Gurps Delta Green

[aesir23]

Originally Posted by Juca

The only thing you will really need is the monsters converted, and maybe the more robust rules for fright checks and madness. There is no such detailed rules for madness and fear in GURPS Horror?

There are such rules in GURPS Horror, as well as some helpful guidelines for creating Lovecraftian horrors (labeled "Things Man Was Not Meant to Know")

To play GURPS Delta Green, all you'd really need Basic and Horror, and optionally.

Monster Hunters 2: The Mission would be extremely helpful as well, but GURPS Mysteries could cover in a pinch.

If you want to use templates, MH Sidekicks may be the way to go (as others have noted), some of the templates in Applied Xenology would also be helpful.

[acrosome]

I had some ideas here, but I have been tweaking this over and over. A LOT of GURPS: Horror comes in handy, so I've changed things to use it. So, it's actually changed a lot since I posted that. But on the plus side it's much better, now. Still a work in progress, though.

[apoc527]

My intention is to use a combination of Sidekicks and Action to run GURPS Dark*Matter, which is very similar to Delta Green, Monster Hunters (but lower powered), and various conspiracy settings.

[HANS]

The only essential GURPS book to play Delta Green is Horror. Cthulhupunk is nice to have, but not necessary (and requires minor adjustment since it is for Third Edition).
Very useful are Action, Cops, High-Tech, and Special Ops. Martial Arts and Tactical Shooting may come in handy. This is based on the fact that the average Delta Green campaign centres on highly competent Federal agents and special ops soldiers, who are well-versed in all sorts of tradecraft, including violence.
Monster Hunters is, frankly, rather less suited to a Delta Green campaign, since the average DELTA GREEN agent has very little understanding of the Mythos and hence, no useful knowledge how to combat it.

And now for a bit of shameless self-promotion:

I've recently published Investigator Weapons 2: Modern Day, a book for Call of Cthulhu that is primarily geared to support Delta Green. This covers a lot of information about agent armament and related tradecraft, including where to get the guns and what to do with them, much of it system-neutral.

Cheers

HANS

[acrosome]

I have to agree with Hans- that's basically what my conversion says. I'd add Loadouts: Monster Hunters to his list if only for the advice it gives to players on how to conduct an investigation. And in particular the Stress, Derangement, Insanity, and Contagion rules that start on Horror p141 work wonders when added to the basic Fright Check system. I pretty much canned my ideas on that when Horror for 4e came out. The only original bit of mine is the stat conversion system, and even that may not be- I can't recall how much I plagiarized from Ellis Dickerson. I know that I did change some things

The most annoying thing is picking a magic system, frankly. I was most interested in converting existing CoC material, so after a lot of waffling I stuck with the basic magic system, which is damned similar. Then, I just had to stat the spells (which I have barely begun) and start converting critters (ditto).

[cell]

For the delta green feel the characters should be competent at dealing with people, not the supernatural. An f.b.i. agent should be able to deal with a cultist quite easily, not a haunting horror from beyond time and space. I was in a game once with a swat sniper, an f.b.i. agent, a us marshal, and a medical examiner. We got our ass's handed to us by the monster. But when we went up against the human cultist we handled them quite easily. You should never be confident when fighting a monster. You should be panicked, afraid, and worried that guns wont hurt it in the first place.

[Gollum]

I don't play Delta Green, but run a lot of Call of Cthulhu adventures with GURPS rules. So, here is a table that I use for quick conversions ... Hoping it will help.

