anny:

i find it quite easy. use the core of the adventure. thats easy to convert. with regards to monsters and characters. well figure first what levels you want to play the adventure at and then insert everything accordingly. i do a rough draft and then re-read it to see if it has a balanced feel.

but then the way i DM, it works for me, as i would add/take out stuff that didnt feel right at the time.

Al

Its very easy. Drop anything you don't need, or that doesn't exist. Correlate what does to existing options (especially monsters), and invert AC. Replace statistics with relevant ones.

The hardest part is leveled monsters and "template" ones, but use something equivalent, or just assign modifiers to it in A/OD&D terms.


Having done quite a lot of this (Monsters and Treasure for Castles and Crusades) I can testify that its not hard -- the hard part is creating the new rules, and rewriting descriptions.

Is there a straight conversion--"fudge factor" or "black box"--for AC from 3e back to OD&D/AD&D?

I.e. the best AC originally was -10 (lower AC number was better then); I don't know what that would equal here in 3e or 3.5e.

I own lots of good 3E modules from the likes of Necromancer and Goodman.  While I would say they are very good in terms of providing cartography, background, story lines, encounters and situations for many a fantasy system, I wouldn't say they are a slam dunk for 1E conversion by simply going through and replacing all the stats and die rolls with suitable 1E equivalents and scaling all the encounters.  In 3E there is pretty much a rule for everything, and everything is the application of a rule.  As a 3E DM (and Player!) running a 3E game then comes down to you applying the rules and crunching the numbers to obtain the final result of a given situation.  That's not a bad thing but it is a different thing from 1E.

In 1E only the essential situations are covered by the rules and therefore Player skill as oppossed to PC skill comes more into play.   Situation outcomes are now not so nearly reliant on the numbers you have on your character sheet as they would otherwise be in a 3E game.  Think of a 1E Module like Tomb of Horrors and how it would be converted forward to a 3E game.  That module is notorious for the players needing to pay attention to the DM clues and asking the right questions so as to think their way through and outfox the traps and dangers in the tomb.  A 3E conversion would change this aspect of the game and convert everything into a difficulty rating to be used in conjunction with the PC's skill level to determine outcomes.  Player skill into situations would now be minimal at best and maybe result in modifying the die roll a bit, but would not replace the die roll.

Presumably then if you wanted to transform this 3E Tomb of Horrors back to 1E you actually need to go through and change parts of the module to fit the 1E system.  Sure some, even many of the stats, die rolls and other numbers can be replaced with their nearest 1E equivalents.  But others need to be replaced outright with clues and other textual information whereby the players themselves can gain insight into the situation and affect what happens, rather than by only the die roll.  If you did not have insight into the original 1E module I don't think it would be so evident as to how this occurs.  Without putting in some thought and writing in some additional text you would find your 3E -> 1E Tomb of Horros conversion would be qualitatively different than the actual 1E module when it is compared and played out in an actual game.

That's why I am skeptical of wholesale 3E -> 1E conversions being easy and resulting in a truly 1E game experience.  If you already have them use them by all means ...peicemeal I would say.  I like for example using the cool maps of the donjons but stocking them myslef with my own tricks, traps and monsters, in some places even randomly so using the monster and treasure tables.  But I would avoid buying any 3E material for the express purpose of running a pre-cooked end-to-end adventure and opt to buy one of the growing list of OSRIC modules instead.  By doing so you encourage people who are writing 1E modules from the ground up to keep doing so and you probably end up with a well nuanced 1E adventure.

Cheers!

islestrike wrote:I own lots of good 3E modules from the likes of Necromancer and Goodman.  While I would say they are very good in terms of providing cartography, background, story lines, encounters and situations for many a fantasy system, I wouldn't say they are a slam dunk for 1E conversion by simply going through and replacing all the stats and die rolls with suitable 1E equivalents and scaling all the encounters.  In 3E there is pretty much a rule for everything, and everything is the application of a rule.  As a 3E DM (and Player!) running a 3E game then comes down to you applying the rules and crunching the numbers to obtain the final result of a given situation.  That's not a bad thing but it is a different thing from 1E.

In 1E only the essential situations are covered by the rules and therefore Player skill as oppossed to PC skill comes more into play.   Situation outcomes are now not so nearly reliant on the numbers you have on your character sheet as they would otherwise be in a 3E game.  Think of a 1E Module like Tomb of Horrors and how it would be converted forward to a 3E game.  That module is notorious for the players needing to pay attention to the DM clues and asking the right questions so as to think their way through and outfox the traps and dangers in the tomb.  A 3E conversion would change this aspect of the game and convert everything into a difficulty rating to be used in conjunction with the PC's skill level to determine outcomes.  Player skill into situations would now be minimal at best and maybe result in modifying the die roll a bit, but would not replace the die roll.

