Monday, June 27, 2022

Savage Pathfinder, Module Conversion

So one thing I wanted to do with the Savage Pathfinder system is play in the original Golarion setting, the official game world, but borrow classic AD&D modules and put them in the world. If I have the old modules, I am using them, so my world will be a strange mix of original edition content plus adventure paths.

I suspect this is what many people did when Wizards dumped 3.5 for D&D 4+; they kept playing their 3.5 worlds and adventures with the newer Pathfinder 1e rules and did not skip a beat. I also suspect many D&D 3.5 game worlds, including Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms, got converted over, and the campaigns continued.

Plus, there is a lot of room in this world for fun places like the GDQ series, the B-series, the S-series, and the A-series modules. Put the Isle of Dread in the ocean somewhere; it would work.

Now, excellent idea, but is it practical?


Converting is Worldbuilding

I would grab my World Builder and Game Master's Guide for this one since this is a beneficial resource when converting anything into the game.

I would be careful with scripted adventures and use their content as guidelines. The Slave Lords modules in the A-series are good examples. Would I convert every room description, ensure every area and monster were accounted for, do a 1-to-1 map conversion, and ensure my adventure followed the exact same encounter and key matrixes as the originals?

We did this thing before with other games, such as D&D to Aftermath, a gigantic task that is rarely worth all that effort. After a while, things break down and begin to not make sense. The entire game turns into this hours-long slog where you realize if you had converted everything over loosely and not worried about the details, you would have never spent days of work prepping a module conversion that came out horrible anyways.

Often, there is just way too much to deal with. The encounters are too big, made for a game that simplifies combat and heavily relies on sleep, fireball, and other area spells to clear rooms.


Very Real Tournament

The Slave Lords A-series are interesting to study because one thing they did was convert these from simpler tournament modules to fully stocked dungeons and adventures to "add more value" to them. You will find the first two adventures expanded from simple and straightforward tournament maps to massive dungeons with many encounters and expanded content.

I dare say the more straightforward tournament maps look better for Savage Worlds Pathfinder to play since they capture the essence and narrative of the adventure, keep the number of encounters down, and avoid confusion and needless bloat. In the first module's tournament version, A1, you get all the classic encounters, the best areas, and the essential experience of the module without too much sidetracking or artificially lengthening things in that typical AD&D way using quantity over quality.

On a downside, due to tournament play, the modules are often a single track of encounters with no bypassing. Some caution is advised, but as a roadmap of the best the module offers, start with the condensed tournament content first.


They Are Not Perfect!

A reminder, the old modules are not perfect. They have a lot of flaws. If you look at the differences between the A1 tournament and vs. A1 expanded, you will see a vast "mapping challenge" in the expanded version. Many groups don't even "map" these days the way they used to. The number of rooms and encounters in all modules is significantly expanded, leading to many long combats and grinds. There are rooms to soak area-of-effect spells and resources. Places to burn divination spells. Lots of save-or-die parts. Plenty of slow hallway crawls with 10-foot poles in the lead. 

Some of this stuff is great for a B/X game, but a Savage Worlds game is different.

There is also this "video game" mentality. They will respond if an operation, like a slave-trading group, is hit. They won't casually sit in the dungeon waiting for the characters to return after they rest up and recharge spells. They may clear out and move elsewhere. They may follow the characters to town with some of the forces they have left and hit the party back before they rest. We were kids when we played these modules and cleared rooms like stand-alone videogame encounters to "solve." We allowed infinite resting in the town, even if the last room was the boss battle and the entire dungeon around them cleared. 

We were really dumb, but hey, we were kids.

From a  pulp-storytelling point of view, having the organization active in the nearby cities and a good amount of fights and encounters outside this dungeon makes a lot of sense. You could go all Indiana Jones and have a vehicle chase with a slaver caravan for a good time. Do not let the modules and maps constrain you. These are more story seeds than monsters and mazes.

And as far as I am concerned, that "respond to multiple incursions and make it harder" applies to all modules, even the Tomb of Horrors. What if, on the second foray in, things changed? That is true horror and makes venturing in there repeatedly a perilous proposition. If the groups and boss monsters had the magic and creativity to build these places and call them home, then they would have the same interest in defending them and self-preservation, especially once they know what they are facing. And if the dungeon is high-level enough, the boss must have a few wish or limited-wish scrolls lying about.

That 15-minute adventuring day should come with a considerable cost, with failure being just the most apparent price.


Railroad Crossing

One word of warning the tournament modules are very railroaded, so I would use them as guides only, and if the players found a way to bypass them, or there was a way to in the expanded version, I would let them. The entire goal here is to figure out what the essential encounters are in the adventure, what ones are needed to tell the story and build the Savage Pathfinder experience around those.

Like the World Builder's Guide says, less is more.

I would use this "pick the top 9-12 encounters" in every module conversion, even Tomb of Horrors. There are those signature moments you are trying to simulate and those memorable encounters you want to experience again, so why throw in the fluff? If the designers wanted to fluff out a fort with 6 extra rooms of hobgoblins, why put them in if there are already one or two great fights with them here? Let those signature moments tell the story of the adventure, and get rid of the extra filler.

Also, do not be afraid to "change the module" dramatically. If my group has been through the Tomb of Horrors so many times, they can recite the room descriptions and point to every trap and secret door like they were reciting lines from their favorite movies; well, it is time to change things up. Rooms will be shuffled, secret doors moved, new traps and puzzles laid down, and new deadly save-or-die horror moments added everywhere. The essence of the module is supposed to be a horror movie where the party needs to pay attention and figure things out, so make it your own and have fun.

And if you can't think of good traps, head on over to the Goodman Games store and pick up this:

Your players will not love you if you mix up Tomb of Horrors with some of these classics, I guarantee it. Even some of the ideas in this book can be combined with the traps in Tomb of Horrors to make the assumed solutions quite deadly. But allow clever play to figure things out. If someone tosses sand across the pit trap and discovers the wall of force, magical push trap, pane of invisible steel, or the illusion of a hallway over there, let them be smart. The sand won't set off the spring-loaded plate that shoves them into the spiked ceiling on the other side.

Take the solution they know works, and make it kill the characters.

And the suffering doesn't need to end with death; if a character "dies" in this dungeon, they wake up remarkably healed in a particular deeper part without their gear. With more traps that will kill them this time, or if they can figure out how - escape. Just trip that revelation to the "supposedly dead" party after the last one falls or flees and keep the fun going.

A big part of the module conversions is to simplify things to fit the pulp-action style of Savage Worlds. You can use that to add fun and your own ideas, so go ahead and make these adventures your own.

No comments:

Post a Comment