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If you're converting a different Fantasy game to GURPS, you will need Dungeon Fantasy 1: Adventurers and Dungeon Fantasy 7: Clerics to retain the Magic User/Cleric/Druid distinctions and flavor.
You need not convert all the powers or spells from the old game because you're playing GURPS now; so play GURPS!
Play it in the other setting, but play GURPS.
Because I'm a gamer and because I have Amazon Prime, I get the animated productions from Critical Role.
The most recent outing, "The Mighty Nein," has messed with my suspension of disbelief with a musical number.
In a burlesque style strip club they played a speakeasy jazz number.
Nothing about the way it's been presented lead me to expect music or technology past the 13th century.
I sometimes wonder if most fantasy worlds can best be explained by the Aladdin theory that it's set after an apocalypse that dimly remembers the world before, but not very accurately.
It just hit me that Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is set in the same time frame as the English Civil War.
How about that?
Kinda cements the idea that adding some blackpowder guns doesn't wreck the fantasy world feel too much.
It also underscores how little you really need to do to make WFRP work under GURPS, if you're motivated and not easily distracted.
Which, I'm sorry to say, I am unmotivated and easily distracted.
In a nutshell, 95% is already done.
If you wanna preserve the distinction between mage and cleric, you need a couple of GURPS: Dungeon Fantasy supplements.
All that's left is a couple of the world specific races and I've been plugging away at them.
It's slow work because WFRP is not well grounded in reality and that means converting stats is an irritating slog.
The Dungeon Dudes are using the default game rules for their setting, which means you just buy the equipment off the table included in the Player's Handbook.
For a GURPS Fantasy setting you have to pick a tech level.
I've mentioned that much of the armor depicted in D&D is actually TL4 when most people think of TL3 when they're thinking Fantasy.
The easy way out is, "A wizard did it!"
Or, rather, the Elves and Dwarves did it.
Through different methodologies, they make the TL4 armor that most players expect, and the player will pay twice as much as listed for the privilege. Rather more, actually, since the armors that the Elves and Dwarves sell are typically decorated, and really should be fitted because of the pride of the makers.
They just don't make cheap, "mass produced" examples of their best types.
Interestingly, this should make the four times as expensive bronze plate armors cheaper than steel.
Still plunking around with the ideas of a realistic fantasy world with real gods.
For a big hunk of real world history religion is an organization.
Especially the medieval / pre-rennaissance TL3 European model most people think of as the default.
That'd mean your party's cleric would be sent by their employer, The Church.
In the, common, polytheistic religions of most fantasy settings; is it The Church or churches?
If it's The Church, does each god have, like, an office in the big temple or is it dozens of competing temples?
Something I kinda wanted to upset is the idea of racial gods.
Drawing from a Babylon 5 episode, "The Fall of Night," where everyone sees Kosh in their own race's image... An elf would see their deity as an elf, dwarves as a dwarf, etc.
I kinda like the one big church with sub-temples for each god.
Then I get to do a Cleric and cleric split where lower case clerics are specialized in a particular god and the upper case is beholden to the entire pantheon. A lot like single college magery.
Lots of social implications.
I've just watched the old film, Scaramouche.
It's outstanding and it's aged wonderfully.
I'm also edging to the idea of making my next Fantasy setting TL4.
There's absolutely nothing contraindicating such an "advanced" tech level in most of the AD&D stuff I have.
Really, the only setting I own that specifies a lower TL is GURPS: Banestorm.
Every single AD&D module and rule book I have hints at TL4 while not actually saying it. It's my preconceived notions about the look and feel getting in the way...
That might be because of my having just read Ivanhoe right before I discovered Tolkein...
The Lord of the Rings is TL3, with a TL3+2 for Numenorean stuff.
Clerics and Druids draw their power and spells from a different source than Mages, so it seems a little unfair that they have to spend the same fatigue points on them.
By way of example, an hour of hiking unencumbered uses a fatigue point. Many spells use three or four fatigue in a few seconds for a single casting.
Dungeon Fantasy 1, anticipating my post here, makes a large hunk of spells off-limits to Mages. This is not the first thing I noticed about the DF series that makes GURPS more like AD&D.
To think; I was trying to figure it out on my own.
It also occurs that DF is ALSO the conversion of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay for the game mechanics side. All I really need to do is make the racial templates, and I have a decent pack of them already.
