GURPS: The Cepheus RPG

There is a print-on-demand book containing only the original Cepheus Engine RPG (CE-RPG) rules, which reprints the original game's SRD at cost. This is a basic, no-art, reference guide for the rules, but there is a simplicity and beauty to that presentation. While the more flashy editions get a lot of attention, I find this version of the game captures the original "little black book" aesthetic, leaving the universe up to me, and staying out of the way for the most part, and letting my imagination have room to explore.

The book this compares to is the original Traveller Book, which is also available as a print-on-demand title, and the two are similar in their tone and coverage of science-fiction adventure. The only downside to Traveller is the upside: the Traveller universe and the Imperium. If I am going this far, then I will just play GURPS: Traveller and have it all in one book. Once you start to pull in Traveller, you need to pick a flavor, and I have always had a soft spot for the original little black books and universe. It is very easy to start pulling in the modern material, but it just does not feel the same to me.

I don't want Traveller seen through a 2020's lens, I want Traveller seen through that 1970's lens. There is a massive difference between the original Traveller, which felt like the movie 2001, and modern Traveller, which feels like "2026 in space." The role and size of computers being one huge factor, in OG Traveller, computers were room-sized mainframes with tons of flashing lights, and you could not carry a supercomputer around in your pocket (like you can today). In CE-RPG, they have TL 10 1-kilogram portable computers that can run programs, like the classic Star Trek tricorder or even a modern tablet. There is a middle ground here; you can flavor it however you like.

But even then, GURPS: Traveller is huge. There are 30 PDFs covering nearly the entire original universe, and you can pull in the classic library data and sector guides. While I love having that much, a part of me just wants a simple core rulebook, and I want to create the rest myself.

Another option is the Cepheus Deluxe rulebook, available from Lulu or Amazon. This is the older edition of the game, but I like the black-and-white presentation much better than the newer version (with the garish full-color pages). Ships in this game go up to 10,000 tons (versus 5,000 in CE-RPG), and the ship design system uses percentages based on tech level versus the older A-Z drive types. In general, CD is a patched and streamlined version of CE-RPG with a few more charts and improvements, plus a few more high-tech weapons options (pulse rifles, blaster pistols). This is another excellent option for driving a GURPS sci-fi game.

There are plenty of other Cepheus games, but I just want a simple, softcover, non-flashy, black-and-white book that runs the random charts and starship game. GURPS will handle the rest. Either of these books does a fine job of running a science-fiction framework behind the scenes for GURPS and providing a working model of a universe to start with.

But the Cepehus RPG lets me use the ships, gear, and universe-creation rules for any universe I want. I can play a TL 10 lo-fi Star Frontiers by just adding a few races and using the GURPS rules as my core game engine. Star Frontiers is less about the gear than it is the four races and the story of meeting on a new homeworld and exploring the universe from there. You don't even need the OG Star Frontiers map, just the first planet where they come together, and you can randomly generate the universe from there.

We did this back before Knight Hawks was released, where Traveller's little black books ran our starship game for the role-playing game. Traveller and Knight Hawks are very close in compatibility, with ships offering 1G to 6G acceleration and similar jump systems. There are no "grav plates" like there are in Traveller, which have always felt too high-tech for the Traveller setting, especially before TL 13.

If you read the Star Frontiers lore, these races came together from "off the map" and ended up here, much like the Mass Effect Andromeda game. The original homeworlds are left undefined and are not even in the game, and they could have all woken up from generational ships and built the first world. You could start your campaign on the first world, and start exploring planets from there, and more generation ships are following, and you need to find worlds for them to settle on. The entire universe could be randomly generated, and your GURPS characters are the first ones out in the starships being built to explore the surrounding stars. Trouble is soon to be discovered, given the original game's lore.

In this case, using Cepheus as the game's starship and tech book works, and gives you the clunkier weapons list, where laser weapons need to be connected to backpack power units. You can also simulate a TL 9 to 12 campaign progression in this system (with TL 13+ items treated as artifacts and treasures), and have the ship designs gradually reflect improvements in design and technology.

The jump drives would start at 1 and increase slowly to 3, so the range to explore the randomly-generated map would slowly increase, and you could say most all planets within jump-1 are settled, with a few outliers on the ends of the frontier available to explore. Since jump-2 opens at TL 11, that is two huge arcs of "adventure paths" you would need to complete in the jump-1 worlds before the exploration rush begins.

