Converting settings - general thoughts

[Anders]

I've been busy converting settings I love to GURPS and I'd like to gather the wise thoughts from wise people on this in one place.

Among the things I've concluded...

a) Don't do more work than you have to. When converting a huge world like, say, Pathfinder, it's tempting to start at one end and continue until you run out of books. While this is fun, it's also a lot of work you won't really have to use. Focus on the area you find interesting and think about what the minimum set of stuff you'd need to run a game in that area.

b) Focus on getting the feeling right. This is also known as "convert the setting, not the mechanic". You could probably convert the Vancian system used for Pathfinder magic fairly accurately if you put some work into it, but again - is it necessary? Does the Vancian system play a huge role in Pathfinder, or could it be replaced by something that already exists in in GURPS. Again, minimize your workload.

[Mr_Sandman]

Originally Posted by Anders

I've been busy converting settings I love to GURPS and I'd like to gather the wise thoughts from wise people on this in one place.

Among the things I've concluded...

a) Don't do more work than you have to. When converting a huge world like, say, Pathfinder, it's tempting to start at one end and continue until you run out of books. While this is fun, it's also a lot of work you won't really have to use. Focus on the area you find interesting and think about what the minimum set of stuff you'd need to run a game in that area.

b) Focus on getting the feeling right. This is also known as "convert the setting, not the mechanic". You could probably convert the Vancian system used for Pathfinder magic fairly accurately if you put some work into it, but again - is it necessary? Does the Vancian system play a huge role in Pathfinder, or could it be replaced by something that already exists in in GURPS. Again, minimize your workload.

Good points. I'd say that 'a' just reflects my GMing style in general. I don't usually sweat the details of something that isn't interesting to me or one of my players, or isn't likely to ever come up in the campaign.

'b' is especially true since the mechanics in many games don't support the feeling of the setting all that well to begin with.

[Phantasm]

I've also converted settings, in particular

Originally Posted by Anders

a) Don't do more work than you have to. When converting a huge world like, say, Pathfinder, it's tempting to start at one end and continue until you run out of books. While this is fun, it's also a lot of work you won't really have to use. Focus on the area you find interesting and think about what the minimum set of stuff you'd need to run a game in that area.

In addition to this, I'd like to add "don't reinvent the bat'leh". If there's a special weapon or technology scanner in use in the setting - a lightsaber, bat'leh, tricorder, phaser rifle, etc. - don't drive yourself nuts trying to recreate it from scratch. Find an item in one of the -Tech books that looks like it fits mechanically and use that. A Bat'leh is basically a Qian Kun Ri Yue Dao without the hand-guard blades; a Lightsaber is a Force Sword; a tricorder is a portable Ultrascanner, etc. Some thing you may need to make stats for, but don't build from scratch unless you've exhausted your library of books for something similar.

Originally Posted by Anders

b) Focus on getting the feeling right. This is also known as "convert the setting, not the mechanic". You could probably convert the Vancian system used for Pathfinder magic fairly accurately if you put some work into it, but again - is it necessary? Does the Vancian system play a huge role in Pathfinder, or could it be replaced by something that already exists in in GURPS. Again, minimize your workload.

Emphasis added by me.

This. A thousand times this. When I decided to do my experiment in insanity known as the GURPS Rifts project, I decided three basic things:

1. Do not convert the numbers for the SDC/MDC side of things. A laser pistol is a laser pistol; mega-damage just means better penetration, and hey look! Lasers already have a an Armor Divisor (2) in GURPS.

2. Armor being ablative is how the original system handles things; GURPS doesn't need to be ablative with a hundred points of DR. This doesn't fit the artwork anyway. Vehicle armor being semi-ablative fits the feel; body armor being semi-ablative doesn't.

3. Classes are a basis for templates, but classes that are so close to each other - Rogue Scientist/Rogue Scholar, Freelance Spy and Super-Spy, the many flavor variations of Headhunter from the Canada book - are best handled as lenses.

