GURPS: Star Frontiers, Update #2

Okay, a few updates on the project are due, plus a couple more observations.

The game will be based on a TL 10 base.

The damage conversion for personal weapons is 1d10 SF, which converts to 2d6 GURPS. This is for ranged weapons only and roughly matches the SF auto pistol with 9mm pistol damage. This will throw the auto rifle out of whack, but that is likely going up to 5.56mm or 4.7mm PDW damage to 4d6 GURPS. I am keeping the d6 damage without adders to keep the dicing clean and match SF better in terms of simplicity and clean damage ratings.

Melee weapons will be as they are in GURPS, with a few exceptions around some of the "shock" and "electro" melee weapons. These can better be done in GURPS with added "shock and stun" electricity effects than SF, which just adds a few d10 of damage.

Starship damage is going to the d6 scale, with hull points being 60% of the base game. The "combat table" on the back of the Knight Hawks rules will get converted to 3d6 GURPS rules, with a 50% being a +0, a 60% being a +2 to-hit, a 40% being a -2 to-hit, and so on. Starship movement and damage tables stay as-is in Knight Hawks.

For starship combat, one hex of starship scale will equal 10 yards of GURPS scale, which is what all the weapons are "designed and tuned" at. This means a target at 10 hexes of starship range will be as hard to hit as a target at 100 yards in GURPS, or a -10.

I could apply a -1 per hex of range modifier for starships and be fine, "This is how it is."

As a reader suggested, I could use the OG GURPS 3 Space rules for combat and construction, but I need to read up on them and consider them. It is fun to do it the GURPS way, and another type of fun keeping this more like OG Knight Hawks. The starship game is further off, but that is my plan for how it will go. Testing is needed!

One of the strangest parts of Star Frontiers' personal combat is "the defense game." We have suits that protect against physical or laser damage and screens that do the same. In our games, we stuck with the skeinsuit for physical damage resistance and albedo screens to turn on for anti-laser protection. You often needed to guess the defenses you needed, or you were left without.

Also, the defenses do not work the same. Albedo screens take damage and drain 1 SEU per 5 points of laser damage. Inertia screens drain 2 SEU and halve ballistic or melee damage. Gauss screens drain 2 SEU and absorbs all damage. Albedo suits have 100 hits and disintegrate but prevent all damage. Skeinsuits halve ballistic or melee damage but are ruined when they take 50 points of damage.

There is fun to the defense game, but this also gets tedious for some groups. I want to model the special armor and defenses, but another part of me just wants to make one force screen and one or two skeinsuits (civilian and military) and make them protect against most types of damage. When I get to armor or defenses, I have some serious design work in store for me and questions about where I want my game's focus to be.

I will likely simplify the defenses for a simple story-based game. Otherwise, I will model them all as designed to be true to the original game. I am not "designing them with points" unless I have to. If something absorbs 100 points in SF, it will absorb 120 points in GURPS (1d10 to 2d6). If something drains 1 SEU per 5 points of damage in SF, it will be 1 SEU per 6 points in GURPS.

An average STA of 50 in SF means characters in the original game were superhuman regarding hit points. In GURPS, everyone will be much more fragile, and I may need some of these armors to have some fixed DR. Something tells me modeling my armors off of comparable GURPS armors will be the way to go.

From now on, we do a lot of math, so be forewarned...

Also, remember that the game is TL 10, so the DR of the TL 9 armor will be multiplied by 1.5. This will make many projectile weapons useless against soldiers (both UPF and Sathar) in DR 30/15 tactical armor. The dominant weapons will be lasers with their armor divisor of (2). Allowing variable SEU settings for laser weapons may make armor useless, so there is an argument for keeping the laser pistol at 3d(2) burn and the laser rifle at 5d(2) burn and not having SEU settings on the weapons.

GURPS Basic Set thought about all this stuff, so it may be easier to default to the well-proven rules here rather than do all this conversion work and end up with a broken game. I can see using GURPS weapons and armor and not doing all these conversions or just doing the force screens and calling it a day. A skeinsuit is just a GURPS TL 9 "ballistic suit" at TL 10 and has a DR of 18/6. This will make many of the projectile weapons in the game useless, but that is the price of progress.

The original Star Frontiers needed to account for STA scores from 50 to 70, so damages were high, and the defenses worked in specific ways. All weapons were meant to be viable and have trade-offs and benefits. Switching to a projectile weapon was a good tactic if you had a Sathar wearing an albedo field. The guns were designed to be viable alternatives to each other.

