Subject: MYSTARA-L Digest - 21 Aug 2007 to 22 Aug 2007 (#2007-78) From: MYSTARA-L automatic digest system Date: 23/08/2007, 17:00 To: MYSTARA-L@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM Reply-to: Mystara RPG Discussion There is 1 message totalling 77 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. D&D 4e and Mystara ******************************************************************** The Other Worlds Homepage: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/OtherWorlds.asp The Mystara Homepage: http://www.pandius.com To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM with UNSUB MYSTARA-L in the body of the message. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2007 12:56:21 -0700 From: Dave Keyser Subject: Re: D&D 4e and Mystara On 8/17/07, Beau Yarbrough wrote: > > Joe Mason wrote: > > >From what I've heard, it sounds like the 4E rules will be much more > > compatible with the BD&D rules. > And here it is again, the very thing that led to the bickering and > from there to the apathy as tons of people gave up in disgust on the > Mystara 3E project: Mystara is distinct from BD&D. > If someone wants to play BD&D, they should go grab Castles & > Crusades and modify that. Converting Mystara needs to be about > converting the setting, not the rules. > If someone wants the full-on experience of playing BD&D, they can > download the PDFs of that, and off they go. No one -- at all -- is > served by trying to turn 3E (and now 4E) into BD&D and pretend that it's > a meaningful end result. > Assuming there's a genuine interest in actually making the setting > available before 5E rolls around, the focus should be on describing > Mystara in system-neutral or in 4E terms, There is a lot to recommend a baseline Mystara setting description in system neutral terms, basically all flavor and no crunch. That way it stays consistent through any future D&D new editions and revisions. It also provides a foundation for building a conversion for any D&D edition. Since 3.5E is coming to a close, one suggestion I have is to take advantage of what is out there for the 3.5e conversion. The two main things are- 1) The Savage Tide/Isle of Dread adventure path 2) The Lost City Dungeon magazine adventure and Dragon magazine update The Savage Tide is a complete set of adventures, and you can leave everything as is, while tweaking the story line and scenarios to add more details in a Mystara campaign. Possibly adding more side adventures as well as several starting locations for Sasserine. This would serve as an excellent gateway for new players and DMs that were planning to play an adventure path. The Lost City would be converting B4 and adding to it using the magazine adventure as the intro and using the Dragon article as a seed for conversion. There is enough in B4 to make a long-term campaign. Providing two 3.5 adventure campaigns in specific areas requires only those areas of Mystara to be detailed. And with all the complete books and the PHB2, as well as third party books, I bet 90% of the custom features from the Gazeteer series has an approximate equivalent in 3.5E now. not in trying to reverse > engineer 4E back to BD&D. Reverse engineering 3E back to BD&D was Castles & Crusades. Converting(aka reverse engineering) 3E to Mystara is something else. Of course, converting(aka reverse engineering) Mystara to 3E or 3.5E can be as easy as taking the latest WOTC published adventure and changing the country name from X to Karameikos if you want to keep it fast and painless. ******************************************************************** The Other Worlds Homepage: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/OtherWorlds.asp The Mystara Homepage: http://www.pandius.com To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM with UNSUB MYSTARA-L in the body of the message. ------------------------------ End of MYSTARA-L Digest - 21 Aug 2007 to 22 Aug 2007 (#2007-78) ***************************************************************