RPG 101: Converting the Classics
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 มิ.ย. 2024
- This video is me sharing some tips on where to look for inspiration for your RPG table, and also how to convert material from one source to another. This should be in every GM's toolkit!
#D&D #OSR #DM #WorldBuilding #ForgottenRealms - เกม
Great video! All that need to hear it, you can do what you want with your materials!
We have been conditioned by the publishers that we are restricted in how we should be using products, but when you take down the imaginary barriers, we have a lot of material to work with!
Savage Worlds is my favorite rules system and I have done tons of conversions of older settings to it. I totally plan on doing more. Thank you for the video. ❤
Dangar, thanks for the props my good man! Love Savage Worlds, totally giving new life to older systems for me. 😀
Great video! Whilst looking at that Forgotten Realms Campaign Set, it took me back to my childhood. It was a wonderful product and an amazing era. Damn! I miss the 70s and 80s.... Thank you for the video.
Welcome Stanley! Those boxed sets were really something.
@@booksbricksandboards783Yes, I still own many of them.
Great topic and discussion!
Forgotten Realms was a love of mine since I got into 2e in the early 90's. I fully agree it's a treasure trove with pre 4e materials. I'm glad I've held on to those books though I've been a little bored with the setting for a few years now. I still really like the vast Pantheon for instance.
One reason I don't like converting is that I need to keep separate notes besides the official product and I have difficulty staying organized. I have however been converting a lot of adventures into the Dolmenwood setting. There are ofc so many OSR and old school D&D materials that don't take so much mechanical conversion so it's more about theme, tone and lore. It's a challenge as well for sure. Hot Springs Island will also be situated among other island adventures in the sea south of my Dolmenwood 😁
Paavo! I figured you would be a fellow early Realms guy. Just flipping through books like Waterdeep and the North, or Volo’s Guide to Cormyr, you get a richness in background that is lacking in modern releases. Thanks for chiming in!
@@booksbricksandboards783 Happy to chime in 😁 My friend used to joke about how I knew more about FR history than of the real world. I've forgotten so much now though. I'm glad I chose FR as the setting when I got into AD&D though Greyhawk wouldn't have been too bad either up to those days.
@@booksbricksandboards783 and yeah, Volo's guides were great! Too bad I think I only ended up having the Cormyr one on pdf. 🤔
The reprints from Drive Thru RPG are EXCELLENT. I had the original Waterdeep Guide and the reprint. The original is SLIGHTLY smaller, but otherwise a VERY faithful recreation. Around $20 in the states, with the added bonus of a PDF. Only 3 available POD are Cormyr, Waterdeep and the Sword Coast. In case you wanted to look at picking them up!
@@booksbricksandboards783 Nice thanks! I've yet to pick any pod's but will keep that in mind though not a high priority atm. So many books on the wish list 😅
Completely agree with you approach here, but not sure I’d call swade a modern game :)
lol. Showing my age there. To me anything post millennia is modern, but I understand where others would question my timeline! 😀
😁 I guess it's that also in the sense that the old school renaissance (OSR) movement in D&D considers the huge changes in D&D between AD&D 2nd edition and D&D 3rd edition as the watershed moment. SW is new school in that sense.
Great video some of this stuff can be alot for people for myself I am doing it easy using Shadowdark I am going to run the Gunderholfen Megadungeon along side The Monster Overhaul to add some extra flavour to things. I need to change a couple things such as leveling up, gold system a little bit but not to much I am also doing it solo. Will add some of my own stuff to it as well explore more outside of the dungeon and massive city. Its a good way to do it for myself and maybe others (maybe not a megadungeon) but the idea start small and add more over time. I have tons of moduals I might add in for missions or adventures from time to time and expand the map into my own world more even as characters die or level up higher :-)
That is exactly the idea, take what works, toss what doesn’t. Also, running a game solo does help prep to run it for others. You will be more ready if you decide to do that. I just picked up Shadowdark (got the hard copy the day that they went on sale for the public!). System is nice and tight, looks like another winner for solo play!
@@booksbricksandboards783 Yeah same I got it the other week when it went back on sale I didnt get the deluxe they were gone when I got on (I live in Ireland damn American times) lol but yeah mine is still on the way and my other books are coming tomorrow ha will have a look through :-) I do solo mainly because I do night work 50 hours a week so dont really have time for gaming I also work weekends. But yeah it does help for sure, I ran DCC a bit and Mork Borg. Just need to play the characters also have some tables to use, since I need to read ahead for setups I need to try and see if the characters can figure out puzzles |I use rolls plus infomation they might have from people, scrolls and their background (another reason I like Shadowdark and DCC) to give them plus to rolls and set how hard I think it is. Thanks agian enjoy your videos sorry for my rant ha
Yags, rant away buddy! Enjoyed hearing your process. I am similar, except my issue is I want to play more than once a month and live in a rural area. My group are pretty busy folks (a teacher, a doctor, a nurse and a student… sounds like a bad walks into a bar joke), so I supplement my group play with solo RPG’s and solo dungeon crawl board games (and making TH-cam videos 😉). I’m very much looking forward to trying Shadowdark… I liked it enough that I immediately ordered all 3 cursed scroll zines after seeing the physical book, and surprise surprise they just showed up on my doorstep this morning l! You’ll have to let me know how it goes. Also, I too enjoy the Borg series and DCC!
