Are Conversions Even Worth the Trouble?

Some games are so large that they aren't even worth converting. They showcase a world, adventure path, and rules where everything is part of a whole. I picked Pathfinder because I have a massive collection of 1e pawns perfect for hex-based battles.

I am still working on a " Pathfinder-flavored" Dungeon Fantasy game since I have the pawns and background material. But converting in every spell, magic item, class, and power is off the table. This will be straight Dungeon Fantasy wearing a Pathfinder 1e look and style, much like the excellent Savage Pathfinder set of rules (without all the conversion).

I will likely base this around everyone's favorite starting town, Sandpoint, since it has a book of information and is as iconic to the game as the Keep on the Borderlands module. I would modify the town, the underwhelming dungeons underneath, and the sparse pickings in the overland map to add more dungeon locations and excitement to this map. This book assumes the Rise of the Runelords adventure path is completed, so take note of that.

That said, the 3.5E era Rise of the Runelords adventure is also a good resource, and if all Pathfinder 1e was is the core books and this module, that would be a lifetime of gaming or converting over for Dungeon Fantasy. A word of warning about any Pathfinder adventure path: there are places where they actively discourage exploration and expansion of locations and source materials, which is annoying. I know why they do it, to "keep the story moving" and "hustle the party along to the next place."

Because if you stick around in one place too long, you will gain levels and power, and the next part of the story will be a pushover. The appendix for the book above contains an ancient city, and it goes out of its way to say, "The real loot is in the tombs" and "Don't be scavengers here."

Seriously?

Sandbox, you ain't.

Old-school TSR would give you places to expand your adventure in every location. They would dot the Sandpoint landscape with ruins and exciting locations. Every chapter of the adventure path would be full of places where the game master could expand the area with new dungeons, missions, NPCs, and towns to help.

Paizo tends to say, "Please move along." To be fair, they have a section for "continuing the campaign" afterward, but as you go through the story parts, I wanted much more than was given here, especially for expansion.

If you convert these over, please be more like old-school TSR.

GURPS makes it easier to have a flatter power curve, and you don't need humanoids with 30-80 hit points in every room at level ten when you start with the same enemies with 3-8 hit points in every room at level one. In GURPS, I can "increase the CR" of an average orc by giving in 4 points of skill, 5 extra HP, a few points of FP and other stats, good armor, and the combat reflexes advantage.

Slow down and enjoy these places. Explore them. GURPS's flatter power curve has you covered, and you don't need to worry about artificially limiting character progression. Just have fun.

I can use most OSR monsters without too much conversion instead of Pathfinder stats. Pathfinder stats are on that lousy "Wizards scaling curve," so they are way out of line with the OSR. To do this, I halve Pathfinder HD and divide attack bonuses and damage by three. Or just grab a copy of Basic Fantasy and use those numbers.

Another word of warning is that some of the maps and creature sizes are strange in the Paizo adventures. A battle with a full-sized dragon occurs in a room 100 by 150 feet somewhere in the adventure. There isn't enough room for that dragon to fly in a circle. The 3.x and later versions of D&D have always had this disconnect with the proper sizes of creatures, and it shows. Some of the maps here with 5-foot squares are too darn small, and some of the "legendary dungeons" under iconic locations are tiny cellars. Battle-mat limitations, I suppose.

Use the books and maps as "inspirations" and make your own. Go big. Expand. Make these places your own. Part of the fun of a conversion is adding your own stuff, so go to town.

The OSR does not have this problem since you aren't supposed to "balance encounters." But every Wizards D&D release and Paizo version of the game is tightly balanced and easy to break if you stay too long in a place and level up a little. It has been this way since D&D 3.0 in the 2000s, and it sucks.

This is a tricky subject since some conversions rely on a few key things to be there to "look and feel" like the original setting. You do a Star Frontiers conversion, and you need the major races, the iconic gear (skimmers, explorers, hovercycles), and the hard sci-fi starships. Most of these items are reskinned gear in GURPS, but they still need to be listed and stated as the options for this world. You will not have anti-gravity cars and artificial gravity in this setting, though we did when we had a hybrid Space Opera/Star Frontiers game back in the day.

With GURPS Traveller, we have it all done for us. Sci-fi can be tough since there is more to convert, so the setting feels authentic.

