Quote from: S'mon on October 09, 2020, 03:56:48 AM

Do you find the 5e books easy to use? I'm running Princes of the Apocalypse and I find it's a good bit harder to use than my old 1e & Classic modules like Keep on the Borderlands. Although not as hard as using Paizo wall-of-text APs, which are also very linear; at least the 5e campaign adventures try to avoid railroading.

5e adventure presentation tends to be poor IME; I've used 3e and 5e Forge of Fury and the former was far easier to run, with legible maps and incorporated stat blocks.

Princes of the Apocalypse is probably the worst organised module for 5E. It doesn't help that, in principle, you only actually need about 1/3 of the adventure  - you could just run the adventure using the outpost and temple of a single element. Because it is organised into chapters that correspond roughly with levels, you get all the outposts in one chapter. Then all the temples in another, whereas PCs are likely to just go from the outpost of one element straight to the temple of the same one.

And putting the "extra" sidequests at the end was just stupid. If you're going to organise things by level, be consistent about it!
   

Quote from: spon on October 14, 2020, 06:47:08 AM
Princes of the Apocalypse is probably the worst organised module for 5E. It doesn't help that, in principle, you only actually need about 1/3 of the adventure  - you could just run the adventure using the outpost and temple of a single element. Because it is organised into chapters that correspond roughly with levels, you get all the outposts in one chapter. Then all the temples in another, whereas PCs are likely to just go from the outpost of one element straight to the temple of the same one.

And putting the "extra" sidequests at the end was just stupid. If you're going to organise things by level, be consistent about it!

POTA is definitely a big old mess that could have been much better very easily. Eg a proper sandbox gazetteer of the region at the start would help hugely in developing a sense of place. I do kinda like the way  that it encourages the players NOT to slog through all the material though; this gives a sense of choice and freedom lacking in railroad adventures. Some of my players love the strategising over which cult to knock off in what order - they went Fire (stronget, bit of a fluke, used sneaky deception tactics to kill Vanifer), Water (because with the defeat of Fire, Water was getting too strong), Earth (because strongest remaining) - they are about to fight the Prophet of Earth in the Black Geode. They plan to do Air last, on the basis that Air is the weakest and they assume they have the best chance to beat the Air Prince & Prophet.

You can run stuff from any D&D edition with OSR games. That said, I haven't seen any of the newer stuff that would appeal to me more than older stuff or than OSR-specific adventures (of which there's a ton of great stuff).

Quote from: S'mon on October 09, 2020, 03:56:48 AM
Although not as hard as using Paizo wall-of-text APs, which are also very linear; at least the 5e campaign adventures try to avoid railroading.

Yeah - Paizo's adventures are solid IF you're okay with being linear. The APs can be fine with table buy-in, but I tend to prefer the short ones designed for Pathfinder Society play.

Sure, they're still kinda linear, but they're short enough that you can drop them in anywhere with pretty minimal tweaking - likely just the adventure hook if it's a bit too Pathfinder Society specific, though many of them aren't.

They make for great side-quests.

Quote from: theOutlander on October 08, 2020, 03:59:57 PM
One of the first questions I can think of is: are the modules convertible enough so to accommodate the lower power level of OSR without making Strahd a bitch?

Well, Strahd in particular is already converted to OSR in the original module, so that part of it is easy. There is some danger in that certain abberant monsters may require a more precise balancing attempt depending on the power level of the given OSR. Lets take Llolth as an example, with super high defenses and low hp. Thats fine for the 1E Player's Handbook. Add in Unearthed Arcana and Oriental Adventures and now you have to account for higher bonuses, more attacks, more damage, etc, and she'll probably go down more anti climactically than you'd like.

I've found nearly anything can be converted once you've got a good feel for the system you'll be converting to. Using existing monsters in that system as templates makes things a lot easier too. I ran a whole pile of converted OSR adventures for PF2 and had few problems. Your biggest issue may be the assumed heroism of the newer stuff vs the more looty OSR aesthetic.