I always wanted to move from D&D to GURPS, but the different system and lack of pre-made material always put me and the players off. Have you tried such transition, how did the players handle it, and was it feasible ?
[RPG] From D&D3.5 to GURPS
dnd-3.5egurps
Related Solutions
In terms of the GURPS part, assuming this is not for sale and just posted publicly on the Web, your use would be dictated by the Steve Jackson Games Online Policy. This allows you to make adventures and stuff but not things that require a restatement of the GURPS rules - so you'd want to be careful that your "fan book" doesn't do that.
In addition, the online policy warns you about the second problem -
Post GURPS rules for a book, movie or TV show?
Be careful here. Even if what you do is completely within these guidelines and does not infringe Steve Jackson Games, you're probably infringing the copyright of the creator of the book/movie/TV show. They have the right to decide what use gets made of their intellectual property, too. The better known the property, the more likely you are to get a letter from a lawyer. But even with something obscure, courtesy dictates that you get the permission of the creator first. Then, if you have any doubts about your use of OUR material, ask us.
Making a fan book for those video game properties is technically not legal (though they may have a fan use statement of their own that lets you). However, many netbooks exist out there in the wide world because of a mix of flying under the radar/no one caring.
Super Legal Answer:
I am not a lawyer, hire one to advise you! The most "correct" answer from the point of view of a cover-your-ass legalistic society. They'll just tell you not to do it, though. "Fun versus a minute amount of legal risk? What is this 'fun'? Don't do it or you may end up in PMITA federal prison. That'll be $500." Save the money and just don't do it if you're risk averse.
Semi Legal Answer:
Contact both SJG and the game IP owners asking for permission to do this. Of course, it'll be hard to actually contact anyone about those old games, and the routine answer is "no" for more of those CYA legal reasons above. Sadly most media companies haven't figured out yet that stuff like this just helps to increase the buzz around and value of their brands.
The Most Common Answer:
Do it, but be prepared to take it down if any of the parties involved demand you do. Some may. Carries marginal risk of a vengeful company trying to ruin your life even if you take it down, which best as I know has never happened over a free fan book.
First of all, I'm curious as to why the non-gp materials are included in the spell description at all if they are never going to be considered. Yes, it adds flavor, but since the material components are effectively ignored in play, the flavor is lost.
They're only ignored if you have a spell component pouch or the feat Eschew Materials, and the ability to hold and prepare the components when casting the spell. If you can't prepare the components (because your hands are tied behind your back), every spell with a material component is unavailable to you, even if Still Spell would let you cast it without the somatic component.
They're also not ignored when casting spells that have expensive components.
As for why? It's carried over from previous versions, which were based on Vancian magic. At some point they seem to have decided that it was too much work to deal with, and the spell component pouch was invented to make it simpler to play with while keeping the flavour.
Second of all, some of these mundane spell components seem hard/interesting to obtain. Opening to a random page in the PHB, I find Telepathic Bond, which requires:
Eggshells from two different types of creatures
Which seems possible to get, as long as the wizard is a little proactive, and provides a cool opportunity for roleplay.
Most of them are fairly straightforward to get, in an economy where Wizards have lots of gold and a need for those items. Since there is demand for eggshells from two different types of creatures, someone will create supply to fill it and get some of that sweet Wizard gold.
Thus, if you can get to a city (and 3.5 generally expects that you will at some point), you can restock everything a Wizard would normally have. If your campaign takes place entirely in the wild? Then it could be more of a thing, but the rest of the party might get bored if you spend a session where the Wizard is harvesting.
Third, it seems to be generally agreed that Wizard is the most powerful class in the game. Might requiring that the wizard actively seek out all spell components balance the class a little? Or at least the spells with material components? I mean, some spells have material components for a reason, right?
No. Unless your goal is to balance Wizards by annoying them into submission (see below), this won't work. It really won't work on Clerics and Druids (up there in power with Wizards), because very few Divine spells have material components that don't have significant cost (ie: ones they already have to track).
The Wizard's greatest ability is that she can do absolutely anything, given time to prepare. With time to prepare, a Wizard can gather any components necessary for the spells she's preparing to use.
Has anyone tried running a game in which material components were strictly tracked? How did it work out for you? If you haven't run a game like this, what are some reasons not to (if any)?
