GURPS: Battletech

A GURPS: Battletech conversion is surprisingly easy mod to create. First up, use GURPS for all personal combat and character rules. Second, play Battletech using Battletech rules. Why change a good thing? This is a fun tabletop game, and if you have the hex maps, figures, and rules, why not just use that?

Battletech uses the six-sided dice we already have. The game is tested and works. We are not designing hundreds of mechs in GURPS Vehicles. Things work and fight as they do in the real game. Why change a good thing?

The real problem is mapping the skills. Battletech uses a skill system of 8 down to 0. This is your base target number for a 2d6 roll, such a gunnery skill of 4 meaning the pilot hits on a 2d6 roll of 4+, and this most always get modified up for range, movement, terrain, and so on. I would map the GURPS to Battletech skills like this:

• GURPS 3-6: Battletech 8
• GURPS 7-9: Battletech 7
• GURPS 10-12: Battletech 6
• GURPS 13-15: Battletech 5
• GURPS 16-17: Battletech 4
• GURPS 18-19: Battletech 3
• GURPS 20-21: Battletech 2
• GURPS 22-24: Battletech 1
• GURPS 25+: Battletech 0

Skills in Battletech cannot go below zero, so the game does have a hard cap. In GURPS, a skill level of 14-18 is an expert, which maps into a Battletech skill of 5-3, and masters are 20+, which covers the 2-0 range. GURPS says skill levels of 25+ are extreme (B172), so setting zero to 25+ makes sense.

Battletech skill rolls do not change.

Could you, inside the cockpit, need to make a self-control roll or some other GURPS skill roll? Yes, you could. Anything that does not touch the Battletech rules and dicing systems is fair game. 

The only two skills you need in Battletech are piloting and gunnery, and those would map into GURPS as Driving/Mecha/TL 11 and Gunner/Mecha/TL 11. That Gunner skill is different than GURPS' specialties in rockets, machine guns, beams, and so on, so this is a minor rules tweak to group all mecha weapons as one skill.

The only two other skills in Battletech are Driving Skill and Anti-Mech Skill, and those can be easily mapped from GURPS skills, with combining all anti-mech weapons under a Guns/Anti-Mech/TL 11 skill.

That skill mapping table is all you need. Now play Battletech as Battletech, and when you are outside the cockpit, use GURPS for everything else. Since mech combat is at a different scale, the conversion works well and both games coexist nicely.

The Tech Level of Battletech is about TL 11, with typical personal weapons and armor covering a few levels below that. The Battletech RPG does have lasers, blasters, and Gauss weapons, so this is firmly TL 11 in personal weapons and armor. Just use GURPS Basic Set and GURPS Ultra Tech for your weapons, armor, and gear list, it will be easier.

This is a quick, easy, simple, and fun mod that lets GURPS be GURPS, and Battletech be Battletech. Now go forth, make your mercenary band some credits, fight for your house, and repel the clan invasions with some heavy metal gaming!

And, of course, have the best RPG powering the personal game.

GURPS and Traveller

I have been doing a bit of Traveller reading these days (for my new 2d6 gaming blog), and exploring the new version of the game a little more. I like the original 2d6 game, and to be honest, a "d6 game" could be used to describe either GURPS or Traveller, the similarities are there. One is roll under, the other roll over. One uses an extra die in its rolls, one uses just the two you took from the Monopoly set. Damage in both games is a number of d6. Both are skill-based games. Both have no concept of class or level. Both have deadly combat. The two games still share a lot of DNA.

Also, the original GDW Traveller is close to Car Wars for myself, as that was my RPG system for the original 2d6 vehicle combat game. That campaign lasted 30 years, and it is a part of me.

And yes, I do run quite a few gaming blogs. There is such an amazing world of games outside of D&D 5E, that having little dedicated places for the games that interest me is a part of my hobby. My main site, SBRPG, started in 2012, so I have been blogging for the last 13 years, and I was originally inspired by the original great, the legendary Grognardia blog.

One of the huge differences between the games is Traveller's random generation versus GURPS' point-buy character creation. In Traveller, I have no idea who I am playing, I will pick a career and watch the pachinko machine go, with the terms ticking by, skills being picked up, and to the eventual mustering out at the end where we have a completely randomly generated character. A few choices may be made along with way for possible career changes, but it is mostly random.

