This is off-topic for Planewalker/Planescape.
As some of you know, I’m giving a talk at GenCon about a campaign setting called Jorune. The talk is about my personal conversion of the original setting (and some rules) to d20/3E. Details here. The summary is:
“A personal adaptation of a unique and little-known setting. Experience a rich world with an expansive history. While following the rules, this is not your normal d20. Original fans, keep an open mind.”
I ask the question: “What would you want to see in such a talk?” In other words, when you hear there is going to be a talk about a d20 conversion, what would you both expect and want to hear during the talk?
I have plenty of ideas, but I can see it going in a few possible directions. One way would be to only spend about half the time (or less) on my conversion and the rest of the time on the setting itself. Think of it as “selling” the setting. I’m more inclined to be brief in the parts about the setting as a whole. The same goes with the history of the setting itself (who the Lekers and Teves are, the 3 editions, etc.) I plan to provide links, references, and email address(es) so people can find out more if they are interested. Plus I don’t mind talking about it after the session.
Then we get to the conversion itself. It is somewhat important to point out that my conversion brings very few new or modified rules. Like it or not, I used 3E/d20 rules. I wasn’t trying to capture the mechanics of Jorune, but the essence of the setting.
One way to go at it is to simply list/show/describe all the things that were converted. I could talk about stats and all that jazz. It could be a little boring that way, plus I couldn’t possibly cover it all in the time allotted. Another way to go is to focus more on how I converted everything. How did I come up with this or that stat, a certain number of hit points, etc.? I would use some examples, but not really go into more than a few. Again, is that too boring? Another focus could be on how I tried to capture the feel of the setting without a major rules change. Despite what a lot of people think about 3E/d20, my campaign was not even close to hack-n-slash. In over a year, we had less than a dozen combat encounters. I know I want to cover some of that, but I am saving a some it for another talk I’m giving.
I’ll also want to spend a few minutes talking about other conversions out there (j20, GURPS, PLUS, etc.) These will mostly be in passing, again with links/references.