Conversion, a Tough Problem

Conversion has always been a tough problem for any generic game I played. You get this rush of excitement, "Let's play X using GURPS!" and then it hits you.

We have nothing.

In some cases, we have something, but it isn't "the exact thing we want."

Starfinder, Star Wars, D&D, Star Trek, Diablo, Warcraft, or any of these other "play them with GURPS" ideas need a ton of conversion to even be viable, and then, getting players to understand those conversions and what went into them is another hurdle.

And this affects any generic game, be it Savage Worlds, Genesys, or any other.

For some genres, generic sci-fi, generic fantasy, and anything covered in a GURPS sourcebook - we have it all. These are good starting points, and we can extend and support about 90% of what we need from here. GURPS does give a lot of "close enough" items that we can either repaint them as "the thing we want" or tweak them just a little to be "good enough."

If you use AI, some AI agents do an amazing job converting anything into GURPS stats. Some of them go wildly off-base, but for the most part, AI is catching up and being able to do a lot of the conversion work for us. I can toss any BX monster stat block into an AI agent and have it easily return "good enough" GURPS stats. The last 10% of tweaking I can do myself, but in 90% of the cases, the stats are instantly there, ready to use in my game.

Ethics is another question entirely here. Understanding that the capability now exists is good for everyone, since it allows us to make ethical and informed decisions, and ask the right questions on sourcing and fair use. This is coming into our hobby much faster than we could ever have imagined.

But a part of me would hate for "AI to be the answer," and I love doing these conversions myself, even if there are so many things to port over that it is an impossible task to even begin.  There is an art to a great conversion that AI will struggle to ever capture. There is also a fun factor that can't be denied.

D&D 4E, Monster Manual, page 83

Add to that, many data sources have changed dramatically since the early days of the hobby; an ancient red dragon went from 88 hit points in AD&D to about 1,400 in D&D 4E. This came back down in D&D 5E (546 hp, still too many), but still, even AD&D 2E sources (23-184 hp, 104 average) are not the same as AD&D 1E, BX, 3.5E (527 hp), Pathfinder 1e (362 hp), or any other edition of the game. D&D 4E was arguably the "videogame outlier" in all the editions, having massive numbers of hit points to match the MMO-feeling of the game.

One could argue that multi-attacks and scaled damage drove hit-point inflation, whereas the original BX game kept the numbers reasonable. GURPS also keeps damage numbers under control, especially for melee attacks. A 1d8 long sword holds a measure of threat against an 88 hit point dragon, especially with fixed modifiers upping average damage to about 10 points. Versus a 546 hit point dragon, 1d8 is relatively nothing.

And I guarantee you that using the D&D 4E stats as a conversion base will result in a "GURPS: The MMO"- level of damage and hit points compared to using a BX-based source. Conversion is one thing; finding a consistent, untainted source is another. My gold standard is BX and 1E-based sources, and those are my benchmarks since they work the best with GURPS.

Also, conversions don't always have to be on the referee! Players can help too by dividing the work if you all want to build something cool together.

There are a few games with loads of "toys" to play with that are tougher sells, like anything with starships, mechs, or vehicles. For a game like Battletech, I love the original minitatures wargame, and I would rather play that (and convert GURPS stats to Battletech piloting and gunnery levels) than convert everything over to a GURPS Mecha conversion. The same could be said for original Car Wars, or even Traveller's ship combat.

Those original games have well-tested, amazing games to play, and doing a side-grade GURPS conversion of the game's stats is easier, more fun in the long run, and saves me a ton of conversion work. I have ships, cars, mechs, and other toys, ready to go, and many are already familiar with these games and can jump in without knowing too much about GURPS. This lets me pull people in easily; we can use GURPS for the "out of vehicle" parts, and it all blends seamlessly.

And I love playing these games as they were designed. GURPS gives me a reason to bust out my Car Wars pocket boxes and dive into that world. When the battle is over, I shift right back into GURPS and enjoy the best game ever written.

Star Wars is a tough one, along with Star Trek. While a part of me loves a gritty, detailed, and to the metal conversion of these games into the "GUIRPS reality," another part of me (and the part that likes to play with others), recognizes it is easier to buy the official game, use all the toys they have ready and converted in for us, and just play that without a ton of redesign work. Playing these settings in GURPS is amazing and opens my eyes to so many new possibilities, but when putting a group together, just playing what we have is going to be far easier (outside of the GURPS community).

Still, running an X-Wing battle is going to be tougher in GURPS, especially for newer players, than it will be in a game designed to make the experience accessible. Granted, these games tend to use a lot of aggregation that you would end up using anyway in GURPS. Still, when you start getting into massive problems like simulating a capital ship, both games tend to break down, but the more focused game usually has a way of dealing with the problem within the rules framework.

But a starfighter-versus-capital-ship battle can be done in GURPS if you take reality into account. No, you are not going to be able to defeat a Star Destroyer in an X-Wing. You can fly faster than it. The big guns won't be able to hit you unless you are sitting still. Every combat turn you are near it, you will be dealing with "flak" as laser fire from point-defense batteries. What are you trying to accomplish? Taking out the shield generator? That can be a few turns of dodging fire, fighting TIE fighters, and making a difficult skill roll and a good enough damage roll to disable that one system. Mission accomplished, now try to escape alive. All we needed were X-Wing and TIE fighter stats to run that; the capital ship is more of an "area hazard" than something with game stats.

If you are smart and deal with things realistically, you can play a game like this with minimal conversions. You can also push most starships "into the background" if they are not that important to the action, and just treat them as background props. Realistically, how many damaging hits from TIE fighters can your fighter take? What makes sense story-wise? A small ship, maybe 3 hits. A medium ship, maybe 6. A failed defense or piloting roll on a successful hit causes one point of damage. Things work mostly like GURPS ranged combat, but with an extremely aggregated and simplified combat system running the battle.

In a system like that, I could give the Starship Enterprise 36 hits, and make the ship's phasers do a d6, and photon torpedoes do 3d6 damage. Shields block 6 points and take a turn (skill roll) to come back after they are brought down. That sounds about right, and feels like what I saw in the movies. Test it and see how it goes!

And I guarantee you that how a movie writer writes these scenes is based more on feelings and narrative weight than on any technical stat or simulation. This "quick system" is likely getting you closer to "movie reality" than any to-the-kilogram vehicle design and simulation of the battle. Players will be able to understand their ship reeling after two unprotected torpedo hits took half their ship's systems down, and the damage control teams are struggling.

The quick system will be easier for the narrative flow.

And the quick system will feel more like the movie, and you can flex your game design chops and build these "aggregate systems" pretty quickly and make sure they are fair and understood by the players.

What are the hits of the vehicle? How much damage do the weapons do? How do defenses work? How do things work with attack and defense rolls? What are the factors of speed, range, and movement? Most of this will work like GURPS, only scaled to a vehicle or starship scale (and those will be relative scales, such as small craft or capital ships).

Propose a system to the players, try it out, tweak it if it doesn't seem right, take their creative input, and write it down as its own minigame if you like it and it makes your game easier. Almost every board and wargame began life as a minigame, notes on a piece of paper.

Anc conversions don't always have to be a science. I know, GURPS loves its reality simulation, but there are times that the "art" of an aggregation of a complex system will do just fine, fit the need in the moment, and tide you over until your full simulation is ready to go. You may decide to stick with the "quick rules" and just focus on playing.

The trick is to recognize how much work you want to do, where you can save time, and where aggregating a system is better for gameplay and more reflective than reality than a full simulation.

Conversion is both a hard problem to solve and a very easy one - it all depends on how you approach it.