D&D 3E/3.5 3e to 4e

[mps42]

I was thinking about trying to put together an adventure path that would follow characters through the tumultuous transition from 3e to 4e in game terms and was wondering if anyone else had attempted such a thing.

 

[Garthanos]

I was thinking about trying to put together an adventure path that would follow characters through the tumultuous transition from 3e to 4e in game terms and was wondering if anyone else had attempted such a thing.

Huh... how do you play through a game transition? I have converted characters between dozens of game systems... we converted the characters to best represent our visualization of them with the new system....frequently resulted in the evolution of characters and fermented more interesting ideas about the nature of old characters but basically we always pretended the differences were there all along and moved on.

 

[Starfox]

I can see a campaign set in the aftermath of a rule change, when suddenly-empowered fighters topple the towers of weakened wizards and some of those wizards turn out to be Swordmages instead.

But I think it would be hard to make such a campaign not be a parody.

 

[Nytmare]

I've played in a couple of games that jumped between rules systems before, but they always seem to have been more interesting on paper. They usually involve some kind of dimensional hopping silliness or Matrix-esque enlightenment.

The most interesting one I had played in was a floating campaign of random systems where we were encouraged, but not forced, to play basically the same general character from game to game. The settings were, for the most part, different; though there were a host of recurring NPCs from game to game and inter-system knowledge and breaking the 4th wall wasn't frowned on at all. After several months of jumping from DC Heroes to Feng Shui to Toon to Amber, and interacting with that set cast of characters, we slowly pieced together that we were all patients in a mental ward suffering from schizophrenia.

 

[Mr. Teapot]

I ran a game in 3rd ed which had the real world time limit of "This game ends when 4e comes out". The PCs were working to fight off an interplanar invasion/giant planar conjunction by gathering the Rod of Seven Parts. When the main PC gathered the last bit, she ascended into godhood, fought the Queen of Chaos into the ground and kept the universe from exploding.

The next campaign was in the same setting, but twenty years later. As a result of the epic planar realignment that ended the 3rd ed game, the 4e rules were in effect. Some characters were majorly effected, some were not at all. Elven society was in chaos for a while, because all of a sudden everyone had to start sleeping every night. Most elven houses didn't even have beds.



(Several other games I played in transitioned without it being addressed fictionally at all. One session we had certain abilities, and in the next we had different ones, but we assumed that they were roughly the same abilities but just represented differently mechanically.)

 

[unan oranis]

I ran a game in 3rd ed which had the real world time limit of "This game ends when 4e comes out". The PCs were working to fight off an interplanar invasion/giant planar conjunction by gathering the Rod of Seven Parts. When the main PC gathered the last bit, she ascended into godhood, fought the Queen of Chaos into the ground and kept the universe from exploding.

The next campaign was in the same setting, but twenty years later. As a result of the epic planar realignment that ended the 3rd ed game, the 4e rules were in effect. Some characters were majorly effected, some were not at all. Elven society was in chaos for a while, because all of a sudden everyone had to start sleeping every night. Most elven houses didn't even have beds.



(Several other games I played in transitioned without it being addressed fictionally at all. One session we had certain abilities, and in the next we had different ones, but we assumed that they were roughly the same abilities but just represented differently mechanically.)

Interesting way of handling it.

I did something similar, but 500 years in the future so everyone's normalized... except for all civilization being replaced with the "points of light" thing.

Did you just luck out and have your final session just before 4e launched? Or did you have to bridge it a little?

 

[Mr. Teapot]

Did you just luck out and have your final session just before 4e launched? Or did you have to bridge it a little?

When I established the deadline, it became the player's job to schedule additional sessions of the game and to find time to play. So we had the last session right around the proper end time (I don't remember where the date exactly fell relative to 4e's release).

 

[Nymrohd]

It's called FR. The spellplague changed the rules in the world You can play through that.