Converting Cthulhupunk to 4E

[GreenAdder]

My apologies if these questions have been answered in another thread. I did a search for them, and didn't see these questions answered, but admittedly I only checked out a handful of threads.

I'm converting Cthulhupunk to 4E, and the conversion PDF has helped so much that I'll be getting the GM screen just for a hardcopy of it. But there are a few (dis)advantages, skills, and such that I'm having a bit of a hard time converting.

Essentially, I'm just wondering if the point costs should be different or the same for:
Mythos Awareness
The Innsmouth Look
Dreamlands Lore
Mythos Lore

I'm also wondering if I should treat any of the spells differently in 4E.

Please keep in mind that I'm actually pretty new to GURPS, although well-seasoned with roleplaying in general (going on 15 years now). The 4E basic set is my first ever venture into the system.

[tylrlsaa]

Originally Posted by GreenAdder

Essentially, I'm just wondering if the point costs should be different or the same for:
Mythos Awareness
The Innsmouth Look
Dreamlands Lore
Mythos Lore

I'm also wondering if I should treat any of the spells differently in 4E.

Mythos Awareness = Detect(Mythos), with Magery 0, or just Magery 0 by itself. the ability to feel the wierdness was sometimes very, VERY strong in the stories, but with little ability to control it. A limitation on the Detect might be in order to reflect this.
The Innsmouth Look = Unusual Feature(Innsmouth Look), possibly in addition to Unattractive. Could also have a Reputation +1/-1 (Kinfolk to Deep Ones).
Dreamlands Lore, Mythos Lore = Hidden Lore (I think that's the skill name.)

On the Mythos magic, I'd suggest you re-write is a bit to conform more along the lines of Ritual Magic. It seems to fit better, and parallels how magic works in the stories. If you're using more than one magic system in your game, make Mythos magery seperate from the other types.

[GreenAdder]

Thanks for the suggestions. Like I said, I'm new to playing and GM'ing GURPS. 90% of the CthP book seems to be game world information, with very little "hard" rules, so it's pretty easy to just scribble little notes onto a sheet of paper or two and consider the book "converted." That makes me really like GURPS.

What would be nice, bordering on "freakin' sweet," is a new edition of the book (on e23 or otherwise). Until that time, I'll take any suggestions I can get.

[thastygliax]

The Cyberworld setting & cyberware: I gather that at least some cyberware will be covered in the 4E Ultra-Tech book. Beyond that, I can't help with the setting, as I bought CT for the Mythos material and ignored the cyberpunk stuff.

Characters: The character concepts are vague enough to use mostly as is in 4E.

Mythos Awareness and Innsmouth Look can probably stand as written; they have elements that go beyond the standard Detect or Unnatural Feature traits. The Innsmouth Look might be cheaper in 4E, though, since Unnatural Feature and bad Appearance both are, and the change to Deep One isn't necessarily imminent enough to count as a form of Terminally Ill.

Dreamlands Travel and Mythos Lore can be treated as specializations of Hidden Lore, but you'll probably want to retain the difficulties listed in CT.

Dream Travel needs to be rewritten, now that psionics work differently in CT. You may want to look into the rules for astral projection in the 4E Fantasy book, or just use the Dreaming skill, depending on how complicated you want that travel to be.

Mythos Fright Checks & Mythos Magick: These rules were designed to work differently from standard GURPS, so IMO, can still be used as written.

NPCs: Use Update to convert these.

Bestiary: With three exceptions, these entries use the early/mid-3E style creature entries, which are nowhere near as complete as 4E or late 3E stat blocks, so this will probably be the hardest chapter to convert. If you're familiar enough with Call of Cthulhu and/or the original stories, you might be able to just start from here and work out the rest.

If not, then you might want to look at "Ultraterrestrials" in GURPS Spirits (p. SPI62) or "Things Man Was Not Meant to Know" in GURPS Horror, Third Edition (the Ken Hite revision; p. H45). These give late-3E style stat blocks for similar creatures, so may give you ideas for how to complete 4E stat blocks for CT monsters.

I realize that may all be a bit beyond your grasp of the system right now. Feel free to just use the creatures as written, if that's enough data for how you run your games.

Conversions: Much of this chapter should still be useful, though you'll want to watch for differences between 3E and 4E (see Update).