YouTube: Nosh Solo, Keep on the Borderlands

 

Nosh Solo is doing a fantastic series of solo plays on YouTube, going through the classic Keep on the Borderlands with GURPS 4e. We get seven 100-point characters, built off Dungeon Fantasy templates, going through the adventure. This started a few weeks ago, and it rocks. Let's show our YouTube creators some love and support this weekend!

This is like listening to a fantasy adventure podcast for GURPS, and it inspires me. This is so well done, and it needs more views, comments, likes, and attention.

This is like a look into an "alternate universe" where Steve Jackson Games got the rights to D&D and used the GURPS rules for the game. It is such a different experience, much more story-based, much more gritty and realistic, and a far better "narrative game" than even the "narrative-focused" games we have in the hobby today.

Grounded, gritty, realistic, historical, and hard-hitting fantasy? GURPS does it the best.

And this is one of the best solo plays in GURPS, and it is currently being developed! This hasn't ended yet, and it is time to jump in, follow along, comment, and join in the fun. We have seven so far, and catching up is not that hard and quite enjoyable.

If you start a podcast or live play series this weekend, definitely make it this one.

Western Realm Atlas, Worldbuilding

I like converting campaign worlds to GURPS, but I often feel the original systems were just "made" for them. My current campaign is set in the Aquilae world, which is an extraordinary setting over on DriveThruRPG, which is a system-neutral setting where you can do anything you want. It's just maps, roads, towns, cities, kingdoms, ruins, and terrain, and you fill in the rest. For creative people who want to fill in "what goes where," this setting is a fantastic canvas. Those who want a fully developed setting will find this lacking. I love worldbuilding given a set of parameters, and having a setting where I can just "fill in what I am given" is endless enjoyment for me.

Aquilae is sort of like a "paint by numbers" campaign setting, where you are given a premade picture, paints, what color goes where, and you fill in all the rest. True artists will hate these, but they can be fun projects that are relaxing and low-key chill. It doesn't matter if it looks different than the picture, as skill varies and people may make other choices. Do you want to put in a fluffy cloud layer in the middle ground? That is your choice, go watch a few videos on how this is done, practice, and add that to your masterpiece. Want to blend colors and create a pretty shade of green (for color 45) with a hint of blue and purple? Go for it! The guidelines are here, but you can be infinitely creative within them. In the end, you will have something you made by hand, with your own personal touches.

Everyone can feel like a world builder, just like everyone can feel like an artist.

Yes, GURPS: Forgotten Realms is fun, and it plays very nicely, but a part of me will always see that as the AD&D world, before all the novels, that it was in our campaigns. The same with Dark Sun or Greyhawk, those will always be tied to one version of AD&D or another. GURPS versions of these are fun, but I feel at home in them with a decent first-edition game, such as Adventures Dark & Deep, or even Castles & Crusades.

Also, other settings that were designed to fit a theme are fun, such as the Conan-inspired Savage Thule, but if I am playing GURPS, I am playing GURPS Conan. Some of the "flavored" 5E settings are very well detailed and make fine GURPS settings, but given a choice, I will play GURPS: Vikings over a Viking-themed 5E setting. While these are fun, they are more "best of" and "tribute" settings when GURPS can give you the real thing.

And Harnworld is also a fantastic GURPS setting, one of the best. This is my dream GURPS setting for a serious, meaty, political game. It is not so much a "dungeon" setting as it is a "Game of Thrones" one. I could put dungeons on the map, but the world is far more interesting to explore and meet the people of. Everything you can ever want in a classic Middle Ages setting is here.

Something keeps me coming back to the very strange and almost quirky Aquilae setting, a system-neutral setting by design, that lets you fill in all the blanks. It is nothing more than a giant hex map of cities, roads, and optional GM's information on ruins and other secret places. You do with it what you want. Harnworld assumes "you read the books," where this setting "has nothing." 

That is a freedom I like, since there is no required reading (while fun), and if I want this city to be one thing, and that another, I can just have it. This kingdom in the middle can be the evil one, and the two on each side are good, but weaker. There are plots and motivations in my head. If I need NPCs or taverns, I have plenty of random charts. Maybe the evil king has a black dragon he rides and sends on missions. There are ruins and dungeons out there, and I get to make them myself.

It is much more of a sandbox canvas for my ideas than it is anything else. It gives me a map and names, and I do whatever I want with them. Another thing I like is that the world does not rely on a set of monsters being the villains; I can use whatever I like, the monsters from Dungeon Fantasy, some of the excellent GURPS bestiary conversions on the Internet, my B/X converted monsters, or any other monster I want. Also, there are no assumptions on fantasy races here; if I wanted this to be all human, I could have that. I can put the standard four here, or go all out with the modern mix.

Anything I want, I can have.

Just like GURPS.

