Converting material from other systems
 

I know one of the great benefits that people tout about GURPS is how easy it is to convert material from other systems into it. At least that's the theory. In practice how easy is it really?

I've found it difficult enough that it's easier to use another system's published adventure as inspiration rather than convert it outright. With settings I've found it easier to make the setting fit GURPS than vice versa, even if that means breaking some long-standing assumptions the other system provided. (Not always for the worse, though, but not always for the better, either.)

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

When converting settings to GURPS, I try to keep as much of the setting as possible, but some things are so different that it's easier to use GURPS as is then to figure out a way to do it the other way.

Converting systems vary in difficulty. Some mechanics are quite similar while other mechanics in the same system can be quite dissimilar.

I'm running a Dragonlance adventure right now, as is, with GURPS instead of DnD3.5. So far I've only needed to convert a racial template (Baaz Draconian) and some NPCs of that race.

Most of it was fairly straight forward, but some traits were resolved so differently in DnD then in GURPS that I had to tweak them to GURPS resolution.

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

This, for me. I try to come to converting a setting to another system, not converting a system to another system. Thus, for example, in "converting" 40k RPG over to GURPS I would ask how might the setting (as filtered through my interpretation*) be reflected in GURPS rather than, say, how did the Dark Heresy system handle "psykers" and "sorcerers." Rather than, "Oh, that's how Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader/Deathwatch handled bolt guns!" it became an issue of, "Okay, what is the closest approximation and what are the implications?" (For example, say that I select a "shaped charge gyroc" as the standard for the micro-missiles those things fire. Does that feel right from the perspective of the setting and, using GURPS as a consistent basis, what does the selection of a TL 8 technology imply for other aspects of the setting.)

Of course, you get "powered by" approach rather than a direct conversion. That's usually acceptable to me since I'm comfortable with many of the assumptions and options of GURPS. Then again I'm not uncomfortable breaking a bit of GURPS if it suits the setting (which is usually just a case of my being lazy and inelegant in crafting the GURPS interpretation than the fault of the system).

Kage

* This can in my experience be an important bone of contention in my experience, but to others it is less so. YMMV.

Edit: In retrospect it seems that I could have just said, "I agree for the most part" to the first post as well. :D

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

The key is to convert by name rather than number. D&D Orc becomes Gurps Orc, D&D Lich becomes Gurps Lich. I haven't even found creating fleshed out templates to be necessary.

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

Pardon the tautology, but if I'm converting something over to GURPS, it's because I want to use GURPS to play it. Thus, I'm more than happy to break anything that relies heavily on rules from the other system -- but also just as happy to adapt it into GURPS if the rules mesh well.

GURPS Deadlands is a wonderful example. The hexslingers' success rolls were completely changed to use GURPS' success rolls instead, but then the playing card rules (which work just as well in GURPS as they do in Pinnacle's system) were retained for flavor. On the other side of things, the American Indians were radically changed to use GURPS' Path/Book magic instead of their own system, because that was a better fit for GURPS.

So yeah, if I'm taking something from another system, I'm doing so because I want to redo it in GURPS, so I don't see any problem with doing just that.

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

That depends on the level of rigor you apply to the conversion, as you mention in your original post.

We normally get a few post a year on how to convert another systems settings or Mechanics to GURPS.

For some concepts, like levels, there is simply no good analog.

The more you abstract a setting or other ideas from its rules system the more portable it becomes, but the more it relies on the GMs interpretaion of what those means in each system.

Its not unlike the problem of the infinite subtlety of orcs that shows up on these boards from time to time. There are differences in orcs in evey system, and gurps even has a racial template, and a monster template for them (In fantasy I think). Because they are different, that makes the translation difficult.

For example, if your translating a D&D orc to GURPS, do you simply say orc = orc and use the template, or do you say Orc as beginning level worthy = Orc as begining level owrthy and then convert on that basis fiddling with Attributes, Ads and Skill levels? Do you go futher still and import Gruumsh and other aspects of the orc society into the game as well? What then happens if you also want to incorporate Warhammer Orcs? World of War Craft Orcs? How do you differentiate them from Goblins?

Generally, as I convert I try to key in on a few signature features of an idea so that they will be recognizeable by the players and we can whiz on by the exposition. From there, I fill in what I think is suitable for my players, and the game, and what I get out of it is something that ends up being varrying parts of new and familiar.

Again, the problems arise when the GM says a world like ORC and people think of something the GM is not thinking of, also called assumption clash. For example, say they are playing Starting DF Charachters with skills in the high teens or 20's and they come upon a worthy Orc adversary who also has suitably high skills. If the players are thinking 1d-1 Hit Die monster, they may be suprised at the orcish skills.


