GURPS: Star Wars (Legends)

I ran Star Wars - Legends.

None of this new stuff was real to me, and it was all derivative, made-for-streaming "content." We played exclusively in the now-branded Legends era. In this place, new creators dip in to steal ideas for the nostalgia, while never respecting the stories or original writers of the time. In a way, it feels like D&D, where the new crop of creators can't be bothered with canon or continuity, letting any writer they hire off the street "do what they want" since they feel "it speaks to the new audience."

That is death for a franchise.

The new audience isn't interested in what you have to sell.

How they used to do this is get the older audience excited, and the new audience would latch on to see what the buzz was about, and from that point forward, new stories that could speak to a younger audience could be created. Simply "rewriting the whole thing" but "for a new audience" never works. Lucas knew you could never tell the same story twice, which is why none of the original movies were ever beat-for-beat recreations of each other.

Yet, here we are, with beat-for-beat recreations built by investor money to farm nostalgia.

We played Star Wars roleplaying during the 1990s, when it was fun; the novels and comics were the only source of "new" Star Wars, and writers were free to run with new ideas and shape the franchise's future. I hate to use the word "franchise" here, since it cheapens the creative effort by making it sound like a fast-food chain.

Which is where we are.

Star Wars is Arbys or Taco Bell.

What I remember is a good Star Wars, where the galaxy serves as a setting for sharing universal stories. These days, the setting feels more like a lead weight than a benefit. I can get better science fiction stories out of Cepheus Engine these days. The aliens here are more mysterious, the space empires more vile, the rebels more heroic, the battles more personal and real, and the whole universe doesn't feel like a "put on" or something fake crafted for audience engagement.

Star Wars is where D&D 5E is these days: a medium curated to deliver a certain, preset, on-rails, audience-pleasing "experience" that only delivers mindless action, flashy CGI powers, fake monsters and robot fights, and more flash than substance. Cepheus Engine feels real, like the player's starship could get blown up by space pirates, and the campaign ends then and there. With Star Wars, I am back in D&D 5E land, with heroes that can never die, and adventures that feel like they're on rails with the ending predetermined.

I am free to tell the stories I want to tell in my GURPS: Cepheus Engine game.

In Star Wars, I feel beholden to outside forces, to tell only stories that creators and a wider audience would approve of hearing. It is a strange feeling, like I couldn't tell a story where "the Empire rises," "they hunt down the Rebels," and "crush them all" in an "Evil Star Wars" campaign of a resurgent Empire. It isn't a story that would go over well with many. Still, as a literary vehicle and tragedy in the genre of Greek parables about how dreams can be corrupted and die, it is a solid moral tale of hope turning into despair and ruin, yet again.

Maybe the galaxy realizes "things were better under the Empire" and the influence of Hutts and space pirates in this new, open, and lawless frontier where the Rebels sit on the dying embers of the Death Star's destruction is not enough to sustain people's hopes and dreams, and that running a galactic government free of corruption and grift is a harder task than hopes and good feelings shall ever sustain. The glow of good feelings fades when it is time to run the tax machine, space police, and military, and to get a million planets to agree on policy, as the criminals rob everyone blind and make their own deals with worlds and consortia.

Eventually, the planets will get sick of the constant theft, corruption, and grift, and they will cry for the Empire to return and for security to be restored across the galaxy. I honestly believe that Star Wars stories using the tired old WW2 metaphors should be banned; they have been done to death, and we are ready for new stories where things are not so simple. Forcing creators to think outside that "lazy narrative box" would be a good thing for the stories they tell there.

This is not to diminish the evil and power of the WW2 metaphors, but they are far too easy for creators to fall back on, the science fiction equivalent of an English teacher putting a red X on the phrase "many people say..." They are overused narratives, crutches that frame things in a tired, overdone, and overused framework. I want writers to move beyond the easy answer for evil and write things that generally disturb and terrify them within this storytelling setting.

In my GURPS: Cepheus game, I can do that. Refugees fleeing a war that a planetary governor turns back since accepting them would strain his planet's resources so hard that his entire government would collapse. In Star Wars? I don't think we ever had a story about refugees fleeing a war or a dying, domed city. Even though "war" is in the title, we never get anything beyond "space WW2 evil R bad."

In a storytelling sense, where meaningful stories can be told, Star Wars is dead.