Fantasy is easier than sci-fi since I can just throw all the old 3.5E content in the bin and stick to a system designed for a flatter power curve fantasy. Thematically, there is little difference between a GURPS fighter and a Pathfinder 1e one, except the GURPS fighter is much more capable and on a more even power level with casters.

Module Conversions: Keep on the Borderlands

Many old D&D modules have this "wander the halls and kill" mentality. B2 is different, with a more instructional conversation style for new DMs. It was written by Gary Gygax, so it is a masterpiece of a teaching module. Also, once Wizards starts running these through AI to "create new content," all that magic will be lost. Just read some of this:

Reading that makes me want to play.

Putting it through AI to "create more Gygax" makes as much sense as putting the bible in AI and treating everything it spits out as gospel. We are in for some sad lessons Wizards will have to learn.

The coming age of AI darkness aside, converting B2 to a "GURPS on the Borderlands" type experience is pretty easy with my conversion notes. Many humanoids have less than 5 hits, which in GURPS seems strange, but this is an OSR-style world, and some monsters will be minion-like here with only a few hits. Maybe they are sickly or wounded. The world may work differently, and some are more minion-like than others and lack the hits to last long in a fight.

The notes on page 14 indicate that B2 could also be seen as a role-playing module rather than a combat one. A paragraph here allows for surrender, humiliating captivity, and ransoming the captured characters back to the keep. There is another paragraph allowing for alliances with the tribes and setting them against each other. On page 6, Gygax talks about how those who survive may "turn from Law and good to serve the masters of Chaos."

This, as a role-playing module in GURPS, raises many questions. First, picking a tribe—or even being offered a chance—to cooperate with them. None of my playthroughs of this adventure ever ended with the players setting the tribes against each other—partly because there is very little advice other than this section. A few of those in the tribes may know common languages, but speaking those languages will come in handy if you choose this route.

Being captured and overhearing conversations may help characters learn of tensions and opportunities, but my players were never captured when we played this. Many who play this in 5E treat it as a deathtrap dungeon where the monsters fight to kill with no quarter given. You could start the game by having players captured in the Caves of Chaos and ransomed, which is one way to drop these seeds.

This module should be less deadly than it is written. There is a lot of talk of defenses and traps but not enough about the tribes' leaders and their goals outside the caves. Are the orcs fighting with the lizardmen in the swamp? Would they reward characters for freeing orcs captured by the lizardmen? If you side with the goblins, what do they want? What would you say if they asked you to go against the Keep? Would they even ask that, knowing who you are? Could one tribe work out an arrangement with the party to work for them - but not against the keep - and eventually fight with that side to eliminate the others?

D&D has this "never work with the monsters" thing going on, and this was cemented after the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. D&D never had the good-to-evil alignment axis in these early modules, only law versus chaos. Working with the tribes was an option. Aligning with Chaos was also an option. D&D has always had a thing against "the evil campaign" and even "characters who did not align with the common good." They use the fear of "players fighting" as a boogeyman, and most adventures are written with the "hero narrative" in mind.

This module is likely different from many that came after because TSR feared releasing sandbox modules where one could side with Chaos. The D&D and AD&D split further pushed D&D to be the safe "for kids" game, and AD&D got the good-to-evil axis, which honestly prevented many evil games from ever happening since you chose alignment once, and it stuck that way as guardrails for player behavior. D&D was actually the more morally ambiguous game since servants of Law could commit "evil" actions (paladins killing innocents on a crusade) and servants of Chaos could do "good" (Robin Hood stealing from the rich).

Similarly, servants of Law could justify working with a tribe if the cause of Law comes out ahead. The servants of Law could also go back on their word after all; killing all the other tribes and finishing off the one you worked with would help the cause of Law in the grand scheme of things. The law-to-chaos axis is much more fluid and allows for betrayals by both sides. Good-to-evil is far more absolute and restrictive.

To rebuild this adventure to be a true "GURPS on the Borderlands" experience, you will need to rethink how you approach this adventure as a player - and the referee will need to rethink how to run this adventure. There will be far more outside missions and alliances if the party takes the route of talking with the tribes and negotiating with them. There will be jealousy and hatred from the opposing factions. Special missions that take characters to other places or deeper underground may be asked for. Some in the keep may get suspicious of the adventurers that return with gold, but no reports of the Caves of Chaos being cleared out. There could be intrigue in the town or secretive factions trying to blackmail the players (and get them to do missions for them next). Maybe there is a plot to overthrow the keep's leadership, or an outside group of crusading paladins arrives.

