GURPS: Space Opera

Okay, first up, why?

Space Opera in itself is generic enough science fiction, the early FGU attempt at "D&D in space" inspired by classic science fiction novels, TV shows, and movies. Why would we even need to play a GURPS: Space Opera when we have much more solid and compelling settings such as Star Frontiers, Star Trek, Star Wars, or even Traveller?

Because with GURPS, we can.

First up, what is Space Opera? What can we even call this? Generic science fiction in space? Even the cover is strange enough. Goggles Guy space southpaw with a bad haircut, Buck Rogers girl from the NBC Studio Lot, Raptor Man, Badger Wookie, green bald psionic guy with the high collar, not a furry lion guy, and Robbie the Robot. The Death Moon and starships that look like women's razors. Is that a pink space castle back there?

Okay, we are on some serious drugs here.

This is going to be good.

What is Space Opera? Let's check out the introduction.

"The original concept was to create a game that would not need the usually innumerable supplements to its rules but that would be a complete science fiction role playing game. Thus, we wanted a game that would allow players to role play all of the most popular roles for characters in the entire genre of science fiction literature. This called for a game to handle the future warrior and mercenary, the free-trader, the asteroid miner, the planetary explorer and first contact man, and the member of the diplomatic corps/spy service. We needed science and the possibility of scientist characters with medicine playing a major role.

As if this were not enough, the decision was made to base the game on the grand tradition of Space Opera, in the vein of E. Doc Smith and most recently Star Wars from George Lucas. This meant that we would also have to allow for the psionic powers so prevalent in the Lensman series and in Star Wars with 'the force.'" - Space Opera, FGU, page 6

So we have: Lensman, Foundation, Starship Troopers, and other classic science fiction books. We cross that with the Star Trek original TV show, Star Wars, the Buck Rogers TV show, the original Battlestar Galactica TV show, 2001, Flash Gordon, Logan's Run, Alien, Dune, Westworld, and a few other influences and we have Space Opera.

My MS Paint Art, not Space Opera -Hak

Psionic powers are our "magic."

These inspirations are the "science fiction AD&D" we have always been looking for. They mix a mess of pop-culture influences in a huge heaping mess, stir them together, and create a generic science fiction universe that should be able to do anything.

And this is not "Mass Effect" since that in itself has become something of a trope for generic science fiction these days, and endlessly copied when nobody has a better idea. The new 5E science fiction game Wizards silently put out to be drilled full of lasers by Starfinder 2 is a prime example.

You see, D&D got in early, so they could mix Greek, Egyptian, Norse, Celtic, Arthurian, and all sorts of other fantasy influences and create a genre. Science Fiction was a bit late to the party, and the franchise players split up science fiction and movies between themselves, and we never really got a great "universal science fiction" genre like we had in fantasy. Star Wars took its piece of the pie, Star Trek had theirs, and everyone else was scrounging for scraps of the audience.

If we ever had "generic science fiction" Space Opera would be the first known combination of all science fiction genres and the unified universe where it all takes place.

Or, simply put, GURPS Space.

Wait! There is more to this than just saying GURPS Space is your thing. While GURPS Space will be very helpful, along with GURPS: Ultra Tech, that is not why we are doing this mod and conversion.

Or, simply put, GURPS Traveller.

No! Not again! It is true Traveller did beat GURPS out in the early 1980s, then Star Frontiers came and went like a flash, and only Traveller survived. What is even the point of a GURPS: Space Opera? This is just "generic science fiction" right?

Okay, let's check out the back cover of the game. Hey, that is a cool starship, too. We have a couple more clues here.

"For you, as a player, Space Opera offers a selection of species for your character. From a basis of randomly determined characteristics (slanted to favor your character) you take him through his career up to the point when his adventures start. This development system results in a complete and rounded character with skills chosen in a non-random fashion to suit his or her needs.

For you as StarMaster, SPACE OPERA offers rules covering a wide variety of topics from which you may pick and choose those that will best suit the universe in which you wish to play. In this way you can simulate situations from virtually any part of science fiction literature. SPACE OPERA gives you a framework within which to set and develop the adventures which you conceive for the characters. The only limit is your imagination." - Space Opera, FGU, page 2.

