Fun Mixing and Matching Systems

Dragonhelm · Post by **Dragonhelm** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 4:41 am

For a while now, I've tried to convert my old half-giant gladiator from Dark Sun to 3e. Long story short, the task was nigh-impossible since a) half-giants in 3e aren't anything like the Dark Sun version and b) his psionic wild talents didn't convert well without giving him several levels of psychic warrior (which I didn't want to do).

So I thought I'd try a different approach. I thought I'd use C&C as a baseline. And since C&C is 2e-compatible, I didn't have to change the psionics whatsoever. My skill system is based largely on 3e's, though I'm taking a page from True20 and allowing for a certain number of skills to be picked.

Here I am mixing and matching systems, and I'm having fun. I love the end result.

So how has mixing and matching systems worked in your games?
_________________
Trampas Whiteman
---DragonHelm--->
Dragonlance Nexus

Dristram · Post by **Dristram** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 4:56 am

Cool! Pretty much for me, it's been easy to input details from OD&D, AD&D and 3e seamlessly into my C&C games. Fun!

Treebore · Post by **Treebore** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 5:30 am

1E, 2E, 3E, OD&D, it hasn't mattered. Its been easy. Now I am looking at stealing stuff from the d20 version of "Magic of Arcanis".

Metathiax · Post by **Metathiax** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 6:28 am

Quote:
For a while now, I've tried to convert my old half-giant gladiator from Dark Sun to 3e. Long story short, the task was nigh-impossible since a) half-giants in 3e aren't anything like the Dark Sun version and b) his psionic wild talents didn't convert well without giving him several levels of psychic warrior (which I didn't want to do).

I guess you already know about the free Dark Sun conversion to 3e D&D (www.athas.org). If you don't, it looks like near-professional work and I think that, if I were to play with the current edition of D&D, I would do so using the 3 core books and their campaign material exclusively. I have fond memories of Dark Sun... 8)
_________________
"Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy." author unknown
My C&C Page
My House Rules v8

Dragonhelm · Post by **Dragonhelm** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 6:57 am

Metathiax wrote:
I guess you already know about the free Dark Sun conversion to 3e D&D (www.athas.org). If you don't, it looks like near-professional work and I think that, if I were to play with the current edition of D&D, I would do so using the 3 core books and their campaign material exclusively. I have fond memories of Dark Sun... 8)

Yep, aware of Athas.org's fine work as well as the conversion in Dragon. I'd probably use a mix of the two if I was to run a D&D Dark Sun game.

I'm just goofing around, really. Trying to find a good mix of rules to represent my old character in the best possible way. 8)
_________________
Trampas Whiteman
---DragonHelm--->
Dragonlance Nexus

serleran · Post by **serleran** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 9:02 am

I don't have to mix and match. I can translate.

Omote · Post by **Omote** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 1:00 pm

I've not really mixed and matched any other games to C&C, now that you mention it. Odd really.

...........................................Omote

FPQ
_________________
> Omote's Advanced C&C stuff <
Duke Omote Landwehr, Holy Order of the FPQ ~ Prince of the Castles & Crusades Society

Nelzie · Post by **Nelzie** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 2:40 pm

I am waiting to mix and match bit until after getting deeper into or completing the campaign we are running right now. So far, there has been no need for skills outside of the SIEGE Engine, which means there hasn't been a need to bring in a seperate/extra skill system.

I have added some minor house rules and a handful of classes to fit the campaign world and how the campaign world is supposed to match the core C&C rules (in regards to Class/Level progression) with a tweak regarding the difference between NPCs and PCs.
_________________
Earned the following:

50 Useless Trivia Points from Serleran

phadeout · Post by **phadeout** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 12:56 am

Metathiax wrote:
I guess you already know about the free Dark Sun conversion to 3e D&D (www.athas.org). If you don't, it looks like near-professional work and I think that, if I were to play with the current edition of D&D, I would do so using the 3 core books and their campaign material exclusively. I have fond memories of Dark Sun... 8)

Dear gawd, you'd play 3E Dark Sun?... you mean you wouldn't play 2e Dark Sun plugged into C&C?

phadeout · Post by **phadeout** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 12:59 am

I've been trying to get a Midnight D20 to C&C conversion working along with Nif on the AtS.org forums, but I just don't think I can make Midnight work with C&C, not without re-working A LOT of stuff. It would basically require re-writing a whole new set of Core Classes for Midnight, plus the Magic is a big problem. I'm think (oh lord I'm gonna have to duck some flying tomato's for this) that I may have to drop C&C for a bit, just so I can play Midnight at all (cause it's my new favorite gaming world and I'd rather play it than convert it - seems no one is really interested in a conversion).

