Old-School D&D style game

[robertsconley]

I have lot of experience with this due to running my Majestic Wilderlands under GURPS since 1988.

Originally Posted by soulnafein

Hello there,
1) 250 points characters are complex for beginners

Well template do help. However I use 100 to 150 as my starting point.

Originally Posted by soulnafein

2) Old school 1st level characters aren't that complex

The key to make a set of template and explain the option. For example this for a Myrmidon of Set.

http://www.batintheattic.com/downloa...20Template.pdf

I typically go to the 4e Historical Folk netbook that is floating around as a starting point.

http://www.mygurps.com/historical_folks_4e.pdf

Originally Posted by soulnafein

1) Progression (what's a good progression rate for such a game?

2 Points plus 2 or more point for achieving a character or group goal.

Originally Posted by soulnafein

2) Adventure: can you suggest an old published D&D adventure that doesn't involve too many different type of creatures (lots of conversion work) and that they would enjoy?

My own Scourge of the Demon Wolf. It actually a GURPS adventure I ran converted and playtested to use classic D&D in the form of Swords & Wizardry. Just swap out the stats for GURPS equivalents, There is a roster in the back of the book. Pretty all you will need for certain are bandits, wolves, a demon wolf, and a demon.

http://www.batintheattic.com/scourge_demon_wolf.html

As for TSR or Wizards, I find using the the basic dungeons found in core books like the Porttown Dungeon in Holmes Basic D&D to be well suited for an initial foray for GURPS dungeon crawling.

As that may hard to find, I recommend the dungeon in Swords & Wizardry quick start. http://www.black-blade-publishing.co...tart-pdf-.aspx

Originally Posted by soulnafein

3) Anything else I should think about and I'm not?

My campaign have magic shops including healing potion. They are not cheap about $120 each, but a typical party in my campaign will have 2 to 6 of them as they are one of the first things they invest in.

Even with healing potions, forays into well-populated dungeon tend to be hit and run affairs. The group will scout out an area, pick a target, and hit it. If injured enough they will run and recuperate. Scouting and understanding the situation in the locale or dungeon becomes very important.

Because of this the dungeon tend to be more background heavy in my campaign. So that doing this has a clear payoff.

I stress that the key to make GURPS work for novices is clear, well written templates. Start out with the traditional set of Fighter, Priest, Thief, and Mage and go from there. I recommend Dungeon Fantasy Henchmen as a starting point for sub 250 point campaigns.

As for Dungeon Fantasy, what 250 points gets you is characters with endurance. They get injured, and badly. It is still GURPS after all. However they have just enough extra that they can last 3 or 4 encounters before recuperating. Similar to classic D&D except of course Combat takes longer to resolve most times. With my starting point of 100 to 150 points that number is one or two encounters.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by robertsconley

As for Dungeon Fantasy, what 250 points gets you is characters with endurance.

Which is to say, more old-school (not necessarily GURPS) hit points. At 250 character points, you can avoid, bounce, absorb, heal, or just function despite more incoming damage. Each character type does so differently – higher active defenses, more wealth for buying armor (and healing potions), more ST for lugging armor (and giving more HP), naked DR, defensive buffs, healing abilities, not being seen in the first place, Luck, or just being a berserker with ridiculous HT and HP – but all that stuff costs points. If you stick to the way points are spent on the canonical DF templates, then with one or two exceptions (bard . . .), the closest old-school-to-GURPS correspondence is between old-school hit points and GURPS character points – not 1:1, obviously, but there's clearly a relationship.

[robertsconley]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Which is to say, more old-school (not necessarily GURPS) hit points.

It tricky to balance deadliness, endurance, etc in dungeon fantasy. One thing I notice since playing, playtesting, and publishing for classic editions of D&D is that OD&D (1974 3 booklets) has a far more gritty and deadly feel than AD&D 1st 2nd, and 3.X. Character are vulnerable for far longer than later editions. Even with the addition of the Greyhawk supplement the OD&D power curve is more flat and threats are more credible to higher levels.

I think DF does a good job of emulating AD&D 1st edition. But for OD&D 150 pt templates are a better fit. Which is ultimately why I when I adapted my Majestic Wilderlands from my GURPS notes I went with Swords & Wizardry as the base rather than OSRIC (AD&D) or d20.