D. This makes for huge variation in the power of groups. Yes, a 1e character is arguably weaker than his 4e counterpart, but, there's significantly more PC's in the group, with the very real possibility of henchmen and the like adding still more.

2. Power level differences. The creatures do not scale linearly with the PC's between editions. 1e versions of PC's again, might be weaker than their 4e equivalent, but the monsters are significantly weaker relative to the PC's. There's a reason you could throw fifteen orcs at a low level 1e party and expect them to win through whereas that same encounter in 3e would be an instant death sentence.

These are good points. Frankly I don't worry about balance or appropriate challenge much when running games. The only DMG I ever owned was for 4E. So enlighten me.

4E has a really easy method for creating balanced encounters and 3.5 has the CR system which seems a bit trickier. Do previous editions have formulaic methods for creating balanced encounters based on XP budgets? I feel like you could just create a system for identifying a "hard encounter" for a level 5 encounter in 2E. We already know what a hard encounter is in 4E, so you would just have to create a similar hard encounter in 2E. And of course you'd have to measure how many difficult encounters a group could endure in that edition. I may be wrong, but I use much less formal metrics when homebrewing my games. Things go wrong in published adventures and homebrew ideas and that's just fine. Ultimately if you give DMs the tools (crunchy numbers) I think they'll figure it out.

This is an instance where crowdsourcing would be extremely helpful (like how Paizo does public playtests and WOTC did the same with D&D insider)

3. Available options. 4e characters don't have access to some things like travel magic (3e) or long term invisibility (AD&D) which can radically change how an adventure runs. Sneaking through an orc camp is a skill challenge for a 4e party, it's a single Invisibility 10' Radius spell for a 1e party.

That would break things a bit but still that's sort of okay. Players are clever and find ways to outsmart you. That's fine.

4. Differing goals. The goal of the PC's in various editions is different. In 4e, the encounter is the base unit of the adventure. Everything is about the encounter and PC's can generally regain most of their resources between encounters relatively easily. 1e character's lack the magical resources of a 3e party (no healing sticks and clerics are severely limited with healing) and have no realistic way of regaining resources without retreating and resting. Time based adventures have to take these things into account. A one or two day time limit might be enough for a 4e or 3e party with magical healing, but the 1e party is seriously handicapped.

Yes, that is indeed a tricky one.

 

[GregoryOatmeal]

2)And honestly, you're not going to get even a small fraction of the old edition players, either, because many of them are quite happy with what they have, or have other companies to buy from, and they aren't going to want to shell out big bucks for an adventure that's half useless to them anymore than current edition players will want to.

You've convinced me it's not feasible to produce 2E and 1E content in this day and age, but 3.5 and Pathfinder are going very strong. How is it viable for ENWorld to produce adventures for multiple editions with small profit margins and a limited audience? They're even printing both editions.

It seems like WOTC and Paizo are willfully ignoring huge demographics they could easily sell products to if pride weren't such an issue

 

[MichaelSomething]

Enworld sort of has to do it that way because their audience is strongly divided between 4E and Pathfinder. They can write adventures from the ground up designed to work well with both editions. They can also draw on people who have a decent level of system mastery in both systems, due to Enworld's culture.

WOTC and Paizo are more concerned to playing to the strengths of their respected systems. Paizo simply doesn't have the manpower to spare and I don't think WOTC can give a guy a week to convert an adventure just because...

 

[Barastrondo]

Wrong thread yo. It's really easy to run that analogy off the tracks but it misses the original point of the whole discussion (that popular games don't see constant major and controversial revisions.)

I didn't miss the point, I just don't agree that it's sufficiently accurate to be used as a marker, or that the basis for comparison is valid. Campaign play is a major thing, the thing that causes people to reject edition changes or houserule so much that they influence edition changes.

It seems like WOTC and Paizo are willfully ignoring huge demographics they could easily sell products to if pride weren't such an issue

"Huge demographics" and "easily" are the points of contention. My personal estimation is closer to that they're willfully (or perhaps regretfully) ignoring modest demographics that they can sell to with a notable amount of effort.

