INTEREST CHECK - D&D 5e Convention module

I designed a game back in the early 80's ostensibly for my own enjoyment and then decided to offer it in a local Con. I playtested it in my own gaming group first and everyone seemed to enjoy it. The name of the Game is Fortress of Kahlilahd and it's pretty simple and straightforward. It was originally designed in 1e and then later updated to 3.5e and subsequently updated again to be run PbP on another site. When it was completed there and I started Chapter Two which ran for a couple of years, the game and the site petered out.

The set up is thus: The King has recruited a small group of fairly high level heroes (8th) to find his son who seems to have disappeared. It is suspected that he was taken by an evil wizard and hidden away in a fortress within a couple days ride of the King's Castle. The team would start at the entrance to the fortress downs. I had originally set it up to use my own characters but I won't hold all of you to that. What I do ask for is to keep to standard character. I don't want to be finding and reading several different resources to understand your highly esoteric character.

As I said it's pretty simple but I need some time to set everything up on this site and refresh all my notes most of which are still hand written and 38 years old. Anyone interest post here and we can discuss the game in more depth.

I'm interested. Please send me an invite when you get things set up.

I'm afraid it may take another couple days before I get it put up. Accessing my files has proven to be much more difficult than I thought. I have to reconstruct everything from memory and that's not real easy to do at my age. I'll make sure you get an invite though.

I would be interested.

Good. The game was originally designed for 8 players and I hope we get that much interest. My memory is coming back but the denizens of the Fortress are much harder to recall and the bestiary has changed significantly since the 80's. The place will be stocked with 5th generation beasties. I'll go ahead and put up the game later today or tomorrow after the super bowl so I can get you both on board and we can start talking about character concepts.

I'd be interested Aldrusian. Would be a pleasure to play in a game run by you.

If this is still happening I'd be interested. I've got a Dwarf Forge Cleric concept I've been itching to play.

If you need players, I'll help you out.

To the three of you who have just posted here, how do you feel about playing this in a 3.5 format instead of 5.0? I'm having a lot of difficulty with a number of the 5e rules. One thing that players usually are concerned about when starting with higher level characters is what sort of gear and/or magic items could they have with them. At 8th level players only get 2 common and 2 uncommon magic items. In the original 5e guide there are only 2 or 4 common items available. Since I don't have any of the 5e books other than a pdf of the GM and Player's Guides it is tough for me to understand what else is available. I have a lot of 3.5 material which includes a large number of prestige characters. In 3.5 an 8th level character gets 27k gold to spend and the books list the gold value of everything available. The only other option in 5e is that you list what items you would like and provide the details and I would have to decide whether or not it's acceptable. I would also add a rare item to the mix.

Let me know here or by PM. I'm likely to lose a few of my original cast members if I go to 3.5

If you decide to run this in 5e, I'd love to join in. Sadly I haven't played 3.5e yet and I don't really have access to the books to learn it. If there is easy access somewhere on the net, I'd gladly take some time to read into it~

But yeah, all in all I'm interested, although I'd prefer 5e.

Interested... :) What was the name of this?

I'd have to bow out if we ran 3.5. I never played that edition and don't have access to the materials. I can tell you the books you'd want to look for to find magic items would be pretty simple: the DMG and Xanathar's Guide to Everything. Xanny's has all of the common magic items and the DMG has everything else. There are a few magic items scattered throughout the different adventure modules, but by and large you can get by with those two resources.

I'm seeing sites that offer free downloads of a Xanathar's pdf but every one of them require that I download something else first. Since so much of what I see is a scam I am loathe to download anything from an unknown source. The cheapest I've seen the hard copy listed for is just under $25. I get bitched at for wanting to spend $10 on something for gaming so you won't find me spending much if anything for game related stuff. That's the biggest part of why I'm still old school other than the fact that I'm just plain old.

Here is something that those of you who are well versed in 5e can help me with. I know how to assign XP based on the value of Monsters slain, situations/traps overcome and value of treasure. I haven't found anything in the 5e rules about assigning XP to monsters that only have a CR rating. Is there a chart or something that translate CR rating into XP?

I'm sure you'll find players who are more than happy working with just the basic rules. I have no problems with making archetypal characters.Not so much a rule about assigning XP, but this list has both XP and CR values for most (if not all) monsters in 5e.

EDIT to add, I think the beauty of 5e is that you can just make things up. If you think the players earned N amount of XP, you can give them that amount of XP. Or do milestone leveling.

The list helped a lot. I've got enough to read for all the new spells, races and character classes that I'd rather not spend time trying to figure out how to do milestone leveling. What I will be doing is figuring out the total XP value of an encounter and do contribution measuring. How you dole out any treasures accumulated is totally up to the players.

