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.