The Weird Fantasy Genre

With weird fantasy, one of the best games that tries to dive into it is the great Dungeon Crawl Classics game. The dungeon is not supposed to be "the normal," as entering the dungeon is more like Alice stepping into the looking glass. This is the upside-down world, where nothing should work or seem normal, and a place apart from reality, like a near-death perception-altered experience.

D&D 5E turns dungeons into video-game levels, boards in a strategy guide to clear. This comes from D&D 4E, which is why modern Wizards D&D is not D&D. The classic D&D experience is defined by that "Beyond the Looking Glass" dungeon crawl, of a dungeon master using their twisted imagination to create an out-of-body experience in other players' head spaces.

I have had my 5E groups go through a dungeon without fear. All my AD&D groups had fear.

Making D&D into "influencer fantasy" with slavish influencer art and the yoke of nostalgia guts the game's spirit and power. Wall Street has stripped D&D of its identity. D&D 2024 is not D&D. It is a tabletop game influenced by Diablo IV.

Is it fun? Yes. Like a video game is fun.

Dungeon Crawl Classics tries to achieve this by using strange dice and random charts, but the charts ultimately define and limit the experience. True out-of-body existential discovery and horror cannot happen if everyone knows the results on the charts.

The charts will prevent you from truly discovering and realizing what we all once knew with these games in the 1980s. The Satanic Panic happened because more and more people were being enlightened (look up the late-80s enlightenment movements, like crystal therapy, and so on), and AD&D 2nd Edition was created to put the genie back in the bottle. Wall Street stopped mass spiritual enlightenment in 1989 when D&D was at its height of cultural influence.

Note: This is not what I actually believe, but to get in touch with the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, this is where your thinking has to go. A game is a game, but many in spiritual movements latched onto AD&D as a transcendental tool. Religious groups responded to this and pushed back. 

To get into the proper gonzo mindset, you must free yourself from the idea that tabletop games are simple replacements for video games (2000-2020) or consumer-driven, identitarian lifestyle gaming (2021-present). When you feel "the game is more than just a game," then you have the proper mindset. 

All that sounds crazy, but trying to understand that concept and theory will put your mind in the correct mode to run weird fantasy games. This is not just a video game with goofy stuff or some superhero power fantasy where you are "meant to kill the monsters." Kitchen sink fantasy, while fun, ultimately leads to "videogame-ism" and puts you into a mindset where you will never reach this higher state of enlightenment.

Wall Street took over D&D and made it "safe" again. Even DCC refuses to go to some places, and keeps itself safe for every audience. The collection of things considered to be in "kitchen sink" fantasy shrinks as controversial topics are bleached from the genre, such as half-races and succubi. And stale and controlled is what most of today's "gonzo fantasy" becomes. It is a commoditized fantasy, featuring goofy elements like silly hats, big mustaches, talking bananas, and strangely drawn art. You get the visuals right, but not the heart and soul.

With kitchen-sink fantasy, I love how familiar it is, but the world it creates feels like any version of D&D. Gonzo goes a step beyond that. For me, it is a starting place, a doorway to that more enlightened, mind-altering, and almost spiritual place. It is the "normal" from which we jump into the "abnormal."

True gonzo fantasy is like stepping through the Looking Glass.

Part of me dislikes the kitchen-sink genre since it leans too hard on D&D's tropes. Our games become nothing more than "D&D simulators" compared to our stories and imagination. Yes, they are D&D simulators coaxed in realism, but GURPS can do so much more than power a simulator.

Shadowdark does a little better, and it "gets" what the dungeon should be, if in an abstract form, where "the dark" is a powerful, evil, irrational metaphysical force that wants to consume the party and all that is good. We are making progress, but we are not yet where we need to be.

However, Shadowdark also begins with a more humanistic and ordinary world. We can't enter an altered state of heightened perception if we start out in that "101 fantasy races eating cupcakes in a town" mess of fantasy art we get in D&D 2024 these days, which looks more like a Target ad than it does D&D art. We must start with a more "our world" humanistic, grounded base to get that stark difference and experience that perception shift.

These people playing as anthropomorphic dragons or gentrified orcs will never experience a heightened reality because identity swapping dulls their experience and senses. You are so focused on your new self that you never see the outside or witness the stark differences between realities. If a human begins to change into a dragon, that is special. Who cares if you get to start as one and be the same as everyone else?

In GURPS, we have tools to help us journey towards true, authentic, pre-1989 weird fantasy thinking. One of the best is GURPS Cabal, designed for more conspiracy-minded campaigns and urban mysteries. But trying to imagine all these strange planes and dimensions intermixing with a medieval world where they don't even know science yet...

They can't even explain combustion or bacteria. How will they understand a strange point in space where two dimensions cross and the rules of how the world works are entirely different in one or more ways? What happens when a figment of a reality comes close to our own and only affects one aspect of mental perception? There could be a place where you try to write in your native language, and all that comes out is strange alien gibberish.

This place will never be explained, and you will never tell the characters the real reason why. They may never figure out the worlds they inhabit. We have enough trouble in this world trying to figure out the unexplained. Imagine a world of myth, trying to make sense of it all.

