Trail of Cthulhu to GURPS?

[Shostak]

ToC has several excellent adventures published for it that, for the most part, are pretty easy to use for GURPS. But the resource-management that is central to ToC leaves me mystified as to how to accurately translate it to GURPS. For instance, take Scuffling: Brawling seems like a good GURPS equivalent skill. But what would a 5 rating be in GURPS, as compared to a 10? I've just been working with the idea that for a Purist feel, PCs should be pretty average people (up to 50 points) whereas a Pulpy game might see PCs built on 100-150 points. Does anyone have a better approach?

[AlexanderHowl]

Percentage-based games (whether d100 or d20 or d6) are difficulty to translate to probability curve games. I would suggest using the character concepts and story ideas. I would suggest making characters and creatures from scratch because percentage does not translate well to a probability curve.

[Litvyak]

If you want a quick way to translate NPC stats or something, I'd probably go for something like 10 + (Rating in General Ability/2) = GURPS skill level. The ratings on investigative abilities are different, of course, and I'd probably go for something like 10 + (Rating in Investigative Ability * 2) for those (or start with a base of 12 instead of 10 if you want them more infallible).

[mhd]

Quick rule of thumb: Multiple ToC by 12 and find the appropriate value on the 3d6 bell curve.

A few skills are actually combinations of several GURPS values, like Scuffling (High ST, low Brawling and Low ST, high Karate could have the same Scuffling).

Never mind the whole GUMSHOE investigation skill setup, but I think you don't want to keep that anyway. It makes conversion harder, though, as resource-managed skills are a bit different from just chance-based one.

Regarding point values: Even "purist" ToC characters are quite competent in GURPS terms, as they need to have all kinds of skills. Even more so if your player group isn't that large, given how GUMSHOE works.

I wouldn't go for a conversion, instead rebuild the characters with the original concept in mind.