![]() It's not just "roll a skill to hit this DC". The philosophies Rodney talked about all require DM judgement. then the odds are better that these new players would stick with D&D. ![]() What better way to expand the reach of the game than if the system itself gave you a massive jump forward in having fun and exciting encounters, without having to rely on the skills of your DM? If a new DM could get the game 3/4ths of the way there without having any experience whatsoever. Well, that was because the design philosophy behind 4E always seemed (to me at least) to be the creation and execution of cool, massive encounters regardless of how good or bad the DM is that is running it. As it stands, this gives me some great ideas for my own campaign as I think a lot of this will fit well into a future adventure I have planned - though I don't intend to simply run the module, rather, I'll be borrowing from it. Simply posting the conversion might have made it easier for us to run this particular mod, but would not have necessarily helped us run other mods. Its pretty easy to figure out what Rodney did, and more important, he showed us how to do it with other modules. Personally, I really don't have a problem with how they handled this. It then gets back to asking him to convert it into a publishable format which means either a) WotC pays him more $ (thereby reducing their profit margin) or b) he works for free essentially. If this were the case, then publishing his "conversion" would not have been all that much help anyway. ![]() Now, it could also be that Rodney, like me and many others, doesn't bring extensive notes to his sessions and in many cases just ran with what was on the sheet from the original module, converting some things (other than monsters) on the fly. This of course assumes he converted the entire module into a publishable format. Thing is though, they pay the writers for Dragon/Dungeon by the word, so publishing the entire conversion would have cost WotC a lot more $. NOTE: Rodney's D&D Encounters adventure March of the Phantom Brigade lightly adapted some elements from Ghost Tower of Inverness. Overall, an interesting read that I will keep on tap when I tackle converting The Temple of Elemental Evil this Summer for a home game. ![]() Included are some sample 4e monsters he converted from the original and there is a section on how to down convert it to 1e and 2e with example stats for Vlaakith (the lich-queen) in AD&D Monster Manual format.Īlso included is the original Chris Perkins adventure for comparison and conversion. The weird doors in the Palace of Whispers aren’t just obstacles they are something to investigate-dire entryways that reinforce the alien feel of the adventure’s setting. In the larger context of the overall adventure the party was still chipping away at their resources which made medium and hard encounters more challenging and meaningful.ĥ) " learned that exploration is essential to the classic Dungeons & Dragons feel, and that traps and hazards are more than set dressing-they constitute an important part of the exploration and discovery process. The way they rose to the occasion made me realize that I had underestimated them when I designed my old adventures."Ĥ) While making encounters hard on the players made them get sneaky, some judicious use of "easy" encounters, for example, 2 to 3 monsters that the party steamrolls were just as important. As soon as the players saw that they couldn’t just make a skill check to design a spell to counter whispers of the damned, they realized that they needed to become more creative. This decision ran counter to my usual style of adventure design, in which a character overcame a noncombat test by making a skill check or passing a skill challenge. The effects where surprising to him (probably not to a bunch of folks here) and will probably influence his design ideas for the game in the future.ġ) The overall experience was positive for both DM and Players.Ģ) Players relearned skills from previous editions, "such as the caution they began exercising after they started running into things they couldn’t overpower."ģ) " resisted the temptation to provide ways around problems. He tried to stay true to Chris Perkins original design as much as possible (deadly traps, magical effects, and encounters built outside the standard 4e design principles). He wanted to give his 4th Edition group some 3e encounter design sensibility and see what it would do to their play. Rodney Thompson talks about converting the 3rd Edition Dungeon adventure The Lich-Queen's Beloved (Behind the DDI paywall).
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