What Do You Want In A Converted Adventure?

[Dannager]

Imagine that you're considering running an adventure made for a system or edition that you don't play. If someone were to do the work of converting that adventure for you, what would you like to have provided?

I do a lot of conversion work, and I'm trying to decide what the best format to present conversions in would be, along with what I should be including. While voting in the poll is great, expanding on your thoughts in the thread is even better.

Thanks!

 

[Aegeri]

Personally the most important thing and something some conversions forget is that 4E is a different system. It seems obvious, but the worst mistake when converting is trying to be too literal instead of maintaining the spirit of the encounter. A simple example is when you have 3 orcs in an encounter for 3.x. Now this works fine in that system because 3 orcs can actually do a lot of damage, but the same 3 orcs in 4E might not even be an encounter. Replacing with appropriate monsters and an appropriate mix of monsters is essential.

Additionally, conversions that extend on the original work into 4Es framework work much better. Adding in terrain powers, hazards and similar to an encounter makes it feel more dynamic and more "built" for 4E. Another important consideration is the changing of area maps or encounter areas. 4E doesn't like a 1x1 corridor with 2 murderous mushrooms in it. A bigger space with more terrain and nuances is essential. Additionally there isn't the same flexibility in things like flight and teleportation in 4E compared to say 3.x. So higher level encounters basically metagamed to prevent half this stuff from working don't need to keep it for balance anymore.

Those are just a few general things I tend to think about, but after that it's all completely specific to what I'm trying to do.

 

[TerraDave]

I would caveat Aegeri a little bit. Keep the orcs, but maybe combine with another encounter nearby, or add a dire boar. Or make the orcs tougher or elite (very easy in 4E). Try to keep the style and details of that adventure. But otherwise, yes, make spaces bigger as needed or combine encounters so they cover more area, throw in some twists (though the classic adventures often already have many), etc.

 

[the Jester]

My votes assume that I'm not running from notes and the original.

 

[renau1g]

Yeah, I convert a lot of Paizo's work to 4e and there's tons of combining of encounters, so a 12-encounter dungeon gets shrunk to 4-5 or so with larger encounter areas.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Broadly, I want the converted adventure to not feel like a converted adventure.

 

[Dannager]

I should clarify that I'm not necessarily looking for standard advice on converting adventures to 4e. It's certainly helpful, but to be honest, I've heard pretty much all of it before. What I'm specifically looking for is feedback on what information you would want to have in front of you if you were running a converted adventure - if you opened up a conversion document (or website, or whatever), what elements would you like for it to contain? What format would you like it to be in? What sections would you be happy to see in its encounter write-ups? What would make you say "Oh, cool, I'm glad he included that."?

And yes, I should note that this assumes you will be running the adventure using both the original adventure and the conversion, since I can't republish information from the original adventure.

 

[IanB]

DM/player advice stuff is by far the least important. Encounter details and stat blocks are the most important and the only *truly* necessary thing. (although I can even get by without stat blocks if you're using standard stuff out of the Compendium.)

Properly calculated treasure placement and a summary of where you expect characters to level are also very useful.

Updated maps with interactive terrain added are nice, but not strictly necessary; assuming I own the thing you've converted, that kind of thing is pretty easy to do on the fly. (For anything that someone can go out and buy their own copy of I think leaving out the maps is probably the right thing to do, really. Conversions shouldn't stop the original publisher from getting their money.)

PDF is going to hands down win the format question.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Mainly stat blocks, which means encounters. The story and such like that does not change all that much.

I find it odd a lot of people chose pdf as their most important change. Scanning an old module and then rereleasing it does not seem it would help much.

 

[IanB]

Who said anything about scanning the original? I just want the conversion document in PDF form so I can easily read/print it from different platforms (say, my home PC, or my Xoom, or my phone...)