Call of Cthulhu Skill / Call of Cthulhu Attribute / GURPS skill or attribute
0 or 1% / — / 3
2 or 3% / — / 4
4 to 6% / 1 / 5
7 to 12% / 2 / 6
13 to 21% / 3 or 4 / 7
22 to 31% / 5 or 6 / 8
32 to 43% / 7 or 8 / 9
44 to 56% / 9 to 11 / 10
57 to 68% / 12 or 13 / 11
69 to 78% / 14 or 15 / 12
79 to 87% / 16 or 17 / 13
88 to 93% / 18 / 14
94 to 96% / 19 / 15
97 or 98% / — / 16
99% / — / 17
100% / 20 / 18

It is based on the Probability of Success Table (Basic Set, page 171). Unlike Cthulhu Punk, I don't use directly Call of Cthulhu attribute numbers as GURPS attribute scores (Call of Cthulhu DEX 13 doesn't correspond to GURPS DX 13 in my games, for instance). Indeed, Call of Cthulhu NPCs tend to have very high attributes levels (16 or even 18 is very common in official Call of cthulhu adventures) while GURPS "realistic" attributes are supposed to be much closer from the 8 to 12 range. So, using the table above brings them back to more reasonable numbers ... Furthermore, it is logical: a Call of Cthulhu INT of 15, for instance, gives an idea roll of 75%, which corresponds to a GURPS score of 12, not a GURPS score of 15 (95.4% chance of success).

Warning!
For skills, just add +2 to the final result because Call of Cthulhu skills tend to be very low. With +2, a Call of Cthulhu skill level supposed to be "professional" (50%) remains "professional" in GURPS (12), and an "expert" level (75%) also remains "expert" in GURPS (14).

[acrosome]

Mine's this:

ST = (STR + SIZ + 19) / 4
DX = (DEX + 9.5) / 2
IQ = (INT + EDU + 19) / 4
HT = (CON + 9.5) / 2
Will = (POW + 9.5) / 2
Per = (INT + 9.5) / 2

Round up. (But if you're an inveterate IQ stat normalizer, round that one down. And it'll still be too high for you.)

I like formulas because they're easy to plug into a spreadsheet program and do conversions en mass. Lookup tables suck. These are essentially an optimized version of "take half the difference of the CoC stat from 10, and add it to 10 to make the GURPS stat." But CoC attributes are essentially based on 3d6 (albeit with little boosts to some), which averages to 10.5, so I had to subtract 0.5 to center the curve a bit, making 9.5.

These formulas result in converted GURPS attributes ranging from 7 to 15 for starting PCs, which seems appropriate since 7 is the lowest score that isn't considered "crippling" in GURPS canon. CoC PCs have attributes randomly rolled with those "boosts" in such a way that the curves are skewed and the average randomly-rolled CoC investigator will translate to ST11 DX10 IQ12 HT10, displaying the CoC tendency to produce very intelligent and/or educated PCs. But I intend to generate PCs using GURPS so I am mostly concerned with easily translating the NPCs listed in published CoC investigations, and those tend to be designed well and will give superb results with these formulas. FYI, though a human with median scores for the 3d6 range (i.e. 10.5) in every CoC attribute will translate to ST10 DX10 IQ10 HT10, the curve for this conversion nonetheless isn't perfectly centered on 10- it's nudged just a bit into the higher range. If you don't like that then round normally instead of up, but this will result in a range of 6 to 15 instead.

POW correlates almost perfectly with GURPS FP. If POW (and thus Magic Points) is greater than the calculated FP for the GURPS statistics add an Energy Reserve to cover the difference- see GURPS Thaumatology p.50, or GURPS Powers p.119. I favor this rather than merely buying more FP, but if you prefer to just tweak FP recall that it is limited to within ±30% of HT in humans.

Likewise, add levels of Strong or Weak Will as appropriate to match the values derived from CoC statistics. Recall that Will is capped at 20. (Many Great Old Ones and deities will have Will 20.)

One weakness to this system is that the upper end of human normal stats is 21 in CoC rather than 18, though starting PCs can only get 21 in EDU. But a CoC character with STR 21 and SIZ 21 converts to only ST 16, whereas in GURPS a truly world-class bodybuilder or weightlifter probably has a few more points than that- theoretically as high as ST 20. However, examining the NPCs in published CoC investigations reveals many cultists with STR and SIZ near the top of the scale yet it is nonetheless clear from their descriptions that these are not quite meant to be Schwarzenegger-statured behemoths, so topping out at 16 is not terribly off. It's still wicked strong. If the PCs survive long enough to encounter Joe Weider feel free to spot him a few points in ST. Maybe a special rule that 21/21 means ST 17 would help?

