Star-GURPS-Finder, Part II

There are a few stumbling blocks with the GURPS conversion for Starfinder, one being that the original classes have no starship skills. Well, very little in terms of "defined skills" for a starship outside of piloting and engineering; otherwise, anyone could conceivably hop into a starship station and help. I get it, we don't want players "feeling helpless" during a starship battle, and "everyone should have fun."

So this is a universe where everyone is assumed to have some familiarity with starship functions, and there is no dedicated skill set for starship operation. GURPS has a complete set of skills dedicated to starship operations, and it goes into extreme depth here. So, if you are not skilled, you are pretty much helpless and more of a hindrance than a help.

So, there is a clear difference between how GURPS sees starships and how they are handled in Starfinder "to enhance fun." You could always require every player to pick a windcard bang-skill for some sort of starship operation function (piloting, gunnery, sensors, engineering, etc.) and leave it at that, just so the characters mesh better with the universe and have things to do when the laser cannons fly through the vacuum of space.

Frankly, bang/wildcard skills are a great way to do a simplified GURPS Star Frontiers conversion, and that is a tool in my toolbox. Just use the existing 13 Star Frontiers skills (plus five Knight Hawks starship skills) and make them all wildcards, and forget the GURPS skill list entirely. It is quick and dirty, works well, and is simple; GURPS gives us the option to do it this way. Just get playing!

For Starfinder, wildcard skills may be the way to go. There is always this question when doing a conversion: "How deep do you want to go into the skills?" For a full-phat conversion, move every character class and subclass choice into 100% GURPS-compliant templates, only use GURPS skills, and let the system sing. Starfinder has 20 skills, plus you could crib in a sensors and gunnery skill, and completely replace the GURPS list with a stripped-down core of these wildcard-like skills, plus a few others the system needs.

Starting with the classes and builds (like a subclass) as templates would make the most sense. Many of them are sort of generic in scope, like Mystic/Shaman, or Operative/Outlaw. These are easy enough builds in GURPS, and I bet you could find comparable examples of them quick enough. Still, in 3.5E fashion, the classes themselves are huge scaffolds of powers, spells, and other abilities given over levels.

General roles and occupations feel like the better way to go, not specific class rebuilds.

3.5E has a strange tendency to make all "outlaws" the same (defined down), whereas in GURPS, outlaws come in many styles and varieties (defined out). Beware of over-converting, which can tighten the screws too much and make the templates too restrictive and all-encompassing.

Level-based systems are inwardly focused to a fault, where you start with nothing and then try to narrowly define a character through a framework of rules, math, and capabilities. Point-buy systems are outwardly-focused, where you start with nothing, and leave it up to the player to form the character with their choices. Starfinder tried to take a universe of characters and define them all with levels, and the result is book-after-book of rules.

Still, Starfinder was ambitious, and they deserve props for taking 3.5E and turning it into a science fiction game. It reminds me of Spycraft in a way, and anytime 3.5E tries to do a modern setting, the bloat and rules needed to cover everything expand to an insane degree. 3.5E is the antithesis of rulings over rules, since 3.5E requires a rule for absolutely everything.

Even GURPS is easier than 3.5E, given the volume of rules the game eventually needs for everything. GURPS uses general rules that handle every situation, whereas in 3.5E, a specific rule needs to be written to cover everything in the game. This adds up quickly to hundreds of pages of rules for every specific subsystem, class, power, and build.

One of the areas that has always puzzled me about Starfinder is the lack of mystery in the universe. The rules keep saying "discover the mysteries of the universe," but with every power laid out, every magic source known, every god cataloged, and every class built fully vetted out - where is the mystery? This has always been a problem of 3.5E and on, and it is even present in D&D 5E. With every "mystery of magic and the forces of the universe laid out," where is what we don't know?

Mysteries, in the most part, are "story mysteries" and not "leaving the nature of power open to interpretation." Power in any D&D-style game needs to be laid out without any room for interpretation, or else there will be arguments at the table. This is still the legacy of the Magic: The Gathering design style that endures in fantasy today.

