Cthulhu no D20?

[Thorin Stoutfoot]

I wrote chaosium

1. They did request that fan conversions, etc, not be posted or diestributed. They did point to the "no open content" part of the copyright notice. (Front page)

2. They asked if I'd like to get the conversion I was working on published as part of the next printing. They'd offered to pay me standard rates for it, and that way others get to enjoy my work. It's reasonable, and I'm going to take them up on it.

That tells me that they don't have a religious opposition against printing dual-stat products (though they did say they wanted to see how Pulp Cthulhu does before they invested heavily), and well, if there's something in particular you want to see converted, you might want to e-mail them and see if they'd pay you to do the conversion.

You will also find out how badly being a game designer pays

So, I now admit my suspicion of Chaosium was in error and withdraw my (unfounded) complaints.

 

[Skywalker]

"I like your attitude. So when do you think Chaosium will be posting those conversions on their web site as free PDF files since it's so easy? It's not as easy as you make it out to be and it's still very time consuming. This is especially true for the Elric line where monsters and magic items are very different than D&D standards. Even with the DLoM book, it's not simply a matter of flipping here and there as many books used unique items and character conversion isn't even touched on in any of the Chaosium D20 material."

Well I don't expect Chaosium to provide the conversions. The rules content of Masks for example is very low. There are a few monsters who aren't human (all of the monsters are generally far more powerful than the players and not meant to be interacted to a level which rules matter (the Sphinx is a good example) or there is an equivalent in the MM). From my experience with Masks I think only about 5 or 6 spells were actually cast on both sides and a couple of those were solely for narrativist purposes.

I suspect we may have a different expectation/style/view (?) regarding conversions. My group is not that concerned that I convert every stat/rule in the book over to d20. From our experience in CoC the rules of each exact spell, NPC and monster aren't really that necessary. Sure some (and these are pretty obvious and will be prepared before hand) are but I find the two rules sets similar enough for me to do adequate armchair conversions when needed.

 

[Thorin Stoutfoot]

conversion on the fly vs. pre-done conversions

Ok, I have definitive things to say about converting on the fly. There are a lot of things that get missed by a conversion on the fly.

Here's an example: what is the DC of a diplomacy check against a key NPC to get him to divulge some important information? What sort of modifiers apply? What skills applies? In your game, does Knowledge (psychology) count, or is it Sense Motive?

I have very poor experiences watching other GMs do conversions on the fly. Frequently, the difficulty rating is set too high, because GMs on the fly don't have time to think it through, and usually think, it's safer to make things too hard than to make them too easy, and then are forced to ad-lib ways for the investigators to get information even though they failed their role.

Furthermore, with NPCs, it's really important to layout their skills in advanced. Otherwise, GMs do again, usually find it easy to give way too many skill points to normal cultists.

I'm not saying that it can't be done --- I've seen it done. But even intelligent, experienced GMs do what I consider to be pretty poor jobs. With D&D games, it doesn't matter too much, since to be honest, most D&D games aren't skill based. But Chaosium's CoC is extremely skill based, and without a set of guidelines on DCs, I'd say that the game can end up being much harder on the PCs than desired (or even intended).

In any case, Skywalker, I think you'll be surprised at the difference a good conversion works. If I do end up doing this, maybe you'd be willing to play-test for me?