But it wasn't in my 1990s game. We had amazing stories, just like that one, where the Empire sometimes played a neutral role or even came in to save the day, however reluctantly. They were looking for the same space pirates, too, when a sector fleet hyperspaced in and started blasting the space pirates the players were fighting. The players were the ones who tipped the Empire off, and then that situation played out. The Empire was "helping" in a sense, and the players fled the battle, the pirates too distracted to give chase.

And the Empire could win over territory in my game, and they did, as planets lost faith in the Rebels to hold together a galactic government. The agents of the Empire would walk in, diplomats, causing chaos behind the scenes, and then being the ones to help fix it all. The Rebels hated them, but the fight was real, and neither side was magically guaranteed victory just because "they R good."

Our Star Wars game in the 1990s was one of the best Star Wars games I ever ran, and my players were addicted to this universe since it felt real to them. Like a great OSR game, when it becomes a "dungeon simulation environment," and the world does not care if you live or die, your survival depends on your actions and a little luck, my Star Wars universe had that same OSR mentality.

You make your future and fortune here.

You are not guaranteed power and success, and your character can (and will) die, unlike D&D 5E's curated hero-path experience. Like modern fantasy gaming with too much focus on heroes and the heroic path, I want to forget these fake, MMO-like curations and return to a simulated world where nothing cares if my character lives or dies, and my success is my own to make.

This is the difference between a visual novel with one true path and a game like Minecraft, where you make your own stories from what you are given. I play one and forget, and the other I keep returning to so I can create more.

The universe doesn't care whether one side is seen as good and the other as evil. Those who put in the hard work will get the fruits of their labor. The universe is inherently neutral and a deadly, chaotic, and harsh environment for civilization to live in. Planets are not predetermined to see "rebels R good" and "empire R evil" - they will default to self-interest and survival in a universe burning in war and conflict. Nor will all Imperials act like mustache-twirling villains; some are in there to survive and protect their homes. Some have legitimate, genuine reasons to keep serving. Some areas of the Empire will be "less evil" and will almost seem like good guys, depending on leadership. They will constantly fight the "evil side" of the Empire and seek a middle path in conflict resolution.

It is heresy to even say that, since the ideologues are sharks in the water.

But I am a writer. And writers hold the truth as a core tenet and a reason to live.

If it is true, then it is true, and I am not changing my words to please others.

And there will be a wicked side of the Empire that seeks to corrupt its soul, Sith cults that seek to turn the war into a blood sacrifice. Same with the Rebels, the Hutts will promise resources and free access as long as they ignore their crimes and sins. Do you sell your soul for victory and let the innocent suffer, for the Hutts to sell slaves and drugs, and for corruption to run rampant? Or would you, knowing, lose the fight to a new planet coming to your side since you know it would stain your soul to make that deal?

Again, I can't tell these stories in Star Wars anymore.

I could use GURPS to run a gritty, morally gray Star Wars game, and that would be a great throwback to my 1990s experiences, delivered with punch and style. The holy grail of any generic RPG is to "play Star Wars" with it, and GURPS does it perfectly. Just because one side of the other wears the uniform does not mean they can be trusted; we need to know the person under the clothes first. Where their heart is will determine good or evil. The rebel commander who makes deals with the Hutts and the Imperial Administrator who refuses to let the Sith cults enter his sector and wishes to keep the preservation of civilization as their goal are both strong character archetypes.

And the conflicts these character types create are far better than the stories we get today.

They make me question the jingoistic side-isms that plague Star Wars these days and force people to think of others as people, not as cartoon characters.

I want the true, old-school simulator universe.

I want players to question motivations, not look at clothing.

I want the notion of good and evil to be in what lies in someone's heart. The players need to work a little harder to know what that is. For some of today's games and writers, that is too long a bridge to cross.

I do not want a world where we determine hearts by the labels we attach to either side.

The universe is not that easy a place.

Nor are its conflicts.

GURPS: Lite Fantasy Characters

One project I have been working on is a set of generic GURPS: Lite characters that cover the archetypal fantasy roles, so I can put them out for free and give people "something" they can use to try GURPS. GURPS Lite is great, but it needs pre-gen characters and a few monsters to have stuff to play with. Otherwise, this is just a design system, skill rules, and a combat engine with no toys to play with.

I got a sample "fighter" done for about 200 points, and I want a ranger, rogue, monk, and maybe a non-magical bard. There is no magic in Lite, so these will be martial characters, but that is fine. I need a few classic OSR monsters, too, like goblins, orcs, a giant spider, and a few other classics.

