Orcus of Necromancer Games says "You were right, I was wrong"

[jaerdaph]

I don't think you have to apologize for anything, Clark. You were very enthusiastic and supportive of the new edition of the game, and in return WotC screwed you and other established third party publishers over with the original GSL. And now, if you can't use it with the DDI, 4e fans won't buy it, if they're buying from 3PPs at all.

Ultimately, if 3PPs want to remain viable, they have to follow the cash. I hope to see more of Necromancer now in the Pathfinder and possibly True20 spheres - those licenses are a lot more 3PP friendly.

 

[Truth Seeker]

I heard of this, from a current creator in the same vein. And the results left that individual with the mindset of NOT doing anymore 4E projects at all (will not get into the full story here), and that creator I do considered highly, a very hardcore industry person, from my view.

Now, I listen to the complaints (about 4E), and honestly...it leaves me in shudders, to hear and witness such a unbelieveable turn around.

But this is just one case, one single situation, it is not reflecting the industry as a whole.

I can't speak for Clark, but this hits the nail on the head for me and Slumbering Tsar. Not only would be the update have been a near-total rewrite, but it would have drastically changed the feel and balance of the adventure as intended. I'm not bashing 4e here, I write for 3.5, 4e, and PF. I'm just saying there is a very real difference in the technique of making them and the feel of what they produce, and ST is very much an atmospheric adventure. The more frenetic style I have seen and written for 4e did not fit as well. Now certainly 4e is continuing to develop and may already be to that point, but what I'm saying is that it was beyond my personal abilities at the time (there's my mea culpa ) to capture what I was trying to capture with the adventures and to do it in a 4e format. Plus the trilogy clocks in at near 500,000 words (ST1 represents about 20% of the total), and converting all of that would have been far more than my schedule could have handled.

So there it is from the angle of ST1 for what it's worth...

 

[Truth Seeker]

Yes, there will be a 'diffferent' feel, when reworked to another system, something indeed will get lost in the translation.

But if I was a creator, and was told that (about being change to 4E mechanics).

I would give the money back.

And I will take back my work.

But that is just me.

Greg is right on. Reworkings of 3E stuff for 4E--straight conversions, that is--just doesnt seem to work well. That means the whole adventure would need to be redone. That, frankly, is too much to ask of an author in my book. And you know what, I like 3.5. I like it alot. There are things about 4E I really like, but I have never jumped on the 3.5 is broken bandwagon. It had its faults, yes. But it is a great system.

 

[SteveC]

I'm going to have to disagree with the points about how 3X adventures can't directly be mapped over to 4E without tremendous effort. It's not every day that you get to disagree with some of your favorite adventure writers, so I'll give it a go. I'm not trying to tell anyone how to do their jobs, but I think this is really being over thought.

Some adventures will have difficulty being updated, and I'd say typically that those would be adventures that have natural pauses and breaks built in to account for resting. The problem is, most adventures don't have that built in at all. Certainly most Necromancer adventures don't have that built in. Building in more space for the battle is more of a cartographic issue, and having interesting battles, well, a boring battle in 3X will likely still be dull in 4E -- and vice versa.

Let's take a look at some existing adventures of different kinds:

When I think about Abysthor, or the Lost City, (two of my go-to adventures from Necromancer Games) I think of largely site based adventures that let the adventurers come and go (largely) as they please, with no time constraint (other than wandering monsters, of course). How any adventure like this would be different under 4E is a mystery to me, since the group would likely handle about the same number of encounters (perhaps one or two more, depending on difficulty) and then leave off to rest.

For a small, site-based adventure, you might have some difficulty, but I know of so many groups who essentially rest after any difficult encounter to go at it full strength that any internal encounter balance that's been done will largely be ignored. So Larin Karr (another favorite) wouldn't take too much work to convert either.

So then we're left with "time sensitive" adventures. Well, the the last 3X game I ran was the Shackled City Adventure Path. If you recall the first adventure, it's a race through a dungeon to rescue kidnapped children. My group took the bait and decided they were going to run the whole thing and not rest at all until they got to the kids. The problem was they were first level, and there was virtually no chance that was going to work. What I ended up with were several near TPKs as the group said, "I know we need to rest, but we've got to get those kids out!" If anything, a 4E conversion of that adventure would run better. I would similarly say that the first Burning Sky adventure (where I have both the 3X and 4E versions) runs much better in terms of making the group feel like they can get what they need done in a reasonable amount of time.

So what I'm saying is the notion of adventure design in 4E really doesn't need to be that different from 3X. In fact, it can free the writer from some arbitrary additions they might make to allow a group to rest for a day.

Just my thoughts...and I'll still miss these adventures. I'll be back when Necro makes something for 4E.

