GURPS: Star Frontiers, Update #2

Okay, a few updates on the project are due, plus a couple more observations.

The game will be based on a TL 10 base.

The damage conversion for personal weapons is 1d10 SF, which converts to 2d6 GURPS. This is for ranged weapons only and roughly matches the SF auto pistol with 9mm pistol damage. This will throw the auto rifle out of whack, but that is likely going up to 5.56mm or 4.7mm PDW damage to 4d6 GURPS. I am keeping the d6 damage without adders to keep the dicing clean and match SF better in terms of simplicity and clean damage ratings.

Melee weapons will be as they are in GURPS, with a few exceptions around some of the "shock" and "electro" melee weapons. These can better be done in GURPS with added "shock and stun" electricity effects than SF, which just adds a few d10 of damage.

Starship damage is going to the d6 scale, with hull points being 60% of the base game. The "combat table" on the back of the Knight Hawks rules will get converted to 3d6 GURPS rules, with a 50% being a +0, a 60% being a +2 to-hit, a 40% being a -2 to-hit, and so on. Starship movement and damage tables stay as-is in Knight Hawks.

For starship combat, one hex of starship scale will equal 10 yards of GURPS scale, which is what all the weapons are "designed and tuned" at. This means a target at 10 hexes of starship range will be as hard to hit as a target at 100 yards in GURPS, or a -10.

I could apply a -1 per hex of range modifier for starships and be fine, "This is how it is."

As a reader suggested, I could use the OG GURPS 3 Space rules for combat and construction, but I need to read up on them and consider them. It is fun to do it the GURPS way, and another type of fun keeping this more like OG Knight Hawks. The starship game is further off, but that is my plan for how it will go. Testing is needed!

One of the strangest parts of Star Frontiers' personal combat is "the defense game." We have suits that protect against physical or laser damage and screens that do the same. In our games, we stuck with the skeinsuit for physical damage resistance and albedo screens to turn on for anti-laser protection. You often needed to guess the defenses you needed, or you were left without.

Also, the defenses do not work the same. Albedo screens take damage and drain 1 SEU per 5 points of laser damage. Inertia screens drain 2 SEU and halve ballistic or melee damage. Gauss screens drain 2 SEU and absorbs all damage. Albedo suits have 100 hits and disintegrate but prevent all damage. Skeinsuits halve ballistic or melee damage but are ruined when they take 50 points of damage.

There is fun to the defense game, but this also gets tedious for some groups. I want to model the special armor and defenses, but another part of me just wants to make one force screen and one or two skeinsuits (civilian and military) and make them protect against most types of damage. When I get to armor or defenses, I have some serious design work in store for me and questions about where I want my game's focus to be.

I will likely simplify the defenses for a simple story-based game. Otherwise, I will model them all as designed to be true to the original game. I am not "designing them with points" unless I have to. If something absorbs 100 points in SF, it will absorb 120 points in GURPS (1d10 to 2d6). If something drains 1 SEU per 5 points of damage in SF, it will be 1 SEU per 6 points in GURPS.

An average STA of 50 in SF means characters in the original game were superhuman regarding hit points. In GURPS, everyone will be much more fragile, and I may need some of these armors to have some fixed DR. Something tells me modeling my armors off of comparable GURPS armors will be the way to go.

From now on, we do a lot of math, so be forewarned...

Also, remember that the game is TL 10, so the DR of the TL 9 armor will be multiplied by 1.5. This will make many projectile weapons useless against soldiers (both UPF and Sathar) in DR 30/15 tactical armor. The dominant weapons will be lasers with their armor divisor of (2). Allowing variable SEU settings for laser weapons may make armor useless, so there is an argument for keeping the laser pistol at 3d(2) burn and the laser rifle at 5d(2) burn and not having SEU settings on the weapons.

GURPS Basic Set thought about all this stuff, so it may be easier to default to the well-proven rules here rather than do all this conversion work and end up with a broken game. I can see using GURPS weapons and armor and not doing all these conversions or just doing the force screens and calling it a day. A skeinsuit is just a GURPS TL 9 "ballistic suit" at TL 10 and has a DR of 18/6. This will make many of the projectile weapons in the game useless, but that is the price of progress.

