D&D 5E The Slumbering Tsar Saga (Frog God Games) and 5th edition?

[qu0zl]

The Pathfinder/Rise of the Runelords campaign that I'm currently playing in should end in about 2 months - we're almost finished book 5 of 6 and we're flying through it as a bunch of fairly optimized semi-murder-hobos to be honest. I'm not a hobo, I have a house and family!

I was planning on running Frog God's Slumber Tsar saga because it's the most amazing sand-box campaign that I've ever seen! I bought the Pathfinder version of it.

Now though I'm really interested in playing 5th edition as it reminds me more of the earlier editions and their style that I love. An earlier edition style that Frog God Games stuff seems to me to fit well.

Has anybody run any of the Frog God Games stuff (especially their mega-sandboxes Slumbering Tsar or Sword of Air) under fifth ed? I wish that I'd bought the S&W version of Tsar now as I think that might be a more straight forward conversion to 5th ed. I could always buy the S&W PDF to go with my Pathfinder hard-back.

Is on-the-fly conversion at all realistic? With such a huge sandbox world part of the fun will be not knowing where the players are going to go. I'm sure that a lot of the time I'll know pretty much what's next but I'm hoping that there will be a lot of them controlling where they end up and I don't want to rail-road towards stuff that I have pre-converted.

I'm only new to 5th ed but I'm a quick learner and I have a very good knowledge of Pathfinder but I'm time poor - 3 young kids and a full-time job so I can't put hours of prep in each week.

Anybody doing this stuff? How's it working out for you? Any advice!

[edit] I obviously should have mentioned that they're currently doing a kickstarter that comes in 5th Edition - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/froggodgames/the-lost-lands-borderland-provinces I have backed that - it looks great - but I want to run Tsar very soon Maybe I'll do the Borderlands afterwards but I could see Tsar lasting a very long time. [/edit]

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I haven't dealt with those particular products, but I am running Rappan Athuk in 5th edition by basically just filling in the nearest 5th edition monster, magic item, and so on and it has been working out just fine.

Though I do advise either starting the 5th edition characters out at a level other than 1st even if the adventure says that it is for 1st level characters, or at least being mindful of the high fragility of 1st level characters and adjusting the early portion of the adventure accordingly.

 

[qu0zl]

Thanks Aaron, I'm glad to hear that. So 5th ed level 1s are more fragile than 3.x ed level 1s? I did not know that and I'll keep it in mind!

Also, where are you sourcing these 5th ed monster swap ins from? Are you using just the Core Monster Manual or do you have the FGG fifth edition foes or some one else's product?

I have the Monster Manual but don't have Fifth Edition Foes, though I'll probably get it.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

So 5th ed level 1s are more fragile than 3.x ed level 1s?

Its not that they are more fragile than 3.x, because both really only take 1-2 hits from a monster to go down - it's that 5th edition has a higher baseline to-hit expectation overall, so taking a hit is more likely. And at the same time, 5th edition characters that go down in a fight are much more likely to survive than a 3.x character.

So really you just have to be aware that 1st level 5th edition characters are likely to get dropped and get back up, so that they did get dropped shouldn't be viewed as severely as getting dropped in 3.x. And the whole situation can be mitigated by the DM choosing to use average damage for monsters instead of rolling (a thing which I do at all stages of play).

Also, where are you sourcing these 5th ed monster swap ins from? Are you using just the Core Monster Manual or do you have the FGG fifth edition foes or some one else's product?

The Monster Manual if at all possible, Fifth Edition Foes I use only if the Monster Manual doesn't have anything close to the actual monster and it does (not because I have anything against the book, I just only have it in PDF and already have PDFs open for the adventure material and maps so it is more convenient if I can use the hard copy monster manual for monster reference).

 

[qu0zl]

Thanks Aaron, I really appreciate the detailed replies.

I think I'll give it a go after our RoTR campaign ends. Stoneheart Valley (1-7) and then Slumbering Tsar (7+) in 5th ed I think it's probably time to order 5th ed foes, I was kind of looking for an excuse anyway to be honest.

 

[DM_Jeff]

I too got the Pathfinder version of Slumbering Tsar and now wish I'd got the S&W version. But I think the campaign would run much easier in 5e. Conversion of weird monsters can be done by copying the stablock and using this monster converter, not sure if it will pick up the exact formatting FFG uses or not...

http://marklenser.com/5econverter/

 

[qu0zl]

Thanks Jeff. I've book-marked that. I'm hoping to be able to swap in stat blocks from the Monster Manual or Fifth Ed Foes (I cracked and ordered that), rather than convert them, but that'll be very handy if I can't find something close enough.

 

[qu0zl]

I just saw on facebook that Frog God Games are doing a 30% off discount this week for their Lost Lands Stuff -

This week there is a customer appreciation sale on the Frog God Games website! All Lost Lands and Rappan Athuk titles are on sale for 30% Off! Use coupon code LOST-LANDS-30% during checkout and complete your Lost Lands collection today!
https://www.froggodgames.com/lost-lands

That doesn't cover Tsar but it does cover Stoneheart Valley which I'm planning on using as the low-level lead in to Tsar and it covers their other mega-sandbox 'Sword of Air'. It's all Pathfinder or S&W I think but if anyone else is interested in them then this week is a good time to buy them.

If anyone else gets experience running their books in 5th Ed I'd be very interested to hear about it. With about 2 months until my campaign starts I might do a bit of in-advance conversion of the major NPCs to 5th ed. Though I'm hoping to mostly use AaronOfBarbaria's approach as it sounds the quickest and easiest and I'm time poor.

 

[DaveMage]

Slumbering Tsar is only available as a Pathfinder version at the moment so those of you lamenting you didn't get the S&W version can stop lamenting.

And, yes, the adventure is awesome.

It's the best adventure I've ever run.

 

[qu0zl]

Greg Vaughan has given permission for a community Wiki based conversion of the system dependent components of Slumbering Tsar to Fifth edition. So I've built a site to host the conversion, and some tools so that it's very easy for anybody to add 5e conversion content. You don't need to know any HTML or web-programming stuff to use the site and it'll produce pretty monster stat-blocks for you if you just type the information.

Full details are here - http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ar-Saga-5e-conversion-wiki-(with-FGG-approval!)

I hope that some of you who are already running Tsar in 5e or are considering it, will put some of your home conversions into the Wiki for others to use. If we get a few people contributing then it won't take long to convert the Camp and the Desolation, and then expand into Tsar itself if we're brave enough

Direct link if you don't want to read the more detailed post linked above - http://www.tsar5e.com