Of course, players forget history in modern gaming, and fantasy worlds are just Ren Faire-dressed modern worlds. Of course, these worlds have scientific knowledge because ...magic! GURPS players know about and respect Tech Level, so you will find a player base here with a more profound understanding of history and the progression of technology.

Another great resource is GURPS Powers: The Weird, which initially explores the concept of weird science. However, the later chapters touch on topics discussed in the Cabal book and delve into this genre's power types and sources. You get some great power ideas that places, people, or monsters could have, such as illusions that can heal or harm, scale adjustment, and other strange, mind-altering ones that break your perceptions of reality.

Mix all this with GURPS Fantasy (or Dungeon Fantasy), and try introducing "the weird" into a game world. Don't make "everyday magic" a part of the world; keep wizards and other casters mysterious and rare. Magic is not understood, accepted, or a technology metaphor. It is not used in everyday life by everyone. Magic can be feared as "something that steals your soul" - even if you rely on it for convenience. Wizards must keep their work secret for fear that someone may stab them in the back for being a devil worshipper.

Then, introduce the weird.

Make the population fearful. Make the strange happening truly strange and not reproducible by "simple magic." Something else is going on here. You will begin to experience the reality warping sensation of seeing characters deal with something they can't explain, and their players can't either. What do you do next if you can't explain it, dispel it, understand it with divination, go into a dungeon and turn it off, or wish it away? D&D assumes you have perfect knowledge and control of your world, and that everything on the spell and power lists will be able to solve every problem in the universe.

This is how it was with AD&D for us, of which the excellent Adventures Dark and Deep is my stepping stone. When we entered that dungeon as characters, we felt like we were stepping out of this dimension and into another. There was a transcendental experience that was more than playing a video game or running a simulation. The dungeon door was the portal to another universe. Today, the above game carries on that mantle.

GURPS was created in that era. When we played GURPS, we stepped out of this world and into another on a different path, but it was there. This was when we stepped into another world entirely, created using the alchemical parameters of the game, and felt like we were somewhere else. While in AD&D, the dungeon served as a metaphor for moving into another reality, in GURPS, entering a world nobody had ever seen before was referred to as a "dimension shift."

GURPS is the more mind-expanding game, and it doesn't need the dungeon metaphor for the shift.

But you still need to build the grounding metaphors, establish the parts of the everyday world to relate to, and then contrast the differences between the world we perceive and the one we cannot.

GURPS: Everquest

EverQuest is one of those games that is more of a setting than it is a game. The MMO has been going on decades, and the definition of "what a class is" and "what classes have what powers" is a subject really only for the hardcore players, and even then, the endgames is where the action is at, and the numbers are so high damages are in the billions these days.

It is an easy setting for a game like Dungeon Fantasy to simulate, and you can get away with all of the standard Dungeon Fantasy templates as the standard EverQuest classes. Not many will really notice, and to most, a fighter is a fighter in this sort of setting, and the setting is why they are playing. This is almost the opposite of D&D, where people will play more for the classes than the setting, but here, you give me a Dungeon Fantasy wizard, and yeah, that could be an EverQuest wizard easily with very little suspension of disbelief.

The only notable must-haves for this world is Dungeon Fantasy 3 (The Next Level) for shadow elves and other backgrounds you may wish to reskin, and there is also the unholy warrior here for a nice shadow-knight template. Dungeon Fantasy 9 (Summoners) is good for beast-lords  and necromancers. To be fair, these are more "advanced classes" for a game like this, and you can add these in later as needed.

Playing in the classic EverQuest setting is the huge appeal here. There is also an alternate timeline for EverQuest II, and all that really changes is the map and current events. They are both pretty much well interchangeable except for the story and the places you can go.

Monsters are pretty well much standard fantasy monsters, and there are fewer than most OSR games when you start. A lot of these will be goblins, orcs, gnolls, skeletons, giant rats, fire beetles, spiders, and your typical MMO creatures. If you want to simulate the special dungeons you will need a strategy guide with maps and monster lists.

Plenty of online resources exist for EverQuest.

You can "wing it" pretty easily in a world like this, and inventing new dungeons in this world will be pretty simple, as you can just say there are forts, caves, villages, evil temples, and other places not in the main game that are in your world. If you are trying to do a "Guk-like" dungeon, just makes it a twisting maze of hexes with evil frogs, trolls, and other swamp beasts living in there. No one is going to call you out for things not being perfect, they will be happy to play in the setting and not worry about the specifics.

Close enough in Everquest is just fine as long as you get the major cities, locations, and places correct. You can play a "softer lore" setting and include other fantastical races not normally playable, like the Minotaur-like Tizmaks, or the otter-like Othomirs, and be just fine, too. Again, it really does not matter much how closely you play the lore to the game, the game as it is today is very little concerned about lore outside of the RP communities.