We have OSR-like language here. Pick and choose rules? Simulate situations from any part of science fiction literature? A framework to develop adventures for the characters? Okay, we have a few more clues. Still, why play this? And why simulate this with GURPS?

One, I love the world building in this game. They say "generic space game" but they do a lot of creating their own world, apart from what they say, this is a new universe with its own organizations, factions, worlds, and aliens. Granted, very few people even know about this universe and care about it, but it is here and an interesting place.

Our character classes are: Armsman, Technician, Scientist: Research, Scientist: Medical, Scientist: Engineering, and Astronaut. They are an interesting mix, sort of mirroring Star Trek, but not really. I like that Astronauts are the pilots and commanders, while Techs are the higher skill-level technicians, navigators, med-techs, and other non-science specialists. Armsman is sort of a classic 1950s science fiction throwback like a Starship Troopers style space soldier. There are lots of scientists, too, which means there is a lot of science going on in adventures.

My MS Paint Art, not Space Opera's -Hak

This is like Star Trek if Kirk wore a spacesuit all the time and flew the ship, Scott sat in the engine room in a radiation suit, Bones, Spock, and some new Engineering scientist researched in the lab all day, and another new Armsman character named Carter manned his powered armored suit with a nuclear rocket launcher on the shoulder and a Blaster HMG to use as a personal weapon, along with a flame unit and defensive grenade launcher tubes on the back. One of them, a green trans-human named Jar'Jeel, has psionic powers and acts as the ship's precognition expert.

What a strange crew.

It is like Starship Trooper Trek Wars.

I would use the species here, since that matches the strange mix on the front cover. I would also use the random home world generation in Book 1, and then skip to the careers. And this is where the next major bit of world building is done with all the organizations in this universe. We have:

• Star Force
• Marines
• Commandos
• BOSS (external intelligence agency, civilian)
• BRINT (internal state security, military)
• IPA (interstellar police)
• Survey (space)
• Scout (planetary)
• Explorer (independent, corporate)
• Contact (government civilian)
• Merchant
• PDF (planetary defense)
• Police (planetary)
• Mercenary (independent, corporate)

That is a lot of world building! This is way more than either Star Wars or Star Trek have ever done, and it forms its own interesting mix of agencies and organizations which can all interact and take missions all over the galaxy. And this is just the Terran faction! And there are more human factions than just the Terran one, and also alien factions. This universe is huge. The factions and organizations are very deep.

The split between Survey being the space explorers, Scouts being planetary survivalist explorers, and Contacts being the alien culture and linguist people is a fascinating split between the scout factions. Having independent scouts is also a cool division.

And this book has a lot of fun expansion books, one of the ones we loved was the Ground and Air Equipment book, which gave you all sorts of tanks, planes, star fighters, rocket launchers, heavy blast cannons, and other toys to play with. This one even has WW2 era old-tech vehicles, and it is a fun guide across a few tech levels for the heavy metal gear in the universe, all the way up to 500 ton Continental Siege Unit tanks like something out of Ogre.

This is a book packed full of toys. 

There is an Orc-like race of space baddies, space Soviets, bug armies, a human supremacist empire, space Roman merchants, Hisser snake people, Mekpurr tech-cats, space China aliens, Transhuman knights, and all sorts of strange factions in the universe with room to make your own.

Also, if you ever wanted to use Space Opera ship combat, the game's skill levels from 0 to 10 map easily to GURPS skill levels by subtracting 10 from your GURPS skill, so a 18- skill in GURPS becomes a level 8 skill in Space Opera. So the full ship combat system is open to you if you wanted to break out the d100 and do things with this game's naval-war game-like space combat tables. For personal gear and armor, use GURPS Ultra Tech.

This is all of a sudden looking less and less like a generic space game, and more like its own setting. 

Okay, still not enough. Sure, you can break down the universe into all these groups, give me a bunch of aliens, stat out a few armored vehicles, and even give me a dozen stellar guides, but why? It is not Traveller, it is not Star Frontiers, it is not Star Trek or Star Wars, it is not Dune, and it was never compelling enough back in the day to really catch on and endure. The system is so obscure and complicated we need to replace it with GURPS. So, why play this?