Though, if you are, Go Post in the House Rules & Conversions forum at:

againsttheshadow.org

anglefish · Post by **anglefish** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 3:44 am

phadeout wrote:
I've been trying to get a Midnight D20 to C&C conversion working along with Nif on the AtS.org forums, but I just don't think I can make Midnight work with C&C, not without re-working A LOT of stuff. It would basically require re-writing a whole new set of Core Classes for Midnight, plus the Magic is a big problem. I'm think (oh lord I'm gonna have to duck some flying tomato's for this) that I may have to drop C&C for a bit, just so I can play Midnight at all (cause it's my new favorite gaming world and I'd rather play it than convert it - seems no one is really interested in a conversion).

Though, if you are, Go Post in the House Rules & Conversions forum at:

againsttheshadow.org

That's funny. I remember that some people seemed interested in a conversion over at AtS.org. Strike that, they were interested in someone else doing a C&C conversion and then downloading it. Unforntuantly so was I. Shame on me. LOL!

My ideas at conversion was more how to use Midnight ideas in C&C, I guess.

*With C&C's no magic bard and ranger they'd be perfect.

*Any heroic paths that gave skill or feat options would be defined my me in the write up. (essentially they'd be Heroic Path abilities that add on to every level, regardless of class.)

*Convert over monsters.

*Cut off options that weren't in the vein of how I'd run the game. I didn't want any Legate PCs, so no need to balance the class when I gave it to NPCS.
*Find a spell point system that I felt comfortable with.

That last one hung me up for a bit and then I moved on for a while.

Gnostic Gnoll · Post by **Gnostic Gnoll** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 4:47 am

phadeout wrote:
Dear gawd, you'd play 3E Dark Sun?... you mean you wouldn't play 2e Dark Sun plugged into C&C?

Hee hee. I see your wink, but still wanted to chime in.

It's more like "spend a fair deal of time converting Dark Sun to C&C." DS poses a problem in conversion, especially in character creation. You might be able to get away with everything else on the fly, but making characters requires attention.

The C&C PH isn't equipped to deal with 4d4+4 in ability scores (and another +0-4 for racial mods), to begin with. Even if you don't mind killing one of the defining parts of making a Dark Sun character (like the 3E/3.5 version does), the higher racial ability mods are still out of the C&C PH's league. Then the Gladiator, Defiler, and Preserver at the very least require a great deal of tinkering, considering the Defiler's Charisma penalty, for example, will start affecting C&C saves in a bad way... against death attacks no less.

It probably wouldn't take as much time to convert as it likely did for 3E/3.5, but it is hardly like taking Greyhawk or those nameless "generic" adventures and doing on-the-fly conversions. At least it wouldn't satisfy me personally.

Treebore · Post by **Treebore** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 5:26 am

phadeout wrote:
I've been trying to get a Midnight D20 to C&C conversion working along with Nif on the AtS.org forums, but I just don't think I can make Midnight work with C&C, not without re-working A LOT of stuff. It would basically require re-writing a whole new set of Core Classes for Midnight, plus the Magic is a big problem. I'm think (oh lord I'm gonna have to duck some flying tomato's for this) that I may have to drop C&C for a bit, just so I can play Midnight at all (cause it's my new favorite gaming world and I'd rather play it than convert it - seems no one is really interested in a conversion).

Though, if you are, Go Post in the House Rules & Conversions forum at:

againsttheshadow.org

I wish I owned Midnight. I'm willing to bet the conversion isn't as tough as you think.

Metathiax · Post by **Metathiax** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 11:09 am

phadeout wrote:
Dear gawd, you'd play 3E Dark Sun?... you mean you wouldn't play 2e Dark Sun plugged into C&C?

I said if I were to play with the current edition of D&D. I would love to play in Dark Sun with C&C but I'm just to darn lazy to work on the conversion. I've read in an old DF thread that Jackal (among others?) wrote-up such a conversion? I'm now sticking with Greyhawk although I probably would have preferred the Aihrde setting for C&C had it been available before I started out my campaign...
_________________
"Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy." author unknown
My C&C Page
My House Rules v8

Metathiax · Post by **Metathiax** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 7:05 pm

The Midnight campaign setting looks cool as hell (after all, Dante did portray the depths of hell as being cold )!
_________________
"Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy." author unknown
My C&C Page
My House Rules v8

Omote · Post by **Omote** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 8:39 pm

anglefish wrote:
That's funny. I remember that some people seemed interested in a conversion over at AtS.org. Strike that, they were interested in someone else doing a C&C conversion and then downloading it. Unforntuantly so was I. Shame on me. LOL!