You can run an entire campaign out of one of the major cities and be just fine, with limited visits to other locations. Your players, their experiences with the game, and their interests will drive where you need to focus on. There will be factions, conflicts, and races that will play the starring role here, and there are some great ones. The dark elven city of Neriak, the good city of Qeynos, and the evil Freeport are all amazing locations, and they don't really have to be "lore accurate" in terms of maps and locations. If you get the flavor and feeling right, that will be great for most players. These locations have changed over the years, and even during each game's lifetime, and there is also the limited part of the city each game can simulate - so you are free to expand and make up as much as you like about these places.

If you ever played these games, the maps are pretty primitive, so anything you imagine will definitely be an improvement. EverQuest 2 has a few more "interesting points of interest" so you may run into those expectations, but for the most part you will be fine, or the players can help you with lore. Most hardcore fans will be thrilled to play in this setting, and will be more than willing to help out fill in the details.

These games are also free-to-play, so if you needed to log in and see a place, it is certainly possible.

The normal Dungeon Fantasy magic items are also "good enough" for this setting, and you don't need a complete magic item list for the game out of a strategy guide, unless you really want to, or have a favorite item you want your character to get their hands on. Dungeon Fantasy (Magic Items) is a good resource to have here, and you can do some fun items, like making musical instruments as "casting items" (or bonus items), and you can outdo the original game pretty easily. Dungeon Fantasy 8 (Treasure Tables) is also an excellent resource for creating treasures and magic items.

I like this conversion since there isn't that much pressure to "rebuild the MMO" in the GURPS rules. Bog-standard fantasy will cover most of the pieces you need, and you really only need a few flavor locations, gods, and foes to get the feeling right. The games have progressed decades of expansions, and it would be impossible to recreate everything exactly how it exists in the game.

This feels different than kitchen-sink fantasy or B/X conversions since there are more current expectations there that you have a near-complete set of conversions of monsters, magic items, and the standard tropes. We have a feeling that we need to be "much closer to the rules" with B/X conversions to GURPS than does a setting like EverQuest, where in all honesty, if it played and sounded like an "EverQuest the streaming TV show" it would be more than fine in most player's eyes.

This feels more like a novel of TV show conversion than a "game into another game" conversion, which makes the work a lot easier, and sets the expectations bar pretty low. The "realistic feeling" of GURPS will also be a plus here, and put a more realistic lens on the setting than a typical d20 or 5E game, and yes, there was a D&D 3.5E game for this world. 

GURPS will do the setting far more justice and give us some hardcore "grind and simulation" which is what the original game was all about back in the day. I don't want 3.5E "bags of hit points" for this setting. I want realism and drama, and that movie-like feeling that GURPS does so well.

Settings: Pulp Gangsters, Noir, Adventure

The original Gangbusters game was one of our favorites growing up, and we always had a soft spot for the tough-talking, two-fisted, pulp era. These days, the shine has worn off this genre, and it is hard to find anyone interested in pulp and gangster adventures in the era outside of a few old-school and nostalgia groups.

I have always felt the pulp era is the closest you can get to a "fantasy" genre in the modern era since many fantasy genre conventions are here, with some of the best modern additions and features.

These days, the excellent B/X Gangbusters has picked up the torch for this gaming genre, and there is always Savage Worlds in the pulp genre. But for the gangsters, Prohibition-era, tough-talking, rise-and-fall gaming, you need to go to B/X Gangbusters to get the focused package.

Either of the Gangbusters books (original or B/X) is an excellent resource for GURPS and helps "set the tone" of the game you want to play.

It's worth noting the unique era shift in Call of Cthulhu, which has redefined the 'gangsters' genre with its eldritch horror vibe. In this game, you will find many excellent resources for playing in this era.

With the Basic Roleplaying game, you can easily do a gangster game in the same system and leverage the 1920s material in CoC. You need to eliminate the monsters and horror elements, and for such an iconic game, that may be hard to do with player expectations. The players will look around for evil fish monsters in the swamp when they should be looking for bootleggers.

GURPS has one of the best genre books of the period: GURPS: Cliffhangers (a 3E book), which has an excellent history and overview of the era for any 1920s and 1930s game.

One of the genre's weaknesses is its heavy combat focus, and this is endemic to the early 1980s games, which were "bam-pow" sort of tabletop combat games. The original game sometimes felt like a "gangster miniatures wargame," and the adventures existed to "have combat." There was a late shift in the original Gangbusters game towards Noir private-investigator mysteries, especially in the adventure modules. With a combat system as deadly as GURPS and a lack of body armor and defenses, any modern gangster game will be lethal, and characters will tend to be shorter-lived without pulp conventions.

Before beginning a campaign based on nostalgia, it helps to ask, "What does GURPS bring to the table?" GURPS will quickly drill down and do a heavy simulation of any genre, and that "immersion thing" will kick in. This requires you to "ask a few questions" about your character before you begin the game. In 5E, you don't usually need to ask these; just pick a class, race, background, or culture option and go. Motivation comes later; just give me a dungeon.