Keeping magic out of the game will keep it mysterious, and also allow us later to choose our magic system, so that feels like a better way to move forward. I would love to have a pre-gen cleric and mage, but I am sticking to what we have in Lite.

I am only using what they have in GURPS: Lite, which are the project's ground rules! If a skill, piece of gear, or advantage is not in there, I don't use it. People need to be able to download Lite, grab a few pre-gens, and play along for free.

Once I have these, I can use them as examples of play here on the blog and have a standard set of characters for those examples, rather than getting so deep into theory and game planning.

You know, I would love to see a new version of GURPS: Lite called GURPS Fantasy: Lite, more focused on fantasy gaming and including a bunch of OSR standard monsters and magic items, plus a small magic system to try out. Put that out as a free product, and let people have toys in the box to play with, and directly compare the GURPS experience against D&D 5E.

That is, in essence, what I am trying to do here with GURPS: Lite. Partly for others, and partly to have standardized characters to run play examples with.

And I know once people see the difference, they will likely stick with GURPS and have a better game and character experience.

It does not need all that much, just a handful of archetypes and a few spells, a sampling of monsters, and some treasures to grab hold of. It needs a few rules for running a GURPS dungeon. We need rules for light, searching, breaking down doors, torch times, disarming traps, and the dungeon standard tasks. It needs to cover the basics and nothing else. It needs pre-gens to "grab and go" with, and monsters to throw down on the table on night one.

Focus on "factors that ensure a game's success" and the questions that will come up at a table of inexperienced players (think of how Shadowdark addresses these sticking points for players), and you will have a winning product that serves as an entry point to our hobby.

GURPS: Mixtape

What am I wading into?

This isn't clickbait.

First up, an interactive movie as a game, there is nothing wrong with that. We see visual novels do this all the time. Mixtape is nothing new.

The game's high review scores? Well, only if you take video game review sites seriously, which I would be surprised if anyone does anymore, given that the majority of them are likely written by AI at this point. For all I know, that string of 10/10 scores could have been one site's AI copying the other. Who knows nowadays?

The game is not my cup of tea, so I am not going out of my way to bash it. There is no point. It sort of is what it is, and I am betting we see more interactive movies in this format. But hiding in this mess is a genre we can pull out for our games, and one of the best genres that many games ignore.

Where I want to go with this is that GURPS is the coming-of-age story, which, to be frank, GURPS does better than any other game out there. You could write a $200 crowd-funded 5E book ($1000 for the premium edition) for coming-of-age stories and still get nowhere near what GURPS brings to the table.

Hands down.

GURPS does these games insanely well, and there is no competition. GURPS slays other games in narrative and character-focused stories and tools. You get it all here. And you can do this with the two corebooks, no extra books needed.

And if teens in my high school can figure GURPS out, 5E players, you can too. Come join the party!

Let's say our story begins with our 18-year-old characters in their last week of high school. All stories start here. If you need inspiration, have an AI write a "teen movie" character background for you, and give it something useful to do besides copy game reviews.

Where you should start is on page B20, with the age modifiers in GURPS. Past fifteen, there are no ability-score changes, so they can be pretty average, 50-point characters, with the Dead Broke, Social Stigma (Minor), and Patron (Parents) choices. Just like the game recommends.

And a whole boat-load of disadvantages to deal with that reflect the difficulties of teenage life. This is where you're going to have the most fun. You may end up getting a bunch of character points from these, but I would not buy skills too high, since you want to reflect inexperience in practical knowledge.

Failed self-control rolls, cliques and rumors, dealing with parents and authorities, and struggles with self-image disadvantages will make your game shine. GURPS was made for this.

They haven't been through college yet, so you are not buying up medicine or any other profession to a post-college level. Sports, social skills, athletics, nerd stuff, gaming, technology, and those typical teen skills are fine within limits.

You may want to buy "teen skills" they will eventually forget, like video game skills and being an expert in Pac-Man. Those character points will likely be forgotten as the character grows older and starts to suck at Pac-Man. But for a teen, these sorts of "forgettable skills" define who they are and are important to that part of life. This also does not create pressure to buy a full set of professional adventurer skills, which may make the character boring when they are in the arcade and need to excel at Street Fighter or Dance Dance Revolution.

The dumber and more specifically silly the skill, the better it will be. Every group needs a character who is extremely proficient at launching spitballs out of a straw. Who knows, you may need that to flip a light switch in a room you need to sneak through, or knock a set of keys off a jailhouse wall. When you are down to your last three spitballs, you will know why you are the master spitballer and the chosen one.

