Converting a campaign's character sheets (rules system) mid-game?

Are there any tips or tricks in changing a campaign's game system/character sheets mid-campaign? e.g. I'm going from 1st ed AD&D to Old School Essentials (OSE). I searched the forums, and found a post from 8 years ago... and I know a lot has changed since then! So, looking for any best practices now. (Like, best to create a new campaign from scratch in OSE and just re-upload the assets? Or it's OK to change it in Game Settings, create new character sheets, and can still access the old sheets to transfer info...?) TIA!

Hi Liam,  My suggestion is to do the following:  1) Copy the campaign 2) Switch the copy to the new character sheet.  3) Open the copy in a new browser window (either a different browser from the original or Incognito (Chrome) or Private (Firefox)) 4) Set up both the original and the copy side by side.  5) Manually replicate the information on the character sheets from the original to the copy.  6) Then fix tokens and macros in the copy. 

Gauss's suggestions are good. However, I would suggest: make new character sheets for each character manually add whatever attrbute values they need This is slow and tedious, but will be most efficent. For the purpose of changing character sheets mid-campaign, nothing has changed in the last 8 years, and probablly never will  change, due to the way sheets work in Roll20.

Unless I missed something, this is Gauss' step 5, yes? GiGs said: Gauss's suggestions are good. However, I would suggest: make new character sheets for each character manually add whatever attrbute values they need This is slow and tedious, but will be most efficent. For the purpose of changing character sheets mid-campaign, nothing has changed in the last 8 years, and probablly never will  change, due to the way sheets work in Roll20.

The difference in Gauss and GiGs' methods: GiGs urges you to create a fresh blank new OSE character sheet for each Character, and fill it in. Gauss method suggests having a New Game with copies of the Old AD&D Characters and the switch the game to OSE Sheet. In this method if both sheets have a field called, say, STRENGTH and it is called exactly STRENGTH on both sheets' attributes, then that stat will port-over. If AD&D has the Attribute named "STR" but OSE has it labeled "STRENGTH" then it won't convert over, and will leave some extra junk-attributes (not being used) on the Attributes & Abilities page. In my experience either way could work. Gauss method might save you a small amount of time. The GiGs method is "cleaner" and the Gauss method could leave more junk/unused attributes, which is probably harmless and fine anyway.  I would probably try Gauss way first, in hopes that AD&D and OSE share a lot of the same Attribute Names, so some of the stats will appear already filled-in on the OSE game. Liam W. said: Unless I missed something, this is Gauss' step 5, yes? GiGs said: Gauss's suggestions are good. However, I would suggest: make new character sheets for each character manually add whatever attrbute values they need This is slow and tedious, but will be most efficent. For the purpose of changing character sheets mid-campaign, nothing has changed in the last 8 years, and probablly never will  change, due to the way sheets work in Roll20.

Starting with clean sheets would prevent potential issues. But that might also remove things like Bio & Info tab information and may require more work with the tokens, Ability macros, etc. In any case, the clean sheet method is also viable, try the method you like. :)

The above answers have explained the dfference. The clean method I suggest is best for games where you have lots of characters, and characters have lotsd of information on them (lots of spells, weapons, big equipment lists, etc) - you'd likely have to manually recreate all those things anyway, and doing it on a new character means the campaign is much more efficient and won't experience as much lag. Then delete the original characters. The method Gauss suggests works best for games where characters don't have that much information, or where the sheet attributes have the same name (so you dn't have to manually recreate a lot of information). If you're experiencing lag after the copy, try my method. If you are not experiencing lag, try Gauss's method and if you then eperience lag, try my method.