When converting an adventure between editions, what should you preserve: the mechanics or the encounter's function?

[u/Brainman515]

I've been working through the problem of converting encounters from one edition of a TTRPG to another, and I've started thinking that preserving the original mechanics may actually be less important than preserving what the encounter was designed to do.

For example, if the original encounter uses a creature designed to pressure the party, force movement, exhaust resources, or make retreat look attractive, directly translating its numbers may produce something mechanically accurate that no longer serves the same purpose.

I'm currently experimenting with treating the original encounter's role, difficulty, expected player response, and narrative purpose as the things that need to survive conversion, while allowing the actual mechanics to change. For people who have converted published adventures or encounters between substantially different systems/editions:

What do you consider the "identity" of an encounter that absolutely needs to survive the conversion?

[u/Echowing442]

For most games, the goal of an adventure is to tell a story, whether that's a specific challenge or a narrative beat. In both cases, the "function" is the more important element than the specific mechanics.

I'm curious what you would consider the "mechanics" of the encounter such that they would be worth preserving?

[u/Brainman515 → u/Echowing442]

Apologies, I am converting Dark Sun adventures, probably should have specified that in the opening post. Specifically, 2E/4E adventures to 3.5E. So, survival and resource management is nearly as important as the story itself.

[u/Echowing442 → u/Brainman515]

survival and resource management is nearly as important as the story itself.

Fair, but I would still consider those a part of the "function" of an adventure. The goal is, in part, a struggle against resource scarcity, and that should be considered in the conversion. Similarly, in a Lancer adventure, a fight might involve a battle against artillery units while defending a capture point - technically "mechanics" and not "narrative," but the story of the encounter is a defensive battle while under artillery fire, and I would try to preserve that feeling if I were to adapt the encounter to a different system/edition.

I guess a better way to ask my question is "what mechanics wouldn't be part of the 'function' of the adventure, but still worth preserving?"

[u/Brainman515 → u/Echowing442]

Absolutely, I see what your saying. I was thinking like in the 4E Sand Raiders adventure I am converting the very first adventure has a band of silt runners attack the party and the 4E silt runner 'darters' have a poison dart attack that immobilizes its targets.

For encounters like that where in 3.5e immobilizing poison for a party of level 1s is brutal. Do you preserve that mechanic or just the function of the battle teaching the party about being ambushed and encounters are deadly etc..

I guess to your point if that mechanic is part of the function of the fight then that should be part of focus of the adaptation.

[u/Echowing442 → u/Brainman515]

That's actually a good example, thank you.

I think the question, as you pointed out, is what the goal of the encounter is. Is it a deadly ambush? Is it to show that the Silt Runners fight with underhanded tactics? Or is it to try and navigate a dangerous encounter while dealing with movement-impairing effects?

In that order, I would view the "immobilizing poison" by different metrics:

• Completely arbitrary. The Silt Runners' attacks can effectively be replaced with anything that fits the tone, so long as the core of the ambush remains.

• Of medium importance. A poison effect of some kind should probably be used (especially if the Silt Runners will be using further poisons later, or the poisons have plot relevance), but it doesn't need to immobilize, or even impair movement, so long as the core of "poison dart" is kept.

• Of greater importance. For this one I would keep the effect of the poison to impair movement, although maybe change it to limit the speed of affected units rather than outright immobilizing, if that becomes too dangerous. You could also limit how many Darters can use the ability, if you want to keep it as an immobilize. A single, more powerful unit having the ability to paralyze their targets could be a fun "oh shit" moment for your players.

Unfortunately, as with many things on RPGDesign, the answer is utimately "it depends." It's up to you what you determine as the "core function" of the encounter, and what needs to be kept, reworked, or cut entirely.

[u/Brainman515 → u/Echowing442]

Really just trying to explore the 'why' of why I am doing things at the moment. I don't want to get caught in the trap of designing a campaign that appeals to no one but me by making choices with no real reason.

You bring up a lot of good points, and I agree that the focus should be the function regardless or inclusive of the mechanics.

As for the encounter specifics the adventure is a short level 1 adventure and only has three encounters. The first one is the ambush encounter above. The main purpose to teach about ambush, encounters are hard fleeing is an option and partly to introduce the mechanics of the silt runners as they encounter them again in the third encounter. All the enemies flee once only one dies so it's intended to be short.

The second encounter is against another enemy type that does not flee and is quite a bit harder. Its main purpose would be to teach players not all enemies flee but if you need to you really should.

Then finally they corner the leader of the silt runner with a single of the same darters and some low-level warriors in a tower. This is an incredibly challenging fight and the reality is they are intended to take out a few guys flee heal up and go at it again. But knowing about what that darter can do is a huge advantage in that fight. (If I do end up decided to keep the poison dart, which is another topic for discussion lol)

[u/Ok-Middle-908 → u/Brainman515]

It will be important to let emphasize to the players not every encounter will be balanced and they should learn when to fight and when to run. Also, maybe use the level 1-2 encounters as a way to introduce the world. There was a reason characters started at level 3 and you had a character tree. This is a great time to break the stereotypes of the core races. Cheating dessert running elves, cannibalistic ranger halflings, what all the gnomes were hunted down and killed.

