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In Search of the Unknown: The BECMI Chronicles 5E.
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<blockquote data-quote="Zardnaar" data-source="post: 7341649" data-attributes="member: 6716779"><p><strong>B1 Into The Unknown 1980</strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p><strong></strong>B1 is being redone by Goodman Games, and it seems to be a good place to start. First things 1st the module is aimed at beginning players. My PDF is 36 pages but only 16 are the actual dungeon itself which is a medium sized Dungeon of around 50 rooms. One thing that stands out is that it a build your own dungeon- for example the rooms do not actually have encounters in them it is up to the DM to put encounters in them. This means the module can play out differently under two different DMs only the map will be the same. I did not like this feature much and it was rarely used again in the line (B3 IIRC) but its not a bad idea in theory from a how to learn to play the game as it is basically teaching you how to build n adventure- they have just done a lot of the work for you. </p><p></p><p> The rest of the module is mostly full of advice on how to run the game (the 1st 8 pages or so), and the Dungeon has a bit of a backstory on who built it and why and why they have left the area. They also provided 25 encounters along with loot to be placed as you see fit. The module also makes it clear that it is for 3-6 players and 48 NPCs have been produced to fill out the party if they are short of numbers. The NPCs may be little more than a stat line and they have some tables for what they have and there are some personality tables. You could even use those stat lines in a 5E game, Glendor the Fourth for example has 17 strength, 10 intelligence, 9 wisdom, 13 con, 9 dexterity and 14 charisma. Stick him in heavy armor, apply racial modifiers (which BECMI lacked) and that is not to bad of a stat array. </p><p></p><p>There is also a basic wandering monster table of 6 encounters. </p><p></p><p> So there is a little bit of DIY involved. </p><p></p><p> For converting this module you could more or less run it as is right out of the book. However sometimes the B line adventures can kick you the ass doing this. For example most of the encounters are easy mostly 1d6 Goblins or whatever but one encounter is 2-7 orcs (1d6+1) and due to power creep between the editions that could be a big big problems and an inexperienced DM might use that as an encounter (level 2 and 3 maybe, level 1 is TPK material). There are also some Gnolls and Hobgoblins in that table- 1d4 and 1d4+1. Mostly its Goblins, skeletons, insects typical low level fodder in multiple editions of the game. It gets very high marks for a ease of use running it as written in a 5E game just be aware of some of the monsters on the construct your own table. </p><p></p><p> Overall I really liked this adventure and most of the advice in it and the module itself apply to 5E as well. If you ran it more or less as is you could probably get to level 4 or 5 and have a similar amount of equipment as Lost mines of Phandelver (and a +2 spear OP or what<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />. The major downside though is it requires a bit of work to run (although you could wing it), and the actual dungeon itself is not the most exciting thing in the world being a 53 room dungeon hack with fairly minimal reason to be there. You have a few rumours but it is very old school here is a dungeon go and have a crack at it. As a learning tool its great and I loved reading it and they crammed a huge amount of material into it. The dungeon itself is nothign special however. Still its easy to sex it up a bit (AKA add some NPCs and a very basic plot eg Lord so and so wants this area explored). Most of it will come down to DM skill and how they use the pregenerated encounters and where and how they place them as it might get very odd with the mix of all the monsters. Not all of the rooms have to have combat encounters and even if you used all 25 over half the rooms are empty or will have treasure and other features.</p><p></p><p>Rating it out of 5 I would give it a 3.5/5 overall, 4/5 as a teaching aid, 5/5 for 5E conversion it doesn't get much better in ease of conversion- run it as written being careful with some of the tougher monster placement. And a 5E Rogue is a lot better than a BECMI Thief. Come to think of it so is a 5E cleric. Fighters and wizard basically do the same thing.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Zardnaar, post: 7341649, member: 6716779"] [B]B1 Into The Unknown 1980 [/B]B1 is being redone by Goodman Games, and it seems to be a good place to start. First things 1st the module is aimed at beginning players. My PDF is 36 pages but only 16 are the actual dungeon itself which is a medium sized Dungeon of around 50 rooms. One thing that stands out is that it a build your own dungeon- for example the rooms do not actually have encounters in them it is up to the DM to put encounters in them. This means the module can play out differently under two different DMs only the map will be the same. I did not like this feature much and it was rarely used again in the line (B3 IIRC) but its not a bad idea in theory from a how to learn to play the game as it is basically teaching you how to build n adventure- they have just done a lot of the work for you. The rest of the module is mostly full of advice on how to run the game (the 1st 8 pages or so), and the Dungeon has a bit of a backstory on who built it and why and why they have left the area. They also provided 25 encounters along with loot to be placed as you see fit. The module also makes it clear that it is for 3-6 players and 48 NPCs have been produced to fill out the party if they are short of numbers. The NPCs may be little more than a stat line and they have some tables for what they have and there are some personality tables. You could even use those stat lines in a 5E game, Glendor the Fourth for example has 17 strength, 10 intelligence, 9 wisdom, 13 con, 9 dexterity and 14 charisma. Stick him in heavy armor, apply racial modifiers (which BECMI lacked) and that is not to bad of a stat array. There is also a basic wandering monster table of 6 encounters. So there is a little bit of DIY involved. For converting this module you could more or less run it as is right out of the book. However sometimes the B line adventures can kick you the ass doing this. For example most of the encounters are easy mostly 1d6 Goblins or whatever but one encounter is 2-7 orcs (1d6+1) and due to power creep between the editions that could be a big big problems and an inexperienced DM might use that as an encounter (level 2 and 3 maybe, level 1 is TPK material). There are also some Gnolls and Hobgoblins in that table- 1d4 and 1d4+1. Mostly its Goblins, skeletons, insects typical low level fodder in multiple editions of the game. It gets very high marks for a ease of use running it as written in a 5E game just be aware of some of the monsters on the construct your own table. Overall I really liked this adventure and most of the advice in it and the module itself apply to 5E as well. If you ran it more or less as is you could probably get to level 4 or 5 and have a similar amount of equipment as Lost mines of Phandelver (and a +2 spear OP or what;). The major downside though is it requires a bit of work to run (although you could wing it), and the actual dungeon itself is not the most exciting thing in the world being a 53 room dungeon hack with fairly minimal reason to be there. You have a few rumours but it is very old school here is a dungeon go and have a crack at it. As a learning tool its great and I loved reading it and they crammed a huge amount of material into it. The dungeon itself is nothign special however. Still its easy to sex it up a bit (AKA add some NPCs and a very basic plot eg Lord so and so wants this area explored). Most of it will come down to DM skill and how they use the pregenerated encounters and where and how they place them as it might get very odd with the mix of all the monsters. Not all of the rooms have to have combat encounters and even if you used all 25 over half the rooms are empty or will have treasure and other features. Rating it out of 5 I would give it a 3.5/5 overall, 4/5 as a teaching aid, 5/5 for 5E conversion it doesn't get much better in ease of conversion- run it as written being careful with some of the tougher monster placement. And a 5E Rogue is a lot better than a BECMI Thief. Come to think of it so is a 5E cleric. Fighters and wizard basically do the same thing. [/QUOTE]
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