Presumably then if you wanted to transform this 3E Tomb of Horrors back to 1E you actually need to go through and change parts of the module to fit the 1E system.  Sure some, even many of the stats, die rolls and other numbers can be replaced with their nearest 1E equivalents.  But others need to be replaced outright with clues and other textual information whereby the players themselves can gain insight into the situation and affect what happens, rather than by only the die roll.  If you did not have insight into the original 1E module I don't think it would be so evident as to how this occurs.  Without putting in some thought and writing in some additional text you would find your 3E -> 1E Tomb of Horros conversion would be qualitatively different than the actual 1E module when it is compared and played out in an actual game.

That's why I am skeptical of wholesale 3E -> 1E conversions being easy and resulting in a truly 1E game experience.  If you already have them use them by all means ...peicemeal I would say.  I like for example using the cool maps of the donjons but stocking them myslef with my own tricks, traps and monsters, in some places even randomly so using the monster and treasure tables.  But I would avoid buying any 3E material for the express purpose of running a pre-cooked end-to-end adventure and opt to buy one of the growing list of OSRIC modules instead.  By doing so you encourage people who are writing 1E modules from the ground up to keep doing so and you probably end up with a well nuanced 1E adventure.

Cheers!

... what you said does make sense to me.
I have been mostly simply replacing the encounters with new ones, since I know almost NOTHING about 3rd Edition.

DC means nothing to me. I think it has to do with Dex Checks?

As for NPC Levels, or Monster ability (Hit Die?) ........
I think they call it EL in the D20 modules I have.

AC I simply do not understand..........
I have been reading the Equipment/Armor descriptions and using the old rules for that. Dont know how to apply NPC abilities/feats to armor class..........

I know what Feats/Skills are, but I have never used them outside of Computer one player games, where the game does all that for me.
No hard line thinking involved, so its perfect for me..........
I just let the PC game engine do all that.

I have almost ZERO knowledge of 3rd Edition Rules and I have none of the 3e, or 3.5e books and I do not intend to get the 4e's when they come out either...........

I once had the core books (3rd ed) and read AT them (not totally) but when BadMike bought my collection those went with it... (I was happy to add them to the truckload)..........

I am admittedly far too entrenched in the old School, perhaps too old (Or too stubborn) to learn new tricks. And worse, in the small amount of reading I did do when I had those core books for 3rd ed, the new rules seem so complicated that as you stated there seems to be a rule for everything and everything MUST be ruled. To me this would appear to leave little or no room for actual Player interaction in those new rules. And it would also seem to encumber the game with rules searches. Far more than OD&D or AD&D did, and we even had rules lawyers then to contend with........

Although there was obviously a great deal of interest by the gaming public in 3rd and 3.5 (with the sales that WOTCO had with the Many variety of books) I failed to see the attraction.

Aneoth wrote:DC means nothing to me. I think it has to do with Dex Checks?

Difficulty Check: it's the number you have to roll above (applying modifiers) to succeed on the check.  What stat/skill/save you're using depends on what what the DC corresponds to.

To answer the original question: 3e to 1e is not a huge deal. I wouldn't want to do it the other way, though.

There's no accepted "best" method to reduce 3e's huge templates of information down to 1e's simpler "just the facts" style, but there's some pretty obvious places to start. Many feats and skills can become "special abilities" pretty easily ... or be translated into extra attacks or increased damage. AC and DC (hey, that would be a good name for a band!) have been discussed; it's just counting up instead of counting down. A lot of the spells are pretty similar to begin with, so that shouldn't be a problem.

One thing to remember: in general, 3e is a buffed-up 1e. Everything is just a little bit bigger, stronger, and faster ... the numbers tend to be a bit higher ... the emphasis is definitely more "kewl featZ" than it is problem-solving. You're dealing with a system where even kobolds have character templates with feats and skills. So, to me anyway, a 3e-to-1e conversion would also need to be "dialed down" a bit, even after the original conversion is complete.

deimos3428 wrote:I'd do what killjoy32 said.  Convert it plot-wise, not stat-wise.

well it does cut out the hassle of understanding what a lot of the stuff is, IF you dont want to know what it is.

i do though think its a shame that you do lose the personal touch in 3e+

i have watched a few games to see this and its all about the GM saying to someone what are you doing, they say so and then its dice rolls for this or that. no interaction, which i think is a real shame. are all games like this or just the few i have seen? any 3e guys?

i interact as much as possible as it keeps everyone entrenched in the game and i keep things quick, so in a situation, you have to think quick and mistakes are easily made and it just makes everything all the more interesting. dice rolls are a secondary part of the game, as are player stats blah blah.

thats why i stated as deimos reiterated. use the plot and the general detail and put everything else in yourself in the way you want to. easy.

good luck anny

what ones are you thinking of converting?

Al

killjoy32 wrote:
what ones are you thinking of converting?

Al

Well one of them is Gambler's Quest by William Christensen
(Expeditous Retreat Press, 1 on 1 Adventures #1)