Conversion: Keep on the Borderlands

[Celebrim]

Officially, you can only post crunch, no fluff. Seems fair to me.

Except that officially its even tighter than that. Not only can you only post crunch, but you can only post crunch that is a direct conversion with no notes, ammendments, extensions, editorial commentary, reblancing or anything else.

Personally, I think the legal status of fan created material is still an open question. The rules of the game obviously intends for you to create your own material. It would be ridiculous to suggest that you as a DM could not create an adventure set in Waterdeep, and run that adventure among your friends. Yet, at the same time WotC claims that you can create that for your personal use but not distribute it. Supposing I wrote a fan based 'Return to the Caves of Chaos', somewhat loosely based on the original B2. How many friends can I share it with before it constitutes misuse? What if it is a NN's adventure? It's a far from settled question what fair use of gaming materials constitutes. Until WotC finds itself wanting to sue a DM for distributing his work for free, I doubt anyone knows exactly what a judge would rule.

 

[AFGNCAAP]

It's a very cool idea. I was running Keep on the Borderlands as a starter adventure for a 3.5 D&D group of mine, but the group dissolved before they got halfway through the module. I'd like to use it for 4th ed., though. I'd be very interested in seeing a 4e conversion of it.

 

[LowSpine]

I have scanned Dungeon Tiles in order to create my battle map. I have used them as the basis but I have heavily edited them. I was just wandering if anyone knows any copyright law on edited images.

I heard that if you edit an image enough it becomes your own work but I have also heard that that is a common myth.

Does anyone have any direct link to any material giving information on this element of copyright law.

I have no major interest in trying to sell the battlemap, but it would be nice to share it when it is done. (It is meant to be a direct conversion of an old map so it would infringe that aspect of copyright anyway I think.)

 

[elijah snow]

Thanks for posting these. Are they actually 3.5 or 3.0 conversions? I'm trying to collect 3.5 conversions of classic modules.

I've done 3.0 and 3.5 conversions of KotB. I'd thikn 4E would actually be somewhat easier (assuming you have all of the relevant monster stas -- I think we only have Hobgoblins and Kobogls thus far, and one or two other monsters) because you wouldn't have to re-scale the encounter sizes. The number of monsters in the original modules shoul dbe about right for 4E.

I'll attach one of my conversion (it isn't completely true to the module as it contains adpatations for my campaign, but it may serve as a good starting point).

Edit: The campaign this was used in was set in Mistledale in the Forgotten Realms, so the Keep became the "Keep at Peldan's Helm", and the Caves of Chaos beacem the "Caves of Moander" ... but you'll get the idea.

 

[Immolate]

Isn't H1, Keep on the Shadowfell something of a 4E update of Keep on the Borderlands? Please be gentle as I am just now really digging into 4E.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

Isn't H1, Keep on the Shadowfell something of a 4E update of Keep on the Borderlands? Please be gentle as I am just now really digging into 4E.

I don't think there's been anything officially said, but I'm making this guess, too.

 

[IanB]

The biggest problem with KotB that I've come across in some 'for practice' converting experiments I've done is that the room sizes are often too small for real use of all the movement/pushing/pulling/etc effects that 4e seems to have. I think the map may need some revision to really get enough 4e goodness into the fighting, at least for some of the caves - the old standard 10' hallway is used pretty heavily.

 

[stripes]

The biggest problem with KotB that I've come across in some 'for practice' converting experiments I've done is that the room sizes are often too small [...]

For sure! I ran B2 a few weeks ago (with the blue box rules) and the rooms were TINY compared to typical 3.5 rooms. I suspect 4e will tend to have rooms at least as big as 3.5 used.

It would still be interesting to see how it works in 4e -- maybe the more fluid movement and encounter rules will actually end up having clusters of rooms play more like single encounters (of corse then there are going to be way to many opponents almost everywhere, not just "we managed to deal with the guards, but when we got to the common room we were goners!")

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Thanks for posting these. Are they actually 3.5 or 3.0 conversions? I'm trying to collect 3.5 conversions of classic modules.

3.0 actually, but at the low levels invovled, if you run it as is I can almost guarantee your players won't notice. There's really not much difference between 3.0 and 3.5 until you get to higher levels (druids, bards, and rangers aside).

 

[Eye of the Beholder]

The biggest problem with KotB that I've come across in some 'for practice' converting experiments I've done is that the room sizes are often too small for real use of all the movement/pushing/pulling/etc effects that 4e seems to have. I think the map may need some revision to really get enough 4e goodness into the fighting, at least for some of the caves - the old standard 10' hallway is used pretty heavily.

Quoting the original AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, regarding the use of miniatures in the game:

"Figure bases are necessarily broad in order to assure that the figure will stand... Because of this, it is usually necessary to use a ground scale twice that of the actual scale... squares of about one actual inch per side are suggested. Each ground scale inch can then be used to equal 3 1/2 linear feet, so a 10' wide scale corridor is three actual inches in width and shown as 3 separate squares. This allows depiction of the typical array of three figures abreast, and also enables easy handling of such figures when they are moved."​

In short, the corridors were drawn ten feet wide, but with the assumption that ten feet was enough for three people fighting side by side (three squares), not two. Since 4th ed divorces squares from actual distance measurements anyway, I'd say you're perfectly justified in following the Great Gary's advice and upping your maneuver room by half.

Other than that I'll just follow stripes's lead and say combine lots of rooms into one encounter. Don't have the orcs (or whatever) sit back and wait for the PCs to clear out one group at a time, have them rush toward the sound of battle, fall back for reinforcements, and in general make fights bigger than they first appear.