Tough transition - 2nd to 3.5

[Scratched_back]

Hi all,

I'm 21 now, and I've been gaming every week since I was 14. Obviously when I began, 3rd ed wasn't even in the pipeline so my gaming group and I (all a lot older than myself, incidentally) played 2nd ed also using the player's options series.

THERE IS A POINT TO THIS, DON'T CLICK AWAY

Basically, when we made the jump to 3rd ed, there was a lot of grumbling from half the party, your typical 35+ "we know what THAC0 is and we love it - Don't change it if it's not broken" type people, I'm sure we all know some.

Although we've been playing 3rd ed (and now moved on to 3.5 now) for a good while, some of the players are involved in other campaigns being run in 2nd ed and still complain about the odd 3.5 rule here or mechanic there.

STAY WITH ME, I'M ALMOST DONE!

What I'm looking to do is have my DM (who is all for 3.5 100%) run some of the "classics" in 3.5. Some of the adventures that my older players will have played when they were younger, attached to a strong sense of nostalgia. I think this will help bring them on board with 3.5.

I was thinking:

* Ravenloft (personal motive, I've never played it and always wanted to!)
* Against The Giants (the full series)
* Slavers
* White Plume Mountain
* Tomb of Horrors (cue "Dan Dann Daaaaaaaaaaaa")

1) I'd love to know if anyone else has had a similar problem, and how it was overcome.

2) Has anyone converted the above modules and played them successfully? Did they translate well?

3) Can anyone think of other modules that might be handy to help me in my cause?

Cheers everyone, for your help and patience!

I'M DONE, YOU CAN GO NOW... AFTER YOU REPLY

 

[painandgreed]

1. No. All my 1 & 2 E people changed over without a quibble. Of course, we all started with 3.5 and playing LA monster races which wasn't really possible under earlier rules but something we always wanted to do.

2. Conversions are out there. Personally, I just run the modules as is and ad hoc everything till I encounter a monster and then pull out the 3.5 Monster Manual and begin battle.

3. Keep on the Borderlands - Start at first level and play up. Classic module with easy to conduct combat with basic monsters. It has a soft spot in all old players hearts and is meant to be a training module. I did it with no preparation other than having a monster manual present and it workes well ( I had to flub a little as the players stumbled into the ogre first off but it was all a learning adventure for everybody).

 

[Kae'Yoss]

The first gaming circle I played in refused to play 3e. One of the reasons was that "character generation took too long because you had to assign too many points to skills". My solution was to abandon this circle (but that was more due to the fact that over 90% of the sessions were cancelled last minute because people just didn't show up.) A couple of the members of this circle are in one of the two I play in now, and are happy with the rules.

 

[DarrenGMiller]

I never went 2E, but instead stayed with 1E, then went 3.x. My first 3E campaign was exactly what you want to do. I started with a low level adventure from the Greyhawk Adventures hardcover to hone my conversion skills, then used such classics as:

Ghost Tower of Inverness
Falcon series
White Plume Mountain

In another game I used:
The Forest Oracle (N2)
Destiny of Kings

Yet a another game:
Saltmarsh series (U1-3)

Current campaign has used T1 Village of Hommlett.

I also want to someday use:
The Sentinel and Gauntlet
A1-4
GDQ series
Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth
Keep on the Borderlands (I have a conversion of the Return to KotB)

I could go on...

Just be careful of CR's/EL's as without some really careful conversion they can become quite skewed. Check out the ENWORLD Conversion Library over at the conversions subforum of the rules forum.

DM

 

[Numenorean]

Hi all,

I'm 21 now, and I've been gaming every week since I was 14. Obviously when I began, 3rd ed wasn't even in the pipeline so my gaming group and I (all a lot older than myself, incidentally) played 2nd ed also using the player's options series.

THERE IS A POINT TO THIS, DON'T CLICK AWAY

Basically, when we made the jump to 3rd ed, there was a lot of grumbling from half the party, your typical 35+ "we know what THAC0 is and we love it - Don't change it if it's not broken" type people, I'm sure we all know some.

I'm 33, my group tends to be older and we went through this exact scenario. We even went from 3e, back to 1st, and then back to 3.5e. Talk about a change .. yet the campaign survived.

Although we've been playing 3rd ed (and now moved on to 3.5 now) for a good while, some of the players are involved in other campaigns being run in 2nd ed and still complain about the odd 3.5 rule here or mechanic there.