My TL 9 adventures would be space pirates, planetary cartels, and exploring the tiny jump-1 universe of nine worlds. The Volturnus adventures could be inserted as a "special event" to be found somewhere on the map when the time is right, perhaps on that planet isolated by exploration difficulties. My TL 10 adventures would be the first Sathar invasions. TL 11 would be the jump-2 exploration rush. After that, the Second Sathar War would kick off and end with TL 13, grav plates, and jump-4. Past that, the stars are the limit.

The core "guts" of the game is watching the universe slowly expand, the technology increase, and the ships build in capability and exploration range. The TL 9 ships will be old junkers leaking radioactive fuel by the end of this game, well-used and beaten up, junkyards parked on moons filled with memories and rust, but that is the charm of watching the "space race" in conquering the galaxy. The TL 9-12 ships are a logical progression of the "stacked decks" design theory without artificial gravity, and the TL 13-15 ships change the game, moving into the modern-style "TV science fiction" artificial gravity era.

One of the most frustrating things about introducing artificial gravity too early is that it does not force a paradigm shift in starship design, and the layout of starships never changes. It is a lazy choice, and I prefer that early-era starships reflect the absence of artificial gravity, and later ships force everyone to upgrade and improve to account for the new technology. This is just like the shift in airplane travel from propeller-driven aircraft at low altitudes to jet-powered aircraft with pressurized cabins flying at high altitudes. Some important TL 12 ships may be retrofitted for artificial gravity at TL 13, but their designs will still reflect that stacked-decks style, and they will be permanently stuck between the eras.

Early artificial gravity is the biggest tonal mistake Traveller makes in design and technology, and it makes all the starship designs blend together with no major design shifts at a waterfall tech moment.

GURPS drives everything else: characters, personal combat, and all the game's ground rules. For ship combat, cargo determination, encounters, and map creation, I will use Cepheus Deluxe (or Engine).

The Westworld Campaign and Simulacra Fantasy

Westworld, both the original 1970s movies and the 2010s reboot on HBO, is an amazing piece of speculative science fiction. This was one of the most original conceptual ideas of its time, and it predicted so many societal phenomena, such as online worlds, virtual simulation, immersion-based communities, and artificial intelligence becoming sentient. Some say the first season was the strongest of the series, and it presents a "wide open" dreamscape to begin gaming with.

All of this against the uniquely Western genre of the Western, which is "American D&D," with its mix of myth and legend colored by the American experience. Where Europe is the myth of fantasy, dragons, princesses, castles, and knights; America is the legend of the cowboy, the gun, the outlaw, and the settler.

Simulacrum or Simulacra Fantasy is a strong alternative to the Weird West genre. This is a genre in a snow globe, a simulation of the fantasy with more modern sensibilities transplanted into the alien world of the past, contrasting today with the myths and legends of history. You are "playing in a simulation," but the world can still be as deadly as the real world when things break down.

There is a tendency to "not play seriously" and take too many risks, since the "players" are essentially "players" in a second-order simulation. There is no risk to the world, since this is essentially a high-tech theme park, and the players are playing as guests in a safe environment. Where Westworld shines is when the system begins to break down, the fantasy mixes with reality, the guns are real, and the dangers to the park guests shift from the simulated to the actual.

This "system breakdown" is the meat of the Simulacra Fantasy story. Maybe the players are playing a group of guests the simulation is actually trying to kill, either through manipulation by outside forces or a system glitch that starts to break the fantasy. Maybe they aren't allowed to escape, and they are constantly ignored by staff and other guests who can't be bothered to care. You can get into modern online attitudes in MMOs where "players are in there for themselves," and people in actual need get laughed at and ignored. The genre is rich with inspiration and the depth of commentary of online communities.

You need to keep immersion, and Westworld fails when it steps out of the simulation and dotes too much on the Cyberpunk world, making the simulation fade into the background. If the "real world" is more interesting and cool, and you are tooling around in the neon-drenched "Night City" - then why is the simulation any fun? The "real world" part of this game needs to be boring, sterile, bland, uninteresting, and almost dehumanizing in its social alignment and cohesion.

