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Orcus of Necromancer Games says "You were right, I was wrong"
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<blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 4958059" data-attributes="member: 22424"><p>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.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>There's more to it than simply expanding the battleground, although this is certainly a big factor.</p><p></p><p>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.)</p><p></p><p>Furthermore, when 3e adventures <em>did</em> 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).</p><p></p><p>(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 <em>has</em> to be so.)</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="delericho, post: 4958059, member: 22424"] 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. 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 [i]did[/i] 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 [i]has[/i] 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? [/QUOTE]
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