In addition to this, I decided to treat some of the occupational classes as racial templates instead. This is most notable with the Crazy, Juicer, and Borg classes.

The biggest overall changes I made are with Languages, adding several North American ones while removing two of the ones that are centered in Asia. This just reflects where I like to play; I really don't see much call for Chinese or Japanese in a post-apocalyptic North America except in isolated settlements.

[Mailanka]

First, I would probably say the most basic advice would be think about why you're converting in the first place. So many people seem to convert for the sake of conversion. Why are you doing it? Is it because you want to better understand GURPS and the game you're converting and this is a good way to explore both? If so, what would be the best way to learn as much as you can about both systems? Is a conversion really the best answer?

Is it because you prefer GURPS to the system that is currently attached to a particular setting or franchise? Would GURPS actually be better for the setting than its current system? If so, why? What does GURPS offer, specifically, that the other system does not? What is the best way to capture that difference? Will your audience agree with you?

The most important thing about a conversion is that it is useful to you, that it helps you achieve your ends, if that's a finished campaign or a newly published work. Thinking through your goals before you put pen to paper will go a long way to helping guide you through the conversion process itself. For example, if you're converting D&D to GURPS because you think the combat system is much better for capturing that wild, swashbuckler feel, then you might not need to convert the magic system. On the other hand, if you're converting D&D to GURPS because you like GURPS better, but your players love D&D as is and thus you're trying to leave everything as D&Dish as possible then I would suggest, rather than converting the GURPS magic system to the D&D magic system that you reconsider converting D&D to GURPS at all, given that your players seem to prefer D&D.

Next, I love to say Create, Don't Covert. I don't mean this as a threadcrap, I just find it a useful step in the "Should I even be converting this?" checklist.

Often, what we want is a mode of play or a experience similar to a previous experience. You don't need an exact copy of a game to get that. If you want a swashbuckling game, you don't need 7th Sea. If you want a kitchen-sink post-apocalytpic setting, you don't need Rifts. If you want laser swords and space princesses, you don't need Star Wars. If you want dungeon crawling, you don't need D&D. In fact, if you investigate around, you may be delighted to discover that there are other works of these various genres that may offer some fascinating ideas to your work. Captain and Crew Space Opera covers more than just Star Trek: It covers Farscape and Blake's 7 and Babylon 5 and Starflight and, in some ways, Star Command and Masters of Orion and Endless Space. If you explore, you may find some other elements in this other material that you quite like.

There are also certainly things you don't like about something that you're converting ("the fact that it's not in GURPS" is surely one). Once you've looked at other material, you will surely see elements you don't like in the original work.

Once you have elements you like from a given franchise, elements you like from other franchises, and elements you dislike from the original franchise, then you have the capacity to mix and match as you please and to breathe life into something new, something original, something unique and suited to your own personal preferences. You also prevent people from arguing with you and saying "But that's not how Juicers in Rifts actually work!" Well, they're not Juicers in Rifts, are they? They're Genophages in Black Friday.

Finally, if you're going to ignore all of my advice and convert anyway, Let GURPS be GURPS. Don't try to shove D&D's Vancian magic or Vampire's Humanity scores or Legend of the Wulin's River and Lakes sub-systems into GURPS. GURPS is distinct. GURPS is unique. And GURPS is great. That's why you're converting this franchise to GURPS, rather than choosing another system, or simply letting it remain in its native system. Use that system. Let that system stand on its own two feet. There's a reason you like it.

The harder you try to make GURPS look like the original system, the more I wonder why you're bothering to make the conversion at all. A classic example is the D&D guy who wants to do GURPS in D&D, only with converted critters form the Monster Manual, Vancian magic, and huge hitpoint totals, and a master attack bonus, and armor that makes it hard to hit you rather than taking less damage, and with a removal of the defense system... and so on, until you essentially have D&D, but with 3d6 and a few hacked on bits of GURPS before. Not only will this take you tons of work, it won't get you very much (You're either reverse engineering GURPS into D&D for some unknown reason, or you're creating something entirely new at which point it's better to just do a green field project rather than deal with the clutter and mess of two well-established systems).