The original Star Frontiers needed to account for STA scores from 50 to 70, so damages were high, and the defenses worked in specific ways. All weapons were meant to be viable and have trade-offs and benefits. Switching to a projectile weapon was a good tactic if you had a Sathar wearing an albedo field. The guns were designed to be viable alternatives to each other.

In GURPS, the default assumption is to model the passage of time and technology, with projectile weapons becoming as obsolete as crossbows and muskets on the battlefield. Any character with a TL 10 DR 18/6 skeinsuit will laugh off every projectile weapon in the game, and adding a helmet with a visor will eliminate the headshot option.

Even if you assume all projectile weapon ammo is APHC (reducing penetration damage to pi-, or x 0.5), the 2d6 pistols will only penetrate at a 2d6 roll of 10 or higher, and the 4d6 rifles will fare a little better, but the internal damage will only be on average of a 14 - (18/2) / 2 = 2 points per penetrating shot. A 3d6(2) laser pistol's average damage to that same suit will be 11 - (6/2) = 8 points per penetrating shot. The laser rifle will be 15 points.

The intelligent characters will carry laser weapons in a TL 10 science fiction setting, and the 9mm pistols and 5mm rifles will be tossed in the metal and polymer scrap bin. They could be encountered in backwater and primitive situations. Still, in the main worlds and most portions of civilized space, the laser pistol will out-damage the 5mm APHC auto rifle against the most commonly encountered armor in the game.

And hey, math is fun! Don't be afraid of it.

Converting all these exotic weapons and defense types will be a waste of time if you want to bring armor and weapon damage closer to GURPS norms. Just assume a TL 10 setting and use the laser weapons in GURPS Basic as your go-to weapons. The Gyroc Pistol TL 9 with APHC ammo is a viable option, doing 6d6(2) pi+ damage, so against that skeinsuit it will be 21 - (18/2) x 1.5 = 18 points of damage. Gauss PDWs are not in Star Frontiers but in GURPS Basic.

Note that GURPS Ultra-Tech has a 6d(2) burn laser rifle (the carbine is the 5d(2) one, now) and a few other TL 10 weapons, and this will expand your game considerably but also add sonic stunners, which are cool options. The TL 9 projectile weapons and new ammo types (APEP) are dramatically expanded here, making that skeinsuit far less effective.

A game using Ultra-Tech will be dramatically different from just using GURPS Basic. The comment about "sticking to laser weapons" is far less accurate with Ultra-Tech being used for the game, but for a game with new players, sticking to laser weapons and DR 18/6 skeinsuits (with an anti-laser screen option) may be the easier way to go.

You could convert things to play more like the original game, but if you look at the above math, you will need to do a lot of design work to make it work the way SF did and perhaps break some of the things we like about GURPS.

For me?

As a setting, it is easier to use the GURPS Basic weapons and armor as-is and reskin the ballistic suit as my skeinsuit. I will need to model or find an anti-laser screen equivalent, which I am sure is in the rules somewhere.

GURPS: Star Frontiers, Try #2

I am restarting my GURPS: Star Frontiers game, but doing it the right way this time. Well, what is "the right way?" I am creating an equipment and weapon list in the GURPS Character Sheet (support the project, link on the sidebar), sticking with those items, and only supplanting from other gear lists as I need.

This is more like a "GURPS sandbox" conversion, where I make a focused gear and weapons list and just use that. I am not allowing random weapons from GURPS Ultra-Tech or any other source; it is fair game if it is on the "in-game" gear lists. The only change is to add the GURPS power cells from UltraTech as my "power clips" for the game since UT has the smaller A & B style cells that can power some of the smaller devices.

I will make a list of races and build those as templates.

I may create "template packages" for the various primary skill areas and the skill choices, like "robotics skill," a 25-point GURPS template you can pick and add to a character's skills. I may also add the starship skills from Knight Hawks as templates. This will make building characters (and NPCs) as easy as setting a point level and picking packages.

Laser pistols will be capped at a maximum of 5 SEU, rifles at 10, and heavy lasers at 20. We made this house rule back in the day, and it worked well. Smaller weapons can only be turned up so much. If you want big, go big.

A 1d10 damage in Star Frontiers is a 1d6 in GURPS (or 2d6).