Milestone leveling is dead simple: when you feel the party has done enough to earn it, you level them up. It usually happens after a major, well, milestone in the campaign. It’s way easier than tracking XP. After running accumulated XP leveling games and milestone leveling games, I’m 100 percent onboard with milestone from here on out for games I run. I’m happy to play either way, just trying to give you some insight to the benefits of milestone.

When it comes to something like that I'm very anal. I've long been accused of analysis paralysis and it probably holds true in this case. I could use the same cutoffs I used in the original tournament but I don't know if that's fair. As is normal in all long spanning games the early XP is smaller than the later XP. I understand that with each bump in level it takes more to get to the next level so that could even out but the milestone option is usually reserved for the entire party. My method gives more XP to people who participate and less to those who don't. I'm talking here about people who miss turns rather than those who stay in the background but still contribute to the success of the team. I'm still a pretty long way before I can actually determine what a fair milestone would be. Since I can no longer find my maps I will have to redraw them from memory as well. And I don't want to hear anything about simple mapping tools that other people use. It's hard enough to learn everything about 5e I need to run this game without worrying about new mapping software. If we get someone who wants to use something like that, I will see about working with them.

Honestly, I'd say you're overthinking it. Milestone advancement is simple, intuitive, and easier on everyone.

Regarding systems, I'm fine with both.

For those who don't have 3.5 books, everything you need to create characters and run is here, on this very handy 3.5 SRD page.

Regarding XP, I'm pretty much old school myself. Milestone advancement works in story-driven role-playing. But if you're playing a more hex-crawl or dungeon-crawl style of game, you have to keep that risk-reward relation using xp as the carrot.

Thank you, matmaisan!
I'll read into the SRD over the weekend~
I love getting to know new systems

Perhaps you are thinking on milestone leveling as too similar to XP leveling. The reason that milestone leveling is superior, in my opinion, is that you can create encounters that you want to create without worry about pacing experience points over an entire plot or adventure. This frees you to pace your adventure with a story or character arc mindset.

CR is still considered for balancing of threat to the party, but if the climax of your adventure is designed for level eight characters, then it means you can plot out all of the content you want along the way without tracking how many monsters, traps, etc there have been. You simply say, this session or this content is designed for the party at level four. This next chapter is for the party at level five, and so on. Design it all easily knowing exactly what level the party will be.

From a player standpoint, I enjoy milestone leveling over exp leveling because it's one less thing to track, and it keeps all characters in line with the challenge level of the obstacle we face. No one enjoys being too low level and feeling helpless when facing obstacles thrown at the party.

Unfortunately, the game is not conducive to milestone leveling. It will be done by experience point distribution.

I have not seen any recent game system that is not conducive to milestone leveling especially if it uses xp as means of doing so -- back in 1st Edition DnD and maybe 2nd Ed -- it was bit more difficult as it used none equal experience charts but that could still be done by simply denoting at each milestone how much XP was acquired. So I do not understand how you can make that statement.

Aka can you please clarify why you feel that XP system is not conducive to milestone leveling?

Since this is an Interest Check thread, we can have a discussion about the pros and cons of experience points elsewhere. I'm sure there are players who are content with whatever system the GM chooses.

I am not trying to derail things or be confrontational or any of that stuff. Further I actually do not care what the GM chooses to use for their game as that is totally their call -- I am just curious about the statement they made is all -- very basic and simple and since it only requires a single answer as its them sharing their opinion its not a extensive discourse on the topic either

Again to me its not a what is better or not -- all I am asking is why they feel it would not be conducive -- and I am not saying they should use it as that is totally irrelevant to the question and something I have no interest in.

It's an interesting discussion but it is derailing in this interest check thread. I think a new thread would be a better place to debate this topic

Why is everyone -- debating this -- mine was not a debate question -- or are others debating this because I am not -- I just saw a statement and was curious about it nothing more

The question is, Joker, are you interested in the game? If you are, then you can take part in the discussion. When the game was run at the Con back in about 1982 under first edition rules there was no concern about XP. There was a monetary reward to who I thought was the best player in the round. There were three rounds and all new players in each round. When I ran it 15 years later on a PbP site I had to pay more attention to XP because the players expected to be rewarded in that fashion. There was no such thing as milestone leveling at that time, at least not that I ever knew of. Today the environment is quite different and I struggle to deal with it. But this game and this site are one of the few things that keeps my brain functioning. If I didn't do this, I would probably just drop dead. I would like to think that I can live to see it run its course but in its first PbP iteration it took 5 years. If it does the same here, I will be 77 by the time we're done. My father only lived to be 70. So to avoid giving me a stroke I would appreciate everyone tone it down a little.

When ever you decide you wish to get the game going. Do let me know. Matters of EXP come as they may, I'm not really concerned. Where to apply is my main question.

Oh okay so your statement was false and the real reason is that you just do not want to do milestone leveling -- okay that is cool and no my plate is full right now -- again I was just curious about the "not conducive" statement was all as I found that kind of odd and thought perhaps I was missing something. Thanks for the reply hope the game goes well for you