The 250 point templates in Dungeon Fantasy baffle me a bit. The stats are VERY high and a couple of skills are way high, but they're very inefficiently made. I have a couple of characters for a fantasy setting at 150 that are better at the job, except for melee combat.
I'm less hack and slash than they are, I guess.
Some of the starting career classes in WFRP 1e might be 50 point characters in GURPS 4e! Lots of normies in that list.
IIRC there's not too many spells that are the same between the OG D&D classes.
You really need a cleric and a magic user to have all the spells you need.
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy clerics and druids use the same spell lists as mages, so a mage could have all the spells needed.
It's a flavor thing.
The big difference is clerical spells will work in zero mana if the sanctity of the location is high enough.
The character will be constructed differently too.
The rules as written don't forbid a mage from wearing armor; but I have applied a penalty to casting based on encumbrance before. I've also applied a penalty based on the amount of iron the mage is carrying.
The goal is to capture the feel of AD&D without rewriting the entire system.
I've even gone with social restrictions.
There's no fundamental reason for a mage to not wear armor, the Wizard's Guild and Warrior's Guilds have an agreement. If a mage is a member in good standing of BOTH guilds, then they can wear armor...
I need a skill list for the minimum entry level guild membership for that; but that's not new rules. That's world design!
I have gone through DF 1 (Adventurers) and DF 7 (Clerics) and I have a better grasp of how to proceed.
Knowing OG GURPS instead of just Powered By GURPS will allow me to scale the power levels back down from the 250 points of Dungeon Fantasy to my preferred 150 points.
I don't mind getting to epic levels, but I like to start gritty and grounded.
There really isn't anything there that I didn't already know, but it's presented slightly differently and the light came on.
I like that.
Turns out what I really needed to make the final connection was a suggested list of spells and how to buy them.
Clerical spells don't have prerequisites like mages. They have a minimum power investiture level. DF 1 has some listed by PI level for Clerics and Druids. DF 7 has more lists based on the sphere of influence of your deity.
I think I can do this now!
Just need players.
The Achilles heel of any gamemaster.
I posted here that clerics in AD&D are described as, "This class of character bears a certain resemblance to religious orders of knighthood of medieval times."
GURPS doesn't really have a clean and clear path to getting a warrior priest, but it does have mages and vows!
The Hospitalers and Templars don't really fit the mold well, so I thought to create a new order!
The Order of Knights of the Library of St. Jerome of Stridon.
Members of the order take vows. Vows to not use edged weapons. Vows to restrict their spell use to certain colleges in accordance to their religious dogma seems to fit. Basically to pare them down to the AD&D Cleric!
If I wanted to get a bit dirtier do the investiture and sanctity instead of magery and mana and let any religious mage take any spell just like a conventional mage just with different prerequisite advantages.
This has the advantage of being relatively simple and allows for different religions to have different restrictions on their warrior priests.
I think I even have a list of the vows for the Hospitalers and Templars from GURPS: Banestorm already so I have three flavors of Cleric already!
Huzzah!
I like simple solutions.
I think I might have come up with a similar solution for Druids with restricting them to Animal, Elemental and Plant colleges.
While contemplating the owlbear, griffons, hippogriffs, corviths and such other animal hybrids, it occurred to me that we don't see much of the human-animal hybrid...
We have some centauroids and satyr.
In a world where the Gods are provably real and physically present some of the time...
There's things you should not do, and don't get to do twice.
The Gods don't like people playing God and making centauroids is making people and making people is God work not talking monkey work.
Thus there's a place that used to be a wizard's tower where a wizard is being slowly and painfully killed for their transgressions against the Gods.
It might even be a place to pilgrimage to. Or a tourist trap.
No matter why people come to see, the important thing is to remember WHY the screaming in pain for decades dying wizard is being punished so.
Spread The Word. Tell your friends.
You don't want the Gods to ask themselves, "Were we being too subtle with the other guy?"
Your party is in a city and you decide to have a random encounter, so you consult the table on page 191 of the OG Dungeon Master's Guide and roll "Harlot."
That's all well and good, you think, but what KIND of harlot does the party encounter?
The table on the next page has you covered!