Starships? I will stick with the Knight Hawks rules with a few modifications. GURPS will handle all to-hits and skill rules. Turns and movement will be Knight Hawks. Ranges will be handled by GURPS, but 1 hex of starship scale will be one meter of GURPS scale, and the GURPS range modifiers will apply. If Knight Hawks gives a -10% chance to hit, that will be a flat -2 in GURPS per -10%. Otherwise, starship damage, weapon damage, and all other rules will be Knight Hawks.

I could use 1d6 as the "base die" for starship damage and scale hull points down to 60% of KH.

Vehicle combat in Star Frontiers can work as-is, rolling d100 as needed. However, there is a power difference between Star Frontiers' heavy weapons and GURPS' more realistic ones. This needs to be tested or followed closer to GURPS' standards.

I am not messing with any of the GURPS starship combat systems again; those derailed my game last time. I want a GURPS sandbox, a transplant of the starship rules, and a thin emulation layer to make everything work with GURPS. All the character, ground combat, and other rules will be GURPS.

I tried this with a mix of GURPS Space, Ultra Tech, and Starships, and it did not feel the same. It felt like a GURPS: Space game wearing a Star Frontiers skin. There is a certain "toybox" that Star Frontiers needs to work well. When all of GURPS: Ultra Tech is thrown into the mix, even at TL 9 or 10, the game just feels like it derails and goes everywhere. Like huge skill lists, a part of me feels Star Frontiers needs to be a simplified, almost "pulp" science fiction experience.

Curating carefully and making focused lists of options is key to pulling this game off.

GURPS EverQuest: Rules or Setting?

I vote GURPS: EverQuest is more the setting and less the game.

I have enough "rules" in Dungeon Fantasy, and the spells work well. With all the "GURPS Dungeon Fantasy" PDFs for the main rules, you have even more options for evil gods, dark knights, and necromancers.

I can design within the EverQuest class frameworks; I have played this game and know what these classes are supposed to feel like. Realistically, in a "pen-and-paper world," there will be variations among the classes based on the individual. One shadow-knight might be more into raising the undead, and another may be into inflicting pain.

In 5E? Forget it; you have a few subclasses that define everything about your character, and you will never have the freedom to have fun with a base class and tweak it. I could make a necromancer-bard in GURPS that sings to the undead, and I can't think of another 5E or OSR game with a class like that. Sure, I can multiclass, but to have those songs designed to affect the undead only? I can't think of a game that does that.

In EverQuest? You have almost no customization outside of placing a few ability score points at character creation, and those matter very little by the end game.

GURPS gives you the best flexibility, and you should use that to create characters that fit "your idea" of what a class role is for your character. Not everyone in that class will be the same as you; this is GURPS; embrace it.

The only "look and feel" the game should have are the "class frameworks," but even then, you should go outside what the game allows you to create since you have a full pen-and-paper RPG with the best character design system in gaming. The GURPS game enables you to customize and tweak your classes; as long as your necromancer "raises dead" and "does necromancer things," you are fine. Just don't include holy abilities that break the thematic feeling of the class, and you will be good.

Race is also an essential part of "why you play." In the original game, people loved their characters and backgrounds; capturing them is critical. In GURPS, these are straightforward templates, so they will not be hard to build. The unique options, such as tough hides, wings, tails, claws, water breathing, and other body parts and abilities, will need the full GURPS game and not the limited subset of Dungeon Fantasy.

You will need to go "outside the box" a little, depending on how "superhero" you want the races to be in abilities. None of the races in the original game have water breathing, but if that thematically fits with your idea of the froglok race, then you may give them that power.

The setting is the star of the show here—the classic Freeport and Qeynos settings and all the places in the world with charm and history: the moon of Luclin, the savage continents, jungles, swamps, and frozen lands. The world is vibrant, either the original EQ1 or the alt-history EQ2.

But this conversion also highlights how you should approach similar conversions. Dungeon Fantasy "rolls back" some of the GURPS's freedom and limits your design flexibility.

But also, when you are doing conversions, you may not always want a "note for note" exact match of your source material since that may be severely limited. The Dungeon Fantasy spells are far better than the EverQuest ones, and as long as you pick "close enough" or "fits the theme," then you will have a better character design than an "exact recreation" or even a "game conversion."

If a paladin has a few "holy abilities," then OK. This works. If they are powers you want, then go with that. If they aren't perfectly "on spec" and "100% conversion accurate," who cares?

