I think we're overestimating the problem. The process of converting 3.5 modules to C&C was "look up the monsters in the other book and replace them". That works for just about any of the systems I mentioned besides 4E, so once you've gotten to 3.5 you're pretty much home free. The translations don't have to be perfect, as the encounters hardly felt balanced anyway in AD&D
Agree.
Absolutely if you put five editions worth of stats on one page. That's why I suggested separate PDFs (again, just plug the numbers in and out) or 4-page addendums of notes on running in different editions.
Also agree.
The assumption here seems to be that the flavor is imbued in the edition, and converting the game to another edition would remove the flavor. Can you elaborate? This has not been my experience at all. I've found the flavor of the edition to be tied closely to the setting, art, and writing of the module itself, not the edition.
Also agree. Somewhat. Editions changes are generational changes, not just flavor text changes. See the point about the poisoned door below.
Sure you can! Like, really, why not? Absolutely nothing would stop me from running a 4E comsology in 2E or a Planescape Cosmology in 4E. The 4E Manual of the Planes actually suggests this if you like the old cosmology.
The only thing stopping you is time. And lots of it.
D20 Modern was basically 3.0 with some changes. The dimensional horror is a monster converted from Alternity, which could grab a PC and take them to the "ethereal plane". D20 Modern didn't have such a plane, so WotC had to reprint the entire ethereal plane rules in the monster statblock. While extensive, they just needed to copy the ethereal plane rules from the DMG1, so no real problem there.
Alas, that only worked because d20 Modern and DnD 3.0 had the same basic ruleset. In 4e, the ethereal and astral are the same plane, so you'd need to create a new set of rules to represent the "purely ethereal" plane, and that takes time. (Ethereal monsters like the filcher just teleport in 4e, from what I've seen.)
Perhaps, but I seem to recall every edition having rules for scaling monsters up/down. If WOTC asks players to do this it isn't too far-fetched to expect them to be able to do it as well?
Monsters can't really scale more than 5 levels in either direction in 4e, and it didn't even work properly in 3.x, especially 3.0. You'd be better off picking thematically similar monsters if the level difference is that great.
(When converting City by the Silt Sea to 4e, at a much lower level, I found myself designing 2e monsters from scratch, as the 3e and 4e variants were often so different from the 2e monster that I didn't want to use them as written. The green abishai's illusionary ability was key, for instance, and I don't believe the newer versions had that.)
Why not? As I said it'd be easier to convert new modules from 4E to 1E than vice versa, but yeah, you could do this if you wanted to maintain that 1E spirit.
That type of trap is bad writing, an unfun reactive trap that promotes PC paranoia. It's less an edition issue than a generational (and writing) issue. I wouldn't want to use such a trap now, even if it were written properly for 4e and "balanced".
You'd need to replace it to avoid player revolt... which means more time coming up with a cool encounter, rather than a lame one. You could have a fun one, I'm not denying that, it's just that you have to spend time on it.
You'd have similar issues with the number of encounters, "pointless" encounters and so forth.
But maybe there has been too much negativity. I would challenge you to prove us wrong. Take a free 1e to 3e adventure and convert that to 4e for us to see.
