Legacy of the Crystal Shard

[Teknykk]

Well I can't speak for anyone else personally, but I'd like to see all the D&D Next adventures be carried over to 5E Fantasy Grounds modules at some point. I know I'd pay for them all, even if I'm in the minority. Of all of them I would especially like to see Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle next in line, as it's quite a good adventure. I would consider converting them all myself, but I have a hard enough time converting the Dungeon Magazine #213 D&D Next Tomb of Horrors to 5E properly, let alone a full blown adventure PDF.

And TMO, the reason for why Dead in Thay, and possibly Vault of the Dracolich, wouldn't be inapplicable is because both were somewhat designed more for convention play, with multiple parties of players instead of just a single group. That said, there is mention of the fact that either of them can be done with a single party, but they may not grasp the full extent of the adventure, or they might undertake multiple characters in different parties and alternate between them.

That said, it's not impossible to run them with a single party, it just may be a completely different experience to what was intended. But to me at least, I wouldn't have an issue with it, and I'd buy it just for the sake of having the module inside my client to be used or referred to as I see fit.

[TMO]

That said, it's not impossible to run them with a single party, it just may be a completely different experience to what was intended. But to me at least, I wouldn't have an issue with it, and I'd buy it just for the sake of having the module inside my client to be used or referred to as I see fit.

And that basically sums up my position as well. Like you, I would certainly pay for the module. Hopefully we are not the minority in this case.

[TASagent]

Hey Teknykk and TMO,

Yeah, I totally get where you're coming from, with regards to conversions of Dead in Thay and Vault of the Dracolich. I guess my concerns about doing a conversion of these are several-fold:

They would need (moral imperative) to be sold with a disclaimer along the lines of "You almost certainly can't use this product as-is". The lesser applicability would make the considerable work to convert these even more a labor-of-love than usual. Additionally, some people will inevitably miss the warnings, buy the module, and be upset about not being able to use it. Perhaps this second point is unnecessarily catering to the Lowest Common Denominator, but it remains a concern of mine nonetheless. They're also dungeon crawls, which means they tend to be more work per page to convert and I tend to enjoy them less (my personal games of Dungeons and Dragons are decidedly dungeon-less).

However, all is not lost for those who wish to have these modules in FG. For one, I definitely have not taken the possibility of doing a conversion of these modules at some time down the road off the table (what a mixed metaphor). Additionally, maybe Doug can say something about the possibility of someone else doing the conversions for modules I have neglected. As a third possibility (also compatible with the previous point), I would be happy to offer advice and assistance with someone trying to do this conversion themselves. It's not hard, per se, it just takes a bit of work. I did my original conversion of Scourge of the Sword Coast entirely and exclusively in Fantasy Grounds.

Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle is certainly next on my list of older adventures to convert, after Murder in Baldur's Gate. The thing is I just work on those when I don't have a main project and free time allows. Something some of you who haven't seen the GoDC module might not be aware of, it has an odd Graph-paper and Post-it aesthetic that won't really be reproducible in a converted module. Literally, some post-its acting like sidebars making a comment or Gaffe about other stuff on the page (like one instance where an image is deliberately displayed upside-down and a post-it makes a comment that it needs to be fixed).

Hopefully that is helpful. I wanted to mention that I have taken note that there is some demand to see all of the Sundering adventures converted.

[TASagent]

gqwebb,

The problem with including the DM Screen as images is they really couldn't be used. The images that make up the DM Screen are all present in higher resolutions in the module already. The DM Screen has an aspect ratio of 5:1, and couldn't really be cropped along the fold seams because in some cases the maps are continuous across it. Using it in FG would be unwieldy, and in order for all the text to legible, the image of each side of the DM screen would need to be ~30MB, making it a nightmare to share.

If it's just a matter of wanting to know what it looks like, I searched around the internet, and found one image showing the front of the DM Screen. It shows the large map of Ten-Towns in the center panel, and the side panels have the Campaign Guide maps of each of the towns as well, Easthaven and Bryn Shander benig the two prominent ones. No images of the inside, unfortunately, but I can describe it. On the left panel are all the Random Encounter tables, in the Middle, covering about 2/3 of the central panel, is the larger map of Icewind Dale, and covering the rest on the right is the table of travel distances (for some reason called "Battlefield Encounters"), The Trinkets and Treasures tables, Weather Surprises, Tables of NPC names, and random Ten-Towns NPCs.

I made sure all of the content exists in a usable form in the module - all of the maps on the screen were already present in the Campaign Guide, but the tables only appear on the DM Screen, so those were of course added to the module. If images of the DM Screen were included, they would basically just bloat the size, offer redundant information, be particularly unwieldy to use due to their huge width, and a pain to share due to their large filesize, plus the inside being mostly text would make it particularly unusable.

If, despite these issues, people still want images of what the DM screen looks like, we can try to discuss solutions to get you want you want. It's probably best to start with the question "What do you want to get from having an image of the DM Screen?" and seeing if it makes more sense to try to accommodate that need in a way better suited for the platform.