Put me into that camp too. I also wanted to do a Midnight C&C game, which would be fine if you didn't use a great deal of the Midnight specific rules regarding magic and lineage rules. But I couldn;t see myself spending all of that time converting...

...........................................Omote

FPQ
_________________
> Omote's Advanced C&C stuff <
Duke Omote Landwehr, Holy Order of the FPQ ~ Prince of the Castles & Crusades Society

Nifelhein · Post by **Nifelhein** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 2:04 am

Midnight is fantastic.
The conversion has some troubles in the magical side because Midnight has magic as available to all through feats, spells are learnt by paying xp but the schools are separated by feats, with all summoning spells of conjuration being moved to greater conjuration and all spells from evocation that are damage dedalers (magic missile, fireball and the like) going to greater evocation too.

It uses a spell energy as well, the great advantage a channeler has over a non channeler. Aside from that some other things I see as troublesome in the work is that midnight palces a great deal of importance on crafting and skills, much like dark sun the world's economy is not something you can rely on, you better be able to make things for yourself, as well as capable of surviving.

Anyone familiar with D20 can get nearly all mehcanics for Midnight from here if you want to help us on this.

Reworking the classes is a must too, a Midnight's Wildlander is very different from a ranger, same for the defender when compared to a monk, but those are the easy ones, the channeler is originally the only spellcasting class beside the legates (which are the only clerics in the setting, and followers of a dark god too). They divide the channelers through 3 traditions, the class abilities make them different from one another, not the spell list.

The heroic paths were a mechanical tool to make characters roughly equivalent to those with magicla items in core D&D (3.x), in C&C they need not be so powerful and i pondered on making them the ace. Explanation: make each heroic path define a character in some way (usually it is a third layer when making a concept, added to race and class) but place some options through out the path where one could get a bonus of +1 to some kind of task or learn one spell instead, a single task could get up to +3 bonus through this.

Anyone willing to help is more than welcome too.
_________________
"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects." - Attributed to Herman Melville.

Treebore · Post by **Treebore** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 3:46 am

Nice website. Nice map. Nice maps are always a good thing!

I'll have to do some slow reading, but reading stuff fast it seems to me like using my "feat like actions" roll would help a lot of that stuff to work. I could have definitely missed key elements that would shut that down with just a quick read through, but if I didn't, it can work. I'll hopefully have time to read through slowly at the end of the week.

Nifelhein · Post by **Nifelhein** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 11:51 am

Hey treebore!

Darkness falls is mostly an SRD, the actual discussion boards for the setting, as PhadeOut said, goes on AtS.org, we have a whole forum for house rules and conversions, and one child forum for C&C. Midnight has seen complete conversions to GURPS and The Riddle of Steel already, there is a nearly complete one for Unisystem, one not finished for True20 and some people have been using Iron heroes to play it too.

I think both me and PhadeeOut will love to see what thoughts you have, reading the SRD cannot be half as fun as reading the books, given that you loose what makes the setting itself so good, but there are quite a few good spots on the game rules.

Like how FFG used Tiered abilities to make wildlanders different among themselves, this is a concept that we can get into C&C rather easily too.
_________________
"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects." - Attributed to Herman Melville.

phadeout · Post by **phadeout** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 5:12 pm

If more people were interested (seriously interested) in C&C Midnight, I'd be happy to go hardcore on a conversion. The way I see it right now, for all the time I'd spend converting, I could just be playing. What would need to be done to make it "perfect" would be to basically re-write the whole Midnight Campaign book using SIEGE (rather than trying to "convert"). The problem there is, I doubt people would agree on how to do things (as not everything would be as it was, things would be changed to make them work with C&C and to keep the Midnight feel while at the same time "making the system better and more unique").

It would be a lot easier, if doing a straight conversion, to use the 3.5 Spells and Spell System (schools) rather than the C&C Spells. That would get over a major hurdle... But once again, it's one of those "how to do it issues" where a lot of people may not agree on it being done that way.

Like I said, if it was up to me, if I knew that a book would be published out of the work, I'd write my own complete C&C Midnight book (so no need for the C&C PHB or the 3.x PHB to play, all in one - like Wheel of Time or Game of Thrones).