@@booksbricksandboards783 thanks bud. Also clearly great minds think alike and enjoy the same type of games 🤣 yeah Shadowdark seems so cool hell after all they took some of the best parts from B/X or OSR a bit of modern stuff slapped in a bit of DCC eithbthe funnel and a simple version of the magic system and full of great tables you can use in any fantasy game. Making it easy to run the very first DnD adventure all the way up to something that came out yesterday and everything in between. Can easily run OSE stuff as well and if you want slap the DCC stuff or use Shadowdark stuff in DCC ha. Yeah those are cool I got the PDFs myself and got them printed locally should be here sometime today! If I am lucky (it was cheaper for me) alongside the megadungeon and other stuff. Also going to check out your new video I had my eye on that game as well. I only fell back into TTRPG stuff myself recently and loving it again. Solo stuff is the reason I was able to get back into it lots of great tools these days.
Well, I have lots of videos on solo rpg play in my catalog. I made a playlist of them if you get curious. If you haven’t picked up the Arcane Library “Cursed Scroll” zines, I would HIGHLY recommend. High quality saddle stitch design. Each contains a couple classes, a hex crawl and a dungeon. For around $15 each that is a BARGAIN. You also get separate PDF’s for the maps if you buy straight from AL. Happy gaming Yags.
Ah, FR. A great game world, and a hot mess. My experience is there have been many FR versions over the decades. A lot of the FR material is therefore contradictory (which may be a kind way to describe it). It's not like Golarion or Middle-earth where things remain consistent. The potential for play in FR is both awesome and disastrous. Players familiar with FR often have one version of the setting in mind and will be surprised that not everything published fits their FR. Wishing you the...
Best of luck!
lol, yeah I definitely hear you Fred! I am sticking to the first edition and early 2nd edition stuff. Gray Box, Ruins of Undermountain(first version), Kara Tur box (if they ever get there), Horde box (unlikely to spend much time there), Volo’s Guides series, Waterdeep and the North, etc. I’ve had that discussion with the player and he basically just liked the vastness of the world, doesn’t know much about it. So I would run it in those earlier years, prior to the Time of Troubles, and the wackier changes in fourth and fifth. Back when the main Realms were Greenwood’s playground of homages to his favorite books, and the rest of the realms were pastiches of fictional version of familiar historical settings. The additions of the Horde and Kara Tur just make the setting HUGE and add the ability for players to represent characters from those places.
3e FR material is by far the best
I think a lot of that perspective is flavored by which you were exposed to first. 3rd edition provided crunch, mechanics and general exposure to areas that were not described in previous editions, and in detail not provided in subsequent editions. That said, for me, the openness and sandbox nature of the older sets really appeal to me. I could drop ideas all over the map in empty spots, where now there is much more pre defined. Difference of preferences.
Heheh. I wasn't always the easiest player as a long time FR fan when my GM ran games in FR in the 3e era. Not so much the difference between 2e and 3e FR but the canon vs my GMs version 😅
@@kevoreilly6557I really like 2e and 3e. 2e is more in depth and detail while 3e is more approachable. Luckily they're quite highly compatible as far as the lore as they were a more direct continuation historically than later takes.
One of my favorite forgotten gems is en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lankhmar_%E2%80%93_City_of_Adventure and if you can get your hands on it 1st ed AD&D Legends and Lore is full of amazing stuff.
I actually had that book as a kid! It was sitting on the shelf at Waldenbooks and the cover was cool so I picked it up. I had no idea that it was even related to a fictional treasure trove of material, just thought it was a setting book. I have the entire savage worlds Lankhmar line, and the PDF of the entire DCC Lankhmar line, all the novels… love Leiber. Great suggestion!
@@booksbricksandboards783 It's now part of the Dungeon Crawl Classic world iirc, landsharks and all.
Yes, Goodman Games has the official rights to the property currently. I own all of their stuff on PDF. I actually prefer the toolbox nature of the Savage Worlds take, with seeds over adventure, and content generation tools more often than predefined content. Both are excellent!
@@booksbricksandboards783 I wasn't a fan of the SWADE take on Deadlands, but different strokes for different folks.
That is interesting to me, because after playing Deadlands in Savage Worlds, I can feel Deadlands impact on all my other Savage Worlds games… the cards, the chips, etc… they make more sense in the game when I realize that it was originally a Western.