One, the concept of a universe that puts a Star Trek like Federation against a Star Wars like Empire is a fun one, and just a little reskinning and you have the ultimate fan-fiction universe. You have a group of Space Romans that could easily sub in for a Dune-like faction. You have space bugs like Starship Troopers and Marines. There are probably places to put Battlestar Galactica's Cylons and Buck Rogers in here, or even Ming from Flash Gordon. If you wanted the ultimate "clash of the fan fiction" science fiction universe, this is it.

My silly art, not Space Opera's - Hak

If you wanted to play it straight, this is an entirely new universe to explore, with plenty of the work already done for you! This is far more than you get in many GURPS source books, and having a whole science fiction setting that has nothing to do with anyone's movie or TV show is a cool thing. It has similarities, but this is a ready-made universe with plenty of factions, aliens, worlds, and adventures to use as a great GURPS setting.

The thing is with Star Wars and Star Trek, and even Traveller, new players will want to play the "official game" before a GURPS conversion, and that is understandable. With Space Opera, you can come in with GURPS players and have a ready-made setting with plenty of lore, planets, aliens, and work done for you. You can tweak most all of this to whatever you want.

Plus, the character types are cool and different. I like the concept of an astronaut being space pilots and eventually fleet commanders. I love that there is such a heavy focus on science. I really like the focus on the armsman, and having a dedicated soldier class that can fill many roles. I even like that technicians are anything from engineers to doctors, all with a non-science focus, but highly capable.

Space Opera, Star Sector Atlas 2, page 49

Downsides? The setting is very strange. There is an incoherence to it. Nothing feels connected and the planet descriptions feel disjointed. The organizations have no identity, they are just names with no history or personality. The setting has no flow or history. The entire universe feels like B-Movie science fiction that is hard to relate to, or even get a feeling of what the universe is about. The setting hinges in a false feeling of self-importance. Players will sit there saying "I don't know what this is or how to act."

In trying to be "all science fiction" the game comes out feeling like "none of it."

I could say the same thing about D&D and fantasy, honestly. 

And Traveller is a far more complete and well-laid out universe. Star Frontiers is a tighter and more focused sandbox. Any "IP science fiction" is easily relatable and instantly playable.

Space Opera, Star Sector Atlas One, page 45

On the plus side, the game has some of the most interesting early 1980s science fiction line art by some of the classic fantasy artists. These are rare and fascinating works from some of the greats we know elsewhere, doing a science fiction flex and doing some amazing work. This art reminds me of early D&D, and these are rarely seen pieces, and they are amazing peeks into the hobby back then and the "what could have been" if science fiction was not taken over by a few big movies and instead embraced by gaming.

This universe of open, interesting, and speculative science fiction in gaming is completely owned by Traveller these days. Flipping through the sub-sector guides that Mongoose puts out on a regular basis, I see so many ideas and concepts being expressed, interesting planets and factions crafted, and a universe of possibilities expressed and delivered to an ever-expanding setting.

I like the strong psionic focus for the setting's "magic." Rarely do you get such a strong focus on the psionic part of the setting, and even in Traveller, the power feels muted and pushed to the back. FGU was never fearful of leaning into psionic powers, and they even have an entire game (Psi-World) on the subject. Psionic individuals are this setting's "magic users" and a major part of the action. In Star Wars and Star Trek, they are pushed to the back or pigeon-holed into a few roles (in Star Wars, forced to be Jedi or Sith). In Traveller, they are very rare and the exception.

Space Opera, page 24

In Space Opera, by the rules, 5% of the population are potentially very power psionic users and can be "awakened" by psionic attack or exposure to psionic power sources (during the game). The awakening process only happens in-game and can never be started with, so this entire system is built into the role playing and a pivotal character moment. This is a very cool system and mirrors the science fiction of the day, where a Star Force astronaut goes on a mission to an ancient temple, meets a dying alien master psionic, "unlocks their secret potential" and "everything changes!"

If you love those classic heroic science fiction novels of the 1950s to 1980s, where there is a story of heroism, awakening, and transformation, then Space Opera will call to you. A lot of today's "class based games" have no surprises for you, where every power is planned out 20 levels ahead of time, and there is no mystery or changing of your character's path and future. You look at Starfinder and your technician has 20 levels of power planned out for them, and there is no mystery or discovery to the character. Even in Traveller you are pretty much set in stone. Star Frontiers, same thing, spend XP to go up boring skill trees.