Different editions deliver different play experiences by design. Adventures that are any good at all play off and emphasize the play experience of their parent edition. Adventure conversions are kind of a minority market, because you're essentially trying to sell (for instance) a 4e experience wrapped in a 3.5 ruleset to people who prefer a 3.5 experience. If you want that adventure to actually deliver a 3.5 experience, that means you have to be willing to more fundamentally rewrite large sections of it. If you're not willing to fundamentally rewrite your adventure, then you send the message "This adventure is more valuable for people who play its original system: but if you want the less valuable converted version, you still have to pay full price." Or alternately you could write very generic adventures, ones that don't play to the strengths of any edition.

I can see that some people would buy these adventures. I'm not sure that lots of people would buy them, and I'm very doubtful that lots of people would still be buying them a year later. Paizo sells a lot of material, but they worked hard to establish a reputation for quality -- I don't think you can assume a conversion business would have the same success if you don't take quality into consideration.

 

[Mouseferatu]

How is it viable for ENWorld to produce adventures for multiple editions with small profit margins and a limited audience? They're even printing both editions.

It's precisely because ENWorld is a smaller publisher that they can do this.

I know that seems counter-intuitive, but it's true. Morrus and co. don't have to turn nearly the sort of profit on any given book that a large company does. If they do much more than break even, well, I'm sure they'd like to do better, but that's still technically a success.

Depending on lots and lots of variables, certain small RPG companies can sell a couple thousand copies of a given book (sometimes even less), and call it at least a modest success. The larger companies? Have to sell orders of magnitude better than that.

A company like WotC, or even Paizo? There's a lot more riding on their products. They survive based on the products they sell. They have a lot more in the way of overhead costs. They have more people on staff who have to be paid, and more bills that have to be paid off. With a company like WotC, it's not just a question of "Will book X sell?" It's a question of "Will book X sell better or worse than book Y? There's only room in the production schedule for one."

So it's not enough to say "An adventure made for 3E and 4E might sell." You have to show that it will sell better than an adventure made for 3E or 4E alone. Furthermore, it can't just sell a little better; it has to sell a lot better, to make up for the additional costs of producing a larger/more complicated book. And of course, there mere fact that it is more expensive is going to dramatically lessen the potential market, because again, lots of people aren't willing to pay extra for a book where half the mechanics aren't useful for them.

Plus, there's the fact that adventures are used, in part, to drive sales of the core line. WotC isn't selling 3E core books. Therefore, adventures that encourage people to play more 3E do them less good than adventures that encourage people to play more 4E--even if they sell just as well. (The same would be true in reverse, for Paizo.)

It seems like WOTC and Paizo are willfully ignoring huge demographics they could easily sell products to if pride weren't such an issue

Pride is pretty much zero of an issue in this instance. Do you really believe that either company would hesitate to do this if they thought it was worthwhile? Especially with the economy the way it is?

Don't let the flame wars fool you. The WotC folks and the Paizo folks aren't enemies. Their companies aren't trying to destroy each other. Neither of them wants to see the other edition fail, or the people who work on them put out of work. Heck, WotC has a corporate responsibility, for Pete's sake. Sure, they can still make bad decisions, but if this was anywhere near the no-brainer you seem to think it is, they'd have gladly jumped on it.

 

[Mouseferatu]

As far as the "huge potential market" idea goes, let's break it down.

If WotC began making their adventures 3E-compatible, their potential market is not "everyone who still plays a version of 3E."

It's "everyone who still plays a version of 3E, and is willing to do the minor conversion work to change the adventure to their preferred version of 3E (3E and 3.5E and Pathfinder are all subtly different), and is in the market for adventures beyond those already provided by Paizo or the various 3E-compatible companies, and can afford to branch out to a new company even if they want to, and is willing to pay more for a WotC adventure than for a Paizo adventure, even though it'll include whole swathes of mechanics they can't use, and doesn't already have an emotional/personal interest in not patronizing WotC."

It's not sustainable, and it's certainly not going to make up for the increased production costs and lost sales.