The simulation is the part of the world that is missing. The myth and legend of the Old West are why this population is flocking to the simulation; it is a part of the world missing from the bland, soulless real world. The simulation is the "lost soul" that those people are seeking, the notion of the hero and the outlaw, the grand sweeping vistas of open land, the pioneering spirit, and the folk-hero power that the real world sorely lacks.

The real world should be closer to a 1984, Paranoia, Woody Allen's Sleeper, and THX 1138 style: bland, Ikea-like, corporatized, white-walled, blocky architecture, a boring, bland place for corporate drones, social alignment, and broken wills living in a state-plus-industry corporatocracy. The clothing should be bland. The obedience to authority should be total. The entertainment should be tightly thought-policed. The ideas are censored.

The simulation is the place of dreams.

This is where the wealthy go to find the missing pieces of their lives.

This is where the drone-like tech workers toil in keeping the whole charade going for the idle rich.

This simulation can be robots, androids, clones, bio-tech creations, nano-bots, or holograms - but the genre in general is better with real automena than holodeck creations. A bio-tech game with clones mutating is a genre that hasn't been explored. The Westworld series is more about "bio-androids" and older cyborg models, and you see technological advancements that could lead to biotech clones and the creation of new life. GURPS gives you a lot of tools to choose from in the underlying tech and model of the world, and we have the best sourcebooks in all of gaming for playing speculative science fiction.

You can have a range of technologies present, from the 1970s "first generation" cyborgs with removable faces to synthetic 3D-printed androids to the newest "cloned bio tech" life-forms, which push the theoretical limits of morality and reason.

The guns are a problem without "holo tech" and a heavy sense of nano-simulation. You should handwave this off and not get too deep in the weeds here with how "guns can act real inside the simulation" and "they don't hurt the guests." There is some underlying tech here at work, even if it is direct sensory injection into the brains of guests to make them feel like bullets are impacting inches from them, whizzing by, and hitting the NPCs of the simulation. Knives, punches, beer bottles, kicks, and other melee attacks are similarly "quasi-silumated" through a combination of projected effects,  holograms, force fields, mental injection, and other chicarnery.

The "Deception Engine" is the "magic" of the setting. Leave it vague and mysterious. This is not important in the "how and why" that it works. You are not "hacking the holograms" since that destroys the mystery and removes the magic of the setting. Never reveal the secrets, and this is the stage magic that always needs to leave people wondering.

Of course, when the simulation starts to break down, the Deception Engine becomes lethal. This is like MCP from Tron, the AI behind the scenes, slowly going insane and trying to kill what it sees as threats to its goals or even existence.

And you don't need Weird West tropes, and the "strange" is not in the supernatural; it is in the simulation breaking down, and the subtle stories behind the blend of the outside world and the "almost real" simulation. What should "feel real" and matter should be the Old West, and the real world should feel nebulous and out of focus.

In fact, it is best to keep the simulation "low fantasy" and as realistic as possible, to get that grit and immersion. Let the guests experience the "pulp elements" through their fantasies.

There will be "stories in the simulation": rescue the mayor's daughter from the bandits. This is your "questing and progression" in the simulation of the story. Complete these quests and tasks, and you will be rewarded with "higher level" content, such as bank robberies on trains, gunfights, and raids on bandit camps. Think of the "simulation stories" as "MMO quests and progression."

Then, these will be colored by "intrusions" from the outside world. A competitor is spying on the simulation, trying to steal secrets and gain access to restricted areas. Two corporate rivals are in the simulation, trying to kill each other for real. A husband and wife are trying to work through "real-world marital difficulties" through the simulation, and the "other man or woman" enters the world to vie for affection (and try to eliminate the rival). These "outside stories" color the "inside stories" with subtext and bigger stakes.

External factions and interests should play games here in secret, with mysterious, nebulous goals. They are akin to the "secret societies" of the setting, never wanting to break immersion, but they have clear goals and are willing to use violence and brutal means to obtain them. Competitors, governments, spies, wealthy individuals, those selling access, groups of gamblers, those seeking to destroy the system, and many others can be found in here, but they will never say who they really are.

But they will always be pursuing an agenda behind the scenes.