Also, the skills players pick to deal with the tribes won't be the same as those needed to clear out these halls. While improving combat abilities is still essential, languages, lore, social skills, survival skills, tracking, and stealth skills to spy on other tribes will also be needed. An engineer could fortify defenses and put fatal flaws in them in case of a double-cross. Trust will need to be built. The tribe may ask for services the players don't have skills for, and they will need to figure out a way to get this done (with hirelings paid well to keep quiet or learning how to do these things themselves).

And then there is the "end boss" of the adventure in the Shrine of Evil Chaos,, who will undoubtedly notice all this happening and take an interest in the newcomers and their activities. Will he fight them or make an offer? Depending on the player's choices, there could be a lot of roleplaying and double-crossing here.

D&D and 5E don't put you in this mindset, as the adventure is still seen as a "wander the halls and kill things" experience. The skills in 5E lend themselves to something other than this type of roleplaying, and languages are typically set in stone, and you can't learn new ones. You will never learn to speak with them, so let's just kill them all instead. You can never learn orc culture, belief, and history skills, so how can you even relate to them?

Kill them all and take the treasure.

Combat is fun!

There is a lot more to this adventure as rooms to toss fireballs, flasks of oil, and sleep spells into. Especially when you look at this adventure through the lens of a different set of rules.

GURPS Adventures: Smaller Scale and Focus

You can do grand, sweeping action with GURPS. It is easy to abstract things and handle larger-scale battles and scenes with tactics rolls, other grand-scale skills, and narrative sweeps of flourish.

What I find interesting is the size of the dungeon crawls in GURPS; they can be smaller than those in D&D or OSR games. I am happy with six detailed rooms in a dungeon for a GURPS adventure, while in a traditional dungeon game, I feel better with sixty less-detailed ones.

OSR and D&D characters cover much more ground than GURPS characters, but that is both good and bad. I don't care about any of them if I try to work through sixty rooms. I just don't care. With six, if the side chambers are full of skeletons and the far chambers have a puzzle room and a mummy? That is a good, tight, tactical design with many possibilities, especially if you put puzzles, runes to decipher, little clues to find, hidden things, secret rooms, loot to appraise, and plenty of other skill-based challenges and opportunities.

Give me six fully detailed rooms over sixty bland ones, any day. I will get more play out of them, my skills will matter, and they will be much more memorable than another empty 20x20 room out of the 15 more around here.

D&D and the OSR tend to combat well, but not much else, so they engage in a video game-like "clear as many rooms as possible" gameplay mode.

With GURPS, your focus needs to change. Those skills you bought matter - all of them. If there are twelve possible items of value in the room, but only two are worth hauling back to town, how do you identify them? Would etchings and sketches of the runes and inscriptions on the walls and statues be worth money to a historian or buyer? They may be. The place was too dangerous for most to venture into, and you are there, so why not spend some time documenting what you find? Instead of fighting that drow patrol, try negotiation and trade with them, or get information on the caves you are in. Map the caves and sell that!

A GURPS party are not D&D characters who kill for treasure; they are skilled experts in many areas.

Each one of those skills is a potential hustle and moneymaking opportunity.

Adventure areas should reflect that. Too often, in Pathfinder and many other dungeon-focused games, we get room after room of description, monsters, and treasure listings that feel like trying to eat a whole loaf of flavorless white bread as a meal. I convert these adventures and end up saying, why bother?

They are huge, bland, and made for nothing but killing and looting.

GURPS: Miami Vice

I am binge-watching the Miami Vice Blu-Ray collection, and wow, this was a great TV show. Forget all the pop culture, NBC, MTV, and other influences—just as a cop show, this is amazing. It also defined a generation, bringing the 1980s to every corner of America (and the world), and redefined the cop show in a way only Hill Street Blues did for the other, more gritty, 1980s side of the genre.

And I grew up in the 1980s, so this speaks to me.

