Adventures converted to other editions?

[finarvyn]

Has anyone spent time converting any of the MMRPG adventures into other editions? Or, perhaps they are vague enough that one can run them in any rules set?

I downloaded the MMRPG modules long ago but I'd much rather run Blackmoor with OD&D or perhaps 5E and so I've never really used them or even looked at them much. My son and his friends were asking about me running a campaign for him and I thought, "maybe Blackmoor!"

I have the full d20 Blackmoor product line, too, but have never really been a d20 fan. I guess that's why I'm wondering if anyone has done the "heavy lifting" to convert any of the modules.

[finarvyn]

Also, while I'm at it, can anyone tell me how long it typically takes to play through a module? If I run a bunch of these for my son I'd like to have an idea what sort of time block to schedule.

[Havard]

Has anyone spent time converting any of the MMRPG adventures into other editions? Or, perhaps they are vague enough that one can run them in any rules set?

I downloaded the MMRPG modules long ago but I'd much rather run Blackmoor with OD&D or perhaps 5E and so I've never really used them or even looked at them much. My son and his friends were asking about me running a campaign for him and I thought, "maybe Blackmoor!"

I have the full d20 Blackmoor product line, too, but have never really been a d20 fan. I guess that's why I'm wondering if anyone has done the "heavy lifting" to convert any of the modules.

I have thought about doing a conversion project, but I have not really had the time. Also I am not sure what system people would be most interested in. For someone using a TSR era edition, perhaps my BECMI classes and Races could be helpful.

I generally don't think it is very difficult to adapt 3E material to TSR era D&D.

5E adaptations would take more work and while I have run and played quite a bit of 5E these last few years, I am not sure I feel like I have the same mastery of those rules that I have of Classic D&D/BECMI

All that being said, most of these adventures are fairly low on crunch. I think adapting most of them to any edition would not require all that much work.

Also, while I'm at it, can anyone tell me how long it typically takes to play through a module? If I run a bunch of these for my son I'd like to have an idea what sort of time block to schedule.

These adventures were designed for convention play, so I think most of them can be run over a few hours. Perhaps others here have more experience with running them than I have though?

-Havard

[Havard]

A few responses via social media:

Ugh...I'd rather just write a whole new set.



Pathfinder you can just use straight up.

Philip Slama wrote many of the later adventures in this series. I'm going to bugg him into writing some new adventures for us

Here are official conversion guidelines, which you can use to convert across editions https://media.wizards.com/2015/download ... ns_1.0.pdf

This is a 5E conversion guide so not sure how useful it would be if you want to convert from 3E to older editions.

-Havard

[finarvyn]

Thanks for the info so far. Most of the time I can "wing it" with 5E, but it's not nearly as natural a process as with OD&D because of the details. I know that 3E/Pathfinder has a LOT of details, so ignoring stuff makes it easy to go backward to OD&D but I'm not sure if it's as simple to go forward to 5E. If that makes any sense.

[Yaztromo]

As part of Blackmoor Living World campaign on RPoL (https://blackmoor.mystara.net/forums/vie...=76&t=8800) the MMRPG adventures were converted on the fly to Advanced Fighting Fantasy ruleset (here you can find some more detail about how Blackmoor was adapted to AFF: http://www.chimerae.it/download/CHBLW0en.zip).
Of course, this is a conversion to another ruleset, rather than to another edition (of D&D).

[Yaztromo]

Or, perhaps they are vague enough that one can run them in any rules set?

In general, yes!
Just read them thoroughly before beginning the gaming session

[aldarron]

I've run a couple of the MMRPG episodes as OD&D. Some of them are really pretty cool (others maybe not so much). For me (and I think for you Fin), the trouble isn't converting the stats of monsters and such, it is the format itself that is somewhat challenging. The "episodes" are quite verbose with background and Q and A response material. I guess the idea is that the game is scripted from start to finish for uniformity. The actual adventure is usually fairly short. Personally I, read the whole thing to get familiar with the idea of it, go through and circle or otherwise mark the key encounter info, print off the maps, and improvise the rest when I run it.

[finarvyn]

For me (and I think for you Fin), the trouble isn't converting the stats of monsters and such, it is the format itself that is somewhat challenging.

Yeah, I guess that was really what bothered me the most. I was thinking "conversion" but in reality it's more "style" than anything else. I'm used to something with very short bits of information, and more modern modules (say 3E and beyond) have this tendency to have large blocks of information. I have a hard enough time keeping up on my book reading without having to read and remember content for a module.

Still gonna try a few, though. 8)

[Yaztromo]

Personally, my experience doing this has been very positive, so far!