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I grew up on second edition AD&D. I played some first edition, and frankly found most 1st edition add-ons to be highly compatible with 2nd Edition. However, I'm a huge fan of Ravenloft, Spelljammer, and a variety of other 2nd edition add-ons. How can I convert them to D&D 4 in such a way that they're playable, enjoyable, and not super-high-effort? (Or, for that matter, super-high-cost -- IE, I do not want to pay for dozens of new source books.) |
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I think the two things you have to do "manually" are monsters and treasure conversion, which will actually probably be more of a "re-imagining" than a conversion. That can be fairly labor intensive, though, and I don't know a way around it. Using the compendium and monster builder can definitely help in tracking down and/or creating equivalent monsters, though. I recently used the monster builder to rebuild myconids from scratch to make them like 1e myconids, and it actually went pretty smoothly. Although you said you don't want to buy new source books, there is a Ravenloft book coming out for 4e that puts the setting in the Shadowfell. |
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I admit this may not be the answer you are looking for but are you aware of Gold and Glory a 2e AD&D retroclone? This is the thread where the author is working on it. This is the download link to what he has finished. Basically it takes the d20 SRD and removes anything that wasn't part of AD&D 2.0 and alter the stats to make the classes, spells work like their AD&D 2.0 equivalent. It not a perfect clone as some things were never released under the Open Game License (Mind Flayers, Beholders, etc) and some tables and rules are slightly different to avoid copyright violation. |
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What I would do to convert 2e material to 4e, is not work from the point of view of conversion, as much as making the best analogues I can using what 4e gives. For instance, taking a 2e Druid and converting it to a 4e Druid of the same level wouldn't work at all - they're entirely different character types. A 2e Druid is really a 4e Cleric (unsurprising, as 2e treats them as a special case of specialty priest) with some powers from the Druid class, but still having an emphasis on healing that the 4e Druid doesn't have. You'd have to do this in each instance. You'd also need to take a look at various monsters. A lot of them were entirely re-imagined, such as the Lamia, which has nothing to do with the 2e Lamia. You'd really have to build her from scratch using Adventure Tools. Other than that, thematically they're quite compatible. As a big fan of 2e, I really enjoy what 4e gives me, and I've played through a 2e Dark Sun module in 2008, before it was re-released for 4e. I'd also strongly recommend using Heroes of the Fallen Lands as a base - the classes are designed to be more traditional, so creating new classes along those lines would go a long way to doing 2e modules in 4e. |
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They are pretty different games. I don't think there is a way to convert from one to the other, at least not low-effort - you'd need to sub in appropriate level 4e monsters, but NPCs will be a bear. |
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