At least in GURPS, I can "wall off" power systems and sources, and leave them as the mysterious forces behind the powers of magic. Of all my games, GURPS, Call of Cthluhu, Palladium Fantasy, and Dungeon Crawl Classics let magic "feel like magic" whether through game systems, design, mechanics, or the power given to the referee to shape the universe. How a game handles magic and the unknown is one of the criteria I use to decide whether to keep a game out or put it in storage. Castles & Crusades is the only exception to this rule, since everything else about that game is S-Tier.

In GURPS, I can rule that "all magic causes corruption," and then rule that the corruption-caused disadvantages are "divine influence and obligation," "demonic taint," "arcane mutation," "alien intelligence influence," or even "Elder One de-evolution." This gets me closer to DCC's rules, and that puts the fear of using magic back on the table.

Do you really want to fling that spell so casually? Your star mage could end up with strangely glowing eyes that cause others to be wary of them, and make hiding in the dark difficult. Flavor the disadvantages however you wish, just make sure they fit the theme.

Still, I like there to be some mystery to the universe, the gods to be alien and far from understood, and the nature of magic and "strange happenings" not to be laid out on page after page of exacting rules. The original Coriolis game had an amazing amount of depth and mystery to the setting, along with the nature and role of powers. Things were never fully understood, and there was room there to make magic and powers your own.

Magic and technology should oppose each other: humankind's need to conquer the universe and harness its knowledge and effort opposes the unexplained phenomena of life and the universe's energy. The minute "magic becomes a battery technology," you have lost me. Magic should never be understood, nor should it reflect the mastery we have over math and machines. It is not a power for "glowing fist energy" in artwork or media. There is a price, a cost, and an unexplained nature to magic, the same as the mystery of life and death.

Granted, once you define or figure out the big mystery, the entire universe is over.

Starfinder game revels in book after book of rules. A full conversion is unlikely, so the best I can do is be inspired by the "science fiction plus fantasy" setting and do my own thing.

With GURPS.

There is something here I like, the contrast between magic and technology, the wizardry of machines versus the faith in the power behind the universe and life. This is the classic Star Wars conflict between the original never-defined or understood Force and the machine-god power of the Death Star. Starfinder tends to mix it all up in a pop-culture pastiche Guardians of the Galaxy veneer of space adventure.

We have lost the ability to create wonder and mystery, at least in films and TV. No one will pay attention. They are all on their phones. The second screen has taken over our frontal lobes.

While enjoyable, Starfinder is not what I am looking for in space fantasy.

But it is a start.

I like the pawns I have, and they are beautifully done.

Now, to just figure out a way to use them with GURPS.

Star-GURPS-Finder

I have a good collection of Star Finder pawns, too; about a box and a half are for that game. I played the 3.5E version of the game and enjoyed it until it fell apart. The adventures held back money to the point that my characters were constantly broke, starship-owning space travelers. Since money is only used to upgrade armor and weapons, and all of those are leveled items, the game sort of makes no sense.

And I sit there with a perfectly good starship and wonder why I can't just run cargo for extra cash, like in any 2d6 space game like Cepheus or Traveller. But the next adventure awaits, and I found myself working for "space undead." I had no interest in helping them, and the adventure path fell to pieces.

I tried a second time with the sandbox setting, and that was fun, but the leveled gear and that "arms race" started to take over the game when good stories were getting started, and I lost interest again.

I also found myself abusing my knowledge of D&D 3.5E to my advantage, and melee combat with a strong character outshone anything else, to the point where my 1d4 damage laser pistol pilot felt useless. We would just lure monsters into opportunity attacks and whallop them. While D&D 3.5E is the best D&D we got from Wizards, the combat in any version is severely lacking and exploitable.

I would prefer a normal science-fiction system to a level system in space. The only exception would be the Amazing Adventures game, but that is more of a pulp-action game, and those can do most any genre well.

