World Conversions: Monsters & NPCs

One of the keys to a prosperous world conversion is the feeling, "It was always this way." The world always followed GURPS, and when the world was created - it was GURPS. Magic always worked this way; characters were always like this, history was made with these rules, and all the significant NPCs follow these rules and know nothing more.

There was no "time of troubles" or "the way things were before."

The original game books fight you every step of the way, especially the bestiaries and adventures.

This is why I use a bog-standard B/X bestiary (like the excellent Basic Fantasy) and do a rough conversion:

• HT = HD x5 or x10
• Attack Skill, Parry = 10  + (Attack Bonus / 2)
• Dodge = 6 to 10, estimate
• Damage = 1d3 or 1d6 per HD or by weapon (swing = +20%)
• Special Damage = 1d3 or 1d6 per HD (or 5 character points per HD for a power)
• DR = estimate based on armor, or (AC - No Armor AC)

Toss advantages and disadvantages on as needed. I recommend the lower multipliers for average creates and x10 for bosses, as 5x aligns it with the GURPS bestiaries. The elephant is a good example:

• HT = 50
• Attack skill = 15
• Dodge = 7
• Damage = 5d6 thrust, 7d6 swing
• Special Damage = none
• DR = 4

It matches the entry in GURPS Basic close enough. Those are good enough to play with. Goblin?

• HT = 5
• Attack skill = 10
• Dodge = 8
• Damage = 1d6 thrust, 1d6+2 swing
• Special Damage = none
• DR = 2

If you want special powers, like flame breath, give them special powers, tack damage on there based on HD, and be done with it. You don't need a full-blown character creation tool for these!

Again, it is close enough to the DF Monsters book, except HT, which is half - but hey, high fantasy, and this is a "minion" style monster - otherwise, use 10 HT. Skill is a little low, but this may be a villager - pump it by 2-4 points for a warrior.

Getting the numbers in a "good ballpark range" is all you care about. Tweak and adjust from there since no monster is alike.

Do enough of these and reference the Monsters and Basic Set books, and you'll get the hang of it quickly. Now you have a fantasy bestiary there, so you don't need to pick up the old one and hear the siren's call, "Just play me; it is easier..."

Sorry, I got my 4th Edition Basic Fantasy book, and we are free from all "it's not game X" feelings. Most special 5E monsters can be described as, "Oh, it's about the same size as a chimera, but it has ice-breath and mind-control powers." Find the chimera in Basic Fantasy, convert the numbers, tweak them to feel right, and tack on special powers.

You are done.

It is challenging to convert, but having a rule of thumb for converting monsters lets me quickly pull in a few favorites and get me in the ballpark should I need to use a part of an adventure for inspiration. This also helps the feeling that "the world was always this way" since the monsters are good to go.

If converting in a B/X module, remember that the number appearing should also be reduced. Old-school modules are infamous for putting 20-40 monsters in a room, and even a dozen skeletons could be lethal to a party of four.

Everything should be "reimagined" using the GURPS lens, and even significant NPCs should be flavored and given interesting specialties to make them unique for your game. If I were doing a Forgotten Realms conversion and trying to put together an Elminster, I would not make him a 1,000-point arch-mage, a superhero of magic. I would make him a 500-point or even a starting 250-point character and put him in his early career. Nobody gets put on a pedestal if he falls - so what? That is what happened in this reality, or maybe this world was part of one of his dreams (and he was here for a while).

No one gets put on a pedestal; every GMNPC is a starting hero.

If they fall, get corrupted to evil, or end up on the wrong side of something - that's the story. Your players may be playing alongside them or against them.

But I would make him a little different, like an alchemist or monster hunter. Give him a quirky, fun job; maybe he won't be so intolerable and god-modded. Elminster, the inexperienced magic hunter of monsters, sounds fun, and I could root for a guy like that. Give him a unique theme and set of skills, and let him play through adventures and get better at a new role in life.

Maybe he won't turn out like he did in other worlds and end up like a Pokémon trainer or mage who participates in gladiatorial monster fights. D&D can force you into a very annoying and stereotyped archetype at high levels, like the pious paladin, the wise old cranky wizard, or the Xerox Conan barbarian. What else is there to model yourself after?

