Thursday, November 21, 2019

A1 in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy

I've posted before about using A1 Slave Pits of the Undercity in GURPS.

I've done it before.

But how would it be for GURPS DF?

Let's take a look.

Numbers

Numbers mean much more in GURPS than in AD&D. Being outnumbered 2:1 in a close-in melee in AD&D sucks. In GURPS, it's quite likely lethal. Fighting foes with cover, waiting in ambush, and being forced to come out of a tunnel/funnel into a large combat area is rough at best. In AD&D, it's just spice to the encounter. While DF adventurers are far tougher than the low-to-mid level AD&D guys suggested for the adventure, the foes equally have more options.

Overall I'd say it's a wash, with a slight edge toward more dangerous foes at numbers tough to deal with in GURPS.

Lethality

The enemies in this adventure are relatively low-powered for DF. They're numerous, see above, but they aren't terribly tough. Some of them can be, depending on how you stat up the Aspis, what spells you give the clerics, and so on. Setting the bosses up to at least 250 and more like 300-375 points might make them a better challenge for a medium-sized DF group. Still, it'll be critical hits and player mistakes that cost DFers in a way that they'd never cost AD&Ders.

Traps and Obstacles

The access to spells in GURPS on a routine basis means most of the obstacles are more pass/fail - if you have the right spells, you'll pass them easily, If not, you'll fail to pass them easily and need to do some thinking like the AD&Ders do.

Traps have the same situation. They're going to have much more potential lethality in GURPS but likely fail due to spells, armor, skills, and defenses. Player prep will have an amplified effect due to those.

Overall

A1 is a pretty good target for a DF conversion. Adding a real heavy-hitter monster or two might add to the challenge even if it takes away from the purity of the conversion. All in all, I've run it GURPS and it went well, so there is no reason it can't be run in GURPS DF despite the presence of stronger PCs in general.

5 comments:

  1. We played a GURPS Dungeon Fantasy conversion of A1 using 250 point converted characters from the module. It was quite deadly for a party of 4. I believe the their died 2x (they used the resurrection scroll) and the others *should have died* as well but I started to roll behind the screen more after the first pc death. I'd recommend cutting all the encounters in half. It was also a very slow slog. I think we took about 5 or 6 8hr sessions just to do the entire module.

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    Replies
    1. I'm not shocked . . . four characters, especially with one of them a thief, might really struggle with the sheer numbers of foes to be dealt with.

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    2. Wow, that really says something when the original in D&D was to be two 3 hour runs (6h total) and in GURPS it took five or six 8 hour runs (over 40h total)! Since the tournament is dominated by combat that suggests combats in GURPS take about 10x the time. I knew there were more options and rolls but I didn't think it was that heavy.

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    3. I'll note that bt never specified they used the stripped-down tournament version. Using the full module, you'd never get through it in close to the time listed . . . unless you happen to choose the path that leads right to the main bad guy and just win that fight. Otherwise, it's a slog.

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