Converting between rulesets

[VenomousFiligree]

Can adventure modules easily be converted between different rulesets?

I accept that some things may not carry over, but would the main adventure text be available in the new ruleset?

:)
MB

[Foen]

Hmm. An easy answer would be 'yes' - there is nothing ruleset-specific about story text. A more complete answer would be 'depends' - there is nothing to stop a new ruleset from using a completely different data layout.

I'd guess that most rulesets share the same basic story/image structure (especially if adapted from the standard d20 ruleset) and so you should be ok. Once you move away from the basic story (to include NPCs etc) there might be difficulties.

However, it cannot be guaranteed.

The best way to tell is to give it a try. Make sure your data is backed up first and ensure that the new ruleset can accept data from the old ruleset (or you edit the old campaign.xml file to point to the new ruleset).

Cheers

Stuart

[VenomousFiligree]

Sooooo..... How would it be done! :D

MB

[Foen]

*grins* Ok, let's give it a whirl...

Say you want to transfer A Tale of Dinor to Star Wars Saga Edition, and you have a ruleset for SWSE called StarWars. First you need to find the campaign (on my machine it is at C:\Users\<my account>\AppData\Roaming\Fantasy Grounds II\campaigns\A Tale of Dinor, but on an XP machine it would be slightly different).

Secondly, make sure you take a backup of the campaign folder and all its files/sub-folders.

Thirdly, open the campaign.xml file (you can use Notepad if you want) and change:



<root>
<setting name="" />
<ruleset name="d20" />
</root>


to



<root>
<setting name="" />
<ruleset name="StarWars" />
</root>


Finally, open FG and select A Tale of Dinor - it should load in your new ruleset.

Some caveats:


This is quick and dirty, and it doesn't guarantee the data will work in the new campaign; and
If the new ruleset uses similar database node names, but with different data types, the new campaign may crash.


A better solution would be to copy and paste the story XML from one db.xml file (in the old campaign) to the other db.xml file (in the new campaign) and to move the images from the old campaign folder to the new one.

Hope that helps,

Stuart

[Foen]

Picking up the last point from my previous post.

If you wanted to convert (say) A Tale of Dinor from d20 to StarWars using a safer method, and were happy only to have story entries and images converted (most of the rest wouldn't convert anyway):


Create a new, empty campaign "New Tale of Dinor" based on the target (StarWars) ruleset, then close FG2
Copy all the images from A Tale of Dinor\images and A Tale of Dinor\tokens to New Tale of Dinor\images and New Tale of Dinor\tokens
Open A Tale of Dinor\db.xml using a text editor (Notepad will do) and copy all of the text starting <encounter> and ending </encounter> (inclusive of those two tags).
Open New Tale of Dinor\db.xml using a text editor and paste just after <root version="2.1">, saving the file. Close both editor windows.
Launch FG2 and select New Tale of Dinor.

The story, tokens and images will have copied across. Embedded links to NPCs will no longer work (but they won't cause FG to crash, I think) becuase there are no NPC entries in the new campaign (but they wouldn't have copied across well anyway and might have caused FG to crash, as a worse case).

Cheers

Stuart