In GURPS, the default assumption is to model the passage of time and technology, with projectile weapons becoming as obsolete as crossbows and muskets on the battlefield. Any character with a TL 10 DR 18/6 skeinsuit will laugh off every projectile weapon in the game, and adding a helmet with a visor will eliminate the headshot option.

Even if you assume all projectile weapon ammo is APHC (reducing penetration damage to pi-, or x 0.5), the 2d6 pistols will only penetrate at a 2d6 roll of 10 or higher, and the 4d6 rifles will fare a little better, but the internal damage will only be on average of a 14 - (18/2) / 2 = 2 points per penetrating shot. A 3d6(2) laser pistol's average damage to that same suit will be 11 - (6/2) = 8 points per penetrating shot. The laser rifle will be 15 points.

The intelligent characters will carry laser weapons in a TL 10 science fiction setting, and the 9mm pistols and 5mm rifles will be tossed in the metal and polymer scrap bin. They could be encountered in backwater and primitive situations. Still, in the main worlds and most portions of civilized space, the laser pistol will out-damage the 5mm APHC auto rifle against the most commonly encountered armor in the game.

And hey, math is fun! Don't be afraid of it.

Converting all these exotic weapons and defense types will be a waste of time if you want to bring armor and weapon damage closer to GURPS norms. Just assume a TL 10 setting and use the laser weapons in GURPS Basic as your go-to weapons. The Gyroc Pistol TL 9 with APHC ammo is a viable option, doing 6d6(2) pi+ damage, so against that skeinsuit it will be 21 - (18/2) x 1.5 = 18 points of damage. Gauss PDWs are not in Star Frontiers but in GURPS Basic.

Note that GURPS Ultra-Tech has a 6d(2) burn laser rifle (the carbine is the 5d(2) one, now) and a few other TL 10 weapons, and this will expand your game considerably but also add sonic stunners, which are cool options. The TL 9 projectile weapons and new ammo types (APEP) are dramatically expanded here, making that skeinsuit far less effective.

A game using Ultra-Tech will be dramatically different from just using GURPS Basic. The comment about "sticking to laser weapons" is far less accurate with Ultra-Tech being used for the game, but for a game with new players, sticking to laser weapons and DR 18/6 skeinsuits (with an anti-laser screen option) may be the easier way to go.

You could convert things to play more like the original game, but if you look at the above math, you will need to do a lot of design work to make it work the way SF did and perhaps break some of the things we like about GURPS.

For me?

As a setting, it is easier to use the GURPS Basic weapons and armor as-is and reskin the ballistic suit as my skeinsuit. I will need to model or find an anti-laser screen equivalent, which I am sure is in the rules somewhere.

GURPS: Star Frontiers, Try #2

I am restarting my GURPS: Star Frontiers game, but doing it the right way this time. Well, what is "the right way?" I am creating an equipment and weapon list in the GURPS Character Sheet (support the project, link on the sidebar), sticking with those items, and only supplanting from other gear lists as I need.

This is more like a "GURPS sandbox" conversion, where I make a focused gear and weapons list and just use that. I am not allowing random weapons from GURPS Ultra-Tech or any other source; it is fair game if it is on the "in-game" gear lists. The only change is to add the GURPS power cells from UltraTech as my "power clips" for the game since UT has the smaller A & B style cells that can power some of the smaller devices.

I will make a list of races and build those as templates.

I may create "template packages" for the various primary skill areas and the skill choices, like "robotics skill," a 25-point GURPS template you can pick and add to a character's skills. I may also add the starship skills from Knight Hawks as templates. This will make building characters (and NPCs) as easy as setting a point level and picking packages.

Laser pistols will be capped at a maximum of 5 SEU, rifles at 10, and heavy lasers at 20. We made this house rule back in the day, and it worked well. Smaller weapons can only be turned up so much. If you want big, go big.

A 1d10 damage in Star Frontiers is a 1d6 in GURPS (or 2d6).

Starships? I will stick with the Knight Hawks rules with a few modifications. GURPS will handle all to-hits and skill rules. Turns and movement will be Knight Hawks. Ranges will be handled by GURPS, but 1 hex of starship scale will be one meter of GURPS scale, and the GURPS range modifiers will apply. If Knight Hawks gives a -10% chance to hit, that will be a flat -2 in GURPS per -10%. Otherwise, starship damage, weapon damage, and all other rules will be Knight Hawks.

