"GURPS Fantasy" ~ Yrth: DnD translations?

[Akrasia]

Anyone remember GURPS's foray into fantasy? Fantasy GURPS?

It involved a pretty interesting world. What I liked about it was that it managed to combine all the standard fantasy tropes (nasty orcs, holy paladins, etc.) while maintaining a degree of adherence to "real" Earth Medieval traditions, cultures, and religions.

I liked the fact that, in Yrth, a paladin could be a Christian paladin, or a Muslim paladin (the main two religions), or a paladin from that crazy "pseudo-Asian" country up north (what was it called again? I remember it was described as the "Monty-Python-does-Korea-and-Japan-and-China" realm).

A great world. Not quite as great as the "Known World" (pre-1991). But pretty damn impressive nonetheless.

Anyone else like this world? :\

And anyone translate it into D&D?

 

[Bayushi Seikuro]

I really enjoyed GURPS Fantasy.

I liked that dark elves weren't black; it was a mindset. They were pure racists, who wanted to remove non-elves from the world. Except the epic-level spell went horribly wrong, and DREW people to the world... like the Templars, and Crusaders and Muslims... and orcs, etc.

But that's really about all I remember of it

 

[DMScott]

According to SJG's website, GURPS Fantasy for 4th edition is coming out next month, but won't include Yrth. Yrth gets its own book, GURPS Banestorm, sometime next year. Their upcoming releases page:

http://www.sjgames.com/newproducts/nrtext.html

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

If you want to use it with D&D, I'd recommend using the magic rules from Midnight. Personally, I prefer my Yrth religions ambiguous - standard D&D clerics don't really fit in there...

On the other hand, mages can learn healing spells in GURPS, which also fits in with the channeller spell lists. You might also use the "priest" class from Fading Suns d20, which makes being a priest primarily a social issue rather than a user of divine power - and yet is a class fully equal to the other core classes (FS d20 also has the "noble" class which works much better than the "aristocrat" class from D&D - yet another reason to buy this book!)

 

[The Goblin King]

I liked the fact that, in Yrth, a paladin could be a Christian paladin, or a Muslim paladin (the main two religions), or a paladin from that crazy "pseudo-Asian" country up north (what was it called again? I remember it was described as the "Monty-Python-does-Korea-and-Japan-and-China" realm).

It was called Sahud. I never liked Sahudese Fire Drill. That was the adventure which featured crazy-monty-python-asian-people. I would have portayed the culture as Alien but not Silly. The difficulty is that the eastern culture which would have been very strange to the characters is not suprising at all to us modern players.

 

[Achan hiArusa]

Didn't like Sahudnese Fire-Drill?

You got to be kidding! I ran it for my Forgotten Realms campaign and it was the greatest game I ever ran (next to my post-Kennedy assassination Vampire the Masquerade game). I used the Old Empires supplement for my 3.0 game and ran the Mourktar games adventure and one of my players won the princedom. His first major duty was to entertain the "Shou" (which I replaced with the Sahudnese) and then I ran this game. In addition the players had to face down a drow sorceress who had sworn to kill them in revenge for killing her brother earlier. The player who was a prince was sick and tired of the "nerf ninjas" and decided to face them in battle with the nerf weapons he had confiscated from them earlier. Much to his suprise he attacked a squad of drow with nerf weapons. It was great, he survived by collapsing the house the Shou were staying in (because the tree was the only support).
They so hated me for that game, but they still talk about it four years later with laughter.

 

[Akrasia]

If you want to use it with D&D, I'd recommend using the magic rules from Midnight. Personally, I prefer my Yrth religions ambiguous - standard D&D clerics don't really fit in there...

On the other hand, mages can learn healing spells in GURPS ...

I would probably either: (a) use the "generic classes" from UA (along with a spell point system for spellcasters, and a few other variant rules; the 'spellcaster' class, with some tweaks, could correspond to the Yrth mage); or (b) use the new C & C system (and replace the spellcasting classes -- wizard, illusionist, cleric, and druid -- with a singe "mage" class whose spells were determined by his organization-affiliation in Yrth).

Good to hear that SJG is producing Banestorm! Even though I have never gotten into GURPS in a big way, I always thought that SJG produced excellent source-books!

 

[Psion]

Didn't like Sahudnese Fire-Drill?

Nope. Hated it. If you look around the GURPS newsgroup archives, you'll see I am not alone. That is typically recalled as the most frustrating adventure EVER.