Campaign Planning Form

The assumption that "every world must be accessible" hurts GURPS. The core book, Campaigns, has a chapter on an Infinite Worlds campaign that tries to tie everything together. Still, this chapter establishes a "multiverse reality" that confuses many players, as if everything has to be in everything.

In turn, I find myself putting everything in there when creating campaign worlds because why not?

And I never start them since I am discouraged and unhappy.

I was working on a GURPS Pathfinder game, and the source material felt overwhelming. What do I include? Where do I start? How do I narrow this down? Conversion becomes a thought experiment that eventually becomes a source of disappointment and a negative experience.

Incredibly confusing is "leveled content," such as an adventure module for a party of five between levels 4 and 7. Even if those numbers were correct, which in D&D varies widely, different classes are far more potent at certain levels than others. Even if you say 25 CP = 1 D&D level, what do you do when you enter the module? Are the 250-point Dungeon Fantasy starters at level 10?

A 25-point goblin could take down a 250-point character with one lucky hit. GURPS's balance is far flatter than any version of D&D, which is good. When you convert a module, use the suggested level to set the rough "point limit" and then use it as a narrative flow for encounters and challenges - don't try to convert every number and monster over to GURPS; estimate and capture the flow. Many of the ratings in D&D-style games mean very little, and the "leveled nature" of the game creates many problems.

I am much happier when I limit the options, focus, and scope of a campaign world before I even start and set those parameters up before play. We have a tool for that, the Campaign Planning Form.

This form (found here) needs more love and attention, and I rarely see it mentioned. If I converted a module from any OSR or D&D game, I would use this sheet to lay out the game's parameters. I would also forget about any "setting" the module was supposedly set in and just assume the GURPS campaign is only the module, and that is it for scope.

Are you trying to run a GURPS or Dungeon Fantasy campaign for Keep on the Borderlands? Then forget about the setting, Mystara, and focus only on the module as the campaign. Pay close attention to the campaign planning form's sections on valuable and useless character types and appropriate and inappropriate professions. If you want to play this more as a band of sneaky thieves than kick-in-the-door barbarians, the sheet can help get everyone on the same page.

You can add other notes on this sheet, like stating whether the equipment and price list are from Dungeon Fantasy or you are using it in a game like Basic Fantasy. Will the monsters be taken from GURPS sources or converted from Basic Fantasy? Are some sources more for inspiration? Are some of the adventures you will be playing? Are there some informational resources? List them all on the sheet with notes.

Will magic items be converted from an OSR source or pulled from an official book like Dungeon Fantasy: Magic Items? There can be a lot of sourcebooks and resources in a converted campaign, and using a sheet like this to list and categorize them can help keep your game from drifting off in scope and pulling in resources you never really intended to be brought into the game.

If we circle back to GURPS: Pathfinder, that setting goes the entire range of tech levels once you throw the lands of super-science ruins (Numenera) into the world. Androids walk around here. Some things I just don't want to handle in a Pathfinder world. I like the fantasy setting, and the S3 Barrier Peaks-style adventure feels better suited for a more focused science-fantasy setting, like a Gamma World. If I were doing the science-fantasy Iron Gods adventure path in Numenera, I would limit the campaign and scope to that. You may even set a base tech level for different areas, shops, and NPC factions.

The most significant hurdle to playing GURPS is narrowing it down. Use the Campaign Planning Form to collect your ideas, inspirations, and resources and distill them into a plan for your game that will help you focus the idea you are trying to express and focus it like a laser onto the story you and your group are trying to tell.