In a pulp or modern game, you must set goals and create a character directed towards them. Want to be a gang boss like Al Capone? What advantages will help? Powerful allies in government and people you can bribe for favors? Luck? Some inside knowledge? Contacts? An alternate identity? Cultural familiarity with an immigrant group? Legal immunity? Patrons? Go through the GURPS advantages lists and zero in on the social advantages. You will find so many useful ones once you creatively apply them to give you various friends, favors, and immunities in various areas.

As a referee, you must define families, other crime bosses, minor rackets, and other nefarious groups that work in the underworld. I have had a few Gangbusters games fall flat because the game started with nothing and went nowhere besides a "do crimes" simulator. To capture the era, you need a story of families, immigrants, struggles, and the world rapidly changing from farms to industry - and all the small, street-level stories around that struggle.

Movies from that era were also great inspirations for the look, speech, conflicts, and world. Creating a game around them is much easier if you are a fan of these films. If you focus on a story that is not crime-related, things get even better. Let's say your "crime boss wannabe" is looking for a sister he was separated from when they emigrated. That story runs through the "rise to infamy" - then you have a deeper motivation for the character than just a "do crimes" story that can get repetitive and boring.

Do not create a character whose motivation is to "play the game" and "stick to the genre" - you will get bored. This is 95% of 5E characters, and that is why that game now needs to include "random background tables" for character motivation, like "your mentor wronged you and took what you love."

In dungeon adventure games, the motivation "I am an adventurer" is just as boring as the motivation "I am a gangster" in a Noir or mafia game. This is the same for private detectives, G-Men, explorers, bank robbers, reporters, or other characters.

You are not what you do.

You are not your job.

Your motivation is not "my class and race."

Your secondary and tertiary stories will be more important than what you do. Your character will be driven by the story that has nothing to do with their occupation. What you remember about the campaign will be this story, not the genre conventions.

Let's say our gangster has a grandma he cares for in an elderly home, and he needs money for her treatments. Now, he is looking for his sister, and he has someone he needs a significant source of income to care for. His story will be how he gets that and the consequences of that life for him and everyone he loves.

Suddenly, "being a generic gangster who plays wargame battles" fades into the background.

Now, this character has motivation.

This is also one of the most important differences between GURPS and other games. In GURPS, the rules and the genre conventions are not your motivation. The rules are just there to provide a task and conflict resolution system. In 5E, that constant video-game-like chase of power is the primary motivation for many players. This is why the game is popular; you can play the 5E with zero in-character motivation and "go up the level chart." 5E is a pen-and-paper ARPG.

With GURPS, you ignore the rules. This is why some people dislike the system; there is very little "rules motivation." GURPS excels in "designing story into characters" with the advantage and disadvantage system. So, if you start with a story and you bake those into your character designs, you will have a better game.

But you need to have stories that matter to the world.

You also need a referee who creates a layered and detailed enough world or lets players create things in it they can link themselves to. Players creating people, places, and things they want in their story helps players "buy-in," and it saves the referee a little work.

But I will take these story points (grandma, sister, love interest, and a few others) as advantages or disadvantages and find a way to work that into the game. These story points will be "baked in" to my character. This is the best part of GURPS that many other games ignore or miss.

My character will have built-in motivations.

And it won't be "gangster" or "dungeon crawler."

My Characters are Mine

I once ran a survival hex-crawl game with Pathfinder 1e. This was in the Aquilae setting, but it could have been any Norse-like setting, such as Northlands Saga (Frog God), Nordlond (Gaming Ballistic), or even Orbaal (Harnworld). The 5E setting of Svilland (DRS Publishing) would have worked well, too.

The scenario was waking up on a frozen rocky coast, like surviving a shipwreck and going inland to find a town. This was like starting Skyrim in the northern snow areas and installing one of those survival mods that does not let you walk 50 feet without freezing to death. Playing a Pathfinder cleric in this type of scenario is like cheating since low-level cleric spells can give you warmth and protection from the cold, but those only last so long, and you need to stop to make shelter and rest.

She fought a few giant crabs and wolves and dodged a few bugbear patrols. It was a thrilling game, but it fell short in terms of the survival game. The skills the game used to survive and navigate the wilderness, build shelter, understand weather and temperature, and find civilization were lacking. She stumbled upon ancient ruins without history and lore skills; it was a hollow discovery. She had more pressing problems, but like any D&D character, she felt pigeonholed into the role of the 'party healer.'

When she found a town, the game ended.

Since then, I've been searching for game systems that would allow me to recreate this game in a new light. This was before the birth of this blog and GURPS, of course. I experimented with D&D 5E, but she emerged even more 'dungeon stupid' than my Pathfinder 1e character. She seemed to exist solely to vanquish foes and take short rests. My 'spear and shield' build for her was non-existent in some games, and she was back to the B/X mace and shield build. The search continues for a game system supporting survival and exploration gameplay.

