Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Greyson Jun 16, 2008 14:33:39	Hey, all. Is anyone aware of any projects to convert Expedition to Castle Ravenloft to 4th Edition? I'd like help, of course, and use any converted material. If a project has begun, cool. Where do I look? If not, is there any interest in beginning? I did not think there is a pressing need to wait for the GSL to come out to get started, except to post a public document. Happy gaming.
#2 alexanderlambert Jul 11, 2008 19:38:18	Well, ever since "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night" became available for the PSP (albeit only as an unlockable "bonus" within the main game on that disc), I've been thinking about the similarity between the two franchises, and toying with the idea of adapting "Expedition to Castle Ravenloft" to more of a Castlevania tone (most notably by placing the final confrontation with Strahd at the top of the castle's highest tower, in honor of the great carpeted staircase up to Dracula's throne room in every Castlevania game I've ever played). Sadly, I soon realized that spell slots didn't really mesh that well with the Belmonts' "item crashes", and D&D's (3.5 edition, which EtCR was written in) assumption of heavy armor as the default for all warriors particularly failed to capture the flavor of the Castlevania games' emphasis on dodging attacks rather than soaking up hits (since in most games four average hits will cost you a life). And so I began working on adapting EtCR into another D20 game which I won't name here because it wasn't published by TSR/Wizards (but for those whose interest is piqued by what I'm going to say next, it was written by Mike Mearls before he was hired onto the 4E design team); a low-magic, high-action sort of game that worked very well to evoke the tone of Robert E. Howard's Conan of Cimmeria (not to be confused with the tone of the Schwarzenegger movies), and which thus made for a much better fit for the style of the Castlevania heroes - extraordinary warriors with sparse magical resources to draw upon to triumph over the creatures of the night. However, when 4E came out, the new system of at-will / encounter / daily powers gave me the best fit for the different stages off Castlevania's subweapon uses (for one heart, ten hearts, or fifty hearts per attack), and so I abandoned the other game and bought the 4E corebooks. I'm still reading them (done with PHB and working on DMG now), but I like what I see thus far, especially the way multiclassing works now, considering one of the biggest inconsistencies in Strahd's write-ups over the years. Traditionally, Strahd has always been modeled as a master-type vampire who also happens to be a reasonably high level wizard (or magic-user in earlier editions) specializing in necromantic spells, even long before monstrous templates were a part of the rules. However, this really doesn't fit his backstory (as established in the diary fragment included at the start of EtCR's chapter on the village of Barovia) as a military commander who conquered Barovia in the name of a "just god" (but without a just god's mercy), took Castle Ravenloft as his capitol, brought his family to settle there, and only then turned to the forces of darkness and death when the woman he desired fell in love with his younger brother. Especially because there's no mention of any studies of arcane lore before his family came to the castle, which strongly implies that long before Strahd became a magic-user, he had been a high-level fighter (with an army flocking to his banner, as they did back in 1st edition). I remember that in first edition AD&D, when a character stopped training in one class and started in another, they had to start over from zero XP and automatically forfeited all XP for an adventure if they used ANY of the abilities from their old class (until their new class's level exceeded their old class's level), so it's entirely possible that in the rules when he was originally written, Strahd was an 11th (or even higher) level fighter dual-classed into magic-user and not yet caught up to his old level. And then this artifact of earlier-edition rules somehow became the tradition for statting him out in each incarnation that followed. However, I see no reason to continue that pattern, and so I'm looking at Strahd von Zarovich as having been a Warlord (since he's more the cunning commander than the prodigy of personal combat, and certainly was no living embodiment of his god's principles) in mortal life who then multiclassed to Warlock (since the root of his arcane mojo fits so closely with the definition of a Pact) shortly before becoming undead, and has grown into the Life-Stealer paragon path in the centuries since. Admittedly, it's not a perfect fit, as multiclassing to Warlock doesn't give you the Warlock's Curse ability, but fortunately Monsters (which Strahd certainly is) don't get built exactly the same way that PCs do, and I've got some perfectly legitimate room to monkeywrench things. Getting back to the 4E conversion of the module in general, I'm only about 25 pages into the DMG at this point, with very minimal jumping around to read things out of order, so I've still got a whole lot of reading to do before I'll be ready to take the module apart and rebuild it encounter by encounter into 4E. But I'm working on it, and if anyone would like to contribute, feel free. Alexander Lambert, downstate NY