Harlot encounters can be with brazen strumpets or haughty courtesans, thus making it difficult for the party to distinguish each encounter for what it is. (In fact, the encounter could be with a dancer only prostituting herself as it pleases her, an elderly madam, or even a pimp.) In addition to the offering of the usual fare, the harlot is 30% likely to know valuable information, 15% likely to make something up in order to gain a reward, and 20% likely to be, or work with, a thief. You may find it useful to use the sub-table below to see which sort of harlot encounter takes place:
01-10 Slovenly trull11-25 Brazen strumpet26-35 Cheap trollop36-50 Typical streetwalker51-65 Saucy tart66-75 Wanton wench76-85 Expensive doxy
86-90 Haughty courtesan
91-92 Aged madam
93-94 Wealthy procuress
95-98 Sly pimp
99-00 Rich panderer
An expensive doxy will resemble a gentlewoman, a haughty courtesan a noblewoman, the other harlots might be mistaken for goodwives, and so forth.
There's a table for virtually any kind of encounter in the DMG...
The first 'S' word is Sex. As we know from Phil and Dixie, they avoided talking about it while trying to get to talk about it.
Slavery is the other word.
Slavery was common in the way back.
For some categories of slave, it wasn't even a bad deal. A Greek tutor was a good deal for a slave in Rome.
But medieval slaves are laborers, not skilled experts.
Despite the medieval trappings, most D&D campaigns don't have slaves.
I think it's from the generally egalitarian nature of the players.
Most of the fantasy games I've played didn't have slaves and didn't discriminate against women.
The one campaign were slaves were prominent had my character leading a revolution to end slavery. That's the only time it stood out.
OG AD&D has a couple mentions of slavery in the Dungeon Master's Guide. Admitting it exists is a pretty big deal.
The World of Greyhawk has slaves. It also has some powerful abolitionists.
AD&D 2e has an admission that slavery could exist, but only in the context of humans being weak and other races being strong.
The evil nations of Forgotten Realms have slaves and a slave trade.
AD&D 4e mentions there's enslavement and suggests a campaign where the players free slaves and end tyranny and mentions being an escaped slave as a character background.
AD&D 5e mentions slavery as a tool used by the villain in a villain's methods random table.
GURPS: Banestorm, being a world setting rather than a game, has a chapter on slavery as does the 3e book of the same setting GURPS: Fantasy. (4e's Fantasy is for making your own Fantasy world and it explains all the tropes and let's you DIY a world from them).
With all the mention of slavery in the rules, why didn't more of us have slaves in our games?
Again, I think it's just our American egalitarianism being applied to a social order that was decidedly NON-egalitarian in nature. Feudalism isn't, generally, compatible with how Americans see themselves.
All that romantic liberty, freedom and equality (distinct from the French "Liberté, 'egalité, fraternité) seeps into most everyone's game and makes an almost unconscious decision to not go historical feudalism with it's attendant tyrannies and rigid social order.
The players don't like it when you put such things into the game. They never take any social status that makes them noble and when the restrictions of being a commoner hit them, they get peeved.
Enforcing the sumptuary laws on them was good for a laugh. But they really get umpty when they get told they can't buy a common everyday weapon, like a sword.
That first came up when I played a Togugawa Japan campaign in GURPS. A commoner might own a wakazashi with a permit; but only Samurai could own and carry a katana. The VERY rigid social structures confused the players and they didn't work to understand them. Not that I understood them well, but I was working at it.
Japan is interesting here because, while the structure was rigid, it was possible to break through it and move up. Not common, but possible. Toyotomi Hideyoshi being an excellent example.
In Europe it was much harder to break out of your lane. At least until the plagues...
D&D is, normally, set in a myth parallel of medieval times.
Something that medieval times has is the rise of Christianity supplanting, or having supplanted the local polytheism.
Especially with the notes about Clerics mentioning the religious knight model, I wonder if I can get away with just having a single God.
When I remember that the difference between good and evil in AD&D is simply how selfish you are and not whether you're actually a bad person, both an evil and good cleric could be friends and worship at the same altar.
One thing that probably wouldn't happen in a world where God grants such overt power is the schism between Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which are, purportedly, the same deity.
Or would it? God choosing to only speak through His (Her?) priesthood and prophets would lead to human interpretation of Their Word.
On the plus side, a priest that strays too far from The Word will lose their powers.
On page 20 of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Player's Handbook is the following concerning Clerics: "This class of character bears a certain resemblance to religious orders of knighthood of medieval times."
That sounds a lot more like a Templar or a Hospitaller than a priest!
But we always played them as priests back when.