All the technology, cars, fashion, and weapons are classic 1980s icons. Tubbs uses a 0.38 5-shot S&W Model 38 bodyguard revolver and Crockett's 0.45 8-shot Bren Ten automatic. These aren't your modern, high-capacity guns—these were the 1980s classics, where shots were limited, and the look and style for the show were king.

Even the phones in the first season were mobile radio phones—not tablet-like cell phones; these had pull-out antennae and flip microphones and only worked in large population centers. You could be out in the swamp, wilderness, small towns, or sea and out of range of a tower, so you had no mobile phone. You called dispatch or the station for a records check. And records? City records, police files, real estate records, tax records, prison records, or the library. You had to call or go to these places to get information (if they had it or it wasn't missing), which took time. They were just starting to computerize crime and court records, but those searches still needed a mainframe in an office.

Part of the fun of this setting is the 1980s technology and living without cell phones and the Internet. And no, you can't slam the X card to magically have it since it disadvantages you.

Conceptually, this is the same game style as the classic Gangbusters game. This time, in Florida, in the 1980s, where they have radio phones. It is not booze but drugs and vice. Otherwise, policing is still that gumshoe, hard-boiled detective work where clues have to be noticed, informants need to be talked to face-to-face, and getting information takes time from records frequently in file cabinets. You need to maintain cover identities. Science - if it comes to that - is done in a lab. Things often go wrong.

It has the flash and music of the 1980s, South Miami culture, and lingo. Still, it is the same story of rough streets, ambition, corruption, immigrants, broken dreams, big money, government plots, and a new era in America.

Change.

GURPS does this game style well since disadvantages frequently come into play. You get a straight 3d6 down-the-line OSR game with no system for mental and possibly physical disadvantages, and there is very little to work with to make characters come alive. D&D-style games are combat since they only do combat - so you won't get that tense, making social skill rolls, having your weaknesses used against you, conning the bad guys, setting up traps, and noticing hidden clues with a good roll style of play.

In 5E, one detective always builds for passive perception and expects all clues to be told to him once he enters the room, like he has a clue-detecting radar mounted on his head.

There are mechanics in 5E that ruin entire genres of play.

I'm sorry, but life and policework do not work that way. Tell me what you are looking for and where you are looking, and I will decide if a dice roll is needed and what skill applies. This is still an old-school game; the referee can say, "You guessed exactly it," and forego the roll. Fingerprints on the shot glass? They are there; make a skill roll to copy them into evidence.

Again, you still see a lot of the Gangbusters policing tropes here. There is more science here (no DNA testing yet, but yes, on blood types), but the nuts and bolts of investigations are mostly the same.

I could do this with a lower point limit on characters and a focus on role-playing and drama. These won't be your complicated Dungeon Fantasy, list of spells, and 250-point established heroes. I could do this with 100 or 150-point builds and still have capable officers. And those social and investigation skills will be beneficial! This won't be all combat and shooting, though tossing some martial arts on a character would be entertaining (and valuable for going undercover and those times without a weapon).

Martial arts will be your "magic" in this type of game, just like the classic Ninjas & Superspies game. Want to take down a suspect without a gun? Find a dojo and start training. Spend a lot of free time working out. You will need it. But you will be fantastic.

The game will only get complicated when modern guns and martial arts come into play since those areas are more rules-heavy. Everything else will be straight skill rolls, role-playing, gathering evidence, following suspects, filming and photographing illicit activities, and looking for clues. These cases must be proved in court, so ensure you build that case with an evidence trail. It won't be all "D&D combat encounters in a room" and some lame; read the text box aloud, and the adventure assumes you did the evidence-gathering part.

As a referee, I will hold players accountable for what they gathered and expect them to keep a list of the evidence and cases they build. In classic D&D, players drew a map. In a crime game, they create a case to prove guilt. Sometimes, it will be cut and dry, but they must do that homework if they take down a slippery money launderer. This could be as simple as a "list of evidence" on paper; you don't need to go all out. Ultimately, that evidence will be a positive modifier to convict, while the bad guy's legal team will use their skill roll to contest that all. You don't need to roleplay the case, do the contested skill roll, make the determination, and tell the players the outcome.

If you fail, well, get them next time.

GURPS makes this game easy, and I don't need to buy a game off DriveThru and mod it to play this genre and time. And if you want genre support, excellent 3rd Edition sourcebooks are still perfect—like GURPS Cops. This will give you all that gritty police procedure that will help make your game more authentic. Miami Vice is listed in the Bibliography.

