Conversion Assistance requested (V:tR to GURPS 4ed)

[rgaddy]

Several friends have requested that I run a Vampire: the Requiem Game as they enjoy intrigue and political backstabbing. However they love GURPS 4e and want me to run it in that instead of the WoD system.

A website I found that has been helpful is http://www.finestead.com/wod/

Currently my two big obstacles is two vampire abilities. One allows the vampire to spend "blood" to increase some attributes the other allows them to heal using "blood"

I have this so far:

Blood Attributes [??]
(Affliction 1: 10)
(Grants Strength +2 or Health +2 or Dexterity +1 or Speed +1, Enhancement +200%)
(Cumulative +400%)
(Costs Fatigue "Blood Points" -5%)
(Vampiric Power -10%)

Blood Healing [??]
(Regeneration Ver Fast 1 HP/ Second 150)
(Regrowth 40)
(Vampiric Power -10%)
(Cost Blood Point to activate for one second -10%)

[Refplace]

I buy the Blood Pool as an ER with Special recharge.
Then Buy your abilities to use FP from that.
Healing is an easy fit.
Boosted attributes with costs FP last a minute which is plenty for a combat and fits the source material well enough.

[Mailanka]

In my experience, you're better off capturing the spirit of the setting, rather than the literal details. Many of the rules and elements of a game are artifacts of the system rather than important facets critical to the success of the game.

For example, Vampire is more about one's Humanity, the slow descent into monstrousness, the heritage of your clan and covenant, and the hunt for blood than it's really about what that blood gives you, or how exactly one represents vigor (or even if one represents vigor). It's important that the blood be important, for example, and that it empower the vampire, but it's less important how.

When I do these conversions, one of my core rules (after "Create, don't convert") is "Let GURPS be GURPS." GURPS does some things very well out of the box, and it does some things poorly out of the box. You see that trouble you're having representing a boost to attributes? That's something GURPS doesn't do well out of the box. But GURPS does other things well, like letting players have very unique and specifically designed powers.

I'd make the disciplines into powers, complete with power talents, power modifiers, and a list of abilities appropriate to them (thus, Vigor might stop being a straight bonus to strength, and turn into things like lifting strength with the super-strength bonus, crushing melee innate attacks, or cool, vampiric imbuements on melee attacks that fit with the motiff of really freakin' strong. This makes vigor less "Me strong!" and more of a supernatural list of powers that mimic enormous strength), and slap them all with a "vampiric" modifier that required, as a core component, the expenditure of (at least) one point of "vitae" to power the ability.

Vitae is ER, simple as that.

Beyond that... I'm not sure of an easy way to reflect the other elements of vampire well, and I'd be tempted to discard them. I'd modify the vampire template in the core book (ditch the "All vampires can mind control people" but keep the huge ST bonus and such), which means my GURPS vampires would be way more powerful right off the bat than a standard V:tR vampire, but I can live with that. It also makes them a little samier at the start, but that models the fiction and (particularly) paranormal romances (from which V:tR draws much of its inspiration) pretty well, and most vampires differentiate themselves through their powers, their skills, their individual builds, and perks.

I probably wouldn't bother with the unique abilities of the blood. Might stick with the blood bond and blood addiction (the latter is easy: A blood agent affliction that hits them with an addiction disad. The former I'm less certain about), because those are thematically vital, but I think the spending of blood to become superhuman and the core blood potency stat are more artifacts of the system. If we stick with draining, allowing it to heal HP (which covers how regen works well enough in Vampire) and to refill your ER pool (which is useful because it powers all of our powers), then I think we're okay. Our vampires don't need to spend BP to boost their stats, because we gave them inherently superior stats anyway.

Then the hard work is out of the way, because we're letting GURPS be GURPS, and we can spend the rest of the time worrying about more important things, like the designs of the discipline pools, how we want to represent the magic paths, and how we'll tackle humanity (hint: the corruption rules in Horror is a good place to start).

[Not another shrubbery]

You might get some use out of Kromm's old suggestion of a Vitality Reserve... sort of an HP equivalent of an Energy Reserve.