This is GURPS. If all a paladin learns are a few heal spells, forgo buffs, and the other bog-standard paladin powers, it doesn't matter. If another just wants to smite evil all day, that may be how that paladin learned to be a paladin. There is a lot of wiggle room in GURPS compared to 5E. In 5E, if you go up one subclass path, you will be the same exact paladin as someone else.

In GURPS, you could start a paladin and become a bard.

Coming from 5E or even EverQuest, that is strange.

Coming from GURPS, this is normal.

GURPS EverQuest: Lessons Learned

Using old strategy guides, a few others and I worked on converting EverQuest to GURPS. A friend wanted a Shadowdark conversion first so she could play with her friends and a few EverQuest players, so we started that conversion. Shadowdark is like "rules light" 5E, and I get why it is popular; it is 5E without wasting all the time and money.

Shadowdark is simple enough that once EverQuest characters are boiled down to basic abilities, we can use that as a framework for a GURPS conversion since we won't need to dig through our source material and all these ancient, yellowed strategy guides we picked up on eBay.

We are avoiding the D&D 3.5E version of the game to keep D20 out of the conversation. The strategy guides are the source of truth here. The spell lists will be the ones from the game, and we will make a formula to convert those into each game, which is easy because we can just make a guideline chart based on levels and what the spells should do.

So, we got the first five classes converted, and...?

Umm...

Let's stick with Dungeon Fantasy characters. Even the spells are "meh," and the Dungeon Fantasy ones are better if you choose each class spell list with a theme. A shadow-knight with a pain, stun, and wither limb power is much more thematic and fun than the EverQuest spell lists. I can design good GURPS characters and stick to a theme when picking spells. In any D20 game, you design all the options first and tell players, "This is all you get."

My GURPS characters feel more like real characters in this world, and honestly, the setting is better than the EverQuest game rules and spells. Even in our Shadowdark game version, we must make up "cool thematic powers" for each class to give them some "zing" and playability. Otherwise, these are straightforward B/X style classes with a hit die, progression chart, and a skill list.

As-is, the Shadowdark version of the conversion feels plain, and it needs sprucing up outside the rules of EverQuest to make it attractive and worth playing. Let's invent an extraordinary power for a druid, like animal friendship? Let's give the necromancer special powers, too. We must give them more than a spell list and an allowed set of weapons and armor.

Also, casters in the Shadowdark version of the game will end up with hundreds of spells from the strategy guides and be far more potent than the martial characters. Even if you only say, "Pick ten memorized," and cast them with Shadowdark rules, they will still be insanely powerful.

GURPS and Dungeon Fantasy?

The characters as I designed them are perfect, thematic, and feel realistic and gritty. Even my friend says she likes the GURPS characters better than our converted ones, even though our Shadowdark version is much more faithful to the game. My GURPS characters are much more open to different progression paths, whereas my Shadowdark characters are stuck in a class and five rolls on a talent chart over ten levels, and that is it.

Using GURPS eliminates playing with her friends, but given people's time and attention these days, it may be a lost cause, hoping they will play any pen-and-paper game with her. I will jump at the chance, of course! But for those in her online gaming circle, I severely doubt they will even play Shadowdark. Most people who play 5E will play D&D on the Beyond platform and have no interest in Shadowdark or EverQuest, nor would a complete 5E conversion even be worth doing.

GURPS is better for characters; even if you use stock GURPS spells and powers, you can get closer to feeling than design. That is the thing with GURPS conversions, stick with GURPS stuff first, and you may find it does the job better than an item-by-item perfect total conversion.

My druid could learn to become a bard in GURPS. Just spend the points over there and sing to woodland creatures, if you want. In Shadowdark, you are stuck in one class with minimal customization options.

The EverQuest setting is still a classic, and the strategy guides have maps, monsters, and zone information. We are sticking to the first three expansions in the classic, maximum level 60 era of Kunark, Luclin, and Velious. Even with zero EverQuest spells and powers and just using stock Dungeon Fantasy and designing for "close enough," the conversion is already a home run. Monsters? The level is just "toughness" or a point value; we can use GURPS Ultra Lite to create them.

The only advantage Shadowdark has is that the monster list works well and fits EverQuest's game world. The exploration and play systems are tight. The game is D20. It is easy to hand a player a character sheet and just play. Getting friends to play Shadowdark is easier.