There are piles of books with a wink and a nod to you for rapidly prototyping the game of your choice. There are ships in the Starships series that are Star Destroyers (The Empire-Class Dreadnought) and Tie-Fighter (the Typhoon space fighter) and the X-wing (the Starhawk) in all but name. There are force swords right there in Ultra-Tech. There are force-sword fighting styles in GURPS Martial Arts. GURPS Space has loads of templates for Space Knights and Smugglers and Bounty Hunters. Psionic Powers are right there for you to use.

"But that's not really Star Wars!" Who cares! Call it Star Wars, have a blast. You can be playing RIGHT NOW or you can be arguing about it. If it really bugs you, call it Psi-Wars, change a few elements, toss in other GURPS bits you like, and just play.

And if you must fuss in detail over everything (I certainly must!) then still make use of GURPS resources as much as you can, and avoid changing what you don't need to. Let GURPS be GURPS.

[Michael Cule]

I couldn't say it better. It would be my advice and if I followed my own advice I'd get more done.

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by Anders

I've been busy converting settings I love to GURPS and I'd like to gather the wise thoughts from wise people on this in one place.

There's an ambivalence there that is confusing me a bit. Are you converting fictional settings or are you converting game products?

b) Focus on getting the feeling right. This is also known as "convert the setting, not the mechanic". You could probably convert the Vancian system used for Pathfinder magic fairly accurately if you put some work into it, but again - is it necessary? Does the Vancian system play a huge role in Pathfinder, ...

This is a great insight. Though I have known some cases where a magic system or the like is what players like most about a game product.

Originally Posted by Mailanka

... A classic example is the D&D guy who wants to do GURPS in D&D, only with converted critters form the Monster Manual, Vancian magic, and huge hitpoint totals, and a master attack bonus, and armor that makes it hard to hit you rather than taking less damage, and with a removal of the defense system... and so on, until you essentially have D&D, but with 3d6 and a few hacked on bits of GURPS before.

I think the lure of GURPS in some of these cases is the dissatisfying incompleteness of many genre-based systems. He may want D&D-with-actual-social-rules, or D&D-with-consistent-physics, or D&D-with-real-world-guns. And there's GURPS all ready to fill these gaps.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

There's an ambivalence there that is confusing me a bit. Are you converting fictional settings or are you converting game products?

I'm working with published game worlds. Swedish RPGs are generally much better at fluff than they are at crunch. Or maybe I'm just spoiled.

[GodBeastX]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

First, I would probably say the most basic advice would be think about why you're converting in the first place. So many people seem to convert for the sake of conversion. Why are you doing it? Is it because you want to better understand GURPS and the game you're converting and this is a good way to explore both? If so, what would be the best way to learn as much as you can about both systems? Is a conversion really the best answer?

Is it because you prefer GURPS to the system that is currently attached to a particular setting or franchise? Would GURPS actually be better for the setting than its current system? If so, why? What does GURPS offer, specifically, that the other system does not? What is the best way to capture that difference? Will your audience agree with you?

The most important thing about a conversion is that it is useful to you, that it helps you achieve your ends, if that's a finished campaign or a newly published work. Thinking through your goals before you put pen to paper will go a long way to helping guide you through the conversion process itself. For example, if you're converting D&D to GURPS because you think the combat system is much better for capturing that wild, swashbuckler feel, then you might not need to convert the magic system. On the other hand, if you're converting D&D to GURPS because you like GURPS better, but your players love D&D as is and thus you're trying to leave everything as D&Dish as possible then I would suggest, rather than converting the GURPS magic system to the D&D magic system that you reconsider converting D&D to GURPS at all, given that your players seem to prefer D&D.

Next, I love to say Create, Don't Covert. I don't mean this as a threadcrap, I just find it a useful step in the "Should I even be converting this?" checklist.

