This weeks post is a bit late coming because I spent the better part of the last week or two converting Mass Effect to a GURPS tabletop system. This turned out to be a fairly good learning experience for me, so I thought I’d share them.
For those unfamiliar with it, Mass Effect is a sci-fi (space opera, really) setting based in the Milky Way galaxy not too far off in the future. Humans discover the remains of an ancient civilization on Mars, and with the technology advances that come from the discovery humanity branches out and finds/joins the galactic community.
GURPS is the system I choose to do the conversion in. In my experience it has been an immensely flexible system capable of handling just about anything I’ve thrown at it. It stands for General Universal Role-Playing System, and is made by Steve Jackson Games (who also makes Munchkin!). Its a very modular design with a classless system that is great for players and GMs who prefer not to rail someone on a leveling path.
Originally I had never planned to create this setting from scratch. Mass Effect is very popular so I had hoped that someone else already had. Searching around the internet, my hopes were only partially realized – a few people had begun to undertake the task, but none had really finished. One person had come quite a ways in making a d20 rules set (which ended up coming in handy), but in GURPS the furthest anybody had gotten was half-finished rough-draft. Nevertheless, I won’t pretend that I didn’t cannibalize that for everything it was worth.
The first thing I decided to work on was the races. It did not take long before I encountered my first of many obstacles. Video game races often do not transfer well to tabletop settings. In Mass Effect there are several races that are very poor combatants. I don’t mean poor in the sense of kobolds are poor combatants. I mean poor in the sense that chickens are poor combatants. When I encountered this I had to make a choice – should I bother statting this race or not? Sure, they have a wonderful rich history, a cool look, and would be super fun to role-play. But as a player character what impact would they have on the game? Is there something that they can do that nobody else can? Is their niche enough to make up for the fact that they will bring the party down in a fight? Most importantly, would it actually be fun for the player?
In the end, I decided not to write stats for some of the races – but I did not decree that they were unplayable. I don’t believe any players will want to bother with playing one, so there isn’t any need to go in and detail everything out. When I decided this, I realized its likely something that comes up when designing any game. Take my D&D example above, the D&D designers don’t bother stating the chicken as a PC race, do they? (Well…). Regardless, if a players wants to make one, I’ll do it then.
The most difficult thing I encountered, however, was designing the weapons and armor. I’m still not sure if I’ m satisfied with the numbers I came up with – only play testing will tell. But in order to give a large variety I dug through and found all the armors in the Mass Effect games, all the guns from the second one (in universe there was a major change in how weapons work after the first game, rendering older guns obsolete). Although GURPs tech levels offer a good starting point (use TL10 armor vs TL10 guns), it tends to focus on a more realistic approach than other games which offer a more heroic and game-like approach. Since I wanted to capture that heroic game-like approach, I had to modify weapon and armor values (not to mention make up rules and values for shields!)
Not only was designing the weapons and armor difficult, but determining prices for it as well. Luckily, that d20 conversion used much of the same armors, weapons, and modifications that I had. When it came to something that was just a direct port from the console game though, I found myself just arbitrarily making prices up quite often. I’m curious how other system designers out there come up with these figures.
In the end I’m happy with how the conversion has turned out, but I know that I will be needing to make several tweaks before we begin play.
Links:
My (semi-) finished conversion – http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/gurps-mass-effect
Gurps – http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/
Mass Effect – http://masseffect.bioware.com/
Eric
June 19, 2012
Hey. I have been very interested in trying a mass effect tabletop. I don’t have any experience with GURPS, but it sounds like a system worth checking out, and one that would accommodate Mass Effect beautifully. I would gladly help you play test this conversion/help finish it (assuming I can get a group interested in learning GURPS). Unfortunately, the link at the bottom of the article isn’t working. Any way you could update that?
saethone
June 20, 2012
Eric,
Sorry, the Link will no longer work – I decided to take the campaign down to make room for a couple other upcoming games that my group will actually run (we ended up not wanting to do the Mass Effect – and after I did all that work!).
If you are interested in running Mass Effect as an RPG – I would highly recommend GURPS – it’s amazingly flexible and can handle everything you see in the game well. However, it can be overwhelming at first, depending on how much of a “rules guru” you are.
If you’d prefer to stick with d20, I’d suggest looking at this conversion: http://masseffectd20.freeforums.org/index.php – it’s very complete, though I haven’t had a chance to test it’s balance.
Eric
June 20, 2012
I just purchased the basic set books, and am quite excited to give it a try. I’ve talked to a few members of my regular d20 group, and they’re interested in trying GURPS (one player was intrigued to hear about food magic, another is itching to get his hands on the tactical shooting supplement) but they might want to start with more familiar fantasy territory. I did investigate the d20 conversion, and thorough as it is, I feel like I’d rather give it a try in GURPS.
I can be a rules guru at times. I enjoy tweaking rules to fit the flavor of a campaign, but when something comes up mid-session, I usually prefer fudging it to keep things moving.
Is there any other way I could take a look at the work you did?
saethone
June 20, 2012
Gurps really lends itself well to that style of play – most of the “work” in gurps is during character building – applying modifiers to base abilities to create the specific thing that you want.
Unfortunately, I didn’t save any of my work. It was all done before ME3 came out, which really put a kink in it by adding countless weapons, etc.
http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=51602 You can check this for some ideas, I referenced that quite a bit.
http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/zeroed here is another game we’re running in a Sci-Fi esque setting so that you can get an idea of how to build different powers.
TwinSteel
July 28, 2012
So there is no backup that we could beseech you for? My friend was referencing your site when it came down, and we are now in the odd position of playing GURPS Mass Effect without rules. Are there any other resources you could offer?
saethone
July 28, 2012
Oh no! Well that puts you in a pickle doesn’t it. I don’t believe I made a backup, but I may have. I will check this weekend and let you know!
saethone
September 29, 2012
TwinSteel – if you’re still following this, I never did find a backup so I was forced to recreate the whole setting when I decided I wanted to play it again! A lot of work, but its almost finished. http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/just-cant-stop here’s the new link. I’ll leave it up this time!
Eric
September 29, 2012
Thanks, so happy to see this! Now I just need to get my group on board.
Terence
April 19, 2013
Hey, thanks a lot for this conversion! I stumbled onto your blog as I was searching for ideas for ME RPG. This is just what the doctor ordered. 🙂
Astrographer
August 8, 2014
It’s awesome that you put it back up, but access is limited. I get a 403 error. Would it be possible to make it public?
Thanks either way.
saethone
August 19, 2014
Yeah, the website that its hosted changed their layout and it became mostly unreadable. I can try to hack it together real quick so that its at least legible, maybe not pretty like before but enough to get the info.
saethone
September 6, 2014
Hey sorry I forgot to reply. I unlocked it. The formatting is off so it might be difficult to navigate, but all the info that I finished should be there. By all means feel free to take and rearrange it or do whatever with it!