Master alchemist Elminster? Monster hunter Elminster? Steampunk inventor Elminster? Magical postman Elminster? The Island of Doctor Elminster?

Those sound fun.

And they aren't so GMNPC I can't stand them.

GURPS Character Sheet

I started with GURPS Character Assistant (GCA, the software you can buy on W23), but I am slowly migrating to GURPS Character Sheet (GCS, free, but please support the creator on Patreon).

GCA is only a Windows app. I like the "creating libraries of books" and focusing on the experience, though how they do this at times means they remove options from the main books I may want: wings in the Dungeon Fantasy setup, for one. If I want a character race with wings, I must add that as a custom advantage. But when this works, it does very well, like the scripts that remove all the high-tech gear from the equipment lists, so you only have what you want when picking equipment.

GCA is a bit slow on my machine, and the entire "creating and loading book libraries" feels more complicated than it should be and can throw errors if you add incompatible books. Each character can use a different library, so loading can sometimes be a little slow and confusing. The guided templates used in character design are excellent here, though, and the program avoids the duplicates you can sometimes get in GCS that you have to combine or clean up.

I feel GCA is a better "beginner's app" than GCS. Hacking GCA and creating books requires scripting experience to create a book or script and then apply it to a library.

GCS feels like a power-user app. Hacking this and creating custom options is extremely simple; you create files in folders. GCS lacks the "macro scripts" of GCA's library functions because they aren't needed, but you have to be selective about gear or create a custom list for yourself.

GCS sometimes creates duplicate entries in a character sheet, like one option adding a point of STR and another doing the same. The STR score is updated, but I like to combine those into one modification of the sheet to clean it up. I have had a few times where a duplicate advantage or skill was added, so it is good to review each section and look for duplicates, combine them if needed, and delete the second entry. I haven't had GCA do this, so again, it's better for new users and players.

GCS supports Windows, Linux, and Mac and has excellent Foundry VTT export support. The upside and downside of this app are you get everything; there is no creating "lists of books." You have all of GURPS to pick from when building a character. That said, you have to "know your GURPS" to get the best use out of this software. There is a Dungeon Fantasy RPG area I mostly stay in, but if I want a few Basic Set traits, I can open that folder up and grab what I want. It is nice when I am trying to design a monster and can just hop over to something "shop there."

I love taking GCS user files and replicating my custom templates and character lists on another machine and OS with a file copy. I have a characters folder in my user library, and I store my characters in there, with a folder for each game. I click on them, and they open. All my custom templates live in there, too, so I can create a custom "magic corruption" template, give it levels and effects, and save it so I can apply it to a character with a click.

I still like GCA and keep it installed and updated. If I want a campaign focused on a limited set of tech levels, the macro scripts do an excellent job cleaning up the game's massive lists of stuff. The macros sometimes go too far and clean out options power users want. For players new to GURPS, giving them an app with a preset library that limits selections and lets them focus on design is handy. You don't have to worry about a player in Dungeon Fantasy picking a .357 magnum, though this is GURPS, and that sounds like a fun game.

With Mac (Intel and Apple Silicon) and Linux support, GCS is a power user's dream. I tested Mac support, and it works amazingly. I wanted a laptop character creation tool for GURPS, which changed my laptop buying plan to a Mac with some screen room. It works excellent on an M1 MacBook Air 13", but a 15" Air would be very nice to work on and give me more screen room. I was looking at a Windows Surface device (since GCA would run on that, too), but paying 3 grand for less than a day's battery life.

Chrome is the big offender, and that program will drain your battery faster than a Tesla trying to tow a loaded U-Haul trailer. There is very little reason for Chrome these days other than as a password manager, and if you want battery life, switch to either Edge or Safari while on a laptop. The browsers made by the OS companies are good enough, plus they can optimize for battery life far better than energy-wasting Chrome could ever dream of.

The Macs are amazing regarding price, performance, and battery life. My 13" M1 Air will be good for another 4-6 years, and it is really all I need for GCS and my PDFs. However, as I get older, my eyes want a bigger screen. As it is, opening a PDF in GCS to read an option, I need to zoom and pan around, which is not great but workable.