Stupid, dumb, specific, and "why would anyone have that skill" type skills are the best for these sorts of games. The more useless and stupid, the better.

It is extremely easy to create a basic 50-point character for a game like this, and since the game won't likely center on combat, it will be mostly social roleplay, skill rolls, and dealing with those struggles and stupid plans and silly dreams so common in the genre. If there is combat, it will mostly be non-lethal fistfights, karate tournaments, rumbles behind the lunchrooms, and other things that are likely to leave their egos bruised.

Also, act insecure! If you get insulted or lose a fight, take some time to brood and lick your wounds. Struggle with that failure. Deal with being made fun of or embarrassed! This is a solid way to earn a role-playing award and extra CP, instead of acting like an invincible player-character all the time. You don't always want to bull-rush past failure, try and try again, and figure out a way to "win quick" after losing a fight. Wait a while, plot your revenge, and win in the end through a crafty plan and iconic moment.

Remember that scene in American Graffiti where one of the Pharaoh's street gang attached a cable to the back axle of a cop car? That is the sort of revenge you should be plotting. It isn't lethal; it is slapstick fun, with a ring of innocence and pranksterism. A pie to the head quarterback's face in front of everyone at assembly is going to be the best revenge, and you don't need to look through a weapons chart to make it happen.

Think like characters in a typical teen movie.

Give yourself goals and a "bucket list" to accomplish before the week runs out. Reward checking those off with character points! Time should be working against you, and you will need to prep for the prom and graduation during the week, so making skill rolls related to those will have an impact on the final day. Those activities will take time, too, like getting fitted for a suit or dress, class photos, passing the final test you need to graduate, winning the last game of the season, hacking the school computer to change your grades, or whatever else you put in here for school goals and personal ones.

This is stupid fun, as it should be!

It isn't overly violent or filled with death and destruction, but these games don't need to be. Loss and failure in these games will probably hit harder and land closer to home for many, since "not getting the girl" will probably resonate with many a lot more personally than losing your dwarf to a spiked pit trap. The laugh-out-loud moments will also be insanely stupid and fun, and you can even pull from your own life to add to the chaos - or the things you secretly wished you could do back then.

And if you ever get bored with the campaign, or want "somewhere to take this" past graduation, GURPS gives you the tools. Alien invasion? Transported to a fantasy world? Mystery detectives? Invaded by the Russians? Government conspiracy and cover-up of another dimension? Taken to fly starfighters in a space war? Break into a secure government missile system? Taken to Dinosaur Island? A strange but friendly alien is discovered and hunted by the Men in Black? Discover a secret treasure cave filled with pirates? Discover the goth clique is actually vampires?

At this point, I am listing movie and TV plots from the last 40 years, but you get the idea.

Pick up a random GURPS sourcebook, throw the teens into that, and go with it.

When the news is filled with negativity, try to find the rainbow here. Mixtape may be an average, not interesting game for me. This is another victim of overhyping. People will tear this game down for clicks and views. It is unfortunate, but whatever. I can't change the Internet, but I can look for silver linings.

But the genre is worth so much more.

And highlighting the fun we can have with the games we love and the ability to tell our own stories?

Priceless.

Good stuff.

And perfect for GURPS.

Backerkit: GURPS Ring of Fire

https://www.backerkit.com/call_to_action/b9369f92-a3a3-4da2-b507-00a7eca112b6/landing

The location is Grantville, West Virginia. The year is 2000 . . . or is it? Residents of this quaint town suddenly find themselves transported to 1632 Germany during the Thirty Years’ War. What happens next? You’ll need to play GURPS Ring of Fire to find out!

Wow, color me surprised, a major Backerkit launch for GURPS? An alt-history extravaganza, crossing timelines, with a Larry Elmore cover?

Wow. Wow. Wow.

Linked, added to the sidebar, and please check this out if you are a huge GURPS fan. We are in for a great 2026! I am on board!

GURPS: MegaTraveller

MegaTraveller was the last time that the Traveller universe felt like it mattered to me.

Oh, I know this is going to rile a few, since GURPS: Traveller explicitly retconned and took a shot at the entire MegaTraveller setting, and in-canon, pseudo-erased it from history, and this erasure sort of outlived GURPS Traveller and the retcon became canon in the Traveller timeline. GURPS: Traveller took us back to the good days, past this mistake made in 1987, and back to the late 1970s of the little black books - plus GURPS.