Hmmm ... check out my house rules. I call them 3.5e with a traditional or classic AD&D feel .. They might help you out, or give you ideas on where to start?

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=126766

What I'm looking to do is have my DM (who is all for 3.5 100%) run some of the "classics" in 3.5. Some of the adventures that my older players will have played when they were younger, attached to a strong sense of nostalgia. I think this will help bring them on board with 3.5.

I was thinking:

* Ravenloft (personal motive, I've never played it and always wanted to!)
* Against The Giants (the full series)
* Slavers
* White Plume Mountain
* Tomb of Horrors (cue "Dan Dann Daaaaaaaaaaaa")

Be careful. For example G1-2-3 is for levels 9-12 in old 1st edition, however my opinion is if you run it in 3.5 you would want your party to be about 14th level or so? I mean fighting giants like they are goblin fodder requires some levels in 3.5e.

We ran A-2 using 3.5e and it worked out fine.

I would advise caution for the others. The level requirement might float a bit? EN World used to have a bunch of classic conversions that were priceless. I would look for them on here.

1) I'd love to know if anyone else has had a similar problem, and how it was overcome.

Our problem was not being 100% happy with 3.5e. We were stuck on a couple rules snags too. We simply wrote house rules that shaped 3.5e in what we wantes to play. It fixed our problems fine.

2) Has anyone converted the above modules and played them successfully? Did they translate well?

Check for EN world's conversions. I know G1-2-3 got a lot tougher. A-2 was about the same except that a couple key NPCs such as Icar got a bit tougher.

3) Can anyone think of other modules that might be handy to help me in my cause?

It is of my opinion that the UK series of old 1st edition AD&D modules were some of the finest ever written, especially the Sentinel and Gauntlet. Check those out. They are great! When a Star Falls is also a good module to start a campaign with (I believe its 1st-3rd). But all in all check out the entire UK module line. They are exceptional and have a very nice classic fantasy feel, sort of Tolkien-esque.

Cheers everyone, for your help and patience!

I'M DONE, YOU CAN GO NOW... AFTER YOU REPLY

Good luck. I know this can be a challenge, but it can also be overcome. Two years ago I would have told you what a steaming pile of crap 3.5e D&D was ... but with a few house rule modifications its become my favorite system, and I've been gaming since 81'

 

[Luce]

1. yes for a time. One solution is to give a very good explanation why "the rules" changed. Luckily my group was just in the process of completing "Die, Vecna, die." Which involves a diety level creature excaping his prison and trying to rework the universe in his own design. This can have preaty wild effect on magic(since he patrons magic and sicrets). For sorcerers, psyonics etc classes that were not avaliable. well make it so they were there all along in the campaign, just the playeres did not know they from the given class. the idea is give some explanation for the chages.

2. I tryed to rework some of my favorites from Dungeon mag "Forgoten man" "Cum Keratic cum amor" (it is loosely tied to White Plume M. and in the same region geograficaly)(dungeon 71 &75 I beleave). The thing is they do not scale so well. In the first 10level party is supposed to go against 18l lich. In the other ~14 level party is against epic (29l I think) undead mage.(<Side note>One of the things which still anoys me is limited scope of CR a party can face in 3.X, in 2ed players are chalenged wheter they fight bugbears or an adult dragon at 10level. That is to say, i like the rules of 3ed, but miss the evocative feelings that prevous editions caused</Side note>)

RttToH if played using the 3ed version of the monsteres is very high(16-18)(18level mage vampire) to epic (30+) level adventure. Dark ball, demilich, winterwight are all in the ELH.

You might also want to take a look at story hour section of the boards, there were people who run conversions of Borderlands and RttToH(with some chages and twists, but still general enough to pilfer ideas from.

Lastly, while 2ed is not longer supported, there are still a lot of matherials in circulation that you can find cheap on ebay, so may be you could continue to run 2ed campaign for the dedicated fans.(I often run some older modules, when only one or two people show up for game night-I take out some pregenerated char let my friends choose 2-3 and run a 2ed section)

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

What I'm looking to do is have my DM (who is all for 3.5 100%) run some of the "classics" in 3.5. Some of the adventures that my older players will have played when they were younger, attached to a strong sense of nostalgia. I think this will help bring them on board with 3.5.

