I've just started playing an awesome 5e 'hack' to make it more OSR style (Into The Unknown) and mostly loving it. I just got my kickstarter for DCC's box set of Jack Vance's Dying Earth (a huge influence on D&D) and I'd like to adapt this to 5e. I know PF2E makes this much easier but is there a guide (hopefuly official one) to creating classes, monsters, and other rules for modification or is it every person for themselves as they slap things together? Are there any good unofficial guides people can recommend? I've found several but let's say they're not all very good quality.
There isn't a comprehensive guide I know of that explicitly gives information on converting things to 5e, but you might want to have a look at the Dungeon Master's Guide, as it has some decent advice and systems for making homebrew stat blocks, magic items, and spells.
Other than that, I'd recommend just having a good look through D&D Beyond forums, Google, Reddit, and maybe RPG Stack Exchange and DM's Guild
Porting things is often more art than science. I've done quite a bit of porting things from other games and earlier editions of D&D, and I haven't bothered to put together a guide because it wouldn't be general enough to save me any time or effort. What I do have is a spreadsheet that helps me calculate monster stats based on the CR, but that isn't really helpful here.
Every man for himself. But Monty Haul is a cool little zine for 5th ed. that certainly has that Old-School feel. I harvested some classes and other things from it when I ran a 5th ed. game. I'm now more inclined to just run AD&D or Moldvay Basic. But some of the ideas from that zine have become fixtures in my games.
Outside the DMs Workshop chapter of the DMG, no there isn't an "official guide to departing from the official rules". That said, if I wanted to homebrew or hack and didn't know how to start, I'd probably go over the DMs Workshop Chapter, if I want my content to function on D&D Beyond, get used to the homebrew tools here via the guides available on the homebrew subforum here, and then follow other designers, particularly the ones who do it. Most designers these days are pretty open with their process and how they think through a system critically in terms of "hacks" or build on systems. For instance, I once watched a YouTuber who also has his own TTRPG company talk about game design and walked his viewers through how he'd try to create a gunfighter system for 5e. He gets into what a gunfighter system would need, and lays into inadequacies to 5E preventing satisfaction of those needs, and then offered branches of thought into how you build something out of 5e at this point or just build a new system entirely which may or may not have been powered by 5e.
Basically, game design takes some research, but we're in a great moment where many designers work relatively openly and offer access to their process.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Hi all,
I've just started playing an awesome 5e 'hack' to make it more OSR style (Into The Unknown) and mostly loving it. I just got my kickstarter for DCC's box set of Jack Vance's Dying Earth (a huge influence on D&D) and I'd like to adapt this to 5e. I know PF2E makes this much easier but is there a guide (hopefuly official one) to creating classes, monsters, and other rules for modification or is it every person for themselves as they slap things together? Are there any good unofficial guides people can recommend? I've found several but let's say they're not all very good quality.
There isn't a comprehensive guide I know of that explicitly gives information on converting things to 5e, but you might want to have a look at the Dungeon Master's Guide, as it has some decent advice and systems for making homebrew stat blocks, magic items, and spells.
Other than that, I'd recommend just having a good look through D&D Beyond forums, Google, Reddit, and maybe RPG Stack Exchange and DM's Guild
[REDACTED]
Porting things is often more art than science. I've done quite a bit of porting things from other games and earlier editions of D&D, and I haven't bothered to put together a guide because it wouldn't be general enough to save me any time or effort. What I do have is a spreadsheet that helps me calculate monster stats based on the CR, but that isn't really helpful here.
Every man for himself. But Monty Haul is a cool little zine for 5th ed. that certainly has that Old-School feel. I harvested some classes and other things from it when I ran a 5th ed. game. I'm now more inclined to just run AD&D or Moldvay Basic. But some of the ideas from that zine have become fixtures in my games.
Outside the DMs Workshop chapter of the DMG, no there isn't an "official guide to departing from the official rules". That said, if I wanted to homebrew or hack and didn't know how to start, I'd probably go over the DMs Workshop Chapter, if I want my content to function on D&D Beyond, get used to the homebrew tools here via the guides available on the homebrew subforum here, and then follow other designers, particularly the ones who do it. Most designers these days are pretty open with their process and how they think through a system critically in terms of "hacks" or build on systems. For instance, I once watched a YouTuber who also has his own TTRPG company talk about game design and walked his viewers through how he'd try to create a gunfighter system for 5e. He gets into what a gunfighter system would need, and lays into inadequacies to 5E preventing satisfaction of those needs, and then offered branches of thought into how you build something out of 5e at this point or just build a new system entirely which may or may not have been powered by 5e.
Basically, game design takes some research, but we're in a great moment where many designers work relatively openly and offer access to their process.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Because nobody at my LGS below the age of 30 was interested in playing anything that wasn't 5e. And everyone over 30 has lousy schedules.