GURPS: Traveller was the best of both games. I love GURPS: Traveller more than I do many versions of Traveller itself, except the original books.

And MegaTraveller never happened.

MegaTraveller marked the beginning of a fall from grace, leading to TNE and, eventually, GDW's bankruptcy. This is where the Traveller game began to lose its way, its identity crisis, and creators searching for what makes a science fiction setting compelling and interesting.

Battletech is popular!

People like Twilight: 2000!

Let's do that!

And what a mistake it was.

But I loved MegaTraveller. I got into this so deeply. This was the first time that Traveller felt real to me; it brought that "immersive universe" home that GURPS: Traveller would later recapture, and it took a black sharpie to a boring, static universe and killed trillions of people and nearly a thousand worlds.

My brother never saw the point in playing this, but I was enthralled by the setting and the active and post-war lore. This was exciting. It gave characters a reason to care. The stories were not "sleepy space trading" and "science missions," but they held real meaning and consequence.

The universe felt alive again.

And it left us with a mess where infinite adventures could happen, and the universe was reset, becoming yours again. We were no longer tied to endless canon, library entries, and that high barrier to entry for getting into this universe. Traveller today has the same problem that Runequest has: you need to know far too much to even get started. The amount of lore and canon you need to absorb makes the setting impossible for new or casual players.

And like Runequest, needing to know so much puts me to sleep, and it makes the Traveller setting feel massive and sleepy itself. There is far too much here to absorb to start playing, and the only way to start playing the game is to ignore 99% of what we have and start a micro-campaign.

But the setting is why we play. Right?

But MegaTraveller was a soft reset that let you remake the universe in your own way. You could take an entire sector, re-roll the world UDPs, and play there. It did not matter anymore. War changed everything. If you played with canon-plus, that was fine, but you could play in an entirely changed universe where every world was random-gen and still be playing in the same universe.

MegaTraveller brought the "shattered universe" model of Battletech to Traveller, but unlike Battletech, there were no cool mechs to stomp around in. The design and combat systems dramatically increased in complexity, so even if you wanted to fight in the starship battles, the system was harder than the original Little Black Book game and took a long time to figure out. The game created a wargame universe and dropped the ball on making it fun and compelling to fight in.

If I were to play in this setting today, I would use GURPS, the Mongoose 2nd Edition rules, or Cepheus.

But why play?

This is a failed experiment, a universally hated setting, and a huge mistake for the game and its lore. There is nothing "to do here" except fight and die for no good reason. This is Star Wars without any fun or cool elements. This is Battletech without mechs. This is punkless Cyberpunk. This is a lousy, brutal, meaningless, space war fought because stupid, callous royals, corporations, and powerbrokers could not get along and share power. There is very little good reason to fight for anything. The problems caused by war are the only thing driving "more war" at this point. This whole thing is a pointless, meaningless, self-sustaining mess I do not want to be involved with.

Huh.

That should sound familiar, and a bit scary.

If you have an appreciation for war stories, Twilight: 2000, and raw, unflinching survival stories, this is a great universe. There is a later sourcebook detailing the downfall of an entire spacefaring civilization, in which worlds with domed cities supporting billions of people are failing due to a breakdown of the universal economy, and people are fleeing for their lives and forced to live in primitive conditions on nearby worlds, often where they are not welcome. Cities on livable worlds are choked with people and refugees from war. Social strife and the breakdown of civilization and technology only get worse as time goes on, as banks fail, consumer goods run out, and food, fuel, and energy become scarce.  Prices for everything are sky-high. 

Technology itself is failing universe-wide.

Entire classes of people live on credit that is slowly running out.

Old starships are pressed into service, and they barely work, falling apart and breaking down before they ever reach their destinations. Dead space fleets full of wrecks are scavenged by pirates, salvage crews, scavengers, and the locals just to find spare parts to sell to survive.

Entire star systems are mined and under active occupation. Planets have been wiped out, their atmospheres destroyed, and cities leveled. Some live as feudal primitives on cut-off worlds. Others have turned to savagery and cannibalism. Planets suffer orbital bombardment and years-long sieges. Occupation forces and allied factional groups are everywhere, some with shifting allegiances. Mercenaries sell their services to both sides, and force people into press-gang units that fight with soldiers little more than slaves.