GURPS: Star Frontiers, Part 3

Oh my fnord, Interstellar Wars space combat is awful.

It killed my GURPS: Star Frontiers game.

Here was the setup, two starfighters on a training mission simulating a dogfight. Fly towards each other, accelerate, vector, use sensors to find the other ship, fire weapons, and go to the next turn.

Only both pilots blew their sensor rolls for TL 10 ships. Where is the other fighter? I don't know. Well, maintain speed and turn towards where you think they would be. I did, and they turned towards each other (random roll determines turn direction, so I got lucky), and blew the sensor roll again for both of them since the range was more significant.

Where are you?

Well, this is a combat simulation, no cheating telling each other where we are, so keep turning and scanning. I got unlucky in the turn direction where they thought they would be, and due to the speeds involved, they were on the opposite sides of a map with 10,000-mile hexes - 30 hexes apart.

So spotting a starfighter the size of an airplane 300,000 miles away in space with sensors that only go out 4 to 6-hexes at best.

Where are you?

Hello?

Is anyone out there?

Hello?

They will be lost in deep space and halfway to another planet before they realize this is pointless and give up. This is two fish trying to find each other on opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean.

Okay, time for a reset. I add a "space station" guiding them and telling them which way to turn since the one in charge of training wants them to at least have a shot at each other.

The RoF of the weapons is like 20 shots in a turn, pouring lasers at each other in a 20-minute turn. You get any number of hits, and the laser's armor divisor cuts through the other ship's armor like butter, and one side will be vaporized. GURPS at any high-tech level has these insane armor divisors on attacks that make you want to put the "hardened" option on it so the divisor doesn't apply (B46). I tend to assume high-tech armor is military grade and hardened, so no armor divisor applies - and still, damage will get through.

I stopped playing after this.

I could see all ship combat devolving into pointless, where are you, circle strafing as the ships flew further and further apart.

I am going back to Knight Hawks combat. I will roll GURPS to hits with skills and will apply a -1 per hex range modifier to hit, and keep the max ranges in KH. ADF/MR and maneuvering will be as per KH. Ship damage will be KH.

Yes, that means breaking out the d10s but I will survive.

Hex Background!

We have a new hex background! I know a GURPS blog with a square graph paper background is strange. Hopefully, we are more aligned on the hex grid with the GURPS vibe. I did a few edits to keep it from being distracting and pushed it to the back.

Larger hexes are easier on my eyes since small hexes begin to become a visual distraction. You need to be careful with small repeating patterns since they make the text harder to read.

 Yes, the source image is licensed.

GURPS -Anything

I have nothing but respect for people who can run a "GURPS-anything" campaign for years in a setting that uses another set of rules. This is especially hard for settings like Greyhawk or the Realms with established published adventures that, in all worlds, should just convert over?

I know the first thing that happens is "s*** gets real."

I love that feeling; the world goes from a simple game system where everything is abstracted to a level of detail that blows your mind. It feels like having poor vision, wearing glasses, and seeing the world in high detail for the first time. People reported this when they went from Traveller to GURPS Traveller; suddenly, they said they "felt like they lived there" and "it feels like I am in the world and living it for real."

It feels like putting on a VR headset and being immersed in the world.

This is "The GURPS Effect."

It is a powerful thing since all of a sudden you realize what was before limited to four classes - fighter, mage, thief, and cleric and everyone being cut from the same cookie cutter to having a million professions with hundreds of skills and nobody is the same anymore. Entirely new adventuring professions have opened up, like the royal cartographer, and they can actually sell the maps they make (with their adventures and skill rolls) for a profit.

This happens to so many classes as those skills are combined with professions. You get specialty clerics, like an exorcist, that a B/X cleric is like, "cast a spell and done" - to a skilled professional with a deep set of skills to analyze a demonic possession, figure out the exact demon they are dealing with, and having many spells to encircle the affected area, isolate those possessed, and drive them out all one by one while adventuring companions fight off the evil creatures trying to stop the cleansing.

The GURPS character, with dozens of skills and spells, feels much more capable than the 5E cleric, who is armed with a single spell slot for exorcism, a smite cantrip, and a passive perception.

