Great Video: GURPS, Don't Convert, Create!

https://mailanka.blogspot.com/2010/04/gurps-create-dont-convert.html

https://mailanka.blogspot.com/2016/01/psi-wars-dont-convert-create.html

This is one of those mornings where you realize the hundreds of dollars of setting books you bought are a complete and total waste. I kid; they are still good for inspiration, but the advice here is spot-on.

Do not waste your time converting. Instead, create!

The list of reasons is excellent, and one of the most obvious is that you will be able to share your creation and publish it if enough people love what you do. There is a future for your work that is greater for you and the thing you are creating.

For a while, I was checking out setting books for use with a few games that I have, and most of the time, it felt like a waste of time. The only one that really worked well was Savage Worlds with Primeval Thule. You know a setting and a rules system go great together when the "rules disappear," and the "setting feels perfect" for the conversion. Still, Thule is a knock-off of Conan meets Cthulhu, and even the latter elements feel weaker than they should be. Also, the "standard races" are shoehorned here to make this work with "your favorite fantasy RPG."

I would be better off mixing Conan with Cthulhu and making my own setting. I don't need all the standard fantasy backgrounds; most would be distractions. Part of the difficulty in using a setting like this is this process:

1. Have a fantastic idea for an adventure!
2. Endlessly flip through the setting book, trying to find a place it would fit.
3. Never find anywhere great, but maybe a few "okay" places.
4. Compromise and feel disappointed.
5. The above took a day of work, and your inspiration is gone.

If I wanted "Conan versus the village of fish people cultists," why didn't I do that myself? I swear I keep doing the above "foolish dance" each and every time with these campaign settings, and every time I start with a great idea that I am happy about and end up disappointed and never playing.

Why do I have to fit it into someone else's idea first? Do I need permission to use my creativity? What am I getting by using a published setting? Am I saving any time by being forced to do the "foolish dance" with each and every idea?

I could have just used my imagination and created a village of evil fish people cultists. The next step would be to grab my character sheet and begin playing.

But where in the world is this place? That is up to you. Make your own world and put it where you want it to be. Mostly it won't matter, but you may continue the idea, and then it does. But you enjoy the same freedom of extending your world and putting the place "next to this one" that you want, instead of being forced with a few terrible choices the setting guide forces you into.

Same with conversions. I wanted to do a GURPS: Star Frontiers game, but really, Star Frontiers has a lot of problems, and only a few of the parts of the game I really like. The races would be about it if I were given a choice of "what to keep." Then again, everyone owns generic sci-fi concepts: bug-alien, flying-monkey-alien, and blob-alien. And if I do my own thing, I can add sci-fi races to the game.

What don't I like about Star Frontiers? The setting was never developed and prevented me from telling specific stories I would like to tell. The spaceships and starship combat rules are "meh" stuck between Traveller and Star Fleet Battles, and the system doesn't work well on 1" hexes. Some of the technology is cool, but most are generic, and a bit stuck in the early 1980s. Parts of the game feel like they assume anti-gravity, and others do not.

Starfinder feels like a much more expansive and dynamic universe design by comparison.

If I take the parts I like and start over, I feel more inclined and excited to play. Let's say I wanted to go "hard science" with a sci-fi game, with an exploration ship that took years to get to one exemplary star system, with a crew in cryosleep, and there isn't really any going home easy. Games that assume "fast and east hyperspace travel" (you too, Starfinder), will break that design unless I GM fiat all over the place and take things away from the players.

Why take away?

Create something new without the parts you do not want.

This also dips into the curse of modern gaming, where the default assumption is that "every choice must be made available." You see this in 5E and also Pathfinder 2E. While it is nice to have choices, they lock you into one world, one style of play, and a small subset of campaign settings. Every fantasy world becomes the "Star Wars Cantina" of different cultures and backgrounds; the effect is choice paralysis and sensory overload.

I love you, Pathfinder 2E, with your hundreds of choices and combinations - but with a toolbox game like GURPS, I can have infinite possibilities and choose the few I want. With modern "mega choice" games, the hundreds of background and class options can shackle my creativity and force me into the "default set" of options; otherwise, players feel I am "taking parts of the game away from them."

Suppose I want a hard science game where the bug-men meet humans, and we explore how those two cultures meet, relate, and learn to live and work together. Why would I want a game that gives me 99 other background options, hyperspace, psionic powers, space empires, and 99% of the game and background information I would never use.

And then what happens inevitably is I feel I am "missing out" if I don't use it, and my fantastic "first contact" idea gets shelved because "more is better!"