Help for a Noob

[Dalin]

Originally Posted by daermark

One - how do I just get started? Should I get the "How to be a GURPS GM" book? Do I just plop them into the starter adventure after we roll up the characters (roll up as a generic term).

I would go with your second idea: just dive into the adventure. I find a lot of the "getting started" stuff is actually more helpful once I've run a few games and have a sense of it all. Don't be afraid to ignore rules and get everything wrong. Aim for fast and fun and you can look stuff up afterward to figure out what the "right" way is.

Originally Posted by daermark

Two - ... How difficult would it be - after experiencing the DFRPG adventure - to convert one of the S&W modules from Frog God games to DFRPG? My thought would be Lost City of Barakus, as it intrigues me and would last us forever, and is perfect type of setting I would like. I also have tons of D&D modules from the 70s and 80s...

Not hard. I have run many classic D&D and AD&D modules under GURPS with no problem and DFRPG is even more straight-forward. (I don't know the Barakus adventure, but I imagine it is similar.) Jot some quick notes in the margin for each encounter. As others have pointed out, you don't need to do a full conversion for most opponents. Similarly, with traps, puzzles, and social situations, you'll just want to know which character skills might come into play and what the relative skill targets might be.

You'll find that DFRPG will be more lethal in some situations and less lethal in others. It takes experience to predict the balance, so aim for light encounters at first. You can always dial up the enemies at the rear or have reinforcement come barreling in. It's harder to believably soften things mid-battle if you inadvertently start slaughtering the PCs, so it's helpful to have a few ideas in your back pocket (rival monsters, unexpected earthquake, fortuitous critical miss by the boss, etc.). DFRPG combat allows for more tactical creativity, so you can often use the published maps in more interesting ways than in the original.

Balancing magical treasure can also be tricky, so you might want to dial permanent items back a bit until you get a sense of how they affect things. Limited use items (potions, wands with charges, etc.) and money are less of an issue.