Importing MM2 characters into MM3

[Colen]

Hi everyone,

As you may have seen from the M&M3 design journals, characters in M&M3 have changed a lot from in second edition. There are new ability scores, skills, and defenses; some things, like Drawbacks, have changed and become Complications.

So, I've been thinking about what we can do to let you import MM2 characters into the MM3 data files. Because of the 3rd edition changes, there's no way to do a 1:1 mapping of a character. Any import of a 2nd edition character into the 3rd edition game system will have some limitations.

Basically, if we let you you import a 2nd edition character, maybe 50% of the character will import successfully. For example, you might lose a couple of ability scores, some skills, maybe your defense bonus, and a few powers, power feats and power extras.

Would a limited import mechanism like this be useful? Effectively we'd be letting you use a 2nd edition character as the basis of a 3rd edition character. It'd probably be easier than starting from scratch, but you'd still need to do some work on the character before it was ready to play.

What do you guys think? If you think this will be useful, I'm happy to spend some time on it. Given the above, let me know if you would use an importer like this, or whether you'd prefer to just start from scratch.

 

[Duggan]

If the parts that you can convert do so pretty much on a one-to-one basis, I personally think it would be wicked useful. I know that I have some 30-odd characters saved and being able to click a button to get them at least halfway would be very useful.

 

[roguescribner]

Eh, I'd be worried about what fell through the cracks and what 3E trait would work better than a similar 2E trait. Personally, if it can't do the whole job, then I'd rather just build it up myself from scratch.

 

[Nigel Fogg The Wayfarer]

Hmm, I have to echo some of the comments of Duggan and Rogueschribner.

I would like those things that could directly port over to do so. However, I don't see any value is retaining something from 2E that might be one of imbalances that 3E (I'm hoping) seeks to correct or could be done in a better combination of traits that becomes available with 3E.

So, in the absence of a 3E book that I can compare to the 2E books, I'd have to err on the side of "input from scratch." Yes, I know that's going to be a lot of retyping for some, if not most, of us but let's be honest about this; it's far less time-consuming using the software than the old method of pen, paper & calculator.

Okay, getting off my soapbox now,
Nigel Fogg, aka The Wayfarer

 

[charlieluce]

I'd much rather tweak a conversion than have to re-input all my villains from scratch, especially if the conversion is smart about "these two or three 2e skills were folded into one 3e skill so take the highest bonus".

 

[Shadowchaser]

I'll say two things on this subject.

1) I think that a conversion approach would be very useful, and welcome, even if it only got you 'halfway there' as it were... however.

2) I would MUCH rather have the 3E ruleset at my fingertips sooner, with more effort put towards crushing bugs, than driving you guys to distraction trying to pull both feats off at once. It's a great idea for a later project, perhaps? I'm much more concerned about getting the 3E rules into Hero Lab as quickly and accurately as possible.

Over to you, Sirs.

 

[Paragon]

I'd much rather tweak a conversion than have to re-input all my villains from scratch, especially if the conversion is smart about "these two or three 2e skills were folded into one 3e skill so take the highest bonus".

I'm with Charlie on this one. The only problem would be if the conversion tends to be heavily mangled in some way.

 

[Gothenem]

I will go in support of the conversion. Even if its only halfway, that's still alot of information I won't have to re-input.

 

[JDRook]

I actually put in my DCA pre-order yesterday and paid the extra $5 for the pdf, so I've been poring over it when I have time, and have even tried converting over the official 3e Aquaman to 2e in HeroLab manually just to try it out, so here's my two cents:

Colen's estimate of about 50% successful import certainly looks about right. About half of the rules are still pretty similar, while a good chunk of them (Dex/Agi split, new composite skills, Affliction[!], etc) are probably going to get weird, and will definitely take some tweaking. On the other hand, my test with Aquaman took maybe ten minutes, which doesn't seem so bad.

I'd have to agree with Shadowchaser's call. Unless the conversion algorithm or whatever is something Colen can whip off in one day, I'd rather the focus be put into making the 3E module solid as a rock.

 

[Aaron C]

What I would like when talking "conversion" is not only jump from 2nd to 3rd edition, but also be backwards compatible from 3rd back to 2nd edition, it would be nice to input some of the DC characters and then convert them down to 2nd edition to be used in campaigns.

 

[charlieluce]

Actual experience is a wonderful thing...

Now that I've had a chance to play with the new rules for a bit I've come to the conclusion that, while it would be possible to write a really comprehensive 2e to 3e converter (given that you are willing to make some basic decisions about things like points-vs-effect for various power types), there are so many detail differences in the two editions that doing so would be a major project, one that I can't see possibly being worthwhile for Colen & the rest of Lone Wolf.

On the other hand, some quick and dirty app that just kind of brought over the Attributes and saves and any Advantages and Powers that didn't change much and required the user to fix all the rest would hardly be worth it, unless you were converting over an existing campaign and wanted to do stuff like preserve all the old Journal entries.

So I guess I've flip-flopped on the issue, unless putting together a quality conversion application is a whole lot easier than I think it is. I'd rather Colen got to concentrate on things like bug fixes, implementing House Rule options, and designing better character sheets.