Conversions

[sckeener]

Is anyone else thinking that converting previous editions to 4e is going to be difficult?

I've been playing since 1981 and I've got a lot of adventures that I can reuse for new groups. I've converted several adventures from 1st edition to 3.5. I understood the power difference between editions and I at least had familiar terms...

With 4e, I'm not sure how familiar the system will feel....what with no alignment, canon monsters changing, classic MM1 monsters missing, etc...

I'd like to hear from some of the designers how hard was it to convert an adventure and if they've played that adventure in previous editions, how did it change the feel?

There are just some adventures that I think should be base lines between editions...like
Keep on the Borderlands
Tomb of Horrors
Sinister Secret at Salt Marsh
Lost caverns of Tsojcanth
Temple of Elemental Evil
etc...

 

[Morrus]

I think that, given that the designers have already said that conversion will be difficult, it's likely that conversion will, in fact, be difficult.

http://www.enworld.org/index.php?page=4e

Bill Slavicsek: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dramp/20070918

James Wyatt: ""You can't really just convert a character directly from 3e to 4e."" http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?p=13649886#post13649886

 

[Dragonblade]

Like Morrus said, character conversions will essentially be impossible. You will likely have to rebuild the character from scratch keeping only the core concept from its 3.5 incarnation.

But adventures, I think will be be easy. Especially because I think 4e will make it easier to run monsters on the fly and encounters will require less fiddling with challenge ratings and so on. Likewise converting monsters will probably easy since you don't have to worry about feats, skill points, hit dice and so on.

 

[sckeener]

I think that, given that the designers have already said that conversion will be difficult, it's likely that conversion will, in fact, be difficult.

grr...I hadn't seen James quote though it doesn't surprise me. I figured the class conversions would be annoying.

Sounds like I will have to think about each conversion and what the role is supposed to be in that conversion.

Still I'd love to here a podcast of a classic adventure redone to 4e. I'd like to know what felt the same and what got spiked.

Like Morrus said, character conversions will essentially be impossible. You will likely have to rebuild the character from scratch keeping only the core concept from its 3.5 incarnation.

Not worried about my player's conversions...I'll drag them along...

But adventures, I think will be be easy. Especially because I think 4e will make it easier to run monsters on the fly and encounters will require less fiddling with challenge ratings and so on. Likewise converting monsters will probably easy since you don't have to worry about feats, skill points, hit dice and so on.

I guess the stickler will be monster's with classes...

 

[catsclaw227]

It is easy to imagine that adventures would be easier, maybe even replacement of some monsters, but I am guessing that they will be tough since the encounter paradigm has changed quite a bit. No more single CR 9 monster for your 7th level party. The entire encounter will need to be updated.

 

[Fobok]

It is easy to imagine that adventures would be easier, maybe even replacement of some monsters, but I am guessing that they will be tough since the encounter paradigm has changed quite a bit. No more single CR 9 monster for your 7th level party. The entire encounter will need to be updated.

Yeah. You could still have the same story, but you'd have to reimagine the encounters, which is where the difficulty would come in.

Of course, I've only ever used one prescripted adventure. Most seem too scripted for my rather unpredictable players.

 

[Celebrim]

Is anyone else thinking that converting previous editions to 4e is going to be difficult?

Yes. I'd almost go as far as to say impossible.

1st -> 2nd = Mostly easy.
2nd -> 1st = Trivially easy.
1st -> 3rd = Tedious and generally easy, but with a few patches where it was practically impossible because of changes in relative power, multiclassing, expected speed of levelling, and interactivity. I've got personal experience here and while lot most of it was just work, some things you wouldn't think of unless you tried it turned out to be hugely important and agonizingly hard to work around.
2nd -> 3rd = Only slightly easier than 1st to 3rd
Anything -> 4th = From hard to impossible depending on what you are going to try to change. Basically, it would be a complete rewrite/reimagining.

From this I claim:

1st to 2nd: Small change.
2nd to 3rd: Moderate change.
3rd to 4th: Large change.

 

[Celebrim]

But adventures, I think will be be easy. Especially because I think 4e will make it easier to run monsters on the fly and encounters will require less fiddling with challenge ratings and so on. Likewise converting monsters will probably easy since you don't have to worry about feats, skill points, hit dice and so on.

It doesn't work like that. Many of the 3.0 monsters were almost straight up conversions from the 1st edition players handbook. But that doesn't mean that the monsters played the same as they did in an earlier edition.

The problem is that just because this encounter featured 6 Xorcs doesn't mean that 6 Xorcs in any way represent the same encounter in a different edition. The feats that Xorcs had in 3rd edition may have played an important role in how a particular encounter was interesting. With the feat gone, the encounter may be lacking. And the Xorc might turn out to be slightly weaker or slightly tougher relative to a party of a given level between editions. And if Xorcs turn out weaker, it may be that Zoblins turn out much stronger. So suddenly the Xorc encounter is a pushover and the Zoblin encouter is a TPK. So you'll find yourself fiddling with Xorc and Zoblin stats. Meanwhile, you find that the BBEG has a flavor which is out of character with its new mechanical crunch so that its no longer believable in the role, but if you give it the crunch it needs for the flavor then the fight is no longer winnable. Meanwhile you discover that the module assumed that the party would (or would not) have spell resources that they now don't (or do). Then you discover that an encounter depends on assumptions that alignment will have a mechanical effect. And so forth.

 

[psionotic]

I'm tempted to think that adventure conversion will be easier in 4.0. There is no complicated CR and Encounter Level system to worry about anymore, both of which were very tricky at times. Since Monster Level is going to map onto character level, and the default encounter is 1:1 PCs to monsters, encounter design (and redesign, its practically the same thing) should be a snap.

In fact, it even becomes easier, because with abilities based on a per encounter model in 4e, you'll have to worry far less about the order and number of encounters, since most resources will be replenished in between. The order and number of fights was a nightmare to balance in previous editions, and could have drastic consequences. With 4e, we'll hopefully avoid the two-headed serpent of encounter area design, in which too many encounters or creatures caused one of the following:
1) TPK due to resource depletion. Start over.
2) 8 hours of rest, then 1-2 encounters; rinse, repeat, yawn.

 

[Celebrim]

encounter design (and redesign, its practically the same thing) should be a snap.

If you need to redesign encounters, by conversion is hard almost by definition. By an easy conversion I mean 'one which you don't need to redesign'. At its most trivial, if the encounter has 4 orcs and it plays the same in both editions, you can simply flip open a monster manual and get away without doing any heavy lifting at all. If on the other hand orcs are 1/4 as dangerous in the new edition, you end up with questions like, "Should I use 16 orcs, or slightly fewer? Should I make the room bigger to accomodate 16 orcs, and if so how do I change the map? Maybe it would be easier to use 4 tougher orcs as well, and if we aren't using default MM orcs, what stats should I use?"

In fact, it even becomes easier, because with abilities based on a per encounter model in 4e, you'll have to worry far less about the order and number of encounters, since most resources will be replenished in between.

But assuming you are converting an adventure, the order and number of encounters has already been determined. That's the reason you'd convert a module - to save yourself time versus completely inventing your own. With the switch to per encounter balancing you have to start asking questions like, "Should I make these fights harder because the party is losing less resources between them? If so, how much harder?" Then combine that with the questions raised earlier, and you can see that its about as hard to redesign the module as it would be to produce it from scratch.