Change of plans...

Before our weekly game last night, we discussed the 4E game that we will be playing after Gencon. I wasn't sure that the group were completely sold on Crimson Throne (or 4E, for that matter), so I offered them the option of playing either Rise of the Runelords, Curse of the Crimson Throne, or Legacy of Fire. We discussed the pros and cons of each, and RotRL was quickly dropped from the running, not becuase anyone thought it was bad but because they were looking for something less like traditional, standard D&D.

The inital vote between CotCT and LoF was split 3 and 3 (we have 7 people in the group, and one was running late). By the time the last player arrived, a number of people had changed their minds (after looking over the books), and the vote went 6-1 for Legacy of Fire.

So, since I will now be running Legacy of Fire next month, I'm going to shift to working on that conversion. I still want to work on Crimson Throne, but it will have to take a backseat for now.

Checking In

I haven't made much progress on the conversion this week, but will try to get some time to finish out the encounters for Part 1 this weekend. It looks like I will be running the conversion with my group starting after Gencon, so we'll do character generation on 8/19 and play our first full session on 8/26. This should be a good motivator for me to get my act in gear and get the conversion done sooner so I can stay ahead of the players.

BTW - if anyone following this project is going to be at Gencon, leave a comment. I'd love to meet you all in person. I'll be spending much of my time in the exhibitor's hall working at the Arc Dream booth, but hope to get to do more playing this year, including playing some 4E.

Part 1 - The Old Fishery

Looking over this part of the adventure, we find a lot of the problem I mentioned before in which the PCs are set up to fight single opponents in small rooms. My plan is to dissociate the opponents from their locations, and instead break them up into "encounter groups" that may be fought in a number of locations.

First encounter group = Yargin plus 3 dogs (originally he and his 1 dog were separate encounters). I'll make this group a 2nd level encounter so that we start off with a challenging fight, and it will be worth 625 XP. This should take place somewhere on the ground floor, once the PCs enter the building.

The next encounter group consists of Hookshanks and Giggles, plus 4 thugs (minions). This one will be a 1st level encounter worth 500 XP. This can take place in the processing room or on the ground floor if the PCs make alot of noise fighting Yargin and the dogs.

The next encounter takes place if the PCs fall into the water. Originally it was a single jigsaw shark, but I'll make it 2 sharks to keep it interesting, and a level 1 encounter for 500 XP.

The adventure as written has the PCs encounter small groups of Drain Spiders in various rooms. I'll lump these encounters into 1 level 2 fight for 625 XP. I may have to create Drain Spiders. My cursory glance at the spiders in the MM shows that they are all a bit powerful. Maybe I can re-skin a swarm of some kind?

Finally, we have the finale fight with Lamm. I'll give him 2 pet crocodiles rather than 1, and give Lamm himself some forced movement powers so that he can hopefully maneuver some of the PCs into the pit with the crocs. As the finale, this will be a hard (level 3) encounter worth 750 XP.

As a final boost, the PCs can get 100 XP form a minor quest if they get some of the orphans to a reputable orphanage.

Part 1 XP total = 3600. My main conecrn here is that 600 of that XP (from the shark fight and the minor quest) are from sources that may or may not occur without some railroading on the GMs part. I'll have to give that some thought.

Next up, I'll try my hand at making up my first 4E monsters and NPCs...

Over the weekend I managed to skim read the first module (Edge of Anarchy), and then do a more thorough read through. I have a good feel for the flow of the plot, so I've accomplished step one of my conversion plan.

I also played around with the XP budget. I want the PCs to be 4th level and partly into 5th at the end of Edge of Anarchy. For 5 characters, this works out to be:

5 PCs X 4500 XP = 22,500 XP total for the module (getting to 4th level is actually 3750 XP per character, or 18750 total).

This will be my target for the adaptation. We'll see how this works out after I look at the separate sections of the adventure.

The adventure has an introduction, 7 parts, and a sort of denouement/cut scene at the end, which may be a weak spot.

In the introduction, the PCs meet a sort of mentor (Zellara) who enlists them to seek out a crime lord who has wronged each of them in the past. In 4E terms, she gives them a quest. Since it will invlove multiple encounters and resolve a good chunk of story, I'll make this a major quest worth 500 XP (the same as a normal 1st level encounter). I need to keep in mind that they won't actually get this XP until the end of part 1, though.

Here's the wording on the quest:

"Bring Gaedren Lamm to justice, or failing that, end his reign of terror", 500 XP.

