Posting Castle Whiterock Conversions to Pathfinder

[fonkin]

Hi folks!

I'm getting ready to run Castle Whiterock as a side campaign for my regular Pathfinder group - boy I can't wait!

Back in the day, sites like ENWorld used to keep a library of D&D3.5 conversions to old 1st/2nd edition modules; purely the mechanical stuff like statlines and updated class combos. I'm wondering if it would be kosher with GG for me to pull a similar stunt with Castle Whiterock and Pathfinder! I'm mostly doing this for ease-of-reference and I'm sure it could be useful to anyone else considering running Whiterock as a Pathfinder game.

If so, I'm also wondering where I would post it. ENWorld seems to have gone wholly 4E...

[Jengenritz]

I don't speak officially for Goodman Games, but I'd love to see a PFRPG conversion of Castle Whiterock - mostly because I'll be running it as a side campaign for my regular group!
Great minds thinking alike? Possibly.
Even if you can't post it here (that'll be up to Joseph), PM me where you end up posting it, please!

[arlanni]

OK, time for the other author to chime in. Same thoughts as Jeng., its up to Mr. Goodman if you can post it here. But I would be most interested as well. I've been running a few levels on and off using PF, and I would enjoy seeing compiled conversion notes as well.

Chris

[fonkin]

Hmmm, so I guess it's up to Mr. Goodman then eh? Or rather Mr. Goodman's legal and biz depts.....?

[goodmangames]

Cool idea. I've hosted conversions of various modules to different systems before (see the bottom of http://www.goodman-games.com/dcc-resources.html , for example). No problem there. Just keep the conversion material to the stat blocks - you can check out the prior link for some examples. Send me the material and I'll get it posted so everyone can check it out.

[fonkin]

Sweet! It may take me a while (I don't know if you've heard but Castle Whiterock is somewhat horkin' large!) but when I get at least through conversions of the first book I'll let you know. Is there some template I should be using for the PF OGL disclaimer at the end? At EnWorld they used a conversion template that contained the standard trademark and copyright boilerplate...

[goodmangames]

Cool. I would check the Pathfinder/Paizo site for whatever official disclaimer is needed for indicating PF compatibility -- not sure myself.

And what do you mean that Castle Whiterock is large?

[fonkin]

Honest, honey, it's just the jeans!

[DCCfan]

Wow that's a MONSTER side campaign!

[fonkin]

Wow that's a MONSTER side campaign!

O yeah? You should see our REGULAR campaign!

Actually this side campaign is more of an excuse to try out Castle Whiterock as a long-term option. I've already borrowed a few bits and pieces of it for the main campaign; I look forward to players catching the connections - and discrepencies.

[fonkin]

Haven't forgotten, just buried in work and my old high level group kick-started itself unexpectedly...

[fonkin]

Wow I can't believe my last post on this subject was in August. What a year!

Tomorrow night is our first game in the Pathfinder/Castle Whiterock campaign! I have been working on converting up the Slavers of the Iron Manacle to PFRPG rules (Man, Ikenvar on enlarge person is going to be BAD) as well as some of the monsters on the first level or two.

Pretty soon I'll have the data conversion done for book one...

[fonkin]

I started working on level 2 last night, when I noticed that the orc modifications didn't line up. Per "The Orcs of Castle Whiterock" inset on p. 42, the base statline of the orcs in this dungeon should be S18, D9, C12, I8, W7, Ch 8 or 10 (depending on whether the Whiterock bonus of +2 to Charisma is used 'in-addition-to' o 'instead-of' the standard orc modifier for Charisma).

All the basic warrior orcs in CW book 1 have the standard orc statline from the 3.5 monster manual...

Does the Whiterock bonus apply on top of the existing statline for basic troops and/or only in the case of leaders?

[Jengenritz]

I wish I could answer this definitively, but I didn't write the upper levels of Whiterock.
If you found that error, it was probably only applied to leader-types.
If I were doing conversions, I'd apply them to all relevant orcfolk.

[arlanni]

Well, I did write the upper levels, and yes, IIR, those attributes were to be applied to all of the orcs to give them a slightly different feel. There is a good chance the "stats" editor (who didn't read the text on the orcs, I imagine) caught the change in the regular orcs and switched it back to the standard array. Not sure, but its a theory.

Keep the postings coming. Enjoying the tales of actual gameplay.

Chris

[fonkin]

Ah, that makes sense. I hadn't considered that the stats editor would be different from the person developing the level. DUH!

The game was also fun for me to run. Having a newb or two in the group is always exciting. Plus, there were two veteran players, one of whom has been playing in games I run for most of a decade. When I told them all that the "monks" were hitting them for non-lethal damage, their expressions were priceless!

