Classic 1E Mods in 4E?

[ScottS]

You probably don't want to convert any "megadungeons" to 4e... I'm currently running Sabre River (which wasn't AD&D but was from the same era), and even though the encounter sites are somewhat small (~8 per dungeon crawl), they're still taking at least three 4-5 hour sessions to complete. As you might expect, this is almost entirely due to the fact that 4e combats have a "guaranteed length" of about an hour, even when you set the monster levels, XP budget, etc. below the party level. If you go with a larger dungeon and keep the original number and variety of fights, your only option would be to make some of the encounters trivial (i.e. 100% minions); otherwise you'll never get through it. (You could also mess with monster HP, which I've started to do about halfway through the mod, but I'm assuming we're talking a RAW conversion.)

 

[Bluenose]

Like everyone else seems to have found, older modules have a lot if fights in confined areas which 4e doesn't like much. They also have a lot of fights that in a direct conversion are pretty trivial but which still take time to run in 4e. I've been doing a lot of combining encounters and rooms, so that instead of two consecutive fights in small areas with a small group of enemies there'll be one larger fight in a larger area. It's only a personal observation, but I've found that the size of a fight makes rather less difference to it's length than it might have in previous editions, though the fact that I make some of the less important enemies into minions may also be affecting this.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

One other thing: hit the characters over the head with roleplaying opportunities. And when I say hit, I mean with the subtle approach of a tac nuke.

Earlier in the campaign, I twice had the PCs use an NPCs attempt to parlay as an excuse to start the killing with a one round edge in actions. I don't think my players are particularly bloodthirsty. Rather, I think they tend to see the drawback of trying to talk (it's a trick, and we'll regret it) as much worse than attacking (if they know anything useful, we'll just knock them out and interrogate them).

I think this can't be understated. Especially if one's players are familiar with D&D history. Many of the 1st Ed adventures are very hack and slash/kick down doors in design and may easily give cues to the players to behave in a very violent manner than they might otherwise exploit.

I think providing a lot of fairly easy skill challenges fairly often, ones that actually change the ease of the PCs in the dungeon, might be able to train the PCs out of this behaviour. (I haven't yet implemented this to the extent I think it needs to be done, but I have a few Basic & 1st Ed adventures in the pipeline that will have these small skill challenges added.) If the players know that they can advance with skill challenges alone, then they might be more open to attempt to influence NPCs through non-combat means.

One can even combine this use of skill challenges with the use of minor fights. Doing well on a skill challenge to sneak around in a large dungeon, like the Temple of Elemental Evil, may allow the PCs to take out a patrol or two without playing out the combat.

My PCs are currently in Thunderspire Labyrinth, and I will probably be using this technique there.

 

[Chainsaw]

IMO, the T1 conversion is really uninspired. In particular, many of the encounters end up being really boring or bad 4th ed encounters, at least based on my experiences with them. We abandoned it uncompleted so that the PCs could go elsewhere and have more fun in a different dungeon. One of the issues is that 4e often plays better with larger rooms than were necessary in 1e.

Thanks for your perspective - this is very helpful coming from someone with first hand experience. Honestly, there are quite a few people that weren't THAT crazy about the ToEE even using the 1E rules. As I'm sure you know, there are even some die hard 1E fans that believe that T2+ drags a bit.

I'm not aware of any other official direct conversions. There is the Giants supermodule, which is clearly inspired by G1-2-3, and several parts of the main adventure path are I believe inspired by other classic modules, but they aren't really conversions. I would suggest DIY is likely to not be too hard, though.

We'll probably play through the Giants supermod as part of the 4E campaign I'm in now, but I will double check. If not, it may fit in to my plans - or I may just compare/contrast it with some older stuff.

I will likely just raid the old mods for pieces I like rather than run them straight through, so I think your suggestion that it won't be too hard to convert older materials makes sense.

 

[Chainsaw]

I'm running the original Temple of Elemental Evil, and here are a few things I've learned:

1. In AD&D, three characters were supposed to be able to fight abreast in a 10-foot wide square, so I tend to convert each 10 foot square into a 3 by 3 square in 4e terms.

Make sense. Plus, combat was more abstract back then.. it wasn't always relevant that an area might be too small unless the players and DM decided to make it relevant.

2. You can get around the issue of fights taking place in doorways by combining multiple encounter areas into one, especially narrow, twisty areas. For instance, the PCs kick down a door, and the orcs in the chamber call for help from their allies down the hall. That gives the encounter a couple of different "fronts" and makes things more interesting.

I like this idea. It's probably easier to avoid the dungeon feeling artificial (like it was designed as three big rooms for three big encounters) if you think of a combat area as a set of rooms, passages and doors. This happened in one area of Keep on the Shadowfell last weekend, actually. Plus, I think it ratchets up the tension a little bit because the typical big-room strategy might not apply as well.