I know! This was all before this blog, and GURPS, we will get there.

I know this character. In her original life (way back in the day), she was a priestess who traveled between a town and far-off farms, fishing villages, forts, and mines in remote areas. She had to travel and survive in the winter and, in a pinch, live off the land. She had to know her religious skills to perform weddings, burials, and blessings for those in the area. She needed to be able to ride, navigate terrible trails and roads, and build a camp. She can fight and defend herself, shield, bash, and toss a spear. I wanted her to have a backup hammer as a weapon. She is a combination survival expert and priestess, which 5E does not allow you to do unless you are a multiclass ranger-cleric.

Knowing who they are is the first step to building a great GURPS character. Once you have their occupation and story, you can create that. This is the opposite of D&D, where you choose race and class first, and those things define you. These days, they are adding more choices like "heritage" and "background," which are equally and painfully too generic and broad.

Nomadic Cleric from the Human Priesthood may describe her in games like Tales of the Valiant or Level Up A5E (or even Cypher), but those four choices do not come close at all to the short story I created for her earlier. It is like picking cards, A+B+C+D, and saying that equals my detailed story. It comes nothing close.

A+B+C+D is just four mix-and-match picks for a board game.

My little story describes a realistic person, like one you would see in fiction. There are skills in my story she needs to be good at to tell that story well.

5E (and many other class-based games) fall harder in character design's "allowed class skills" part. Most of her skills (survival, travel, tracking, navigation) fall outside the "cleric class," she can't buy or improve them all that well. Sorry, but your story needs to fit the game! Sorry, I will put your game on the shelf, and find one that works. My most recent attempt was with Tales of the Valiant, and I was not happy with the results there, either.

She was a ToV cleric, not the one in my story.

One of my projects now is to rebuild her in GURPS.

Now, in GURPS, you need to understand how character designs evolve. You go through "versions" of a character until you find the one that works for you and fits your story. Right now, she is a bit physically fit, and her skills could be better - especially for ceremonies and religion. I made a few changes, knocking off a point of DX and IQ for 40 character points, which let me fill out her religious training a bit more to my liking.

Sometimes, I will design a character for weeks, picking things, testing, tweaking, and thinking about them. One character can be a hobby, especially tweaking weights and load-outs.

What is the use of trekking 40 miles through inhospitable terrain to teach Norse Sunday school to a fishing village's children if you only put one point in theology and teaching? She sucked at her job and could just "kill things well," which is the D&D curse. In this case, those extra skill points mean she can do something when she gets there rather than embarrass herself in front of the village when the local Town Grandma knows more.

That one less point of IQ and DX will hurt her, but that 40 points of skills will turn her into something more than a dumb adventurer with cleric powers. The way she was? She would be assigned as a healer for soldiers on combat missions. The way she is now? She is a starting but skillful cleric who can fight but knows her job well enough that people respect her. I want the IQ point back ASAP, but that comes later.

Part of a great character design is "hurting for something," and she fits the bill in a few areas. I want that IQ point back! Give me 20 character points! Well, earn them.

As a referee, if she makes those skill rolls, she discovers the evil spirit making the cattle sick (occultism and exorcism skill rolls), teaches Sunday School, blesses the new soldiers, and does a few weddings - guess what? I am going to rule she gets free room and board free meals, and she may get an escort of soldiers to take on a mission involving battle. The local Jarl will offer her any information she needs to solve the regional problems she encounters. She will be respected and may even get free armor and weapon repair. Successful skill rolls in tasks D&D players would say, "So what, where is the dungeon?" give huge intangible rewards and favors in GURPS.

This is how I referee GURPS.

Skill rolls mean something, and the world comes alive. The world is not just "combat and killing," but that is there too for story and danger. There are a lot of problems she can solve in the area. They require her skills and knowledge. Some of them require advanced levels of skill. D&D treats skills as unlocks for reading adventure text, such as, "Roll DC 20 to know..." I use skills to change the story, situation, NPCs, and world. And the players are free to make up new things they want to do.

Compared to D&D's railroaded "preprogrammed adventures," this feels like "putting yourself in the world."

Another troubling part of D&D adventures is "if it ain't combat, it isn't fun." Healing those sick cattle from the evil spirit? A combat encounter. Teaching Sunday School? Another combat encounter shoved in somehow. Many D&D adventures assume players are so bored they need constant stimulation and fighting.

The evil spirit in my game? It may take a series of lore, history, and skill rolls to understand what it is and how to attack it. It may follow her and make bad things happen as warnings and omens. It could be like a mini-horror scenario. It could end in combat, or it could end another way, with a banishment ceremony, or it could end peacefully.

She will also want to improve those skills as the game goes on to dive deeper into the mysteries she finds. Ancient knowledge and facts will have hefty penalties for those skill rolls, so she had better be prepared. A critical success at performing a wedding may mean a new ally is gained, or that union will be destined to create a future hero.