I get the feeling Travellers, along with most people in this universe, go from star to star, picking up random jobs and careers, doing what is needed at the moment, and being pushed into roles they may not be ready for, but they were the best choice at the moment so here they are. People's lives can't be planned or perfectly designed, and you can pick up odd skills along the way from any source. Some of these may have been practical experience, classes paid by your employer, on-the-job training, not knowing a thing and picking up on it from others, college, vocational school, boot camp, or self-learning.

The random generation system for all characters creates a color and texture to the universe and those who live there. That system defines not only characters, but the entire population of the stars. Anyone you may run into may had a few random skills that could be helpful, just since in far-flung star colonies, you don't always have an expert on hand or even in the system, and you make due with the best you got.

We even did this in Car Wars, since that world shared that trait. People in the ruins of the world did not know where they would end up, what jobs they would take, and they sort of existed as "people who lived on the road" going from place to place as they battled in arenas, worked at truck stops, fought bandits, took side jobs, and generally did the transient life out on the open highways.

There is a romanticism in the concept, and it is sort of like an Old West feeling.

A lot of the newer games borrow Traveller's DNA, especially randomized character backgrounds. You see this in Dungeon Crawl Classics with the randomly created "funnel" characters that go on to be the game's heroes, and also in Shadowdark with its extensive use of tables.

 

GURPS, on the other hand, is the complete opposite. We are the writer of this story. Nothing is random. We have complete control of our character's past and present. We pick and buy every skill they have, and if we decide "one was picked up along the way" then we make that choice ourselves and buy it. If we say "Han Solo is X, Y, and Z" then that is all he is. We know his character, we wrote his backstory, and there is nothing random in it. Why should there be?

This is our story, our character, and we are the writer.

This design theory even extends down to the game's core. We don't see "random tavern name tables" in GURPS like we do in Shadowdark, since that feeling of "use being the writer" is part of the game's DNA. We can name the tavern and design it. No table needed! If taverns could be given advantages and disadvantages, and designed using point buy systems, we would. If you think hard enough, you could design anything in GURPS with point buy, even cities, with a Boston accent being a 1-point quirk that is transferable to characters.

GURPS is the game of the writer, and we get that deeper character immersion just because we can get inside a character's head and backstory all that much deeper. A game with random generation does not develop the connection that we need, but picking the skills and abilities of "someone we know" will give us that stronger connection to the character and their story in the world.

No table is making this story, we are.

The flaw in the GURPS system is twofold. One, the average person is just not that imaginative. I am not talking about current GURPS players or those on the GURPS Discord! This is like "getting my sister to play GURPS" and sitting there with her and trying to get her to think about a character backstory and map that into skills. Some are creative enough they could, but most will have no clue about the GURPS skill list and be effectively able to use that massive list of skills as a character design tool.

This is the two-headed hydra that often comes up when introducing players to GURPS, they do not easily grasp character backstory creation, and they never know the game well enough to use it as a design tool.

Give my sister a random table, like the careers in Traveller? She can navigate that well, just like playing Monopoly or Yahtzee. Give her the four or five basic steps, and she could sit there and create dozens of characters and not even know the game. She could probably roll up for or five by the time we get playing, and she could pick the one she likes best, or use them all for her crew.

Her attachment to them will not be on the "I am the writer" level.

It will be on the "I made them by myself" level.

This is another level of attachment, one not as deep as we are used to, but for a new player in a new game, it is a great feeling of mastery and accomplishment. Traveller and most 2d6 games are picked up very easily through that random character creation system, and you do not need to know the game, or even memorize the skill list, to "play" it. I know, for us GURPS players, we want full control or everything, but taking a step back, for someone like my sister? She would love her random characters and have that quick feeling of ownership immediately, which would create the "I want to play this" feeling very rapidly.

Who cares about the rules. Who cares about the design theory. A quick initial feeling of success and mastery is the best way to make a new player a lifetime one.

And this would not happen with a pregenerated character! Those are almost like "walls of text" to some players who want to feel early system mastery, that they had a "quick victory" over learning the game very early. I know if I give a GURPS pre-gen character to my sister, her first reaction will be confusion, followed by that sinking feeling of "I am never going to learn this." I will get her through, but it is a lot harder than it should be.

