What's really at stake in the Edition Wars

[Dannyalcatraz]

4e did try to offer conversions from 3e.

Where? When? I was a Dragon subscriber and never saw one bit of that. I saw suggestions that we retire old campaigns and start anew.

There were new versions of classes and races with the new mechanics, but there was no guide for converting your 3.X era game to 4Ed like there was for the 2Ed=>3Ed changeover.

4e did offer all the base classes that had been in the game since 1e, anfd all the base races that had been in the PHB since 1e. They just didn't do all those things in the PHB.

Which made those of us who were interested in converting right now ticked off.

The hype was fresh. The game was new. We were set to convert our PCs to the new system and run some adventures...

and we couldn't. Not until some future point uncertain when they decide its time to reintroduce what they excised?

By the time those elements were brought back into the game, 4Ed had been relegated to dust-catcher status. (Ship had sailed, train had left the station, etc.) The game we wanted to play wasn't the game that was released.

(See the mock Kanye West statement above.)

 

[ProfessorCirno]

4e did try to offer conversions from 3e.
4e did offer all the base classes that had been in the game since 1e, anfd all the base races that had been in the PHB since 1e. They just didn't do all those things in the PHB.

It absolutely is possible to make a 3e campaign work with 4e. Many people have done it. You can even make a conversion ideas thread here, and I think you will find many helpful conversion ideas.

Then they didn't - past tense - offer those things.

They offer them now, yes.

But when 4e came out, no. They didn't offer conversions and all the base classes and races.

But I suspect approximately zero people in existance was ready to wait for another year to get all their stuff released to change over their campaign.

As for conversions, no, they didn't offer them. They said "Just start over again, in all honesty." And hey, they were honest about it. But that's not exactly the best way of getting previous people on board.

 

[FireLance]

Then they didn't - past tense - offer those things.

They offer them now, yes.

But when 4e came out, no. They didn't offer conversions and all the base classes and races.

But I suspect approximately zero people in existance was ready to wait for another year to get all their stuff released to change over their campaign.

As for conversions, no, they didn't offer them. They said "Just start over again, in all honesty." And hey, they were honest about it. But that's not exactly the best way of getting previous people on board.

This does raise an interesting issue, though. One sentiment that I do not often see expressed on messageboards (and I will be happy to be corrected if I am wrong) is a statement of intent along the lines of: "The new edition does not have sufficient material for me to convert my ongoing campaign, so I will continue to play using the old edition and only change over to the new one when it does."

The impression I get from the messageboard posts that I have read is that the ability to convert existing characters, etc. is only a secondary concern. The primary dissatisfaction is that the new edition delivers a gameplay experience which the non-converters would not want anyway, even if it was possible to convert every character and element of the ongoing campaign from the old edition to the new.

I wonder if it is because the majority of gamers today no longer favor extended ongoing campaigns, and thus, depending on whether they prefer the gameplay experience of the new edition or not, most groups would either start a new campaign with the new edition (perhaps after one final world-changing adventure in the old campaign to bring it to a close), or continue an existing campaign with the old one.

 

[Cadfan]

Where? When? I was a Dragon subscriber and never saw one bit of that. I saw suggestions that we retire old campaigns and start anew.

There were new versions of classes and races with the new mechanics, but there was no guide for converting your 3.X era game to 4Ed like there was for the 2Ed=>3Ed changeover.

There was, sort of. It was mostly a list of suggested ways to use the existing 4e classes and some house rules and reskinnings to create reasonable approximations of 3e classes that didn't yet exist in 4e, or which were never going to exist in 4e. There was no algorithmic conversion guide that procedurally translated material from 3e to 4e.

Which is probably for the best. Those things always suck. I'm a little mystified why so many people want them. Its like poor Charlie Brown and the football, Kierkegaard, and the Knight of Faith. Past experience never quite informs future hopes.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

This does raise an interesting issue, though. One sentiment that I do not often see expressed on messageboards (and I will be happy to be corrected if I am wrong) is a statement of intent along the lines of: "The new edition does not have sufficient material for me to convert my ongoing campaign, so I will continue to play using the old edition and only change over to the new one when it does."

