OSR Converting OSR to 5E or Pathfinder?

[JRoss]

Hi, all. So I've got this game called Kaigaku. It's a hack of Black Hack. The biggest difference between Kaigaku and vanilla Black Hack (black vanilla?) is that you customize your character by inserting various abilities from your PC's school at even-numbered levels. These schools (called ryu in-game) are a lot like archetypes in Pathfinder or those variable class features in 5E (bardic colleges, primal paths, etc.).

I'm currently preparing an epic adventure for Kickstarter, called The Ruined Kingdom. I want this campaign to have as broad an appeal as possible, so I'm going to include monster stats and class abilities for White Hack, too. I'm considering adding support for other OSR games (it'd be pretty simple, based on reader demand). I also am open to porting monster stats and class abilties to 5E and/or Pathfinder. I'm familiar with the systems, but I'd like to get some words of wisdom from you rules mavens or anyone else who has experience with this sort of thing. What would you suggest? Are there any pitfalls? Best practices? Many thanks.

 

[Zardnaar]

Most peopl here won't know what The Black Hack is.

I own it have not played it.

 

[JRoss]

Oh, okay. Thanks for the heads up. The Black Hack is basically a fast version of 1E. You roll under stats to pass tests, level up at the end of every major adventure and tend to be a bit more powerful than in 3E.

 

[John R Davis]

It's not the stats that are the issue it's the style. The Black Hack and other OSR games are quite different to play than 5E and PF. Never mind the PF version upping the page count due to stat block size. There are no skills in OSR games, whereas the others can have somewhat complex skill systems
Speaking from experience of completing 2 of my own kickstarters using all 3.

 

[JRoss]

Thanks for that, John. Sorry to respond so late. That is a good consideration. I had thought to make a single block for stats, just using different colors of text or boxed sections to show which parts you needed for Black Hack/OSR and which parts were usable for Pathfinder. Kaigaku actually does have a skill system figured in. It's based on 13th Age and Scarlet Heroes, but it doesn't have a list like in PF. I might just make it compatible with White Hack because most of the other OSR games use the same stats, and Black Hack can automatically use any NPC that has HD (and all of them do) and disregard everything else besides flavorful special abilities.