Her "quick victory" will be something very minor, like a skill roll, ability check, or rolling a to-hit in combat. that is not the same as the feeling you mastered an entire area of the game, like character creation. this size of that early win is huge for 2d6 games. D&D 5E now character the GURPS problem with all of its complexity, sub-classes, choices, point-buy attribute system, and the hundreds of pages you need to read to get started. the older versions of D&D, like B/X, were much easier to feel system mastery over in character creation.

GURPS still beats the pants off D&D 5E, though, as the pay-off for mastery is exponentially higher. GURPS is a programming language you can create anything from. D&D 5E is a software as service subscription service where you take what you are given, and keep paying for it all, no matter the quality level, month after month.

D&D 5E is the best concept of the negative aspects of "streamification" in our hobby. Just like the metric tons of garbage that come out on Netflix and Amazon Prime month after month, the 5E market is a subscription service to ton after ton of garbage books and crowdfunded content with very little shelf life, zero balance, and very low quality overall.

And we pay monthly fees to make it all work together and design characters for the mess. As long as we keep paying streaming services, the garbage will keep coming. There are always gems in the piles, but 95% of what we are fed is pure garbage.

GURPS? A very curated selection of the best of the best. Every book, even if I have little interest in the topic, is a winner. Traveller? The same. A good game with solid books, written well and curated by those who love the game. A narrower, niche focus compared to the more ambitious GURPS, but still excellent quality overall.

GURPS and Traveller are strong sister games. It is no wonder they work so well together, since they do not have class and level, and are strong skill-based systems. They are not d20 games. They both have that strong human-level baseline character type.

For every game I can play in GURPS, I can play with a 2d6 system, and it works the other way around. GURPS works as-is for everything, where 2d6 games need career character charts and gear lists to have support. A 2d6 game is more initial setup and design work than GURPS, since those parts are needed for genre support. GURPS loads complexity on character creation, without needing those frameworks.

Where they differ is in design philosophy and character creation. Past that, most of the rules are similar, the damages are in dice, and the special rules that GURPS has go into more depth. Traveller is the easier game, and where it spends its "depth" is in the extra genre systems, such as ship design and combat, planetary and sector generation, alien generation, and other support systems. Stripped free of those, the core 2d6 system is the same one as the original Car Wars game, another sister game from the same era, with an X+ to-hit roll.

I enjoy GURPS more, and it gives me a greater sense of satisfaction in character creation. There are also times where a 2d6 career chart creates a character I want to die during character creation, and the charts make a character I can't do anything with. There are pitfalls to random creation you do not have in GURPS.

Still, I enjoy the random charts of 2d6 games, and they can surprise me with characters I would have never thought of. There is a grit, dirtiness, and realism about unoptimized characters with strange and odd skills. Those can also be inspirations to taking that character and later creating them in GURPS, with all the quirks and odd skills they picked up along the way.

GURPS Autoduel

My brother and I grew up playing Car Wars. We would spend long summers making our own car counters with rulers and magic markers, designing hundreds of cars, and playing massive races and arena battles with each other. This was our childhood, along with the Commodore 64 (welcome back), Atari 2600, MTV (I wish I could welcome this back), and many of the other classic 1980s greats. Car Wars killed AD&D for us, and only Aftermath and Traveller survived as our generic games.

We had a role-playing campaign, and we used the Traveller book for a jury-rigged role-playing system. We did not use GURPS since basic Traveller worked exceptionally well for the tabletop game, and all the skills were perfect for the 2d6 game. We switched hand weapons to a 1d6 damage scale; roughly, 3 points of hand weapon damage equaled one point of vehicle damage.

The Traveller Book is such a great game, simple in ways that today's Traveller often overlooks, and one of the true great generic systems of the 1970s and 80s. I'm thrilled that the community version lives on today, powered by the Cepheus engine and bringing so many amazing 2d6 games to life.

GURPS Autoduel handles its own vehicle designs, but it utilizes GURPS Vehicles. Although the GURPS design system offers more options, we found it easier to stick with the classic Car Wars rules, as we had more car designs available and didn't want to reinvent the wheel. Or a few hundred vehicles. What we had, with the original Traveller rules, worked incredibly well together, but it did start to break down with too many XP and skill levels. You need to cap skills at a +4 maximum.