The "what if" is converting the game into GURPS, which would mean all that would be the races, and then using GURPS' great selection of science fiction gear to fill in the rest. There is "magic" present in the setting, and GURPS does that too; it is just a question of "what flavor do you want?" There are psionics, too, and there are already far too many power systems in this universe, which gets a bit confusing. "Too much mojo" is the name of the game here, and it almost feels like too many magic and psionic power systems are in the game.

GURPS would do a good job, but in all honesty, it probably would not really feel like Starfinder. It would be a GURPS Space with magic and psionics, and Starfinder races, with a lot of strange pawns that I would need to create game stats for. I wonder if Amazing Adventures would do this easier, since I could crib monster stats from the fantasy game, mix in spells and spionics from these rules, and just have an easier time converting and playing with the pawns.

Still, GURPS would give me a "throttled own" Starfinder experience, far more concerned with the lower-level skill and gritty combat game than the 3.5E system ever was. Starfinder was always a game that felt like it "skipped over the surface" far too much, ignoring skill rolls in lieu of easy combats with another group of space goblins. In the adventures I played, even social interactions felt played down, and another set of combat stats was given, should "3.5 players were gonna 3.5 their way through this again." D&D never did social and skill-based play all that well, and Starfinder 1e inherited that legacy, becoming a combat game with a science-fiction veneer.

Those weak 1d4 ranged weapons were a pain, though, and the higher-level ones made you roll multiple d4 dice, like 12d4, and I am sitting here wondering why anyone would want to physically roll 12d4 for any weapon. For the love of my fingers, make this 6d8.

It would probably help Starfinder and make it seem like a more grounded universe to slow things down and celebrate the characters, rather than rushing through the next space dungeon and rolling initiative. GURPS science fiction does that; it can put the brakes on a "rush through it" sort of adventure and force you to think about your character and what they bring to the table. And GURPS makes characters versatile in many more ways than a list of special attacks, spells, and a to-hit bonus and number of attacks.

Another part of me wants to dig deeper into the magic systems of this world and define them more clearly in GURPS than in Starfinder. There are a number of tightly-defined and thematic subclasses that make the castes special here, and doing a conversion without them would feel incomplete. When you look at Starfinder, it is the precursor of Pathfinder 2, and the stronger and more thematic subclasses make the character here.

There is a difference between a "dress up" style of GURPS conversion, where you are just playing GURPS Space with a few of the races along the veneer of the universe. There is a deeper level of "total conversion" where you put in the work, build the subclasses as true templates, and rebuild the Starfinder power lists in GURPS from scratch. I get the feeling Starfinder would benefit more from the latter, where in fantasy, GURPS has 90% of what you need for simulating fantasy tropes without too much rebuilding, though Dungeon Fantasy is a good example of putting in that work.

I would probably template the base classes and then offer subclass choice templates under them. Spells would need to be converted. If a conversion needs this much work to make it feel right, you start to wonder if the project isn't too big to take on. It would be cool and be a fresh take on the classes and subclass abilities, but it would be a lot of work.

You begin to wonder if a "Starfinder lite" experience with tech-plus-space-magic is the way to go. This is how Stars Without Number does it, where you can play the base space game, and then port in "space magic" through BX additions. Is the "Starfinder vibe" that important? If so, put in the work and make the conversions. If it isn't, do a generic "space magic" setting.

By playing Starfinder with GURPS, the same thing I have seen reported with Traveller may happen: it feels like putting on a "VR headset" and becoming immersed in the world in a way the original game could not provide. GURPS can help give games an "identity" that otherwise feels lacking, and show people what it is like to live in the universe and experience it at a lower level than a more rules-light system can offer.

It is an interesting project, but a huge one if you want the Starfinder flavor. If you are a super-fan, probably play Starfinder with either the 1e or 2E rules. If I want to use the pawns, maybe a generic "space fantasy" GURPS setting will be enough, flavored but not a faithful conversion.