As communication breaks down, misinformation and lies run rampant. Rumor and underground information networks thrive. Entertainment becomes a black market. The throngs of the poor live in shacks built from scrap as the rich turn their skyscrapers into fortress cities. Armored cars take the VIPs from place to place, as riots on the street grow and local governments crack down with more brutal tactics. Computer and communication networks barely work, and the technology required to maintain them fails. Old-tech, like the radio and newspapers, becomes the way people hear about the news.

Environmental disasters are everywhere as the technology to address them fails, and some are deliberately started as sabotage. Fires burn massive parts of forests. Dams are blown up, and massive areas are flooded. Earthquake damage is never repaired. Pollution from massive war economies clogs smog and rivers with poison. Garbage piles up. Roads deteriorate, and bridges fail. Rail networks are held together by duct tape and prayers. Starports and combination junkyards and salvage yards, with some ships abandoned and being scrapped for spare parts, as they never took off and were left where they sat. Massive shanty towns surround starports, where people beg to be taken off-world, try to find jobs, and scavenge for food.

The frontlines are deadly, dangerous places. Rebel and terror groups sow discord and chaos just to weaken popular support. Local governments turn authoritarian to maintain order. The war economy drags on everyone, prices are insane, war profiteers attend rich parties with royals who couldn't care less, and the poor continue to sacrifice for a victory that seems farther and farther off every year.

The rich care less and less, as long as their war investments pay dividends. Resource shipments become legitimate targets of war, along with factories and starports. Random attacks hit civilian infrastructure at any time. The war seems to spread farther and farther from the front lines as time goes on.

Rarely do we ever get a science-fiction universe like this. Sure, Battletech is close, but you can ignore most of that from your mech cockpit. Here, you need to live in it and face the realities every day.

And the war machines profit, and the class of the rich become more and more detached from a universe they destroyed. Some would even say they are happy with the outcome.

Does that sound familiar?

Yeah, it is today.

Or it soon will be.

MegaTraveller was a game 40 years ahead of its time.

GURPS Basic Fantasy: BF1 Morgansfort

Basic Fantasy is one of the most amazing projects and games ever created. Free for everyone to play, a hybrid OSR game that mixes the best of modern mechanics with old school gaming. And the one part most overlooked is that this game was tested extensively, and the math just works flawlessly. People will play other OSR games and come back to Basic Fantasy just because the math and balance are solid here, and there's no wonkiness or silly stuff that breaks immersion.

And the books are free for all to enjoy.

It is one of the most generous communities in gaming, and the books are printed at cost and sold for zero profit. This isn't some $200 botique OSR game meant for crowdfunding profits; this is a movement to keep gaming free for everyone, forever. I wish more communities were like this one.

And this is one of my favorite systems to convert to GURPS. No offense to the creators, these adventures are amazing in Basic Fantasy and should be played there, too. But as a GURPS adventure engine, Basic Fantasy is a snap to convert adventures into GURPS, the AC values cleanly translate into DR values, and you can even use the HD and hp numbers nearly as-is in a hybrid conversion model.

And the adventures, towns, maps, and worlds are so well put together, they are amazing. There isn't too much detail, but there is just enough to get the mind working. They are the perfect blank canvas to work on, not so blank that they are nothing, but with just enough detail to expand and fill in yourself.

They also feel on the low-fantasy side of the genre, where magic is still rare and special. I could play these almost entirely low fantasy with GURPS, even without magic, and they would work perfectly. I like being able to control how much magic is in a setting, and I have a few setting books that overdo it with the magic to a point where the setting feels unusable.

Converting

BX hit points and damage are very compatible with GURPS, and if an orc has 4hp, let him have that, and he becomes a BX-style mook in GURPS that typically goes down in one hit. I am not looking for everyone to have 10 hit points in GURPS, and 1-2 HD creatures will often have less, but by the time creatures get 6+ HD, they will be tougher in GURPS, almost like boss monsters, and it will all balance out.

If a basilisk has 6 HD in BF, that will be 6d6+12 hit points in GURPS, or about 34 hit points on average. a DR of 5, and ability scores of about 16. Attack skill will be 17, and powers that total 30 character points. I have a B/X conversion page that works pretty well. The only difference is that converted creatures will be a little tougher at higher levels, but if you treat them as boss monsters, they will be fine. Lower-level creatures will go down fast like mooks, but that is fine in the genre, too. GURPS is deadly enough that a 2 hit point goblin with a skill of 12 can kill you pretty quickly on a critical hit with a shortbow.