So we never got a chance to try GURPS Autoduel, just because we were such fans of the original game and our hacked Traveller system. I would like to try it, even with the book being for 3rd Edition GURPS, since the GURPS system is far more character-based than our sort of wargame-like 2d6 system. Just like GURPS Traveller, immersion occurs when the game system transitions to GURPS.

I would love to see the third edition templates translated to GURPS 4th Edition, for this and GURPS: Traveller. Those are great resources and give a lot of flavor to characters. When I get GCS working again, I will work on that.

Until then, I keep my counters and Car Wars books out for the memories. GURPS, one day, shall see this world again.

GURPS: Prime Directive

Wait, isn't there already a game based on this universe? And it is made by someone else? Yes, while we love that game too, this is something entirely different. And this is GURPS.

My brother and I used to play mammoth sessions of Federation and Empire back in the day, and we spent our summers playing that game in epic battles between all sides. There was one game where all the Gorn fleets stacked up, waited for the right moment, and they all rushed Earth in a massive alpha attack. They failed, but the "Gorn Pearl Harbor" to this day lives on as a cherished memory, and it led to a brutal beating of the Gorn by the Federation side that allowed both the Klingons and Romulans to take over vast swaths of punching-bag Federation space.

Huge stacks of counters, massive fleets, phased turns, production, sieging planets, strategic deception, setting goals, telling other players to back off to their faces, feigning treaties, double-crosses, taking worlds, falling back to defensive positions, laying a trap and luring the other fleets one star too far, and pounding the other fleets into atoms with massed phaser and torpedo fire.

AC/DC's Thunderstruck could be in the soundtrack to this universe.

This game is set in an alternate universe Starfleet Universe that was granted a perpetual license by Paramount in the late 1970s to create games. It only covers material from the Original Star Trek Series. Paramount was very cool (back then) with fans and fan support. Regardless, this is unheard of today. This makes Star Trek and its community of creators special, and I hope this legacy continues into the future. The books tell the whole story, but this is such a cool part of parallel fandom, and it is done with a lot of care and respect. If anything, this adds to the mystique, appeal, and lore of the franchise, and it is a part of gaming history.

The main wargame, Starfleet Battles, spawned several other games, including F&E and the simplified Federation Commander, which is a more accessible Star Fleet Battles-style game. Since then, the universe and game have diverged significantly from the original series and future films, becoming their own unique entity.

And lucky for us, we have a role-playing game based on this universe, written for the GURPS system.

Where the original Star Trek universe was hopeful, peaceful, progressive, and advanced, the Starfleet Universe is its parallel opposite dimension in a "dark universe" by comparison. This is a universe wracked by wars, constant ship battles, border engagements, all-out wars, planetary bombardments, taking worlds, aggressive exploration and conquest, and all sorts of reasons to slug it out with naval starships.

And to roleplay in this insane, violent, "we are trying to be the better side here, but don't push us" universe with GURPS is a fantastic experience.

This is like what if Star Trek was set in a universe that resembled World War II and the Pacific Theater. We have battleships, carriers, starfighters, marines, bombers, dreadnaughts, fast attack craft, scout ships, destroyers, stealth ships, and a wide range of other naval warfare assets. While the RPG features ship combat, the game advises you to play it with either Star Fleet Battles or Federation Commander (my choice, as it is a comparatively more straightforward game).

A part of me just loves how "wrong" this universe is with its open hostility and militancy, and the open warfare that goes on like Klingon and Romulan ships were something to "hunt down" if they were ever spotted in Federation space. We aren't talking for half an episode here and getting to know each other, and figuring out a creative way to solve the situation without violence. No, we are loading the torpedoes, charging the screens, and powering up phasers. We are sending that scrap metal to the bottom of the universe.

It is like one of those retro games where a starship is destroyed, explosion sprites appear on it, the sound effects play, and the ship sinks "down" off the screen. Down? In space? Yep, down. It may seem illogical, but we love it.

Klingon landing party detected on a planet? Send the marines down to clear them out, bomb them with bombers and fighters, or just drop a few thermonuclear torpedoes on them, and let's get out of Dodge. 

This game and universe take no prisoners. While this game can be used for a more traditional and peaceful universe, the dial can be turned up to "battle intensity rating 10" and drop you into a constant galactic war with a level of militarization, brutality, and worlds at arms that will shock you.