[Teknykk]

No worries TASagent, I appreciate the work you put in the modules either way. Both the Next and 5E ones you do are top notch conversions, and the fact that I see Curse of Strahd's in your hands is a good thing to know. The one thing I would like to get if you get the time to spare to do it, is send me some details or links to uploads regarding how you go about properly converting older editions to 5E, mainly Next to 5E though.

As there isn't a massive amount of information I can find on how to do it properly, and the basic conversion document from Wizards of the Coast doesn't seem to be all that helpful. So if you have anything you use to do it, I'd more than welcome it via a PM or links so I can get a good grasp on converting some things, or at least have an understanding of the process involved. I'm in no hurry though, just when you can spare the moment away from your current projects.

[TMO]

TASagent, that was all very helpful. Thank you for the explanation on these matters.

Now for a question that I'm afraid will expose my ignorance on things I probably should already know. What is your connection to WotC and these modules? I gather your conversions are officially approved and recognized by WotC (based on the way these items are listed in the FG store), but it seems like you have autonomy to convert or not to convert these modules...like a contractor. How do you come by the source material - especially images - to get this done?

[TASagent]

Teknykk,

Unfortunately, there aren't really any great guidelines to follow for converting Next to 5E. In many cases, monsters have an updated form in the Monster Manual at the same CR. When that happens (which is most of the time), I just simply substitute. Gnolls in Scourge of the Sword Coast are a good example of this: The D&D Next Gnolls from Scourge had an ability called "Blood Frenzy" that let them make a melee attack with disadvantage as a reaction whenever an enemy within 10 feet is dropped to 0 HP. By the time 5E was released, the Gnoll ability had changed to "Frenzy" and it lets Gnolls move up to half speed and make a bite attack as a bonus action when they down an enemy. This was probably updated to make the ability a bit more predictable - when Gnolls are wielding polearms, "Blood Frenzy" can turn a surprise critical hit into, well, a Blood Frenzy. In any case, doing that update was a no-brainer, just swapping out the ability in the standard monsters and "special" Gnoll NPCs that had it. In most cases, you will have a direct, level-appropriate substitution, or at least really strong examples to follow using similar monsters in the Monster Manual.

Substitution is not always an option, however. As a rule of thumb, between D&D Next and D&D 5E, HP went up and AC went down. Similar CR monsters are a great guideline, as they tend not to vary too wildly.

Skill bonuses were also reduced between Next and 5E (or at least they came to understand the ranges better). In general, to properly adhere to the intended difference of Easy/Medium/Hard skill checks, DCs of 12/15/20/25 become 10/12/15/20. This change really only shows up in Scourge. Though in general, the caveat that these were originally written for earlier playtest version.

Oh yeah, and the adventures originally referred to skills that don't exist anymore, like "Intelligence [Search]".

[TASagent]

TMO, No problem!

Yeah, it's sort of doing work for Smiteworks as a contractor. Doug has a thread in the forum about the process, though I'll leave it to him to talk more about the arrangement. Because I've done work for SW in the past, when there's a new project I'm sometimes asked if I'd like to do the conversion, but Doug takes care of all the business-related complications, thankfully :-).

I did the original conversion of Scourge independently, using the PDF and art I had purchased from Schley's website.

[Teknykk]

Aye, I've been trying to convert the Tomb of Horrors from Dungeon Magazine #213 (the online only version PDF from April 2013) and it's a bit difficult to gauge how to do it, mainly because that dungeon was Sir Gygax's evil pet of awesome (and doom), and was meant to be nasty. Approaching it has proven somewhat difficult due to the uniqueness of it and the few monsters within (and the many traps that lay in wait).

For example, the 5E MM suggests that the big boss is in fact now a CR 23 Demilich with full lair capabilities and the other bells and whistles, which turns him into something likely impossible to kill unless you use one of the few in-dungeon methods to destroy him with his own tools and traps. The rest simply have no apparent conversion within the current system, so they need to be carried over manually.

All in all, I've got the pictures and story entries done, I just need to sort out monsters, traps, loot and things like defining what's an ability check now and what turns into a skill check, and what their DCs should be (keeping in mind that it is meant to be a moderate to hard dungeon, with the intent to ultimately kill the party, but still give them a small chance to win).

[TASagent]

Teknykk,

Ahh yes, the Tomb of Horrors. The main goal I have when converting stuff is to preserve the nature of the encounters. There were some instances where swapping out a monster for the version in the MM would have greatly increased the CR. Search the NPC list for "lesser" to see examples. However, I didn't want to rub in the player's faces that I was throwing a weaker variant at them, so I removed the ", lesser" from the NPCs names after adding them to encounters, which I felt was a more useful solution than either creating a new NPC with the same name as an existing one (making reuse more annoying) or tipping my hand and letting players see they were fighting a weaker variant.

I'll have to take a look at the Tomb of Horrors adventure you're using (pretty sure I have it on my computer at home), but I'm guessing Ascererack wasn't CR 23. I can make suggestions later about how I would scale him down, if you'd like.