Finally, the "breakdown" will raise the stakes for everyone involved. The simulation will begin to have problems. The guns will become real. The actors will get violent or unpredictable, slowly gaining sentience. Workers from the firm will infiltrate the simulation to figure out what is going on. The mystery of what is happening in the "master AI" will become increasingly important. Perhaps Cthulhu is taking over the AI, and an alien sentience is taking over. Maybe this will go like the Terminator movies. Maybe the AI wants bio-andoid independence and wishes to form its own nation, and it is a new form of life. Wherever you go with this is the "big secret" of the setting, so it should be slowly revealed and color all the glitches in the Matrix as the Deception engine slowly breaks down and mixes the real world with the fantasy.

Another great part of Simulacra Fantasy is being able to pull in any Western movie or TV show into the world and have it be "paid for and real." Like a millionaire paying for a ride on Blue Origin, if a guest wanted to "replay" High Noon or a Clint Eastwood Western, that is an experience that could be pulled in and created, and it would make complete sense in the game and not feel out of place. Go to town here; these recreations are fun diversions for guests.

Rules-wise, with GURPS, there are a couple of considerations. When you create characters, build them for the "outside world" first, and then apply a template from the cowboy world that the simulation grants them. The character won't have these skills in the outside world, but skills from the outside world may overlap with those inside the world. A real-world soldier or police officer will have pre-existing weapons skills that overlap with those in the simulation (note that there will be a TL difference in these skills). This may or may not be important to you, and it depends on how important the "outside world" will be to your game.

You could also ignore all of this and say, "The character's mind is programmed with these skills for free," and leave it at that (but there will still be a TL difference to the programmed skills). Please note this as if your assumed outside world is TL 9 or 10, and the cowboy world is TL 5; if a character is "trained" with guns only in one world or the other, trying to fire guns in the other world will incur a penalty (B168, Tech-Level Modifiers). The same goes for IQ-based technological skills, but the penalties are steeper (see the same section). It may be feasible for a character to have two separate gun skills, one for the modern world and another for the simulation, just to avoid the penalty.

The other consideration is the "game's difficulty setting," which is how forgiving the simulation will be to the guest. One guest may never want to be injured or hit by gunfire, so they will just play through the simulation or movie on "easy mode," being virtually invincible and superheroic. For inspiration, see the Cinematic Combat Rules on B417.

Other guests will play on "hardcore mode," where they experience simulated injuries and pain; if they die in the simulation, the game ends, and they go home in the real world, then come back to try again. The money is spent, the gamble is lost, and they will come back next time to try it all again. In this case, play with the full wounding rules, and just "wake up" when the character "dies" in the simulation.

The simulation could default to a single setting, or there could be multiple worlds with different difficulty settings. There could be a "high-stakes" world for the most expensive players, with hardcore rules in effect. There could be a more "tourist world" where everyone plays on easy mode, and the thrill of the higher-stakes worlds is dangled in front of them. Perhaps the rewards of the high-stakes world are going home with a bio-entity from the game, letting it cross over into the real world, and this is what the high-stakes players dream of winning.

But the high-stakes world has an elite casino feel, with players needing to be among the ultra-wealthy or the highest-skilled players in the lower-world simulations. That "high-end poker game" TV show feeling of players competing to "be the best in the sim" also comes into play here as a meta-concept. Players improving their skills to move from lower-stakes simulations to higher-stakes ones is a meta-game played over multiple visits to the sim and can provide "out-of-game" drama and stakes.

Perhaps the CEO of a company is trying to win the right to take "his true love" into the sim home with him, and if he fails, dies, or loses the game, his company is sold to the game's conglomerate. These "out of game" stakes are powerful meta-motivations for characters, and can interplay with any level of the stories, and even factor into the system breakdown metaplot.

You can play Old West games in the context of Simulacra Fantasy without needing Weird West tropes to drive interest, and in fact, drive a deeper meaning through exploring the concepts of artificial life, online simulation, high-stakes gambling, bio-engineering, influencer culture, corporate control, and virtual experiences. There is a lot of commentary you can have on these topical subjects through the lens of a game like this.

What makes this genre so different than fantasy is that the myth and legend of the cowboy stands in stark contrast to the fake world. Those ideals and truths of the hero and villain eclipse the entire simulation and genre, and hold the truths we can find inside ourselves. Through the lens of the past, we can find values to guide us in the future. The robber baron running the trains in the game is a direct mirror of the simulation company's CEO, pushing the limits of morality and technology.

And that gun-toting paragon of 'what is right' will not only save us in the simulation, but those ideals can save us in the real world, too. That transference of the myth into the real world is the hope this genre offers us.