Mind you, get access to one high-tech firearm, and even that 9 HD dragon with 63 hit points, a skill of 20, and a DR of 9 is going to go down fast. To those with bows and pointy sticks, that dragon will be terrifying and take dozens of men's lives and a few siege weapons to take down, if it is even possible, or the dragon doesn't flee early.

This is a converted reality versus the actual baseline GURPS reality. The world will have that "video game" feeling in places, but this is how the gods decreed the world, so it shall be. GURPS Ultra Lite fills in most of the rest.

My conversion is more "GURPS in a BX reality" than "GURPS in a realistic reality," where GURPS drives the engine of a BX-style world, BX values are imported from standard bestiaries, and the differences between high- and low-HD creatures create a natural balance. There will always be "hero orcs" generated like characters, but the rest are background extras in a Peter Jackson movie, left with their converted HP and HD ratings.

This also saves me a ton of conversion work, while leaving the door open for me to create custom hero monsters with the character creation tools. Oh, and kudos to the GURPS community that does these amazing conversions! If you want to play with "real reality" stats, please visit those sites and creators and support the amazing work they do.

The GURPS Campaign

I would start in Morgansfort, even as just a hired bow guard on the walls, and run a campaign telling his story. Since there is a refugee component to the setting, with new settlers arriving, I would expand the fort by adding wooden houses huddled around the outer walls, and place the newcomers in them.

The castle itself is a bit small for a few hundred people, and putting them gathered around the fort for protection makes sense. There are humanoid attacks, so the fort's defenders would ring a bell and rush everyone inside before slamming the gates shut. This puts pressure on the new workforce outside the walls to be digging an outer defensive moat with pikes, and putting up a temporary wooden wall before a large outer stone wall can be constructed.

There is room for it on the local map, and the cliffs on the water could be left open for now. There could be an argument on how large the outer walls should be, if they should stay 120 yards from the fort, or extend out all the way to the road. The scattered farms would also need to be considered, and they would need to expand dramatically in the near future. We need the wall. The humanoids keep attacking. The refugees are not safe out there. And we need to keep everyone fed and productive while putting every able-bodied person to work.

And that is it.

That is the campaign.

Keep it simple, use the included dungeons as a source of adventure, but leave the main story of the first few months, the building of the wall, and all the struggles around that, along with fending off humanoid attacks and finding their source. Keeping the game simple will ensure its success, and give me room to go any way I want with it. If the players want to train soldiers from the new arrivals, great. Do they want to direct the construction of the wall?

Do they serve as peacekeepers and constables among the new arrivals? Is there tension among the refugees, or between them and the town? Are the workers cutting logs getting attacked? Are the farms being raided while starvation looms? Is there a clan of dwarves in the hills who could help with stone, if they get help (or gold) for their services?

And since this is BX, could the orcs or goblins be negotiated with? Turned against each other? Could you find a good dragon who could scare them off (in trade for a favor)? Or perhaps find fae and get them to help, and not attack those cutting trees down for the town?

Keeping the starting point simple ensures longevity and playability.

It also gives the players the freedom to go in any direction imaginable.

Some may just want to "up and leave this dump."

Others will stay.

Some will head out to learn the secrets of magic.

Others will eventually make this the seat of their new domain.

That is fine by me.

I don't need "the magical stairs" and the "1000-year curse" with the "planar concordium" coming into play here. Some 5E modules go way too hard on the planar, multiversal, and high-magic stuff, and they lose me. I do not need any of it. I want humanistic, relatable, down-to-earth stories of struggle and sacrifice. In 5E, my characters would get so powerful that they would cease to care about Morgansfort. This is 5E's problem: You get so godlike that the world is beneath you. Why would the town ever trust people who get planar bastions at level 5 and are never seen again?

In GURPS, I can have an 800-point character who still cares about this place. That character is still very grounded and real to the world. While they may be around the world on adventures from time to time, this will always be home, and they will never outlevel it.

That keeps me coming back to turn the next page of adventure.

How Does a GURPS World Work?

In BX, if there is one constant about "how the world works," it always boils down to one simple mechanic: the X-in-6 roll. Wandering monsters, finding secret doors, trap activation, listening for sounds, forcing open a door, and anything else not a percentage thief ability is always an X-in-6 check.