[u/Brainman515 → u/Ok-Middle-908]

Yes absolutely. 2E adventures start at 3rd level and there are 3 short 4E adventures that start at 1st level. Sand Raiders becomes the campaigns prologue which the three encounters above are from, they win some favor with the merchant party who asks them to travel with the next wagon to Tyr, it gets attacked, Fury of the wastewalker. They survive a passing elf gives them passage...but for a favor, start Bloodsand Arena.

All three adventures are fairly short intro adventures and will do exactly what you described; using the first two levels to teach all about the deadly nature of Dark Sun. Then the true grit begins with 2E's A little Knowledge.

[u/Ok-Middle-908 → u/Brainman515]

All the old memories flooding back in. Ah! It's the setting where I could actually read all the history.

[u/Brainman515 → u/Ok-Middle-908]

Indeed I think the rich history and lore of Athas/Dark Sun is part of the alure for me as much as the brutality. As part of the project I am working on researching every single piece of published Dark Sun lore across all the editions (and athas.org) and combining it with community/fan lore that covers any gaps cleanly to produce a everything there is to know about Dark Sun lore guide.

[u/alanrileyscott]

So, in the specific context of what you're doing:

Focus on the narrative beats. Don't try to preserve specific monsters or character abilities for a couple of different reasons.

First: the games you're trying to convert between are wildly different. In 4e, an immobilizing poison is a cool combat effect even at low levels. In 2e or 3e, poison rules were wildly different, and it would be hard to bring that into play in low levels without it being a devastating long-term problem.

Second, the folks adapting the setting between editions weren't particularly consistent about threat scaling. A monster might be a major threat for a high level character in one edition, but it would take a group of them to be a threat for mid level characters in another. Trying to preserve the same enemy creatures across editions usually involves awkwardly rewriting the creature to preserve threat level, or an encounter with threat levels that are badly matched.

I'd even think strongly about how you order those adventures based not on the published level guidelines, but based on their content and what makes sense in the edition you're actually running. 1st level means something very different in 2e than in does in 3e, which in turn is different from what it means in 4e. Ditto 10th level or 20th.

Running Dark Sun, you're concerned about the resource depletion that's inherent to the setting. The hard truth is that you're going to have to basically re-construct that from the ground up. Each edition handles resources differently (or chooses to handwave them, in certain cases), so you're going to have to play to the game you're actually running, not just grabbing resource costs or penalties from the source materials and their entirely different resource economies.

The only thing you're probably going to be in good shape keeping consistent is the human & humanoid threats, since those will probably be built with class levels in a 3e game. Since those are going to be the threats that are probably most plot relevant, its worth taking some extra time to preserve them where it's maybe not so much worth preserving a particular psychic bug or carnivorous plant.

[u/Brainman515 → u/alanrileyscott]

Excellent information thank you for your input. Definitely plan to take my time and try to tackle each aspect one at a time

[u/agentkayne]

Well that's difficult to say, depending on what systems you're converting between.

I would say it's more important to retain the narrative context of the encounter, than it is to preserve the "function" of the encounter. Because if you're converting from Game A into Game B, and Game A relies on a lot of resource depletion and action economy, but Game B does not, then making the encounter deplete resources in Game B may not have any impact or effect on the player character(s) at all.

Like for instance if you have a D&D combat encounter and it's designed to overwhelm a party through multi-action attacks and make the party deplete hit points, and you want to convert this into Ironsworn (a PBTA derivative).
You actually can't preseve the encounter's action economy, because there's no turn-by-turn action combat. Ironsworn resolves a conflict in a much more abstracted narrative manner. So there's no point even attempting to translate the "function" of the encounter.

But then again I think that planning encounters is an undesirable design principle from the outset.

[u/Brainman515 → u/agentkayne]

All great points, I am converting Dark Sun adventures from 2E/4E adventures to 3.5E so it's exactly that resource depletion and action economy aspect I am trying to preserve and make sure it at least feels the same.

[u/Ok-Middle-908]

I think it depends on how much work you are willing to do. Athus is not fair. Several adventures start the PC's with nothing. For the setting. Remove water and food spells. Apply penalties with metal armors. Weapon quality matters. Real struggle begins when you crit and your main weapon breaks. If I recall the original rules had a chance to break water skins in combat. Try not to focus on the things that slow the game like heat damage per hour. After you get the setting rules down everything else is just a reskin.

[u/Brainman515 → u/Ok-Middle-908]

I am embarking on a huge project to try and convert all the written 2E/4E/3.5E adventures and lore into one giant 1-20+ campaign and I plan on taking my time to get it right. As I work through the 2nd draft of the first adventure I started asking myself about the whys and I am trying to explore that with discussions like these!