Only in GURPS and point-based systems do you have that "open character sheet" to freely develop your character. The only "open character sheet" game in d20-land is original B/X where you can freely add powers to your sheet, such as Old School Essentials. The minute you go to AD&D, those level-based charts start to take over the game, and you lose your open character sheet. By the time you get to 3.5E, the open character sheet is gone completely. Modern games like 5E or Pathfinder? Forget it, your character is centrally planned by a committee.

Today's over-designed, over planned, go up the pre-programmed level chart games how no mystery or discovery in them. They are boring and often impossible to balance. They control your character's story. All you are doing is going up the planned power chart and checking boxes. Nothing unexpected or cool can happen to you because of the story.

More of my silly art, enjoy. -Hak

In GURPS? Even in fantasy my bard can become a mage. My fighter can become a druid. My thief can become a paladin. My cleric can learn archery. Whatever happens in the story is reflected on my character sheet, no clunky multi-classing required. My Star Force medic needs to learn how to fly a ship? I can do that. In class and level systems? Forget it, the designers know better than you.

The different branches and divisions of space forces in Space Opera is very cool, and also instant inspiration for your own science fiction universes. What if there were independent explorers and they hired mercenary forces? What would a space police force do, especially with their own ships to fight space pirates and work alongside local navies and star fleet vessels? even if you do not use the setting, there is enough here to give you a wealth of world building ideas on your own.

Just drop in GURPS, let me run an open character sheet, and go. 

GURPS: Aftermath

Aftermath was our game in the early 1980s, and it did everything we wanted in a hyper-realistic set of survival-focused rules in a DIY post-apocalyptic setting. This was "AD&D for survivalists" and the rules skirted the line between real-world Cold War survival manuals for nuclear war, and it had that "scary element" to it that put the fear of God into you.

This game is going in the bunker with me. This game could be very useful some day if the Soviets ever decided to threaten Western democracies.

Huh, I wonder why that is so familiar? 

These days, Aftermath still survives and you can still get this in print and PDF, but GURPS has replaced the game for me almost entirely. GURPS is the more complete, easier, less math, and more complete set of rules that can simulate gritty realities far easier than slogging through the flowcharts and fractional math of Aftermath. The Aftermath PDFs are great source books for the genre, too, and get you into the specific weirdness and world the game tries to create.

GURPS can get plenty detailed and gritty enough, and as long as I have hit locations, sectional armor, critical damage, and sever results for limbs I am fine.

I love the setting of Aftermath, the world was destroyed in 1980, so there was no "consumer Internet" and no cell phones. There is some advanced science fiction technology in here, but the baseline tech is that late 1970s post-Vietnam-era technology with M-16A1 rifles, UH-1 Huey helicopters, M-1911A1 0.45 pistols, and M-60A1 tanks. The highest-capacity commonly available 9mm pistol was the Browning High Power with 13 rounds, and the SMG of the day was the 9mm Uzi. Plenty of World War II weapons were still in use. The weapons were this 1970s retro-tech and iconic for the TV shows of the day. The game also had advanced laser weapons as rare finds.

 

The game does have intelligent mutant rats, killer AI robots, rad-zombies, wild zoo animals running around everywhere, androids, AI computers, and a selection of "Not the Ape Planet" humanoid apes. It also had "walkers" like from War of the Worlds. It was sort of like D&D in a way in that it pulled together common post-apocalyptic tropes and put them all in one game, creating the "fantasy" world with all the best options. Like D&D simulated any fantasy, Aftermath could simulate any post-ruin world pretty easily.

And the world hated you in Aftermath. An old ATM with security systems could try to kill you, before the bears sneak up on you, you are forced to run, you hole up in an old building, accidentally trip a grenade trip wire, and the building is so old it can't stand the force of the explosion and collapses on you. If you survive, you will be buried alive in the water filled basement, drowning, and the water is contaminated with cholera and radiation. Maybe there are rad-piranhas in there. The flamethrower and M-60 machine-gun equipped killer robots will be by later to torch the pile of rubble and fill it full of lead.

In D&D, the traps are usually in the dungeons.