Nymdok

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

A good example of how not to do it is how Disciplines worked in the GURPS Vampire: the Masquerade conversion. Rather than mapping the various vampirical powers into GURPS traits, they tried to retain the structure of the White Wolf's system. The result: incoherent and unbalanced. Oddly enough, they did a much better job with the Werewolf conversion -- each White Wolf "Gift" was given a GURPS trait, priced appropriately to what it did in the GURPS system ... the "level" of the Gift (an aspect of White Wolf rules) had no bearing on its GURPS rules or point cost.

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

I was thinking less "convert D&D to GURPS" and more "convert Tomb of Horrors to GURPS".

I'm considering raiding D&D adventure modules for a Dungeon Fantasy game, but it's more hassle than it's worth I'll just stick to doing it from scratch.

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

If I like it, I take the setting, adapt according to a benchmark or scale that I judge mentally, and adjust if it results in nonsense.

Basically, I look at the maximum that can happen, the minimum, and scale it against three dice.
-then wing the rest.

I rarely write anything down.

This, I find, is sufficient work. ;)

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

I'd say (and of course YMMV) that reading through the adventure's plot and mining ideas is the optimal Work-Required to Benefit-Gained trade-off. It saves you the work of coming up with your own plot, npcs, monsters, encounters, traps, etc, but you don't have to do a room-by-room, stat-by-stat conversion. Where you have a better idea than the module, use that; where you can't think of anything to put in a room, consult the module for ideas.

Personally, I seldom use an adventure module exactly as written anyway, even if there's no stat-conversions needed.

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

Start a thread for it and, if time permits, Ill help you convert. I think I still have a copy some where :)

Im sure there are other people who play GURPS who'd like a nice translation of it.

There was some success in a converstion of White Plume Mountain (hold for the link). I think there are even fewer monsters in ToH, so it may even go quicker. :)

Nymdok

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

That's a really good idea ... I'm in. It seems like there are a lot of traps and puzzles in Tomb of Horrors, and that's a place where I need some ideas.

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

Dead easy. Never had slightest problem with it. Of course I don`t calculate point values for NPCs who aren`t Allies and Dependants, so it would certainly be possible to make it hard.

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

I have started using what I half-seriously call a "strip mining" approach to conversion. What I want to be able to do is look at a character in d20 or World of Darkness or whatever and have a GURPS version fairly quickly. I've worked up some basic "formulas" that indeed let me do this very quickly.

Now, the downside is that these are only rough translations--I think they succeed in capturing the spirit of whatever character I've stole--I mean, liberated, but I don't pretend they'll function exactly as they did in the original system. But that's okay. If I wanted to run a game and have it work exactly the way things work in d20...I'd run it in d20.

For example, looking at a sample vampire from a WoD book, the GURPS version is...

ST 10 DX 10 HT 10 IQ 12 Will 14
Charisma +2
Delusion (Everything is part of a conspiracy) [-10]
Vampire Package [50, more or less]

Power Investiture (Curse of Cain) 2
Ritual Magic (Cainite)-16
Path of Auspex-16
Path of Dementation-14
Path of Obfuscate-14

Acting-14; Economics-12; Expert (Conspiracy Theory)-14;Guns (Pistols)-10; Hidden Lore (Sabbat)-14; Law (Mexican Criminal)-12; Leadership-11; Occultism-11; Performance-12; Politics-14; Research-12; Stealth-10; Streetwise-12; Teaching-12

Zap. I'm done. Less than 10 minutes. Now, it might make me a little more time to flesh out the remaining specifics, like how certain discipline powers work as magic rituals, but I've basically got the character ready to go.

He's an interesting character. He's not a combat monster. He's a trickster and a manipulator. And even if he fails to manipulate you, he'll know you're coming before you show up, and fade away and make his escape before you even know he's gone.

There's also the potential problem that some random piece of World of Darkness or d20 or whatever might be totally unbalanced compared to the rest of the spells, powers, etc. in the game. But I haven't seen anything that looks too bad. And none of my players are munchkins. They like having badass characters, but they don't go looking for every campaign-wrecking loophole they can find. And, honestly, if someone started acting that way, it's important to remember the Rule of Stats: If it has stats, it can be killed. It works both ways, you know. And player characters always have stats. :)

Mark

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

I also recomend Gorgolands Gauntlet. It has three or four that are not only pretty easy, but require NO translation whatsoever.