The Paladin was whom we played like a Templar or Hospitaller.
I am less and less certain we actually played AD&D and were just using a D&Desque home brew the whole time.
I'm in the process of getting the appropriate Energy Reserve, Power Investiture, and Pact calculated for Clerics and Druids.
Druids can select from Air, Animal, Earth, Fire, Plant and Water colleges. Still have to pay for each spell like a Mage would, but no prerequisites. Their sanctity level is based on how close to nature their surrounding are. I remembered I have GURPS: Celtic Myths and they have a much more detailed, and better, setup for Druid magic than what I was coming up with trying to make things fit. Different prerequisites and paths based on what wood is associated with the spells.
Clerics get to choose from Communication & Empathy, Food, Healing, Knowledge, Light & Darkness, Necromantic and Protection & Warding colleges. Their sanctity levels are based on how holy the area is to their chosen deity. The only place they would have no power is in the consecrated ground of a deity diametrically opposed to theirs. Don't stand on the alter of your god's enemies and expect your spells to work unless you do some serious desecration first!
Illusionists are simply one-college only mages using the Illusion & Creation college.
Yes, this means that a Mage can do everything that the other three kind of spellcasters can do.
But...
Clerics don't have material components to deal with. There will be a penalty for NOT using their holy symbol.
Druids don't need material components, but will get a boost if they use their holy plants as part of the evocation.
Something I'm changing from the main GURPS rules about spells is putting a price on material components rather than just assuming the Mage covered it and they're negligible. On the Appendix: Spell Table starting on Magic p. 223 there's a "prerequisite count". That number, squared, is the G$ cost of the materials needed to cast the spell, times the effect.
For example: Fireball has a prerequisite count of 4. So a 1d fireball would cost G$16 to cast in addition to the 1 FP. 2s is G$32 and 2 FP and so on. Force Dome is an area spell, so it's prerequisite count of 11 means G$121 for a 1 hex radius, G$242 for a 2 hex and so on.
It's coalescing.
Finally!
I'm close to getting generic Cleric and Druid stuff done for GURPS.
I keep finding that nearly all of the spells in AD&D have an exact counterpart in GURPS Magic.
That, quickly, gives a sense of what the spell list for each class should be in GURPS.
Much like the GURPS mage has more spells than his Magic User counterpart, so will Druids and Clerics.
Here's the sticky point of a GURPS conversion.
Druids can cast a certain number of spells per day, based on their level:
By level 14 they can cast quite a few, but at level 1 just two first level.
How to incorporate this with the GURPS rules?
Druid Level could be the level of Power Investiture.
One could simply say that the level of Power Investiture gets you the number of spells shown on the table and call it good.
That's a 100% translation.
But it feels a bit wrong.
I'm working on it. Hopefully this will get FuzzyGeff's tasty chess-club brain thinking on it before we talk.
Druid Spells
First Level
AD&D -- GURPS
Animal Friendship -- Beast Link (Animal)
Detect Magic -- Mage Sight (Knowledge)
Detect Snares & Pits -- See Secrets (Knowledge)
Entangle Tangle -- Growth (Plant)
Faerie Fire -- Phantom Flame (Fire or Illusion)
Invisibility to Animals -- Invisibility (Switchable +10%, Animals Only -20%) [36]
Locate Animals -- Beast Seeker (Animal)
Pass Without Trace -- False Tracks (Plant) or Hide Path (Plant) or Walk Through Plants (Plant)
Predict Weather -- Predict Weather (Air or Weather)
Purify Water -- Purify Water (Water)
Shillelagh --
Speak with Animals -- Beast Speech (Animal)
Second Level
AD&D -- GURPS
Barkskin -- Armor (Protection)
Charm Person or Mammal -- Charm (Mind Control) or (Animal) Control (Animal)
