D&D 4E Will 4E be backwards compatible?

[William Ronald]

My own opinion is that new editions should come after ever increasing periods of time. Because it logically takes longer & longer to find enough improvements to justify a new edition.

(Of course, I also tend to think that most changes end up being more of a trade-off than a clear improvement.)



Yes, they can attempt to make it easy, but it will still end up being hard or broken for more people. Because what is easy & what works in conversion for one person/group, is hard or is broken for other person/group. This is the fundamental problem. Even if they try to make a suite of conversion guides to try to please everyone, I suspect it would only be marginally less a failure than the 3e conversion guide was.

But, FWIW, in one of the GamerZer0 interviews, one of them (was it Rob?) said that they've heard the feedback & that they are realizing that because the approach of the 3e conversion guide was a failure, that doesn't mean they shouldn't do one at all for 4e.

But it sounds like it is going to essentially say, "You've got to figure it out yourself." (^_^)



I still play Magic with only my two starter decks & a handful of boosters. I just stopped playing with the guys who were beating me through their wallet.

I still play D&D although I've bought very, very few supplements.

I intend to play 4e whether I subscribe to Insider or not.

The way I took the remark on conversion was not to look at it as a techinical or formulaic approach, but an artistic approach. The remarks said to focus on the role of the character, and what makes that character unique.

Keeping this in mind, I can focus on the role or a monster, a class, or any other aspect of the game and ask what it is supposed to do and fit it in. So, I should be able to take an adventure, replace it with elements (traps and monsters) that fill the same roles in the new edition as it did in the prior edition. This may mean replacing a creature, or changing an encounter.

So, maybe look at conversion in 4E as more of an art than a science. So, perhaps focusing on the roles and the spirit of a character will make conversion easier.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

A new edition, I believe, shouldn't have to come for at least 20 years.

Do tell.

 

[RFisher]

Keeping this in mind, I can focus on the role or a monster, a class, or any other aspect of the game and ask what it is supposed to do and fit it in. So, I should be able to take an adventure, replace it with elements (traps and monsters) that fill the same roles in the new edition as it did in the prior edition. This may mean replacing a creature, or changing an encounter.

Exactly. Which is how most of us have been converting (often on-the-fly) from Basic D&D to AD&D, from AD&D to GURPS, from AD&D to Rolemaster, from AD&D to Hârnmaster, from 3e to 1e, from 1e to 3e, what-have-you for years.

The 3e conversion guide made people think that there was a single, formulaic, correct way to do it. But the formulaic conversions rarely came out well. As I've said before, the one good thing about it was that it could give you a bit of a jump-start when we weren't really familiar with 3e if you didn't assume that it was the single correct way to convert & used it more as a rough guide instead. & it wasn't particularly good at that either.

So, yeah, I expect there to be a conversion guide because of the reaction they've gotten. But I don't expect it to tell us much of anything we didn't all already know.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Exactly. Which is how most of us have been converting (often on-the-fly) from Basic D&D to AD&D, from AD&D to GURPS, from AD&D to Rolemaster, from AD&D to Hârnmaster, from 3e to 1e, from 1e to 3e, what-have-you for years.

One of our group DMs likes to convert stuff on-the-fly from old modules.

It's terribly entertaining when he starts looking for stats, or yells out "They're on crack!" about something that was fine back in AD&D2 days, and horribly bad in 3e.


I figure that rough guidelines should be okay. Also, by seeing how they changed the PHB classes, we can get an idea of how to update non-included classes, like, say, the binder.

Brad