And the lore has diverged and considerably expanded, creating its own universe that is careful not to include anything beyond what they were allowed to do. We have new alien and space factions, along with some of the classics. The whole universe feels vibrant and alive, different yet familiar, with many of the favorites, and so many new species to meet and planets to explore.

This is the D&D in space we never got, with battling starships, planetary exploration, and familiar faces and worlds - and honestly, only the classic game Space Opera comes close. And you can still buy these games! The prices have increased slightly, but they still come with counters and maps, and this is not a digital product. They are well worth it for a lifetime of fun.

Star Fleet Battles, the role-playing game, Federation & Empire, and Federation Commander have always been a strange, quirky, fascinating parallel fan-published piece of the galaxy. It should not exist, but it does, and we love it. And thank you to the parent company for allowing them to do something extraordinary for so long; this makes Star Trek far, far cooler than that other science fiction franchise in my mind.

Amarillo Design Bureau is a shining example of what fandom can accomplish, delivering a world of fun in the often-overlooked, yet vibrant, corners of fandom that are too small to ever be mainstream. Yet the players who love these corners of the hobby are passionate and find lifetimes of fun in these games.

And this universe can be played in GURPS.

GURPS Bundle of Holding Extended to August 4

The GURPS Bundle of Holding for the Essentials bundle and both Pyramid bundles have been extended a week! If you missed out on these, you have until Monday, August 4, to pick them up.

GURPS 4E Essentials (from June 2022)

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/July2025GURPS

Pyramid 1 (issues 001-060, Nov 2008 - Oct 2013)

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Pyramid1

Pyramid 2 (issues 061-122, Nov 2013 - Dec 2018)

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Pyramid2

GURPS: Star Frontiers, Update #5

The GURPS: Star Frontiers (SF) project is as easy as just playing GURPS Space at a TL10^, or it is a slog of conversions to get everything just perfect. I am opting (for now, since GCS is not working for me currently and I am back to GCA), to go with the former.

SF has always been a TL10 setting, with no blasters and only lasers. This also means that starships (GURPS: Spaceships) at TL 10 have engines that produce 1G acceleration per engine mounted in a ship's mounting space (a total of 20 spaces), and antimatter reactors that provide 4 power points per space used. This closely matches the SF ships in capabilities, without delving into the Star Wars-like TL11 super-reactionless drives, which grant 50G acceleration per engine space.

At TL11, this transition moves beyond the technology of Star Frontiers, and we are delving more into Star Wars technology levels. At TL12, this is Star Trek.

GURPS Spaceships will be your best bet for ship design, since the systems are simplified and streamlined. Even the space combat system in here is a lot better than in other books. I get trying to use Knight Hawks directly and converting, but another part of me wants a better system.

The Blaster Issue

TL11 is also when we get into blasters, and those have an armor divisor of (5), which is brutal, even to the TL11 lighter armors that characters wear. Since blasters do burn damage, they use the lesser of the two values on the High and Ultra Tech Armor Chart (B284-285), and remember, armors with the [3] note get higher DR values at tech levels past when they were introduced.

Star Frontiers features lasers, not blasters, which begins to push projectile weapons far off the stage and diminish their significance. So let's stick to TL10.

The TL10 Tactical Suit

A TL10 tactical suit has DR 30/15 (1.5x multiplier), and a TL11 tactical suit has DR 40/20 (2x multiplier). The first number is used only against piercing and crushing attacks, while the second applies to all other attacks.

So our TL10 laser pistol does 3d(2) burn damage, and our TL10 laser rifle does 5d(2) burn damage. We round down for character feats and combat results, so the DR 15 tactical suit protects against 7 points of damage. It still provides us with a good measure of protection against a 3d(2) laser pistol and halves the damage of a 5d(2) laser rifle.

The TL 11 Tactical Suit

Okay, let's move on to TL11 and blasters, as well as the same tactical suit. A TL11 blaster pistol is 3d(5) damage, and the rifle is 6d(5). Even with a 20 DR TL11 tactical suit, that divisor of (5) knocks the suit down to 4 points of protection, giving some protection against the pistol and almost none against the rifle.