I could use 1d6 as the "base die" for starship damage and scale hull points down to 60% of KH.

Vehicle combat in Star Frontiers can work as-is, rolling d100 as needed. However, there is a power difference between Star Frontiers' heavy weapons and GURPS' more realistic ones. This needs to be tested or followed closer to GURPS' standards.

I am not messing with any of the GURPS starship combat systems again; those derailed my game last time. I want a GURPS sandbox, a transplant of the starship rules, and a thin emulation layer to make everything work with GURPS. All the character, ground combat, and other rules will be GURPS.

I tried this with a mix of GURPS Space, Ultra Tech, and Starships, and it did not feel the same. It felt like a GURPS: Space game wearing a Star Frontiers skin. There is a certain "toybox" that Star Frontiers needs to work well. When all of GURPS: Ultra Tech is thrown into the mix, even at TL 9 or 10, the game just feels like it derails and goes everywhere. Like huge skill lists, a part of me feels Star Frontiers needs to be a simplified, almost "pulp" science fiction experience.

Curating carefully and making focused lists of options is key to pulling this game off.

GURPS EverQuest: Rules or Setting?

I vote GURPS: EverQuest is more the setting and less the game.

I have enough "rules" in Dungeon Fantasy, and the spells work well. With all the "GURPS Dungeon Fantasy" PDFs for the main rules, you have even more options for evil gods, dark knights, and necromancers.

I can design within the EverQuest class frameworks; I have played this game and know what these classes are supposed to feel like. Realistically, in a "pen-and-paper world," there will be variations among the classes based on the individual. One shadow-knight might be more into raising the undead, and another may be into inflicting pain.

In 5E? Forget it; you have a few subclasses that define everything about your character, and you will never have the freedom to have fun with a base class and tweak it. I could make a necromancer-bard in GURPS that sings to the undead, and I can't think of another 5E or OSR game with a class like that. Sure, I can multiclass, but to have those songs designed to affect the undead only? I can't think of a game that does that.

In EverQuest? You have almost no customization outside of placing a few ability score points at character creation, and those matter very little by the end game.

GURPS gives you the best flexibility, and you should use that to create characters that fit "your idea" of what a class role is for your character. Not everyone in that class will be the same as you; this is GURPS; embrace it.

The only "look and feel" the game should have are the "class frameworks," but even then, you should go outside what the game allows you to create since you have a full pen-and-paper RPG with the best character design system in gaming. The GURPS game enables you to customize and tweak your classes; as long as your necromancer "raises dead" and "does necromancer things," you are fine. Just don't include holy abilities that break the thematic feeling of the class, and you will be good.

Race is also an essential part of "why you play." In the original game, people loved their characters and backgrounds; capturing them is critical. In GURPS, these are straightforward templates, so they will not be hard to build. The unique options, such as tough hides, wings, tails, claws, water breathing, and other body parts and abilities, will need the full GURPS game and not the limited subset of Dungeon Fantasy.

You will need to go "outside the box" a little, depending on how "superhero" you want the races to be in abilities. None of the races in the original game have water breathing, but if that thematically fits with your idea of the froglok race, then you may give them that power.

The setting is the star of the show here—the classic Freeport and Qeynos settings and all the places in the world with charm and history: the moon of Luclin, the savage continents, jungles, swamps, and frozen lands. The world is vibrant, either the original EQ1 or the alt-history EQ2.

But this conversion also highlights how you should approach similar conversions. Dungeon Fantasy "rolls back" some of the GURPS's freedom and limits your design flexibility.

But also, when you are doing conversions, you may not always want a "note for note" exact match of your source material since that may be severely limited. The Dungeon Fantasy spells are far better than the EverQuest ones, and as long as you pick "close enough" or "fits the theme," then you will have a better character design than an "exact recreation" or even a "game conversion."

If a paladin has a few "holy abilities," then OK. This works. If they are powers you want, then go with that. If they aren't perfectly "on spec" and "100% conversion accurate," who cares?

This is GURPS. If all a paladin learns are a few heal spells, forgo buffs, and the other bog-standard paladin powers, it doesn't matter. If another just wants to smite evil all day, that may be how that paladin learned to be a paladin. There is a lot of wiggle room in GURPS compared to 5E. In 5E, if you go up one subclass path, you will be the same exact paladin as someone else.

In GURPS, you could start a paladin and become a bard.

Coming from 5E or even EverQuest, that is strange.

Coming from GURPS, this is normal.