These dice rolls have meaning and can change the world.

The more significant point here is that my characters are mine. They are a result of my stories and ideas about who someone is. They are not made out of picks in a game or defined only by a race and class combo. The game designers gave me the tools to turn a story into a fully fleshed-out character.

Also, note how my first character for that first Pathfinder 1e scenario was "just made for combat and casting" and how my GURPS character turned into a story; who could go to an area and tell the story of that place and its people? She went from a simple D&D 3.5 playing piece to a part of a novel pretty quick when GURPS entered the discussion.

It is because she is my character, and I own her idea and can express it—not some game designer's idea of my character, and my expression is limited by "5E game designer choices."

There really is no comparison.

My characters are mine.

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.

Campaign Planning Form

The assumption that "every world must be accessible" hurts GURPS. The core book, Campaigns, has a chapter on an Infinite Worlds campaign that tries to tie everything together. Still, this chapter establishes a "multiverse reality" that confuses many players, as if everything has to be in everything.

In turn, I find myself putting everything in there when creating campaign worlds because why not?

And I never start them since I am discouraged and unhappy.

I was working on a GURPS Pathfinder game, and the source material felt overwhelming. What do I include? Where do I start? How do I narrow this down? Conversion becomes a thought experiment that eventually becomes a source of disappointment and a negative experience.

Incredibly confusing is "leveled content," such as an adventure module for a party of five between levels 4 and 7. Even if those numbers were correct, which in D&D varies widely, different classes are far more potent at certain levels than others. Even if you say 25 CP = 1 D&D level, what do you do when you enter the module? Are the 250-point Dungeon Fantasy starters at level 10?

A 25-point goblin could take down a 250-point character with one lucky hit. GURPS's balance is far flatter than any version of D&D, which is good. When you convert a module, use the suggested level to set the rough "point limit" and then use it as a narrative flow for encounters and challenges - don't try to convert every number and monster over to GURPS; estimate and capture the flow. Many of the ratings in D&D-style games mean very little, and the "leveled nature" of the game creates many problems.

I am much happier when I limit the options, focus, and scope of a campaign world before I even start and set those parameters up before play. We have a tool for that, the Campaign Planning Form.

This form (found here) needs more love and attention, and I rarely see it mentioned. If I converted a module from any OSR or D&D game, I would use this sheet to lay out the game's parameters. I would also forget about any "setting" the module was supposedly set in and just assume the GURPS campaign is only the module, and that is it for scope.

Are you trying to run a GURPS or Dungeon Fantasy campaign for Keep on the Borderlands? Then forget about the setting, Mystara, and focus only on the module as the campaign. Pay close attention to the campaign planning form's sections on valuable and useless character types and appropriate and inappropriate professions. If you want to play this more as a band of sneaky thieves than kick-in-the-door barbarians, the sheet can help get everyone on the same page.

You can add other notes on this sheet, like stating whether the equipment and price list are from Dungeon Fantasy or you are using it in a game like Basic Fantasy. Will the monsters be taken from GURPS sources or converted from Basic Fantasy? Are some sources more for inspiration? Are some of the adventures you will be playing? Are there some informational resources? List them all on the sheet with notes.

Will magic items be converted from an OSR source or pulled from an official book like Dungeon Fantasy: Magic Items? There can be a lot of sourcebooks and resources in a converted campaign, and using a sheet like this to list and categorize them can help keep your game from drifting off in scope and pulling in resources you never really intended to be brought into the game.

If we circle back to GURPS: Pathfinder, that setting goes the entire range of tech levels once you throw the lands of super-science ruins (Numenera) into the world. Androids walk around here. Some things I just don't want to handle in a Pathfinder world. I like the fantasy setting, and the S3 Barrier Peaks-style adventure feels better suited for a more focused science-fantasy setting, like a Gamma World. If I were doing the science-fantasy Iron Gods adventure path in Numenera, I would limit the campaign and scope to that. You may even set a base tech level for different areas, shops, and NPC factions.

The most significant hurdle to playing GURPS is narrowing it down. Use the Campaign Planning Form to collect your ideas, inspirations, and resources and distill them into a plan for your game that will help you focus the idea you are trying to express and focus it like a laser onto the story you and your group are trying to tell.

GURPS -Anything

I have nothing but respect for people who can run a "GURPS-anything" campaign for years in a setting that uses another set of rules. This is especially hard for settings like Greyhawk or the Realms with established published adventures that, in all worlds, should just convert over?

I know the first thing that happens is "s*** gets real."

I love that feeling; the world goes from a simple game system where everything is abstracted to a level of detail that blows your mind. It feels like having poor vision, wearing glasses, and seeing the world in high detail for the first time. People reported this when they went from Traveller to GURPS Traveller; suddenly, they said they "felt like they lived there" and "it feels like I am in the world and living it for real."

It feels like putting on a VR headset and being immersed in the world.

This is "The GURPS Effect."

