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 classic "dungeon is a puzzle" roleplaying. Languages are typically set in stone, and you can't learn new ones. You will never learn to speak with the tribes here, 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.