The GURPS Effect applies to characters, NPCs, the world, and the entire fabric of reality.

And you can mix and match skills and get infinite combinations where a "holy cartographer of the realms of Hell" becomes a viable profession. They gate in, establish a base camp, and have a combat mission to map a piece of the planes of Hell for the church. And then escape as the demons figure out what you are up to and mount an assault on your camp.

Why?

Why not?

I love the idea and hear people have done this - but I have yet to try. Mainly because much of the source material steers you in the wrong direction; all of it was written for a limited set of "world physics" controlled by "the game it was written for."

I have never been able to make this work, but I should try since people are happy with their conversions and the games run a long time.

Let's head over to B2, Keep on the Borderlands, and go into one of the first rooms, key A6 to be exact, and get hit by 40 kobolds in a 50' by 40' room. Some of these modules had little clue what they were doing. I played this once in a modern Pathfinder 1e game, and the outside hallway became a slaughter as the kobolds charged and were cut down in hails of gunfire wave after wave. Halfway through, they failed morale.

I felt terrible for them.

Many "new fantasy" games assume steampunk tech, so you will have guns and explosives. This playthrough was not that far off the mark for the new games. Get two or three gunslingers in a party, an alchemist with bombs, and the result is the same with "rapid reload tech" or magic allowing high rates of fire "for the fun of the game." There are parts of this module that feel less like a classic adventure and more like the setup of a mass casualty event.

Even if you assume a B/X party in here and the kobolds can fight 2 or 3 on a front rank, we are talking about a 3-4 hour fight and the same sort of slaughter. 5E would throw a blue screen of death trying to run this battle, and a game like GURPS - if you played this by the book, would take days.

Unless you have fireballs or a bunch of hand grenades, which in B/X is what this room is made to do - burn a fireball, sleep, or other AoE spell slot.

Pair a dwarven architect who knows his underground construction, a mage specializing in detecting the types of magic, and a seer who knows a lot about this ancient lich. This crusty halfling tomb robber knows every trap ever made, and a holy paladin specializing in destroying undead, and the Tomb of Horrors becomes a slow slog of tearing the dungeon apart like an Egyptian tomb excavation taking months.

The death rate would be far less since this team knows their stuff.

Tomb of Horrors is deadly because it relies on throwing characters without the skills to deal with a highly specialized and technical situation into one. I am a fighter! What do you want me to do? I know nothing but how to kill something and stand behind a shield.

Yes, Tomb of Horrors is deadly because AD&D characters are unprepared and stupid in these situations, not because of the players but because of the game. 5E does this with passive skills, turning off player brains and forcing the referee to "read the text box" if they have X higher than Y.

In the original module, it all fell on the player's brain and ability to pay attention. The rules did not help you because they couldn't. In GURPS, I can design a character to completely own an aspect of a skill set needed in this adventure.

You get that seer in there, and he sees a mock-up of a holy temple, his warning bells will go off. If a fake copy of the lich shows up, he will know it isn't real. He will know the riddles and mosaics, who made them and could go outside the dungeon, find a library, and research further - possibly finding a few more experts in areas.

That and none of these dungeons are on hexes.

If I made a "total conversion" world, all the dungeons would be on hexes. Get bent on 60-degree angles, old-school holes in the ground.

But I would like to try this, and I get the feeling tossing out modules and making my own "places of danger" that fit the world better would be ideal. There is something about seeing B2 and getting overwhelmed with all that needs to be converted that just makes me quit before I start. The secret is, I don't need the module, and just one cave with kobolds and a story behind why they are there and what is happening would play much better.

Use the module as an inspiration; there are tons of places in here, like the owlbear cave and the goblin tunnels, the evil temple, and the orc fort, that could be "torn off" and used as smaller adventure sites (with hex maps) that would play and feel grounded in a larger world.

Instead of B2 being this massive mess of a conversion nightmare, tearing parts of it off could populate an entire valley with fun adventure zones, and each one could feel like it belongs in its area.

Even in 5E, that is a good strategy, more minor, site-based encounters, and less of these mega dungeons.