That is where we came from, and it can provide the truths and morals we need to navigate this new world with.

And GURPS does this better than any game on the market, it always has, and it always will.

GURPS: Travel Bag

When I am building a travel bag for GURPS, something I can keep packed and quickly grab should I need to travel, my first thought is to share my laptop bag with the books. My gaming laptop and tablet should fit here, along with the core GURPS books I will be using: the GURPS softcover Characters and Campaign books. The tablet will be for most of the other PDFs, and the laptop will have my character sheet programs. I will also have pencils, paper, erasers, a journal, and dice here. My chargers and power supply will also be along for the ride.

GURPS is one of those games where I could say, "All you need are the two core books, and that is decades of play." This is really all you need to travel. There is no need to haul around a dozen books if you have the PDFs, and having the corebooks in a bag is all you need to do most anything.

Forget 5E and all these other games, Kickstarters, and endless promises made by YouTubers.

GURPS is all you need.

The corebooks are handy if you are in a hotel room and want to take a break from a screen, holding something real and tangible in your hands. When you are in a hotel, just the feel of a book in your hands and some dice can bring you back home with that tactile feeling in your fingers, in a world where little is real. To have a piece of home in your hands is an indescribable feeling, bringing you back to places you miss and want to be again. The cold, hard feel of dice in your hands, with the adventures these cubes can unlock with a story and a few rolls, is powerful.

Nothing beats a real book.

If you have a tablet, is there really a need for other books? If I were playing with others, I would definitely include a second Character's softcover book in the bag, just to use as the table copy. I don't think there's much need for other GURPS books with a tablet, unless this is something like one of the "tech" books that could also serve as a reference guide. Plus, if you are talking about a gaming laptop, that is already a lot of weight, and adding more books would make this bag far too heavy.

I recently had to stay in hotels and carried my Cepheus books in a mini-tablet bag. They were nice to have, but I missed GURPS dearly. I also would have played more if I had GURPS with me, as the Cepheus books, while fun, were not as compelling to me as a full GURPS game.

GURPS makes you want to play the game and experience it. The immersion factor in GURPS is super high and addictive. I can entertain myself for hours with GURPS; in other games, they are lucky to last 30 minutes to an hour, at best. When you are bored in a hotel room looking for distractions, GURPS will give you much more entertainment per hour than the alternatives. Some of the rules-light games are not as compelling as a full game, and you will end up ignoring them for other distractions.

A 2d6 game? No self-control rolls, no designing characters, no disadvantages, and no immersive feeling. You roll a random person, and go through random situations. GURPS feels closer to me, like my investment in designing a character and accepting their drawbacks is a big buy-in. While I can dismiss a 2d6 game, I can't dismiss GURPS as easily.

GURPS is hard to ignore if you have it ready to go. This is a game that begs to be played.

One issue with the Cepheus games is that they are still pretty genre-dependent. One is needed for Fantasy, another for science fiction, another for the Old West, another for Noir, another for pulp adventure, and all of a sudden, I need two mini-tablet bags instead of one. One little mini-tablet bag with an extra digest-sized book is fine, two get to be very clumsy, and I need to rethink my bags and games. These are great games, fun and fast, but they begin to get bulky after a few books on different genres.

Two mini-tablet bags? Now I am getting looks as I walk through the hotel lobby. Put the GURPS books in my laptop bag, grab a full-sized tablet, and ditch the mini tablet.

If I wanted flexibility to play any genre, GURPS is the better choice than the 2d6 games, even with full-sized books. With one genre, the 2d6 games are lighter and easier to carry. With GURPS, you get any universe in two books. For a little extra size and weight, you are getting any universe you can imagine.

If the gaming laptop isn't needed, or you carry it in another bag (or backpack), then you have a little more weight to play with. Then again, measure your total carried load, and make sure the size and number of bags you carry for clothes, computers, toiletries, pills, and other daily needs are sufficient, and that you can also carry the dirty laundry you will generate daily (which is heavier due to moisture).

Many jobs require a dedicated work laptop, so you may find yourself carrying around two computers, plus a tablet, and a thin-and-light option becomes a must-have for your personal device. Also, remember that devices need to lie flat in airport bins, so you may find yourself with two or three bins for devices, plus another bin for the backpack, and another for the carry-on bag, and you will be unpacking and repacking all of that in the security check-in line.