The advantage of GURPS?

Everything is better here, even without a complete conversion. The characters feel better, play better, advance better, and feel realistic and fantastic. The world is just "the setting we play in." The classes are just "frameworks we design within." The different spells aren't a problem since the Dungeon Fantasy spells are better than the MMO's math-based, button-mashing, circa 1999 computer game standards. If you wanted one spell, designing it would not be a problem.

Do you play with GURPS fans or solo?

Choose GURPS.

GURPS: EverQuest - A Tale of Two Necromancers

So, I was designing characters for my GURPS: EverQuest game, and as luck would have it, one of the characters was a necromancer. Regarding exceptional cases, players will always pick the one that makes your life the hardest. But in this case, it wasn't that hard, but it did bring up a massive issue with Dungeon Fantasy Spells versus GURPS Magic.

Dungeon Fantasy defaults to a lower magic power level, a low fantasy feeling, where magic has actual costs, and its effects are limited in scope and often at the time of the impact. The Dungeon fantasy game has necromancy spells, so we can use those for our skeleton summoning caster, right?

Let's open Dungeon Fantasy Spells and see what we have. And we are hit by this line, under Necromantic Spells, page 59.

Rituals for creating or becoming undead exist, but no reputable temple or guild teaches them.

What? Okay, "by-default you-are-the-hero" assuming game, let's start hacking these spells to let our necromancer work at least halfway decent. And, we referees are much less reputable than the magic guilds in this game. We will have to change a few spells, but don't panic; GURPS lets us do this and not have an army of 5E Internet people come down on us saying we have homebrewed our game, which is terrible. In GURPS, homebrewing is the standard and sane thing to do.

This is a vast difference from 5E or Pathfinder 2, where you are not supposed to change rules. GURPS assumes you hack the game, just like any sane old-school game.

We need to slightly change two spells to do this: Command (Spirit) and Summon Spirit. Command Spirit will be used to grab a random wandering undead and make it ours. If this is a random skeleton or zombie wandering in EverQuest, that would cost 5 for "fodder" creatures (10 for worthy undead like ghouls, and 20 for boss monsters like vampires), last for one minute, and cost 2 per extra minute to maintain (half, and we round down for everything not a cost or weight). When you run out of power and haven't sent the undead away, it will turn hostile (or you can roll a reaction). This is lower power necromancy, where you won't control a skeleton for long.

The other spell is Summon Spirit, which costs a lot more, 20 to cast and 10 to maintain. This cost can be halved if you are over the corpse and halved again if over the site of death. So casting this over a fallen soldier in battle would only cost 5, and wandering around a graveyard would cost 10. This is a pretty hefty cost, and it has a hefty maintenance cost, too (but in the best case, it would still be only 2 per extra minute). So if you can't find a random wandering undead, you need to go make one not-so-fresh. Also, summoning like this and stopping maintenance means the undead just falls down and goes away.

This is, again, low-magic necromancy, so I am okay with it. Only high-powered necromancers can create undead, and they will need power items to burn off some of this cost. Also, remember, if your skill is above 15, you reduce the power costs by one; if it is above 20, you reduce it by two (and one point per five points of skill above that). So, a skill 20 necromancer in a spell will reduce maintenance costs by two, keeping that skeleton around free of any maintenance power cost.

What I thought was unworkable, is now workable, and you can have a necromancer with a skeleton "pet" that sticks around indefinitely without a power cost. Lower-level necromancers are struggling to maintain control and must pay a hefty fee to keep the pet as a companion.

This does not change the rules too much and lets you use the existing spells without adding new ones to a character creation program. This is also a very low-magic solution, and it also aligns well with the Create Animal spell on page 19, with a cost to cast and maintain per minute.

A solution that only makes a minor change to a few spells enables our necromancers (or demonologists) to work, and it has a similar spell in the same book? This very workable solution fits what we already have in the game and keeps the same power level intact.

It feels good when you can hack a mod like this with the books you have, and it creates a balanced and fair solution. I like high-skill necromancers maintaining rabble undead for free, and remember that those maintenance costs go up with minor or significant undead, so even higher-power necromancers need to spend power on maintaining control.