I was thinking:

* Ravenloft (personal motive, I've never played it and always wanted to!)
* Against The Giants (the full series)
* Slavers
* White Plume Mountain
* Tomb of Horrors (cue "Dan Dann Daaaaaaaaaaaa")

2) Has anyone converted the above modules and played them successfully? Did they translate well?

3) Can anyone think of other modules that might be handy to help me in my cause?

Funny you should mention those modules. I just started a new campaign, which will eventually include all of the Slavers series (A1-4), Ravenloft (I6), and Giants series (G1-3, D1-3, and Q1) converted to 3.5.

If you want to start at first level, do the Saltmarsh series (U1-3) first. I would have started this campaign with that series, but I already ran them (in 3.0) for my children and my son is playing in the new campaign.

The biggest issue for conversion is the power difference between the different editions. G1-3 are killer with a typical four-character 3.x party. You have to alter the NPCs/bad guys or be ready to handle the implications when the party retreats from the more powerful foes. And some of the unusual stuff seems silly in 3.x (an elf Fighter5/MagicUser5 -- who cares? -- anyone can multi-class in 3.x).

Also, if you convert stuff, a lot of the NPCs have very low stats compared to 3.x so you might want to up their stats a bit. And the conversions people have done are filled with bad builds (not just "not powerful" in combat, but downright ineffective builds), and lots of mistakes (NPCs have feats they don't qualify for, skill points don't add up, etc.).

I took a 3.0 conversion of Slavers and I'm converting it to 3.5 for this new campaign. It's taking a lot longer than I thought due to the poor quality of the initial 3.0 conversion. Still, the players had a lot of fun in the first session and we're playing again in a week. I'm keeping my campaign "core books only" (for both the conversions and the PCs). It makes everything simpler, but some players don't like playing without 42 supplements to choose from.

I would never make my players enter "Tomb of Horrors" (unless it turned out to be a dream!) since it's just the uber-meat-grinder adventure. A couple of years ago my group played it as a one-shot (with 1st ed. rules). I went through three characters in one night, and we never even got to the actual tomb. That was a lot of fun, but I don't think it would be fun at all in the context of an on-going campaign.

 

[the Jester]

I've run Return to the Tomb of Horrors in 3.5... it was good stuff! I'm currently playing a 3.5 version of S4 set in the Warhammer Fantasy setting with dnd rules. It's great.

Have you considered Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil? It's cool in that it really builds on the old school T modules... of course, a great classic move would be to run Village of Hommlet 3.5.

 

[scourger]

different expectations

I've encountered smiliar problems. The real issue, as I see it, is that different players have different expectations of what D&D IS and what it IS NOT. I took up running our 1st 3.0 game weekly after borrowing & reading a friend's PHB (which was a gift from another). My primary motivation was to "save" the AD&D game I ran on weekends so another out-of-town friend could be included. There was much grousing. All the players were RPG veterans of about 20 years. Some wanted Skills & tactics (thank goodness I never got into that game). Some wanted 1e--never have embraced 2e, THAC0, etc. Some wanted to not learn the rules at all and just play until somnehthing bad happened and then argue all sorts of rules new & old. I just wanted to run a core game. It got so bad that I took a break from it about 3 years ago and haven't returned.

We recently played through a classic 1e module using 1e rules. One player had an elf (or half-elf) cleric/wizard in full plate. I don't know how he got away with it, but that sure wasn't in my AD&D experience at all. It didn't match my expectations, but it sure seemed to satisfy his munchkinism (surely given a veneer of roleplaying).

I also tried converting an AD&D 2e Dungeon adventure to d20. It was fun, but overall too much work. Thankfully, the out-of-town friend moved out of state, so that campaing is finally over.

I don't think you will find it any better to try to relive the nostalgia of the old adventures. You'll probably hear comments like, "Remember how great this was before d20 screwed it up!?" There's just too much great new stuff to play without rehashing the classics. I recently sold off all my AD&D stuff. It's just not worth going backward. Find some new classics.

 

[billd91]

Most of the people I play with have been pretty happy with the transition to the 3E family of rules (there are some nits to pick here and there, especially with some of the spell changes from 3.0 to 3.5). With respect to THAC0 not being broken, it wasn't broken, sure. But in my group we pretty much immediately recognized that the new mechanic is simply superior on a number of levels and left it at that.