Return to Boscovania?

Thinking about an Adventurer, Conquerer, King campaign, the first major question is which setting to use.

I have a certain inclination to use the Gatavia Region, we've used for "Return of the Trolls" and "AD&D Badlands" campaigns.   Jason has expressed an interest in taking up the Badlands campaign where we left off, and that sounds somewhat tempting to me too.

A couple of obstacles: 

#1 Hexes vs. Squares: all of the campaign material for ACKS is expressed in 6 mile hexes and 24 mile hexes.   I have really soured on using hexes for mapping.   I much prefer either a ruler with no grid, or a square grid.  With a square grid the math is easier, and it is far easier to scale up and to scale down for larger or smaller maps.   Of course, the Gatavia Map is square-gridded (10 mile small squares, 50 mile large squares).  

Luckily, I've done a quick run through of the rules, and it turns out that they are all stated in square miles as well as hexes, and the hexes aren't key at all.  So, the mapping conventions are not as important as I thought they would be.

#2:  Conversion:  much of the conversion might be a bit dicey.  For one thing, the designer of the ACKS hates halflings, and there are no halfling character classes in either book.  Also, there are no rules for illusionists.  Therefore, Bosco Tripod and Nigel Mysterio are left flapping in the breeze.   These two are really minor problems rather than major ones.   In the Gatavia universe, halflings are biologically more or less completely human.  We could easily just allow halflings to use a limited selection of human classes and go on from there.  Worse comes to worse I would just play Nigel as a wizard.
         More serious problems with conversion would have to do with various plans and spending history of the characters.   They would have spent and invested based on the "old" economy and assumptions, and would find themselves in a new surrounding, having bought things or spent massively for reasons that no longer apply.  Also, ability scores would have to be seriously modified, probably to the point of re-rolling ability scores to re-describe the characters in  the new scale. 

So the conversion project might be awkward and wonky, but if everyone were patient and cool, it would eventually work out.


What's the upside:  When we play D&D in almost any form our campaigns tend to be significantly longer-running than with other games.  Most campaigns we run are 10-15 sessions, while D&D based games are 20-30 sessions.  When we started the Badlands, I wanted to start a really long term game.  And when we broke for Kings of Orion, it was more because of Andrew's eagerness to GM it than because of any lack of momentum.   It was my intention to pick up Badlands where we left off, but then I had an unfortunate case of severe Traveller fever (something I catch every five years or so, but which usually passes).  When that passed, I sort of stumbled into Mutants and Muskets by accident.  Now that ACKS has come into view, I see that it could be a vehicle to make Badlands into the super-long campaign I always had heard about but never  had really seen, and which I always wanted to be involved in.

It would take very little setting conversion to get running.  I used very similar population density assumptions as the ACKS crew, and our opinions on Alignment are in remarkably exact agreement.  I'll have to do some work with the Old Ones to make them fit into the scheme (but they may be close enough to the decadent Zahar of ACKS to fit). 

What do I think:   I'm putting a peg in the idea of re-starting the Badlands where we left off, only converting to ACKS.   It currently ranks as a "Very Good Idea".  But, I want to think everything else out too.   I think we would allow everyone to either convert their characters, henchmen and possessions over or, if they preferred, create some replacements.  In any case, I don't think we need to play first level D&D guys, we've all done that enough times to know what it's like, and we don't need to suffer through it again.