Hey Game Fans, we’re back with another look at one of the intersections we occasionally bounce through in the TTRPG hobby. You’re in the game store or checking out Drivethru and you found the coolest adventure you’ve ever seen. It’s got everything you like in an adventure and will give you and your friends weeks and weeks of adventure. Just one problem. It’s for a system that your table absolutely refuses to even consider trying. What do? Take a breath, think about it for a moment, and grab that adventure. There’s a better than average chance you can convert the game to the system of your choice and still enjoy it with your table of gaming friends.
First up, converting from an existing adventure means that a lot of the hard work has been done for you. The narrative structure of the adventure all ready exists and is ready to go as a series of encounters and set pieces. All you really need to do is convert three key things to the system of your choice. Before i go into the in depth three areas, i should warn you that the more different your settings and systems are, the harder you are going to have to work for it. You can convert a Paizo adventure path to 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons a lot easier than you can convert it to Edge of the Empire for example. You can still convert it to either game, but you’re going to have to work a little harder to get it to fit into EotE than you are D&D.
So, what are adventures built out of? Realistically, adventures share a narrative structure comprised of encounters. Encounters typically have obstacles and rewards. Obstacles take the form of exotic or dangerous scenery, monsters, or barriers to penetrate. Rewards could be treasure, information, or new allies. The other narrative elements can be rearranged however you like, and you can reshape the narrative to fit what you want to do at your table.
So how do you swap out monsters? Well, this is easier than it sounds. Goblins in one game are usually similar to other goblins and you can use that to your advantage. More challenging foes can either be created by adding special abilities or equipment changes to existing substitutes, or swapping them out for a more dangerous foe. Boss Monsters are usually complex enough for you to approximate a set of statistics even if you’re changing from one system to another. In a pinch, you can take an existing template and then add more insanity to flavor up to the encounter you want to build.
Exotic Scenery works the same way. Lava is Lava, high falls are high falls, and mazes are mazes. All you need to make this work for you is to figure out your system’s mechanics for how these interact with explorers and you’re off to the races. The thing that makes a role-playing game an encounterable experience are that the same rough ideas work across systems. Perception is perception, climbing is climbing, etc.
Barriers are probably the hardest thing to convert because every system handles these challenges differently. Traps work a little differently each system, but the core three elements are there. Namely, How hard is the trap to spot, what sets it off, and how does it get disarmed? Those three elements are universal to traps, and identifying them lets you convert with reckless abandon. Barriers and other impediments work on a similar idea, and once you’ve got an idea of how to express them from one game system to another, you can convert with glee.
Rewards work along a similar idea. Money and treasure are universal rewards and figuring out what treasure goes where should be a fairly easy task. The only things you need to really calibrate are things like magical items. This is especially true for settings and games with differing amounts of magical or special gear, but you can certainly figure out how to make this work.
Information is equally easy. The details on the big plot are universal and evergreen for an RPG. Knowing where the secret mine the bad guys are pulling the raw materials for their secret unobtainium weapons cache doesn’t rely on the game’s system. Likewise, knowing that a special shipment of secret prisoners is moving through a specific region is equally applicable regardless of your game.
Friends and allies are equally evergreen. Having friends in lots of places is something that every RPG group can take advantage of. The system doesn’t matter in this exchange and you don’t even need to worry about a lot of the mechanical details of allies unless they are going to be joining the characters on their adventures.
It can seem very daunting the first time to take a stab at converting an adventure, but i have faith in you as a GM. It may take some time, but you have the capacity to transmogrify an existing adventure or scenario for a game into an experience that your players will enjoy at the tabletop.
As stated above, it may take some stretches of the imagination to make it work, but you can reflavor an imperial prison full of stormtroopers into a secured magical jail guarded by golems. You can also reflavor a pirate ship themed adventure into an expedition into an unknown region of space aboard a corsair ship. All it takes is a little imagination and the ability to recognize comparable threats, challenges and rewards. Your players may be so surprised that they are willing to give a new system a try after experiencing one of its adventures through your conversion lens.
That’s going to do it for us this week, Game Fans. IF you want to see us try our hand at this, you have to let us know by either commenting on this article, or sending a note on twitter, or finding some other way of getting ahold of us. I trust you all to be the clever gamers and you can show us what you think. Game On, Game Fans. We’ll see you next time.
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