New D&D 4th DM, seeking advice on incorporating past sourcebooks

[Anjohl]

Hey guys! A local retailer is selling off a lot of RPG books, and I managed to pick up two in particular that I know for a fact are not 4th edition:

Dungeon Master Guide (3rd)
Lords of Darkness (3rd)

I bought the two of them for very cheap, I think it was $10 or less each. I had differing rationalizations for each:

DMG: I figure that tips on running a game as a DM will be useful no matter what system the DMG is for. I guess there is very little "crunch" in here, from what I can see. Most of the statblocks in there look convertible if I wanted to use them. Am I out of line on this?

LoD: A couple of the players have expressed a lot of interest in playing in the Realms. I have all 4th FR materials, but I might alter the setting so that the Spellplague did not have the effects listed. I would prefer to set the game in the FR that people grew to love with the books and videogames. LoD seems to be to be primarily a fluff book, and the wealth of information on factions looks invaluable, particularly for <$10. Is this book useful for a 4th game?

Thanks in advance, we are all very new to the game, we are just winding down our first adventure, a heavily modified "Keep on the Shadowfell". I have no problem hacking the setting, as I enjoy the creative process. I look forward to picking your brains!~

 

[GreyLord]

Well, 3e and 4e can be interchanged (despite what some on this site may think) especially as you get into higher levels. It will take some conversions, but overall, you could use the higher level characters with their stats as are...for the most part. You would need to probably add 1/2 their CR or Level to their saves in order to transfer their save values into Save Defenses (Fort, Ref, Will).

The Lower levels are tougher as they don't have the HP kicker. That's where the real work will come in for the LoD. However, the Fluff in LoD is still very easy to be used, and can easily be interchangeable via either system.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

I use Lords of Darkness as inspiration for my 4E game set in the 4E Realms... which draws much of its inspiration from 1E adventures.

Even the mechanical bits inspire things in my NPC and monster stat blocks.

 

[Dungeoneer]

The nice thing about 4e monsters is that they are very well-defined: a nth-level monster of role x should have such-and-such defenses and so-and-so hp. It shouldn't be too hard to create 4e equivalents. In fact, if you have DDI access you can search the compendium by monster level and role and find monsters that are a close match, and then reflavor to suit. Should save you a lot of work.

 

[The Human Target]

The 3rd DMG has tips worth reading for sure.

Lords of Darkness is a great book, plenty of good ideas for villain's to inspire a game. Do feel like you need to hugely alter the Realms to use it (unless you want to of course.) Most of the actual mechanics in the book basically exist in 4e or can be easily substituted.

 

[the Jester]

I would use them for inspiration rather than trying to draw material directly for my game from them- in fact, I use all my books, back to 1e or before, for just this with a great deal of frequency, often writing conversions of old monsters, magic items, etc. for my 4e game.