I'll discuss each section separately, but here's a table of the XP awards by section that I came up with (sorry if the formatting is crap):

Part XP Cumulative XP

0 - Introduction 500 (500)
1 - Old Fishery 3600 4100
2 - City Gone Mad 1800 5900 (PCs hit 2nd level)
3 - Long Live the Queen 0 5900
4 - Welcome to the Guard 3200 9100
5 - Ambassador's Secret 3600 12,700 (PCs hit 3rd level)
6 - Queen's Scapegoat 1500 14,200
7- Dead Warrens 8100 22,300 (PCs hit 4th level)
Denoument 0 22,300

So, there's step 2 on the conversion plan done.

A detailed look at Part 1 next post.

Differences between 3E and 4E combats

One thing that jumped out at me while reading over Edge of Anarchy was that many of the combats featured only one or two usually human or humanoid opponents. I'm all for fighting humans rather than "monsters", but having read through (and played through) a number of 4E adventures, it's obvious that 4E combats are meant to feature multiple opponents.

Actually, I ran across a couple of humorous (well, I think they're funny) images that purport to show the difference between a 3E encounter and a 4E one:

3E Combat

4E Combat

I can see that this will be one of the areas that will require the most work for the conversion. I think I will end up combining some encounters, adding in some, and adding more combatants (minions?) to others.

Random Encounters

On my first skim read-through of Edge of Anarchy, I noticed that there are a few places in the adventure that call for random encounters. This seems like it will play havoc with the amount of XP that the PCs will get over the course of the adventure, and mess up the balancing of encounters and the pacing of what level the PCs are at any given point in the adventure/AP.

My initial thought is to stat up each option in the random encounter table as a combat or skill challenge encounter, and give them all the same XP value. I'll then suggest that DMs either randomly roll or choose two of the options for their PCs to encounter. This will allow me to keep a handle on how much XP the party should have at any given time in the adventure, but still allow for some variance in the plot.

I'll have to give this some more thought as I continue my detailed reading of the adventure.

Harrow Deck

One of the recurring themes that runs through the whole CotCT AP is the Harrow Deck. The Harrow Deck is Paizo's equivalent of a Tarot deck, used by the Varisian people (thinly veiled Gypsies) for fortune telling as well as to play a card game called Towers (much as the historic tarot was used for gaming, and still is in some European countires).

I've got no problem with the Harrow deck. I think it's great thematically. Paizo makes an actual Harrow deck if you are into props (and I certainly am), but the adventure includes methods to simulate a deck using regular playing cards or even die rolls.

The problem with using the Harrow deck with 4E is that the deck is built around the traditional 9 alignments of previous editions. There are 6 suits of cards based on the six attributes (which remain the same in 4E), and each suit contains 9 cards based on the 9 alignments (which 4E has reduced to 5, dropping Chaotic Good, Neutral good, True Neutral, Neutral evil, and Lawful evil). The suggested system for doing card readings given in Edge of Anarchy even relies on a spread based on the 9 alignments and comparing the card's alignment with it's position in the spread to see if it is "misaligned" (reversed in normal Tarot parlance, although the neutral cards in Harrow don't have a "misaligned" reading). I happen to like the new streamlined alignment system (especially the "unaligned" option), but it makes using the Harrow deck with 4E somewhat problematic.

The Harrow desk is pretty central to the AP, with a reading occuring at the begining of most adventures, and "haunted" deck acting as a sort of "DMPC" throughout the path so that the DM can provide the players with hints, etc. Each adventure in the AP is tied thematically to one of the suits of the deck, and PCs get "Harrow Points" that they can use to re-roll rolls related to the suit/attribute which is the focus of each adventure. Given how central the deck is to the AP (and how much I like Tarot anyway), I'm loathe to drop it.

The easiest solution is to just use the Harrow system as presented in Edge of Anarchy without modification. Only the DM has to know about or deal with the 9 alignments. The players don't actually need to hear references to the alignments when the deck is used in play. This is easy, but I think it could create some disjunct for 4E DMs, especially those not familiar with the earlier alignment system.

Another option is to try and rework the reading spread to reflect the 5 new alignments, and possibly change the "alignment" of the individual cards as well. This is a bit of work (although very doable), but I think it would feel pretty kludged in use.

What I will probably go with is reworking the spread to drop all refernce to alignment at all. I'll keep the association of suits with atributes, and even the Harrow Point idea and the attendent re-rolls, but scrap the alignment stuff. The tricky part in this option is how to decide if cards are "misaligned" (I'm inclinced to go with the traditional tarot method in which the card is reversed if it is upside down to the reader, but this leaves the problem of the neutral cards which have no "misaligned" reading - I guess I'd just use the standard reading whichever way the were turned).

All in all, a minor problem that is more an issue of "feel" than mechanics, so I'm not giving up yet :)