I’ve been very much enjoying immersing myself deeper into the newly-born Dragonreach setting that I began to create using Basic Fantasy RPG, then ended up running for the Nottingham RPG group using Dungeoneer, and finally have adapted for GURPS 3E.

I did not have the best experience playing with rules-lite systems (again) but I have been enjoying Dragonreach so much that I didn’t really want to abandon it. While I’ll complete the one-shot we played face-to-face next weekend, I was delighted to have five School RPG Club players agree to an experiment in Otherworld-immersion.

The school students decided they’d like to play in a fantasy world flavoured by ancient Greek and Egyptian mythology, especially the pagan gods and goddesses. Having scoped out some rough concepts for five player characters, I was left to take the notes home and prepare a game for Tuesday.

Thinking about it, I realised it was trivial to swap out the deities I’d not quite yet introduced in play but had made notes about for Dragonreach, replacing them with Greek and Egyptian alternatives. Grabbing GURPS Egypt and GURPS Greece off the shelves, I decided the Egyptian deities are the older pantheon and the Greeks those of the human invaders.

Creating the characters using GURPS Third Edition was a hoot and reminded me of the flexibility of the system. It encourages roleplay in-character through the choices available and way in which advantages or disadvantages work. It also has no restrictive “classes” to hinder the imagination.

The big realisation was just how much more relaxed I feel prepping and running with GURPS 3E instead of 4E. The latter’s precise and detailed rules cause me to worry about “doing it right”, whereas the 3E rules just seem to draw out my enthusiasm and creativity. I was even able to quickly grab the creature stats I needed from the Basic Set.

Editing the adventure took maybe a half-hour. I swapped out creature stats and references to the deities. I switched potions and magic tome details over to GURPS own magical system. I re-read all the notes. The biggest change was adding in a description for the arrival of a fifth PC in the opening scene.

Finally, I opened up Excel and knocked up a spreadsheet version of all five PCs core character stats as a quick-reference at the table. While I have full character sheets, past games running with the rules-behind-the-screen taught me that shuffling sheets is suboptimal. The one-page summary, while smaller print, is easier to reference but more complete that the typical GURPS ‘GM Control Sheet’.

I’m all set to plunge back into Dragonreach with the school students. I am also all set to run a game there with anyone else who’s interested. Given that last weekend I was sketching ideas for a megadungeon in the same world, it’s now trivial to turn those plans towards GURPS 3E and continue.

Game on!