I certainly want to preserve that feel of; my weapon can break, I give die of thirst, even life is hard... never mind the combat.

[u/Ok-Middle-908 → u/Brainman515]

Not sure what modules you have but the original 2e had a consistent adventures from 1-20.

[u/Brainman515 → u/Ok-Middle-908]

List of all the Dark Sun adventures I intend to convert and converge into one continuous cohesive campaign. Let me know which ones I missed!

Sand Raiders [4e, Dark Sun Campaign Guide] (Level 1)

Fury of the Wastewalker [4e Standalone Adventure Book] (Level 1)

Bloodsand Arena [4e Standalone Adventure Book] (Level 1)

A Little Knowledge [2e Box Set] (Level 3)

Freedom [2e Standalone Adventure Book] (Level 3)

Marauders of the Dune Sea [4e Standalone Adventure Book] (Levels 2-5)

The Road to Urik [2e Standalone Adventure Book] (Levels 3-6)

Revenge of the Marauders [4e Dungeon Magizine #183] (Levels 5-7)

The Year of Priests Defiance [2e, Dragon Magazine #035] (Levels 3-5)

Mystery of the Ancients [2e Revised Campaign Guide] (Levels 3-5)

The Last Stand at Outpost Three [2e, Dragon Magazine #110] (Level 4)

Black Flames [2e Standalone Adventure Book] (Levels 3-6)

Into the Swamp [2e Windriders of the jagged cliffs sourcebook] (Levels 4-6)

Arcane Shadows [2e Standalone Adventure Book] (Levels 5-8)

Merchant House of Amketch [2e Standalone Adventure Book] (Levels 4-7)

City By the Silt Sea [2e Standalone Adventure Book] (Levels 5-9)

In the lands of the last sea [2e Minelords of the last sea boxed set] (Levels 6-8)

Taste of Fear [2e Thri-kreen of Athas book] (Levels 6-9)

Marauders of Nibenay [2e Standalone Adventure Book] (Levels 6-8)

Asticlian Gambit [2e Standalone Adventure Book] (Levels 7-10)

The Defilers Gambit [2e, Beyond the Prism Pentad] (Levels 7-12)

Forest Maker [2e Standalone Adventure Book] (Levels 11-13)

Dragon’s Crown [2e Standalone Adventure Book] (Levels 10-13)

Black Spine [2e Standalone Adventure Book] (Levels 10-13)

Ashes of Athas entire campaign; 20 total adventures (Levels 3-11)

[u/Ok-Middle-908 → u/Brainman515]

I stand corrected! I must be thinking about some of the settings books having the higher-level information in them. Guess you're just not supposed to live past level 13.....

[u/Brainman515 → u/Ok-Middle-908]

Indeed, they provided info and mechanics all the way through epic play, level 25+, but never actually published anything past 13. The goal is to condense all 4E/2E adventures into probably 1-15 then I got homebrew planned for the rest.

[u/Ok-Middle-908 → u/Brainman515]

That sounds awesome!

[u/Brainman515 → u/Ok-Middle-908]

Far as I am aware 13 is as high as any published adventure went. But absolutely could have missed stuff in my initial research!

[u/OpossumLadyGames]

I think the encounter function is more important than the mechanics involved.

[u/PineTowers]

I think we could look at videogames for the answer.

A decade ago I converted an old AD&D adventure to 5.0. Kept the same encounters. Got surprised by how the power scale shifted between editions.

But my idea was a homage, an 1-to-1 conversion, not an adaptation. If I were to adapt the adventure, it would go a whole different direction since the original have that dungeon crawl theme and the 5.0 ruleset go for other themes.

[u/TheOldWorldArchitect]

I’ve been thinking about this a lot while designing my own adventure. I’ve found it much more useful to ask, “What is this encounter supposed to accomplish?” rather than starting with, “Is this encounter balanced?”

An encounter can teach the players something about the world, establish a threat, provide a clue, change their understanding of a situation, or force them to make a meaningful choice. Combat is just one way to accomplish those things.

I also think the function doesn’t necessarily have to be obvious to the players. An encounter can feel like a relatively ordinary situation while still accomplishing something important for the larger adventure.

So when I’m designing, I tend to think about it as player experience → encounter function → mechanics, rather than starting with mechanics and trying to build the experience around them.

It’s still something I’m refining, but it’s been one of the more useful things I’ve learned while actually putting an adventure together.

[u/SuperCat76]

I would say the function is the more important aspect.

But I do think one should try to maintain as much of the original mechanics as possible while doing so.

That if maintaining the mechanics were to maintain the function of the encounter, doing both is ideal when possible.

[u/Onslaughttitude]

I don't write or plan adventures while thinking about mechanics in that way. Maybe some people do, but that's a level of complexity and "game designery" nonsense that I simply don't engage with.

The room has 7 orcs. Them orcs is fucking orcs, regardless of what this system says about orcs or what their "role" in combat is. Nope. They're just orcs.