Why play another game for this? The sourcebooks are here. Why learn a new rule system? To have YouTube or social media cred? To have a book of art? Give me a break. I keep one system in my head. It has excellent sourcebook support and works. No extra money was spent. It doesn't need to be (let's just play D&D instead of this) 5E. I have many 5E games that make the mistake of thinking the game is about genre and story instead of providing compelling character builds - which takes more playtesting and money than most small companies have.

GURPS is not the best system for everything, but it is the best system for anything you want to do.

Don't fool yourself into thinking the "officially licensed system" is the one you are waiting for. I have been burned by too many of those, and they all go out of print and become unsupported - never to be sold again or put in PDF.

If you want a more action-oriented game, pick up the 3rd Edition book for GURPS SWAT and play a tactical team fighting drug runners. They could even work alongside the Vice team and be the big guns they call in when things need serious firepower to resolve. Remember, the equipment will be mostly the 1980s vintage guns and protection, and you may be using M-16A1s with 20-round magazines, no drones, no computers, and working with spotters and walkie-talkies - but that is a fun limitation that sets the game apart. While Miami Vice is not listed in the inspirations here, playing a tactical team in that era alongside the Vice Squad would be a fantastic campaign.

Also note that in a tactical team campaign, you won't be gathering evidence or doing detective work; this is a game primarily about takedowns and combat. It may not feel different from a modern tactical team game since the 1980s will mostly be window dressing to the battles, and you won't interact much with the suspects and witnesses. The more meaningful game is the footwork and detective part, but playing a second set of tactical characters may be fun, too, to add to the mythos and world. Two sets of characters could also free detective characters from becoming "combat specialists," leaving those large gunbattles to the experts.

You could even play the SWAT raids as tactical minigames, with no role-playing focus, and possibly the PCs on the board. Let the PCs play the SWAT team and their characters.

Of course, this is always a vigilante game to be played in this setting, which my brother and I did during the early 1980s. That is out of scope, but we played in this world then with a fun renegade soldier vibe. It was always fun to run those takedowns and hustles and disappear before the good guys showed up. It was like a Batman meets the Punisher game, and it was fun.

That said, I want to play a game like this. GURPS lets me jump right in and do it.

Great Video: More GURPS 1s Combat

This is another great video today from EasyGURPS discussing the one-second combat round and how to keep combats from turning into silly slap fights.

Worth watching to make your combats more fluid and realistic!

GURPS as a Solo Game

When the pandemic hit, my first priority was collecting GURPS books. I feared significant supply chain disruptions would impact printing, and I am happy that did not happen since I could get 100% of the 4th Edition books I wanted, plus a best-of-the 3rd Edition greats on subjects that have yet to be revisited since.

Only once did GURPS get put in a storage crate, and it only stayed there for a short time. I will do this to games to see "if I really miss them." The great games find their way out since I can't live without them. The chaff and junk can stay there and eventually be sold to someone who enjoys them more than me.

But why buy and collect GURPS?

This was always a game I could come back to. It will give me a lifetime of enjoyment, and I can play it solo and enjoy stories without end. The game does not really need a community. Pathfinder 2, 5E, and a bunch of others? No community, no game. Pathfinder 2, especially, was built for community play since every class and build needs a "table advocate" to understand how it works to its fullest. If a player specializes in clerics (or fighters, rogues, etc.) and memorizes all the rules around them, your table will have much more fun.

GURPS? No classes and no special rules around them. It lacks 5E's "classes by committee" design, where any designer can toss any power in any class in any expansion - even in adventures. In GURPS, all characters are mostly the same; they develop differently along the same framework of point-buy choices. In 5E or other games? Who knows how the mechanics will change when you introduce a class? And that is another thing to remember and keep track of. If you buy too many 5E books, your mind will blow up.

GURPS characters still work the same way to the maximum point level, and nothing introduces special rules you need to allocate "mental RAM" to keep track of. I can't handle all of Pathfinder 2's dozens of "tagged conditions," nor can I process 5E's infinite class options that each change how the game works.