Nymdok

p.s. Gorgolands Gauntlet used to be a free download, but Ive heard that D&D got all weird about PDFs so it may not still be available.

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

If you're using something like GCA or GCS that keeps a tally of point as you throw together a character, even that part isn't hard.

I'll look for it, maybe it's worth a conversion thread of its own. There are a few other modules that I wouldn't mind converting, so maybe someday I'll start up a thread and see who wants to pitch in. (Of course, several of my players haunt these forums, so I can't divulge any secrets here....)

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

It's pretty easy if you just strip it down to fluff, and structure yoru GURPS campaign to capture the feel of the original with the fluff in tact. I've personally, don't try to port mechanics, even if I use them for inspiration on occassion.

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

I've been doing an on-again, off-again conversion of Earthdawn to GURPS, and have struggled on many things.

The one general rule I try to stick to is to avoid importing as many "foreign" mechanics as I can when converting. For example, Earthdawn has Karma Points that can boost odds for success, GURPS doesn't. How do I handle that? GURPS does have an option for spending Character Points to affect a die roll result, but that's not quite the same. Do I import the Earthdawn mechanic? How?

Earthdawn has a lot of game mechanics that are tied to the setting, like Spell Matrices (Modular Ability-style spell-casting in GURPS), Circles (character levels), and Disciplines (character classes - templates?). Each of these is a head-scratcher. Sure, I could toss all that out and just run GURPS Fantasy in the Earthdawn setting, but I lose some of the "flavor" that way.

So, in short, it can be challenging, depending on what you want to convert, and how "generic" the setting is.

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

I've found it pretty easy to borrow from Champions for a GURPS Supers game. (Yeah, I know, it's a little like marrying second cousins.) I mostly borrow supervillains, but there's a few published adventures I have handy that I may throw in when I get a chance.

If I'm borrowing an adventure, it's the plot I mostly want it for anyway. Any of the mechanic-related details (NPCs, traps, etc.), I'll read closely to make sure I understand how it's meant to work, and then write up a GURPS version that seems to make sense rather than do a point-by-point conversion.

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

Strangely I was thinking about this when I typed since it ultimately relates to some of my goals when dealing with a post-apocalyptic version of Shadowrun. Of course, that's another "powered by" situation since I personally don't feel so bound to direct conversion of the system

Completely incidentally and off topic... No, I'm going to leave that for a PM that you can select to ignore or not, as you see fit. :D

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

I have done all this, including Tomb of Horrors and White Plume Mountain as part of my World of D'y'r't game, converting on the fly and reading from the original maps as I went. There were seldom any significant problems.

The original material (minus combat details) was actually quite useful. It's putting the "middle" into adventures that I find dificult. Starting things is easy, big finishes are easy. It's where do you go next and what do you do when you get there between the start and finish that requires soms structure.

That's what the original modules were good for. Here's a map, here's a schedule of what happens when. How to implement those things in Gurps is really not that hard either.

Traps require rolls against Per to find and against Traps to disable. Orcs have 10 Hp, HT 10, Attack 12, Parry 9, Dodge 8 and do 1D Sw/Cut with crude, curved short swords. Big ones have better stats. Spells in the text turn into their nearest Gurps equivalent and so forth.

This is anything but rocket science. It only requires a decent but basic understanding of how Gurps works. Page upon page of conversion notes aren't needed at all.

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

I'd be into that as well ... I've toyed with both ideas (converting Earthdawn, and Post-Apocalyptic Shadowrun), so if you start a thread about either or both, I'm likely to have something to contribute.

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

In general, I find converting systems easy, but converting "setting types" takes work, and can be more trouble than it's worth.

Converting D&D adventures for GURPS DF? Cake.

Converting D&D adventures for GURPS THS? Iffy.

Converting Shadowrun adventures for GURPS THS? Cake.

However, you need to understand both systems. For example, if a 5th-level level has an EL: 7 fight, you need to notice that and convert accordingly. You can notice from experience that three owlbears(or whatever) is a hard fight for a 5th-level party, or have some skill with ELs, but either way.

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

I agree that in general you need to understand the systems involved, but EL isn't something I would convert from D&D to GURPS. There's x amount of these creatures, fine. I'm not going to worry if those creatures are more or less powerful than their counterparts in another system, though I may tweak numbers if I think they've been artificially arrived at to "balance" an encounter rather than because those numbers make sense.

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

The desire for an extremely mechanistic conversion suffers from the misconception that the source adventures are meticulously balanced with a certain percentage chance of various outcomes to begin with. The D&D Encounter Level or Challenge Rating is a rough guide, but it's not really very precise. It can easily be off by a factor of two or more, depending on your group and tactics.

