Conversions: Don't Worry About Them

Part of why I have a tough time with conversions is I am too much of a perfectionist, and it gets in my way all the time. The best advice when creating a conversion is "Just Play."

Just play. Don't convert a thing. Just create characters and "say where you are and what is happening." You don't need any notes, a sourcebook, a list of things converted over for the game, or anything else. You are playing:

• GURPS Pathfinder
• GURPS Star Frontiers
• GURPS BattleTech
• or GURPS Whatever...

Sitting down and beginning play will prove to be the most effective "conversion" you can ever have.

Do you need an extra "thing" to simulate a part of the game? Like the BattleTech "mech combat" system? You have two options:

• Play the BattleTech game as-is and covert GURPS Skills to BattleTech skill levels
• Blay the BattleTech game with GURPS as the skill-roll engine.

Either way, once you "hit" a target, use the BattleTech hit location, damage, armor, and internal damage systems - along with movement, heat, and all the other wargame parts. Same with Star Frontiers and the Knight Hawks ship combat system, play it as-is and convert GURPS skills to KH skill levels, or just use GURPS for the skill roll engine and leave everything else as-is. Once you figure out the relative maximum skill levels in each game, a 12- in GURPS is a Level 1 skill, and it goes up by two points for every SF level to a maximum of 24- in GURPS.

And the range table stays the same in all games, just to keep things simple. One "yard" in GURPS is one "hex" in either BattleTech or Star Frontiers, and we use the regular skill rolls without these silly +30 Acc modifiers and -30 range modifiers. The ships and mechs have the "targeting stuff" to keep the to-hits on par with normal GURPS combat ranges; it is just the hexes are bigger.

It works since if you have a 3-foot battle mat with one-inch hexes across the map, the long way is 36 or a -8 to hit, and the short way (24 hexes) is a -7. Standard gunnery skill rolls are used, and the combat scale is normalized with the Basic Game rules.

Still, everything that happens "after a hit is determined" returns to the original rules. Don't try to turn all these into GURPS weapons with damage and penetration numbers—it isn't worth it.

But this is why I wrestle with many conversions: I want them to be perfect. They never will be. Even the original game or setting itself isn't perfect! You can have 1 million interpretations of what one game, movie, or setting is "all about," and that ideal you put up there on that pedestal will never be reachable.

I have had times I suspect I never wanted it to be.

When converting, you can fall into the mental trap of trying to live up to that "perfect image of the game" in your head but never being able to achieve it. It is always better to just "start playing," and I guarantee you that 99% of the work you would have put in will never be needed for your game because it will go off on some tangent, and you will never need a complete list of everything converted into the rules.

If something appears, like a BattleTech machine gun or a Star Frontiers gyro-jet pistol, can you just pull something similar from GURPS and say, "This is that," and move on?

99% of the time, you can.

And you don't need to convert a thing.