Often, what we want is a mode of play or a experience similar to a previous experience. You don't need an exact copy of a game to get that. If you want a swashbuckling game, you don't need 7th Sea. If you want a kitchen-sink post-apocalytpic setting, you don't need Rifts. If you want laser swords and space princesses, you don't need Star Wars. If you want dungeon crawling, you don't need D&D. In fact, if you investigate around, you may be delighted to discover that there are other works of these various genres that may offer some fascinating ideas to your work. Captain and Crew Space Opera covers more than just Star Trek: It covers Farscape and Blake's 7 and Babylon 5 and Starflight and, in some ways, Star Command and Masters of Orion and Endless Space. If you explore, you may find some other elements in this other material that you quite like.

There are also certainly things you don't like about something that you're converting ("the fact that it's not in GURPS" is surely one). Once you've looked at other material, you will surely see elements you don't like in the original work.

Once you have elements you like from a given franchise, elements you like from other franchises, and elements you dislike from the original franchise, then you have the capacity to mix and match as you please and to breathe life into something new, something original, something unique and suited to your own personal preferences. You also prevent people from arguing with you and saying "But that's not how Juicers in Rifts actually work!" Well, they're not Juicers in Rifts, are they? They're Genophages in Black Friday.

Finally, if you're going to ignore all of my advice and convert anyway, Let GURPS be GURPS. Don't try to shove D&D's Vancian magic or Vampire's Humanity scores or Legend of the Wulin's River and Lakes sub-systems into GURPS. GURPS is distinct. GURPS is unique. And GURPS is great. That's why you're converting this franchise to GURPS, rather than choosing another system, or simply letting it remain in its native system. Use that system. Let that system stand on its own two feet. There's a reason you like it.

The harder you try to make GURPS look like the original system, the more I wonder why you're bothering to make the conversion at all. A classic example is the D&D guy who wants to do GURPS in D&D, only with converted critters form the Monster Manual, Vancian magic, and huge hitpoint totals, and a master attack bonus, and armor that makes it hard to hit you rather than taking less damage, and with a removal of the defense system... and so on, until you essentially have D&D, but with 3d6 and a few hacked on bits of GURPS before. Not only will this take you tons of work, it won't get you very much (You're either reverse engineering GURPS into D&D for some unknown reason, or you're creating something entirely new at which point it's better to just do a green field project rather than deal with the clutter and mess of two well-established systems).

There are piles of books with a wink and a nod to you for rapidly prototyping the game of your choice. There are ships in the Starships series that are Star Destroyers (The Empire-Class Dreadnought) and Tie-Fighter (the Typhoon space fighter) and the X-wing (the Starhawk) in all but name. There are force swords right there in Ultra-Tech. There are force-sword fighting styles in GURPS Martial Arts. GURPS Space has loads of templates for Space Knights and Smugglers and Bounty Hunters. Psionic Powers are right there for you to use.

"But that's not really Star Wars!" Who cares! Call it Star Wars, have a blast. You can be playing RIGHT NOW or you can be arguing about it. If it really bugs you, call it Psi-Wars, change a few elements, toss in other GURPS bits you like, and just play.

And if you must fuss in detail over everything (I certainly must!) then still make use of GURPS resources as much as you can, and avoid changing what you don't need to. Let GURPS be GURPS.

This post I'm quoting for truth. I did a lot of the fore-mentioned "Converting Mechanics" and then I started to ask "Why am I doing this? I chose GURPS for a reason!" and all that went out the door.

It sometimes becomes hard to convert cinematic game worlds to GURPS because GURPS tries it's best to model reality. A game world I had trouble with was WH40K. Lasers that shoot 50 yards only?! What?! Medeival armor stopping Dark Elf blasters? What?!

But I stuck with it and got a workable design in GURPS =)

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

I think the lure of GURPS in some of these cases is the dissatisfying incompleteness of many genre-based systems. He may want D&D-with-actual-social-rules, or D&D-with-consistent-physics, or D&D-with-real-world-guns. And there's GURPS all ready to fill these gaps.