GURPS, when you understand it all, is a more rules-light game than either 5E or Pathfinder 2 since the designers of the latter two games need self-control to control the game's complexity. This is the "West Coast" game model where the game becomes a "Windows installation" and some tech-company scheme to turn it into a live service to keep you paying money and "lock out" competitors by making the game so complex and take up so much shelf space you don't have room for any other game in your life, mind, or collection.

"Midwest Games" are like the original D&D, GURPS, and Castles & Crusades. Games designed with this model can be created by designers on the coasts (and anywhere in the world). Still, historically, this is an apt way of describing these games since this is where their origins are. These more humble games tend not to take up a lot of space, have the sensibility not to be a boorish space consumer in your life and house, and tend to be plain-spoken and "are what they are." They are also not trying to sell themselves as "lifestyles" but recognize themselves as "games."

This West Coast tech-company mindset is destroying roleplaying by trying to sell it as a lifestyle and social platform. Monopoly is not a social platform, nor is D&D.

GURPS is one of those down-to-earth games. I have two shelves of GURPS books, but I only need two to play and last a lifetime. Even the basic Dungeon Fantasy set is a complete game that can last decades. And like these Midwest roots, a lot of the game is DIY. In that spirit, you can see where this "make your own game" vibe comes from. You even see that in the older editions of D&D. The canning, gardening, patching your own clothes, sewing your own things, fixing your own house, building an addition to your home, fixing your own car, and that self-reliant vibe permeates GURPS. You are creating your own game every time you play.

That was my feeling during the pandemic. Become self-reliant, even in my gaming.

If they ever made a 5th Edition of GURPS, you know it would be a trash fire of West Coast live service tech company nonsense. You can never get away from it these days. People get ideas of how to put gamers over a barrel for more money, and it kills games. It looks and sounds fantastic, and the community seems behind it all, and the excitement is there. But it is driven by corporate and community grift, slick presentation, us-against-them anger marketing, and mental manipulation.

I would rather be a self-reliant and self-sustainable gamer than buy into another social media grift.

Creativity is like the ability to grow your own food. That can feed you for life and help you live a healthier and more fulfilling life. Rely on fast-food chains for your primary food source, and guess what? You become overweight, unhappy, and reliant on them for survival. You "can't have fun" unless "you buy the next book for Paizo or Wizards." I know the core books are a lifetime of enjoyment for those games, too, but you would be surprised how many D&D and Pathfinder consumers are collectors and never play the game - or say the only fun is the next thing I can buy.

I fell into that trap. I know. All it got me was a garage full of books to sell, and money lost I could have better spent on retirement.

Better to realize it late than never.

I am creative enough to have my own fun without the guilt that I "am missing out" since the only thing I am missing out on is being taken advantage of again.

And I enjoy GURPS for almost any game or genre.

Dungeon Fantasy is GURPS 4.25

The combat section writing in Dungeon Fantasy is so cleaned up, with clear options listed under every action type for how far you move, what attacks you have, and what defenses you can use, that I am starting to see Dungeon Fantasy as the GURPS 4.25 rules, at least in the area of combat.

The movement for All Out Attacks is crystal clear, and the rules have been improved and clarified over the GURPS Basic Set.

GURPS Basic, All Out Attack, Movement:

Movement: You may move up to half your Move, but you can only move forward.

Dungeon Fantasy, All Out Attack, Movement:

Movement: You may remain stationary, turn in place to face any hex, or run forward. If you turn or move forward, you must do so first and then attack – not vice versa. If you move forward, you may move up to two hexes or expend movement points (p. 33) equal to half your Move (round up), whichever is more, and may not change facing at the end of your move.

After reading through these rules and watching a few YouTube videos, I understand all of them now. The above section looks like a patch from some heavy playtesting, where a dungeon-focused game raised some hard rules and questions about how things should work. Some of these may also be pulled from rules clarifications in expansion books.

However, some rule options, like the ranged combat options under all-out attack, were not included to simplify things. So this isn't a 4.5, but more of a 4.25, where you still need the basic set to have all the attack options. I want to see a GURPS 4.5 with this clean-up and update, but I am wary of changing a great set of rules and losing what made it special.

In 5E, complexity is built into the characters, whereas as you level, you collect all sorts of bonus actions and other interrupt-based powers and abilities. GURPS sticks the complexity in the rules, which have the same complexity as your skills increase. More options open up to you as your skill increases since your success chances go up to make some moves viable combat options.