GURPS Rifts?

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Is this kosher according to Palladium's IP policy? I'd have thought that it wasn't.

Well, there's nothing on the site that gives any of the conversions; I've got a file detailing those that I'll be handing out to players. (Edit 1: Oops, I linked the folder that the conversion file is sitting in. I'll edit the page.) (Edit 2: Page edited to remove the link.)

Mainly, the site details the basics: permitted races, useful/forbidden character types, a rundown of the starting village. Mostly system-independent stuff.

[pawsplay]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Is this kosher according to Palladium's IP policy? I'd have thought that it wasn't.

No, it's not. Mr. Siembieda claims converting anything to or from Rifts is intellectual theft.

[Langy]

If he doesn't distribute it widely, I'm pretty sure it counts as Fair Use - in other words, he can use it in his own group as much as he wants, but he can't just give it out on the Internet to anyone and everyone.

[nanoboy]

Originally Posted by Langy

If he doesn't distribute it widely, I'm pretty sure it counts as Fair Use - in other words, he can use it in his own group as much as he wants, but he can't just give it out on the Internet to anyone and everyone.

What's funny is I don't think that would come close to standing up in court. No one's going to stand up to him on it, since they would be facing too much financial risk, but yeah, I doubt his position is qualified. As long as you don't repost any of his copyrighted material, you wouldn't be breaking the law. (Don't do it here, of course, because SJG has no interest in getting involved.)

I'm also wondering if the threat of a countersuit against Palladium on the grounds of a frivolous lawsuit would work or even just dissuade them from suing you in the first place.

That said, I'm sure that a lot of copies of people's various conversions of Rifts into GURPS and other systems can be found in the gray areas of the internet-- think sharing software, Yahoo groups, etc. I definitely created some of it for 3rd Edition and shared it with people. It would be much easier to adapt Rifts to 4th Edition, though.

[ed_209a]

Originally Posted by pawsplay

No, it's not. Mr. Siembieda claims converting anything to or from Rifts is intellectual theft.

I don't understand how Siembeda doesn't see that buying one of his books to use in another system is still buying one of his books.

For that matter, he shouldn't have a problem with buying one of his books to balance a table. because you are still buying one of his booke!

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by ed_209a

I don't understand how Siembeda doesn't see that buying one of his books to use in another system is still buying one of his books.

For that matter, he shouldn't have a problem with buying one of his books to balance a table. because you are still buying one of his booke!

But should he care?

Many people in the creative world are not doing it primarily for the money (which often isn't very good no matter what you do) but for some other reason. They routinely make decisions about their work driven by something other than how they can score the biggest profit on it.

For that matter the fans will often savage you for doing stuff to maximize profits - how many times have you heard complaints about some band "selling out", or how those bastards bought the rights to something and are sitting on them until they get around to making their version of the movie.

I'll admit in the case of an RPG, where the entire business model is selling a tool to create derivative work, that a policy of no derivative works is bizzare, and morally pretty questionable if you fail to inform the buyers somewhere pretty obvious that this product cannot be used for its implied purpose. But hey, you create it, you get to make bizzare decisions about it.

[pawsplay]

Originally Posted by malloyd

But should he care?

Many people in the creative world are not doing it primarily for the money (which often isn't very good no matter what you do) but for some other reason. They routinely make decisions about their work driven by something other than how they can score the biggest profit on it.

For that matter the fans will often savage you for doing stuff to maximize profits - how many times have you heard complaints about some band "selling out", or how those bastards bought the rights to something and are sitting on them until they get around to making their version of the movie.

I'll admit in the case of an RPG, where the entire business model is selling a tool to create derivative work, that a policy of no derivative works is bizzare, and morally pretty questionable if you fail to inform the buyers somewhere pretty obvious that this product cannot be used for its implied purpose. But hey, you create it, you get to make bizzare decisions about it.

To be fair, the policy does not prohibit non-rules accounts of your own Rifts campaigns using the Rifts rules, provided you do not change anything.

[oma]

thank you for the information on how to use MDC and armor. I plan to NOT change all the GURPS stats on gear. I want to keep that. Less work is always better for me. Real Life work takes up too much time to leave me much for rehashing everything in my game.

I am interested in seeing debate as to the merits of changing armor divisors, or making UT armor (Hardened) or something like that.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by oma

I am interested in seeing debate as to the merits of changing armor divisors, or making UT armor (Hardened) or something like that.

Honestly I'd just leave it all. If you absolutely must do a Rifts conversion, take the standard hardshell armor and call it a Coalition Scout Suit, or whatever, but keep all the stats. Don't worry about preserving the relationships between things. You have power armor, mechs, dragons, magic, psionics, guns, lasers, etc. Just use the base GURPS stats for these things. Don't worry that in Rifts a single Glitterboy can take a dragon while in your game it takes 2 or 3. Keep the overall storyline and world (there's these coalition guys, and atlanteans, and vampires in mexico... etc) but use pre-existing GURPS templates for everything you can and for the exceptions (like the atlanteans) find something close and alter it to be "close enough."

It'll be a hell of a lot faster and much less of a pain in the patootie, trust me.

[pawsplay]

Just as a quick and dirty rule, apply an armor divisor of (5) to anything that affects MDC structures. That's the AD of a blaster pistol. Thus, if you wanted to convert a mega-damage power punch to GURPS, it should probably have AD (5) to be able to punch through armor.

Conversely, MDC structures should probably just have high DR and hit points. Reserve Hardended defenses for special situations. For instance, things that take half damage from heat or fire, even MD heat, might have extra DR with a level of Hardened.

As far as natural MDC creatures go, you could either just give them generous DR and hit points, or consider applying Damage Reduction (5).