Newb1 = relieved
Newb2 = unconcerned
Veteran = suspicious
Local vet = terrified

The local vet KNEW from experience how bad it is to be captured!

[fonkin]

Finished off Drugila's lair yesterday during a lull at work. Then I realized "oh yeah, you know, item slots changed from 3.5 to PF. I'd better go over those a little more carefully..."

So far I'm past the half-way point of book one and things are lining up nicely. I'm developing a system for creating these conversions, which really helps move things along. Hope to finish Book 1 this month!

[finarvyn]

By the way, I'm a little confused...

DCC modules such as Whiterock are based on 3E (which in my mind includes 3.5) and Pathfinder is based on 3E (mostly a cleaned up 3.5) so why is any real conversion needed? I guess I just assumed that all of the 3.x rules systems would be similar enough that you could just plug and play from one to another.

I haven't really looked at Pathfinder much, so maybe I'm totally off here.

[fonkin]

Mechanically Pathfinder is very similar; still d20 based and still similar to 3.5. There are a few sticking points around feats and magic item slots, but these have not been terribly problematic. Nearly every non-custom creature in Castle Whiterock exists in either the Bestiary or Bestiary 2, or was pulled from Tome of Horrors, so that's a win as well. Even for the ones that don't fall into this category, there is a pretty simple template you can follow to convert a monster from 3.5 to Pathfinder.

On the other hand, almost every character class has been redesigned, so the only real difficulties have been the conversion of creatures with class levels. There are a lot of changes to class abilities which require some reworking. For example, sorcerer bloodlines, rage powers, and arcane focus. Some spells and magic items have changed, and skills have been consolidated at the same time that the number of skill points a pc/npc accrues has diminished.

Poison, diseases and curses have changed as well.

None of these details are insurmountable on their own, there's just a LOT of stuff to convert, and my goal is to create a reference sheet that someone can take and just drop down on top of CW to make it easier to run it as a Pathfinder game setting.

[fonkin]

P.S. This is also providing valuable data on converting modules in general. After I finish CW, I'm going to start on Greyhawk Ruins!!!!

[finarvyn]

I usually go from 3E to something more simple like C&C, so I can ignore most of the feats, skills, etc. instead of trying to actually convert them.

I can see where Pathfinder must be just different enough to be an annoying conversion, however. Similar but not exact...

[GnomeBoy]

I can understand wanting to "get it right" and I am impressed with the dedication. But I happen to be starting a Pathfinder campaign on Friday and I'm simply going to run the first segment, which includes the Dragonfiend Pact, with 3.5 NPCs and monsters, traps, etc. I'm more than willing to give Pathfinder a spin since a couple guys in the group are very interested in it, but PF's sales pitch of 'fixing' 3.5 addresses problems I don't have with 3.5 (e.g. 'dead levels', if they exist, don't bother me) -- and PF adds extra fiddly bits to keep track of on top of a system that had plenty to keep track of as it was.

Having in the past created NPC foes in detail only to never get to use them to their full potential anyway most of the time, I figure if there is some minor feature that I'm missing, it won't be missed. I may convert major bad guys. I figure I'll run it this way for awhile and see how it goes...

[fonkin]

You can totally do that! It's not that hard to finagle skill and ability checks, at least at the lower levels. Where it gets tricky is with higher character-level-ed monsters. A flat transfer of lower level creatures is pretty painless since you usually aren't losing much, but the CR of a higher level monster is very different in Pathfinder. If you were to run the deeper levels of CW out of the box, your group might be disappointed with the results.

[GnomeBoy]

Right -- I'm going to find my way as I go. The module I'll be using after Pact is The Sellswords of Punjar -- now that will take some conversion, but I may still be essentially making it a 3.5 Sellswords, not a PF Sellswords. I don't own the PF Bestiary, and frankly I don't see me shelling out money on one. If their philosophy is that they don't make obsolete any of your 3.x materials, I'm ready to test that.

I have plans that should take the group up to about 8th level or so. We'll see how much I can get away with...

[Sunderstone]

I was doing this myself awhile back but not from the "perfectionist" angle. Just the basics like converting Class abilities, spells, and some skill consolidation where needed.
One major thing I like about Pathfinder is the seperate XP advancement tracks. I never liked 3.5s uber fast low level progression. While 3.5 is on the "fast" XP track of pathfinder, PFRPG is on "medium". If you use fast, no further modification is needed. On the other hand, I would want to run 51.5 and DCC 17/17.5 mixed in, so for those particular levels I would I would switch on the fly to Medium or even Slow XP tracks. I would likely further modify 51.5 (for example) by adjusting the last 2/3 of the module to keep the whole thing for level 1 PCs as opposed to levels 1-3.
This way I could run these modules and still keep all of CW intact without getting ahead of XP/Difficulty.