Playing Storm King's Thunder Using Fantasy Grounds and Pathfinder

[paladinpariah]

So I bought Storm King's Thunder for Fantasy Grounds because I really like the story and the adventure. I don't want to play 5e for a variety of reasons, the biggest of which is my familiarity with the Pathfinder/3.5/3.0 rules.

How hard would it be to run Storm King's Thunder using Fantasy Grounds and Pathfinder? Is there a way to open a 5e mod using a Pathfinder campaign in FG? If there isn't, is there a way to crack open the mod and import maps and other content into a new mod that's using the Pathfinder rules?

I am very new to Fantasy Grounds and have never actually played a real game with it. Running a pre-made campaign seems to be one the best ways to get my feet wet. Wondering how feasible it would be to do this while switching up all the game mechanics. I feel like the actual conversion from 5e to Pathfinder would be super simple, and I wouldn't even be thinking about it if I was going to do it on a tabletop (a Storm Giant is a Storm Giant in both systems).

I'm also wondering how much interest there would be in this as 5e seems to be surpassing Pathfinder in popularity right now.

Any help here would be great. Thanks.

[Zacchaeus]

I fear you are going to be disappointed.

You can't 'crack open' the module since it is protected for copyright reasons and since it was written for 5e it won't even appear in the modules list in a Pathfinder Campaign.

If you want to play it in Pathfinder you are going to have to type it all into FG from the book. Some of the cartographers have published some of the maps (Jared Blando) but others I haven't seen for sale anywhere so that's going to be another major issue; you'll need to draw some up yourself.

On another point whilst a the names of the NPCs might well be the same in both systems 5e is a completely different system from 3.5 so you'll have to spend a fair bit of time rebalancing SKT to run it in 3.5. It will not be 'super simple' I fear.

The best advice I can give you is play it as 5e.

[LordEntrails]

If it helps, here's a doc I put together for my players when we switched from 3.5 to 5.

[Nylanfs]

You could copy out the dialog and story text elements from FG and paste into a document and then paste sections back into a 35e/Pathfinder game (long an laborious process), but you would need to source the maps yourself, and design the combat NPC's from scratch.

Edit: Also if you are doing a voice based you wouldn't even need that.

[paladinpariah]

I could just use screenshots of the maps and convert them back into Fantasy Grounds but I was hoping there was some way to transfer them over from the original files. It's good to know I can copy and paste the text. More laborious than I was hoping for, but not too terrible. I suppose I could also have a second instance of Fantasy Grounds running in 5e to transfer stuff on the fly if needed.

The real question is will it be worth it. If I go looking for players, will Pathfinder people want to play it?

Thanks for the advice everyone, if I was a rational person, I would just do it in 5e.

[LordEntrails]

...
The real question is will it be worth it. If I go looking for players, will Pathfinder people want to play it?
...

Like just about everything in gaming, its a labor of love
Post in the LFG forums and see there what people think. I'm not too knowledgeable, but it seems to me that the top 5 or 6 systems don't ever have problems getting players. All I ever hear about is people looking for a GM

So, I think if you put yourself out there, people will come to play just about anything.

[paladinpariah]

Like just about everything in gaming, its a labor of love
Post in the LFG forums and see there what people think. I'm not too knowledgeable, but it seems to me that the top 5 or 6 systems don't ever have problems getting players. All I ever hear about is people looking for a GM

So, I think if you put yourself out there, people will come to play just about anything.

Then I have to worry about learning how to use FG in an actual game...

[Trenloe]

You can use 5E modules in a Pathfinder campaign with a tiny bit of XML editing.

Edit the PFRPG.pak ruleset and add a line for 5E to the <importinfo> section of base.xml:

	<importinfo>
		<acceptfrom ruleset="d20" />
		<acceptfrom ruleset="3.5E" />
		<acceptfrom ruleset="5E" />
	</importinfo>

This will allow you to open all 5E modules in a PFRPG campaign.

I did this quickly and the Storm Kings Thunder opened fine in a PFRPG campaign and I can access all generic records (story, images/maps, tables, etc.). NPCs (personalities) give errors when you open them and there's basically no useful info there, items will open and some will have some nice info (description, cost, weight) but don't expect weapons or armour to fully populate if dragged to the character sheets.

NOTE: you will need to make this edit each time you run a FG update and the PFRPG ruleset is overwritten. I tried getting this to work in an extension, but it doesn't appear to be possible - editing the ruleset base file seems to be the most reliable way.

[Nylanfs]

That's a nice little hack.

I wonder if that causes any issues with the database at some point though.

[Trenloe]

I wonder if that causes any issues with the database at some point though.

All it is allowing you to do is open modules meant for other rulesets, it doesn't change the base ruleset you're using. The module data doesn't get copied to the campaign database (modules are read only), the most you'd get is the ruleset attempting to convert any NPCs you opened and giving you an error (as mentioned above), and that data would remain in the module.