In Aftermath, the whole world is a sadistic trap.

Even if you were lucky enough to be a super character frozen before the end of the world, you would wake up in a cryogenic pod and have to fight off laser-pistol armed war-bots with a rolled up copy of Playboy and a jar of Vegemite.

Get outside, and bandits are riding kangaroos and firing poison crossbows at you. You may find a box of sweaty TNT to throw back at them, but be careful not to drop it or fall down. The game ended when you stepped on a land mine. Finding a case of canned beans was a magic treasure, and you put those on a bandoleer on your vest as extra armor and a statement you were a bad-ass.

The world was like AD&D through the lens of the old Soldier of Fortune magazine, mixed in there with High Times. Everything could kill you, show no mercy, what is mine is mine, and always be prepared. As I said, there is a weirdness to the entire genre like a paranoid drug trip through the end of the world.

Trust is the best currency in the world. Just finding a survivor village where you could sleep was worth more than a magic sword or bag of gold in D&D. Often, you traded helping them out for food and shelter. 

We have solid source book support for the genre too, including the excellent After the End 1 and 2 books for GURPS. These books are like a "best of the best" of topics the Aftermath game covers, and are indispensable. The first book covers characters, and it a great resource and inspiration for building your survivors. We get barter and common gear tables, along with reloading rules.

There are rules for mutations here, but not the freaky superhero mutations that Gamma World has. Though, to be honest, you could do a Gamma World easily with Ultra Tech and GURPS Supers.

The second book covers worlds. They even suggest other GURPS books for "killer robots" or zombies, and have topics on diseases, gangs, survival, scrounging, repairs, and other post-apocalyptic concerns. This is all great stuff, and it goes beyond the original Aftermath rules in many areas. We get speculative tech in here too, like nano-tech disasters, and that is a great modern update for the genre.

Aftermath is a sub-genre of post-apocalyptic fiction from 1950-1980, everything from War of the Worlds to Planet of the Apes, and including the 1980s nuclear war movies like The Day After and Threads. Mad Max was not a popular part of the genre yet, as that is the start of the modern "hero era" of post-apocalyptic genre, but it is an influence.

There is a theme of the downfall of civilization, and the "original sin" of the Vietnam War serving as a catalyst for the punishment for the coming final judgment of mankind. This is mirrored today by the "original sin" of the Iraq War, and many internalizing that guilt and trying to destroy today's society in a subconscious guilt response.

Don't laugh, this is a larger societal shift that happened during Vietnam, and it is happening today and you see this manifested by population shifts and encouragement from enemies on the world stage who finance these destructive forces. Like the Cold War, this is a shrinking world pitting history and societies against each other.

You need the almost puritanical and quasi-religious guilt, along with the concept of overseas enemies of an almost alien society, to have this genre. Otherwise, we aren't being punished for anything, there is no "big bad" who caused this, and we might as well be playing opiate fantasy games to relieve the pain of daily life.

In contrast, today's zombie post-apocalyptic genre does this without the "overseas enemy" and "we did this to ourselves." This is why the Walking Dead genre intentionally makes humans worse than walkers, since "we did this to ourselves" and "we will keep doing it." Zombie stories have that self-hate of mankind, and you even saw this in the original 1950s Living Dead movie.

There is always an enemy responsible in these stories, be it the Reds, aliens, apes, nature itself, or ourselves. In Aftermath, it can be all of the above. Today, we can add AI to that list.

Another game close to Aftermath is the excellent Mutant Epoch (ME). this game leans into that weirdness of the genre, and is one of the best examples of that feeling of "strangeness after the end of the world" out there today. If you are not trying to simulate Aftermath in GURPS, this is also one of the best games in the genre today and worth your time. If you do not want the intelligent plants and holographic AI characters, and the X-Men like superheroes running around, you may want to stay more grounded in GURPS.

Aftermath walks a line between realism and strangeness, and GURPS does that very well. GURPS also does the aspect of "mental survival" much better than ME, with the internal mental disadvantages driving character motivation, where ME characters can be more collections of random skills and powers. GURPS does the "realism" very well, and the skill system is also much more detailed and flexible.

