Planning to convert? (not just upgrade)

[Mercule]

I'll have to see what 4E has to offer and where the game is at the time it's released.

I'm currently running a homebrew that is expected to run to 30th level (currently 12th). I doubt it'l be done by then, but might be close. It's a pretty high-prep game, so if a 4E conversion looks to be a gain, I'll go with it. Unfortunately, psionics are critical to the campaign arc, so the magic-as-psi fill in needs to be pretty convincing or XPH needs to be semi-compatible with 4E.

My other campaign is an Age of Worms group and just finished 3FoE. I've "rezoned" the game to Eberron and one of the PCs is a Kalashtar psion with Vow of Poverty (it's a beer and pretzels game and I wanted to see just how broken it was), so that'd be difficult to convert, too. Unless that PC dies, of course.

Otherwise, I, too, have a bunch of modules for 3.5, including Savage Tides, Ravenloft, and Rappan Athuk Reloaded. I'll probably keep my 3.5 core books around to run those adventures, but ditch the others. If conversion looks beneficial, I'll convert them -- but, as a homebrewer of 25+ years, I really only use modules when I'm feeling lazy.

 

[Hrothgar Rannúlfr]

I'm either looking at raiding 4E for house rules for 3.5 or converting to 4E and turning what I want to keep from 3.5 into feats and/or talent trees.

 

[Jhaelen]

IME, you don't see a lot of obscure PrCs and feats when it comes to modules. Publishers generally try to market to the biggest possible audience, so they don't want to use stuff that only a handful of people might know about or have access to.

Well, that was mostly true until WotC switched to the Delve format. Those adventures draw from over a dozen supplementary sources each.

As much as I would have liked to get something like 'Expedition to Castle Greyhawk', I don't think there's a point since I am sure I won't get to play it using the 3.5 ruleset. Conversion will be extremely difficult, since you'll have to replace all of the encounters, won't be able to use the described tactics, etc. You'll basically have to rewrite the whole thing.

It's difficult enough to convert 3.0 adventures to 3.5, I don't even want to think about the effort involved to translate it faithfully into 4th.ed.

 

[wedgeski]

I'm building a homebrew that I've ripped all of the crunch out of and will re-start it with 4e. It's my first homebrew and as long as the 4e game is good (which it should be, it's just a question of *how* good), I want to start with a fresh system as well. Unfortunately getting my group to switch over is going to be a nightmare.

 

[StarFyre]

convert

We will convert...

WIth years of experience DM'ing planescape campaigns with all sorts of weird races (some custom made from monsters) and our current 3.5E game using several custom rules, modified monsters (since 3.5E took away the flavour from a monster by simplifying it too much, etc) I think we'll manage.

It may take longer...read entire PHB and learn how to do it...but we'll manage


My current planescape campaign characters:

* 1 dwarf (infected lycanthrope) fighter
* 1 halfling thief/sorceror
*1 elven cleric
* 1 aasimar wild mage (lots of custom rules for this class to bring back the flavour/randomness of the 2E specialist wild mage)
* 1 half orc barbarian
* 1 elven wizard
* 1 human swordsage
* 1 lillendi bard (some added abilities/benefits to bring back the flavour/background from 2E Planescape Planes of Chaos set)

Regards,

Sanjay

 

[Agamon]

I like picking up the well made 3.5e adventures that are published. Unfortunately, there is no way I could run them all before 4e comes out, and if 4e is streamlining gameplay the way it promises, I'd prefer to run these campaigns with the new ruleset.

WotC, however, claims that there will not be an easy way to convert. In fact, they said outright, "finish your 3.5 campaigns." Still, I wouldn't mind attempting to take the better adventure material and making it 4e compliant.

The simpler PC class builds should convert just fine. But I doubt all the obscure prestige classes and feats with all the classed monsters will convert so well, unfortunately.

What do you think? Are you planning on attempting conversions anyway?

This got my goat when 4E was first announced, too. But by "not easy to convert", I think they refer to converting PCs, not adventures.

I will be finishing my AoW game in 3.5, and it may take a year or so to do it. Then I'm running an M&M game and maybe a WFRP game. When I come back to D&D, it will likely be 4E, and probably the Pathfinder Rise of the Runelords AP, which I'll be converting. I've converted 1E and B/X mods to 3.0 and 3.5, I can't see 3.5 mods being too difficult to convert to 4E.

 

[Jack99]

I like picking up the well made 3.5e adventures that are published. Unfortunately, there is no way I could run them all before 4e comes out, and if 4e is streamlining gameplay the way it promises, I'd prefer to run these campaigns with the new ruleset.

WotC, however, claims that there will not be an easy way to convert. In fact, they said outright, "finish your 3.5 campaigns." Still, I wouldn't mind attempting to take the better adventure material and making it 4e compliant.

The simpler PC class builds should convert just fine. But I doubt all the obscure prestige classes and feats with all the classed monsters will convert so well, unfortunately.

What do you think? Are you planning on attempting conversions anyway?

Yes. So many good adventures that I havent run, both 2e and 3e, since i mostly do my own stuff, but occassionally, I do a published one.

That said, adventures are amongst the easiest things to convert, as small changes rarely will destroy the adventure.

 

[Jer]

I like picking up the well made 3.5e adventures that are published. Unfortunately, there is no way I could run them all before 4e comes out, and if 4e is streamlining gameplay the way it promises, I'd prefer to run these campaigns with the new ruleset.

...

What do you think? Are you planning on attempting conversions anyway?

I've come to the conclusion that, except in a few very rare cases[*], a direct conversion of modules between any editions is not the way to go anyway. An encounter balanced for Basic D&D, or 1e, or 2e was never necessarily balanced for 3e to begin with. And 4e and 3e sound like they are going to have very different balancing mechanics, so a straight conversion will probably be an unbalanced mess. I did multiple conversions early on in the 3e lifecycle for my groups and resorted to "thematic conversions" in the end because the encounter balances were so far off. It turned out to be almost as much work as designing a new adventure from scratch in some cases.

So on the whole, no, I'm not planning on converting much of anything to 4e. My current campaign is 3.5e and I've assured my players that it will remain 3.5e until they hit 20th level, we get bored and stop playing, or they fumble their way into a TPK . I just convinced a few of them to pick up their own PHBs a few months back, for one thing, and they were annoyed that as soon as they finally bought the book - wham - upgrade time. Plus, we converted the campaign from 3.0e to 3.5e and that was annoying enough even though it was a really minor change.

I too own a ton of 3.5e adventure material - an entire run of Dungeon magazines from the 3.0 conversion on for starters. But unlike 2e, 3.5e is "good enough" for me and my group to play even if something better comes along. So I'll just pull it off the shelf and run them that way. (Much as I'm still willing to do with my Rules Cyclopedia -based games).

 

[Piratecat]

I expect few problems with converting 3e modules once I master the 4e rules; heck, I can convert 1e and 2e materials on the fly, and I doubt it'll be more difficult than that. I see far more issues with converting the 21st-23rd level heroes in my campaign.

As a result, I'm finishing my campaign in 3.5e, but I'll probably use old adventures to help support my new 4e game.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

My homebrew is loose enough that there's very little that I'll need to convert. Most of it can just be created whole cloth under the new system.

I will probably want to convert any spells or magic items that have been important to the campaign, and I don't foresee that being a huge problem.

There is a BBEG and a MBEG that I will have to take a good look at, when it comes time to convert them, but I wouldn't be in the least surprised if both showed up in the 4E MM, so I might well get lucky.