Converting material from other systems

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by ciaran_skye

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.

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.

[CousinX]

Originally Posted by Kage2020

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

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.

[Darekun]

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.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by Darekun

IHowever, 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.

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.

[Anaraxes]

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.

[Psychotime]

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.

[Crakkerjakk]

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

Originally Posted by Psychotime

They're based too much on their own internal logic as opposed to a storytelling one.

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.

[The Bearded One]

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).

[Kuroshima]

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.

[Michael Amos]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

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.

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