It is a powerful thing since all of a sudden you realize what was before limited to four classes - fighter, mage, thief, and cleric and everyone being cut from the same cookie cutter to having a million professions with hundreds of skills and nobody is the same anymore. Entirely new adventuring professions have opened up, like the royal cartographer, and they can actually sell the maps they make (with their adventures and skill rolls) for a profit.

This happens to so many classes as those skills are combined with professions. You get specialty clerics, like an exorcist, that a B/X cleric is like, "cast a spell and done" - to a skilled professional with a deep set of skills to analyze a demonic possession, figure out the exact demon they are dealing with, and having many spells to encircle the affected area, isolate those possessed, and drive them out all one by one while adventuring companions fight off the evil creatures trying to stop the cleansing.

The GURPS character, with dozens of skills and spells, feels much more capable than the 5E cleric, who is armed with a single spell slot for exorcism, a smite cantrip, and a passive perception.

The GURPS Effect applies to characters, NPCs, the world, and the entire fabric of reality.

And you can mix and match skills and get infinite combinations where a "holy cartographer of the realms of Hell" becomes a viable profession. They gate in, establish a base camp, and have a combat mission to map a piece of the planes of Hell for the church. And then escape as the demons figure out what you are up to and mount an assault on your camp.

Why?

Why not?

I love the idea and hear people have done this - but I have yet to try. Mainly because much of the source material steers you in the wrong direction; all of it was written for a limited set of "world physics" controlled by "the game it was written for."

I have never been able to make this work, but I should try since people are happy with their conversions and the games run a long time.

Let's head over to B2, Keep on the Borderlands, and go into one of the first rooms, key A6 to be exact, and get hit by 40 kobolds in a 50' by 40' room. Some of these modules had little clue what they were doing. I played this once in a modern Pathfinder 1e game, and the outside hallway became a slaughter as the kobolds charged and were cut down in hails of gunfire wave after wave. Halfway through, they failed morale.

I felt terrible for them.

Many "new fantasy" games assume steampunk tech, so you will have guns and explosives. This playthrough was not that far off the mark for the new games. Get two or three gunslingers in a party, an alchemist with bombs, and the result is the same with "rapid reload tech" or magic allowing high rates of fire "for the fun of the game." There are parts of this module that feel less like a classic adventure and more like the setup of a mass casualty event.

Even if you assume a B/X party in here and the kobolds can fight 2 or 3 on a front rank, we are talking about a 3-4 hour fight and the same sort of slaughter. 5E would throw a blue screen of death trying to run this battle, and a game like GURPS - if you played this by the book, would take days.

Unless you have fireballs or a bunch of hand grenades, which in B/X is what this room is made to do - burn a fireball, sleep, or other AoE spell slot.

Pair a dwarven architect who knows his underground construction, a mage specializing in detecting the types of magic, and a seer who knows a lot about this ancient lich. This crusty halfling tomb robber knows every trap ever made, and a holy paladin specializing in destroying undead, and the Tomb of Horrors becomes a slow slog of tearing the dungeon apart like an Egyptian tomb excavation taking months.

The death rate would be far less since this team knows their stuff.

Tomb of Horrors is deadly because it relies on throwing characters without the skills to deal with a highly specialized and technical situation into one. I am a fighter! What do you want me to do? I know nothing but how to kill something and stand behind a shield.

Yes, Tomb of Horrors is deadly because AD&D characters are unprepared and stupid in these situations, not because of the players but because of the game. 5E does this with passive skills, turning off player brains and forcing the referee to "read the text box" if they have X higher than Y.

In the original module, it all fell on the player's brain and ability to pay attention. The rules did not help you because they couldn't. In GURPS, I can design a character to completely own an aspect of a skill set needed in this adventure.

You get that seer in there, and he sees a mock-up of a holy temple, his warning bells will go off. If a fake copy of the lich shows up, he will know it isn't real. He will know the riddles and mosaics, who made them and could go outside the dungeon, find a library, and research further - possibly finding a few more experts in areas.

That and none of these dungeons are on hexes.

If I made a "total conversion" world, all the dungeons would be on hexes. Get bent on 60-degree angles, old-school holes in the ground.

But I would like to try this, and I get the feeling tossing out modules and making my own "places of danger" that fit the world better would be ideal. There is something about seeing B2 and getting overwhelmed with all that needs to be converted that just makes me quit before I start. The secret is, I don't need the module, and just one cave with kobolds and a story behind why they are there and what is happening would play much better.

Use the module as an inspiration; there are tons of places in here, like the owlbear cave and the goblin tunnels, the evil temple, and the orc fort, that could be "torn off" and used as smaller adventure sites (with hex maps) that would play and feel grounded in a larger world.

Instead of B2 being this massive mess of a conversion nightmare, tearing parts of it off could populate an entire valley with fun adventure zones, and each one could feel like it belongs in its area.

Even in 5E, that is a good strategy, more minor, site-based encounters, and less of these mega dungeons.