Old-School GURPS

Following on from the enjoyment I’ve been experiencing re-visiting Old-School games, alongside the frustrations I feel around clunkiness in those games, I found myself doing something rather interesting this afternoon: I converted my two Basic Fantasy characters to GURPS Third Edition.

Why would I do that? Firstly, because GURPS gives me a unified mechanism for resolving any required die roll that the dungeon game throws up: roll 3d6 under or equal to the attribute or skill. Secondly, because GURPS is suitably simple and fast to play with. Lastly, because Third Edition really does feel a little more Old-School.

The task took about a half-hour from deciding to convert the characters to having two completed sheets, including all the decision-making about how to do it. In short, I decided to keep the characteristic rolls from the Basic Fantasy sheet (well, the four I needed) and then invoke the Random Character…