Create Water -- Create Water (Water)
Cure Light Wounds -- Minor Healing (Healing)
Feign Death -- Suspended Animation (Healing)
Fire Trap -- Link (Meta) on Explosive Fireball (Fire)
Heat Metal -- Heat (Fire)
Locate Plants -- Seek Plant (Plant)
Obscurement -- Fog (Water or Weather)
Produce Flame -- Burning Touch (Fire)
Trip -- Tanglefoot (Body)
Warp Wood -- Weaken (Making and Breaking)
Third Level
AD&D -- GURPS
Identify Plant Ability -- Identify Plant (Plant)
Identify Animal
Ability --
Identify Pure
Water Ability --
Leave No Trail
Power --
AD&D GURPS
Call Lightning -- Spark Storm (Air and Weather)
Cure Disease -- Cure Disease (Healing)
Hold Animal -- Master (Animal)
Neutralize Poison -- Instant Neutralize Poison (Healing)
Plant Growth -- Tangle Growth (Plant)
Protection From Fire -- Resist Fire (Fire)
Pyrotechnics -- Wall of Light (Light) or Smoke (Fire)
Snare --
Stone Shape -- Shape Earth (Earth)
Summon Insects --
Tree Plant -- Form (Plant)
Water Breathing -- Breathe Water (Air and Water)
Fourth Level
AD&D -- GURPS
Animal Summoning I -- Beast Summoning (Animal)
Call Woodland Beings --
Cure Serious Wounds -- Major Healing (Healing)
Dispel Magic -- Dispel Magic (Meta)
Hallucinatory Forest -- Phantom (Illusion) of a forest
Hold Plant -- Plant Control (Plant) or Walk Through Plants (Plant)
Plant Door -- Walk Through Wood (Plant)
Produce Fire -- Create Fire (Fire)
Protection from Lightning -- Resist Lightning (Air, Protection or Weather)
Repel Insects -- Repel (Vermin) (Animal)
Speak with Plants -- Plant Speech (Plant)
Fifth Level
AD&D -- GURPS
Animal Growth -- Enlarge Other (Body)
Animal Summoning II -- Beast Summoning (Animal)
Anti-Plant Shell -- Force Dome (Protection)
Commune With Nature -- Plant Sense (Plant)
Control Winds -- Wind (Weather)
Insect Plague --
Pass Plant -- Create Gate (Gate) and Teleport (Gate or Movement)
Sticks to Snakes -- Phantom (Illusion) of sticks turning into snakes
Transmute Rock to Mud -- Stone to Earth (Earth)
Wall of Fire -- Fire Cloud (Fire)
Sixth Level
AD&D -- GURPS
Animal Summoning III -- Beast Summoning (Animal)
Anti-Animal Shell -- Repel (Animal) (Animal)
Conjure Fire Elemental -- Summon (Fire) Elemental (Fire) and Control (Fire) Elemental (Fire)
Cure Critical Wounds -- Great Healing (Healing)
Feeblemind -- Foolishness (Mind) or Mindlessness (Mind)
Fire Seeds -- Rain of Fire (Fire)
Transport Via Plants -- Create Gate (Gate) and Teleport (Gate or Movement)
Turn Wood --
Wall of Thorns -- Tangle Growth (Plant)
Weather Summoning -- Wind (Air or Weather) or Storm (Air, Water or Weather)
Seventh Level
AD&D -- GURPS
Animate Rock -- Shape Earth (Earth)
Chariot of Sustarre -- Create Mount (Illusion)
Confusion -- Daze (Mind)
Conjure Earth Elemental -- Summon (Earth) Elemental (Earth) and Control (Earth) Elemental (Earth)
Control Weather -- Wind (Air or Weather) or Storm (Air, Water or Weather)
Creeping Doom --
Finger of Death -- Evisceration (Necromantic)
Fire Storm -- Rain of Fire (Fire)
Reincarnate --
Transmute Metal to Wood --
Speaking of AD&D conversion...
Which world?
The original goal is to run, in order...
T1 - The Village of HommletT2 - Nulb and the RuinsT3 - Dungeons of Elemental EvilT4 - Nodes of Elemental EvilA0 - Danger at Darkshelf QuarryA1 - Slave Pits of the UndercityA2 - Secret of the Slavers' StockadeA3 - Assault on the Aerie of the Slave LordsA4 - In the Dungeons of the Slave LordsG1 - Steading of the Hill Giant ChiefG2 - The Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant JarlG3 - Hall of the Fire Giant KingD1 - Descent Into the Depths of the EarthD2 - Shrine of the Kuo-ToaD3 - Vault of the DrowQ1 - Queen of the Demonweb Pits
Officially all of that happens in The World of Greyhawk.
Thanks to Drive Thru RPG, I have a copy of that, though I never did when I ran T1, G1 and G2 way back when.
Greyhawk has a list of Gods! My Cleric problem could be guided by the information there!
Happily, there's a lot of information online too.
I can work with this.