3. Don't shy away from fights that are way below the PCs level if something more interesting than a fight is going on. Example: The PCs bump into a squad of 5 orcs patrolling the dungeon. The orcs are all minions, but the PCs need to cut them down before they sound an alarm or whatever. I've found this is a useful approach for wandering monsters.

Good point. Very likely would have occured that way originally in many cases anyway.. if say, a group of 4-5 level PCs run across 4-5 run-of-the-mill goblins with very few hit points. Not every encounter needs to be equal-level.

4. Look at the monsters in the original as a suggestion, not a canonical proclamation. In ToEE, I replaced some of the ghouls with wights, turned a few of the various NPC clerics into gnolls, and added genasi villains/cannon fodder because they fit the theme. It gave me more flexibility in creating monster combinations that were more mechanically interesting.

I think you hit the nail on the head - the theme is more important than the details. A 1E goblin is not necessarily a 4E goblin. Simply trading them out won't do.

5. Finally, one of the tricks I learned with classic modules is that they are a lot more fun if the PCs take a strategic approach to them. Give the players a chance to come up with plans, interact with NPCs, and so on. A big dungeon is a lot more fun if the players can interact with it on a level other than clear room A, clear room B, and so on.

In my ToEE campaign, I gave the characters an obvious way to sneak in. They met a recruiter looking for mercenaries to aid the temple of earth. I made it obvious the guy was so desperate that any reasonable ploy would trick him and get the PCs into the temple.

That helped make things interesting, because the characters have swapped between clearing out rooms, allying with the different factions, and learning about the dynamic within the temple. They had more decisions than heading east or west, like debating which two temples to pit against each other, or the best way to trick a high priest into allying with them.

Totally agree, thanks for your insights!

 

[Chainsaw]

One other thing: hit the characters over the head with roleplaying opportunities. And when I say hit, I mean with the subtle approach of a tac nuke.

Earlier in the campaign, I twice had the PCs use an NPCs attempt to parlay as an excuse to start the killing with a one round edge in actions. I don't think my players are particularly bloodthirsty. Rather, I think they tend to see the drawback of trying to talk (it's a trick, and we'll regret it) as much worse than attacking (if they know anything useful, we'll just knock them out and interrogate them).

Good point, thanks. We had a few experiences like this in Keep on the Shadowfell last week.

 

[Chainsaw]

Well, i ran a 2e conversion of Tallow's Deep from Dungeon magazine that took 12 sessions to complete. It worked great, it just requires knowledge of 4e encounter design and how to mod that to fit 4e standards. And as others said, look at the encounters as suggestions and just use your best judgment to modify them, especially in regard of interesting terrain features.

Thanks! I think your point about remembering to utilize terrain is a terrific idea.

 

[Chainsaw]

I've done a few conversions for 4e. I love the classics.

I ran Keep on the Borderlands for Origins 2008.
I ran White Plume Mountain, Ravenloft, and Halls of the Fire Giant King for Origins 2009.

I'd say my favorite of all of these was Ravenloft. That was SUCH a great module anyway, and it plays beautifully, albeit a bit HUGE, with 4e.

In my experience looking at these conversions, worry less about the "exactness" and look to capture the very brilliant encounters and feel. The other fun part of converting 1e to 4e is to combine lots of encounters together (four or five rooms) to be one "longer" encounter which will move through multiple rooms, which 4e accomodates well. My last favorite tactic is to insert skill challenges "in between" the encounters to determine if a couple simple encounters combine to become one, extended "hard" encounter.

Enjoy!

Great advice, thanks for sharing. Your point about "exactness" is well noted.

 

[Chainsaw]

Stormonu - Thanks for the links!

 

[Chainsaw]

You probably don't want to convert any "megadungeons" to 4e... I'm currently running Sabre River (which wasn't AD&D but was from the same era), and even though the encounter sites are somewhat small (~8 per dungeon crawl), they're still taking at least three 4-5 hour sessions to complete. As you might expect, this is almost entirely due to the fact that 4e combats have a "guaranteed length" of about an hour, even when you set the monster levels, XP budget, etc. below the party level. If you go with a larger dungeon and keep the original number and variety of fights, your only option would be to make some of the encounters trivial (i.e. 100% minions); otherwise you'll never get through it. (You could also mess with monster HP, which I've started to do about halfway through the mod, but I'm assuming we're talking a RAW conversion.)

I think altering the HP (and XP) makes all the sense in the world. I have no problem altering things to fit my needs or create the right pacing or drama. If a given dungeon would have called for 8 encounters, I will turn 4-5 of them into minion clearing exercises or something similar. I think the key, as others have pointed out, is keeping the feel true. I think you can do this without keeping the exactness. Back when I DM'd alot of 2E, there were small battles that took 20 game minutes and big battles that took two hours. No reason that 4E can't accommodate that with the right usage of monsters. Not every encounter needs to be planned out to showcase every mechanic 4E has to offer. Sometimes you roll into a room and wipe out the bad guys in two rounds - sometimes not. That keeps people guessing, which I prefer in a dungeon setting.