But if that's really all they want, there are certainly some D&D books that will cover that. Unless what they want is more comprehensive. You mention the consistent physics, for example. But with consistent physics, you'd have the lower HP totals and the standard GURPS defense system and the piles of GURPS skills. You'd really be running GURPS DF with some D&D-like accouterments. If you really insisted on having Vancian magic, you'd need to change some of the spell-casting classes, but there are Thaumatology references for that. And you might want to convert some monsters, but I would argue that you only need some monsters. Beholders and Illithids are pretty iconic, but many monsters aren't. Who's to say you don't have a Watcher at the Edge of Time in a proper D&D game? Or Leaping Leeches? Or Void Brutes? Most DMs I know are always in the market for new monsters.

Then when it comes to setting material, most of it is just window dressing in D&D anyway.

So what you get is basically just GURPS DF, only with Vancian magic and a few new monsters. That's not too much work. Seems pretty reasonable. It's more work than I would do, but I'm not you, so it doesn't matter.

What you want to avoid is clinging to the familiar for the sake of the familiar. Take the plunge! Play GURPS! Enjoy it! It won't hurt you. You don't need Illithid and Beholders and Vancian magic to have a good time, and you certainly don't need inflated HP totals to have a good time (and everytime I see people stuff that into GURPS, it usually ends badly, because they don't change the defense/luck system, and it's not long before someone figures out how that actually works and becomes virtually undefeatable unless everyone else adopts the same (basic GURPS) tactics, at which point the fights take FOREVER.

Originally Posted by GodBeastX

It sometimes becomes hard to convert cinematic game worlds to GURPS because GURPS tries it's best to model reality. A game world I had trouble with was WH40K. Lasers that shoot 50 yards only?! What?! Medeival armor stopping Dark Elf blasters? What?!

But I stuck with it and got a workable design in GURPS =)

I eventually ditched the setting and went with a look-alike that borrowed heavily from Dune, Fading Suns and World of Darkness and called it Protocols of the Dark Engine, and all kinds of crazy-awesome things fell out. But naturally, any attempt to do Warhammer 40k or a Warhammer 40k-with-the-serial-numbers-scratched-off requires the use of cool melee weapons in a world full of awesome guns, whether its bolters and chainswords or gyrocs and vibroblades, so that has to be addressed one way or another.

[Gollum]

I fully do agree with what is written above. I play GURPS Cthulhu campaigns for a while now, and go on playing it with the Chaosium system from time to time. Both are very good. But what I want to tell is that when I play with GURPS rules, I almost don't convert anything! Just the character stats...

There is still excellent rules in GURPS horror to give the feeling of Cthulhu campaigns (Insanity, Corruption...). But I don't use them. I probably will... one day. But not now.

Why?

Because I don't need them. What do I want when I play Cthulhu Campaign with GURPS rules? - Mailanka's question is very good here. I just want more consistent rules, especially in combats. I want my players being free to do what they really want to do (knee strike at the balls, head-butt at the nose... Brief, I want good location rules, with special effects that go with them (knock down and stunning, shock). I also want better rules for skill defaults, improvement through learning, and so on. And GURPS Basic Set is just perfect for that. I don't need anything else.

What about insanity? The fright check table do the job very well! Getting more and more mental disadvantages really frighten my players, as much as loosing sanity points in BRP system - perhaps even more. It also gives the feeling that the character has more and more disruption with reality, that there are more and more things he cannot do normally, brief, that he is more and more insane... Which is exactly what is required.

So, as said by Anders and Mailanka, really know what you want and don't do more than what you have to. Don't waste hours to think how to best get the same feeling than in the original system... If you chose GURPS, that is because you wanted something different, isn't it? So, use your time to prepare your adventures and campaigns rather than to search for ultimate rules. GURPS already gives you very consistent rules and a lot of optional ones. An they work!