Problems with Campaign Conversion

I've reached that time in my gaming career when I've pretty much explored all I wanted to explore and used enough game systems to find all the flaws they contain. There is no one perfect version of the game I love (D&D) although there are a few that come close. Although it is human nature to dwell on details, I find that the best games are the ones that gloss over the details and exist with their own set of rules which are meant to be immutable regardless of reality.

I'm mainly having a problem resolving issues with my conversion of Thuin/Sturmgard to Basic/Expert D&D. The alignment thing and several other sticking issues have me thinking that it's not worth the effort to convert if I  have to compromise too much. That and all the backstory of the campaigns I've run leads me to just say "screw it."

So if I don't keep anything I've done in the past, how should I proceed? I've tried to run campaign-generic settings in the past and they require little effort to set up, but inevitably questions arise as to deities, leaders of kingdoms, important NPCs in the area, etc. Now I could cop out and allow anything the players desire in the world, making it a mish-mash of various settings (dragonlances, Norse deities, greyhawk-style clerical orders, Forgotten Realms variety moon elves, etc.) but I think that cheapens the experience. Basic/Expert rules are run more generically and allow the player to come up with their own details about their character.

So, I've been thinking about a completely new campaign. The problem here is that I have 30 years of previous campaign materials covering roughly a dozen binders or so (for D&D alone) and several computer files. Surely something must exist someplace for me to start from and work with. My problem is that I tend to snatch info from one source and then expand greatly upon it, essentially making a campaign out of a one-shot. I did this with Greyhawk I campaign, Greyhawk II campaign, and my current Mystara campaign. My Thuin campaign emerged from a desire to return to original AD&D and mutated into a 2nd edition mess. Nothing I've done in D&D 3.5 has amounted to very much and I eventually gave up trying and reverted to using pre-published adventures loosely woven together into a patchwork campaign which imploded in the end.

I've been enamored of the brutal "dogma D&D" style of late. One of the forums I read has had a campaign thread listing the adventures of the "Companions of the Bling," a sort of Tolkienesque tribute campaign where low-level characters try to survive the random starter dungeons generated by a computer program while attempting to make name level and start their real quest (the destruction of the One Ring). The characters are all modeled after Lord of the Rings characters, but the rules as written are obeyed to the letter - no house rules, no holds barred, and no mercy. Hit points are rolled as is. Ability scores are generated using 3d6 in order rolled, no re-rolls. Characters have to qualify for race and class as usual. They are all generally poor but the lack of resources and danger has led to a surprising level of role-playing among the players, and the reports are amazing to read. Many characters don't survive their fist encounter and those that do become cherished members. When such members later perish, great pains are taken to either retrieve them with overpriced magic or else bury them with loving care. Almost all of these characters are cherished and supported by the other players as well. Even the NPCs are treated with more dignity, especially those that are particularly helpful to the party's survival!

I can really see this as a great way to play the game more casually and yet build details of a campaign world. I would keep religion more generic (Light vs. Dark) and stick obsessively to the rules as written without adding pages of house rules. Basically, if the action is not covered in the rules, don't even try it. Accept the rules as written and agree to abide by them at all times and in all circumstances. So what does this mean for a campaign setting?

Demi-humans are considered to be classes in Basic/Expert. They are also limited in the level they can attain. Most also require much more experience points than the other classes. Therefore, humans will more likely survive to see the higher levels. I think that having an endgame in place for the characters who reach level 14 is also necessary. It is my belief that the unpublished Companion Rules would have added in all the AD&D material to the mix - a direction that would have been unnecessary given the rules published at the time. Adding psionics, more classes, more races, and/or strange rules just serves to complicate an otherwise cohesive set of rules. Ending spells at 6th level of power actually makes some sense to me. Not complicating matters by adding in druids, paladins, assassins, rangers, or illusionists also makes sense. Simply play the base character the way you think they should be played. Granted, druids had abilities that made them vastly different, but you can't have everything.

I could see this as a fun exercise that can last a good long time. A long dungeon spanning the first three levels of play, followed by a series of wilderness/dungeon adventures, leading to name level adventures, and later land development for the characters really could be quite fun. I would need players that don't see the game as a progressive waste of time, but rather as an enjoyment of the journey. Many early characters would be lost, and probably a few later characters would also be lost, but each character would be kept and cherished throughout the campaign.