--Steve

 

[Remathilis]

I'm going to have to disagree with the points about how 3X adventures can't directly be mapped over to 4E without tremendous effort.

I've found that the big problem comes in later adventures (levels 5+ in earlier D&D) were never designed to take into account the new resting mechanic and the slowed power progression. To Whit, a favorite DCC of mine assumes that 9th level PCs have access to flight/teleport magic of some vein or form. In 4e, you don't really have access to said magic until 16th or higher (barring a few short-range teleports). That makes direct mapping very difficult, since 9th level PCs cannot accomplish an element of the module with substantial re-write. The same is sometimes true of monsters; A dedicated DM must make sure all the encounters match appropriate level challenge in 4e (often raising/lowering monster level or substituting) or fights become odd slogs. (Grindy, easy, or boring). That's very different from replacing 1e stats with 3e stats!

So while true conversions CAN be done, they typically either fail to take into account 4e's design paragrim shift OR they end up practically new modules anyway only sharing the faintest minimum continuity with the original.

 

[AllisterH]

Er, wouldn't that 3e adventure that at 9th level that necessitates flight screw over any non-wizard/druid party. Many a cleric and sorceror don't have flight at that level.

 

[MichaelSomething]

a favorite DCC of mine assumes that 9th level PCs have access to flight/teleport magic of some vein or form. In 4e, you don't really have access to said magic until 16th or higher (barring a few short-range teleports).

The thing is every level a 3E character has is equal to 1.5 levels of a 4E character. So 9th level 3E PC = 13.5 level 4E PC. I guess it's not close enough but it would be more fesible for a 13/14 level 4E PC to get teleports somehow.

 

[delericho]

I'm going to have to disagree with the points about how 3X adventures can't directly be mapped over to 4E without tremendous effort. It's not every day that you get to disagree with some of your favorite adventure writers, so I'll give it a go. I'm not trying to tell anyone how to do their jobs, but I think this is really being over thought.

You can certainly do a direct port of an adventure, and end up with something that works. However, the results may well be less satisfying that just running the same adventure in its native system, and will almost certainly be less satisfying than running an adventure built for that system from the ground up.

Building in more space for the battle is more of a cartographic issue, and having interesting battles, well, a boring battle in 3X will likely still be dull in 4E -- and vice versa.

There's more to it than simply expanding the battleground, although this is certainly a big factor.

To a large extent, 3e encounter design tended to rely on the single, powerful creature. By contrast, 4e generally assumes that the 'standard' encounter features a number of monsters equal to the number of PCs. (Also, the standard assumption is that a 'challenging' 3e encounter will drain some 20% of the party's resources; 'challenging' 4e encounters seem to be somewhat tougher, largely because of the at-will and per-encounter powers.)

Furthermore, when 3e adventures did use multiple opponents in a single encounter, these were very often a homogenous group ("4 Orcs", "2 Fire Giants"...). In 4e, the stated advice is to go for mixed groups - a Controller with two Brutes, or a Mastermind with some minions (or whatever - I forget the terminology).

(And, yes, the point made up-thread about the expectations for 'cool' terrain features being higher in 4e adventures is probably true - although there's no great reason why this has to be so.)

What this means is that, rather than do a direct port of the adventure from system to system, it's probably better to regroup the monsters into fewer, bigger encounters. Or perhaps even redo the adventure from the ground up.

The 4e encounter design guidelines are one of the great strengths of the system. (And I say that despite not being a particular fan of 4e.) IMO it would be crazy to publish a direct port of a 3e adventure, unless it happened to fit those guidelines reasonably well - why bother if you're going to dim one of the highlights of the system?

 

[Remathilis]

Er, wouldn't that 3e adventure that at 9th level that necessitates flight screw over any non-wizard/druid party. Many a cleric and sorceror don't have flight at that level.

A cleric could use air walk (Clr4), druids could use air walk (drd4) or wildshape, a sorcerer or wizard could use spider climb (wiz2), flight (wiz3), levitate (wiz2), dimension door (wiz4), teleport (wiz5), overland flight (wiz5), polymorph (wiz4), or alter self (wiz2). Oh, and clerics, sorcerers and wizards could all summon a celestial griffon (SM V) while druids can summon a regular griffon (SNA V). That doesn't even begin to touch the potential of magical items!

So if your party lacks a cleric, druid, wizard or sorcerer, then yes it does screw over your party. However, if you lack a major caster in 3e, you have bigger problems to worry about!

 

[keterys]

One of our later 3e parties had a favored soul and a warmage, so wouldn't have had those spells.

And even if you had a cleric, they likely didn't have Air Walk or Summon Monster prepared so that would require stopping for a day.