GURPS Speed and Move should be calculated from GURPS statistics for humans and humanoids. You should base a creature's Move from their CoC MOV, and add enhancements or limitations to adjust it from the derived GURPS stat. GURPS Move = CoC MOV * 0.7 rounding normally.

Converting those CoC creatures to GURPS statistics uses many of the same rules as for characters, above. Use the same formulas to compute statistics for creatures as were used for characters. However, very large creatures will often convert to inappropriately low ST. Thus, if the CoC STR and SIZ characteristic are both at least 5D6 (remember, every +3 is 1d6, every +7 is 2d6) instead compute ST thus:

ST = (STR + SIZ + 19) / 3 and round down rather than up as for human conversions.

Rounding down keeps the smaller larger creatures from being too ridiculously strong. This will be any creature larger than a bear or a gorilla. This modified formula was developed by comparing canonical GURPS statistics for some large animals such as gorillas, bears, elephants, etc. with converted CoC scores for the same animal. It's far from a perfect conversion, but pretty close. Obviously, if official GURPS stats exist for a creature (e.g. elephant, grizzly, etc.) then use the GURPS stats. Don't convert from CoC stats.

Many CoC creatures have very high CON. However, GURPS uses HT differently than CoC uses CON- CoC bases HP on CON, whereas GURPS bases HP upon ST. If converted HT >14 make it 14 and base FP on HT as usual then, as above, if POW > FP add an Energy Reserve to cover the difference (see GURPS Thaumatology p.50 or GURPS Powers p.119).

But unfortunately many creature statistics also lack an EDU score, which impacts calculating a GURPS IQ. For a creature that is probably the equivalent of a rather smart animal such as a chimpanzee or dolphin (e.g. shantak) assume that EDU = 0. For a creature that is of low-human intelligence but alien and primitive (e.g. shoggoth) assume EDU = 3. For creatures that are roughly human-intelligence but primitive or simply not compatible with education as we know it (e.g. a natural ghoul) assume EDU = 6 if one is not quoted. For a creature that is approximately human intelligence but alien (e.g. byakhee or dark young) assume EDU = 1/2INT. For human-equivalent or better creatures (serpent people, deep ones, Great Old Ones) assume EDU = INT if one is not quoted.

For a creature that is truly animalistic assume that EDU = -3, but there aren't many of those that don't already have official GURPS stats. If no INT is given assume that it is 0. This means that a creature without a listed INT or EDU is assumed to be IQ4, or about dog-smart. (-3 + 0 + 19)/4 = 4.

I have rules for converting APP, too, but they're cumbersome.

To plagiarize David Ellis Dickerson, consider any CoC skill known at 50% to be equivalent to the GURPS equivalent at IQ or DX level. For every full 10% above or below 50%, increase or reduce the skill level by one. (This works very well with average GURPS IQ or DX and CoC skills from 20% to 80% or so. Outside that it skews a bit.) This is also a handy way to translate bonuses or penalties listed in CoC adventures- every 10% is a bonus or penalty of one. One problem is weapon skills, which in CoC are traditionally very low on the character sheet but get a significant bonus (up to 40%!) depending upon the exact weapon used. Would you want to face a shoggoth with Guns (Rifle)-7? You just have to nerf that. Gollum's table has the same issue; my version at least allows some help from a greater than average DX or IQ.

[lachimba]

Originally Posted by cell

Iwas wondering is anyone had and premade templates for government agents? F.b.i., c.i.a., d.e.a.? Anything like that will be helpful.

GURPS Conspiracy X

It's 3E, but they are easy enough to port over. I'm sure that some of them already have been somewhere.