[Rq-rules] Conversion of D&D module?

[Gary Sturgess]

On 1/7/07, Peter Brink <peter.brink at brinkdata.se> wrote:
> It's quite possible that I have used the wrong label for my
> "conversions", perhaps I should have called them "How to import..."
> instead. Because that is the purpose. Doing a one-by-one conversion of a
> lot of spells is very time consuming, if one could import a whole bunch
> of spells then that would save you a lot of time.

Well, D&D is an appallingly bad choice for "import", in my opinion,
because there simply isn't any consistency at all to the spells or
indeed the magic system in general. This isn't even controversial from
WotC POV; there are several spells of each level that are openly
admitted to be more powerful than others, and they're there as much
for "grandfather" reasons as any others. Of course you could do as you
suggest and have a system that basically pulls in the lot by level,
but then you are also importing all of D&D's balance problems along
with it (as well as losing the unique features of RQ in the process).

This is less true of GURPS though; the GURPS conversion in general I
don't see any issues with.

> Essentially what I do is to convert (or import if you wish) an entire
> magic system. The object is of course to replace the sorcery magic
> system of RQ. And why is that? Because the sorcery system sucks, IMHO.

There we certainly can agree. :)

Of course, D&D's system makes the RQ sorcery system seem very well
balanced by comparison... consider Gate vs Meteor Swarm for an extreme
example.

This is not to bag on D&D particularly. It's just that D&D's magic
system was never really designed from the get go - it's basically just
a mish mash of a bunch of ideas from hundreds of different authors
over the decades, jammed into a pseudo-Vancian structure with no real
thought given to balance prior to 3rd edition (and not by any means
balanced in 3rd edition either - just better than it ever has been
before). This is part of its charm, of course, but it also means that
1 1st level spell is not the same power-wise as another 1st level
spell, and a system that attempts to treat D&D spells as a class
rather than individually is going to experience issues because of
this.

There's also the exponential rather than linear power scaling to
consider even if you do decide that equating Unseen Servant and Charm
Person is OK - a 3rd level spell is not merely three times as good as
a 1st level spell, and a 9th level spell is not by any means only nine
times as powerful.

Now of course you can adjust for this, but it would need to be done on
a case by case basis - and that's exactly what you're attempting to
avoid.

In my humble opinion, of course.

> It simply doesn't work very well in my experience. Another object is to
> make it possible to do easy conversions of D&D adventures. There are
> loads of such stuff on the net, both as free downloads and pdf:s that
> you can buy, and for those gaming groups that doesn't mind using such
> material they can be a real time saver.

I cannot fault the goal, as it an entirely noble one. But the "base
assumptions" of D&D and BRP are quite different, which is why such
conversions tend to be problematic.

In a nutshell, D&D assumes that a party of 4 powerful adventurers can
triumph over a dozen or more less skilled opposition. BRP (at least
most variants; Superworld is a probable exception) makes no such
adjustments; numerical superiority counts for a lot more. Especially
in RQ, where one nasty critical can really spoil your day; even Rune
Level PCs will struggle against significant numerical superiority of
weaker opposition.

This is not by any means to discourage such conversions or systems to
make such conversions easier - merely to recognise that it's unlikely
to be possible to develop a generic conversion process for two fairly
radically different systems. If nothing else the idea behind a given
adventure can often be adapted.
-- 
GAZZA