Converting Your AD&D Campaign to 3rd Edition

On August 10, many of you are going to walk into your gaming group to run the night's session and pull this brand-new, shiny Player's Handbook from your backpack. Your players will probably be excited at first, flipping through it, but as they learn more and more, one will eventually say, "Hey! These characters don't look anything like ours! How are we going to play this?"

Luckily, Wizards of the Coast has provided us with a Conversion Manual that takes care of the basic mechanics, but how does a Dungeon Master explain the new abilities available to players, the new player character race (half-orc), the change in racial abilities (especially the gnomish innate magical abilities), extremely noticeable things like the change in the way halflings look (shorter and thinner), and new available classes (barbarian, sorcerer, and monk), within the context of his campaign?

As an example, let us look at Ranald, a 4th-level fighter in AD&D. He's not very different than most fighters--he's got a decent strength, wears chainmail everywhere he goes, and wields a heavy morning star that he loves to whip down on goblin hordes. Converting his character, Ranald's player gets to the point where he would choose skills. Looking at his class skills, he notices "Climb," which was the thief skill "Climb Walls" in AD&D. Ranald couldn't climb before, and it seems odd that he could start doing it now, especially at the advanced level he could easily buy with all the skill points he has for being 4th level. Fighters don't have a lot of skills to choose from, so what should he do?

Ranald is choosing Feats as well. He has bought Improved Unarmed Fighting, and notices that it's a prerequisite for Deflect Arrows, which sounds pretty neat to him. He's never done it before, but it's too cool to pass up. Should the gamemaster let him pick it?

The DM in Ranald's game is designing next week's adventure, and really likes the new Sorcerer class. He's made a great sorcerer NPC, but there's never been a sorcerer in this campaign world before. Where did this guy come from?

There's three good ways to make these discontinuties make some sense in your game:

a) Ignore them.

Imagine your game world as a world on the other side of a window, that you can only view through the window. Your perceptions are defined by the quality of that window. Moving your campaign from 2nd Edition AD&D to 3rd Edition D&D is much like removing a piece of old, discolored, warped glass, and putting in a piece of clear, brand-new glass.

The world is the same, but you notice details you didn't notice before. Kyla the battle-mage (and all around heart-breaker) was really more of a sorcerer-type character--you just couldn't notice it before. And those northern barbarian hordes--well, it's obvious they weren't all fighters--there's barbarians among their numbers. And Ranald the fighter--of course he could always climb. He just never felt like it before.

The problem with this method is that it can be a bit unsatisfying to players. You have to have a group of people that can agree on doing this, and can accept a bit of strangeness for a while. While you may allow players to modify a few things (making their wizard character into a sorcerer, for example), it would be advised to keep them from acquiring new powers in character creation. For fighters, Feats without a visible effect, like Power Attack, Expertise, and even Point-Blank Shot are good choices, while ones like Deflect Arrows, or Far Shot will break the illusion easily. Clerics present similar problems with their granted powers. It is best if players choose domains with powers that are not very visible, such as Luck's power to re-roll one roll a day, or Good's power to cast Good spells at +1 caster level. The Fire domain's ability to turn or destroy water creatures and command fire creatures is rather different than anything in 2nd Edition, and would be out of place in this situation.

Players will still want access to the cool new features of 3rd Edition, and it can be easy to integrate these things--have fighters take prerequisite Feats for Stunning Fist or whatever they want, so they can grab it next level. Slowly phase in a cleric's new power, and have a wizard with no familiar meet an animal while traveling. It is recommended to accelerate experience for the next few sessions in order to have the players gain a level or two, where these new powers are more easily explained. Also, do not be afraid to kill off a character during this time, especially if one of your players wants to play a new character that doesn't fit under the old rules. By putting the new character at a level 2-3 levels underneath the rest of the party, you can let that player play the strange multi-class they always wanted to.

b) Move your characters.

This option has two sub-options, one more drastic than the other.

First, maybe it's time your characters explored part of the campaign world they never have before. Perhaps you will have to make up a new part of the world for them to explore. A land with an Eastern feel makes sense of sorcerers and monks, and a trip to the far north (or the far south, or the jungles, or wherever) makes sense of barbarians. In fact, much inspiration can be found from the real world Mongol hordes' invasion of China. Perhaps the character could be escorting a caravan and find themselves embroiled in a foreign land's war against crazed barbarians.

This, like above, limits the characters from picking new powers and options from 3rd Edition, but gives them the chance to learn or gain these new powers in the foreign society they travel in, as well as see new weapons, such as the double-bladed sword that attracts much attention in 3E.

The second option is to magically transport them somewhere else, endowing them with strange new powers at the same time. Hennet the wizard may find some of his spells gone, with his breadth of casting much expanded (and he has no need to memorize spells anymore), and Roland the ranger can now cast spells at a lower level. New, strange monsters assault the party, and they now have to figure out the way home, leading to a "Star Trek: Voyager" sort of plot.

An amusing corollary to this is to have some magical effect, like a wild surge, endow them with these new powers, and change the world slightly, but leave them right where they are, causing a small "burp" in reality. Have no one but the PC's notice, leaving them to ask strange questions from people, and get very confused responses. NPC's will reply, "But--that's how it's always been. I have no idea what you're talking about. And what is this 'THAC0' you speak of?" This can be set up with subtle changes in the campaign world that the PC's won't notice at first, until too late, much like the "Sliders" television show. Perhaps a new, dark god has risen to power, or an evil wizard has set himself up as a shadow ruler in their kingdom.

c) Make new characters.

This isn't as simple as I make it sound. You want to still keep your campaign (or you wouldn't be converting it.) This actually happens pretty often in a campaign, when the players and GM decide to move forward in time and play their characters' children, or perhaps retire their old characters, leaving them as important NPCs and hauling them out every once in a while for "reunion" adventures. (I haven't seen it, but the new movie "Space Cowboys" makes me think of this--a bunch of old, wrinkly heroes brought together for one more go.)

This works pretty well, especially if the GM describes events in the campaign world that happened in the intervening years that caused changes in the types of people, the way magic works, and the new powers that gods are bestowing on their clerics. These changes, like above, can lead into an interesting mini-campaign on their own. This also can be fun for when the group wants to haul out 2nd Edition for memories' sake (I can't see it, but hey--someone might.) You can haul out the old characters for a geriatric fun-fest.

An interesting way to use this option can be found in the "Nutcracker Prince" setting written by Peter Seckler and myself, which can be found at Gargoyle13.com. In this case, we had a long-running Planescape game going that we wanted to change into this odd setting we had conceived.

As a solution, we brought our Planescape game to an enormous climax. Our characters had more than one demon furious at us, and we all had our own personal nemeses through the machinations of a chronomancer demon named Tempus Fugit. We met our nemeses in the grand city at the center of everything, Sigil, after jumping back and forth through time on the trail of and being chased by our enemies. As we met them in the city, the game became more and more mythic, climaxing in an enormous battle, lightning striking everywhere, and one of our number facing off in a battle with Tempus Fugit Godzilla-style, blocking out the sky with their enormous bodies.

And as the final blow was struck into Tempus Fugit, the world went dark. Over time, images began to take form, and the ground formed beneath us. Trees and grass grew at our thought. We never bothered to figure out the theological details, but that battle created a universe separate from the other, a universe where we were the creators. If you read "Nutcracker Prince," you'll see our characters--not only are they the gods of Primordia, but they are the archetypes that the races are built from.

Taking your characters and making them an important part of the background or setting can give you the freedom to make new 3rd Edition compatible characters, while preserving the essence of your campaign.