Hi everyone! I’m a pretty new GM. I’ve only ever played ttrpg as a GM with my kids, using the Hero Kids system.
We’ve been having a lot of fun running a longer campaign, and my kids were not really interested in the flavor of playing as actual kids (they want to be hulking lizardkin warriors who yeet the bad guys across the room and intimidate even the city guards to let them carry weapons in the city) so I have done a lot of adaptation of the included Hero Kids adventures to fit their style.
What I like to do is pull general plots and encounters out of the pre-made adventures, cut out or change stuff that doesn’t fit, and use them as kind of quantum side quests whenever the players want to ask about rumors from the local innkeeper and stuff like that.
I have been mainly designing my own stuff as we go along but those adventures help a LOT with prep and having resources already compiled in a mostly usable way. It also helps me learn a lot about how to design encounters and plots since I don’t have much experience.
I’m posting because I am about out of the Hero Kids adventures that I feel like fit our setting and play style and I am wondering if there are any other books that have adventures that can be used in this way that aren’t system specific?
I’ve heard of things like the One Shot Wonders book, and others, or even the actual D&D published adventures, but having no experience with that or with even playing D&D 5e, I don’t know how much work it would be to adapt things. So I am wondering if anyone has used resources like that and knows how they are put together would be able to let me know of some good ones to use in this way.
Free resources would be great, but I’m definitely willing to spend money if there are good products.
Hello! So, I did a quick cursory glance of the hero kids system, but likely missed some things, so please reach out if you have any questions.
The easiest way to convert 5e modules to a 2d6 based system:
The lowest you can roll on 2d6 is a 2, and the highest a twelve. So, we convert 5e’s 1-20 numbers to fit that. (Ability modifier in parentheses)
2d6 stats vs 5e stats
2 (-5) = 0 and 1
3 (-4) = 2 and 3
4 (-3) = 4 and 5
5 (-2) = 6 and 7
6 (-1) = 8 and 9
7 (0) = 10 and 11
8 (+1) = 12 and 13
9 (+2) = 14 and 15
10 (+3) = 16 and 17
11 (+4) = 18 and 19
12 (+5) = 20
Example conversion: In 5e, an orc has an Armor Class of 13, Hit Points of 15, gets + 5 to its attack roll, and deals 9 damage on a hit.
In this 2d6 system, it’s armor would be 8 (need to roll above an 8 to harm it) hit points would be 9, gets +4 to its attack roll, and deals 6 damage on a hit.
Using these conversions, it should be pretty easy to add new monsters or bad guys from DnD 5e modules. There’s a few free ones on dndbeyond to look over that may help give ideas for quests! I highly recommend Frozen Sick.
This is awesome and I will definitely save this for reference as there are a few 2d6 systems I want to try out, but Hero Kids is even more basic than a 2d6 system, at least as far as I understand them.
Your stat pools are basically just the number of d6 you get to roll, and you just take the higher number. Every successful hit deals 1 damage (health pools are between 1-4, 1 being like a weak minion or a spider egg or something, 4 being a leveled up hero or a boss). So higher stat just means you are basically rolling with more advantage, more chances to get a higher number, but you always only use the highest dice.
So a hero with 3 melee attack would roll 3 d6 and take the highest number, and that is their attack roll. If they are attacking a creature with 1 defense, the GM would roll 1 d6 - if the attackers highest dice is equal to or higher than the defenders dice, the attack hits and the target takes 1 damage. Otherwise nothing happens.
I think the best way to convert something like 5e stat blocks into this would be to just say - is this monster supposed to be easy, medium, or hard - and then just copy a stat block from a hero kids monster that is similar to what you want. There is a pretty good monster compendium for hero kids so for a lot of creatures I can just use those directly.
I’m less concerned about copying stat blocks directly than I am about just having good narrative / story content, like NPCs and locations. Having never read any other RPG content besides Hero Kids (and perusing a D&D Players handbook a bit) I don’t know how much of the adventures are story content that works everywhere vs just “This place has monsters with these stat blocks” that is D&D specific or requires conversion.
I didn’t realize that DnD Beyond had free adventures, so I will definitely check that out, and that will probably give me the information I need on whether or not I’d like to spend money on other 5e adventures.