Should I Start Up My Character Conversions Once Again?

I've been creating RPG content for quite a number of years, now. I've worked for companies big and small, I've dabbled in half a dozen systems, added to existing settings, and made one of my own. However, if I look back to where it all got started, I can trace my career (such as it is) back to my Character Conversions project... something that started as a lark, but became something more.

You never know the places you'll go.

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How It All Got Started

This whole, sordid tale actually goes back to one of my earliest gaming stories, Don't Ever Field a One-Eyed Dragon. During the course of this game there was something of an arms race between myself and the GM, who had a bad habit of letting far more players than he could handle join the table, and then scrambling to come up with appropriate challenges for that many adventurers. This led to my acquiring a cohort via the Leadership feat, and I built him using one of the earlier drafts of my Incredible Hulk character conversion guide. I enjoyed the character so much (and there were so many shenanigans) that I turned the build I'd used into an early draft of that guide, and threw it online on a website called Associated Content that hasn't been around for a long, long time.

And folks really liked that guide. So much so that I was getting a dozen or more requests for other characters. That was when I realized I might have opened up a Pandora's box; I could either struggle to close it, or throw the lid wide open and see where it went.

I went with the latter option, for those who are curious.

The first thing I did was put together other members of the Avengers, such as Black Widow, Hawkeye, and Thor. I spiraled out from there, touching on characters from the DC Universe, Game of Thrones, figures from history, horror movies, action films, and toward the end of my active run, from the Warhammer 40K universe. The project currently has about 60 or so guides in it, and it spans more than 6 years. Not only that, but it was started on Associated Content, which then became Yahoo! Voices. That site closed and I started moving the guides to HubPages, but Google banned my AdSense profile, so I was no longer allowed to make money with that site. I moved them to InfoBarrel, which is also now defunct, and eventually they found a new home over on Vocal.

That was a lot of work to both move the old guides (which were updated and remastered when they went up on Vocal), but I can honestly say that without them I probably wouldn't have half the career I do today as a game designer. It was these guides that got me noticed by Azukail Games, who is the primary publisher I work with. It's also what got me a gig with Louis Porter Junior when I put together the entry Lucia Krille: Enemies of NeoExodus, which was a direct riff on the character of Absorbing Man from Marvel Comics.

One frustrating thing about this project, though, is that every time it started getting close to really building momentum, something went wrong. Just as my Gotham guides were really getting a lot of attention, Yahoo! decided to deep six the site, which sent my searchability plummeting. I got half of them back up on HubPages, and then they were no longer allowed to pay my bills. I got them on InfoBarrel, and a site update that was never fixed tanked both creator tools, and made articles almost impossible to find via a search. Then I got them all up on Vocal, and Pathfinder announced a new edition was coming out, telling me that once more the project's days were numbered.

Would Readers Like To See It Return?

While there have been a couple of updates to the project, such as my guides for The Mandalorian, or the soldiers of 40k's Death Korps of Krieg, my character conversions have more or less been in cold storage for 2022. And the reason for that has been, honestly, new installments just didn't get the views I needed to justify the time, energy, and effort to keep the hits coming. For context, I make $6 for every 1,000 reads an article gets. When guides were getting 5k reads, I was more than happy to spend the 2+ hours it takes to put them together. When they get 250 reads, though, not so much.

With that said, writing these guides is something I did long enough that I sort of miss it now... so I figured I'd ask if it's something my readers would like to see make one more triumphant return?

There are, however, some provisos here.

Before anyone leaves a comment below, or on social media where you found this link, I want to make something clear. If I do bring this project back and start adding to it once again, I will more than likely continue these write ups in Pathfinder Classic. While it's possible to write some guides for DND 5E, I do not have access to the material for that edition (it doesn't have a complete SRD like Pathfinder does), and I feel that it is much too limited, mechanically, for the sorts of tricks and tips that I feel is necessary for the deep dive into a character's abilities that is the series' main selling point. While it might be possible to start making guides for Pathfinder's second edition, I am extremely reluctant to do so. I did not care for the playtest, and while there were changes made afterward, none of them served to make me eager to create anything for that system the more I read about its finalized version.

With that said, if there's folks who want to sponsor guides for particular characters in a particular edition, I'm always happy to listen to business proposals. But I wanted to be clear about the direction that I would take things if left to my own devices so that folks know what they're supporting/asking for.

If you're still with me, there are a couple of things I would like you to do in order to help let me know this is a project you want to come back:

- Leave a Comment: Either below or on social media is fine, just put it somewhere I'll see it. Feel free to make a character request in your comment if I haven't covered them yet!

- Share a Guide: Increased traffic is what really gets my attention. So share which guide you like best, or just the Character Conversion master list to help get it seen by folks.

That's it!

I'll be reading the comments and checking the numbers. If enough people are willing to help me break the seal and take this one out of cold storage, then it's something I'm happy to do in the coming months!

Lastly, if you're someone who's been thinking about trying their hand at writing a character conversion, I'd recommend reading through Tips For Writing RPG Character Conversions. I basically boiled down my process, what I learned, and how I was able to keep things going as long as I did.

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That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday. To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!

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