In fact, anything in BX is an X-in-6 check. Is the market open today? Is the door locked? Are there shields in stock? Can I find a medicinal herb nearby? Will the duchess see me? Is there a guard patrolling near here? Does the rope break this turn? Do I get run over by a stampeding bull? Does the potion bottle roll off the ledge? Are we lucky enough to find front row seats at the arena? Is the food spoiled? Is the weather bad today?

In BX, any question about the world is answered with an X-in-6 check.

And the different systems are not unified, and that is okay. Not everything has to be a floating strike zone, like it is in 5E! The higher level you go, somehow, the harder everything gets, and this is an endemic problem in any game that uses DC values. Why is it that at level 20, all the doors are DC 20 in adventures when they used to be DC 10? It is DC inflation, I guess.

The X-in-6 check is the universal way to interact with a BX world when there is an open question and the referee hasn't said otherwise. This is one constant about BX worlds: any question, if not determined by a referee to be one way or the other, is an X-in-6 roll.

X-in-6 is an old-school rule, and GURPS can use it without a problem. At this point, it is a pretty well-accepted referee tool, but it does run counter to how 5E does things with slapping a DC on everything. 5E does not use X-in-6 and prefers skill checks and DCs.

X-in-6 in GURPS

GURPS can borrow this rule, but there are specific rules for stuck doors, ability and skill checks, and other checks that supersede X-in-6. And GURPS, by default, uses a 3d6 reaction roll table, whereas BX uses a 2d6 table. But GURPS uses all types of rolls, and in the Campaigns book I can find 1d6, 2d6, and 3d6 charts a-plenty, so there is no standard X-in-6 rule, though you are free to borrow it and use it for GURPS if you like.

In GURPS, rolling high on oracle die (or dice) and reaction tables should be the good results, while rolling low is the bad result. This comes from the reaction roll table and should be uniform across all other types of rolls. If you have a 1d6 roll in GURPS, treat it as a 6+ for a 1-in-6 result with the best outcome. A 2d6 chart? A 12 should be the best result.

Where BX has a 1-in-6 chance for a wandering monster, GURPS would be that roll of one, also. But if the outcome were looking for a positive or beneficial result, put that at the high end of the die, and start at 6 and go down, such as 6+, 5+, 4+, and so on.

Keep the low results bad, and the higher results good.

This also allows you to use a dumbbell die (DBD), with 1 being bad, 6 being good, and everything else neutral. Are you rolling for encounters or wandering monsters? Toss a DBD; most of the time, it will be nothing, but you have two special results you can interpret. This DBD method also preserves the GURPS low-high and bad-good chart alignment, and feels more GURPS to me.

You can also eliminate one side of the DBD if there is no result on that side. A random roll to see if something good happens? Roll a 6. A random roll to check for a bad outcome? Pray you don't roll a 1. This way, a DBD can handle three types of rolls (good only, bad only, and bad-good-neutral) in a consistent manner with one die.

Is There a Standard?

But is there a standard in the books on how a GURPS world works? Is it always a 3d6 reaction table roll if you don't know the answer to a question? Not really. If you are using a d6 and an oracle, you have a 50% chance of getting a yes/no answer. Or a 33-and-1/3% yes, maybe, and no question using two numbers for each.

There is no standard for random tables, and you are free to use 1d6, 2d6, and 3d6 tables as often as you want. For an oracle roll, keep it simple: a 1d6, low is bad, high is good.

What defines a GURPS world comes down to science, math, and physical values such as distance, time, and temperature, as well as other "hard" values. This is always the default, since GURPS is, at its core, a simulation engine. These values drive modifiers for skill rolls. GURPS is a skill-based system. This is its engine and heart.

BX tends to blend the oracle die with set probabilities for specific events or outcomes. When in doubt, the entire world works on a 1-in-6 chance, modified up for probability. BX keeps the oracle die and the universal resolution mechanic as a unified system, while combat is different.

In GURPS, the oracle die, or dice, are separate from the skill resolution (or self-control) rolls. They are two different things that work on opposite high-low scales. Skills are skills, and these define the game. You will never be rolling a 1-in-6 chance to unlock a door in GURPS, it is always a skill. If the referee wants to put a random chance the door is unlocked? That can be an oracle die and not tied to the skill system, roll a 6 on 1d6.

The rest of the world is based on real numbers and math.

Skills are skills, and always 3d6 roll low.

An oracle die is kept apart from the skill system and is its own thing, and feel free to come up with any table you want. Keep these roll high.

And GURPS is GURPS.