Plus GURPS gives you far more source books to pull from for the fantastic and strange. I could incorporate GURPS Horror in a post-apocalyptic game for a unique twist, and make the work beset by vampires and werewolves which brought down society. GURPS will have the greater range of disasters and strangeness to put into the mix.

GURPS is my choice here, the rules are modern, consistent, but have enough grit and depth to satisfy the deadly crunch and medical detail of wounding the genre requires. Aftermath itself is the inspiration of the  strange fantasy of that post-apocalyptic genre, and is one of the hallmark games in the genre. Gamma World and Mutant Epoch lean too hard into the fantastic and science fiction elements, where Aftermath and GURPS can do that realistic tone this specific genre requires.

Story Mechaincs

Story mechanics sound like something you call in when your story is broken.

We have so many new games now with "narrative mechanics" as if tens of thousands of years of human storytelling were somehow broken, and game companies need to reductively sell us the most basic of game activities. 

Storytelling does not need narrative mechanics. 

GURPS gets it, since it is more an old school game, it puts all the focus on the most important pieces of the puzzle - the characters. My character has a weakness or compulsive behavior, and these are the same things an actor needs to know when making a movie, then the game gives us rules for that. There is a slight gamification on the power of these "inner motivators" and the story is the combination of the referee reflecting the current state of the environment, the plot the NPCs are trying to drive, and the natural chaos of the characters inserting themselves into the situation.

While there is no "script" in GURPS since the game is more of a "simulator" - there is a "script" for the adventure for NPCs, motivations, maps, keyed locations, and events that will happen in the future at certain times. So it is not a "set story" that the referee is trying to tell, and there are no "pool mechanics" that players use to alter the course of events.

So the referee is like the director of a movie, but the script does not lay out what is to come as strictly. That is up to the players.

GURPS gives the players the best character backgrounds in role playing. This is the stuff actors need, the strengths, weaknesses, skills, history, and background of the character. Who they are. Where they came from and what they have done, and the choices made during character creation reflect that. A game like Traveller may have random tables for life events and service terms, but GURPS goes a level deeper, not using the charts but giving us full control to "write" a character and reflect that with our choices for them.

There are times I am struck by a typical B/X style OSR character, you know, class, race, and 3d6 down the line for character statistics, and how hard that is to role play. Who are they? What got them here? What are they like?

We need to fill that in ourselves, and nothing in the rules reflects our choices. Sometimes this "100% role playing" is hard to get started with, and I can see why people like the "life-path generators" of Traveller, or even the funnels of DCC. We are taking nobodies and turning them into somebodies.

The "nothingness" of D&D is what makes the game great for some, and impossible for others. 

But past that, when we have our character, and we are like the actor trying to bring that "person only on a sheet of paper" to life, we have complete freedom. We don't need pools, dice, story points, or anything else to interact with the world around us. The world acts as it should. Just like the world.

We have a generation of games with "doom, fear, malice" or other points that gamify the story and world, as if we needed to put another set of training wheels on creativity. Perhaps being a game master is that hard, and nobody really knows "how to do it" and the industry is dumbing down the experience to a board-game where everyone has rules for what they can do.

Refereeing isn't refereeing anymore, it is the "story master" who has cards and can never imagine something into existence, they can only pull a card from a deck and "make the text on it happen." I can just see the Kickstarter for that game now, and it making a few million dollars as another snake-oil solution for all our imagined role-playing problems they keep telling us we have.

This is also why D&D YouTube is so toxic, the constant barrage of referee advice makes you think you are not doing it right, and that you are somehow inferior to the anointed masters. YouTube advice channels hurt your self-esteem and willingness to "just get out there and do it" and force you into a dependent habit of buying more and more advice. These charlatans of self-improvement and professional advice came from the books telling writers how to write, and how to unlock the magic formula for a bestselling novel. Amazon is flooded with them, and they all end up endlessly complimenting you and telling you the same thing: get out there and do it.

All the "how to write a story" frameworks are horrible. You will follow a scaffolding and your story will be just another similar empty shell. The story won't come from you, it will come from the framework, and the author of that supposed self-help book. Same thing with story mechanics. While you may "fill in the blanks" the story tools tell you to make happen, the story won't be yours anymore. Or the players. The story will be what the game wants it to be.

Humans don't need to be told how to tell stories.

We are born with that ability. 

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.