Yes, actually. I played in a game like this once. That's where my comment "annoying people into submission" comes from. It sucked.
What happened was every time I cast a spell, I had to open the book to figure out what component it used. Then I had to go find that component on my giant inventory list and remove one. Every time I got a new spell, I had to add new items to that list. Every time I went to town, I had to restock all those items up to some amount. The GM had to figure out if any of them had weight or cost, since the rulebook handwaves them all away with a spell component pouch normally.
It took what is already a complicated class with lots of things to track, and piled on a whole lot more things to track. As I had access to a city with lots of Wizards in it, actually getting components was largely never an issue. So it didn't really affect game balance at all (I was just as powerful as before). What it did was utterly destroy game flow by making my turns extra long to handle the bookkeeping, and taking extra time in town to do more bookkeeping.
It also caused everybody else to start putting pressure on me to take Eschew Materials to make the problem go away, but why should I have to burn a feat just to reduce bookkeeping at the table? That's trying to annoy a player into submission.
If someone tried to do that again in a game I was playing in, I'd play a Divine caster instead and only have a very small number to track. Obviously, I don't require it in my game. I do require components with cost to be tracked, as per the normal rules.
Best Answer
I switched to GURPS from AD&D 1st back in 1988 and it remained as my primary system since. GURPS works well as a fantasy roleplaying game. It has extensive character customization and a well designed realistic combat system with several levels of detail. For some this is a powerful appeal over the D&D style. Plus it toolkit nature means you can make a highly customized campaign setting that all hangs together ruleswise.
The trick of course is that SJ Games has chosen to focus on GURPS as a toolkit rather than offer ready made out of the box support. But it doesn't mean there is nothing.
First for character creation GURPS distills the myriad choices into what they call a template. This is a package of skills, advantages, disadvantages, and perks that reflect a role, or profession. For example a Mercenary Fighter, Low-life Burglar, Wizard, etc have templates in GURPS Fantasy.
First the GURPS Book.
For a Fantasy referee the following are useful
GURPS Magic - pretty needed unless you spend a lot of time with the core books to roll your own magic system
GURPS Fantasy - the toolkit Fantasy books combination of rules and advice.
GURPS Banestorm - Implements GURPS Fantasy for Yrth, SJ Games in-house setting. You can ignore the setting and just use the rules which comprises a fair amount of the book. It is a fairly typical Fantasy World beyond it's "twist".
GURPS Thaumatology - Give alternate magic rules and in addition options for GURPS Magic.
GURPS Martial Arts - It about ALL type of fighting both with weapons and hand to hand. It includes material on both western and eastern fighting styles including a few off-beat one not covered much.
Then on e23 there is the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy series. Which implements GURPS for a D&D style game of dungeon crawling. It pretty much pure rules but so far light on monsters. In paritcular I recommend Dungeon Fantasy 1 - Characters and Dungeon Fantasy 2 - Dungeons. As for the rest get what interests you. I have them all and there isn't a dud in the bunch but there are of varying usefulness.
With Dungeon Fantasy you have two styles of Fantasy you can readily play with GURPS without much work. The first is the somewhat realistic 125 pt level of Banestorm/Fantasy, the second is the more D&Dish 250 point level of Dungeon Fantasy. Given that it all GURPS elements of both lines are useful to each other.
There are two free supplements to get for GURPS. Natural Encyclopedia which is the closest thing to a monster manual GURPS has and Historical Folks which is a book of templates of historical occupations which is great for making up NPCs.
There is a lot you can get so for the Budget minded my recommendation is
GURPS Core, Magic, Banestorm, Dungeon Fantasy 1, Dungeon Fantasy 2, plus Historical Folks and Natural Encyclopedia.
Then later pick up Fantasy, Thaumatology, Martial Arts (if you want to go into that level of detail), and the remaining Dungeon Fantasy.
Finally there is GURPS Low Tech which is a technology equipment book from the Stone Age to the end of the Middle Ages. It will come out at the end of the year or very early 2011.
I ran my Majestic Wilderlands with GURPS from 1988 to date. I posted a couple of my campaign notes here if you want to see how GURPS can be adapted to a traditional AD&D style world.