So there's no point in expecting a system that produced exactly the same probability of winning a fight ("balance" or "difficulty"), or exactly the same ratio of resources expended, and so on. D&D GMs have to wing it just as much as GURPS GMs if they want the adventure to feel challenging on the one hand, or avoid mistaken party wipes on the other.

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

How I understand them, DnD and GURPS are on opposite sides. DnD is mostly mechanic based than anything else, and GURPS is narrative based.

Maybe it's just me, but mechanic based elements are hard to make into narrative, while the opposite is pretty easy.

So how I'm seeing it, GURPS is more adept at adapting books, movies, ect than it is at mechanical games like DnD or Final Fantasy. They're based too much on their own internal logic as opposed to a storytelling one.

Then again, I am typing this a 2 in the morning.

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

I don't know if I agree exactly with your terminology but I think this:

Is very accurate. A lot of systems have worlds with setting details based on mechanical aspects of the system. Witness Dragonlance's alignment wars, Shadowrun essence effects, etc. I find that when I convert between systems a large amount of the work is sitting down and giving very serious thought to what precisely is actually a valid piece of the setting and what is simply an artifact of wonky game rules that I'm leaving behind.

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

I and a good friend have been converting D&D monsters into GURPS 4e for a while now. I've been using them for my GURPS Midnight game, and I'll be using them also in my upcoming Dungeon Fantasy game. I find converting from D&D 3.x to GURPS is rather easy, but prior editions of AD&D are a bit harder.

I tried also converting some of the Disciplines from Vampire: the Masquerade into GURPS Powers with some success, but the process was not quick (probably because I'm not as familiar with the GURPS Powers book).

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

Converting is easy, as long as you follow these two principes

• What does this actually mean? translate the meaning, not the mechanics. If the creature casts as a level 5 sorcerer, with this list of spells, composed of various fire attack spells, give it a fire innate attack with suitable modifiers, don't try to replicate the Vancian spell system. KISS, and most of the time, you can be more faithful to the original intent by using this method than the original adventure.
• Convert for YOUR characters. This will mean that you'll have to adjust the power level for your campaign, and this is where it might be hard. Other systems handle things in differet ways, and have different expectations. Each GURPS game can have the same issues too, since GURPS does not impose a rigid structure. Any algorithmic conversion that does not include a lot of eyeball steps (thus defeating the point of having an algorithmic conversion) is doomed to fail.

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

Hi Fred,

I was thinking of converting Tomb of Horrors and also The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh. These seemed to be the best of the scenarios from the original D&D as released and bought by me back in, ahem, 1979. (Gawd, I feel the need to lie down with a sherry after admitting that).

My intention is to do it properly, converting the maps etc and sticking the resultant pdfs up on my website. You know, just because I don't get out much...

You say you did it completely on the fly - did you do any pre-conversion at all? More importantly, in an electronic form :-)

All the best,

Michael Amos

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

Nope. when I come to room 55 in the original module and the original map/text says there's a trap at the door in room 55 (and 56, 57 and 58 for ToH) I tell the rogue to make a PER check when she comes to the door(s).

If she misses the PER Roll (it doesn't happen often) then it's make a DX roll to avoid falling into the pit or a Dodge Roll to juimp out of the way of the hidden crossbow bolt or whatever the text says the trap is.

You only need _a_ map and _a_ list of what's in each room. The Gurps particulars of what each line item is are very, very simple at their core.

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

Good to find a similar thinker.

You said it even simpler than I did. ;)

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

Very easy, actually. As others have said, ignore the source mechanics and translate just the feel.

In case nobody has mentioned it already, I recommend you have a look at the first post in Gavynn's thread on CP overuse, where he does an ultra-quick conversion of a D&D monster to GURPS.

Also, check out the thread on my attempt at running Brett's excellent scenario 9,401 (designed for an entirely different system) under GURPS Lite + a few extras. The attempt was a big success, even though the group was completely new to GURPS. If you play rules-light games, you might like my approach.

Good luck,
M.

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

That's an excellent link to Gavvyn's thread. Thanks! Looks
like I can brush the dust off of my polyhedrals after all. :-)

Re: Converting material from other systems
 

I might do that when I've got some solid concept of how magic is going to work and, of course, just how this underground living can be sufficiently hand-waved away (hence the previous thread ;)).

Why is it that magic always gives me pause. It took me ages to start producing 40k materials because I needed to get psykers just right. *sigh*