The Battlesuit

To protect against blasters, you start to need full TL11 battlesuits at DR 140/100. With the divisor of (5), that puts the battle suit at 20 DR, which makes pistols worthless, and rifles have a slight chance of getting through. You need that heavy blaster of 8d(5) for battlesuit combat, and that is on average an 8-point penetration.

Mount a TL11 light force screen on that battlesuit (UT191), and you gain 200 points of semi-ablative DR, which will withstand a few hits before the operator is scrambled.

Battlesuits at TL10 are somewhat unusual at 105/75 DR, and you need to consult GURPS: Ultra-Tech to find a weapon that can penetrate them at that tech level, specifically the semi-portable plasma gun (UT128), which deals 20d(2) burn damage. So, halving our battlesuit DR to 37, the average of 20d is 70 damage, which fries the inside of the suit like an egg. Traveller players know this weapon well, the feared PGMP, plasma-gun man-portable.

The heavy plasma gun at this TL is also an option, dealing 3d5 (2) damage on average, for a total of 55 points of damage against the 37 DR, resulting in 18 points of penetration. Portable railguns (UT142) work, too. Battlesuit combat is out of scope for Star Frontiers and better suited to Traveller. Still, it is fun at TL10 to try to find things to crack these battlefield nuts.

But that "high-tech personal armor game" gets dodgy at TL11, and the regular adventurer armor and weapon types work better with the lower armor divisors of lasers of TL10. If you use TL10 Gauss weapons, that is an armor divisor of (3), and the armor becomes slightly less effective. Even TL7 battle rifles with APHC ammo do 7d(2) pi-, which can punch holes in DR 30 TL10 battlesuits. The armor and gun game at TL10 is still functioning within the range required for Star Frontiers to maintain that mix of weapons and provide interesting personal combat without automatic one-hit kills.

Why All the Math?

5E players are probably reading this and have their eyes glazed over at this point with all this number crunching. Hey, this was the 1980s and 90s, and we didn't have smartphones; we only had graphing calculators. And those were cool. Nerds did math, and we loved it.

Why are we going through all this trouble of matching up armors and weapons? Well, part of the Star Frontiers genre was "fun space combat," and we need to ensure that map-based battles against robots, space pirates, alien creatures, and evil space aliens go relatively smoothly. At TL10, a mix of energy weapons and projectile weapons is still feasible, the armor game feels compelling, and people aren't walking around with one-hit-kill disintegrators.

We are trying to create a "D&D in space," which is what the original game aimed to do, targeting a younger audience. The balance between energy, melee, and projectile weapons needs to be kept. For us, the universe and its adventures were a success, and we remained in this universe for decades afterward.

Hardened Armor?

There is a solution with advantages for high armor divisors, but it requires careful consideration. On page B47 under Damage Resistance, there is an option for Hardened armor, which reduces the armor divisor by one step.

This could be applied to personal armor if you found it too weak, and would increase the armor "point cost" by 20% per level. A (2) would become a (1), a (3) would become a (2), and a (5) would become a (3). This will seriously alter your DR game with high-tech weapons, and possibly unbalance combat, but it is an option within the rules. I wouldn't go overboard with this, but it is a tool in the game that can pare down those high penetration divisors.

Just call them "advanced materials" and double the cost of the armor. Make it lose 1d6 of DR per penetration (due to the hardness making it shatter easily), or adjust the balance accordingly.

Two levels of Hardening on a TL11 tactical suit would take a (5) penetration blaster down to a (2), give us a DR of 10, and even the odds a little against that 3d blaster pistol and 6d blaster rifle. That would be my limit for TL11 weapons and hardening, but it puts some "gameplay" into the armor game at those TLs and solves the "cracked like an egg" problem of high-tech energy weapon combat.

You may want to limit this to "just energy weapons" (15% instead of 20% per level) since these armors are already tough against piercing and crushing damage. GURPS provides us with tools to adjust things if they feel like they are detracting from the fun in our games.

This is what fluency in the system gives you: access to the best tricks and tips on how to optimize the system's performance. The more you learn and play GURPS, the better it gets.

GURPS Summer Sale 7/26-7/28

https://warehouse23.com/collections/sales

The GURPS Summer Sale runs from July 26 (today) through Monday, July 28, as we enter the final days. There are numerous great deals on PDFs, and the core books are also on sale for those new to the system. Now is a great time to jump in and see what all the hype is about!