So let's use Dungeon Fantasy 9, Summoners, to fix our necromancer problem. This is a good supplement for the game, but it is much closer to the default GURPS Magic power level and feels super-heroic and high-powered. This uses the Zombie spell from GURPS Magic, which costs 8 to cast, has no upkeep cost, and the undead stays around until destroyed. Control Zombie in this book costs 3 and lasts indefinitely.

Wow. Do you mean our necromancer just pays 8 powers to cast this spell and has a pet undead forever? Yes. This makes low-level necromancers (and summoners) insanely powerful. They do not have to worry about maintaining control of power expenditure, and there is only a minor benefit to a high skill level. This starts to make a difference with "major" undead

This is the difference between Dungeon Fantasy's power level and the regular game GURPS Magic power level. In Dungeon Fantasy, you have (in general) a lower level of power, whereas in the main game, you have the complete GURPS Magic system - which is more on the level of superhero magic. Coming from 5E or PF2, you would expect all magic systems in the game to be unified and one power level. This is not true, and also it is a huge thing to grasp when you want to understand GURPS.

GURPS is a toolkit, and there are systems in the game that do the same thing but on wildly different power levels. It is up to you as a "game creator" to pick the best systems for your game and lay those out for the players to work with. Yes, you can have two fantasy games in GURPS, one where the characters are gritty survivors in a low-magic world and another where they are flying around like superheroes. Looking at all the GURPS books and games you can buy, you don't realize this at first, but after you do a few character designs you begin to see the differences and can make good choices for your game.

"Making good choices for your game" is another thing you should keep in mind as a GURPS referee, and this is another alien concept for 5E and PF2 players to grasp. GURPS is closer to a "game programming language" than it is to an "everything is done for you" experience.

So, TLDR?

Dungeon Fantasy Spells are low-fantasy magic.

GURPS Magic is superhero magic.

GURPS: EverQuest - The Characters Get Better

So, I was designing my characters with the GURPS Character Sheet (please support the project, sidebar link) for my GURPS EverQuest game. I started with my basic "level one" starting characters using the 62-point templates.

Those came out nicely, but as I researched the classes and powers, I revised them again, and they got even better. GURPS is the only game where you can design a character and then go back over it in a second pass and improve it substantially, tighten it up, strip out things you don't need, and add things you do.

You can't do that in 5E; it typically optimizes your point buy and makes the one or two choices it allows you to make at the first level. You have a few options with the newer "lineage, heritage" combinations (and I suspect these have already been hyper-optimized). I bet in the future, someone will complain about spatial and temporal bias, and all those picks for background, history, and where you come from will be put into a "free pick pool," just like ancestry bonuses are now.

My characters are very cool. They have templates for their races, and in classic EverQuest fashion, some have "evil or good" race social stigmas attached to them, so those parts of the world are forbidden to certain types of kin. Different religious beliefs come with vows and skills. Classes have flavors, and you can tweak those a little to get the character you want to play.

Playing EverQuest in 5E? Why? I am not getting skills and vows for all the gods in here. My Erollisi followers must "love not hate," and my Innoruuk characters must "hate not love." I can't tweak my spell selection to "flavor" my paladin or shadow-knight. Seriously, will my paladin focus more on combat spells or healing? You need to choose, and not all classes are the same. I can think of six different types of rangers as it is now. Most 5E games would never give you this many choices.

And the social and RP elements of a character matter. 

All of this in 5E? Hand-waved and told to "just roleplay it."

In GURPS, these things are in the rules and are parts of your character sheet.

GURPS: Everquest

EverQuest is one of those games that is more of a setting than it is a game. The MMO has been going on decades, and the definition of "what a class is" and "what classes have what powers" is a subject really only for the hardcore players, and even then, the endgames is where the action is at, and the numbers are so high damages are in the billions these days.

It is an easy setting for a game like Dungeon Fantasy to simulate, and you can get away with all of the standard Dungeon Fantasy templates as the standard EverQuest classes. Not many will really notice, and to most, a fighter is a fighter in this sort of setting, and the setting is why they are playing. This is almost the opposite of D&D, where people will play more for the classes than the setting, but here, you give me a Dungeon Fantasy wizard, and yeah, that could be an EverQuest wizard easily with very little suspension of disbelief.