The impression I get from the messageboard posts that I have read is that the ability to convert existing characters, etc. is only a secondary concern. The primary dissatisfaction is that the new edition delivers a gameplay experience which the non-converters would not want anyway, even if it was possible to convert every character and element of the ongoing campaign from the old edition to the new.

The interest in conversion is only partly about keeping existing campaigns alive. Its also a litmus test for whether the game plays the way you do.

For me, its like buying a car. At one point in my life, I thought about buying a Toyota 4Runner. The dealership told me they had just sold their demo. I told them to make a new car the demo. They said no. I told them I wasn't going to spend that money on a vehicle without a test drive.

One of the ways I've "test driven" a new version of D&D was in converting old PCs or campaign elements to see if they still felt the same. That exercises is partly about the mechanics and partly about fluff and partly about legacy games in general.

4Ed was the first to fail that test. Some PCs converted OK, but didn't retain the same feel- the fluff was wrong. Some converted OK, but had radically different capabilities than they did in previous editions- the mechanics were wrong. Others didn't convert at all- from the perspective of the day, the legacy had been ditched. (FWIW, I'm talking about PCs from my old campaigns and also those originating from more recent, 3.XEd era games.)

I didn't take the system for my traditional test drive because, frankly, there was nothing for me to test. I didn't feel the need to try new PCs- 4Ed didn't support my playstyle.

 

[Lanefan]

My quibble is with the idea that 3e is backwards compatible with 2e.

That was my biggest squawk when 3e came out - lack of backwards compatibility. 10 years and 1 edition later, I'm still squawkin'.

Having rewritten more than a few 1e and 2e modules and seen the rewrites done by others, it's a lot of work because the scaling is completely different. Backwards compatibility doesn't only mean on the player side of the screen. Encounter numbers in 1e and 2e modules would crush PC groups in 3e because the monsters got SO much stronger. So, you have to tweak just about every single encounter to make them work.

Oddly enough, it's not that hard to convert the other way: 3e adventures to 1e. Just ignore all the feats and funky abilities, and some of the spells, and it (at least at low-ish levels) falls rather nicely into place.

I just got done running Forge of Fury - well, half of it anyway; they bailed without exploring the rest as soon as they'd done what they went to do - for my 1e-variant group, and the actual conversion was much easier than I'd expected. (the module itself was horribly laid out, what with the main monster write-ups being at the back rather than in with the write-up of where they would be met, but that's another issue) There's a couple of other 3e/d20 adventures I'd like to run someday as well.

Lan-"Orcs don't come with little edition numbers stamped on their foreheads"-efan

 

[DaveyJones]

To which I must counter: at least they gave us a conversion guide, at least base classes that had been in the game since 1Ed were not excised, at least base races that had been in the PHB since 1Ed were not booted out, etc.

By comparison, 4Ed didn't even try.

3Ed gave us enough backwards compatibility that a campaign that had been active since the mid 1980s was still viable without major revision.

I could tell with a single readthrough of the PHB that it wasn't even possible to make that campaign work within 4Ed.

TSR gave us a conversion guide before the release of 2edADnD too.

and they use to send out a catalog of available products and ones in the making.

online ones for the 2000ed seemed to work for the most part.

 

[Psion]

That was my biggest squawk when 3e came out - lack of backwards compatibility. 10 years and 1 edition later, I'm still squawkin'.

Yup.

I did conversions of parts of Undermountain and Return to the Tomb of Horrors.

Undermountain was a minor deal. Fortunately, I found I could tweak most encounters pretty easily by adding class levels.

Tome of Horrors was a bigger deal. Above CR 10 or so, there's WIDE variation between the target power level between 1e/2e and 3e. I totally had to punt the 3e mountain giant and make my own (actually a templated hill giant, BID).

4e takes this a step further by changing creature concepts.

 

[Scribble]

4e takes this a step further by changing creature concepts.

What I find interesting is that I think converting a 2e or 1e monster into 4e is pretty easy, but converting the adventures, as you said, can be a lot trickier.

 

[mudbunny]

As for conversions, no, they didn't offer them. They said "Just start over again, in all honesty." And hey, they were honest about it. But that's not exactly the best way of getting previous people on board.

I remember them saying "finish your current campaign, and then start a new one in 4E". I also remember them saying that if you did want to switch to 4E mid-campaign, the best idea would be to take the soul or spirit of your character and build a 4E character from there.