Mercule
Adventurer
When we got the play test materials, I expected there to be a fairly regular (monthly?) update. The quick issue of the survey seemed to support that idea. Based on that assumption, we said, "Let's just play." The characters didn't have names for most of the first session, until someone started joking about them. The "local town" still doesn't have a name, and there are no NPCs defined.
That's worn kinda thin, though, and we're all getting bored of the basic slog. In retrospect, I can see where WotC put out a quick test, got a response, and just needs to parse everything. No worries. Still, I'd like to continue to participate in the play test, and I don't want to start up another game just in time to put it down. Nor do I have the free time to run two games, even temporarily.
I decided to see what it would take to build my own adventure with the materials provided. There are some goblins, some undead, some critters, and even some humans in the materials provided. As I was staring at my bookshelf, trying to get an inspiration for my new task, I noticed I had a copy of the first "Rise of the Runelords" AP, "Burnt Offerings". To be honest, I'd forgotten I had it, as I decided to take a break from D&D (and related stuff) about that time.
Initially, I thought I'd just browse it for adventure seeds and move on, but I realized it was a really well done adventure -- and mainly about goblins, for which I had stats. So, I started trying to convert it to 5e to see how hard some of the conversions would be. It turns out they really aren't that hard to eyeball a rough conversion. Sinspawn are as bugbear, but their wrathful bite just grants disadvantage with some flavor. Some are a bit more difficult, but still not horrible. I'm turning Koruvus into a berserker with his breath a reflavored burning hands. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with the barghest, so I hope we get another play test release before the group gets there.
This hasn't seen play, yet (next game is Tuesday). I may even just decide to pull out some of the unique bits and through some cultists and undead into the first dungeon and go from there. Regardless, I'm really, really excited by how easy it ended up being to just throw some stuff together and feel like I had a grasp on the difficulty/reward. I'm a bit concerned about the way large numbers of enemies come together (3e downplayed this more than I think 5e can handle), and I'm sure there are some mis-estimations, on my part. Still, I'm pretty confident in saying that it's all the sort of "get some experience under your belt" thing that made 1e such fun to GM. If 5e can keep that and shore up some of the AD&D weaknesses (lack of skills, too many subsystems), I am going to be very, very happy with 5e.
That's worn kinda thin, though, and we're all getting bored of the basic slog. In retrospect, I can see where WotC put out a quick test, got a response, and just needs to parse everything. No worries. Still, I'd like to continue to participate in the play test, and I don't want to start up another game just in time to put it down. Nor do I have the free time to run two games, even temporarily.
I decided to see what it would take to build my own adventure with the materials provided. There are some goblins, some undead, some critters, and even some humans in the materials provided. As I was staring at my bookshelf, trying to get an inspiration for my new task, I noticed I had a copy of the first "Rise of the Runelords" AP, "Burnt Offerings". To be honest, I'd forgotten I had it, as I decided to take a break from D&D (and related stuff) about that time.
Initially, I thought I'd just browse it for adventure seeds and move on, but I realized it was a really well done adventure -- and mainly about goblins, for which I had stats. So, I started trying to convert it to 5e to see how hard some of the conversions would be. It turns out they really aren't that hard to eyeball a rough conversion. Sinspawn are as bugbear, but their wrathful bite just grants disadvantage with some flavor. Some are a bit more difficult, but still not horrible. I'm turning Koruvus into a berserker with his breath a reflavored burning hands. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with the barghest, so I hope we get another play test release before the group gets there.
This hasn't seen play, yet (next game is Tuesday). I may even just decide to pull out some of the unique bits and through some cultists and undead into the first dungeon and go from there. Regardless, I'm really, really excited by how easy it ended up being to just throw some stuff together and feel like I had a grasp on the difficulty/reward. I'm a bit concerned about the way large numbers of enemies come together (3e downplayed this more than I think 5e can handle), and I'm sure there are some mis-estimations, on my part. Still, I'm pretty confident in saying that it's all the sort of "get some experience under your belt" thing that made 1e such fun to GM. If 5e can keep that and shore up some of the AD&D weaknesses (lack of skills, too many subsystems), I am going to be very, very happy with 5e.
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