The only notable must-haves for this world is Dungeon Fantasy 3 (The Next Level) for shadow elves and other backgrounds you may wish to reskin, and there is also the unholy warrior here for a nice shadow-knight template. Dungeon Fantasy 9 (Summoners) is good for beast-lords  and necromancers. To be fair, these are more "advanced classes" for a game like this, and you can add these in later as needed.

Playing in the classic EverQuest setting is the huge appeal here. There is also an alternate timeline for EverQuest II, and all that really changes is the map and current events. They are both pretty much well interchangeable except for the story and the places you can go.

Monsters are pretty well much standard fantasy monsters, and there are fewer than most OSR games when you start. A lot of these will be goblins, orcs, gnolls, skeletons, giant rats, fire beetles, spiders, and your typical MMO creatures. If you want to simulate the special dungeons you will need a strategy guide with maps and monster lists.

Plenty of online resources exist for EverQuest.

You can "wing it" pretty easily in a world like this, and inventing new dungeons in this world will be pretty simple, as you can just say there are forts, caves, villages, evil temples, and other places not in the main game that are in your world. If you are trying to do a "Guk-like" dungeon, just makes it a twisting maze of hexes with evil frogs, trolls, and other swamp beasts living in there. No one is going to call you out for things not being perfect, they will be happy to play in the setting and not worry about the specifics.

Close enough in Everquest is just fine as long as you get the major cities, locations, and places correct. You can play a "softer lore" setting and include other fantastical races not normally playable, like the Minotaur-like Tizmaks, or the otter-like Othomirs, and be just fine, too. Again, it really does not matter much how closely you play the lore to the game, the game as it is today is very little concerned about lore outside of the RP communities.

You can run an entire campaign out of one of the major cities and be just fine, with limited visits to other locations. Your players, their experiences with the game, and their interests will drive where you need to focus on. There will be factions, conflicts, and races that will play the starring role here, and there are some great ones. The dark elven city of Neriak, the good city of Qeynos, and the evil Freeport are all amazing locations, and they don't really have to be "lore accurate" in terms of maps and locations. If you get the flavor and feeling right, that will be great for most players. These locations have changed over the years, and even during each game's lifetime, and there is also the limited part of the city each game can simulate - so you are free to expand and make up as much as you like about these places.

If you ever played these games, the maps are pretty primitive, so anything you imagine will definitely be an improvement. EverQuest 2 has a few more "interesting points of interest" so you may run into those expectations, but for the most part you will be fine, or the players can help you with lore. Most hardcore fans will be thrilled to play in this setting, and will be more than willing to help out fill in the details.

These games are also free-to-play, so if you needed to log in and see a place, it is certainly possible.

The normal Dungeon Fantasy magic items are also "good enough" for this setting, and you don't need a complete magic item list for the game out of a strategy guide, unless you really want to, or have a favorite item you want your character to get their hands on. Dungeon Fantasy (Magic Items) is a good resource to have here, and you can do some fun items, like making musical instruments as "casting items" (or bonus items), and you can outdo the original game pretty easily. Dungeon Fantasy 8 (Treasure Tables) is also an excellent resource for creating treasures and magic items.

I like this conversion since there isn't that much pressure to "rebuild the MMO" in the GURPS rules. Bog-standard fantasy will cover most of the pieces you need, and you really only need a few flavor locations, gods, and foes to get the feeling right. The games have progressed decades of expansions, and it would be impossible to recreate everything exactly how it exists in the game.

This feels different than kitchen-sink fantasy or B/X conversions since there are more current expectations there that you have a near-complete set of conversions of monsters, magic items, and the standard tropes. We have a feeling that we need to be "much closer to the rules" with B/X conversions to GURPS than does a setting like EverQuest, where in all honesty, if it played and sounded like an "EverQuest the streaming TV show" it would be more than fine in most player's eyes.

This feels more like a novel of TV show conversion than a "game into another game" conversion, which makes the work a lot easier, and sets the expectations bar pretty low. The "realistic feeling" of GURPS will also be a plus here, and put a more realistic lens on the setting than a typical d20 or 5E game, and yes, there was a D&D 3.5E game for this world. 

GURPS will do the setting far more justice and give us some hardcore "grind and simulation" which is what the original game was all about back in the day. I don't want 3.5E "bags of hit points" for this setting. I want realism and drama, and that movie-like feeling that GURPS does so well.