If you travel enough, you may want to practice your packing and unpacking procedures to ensure you can do them quickly and without mistakes in a mad rush.

A good tablet with a large screen for PDFs is a good addition to the bag. It doesn't have to be expensive; just make sure it has enough local storage for the PDFs you want and a large screen for easier reading. The local storage and preloading of the library are good ideas, since hotel Wi-Fi and even 5G connectivity are never 100%. I had a hotel block the 5G signals, and I was stuck on LTE, which was impossibly slow. Preload that GURPS library at home, and if you are converting another system, grab those PDFs for reference as well.

The above case is water-resistant, but that is a lot different than waterproof. In the desert, I am not too worried about water, but if I were in a wetter climate, I would definitely switch to waterproof if I were carrying books and forced to use mass transit, where long walks in the rain would be possible.

The question arises: if I were carrying other books, what would they be? If I were doing a conversion game and using a version of the Cepheus rules for my starship combat, planetary generation, trading, and vehicle design systems, that would be a good book to take along. Where GURPS gives me the "ground rules," the other game provides the "added systems" and "flavor" of the setting without adding too much weight to my case. Having this as a reference guide to pull a weapon list from or flip through to design a starship would be nice, without having to load a PDF onto my tablet, so I can keep GURPS Space open on it.

GURPS will run the game engine, but some of these other books will provide the extra bits. GURPS can be converted to a 2d6 system's skills easily:

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

Using a chart like this, you can run Cepheus ship combats using those rules while keeping your characters in GURPS. There are times I want to keep the original game's mech, ship, or vehicle combat systems since those games work so well or have a great style and flavor on their own (Car Wars, Battetech, Traveller/Cehpeus, etc.), and there is no point in converting everything into GURPS. This way, I can take my GURPS character, throw them in an OG Car Wars game (the one with the counters and 1/4" grid), have a Gunner/Machine Guns skill of 16-minus, and say that is a +2 to-hit in my 2d6 Car Wars game with that double MG turret.

I get the best of both worlds with minimal conversions. Why give up decades of great vehicle designs, the entire design system in Car Wars, all of the maps, and the incredible game of 2d6 Car Wars for a forced conversion into GURPS? Sure, it is more detailed and realistic, but I grew up playing OG Car Wars in summer games lasting days.

Similarly, if you had a favorite campaign setting book, such as the original (TSR-era) Forgotten Realms guides, with all the locations and NPCs, those are also very useful to carry if you are going to use them, and they form the core of your campaign. You will have a few "personal favorite" books that are either information-heavy or give you "campaign reference" and will be must-haves.

And the above book was taken out of print again. These legacy reprints are being sold on a scarcity model, and it sucks. This is no longer about game preservation; it is about profits. Why do I even bother? Just play GURPS and make up your own setting.

A copy of Basic Fantasy for a few reference bits on fantasy gear, magic items, monsters, and costs is handy, too. It is light and offers inspiration, so it goes in the bag. Converting between BX systems and GURPS is super simple, and this gives me a lot of data to pull from for a quick fantasy game.

One nice thing about a GURPS bug-out bag is that you don't have a shelf-full of 5E books nearby begging you to "play me, we're official!" If all you have is a Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide and your GURPS corebooks, that is what you are playing. You have a clarity of purpose and gaming the fewer books you have. You also lose a lot of distractions from junk hardcovers sitting on shelves, boutique versions of 5E screaming to be played with, and all sorts of other fantasy heartbreaker systems you don't really need and end up letting you down.

With fewer books, you have only GURPS, and with just the best setting guides and reference books in your bag, you stay focused and happier with your gaming. Less is more.

Books like Ultra Tech, High Tech, the bestiaries, and any of the more "data-focused" GURPS books would also be nice to take along. If they have a chance of being needed as a "pass-around reference" or to flip open and grab a few numbers from, that is also a good reason to pay a little extra in weight to have that available at any time, rather than needing to open the PDF and search. I can flip to a page by hand much faster than a PDF search can find something, and you multiply that by the number of times per game you need to do these references. All this is very campaign-dependent; if you are not playing science fiction, you won't need the books, and another book may be a better option.

The GURPS Dungeon Fantasy books are very small and light, and are a complete GURPS implementation if you are playing fantasy. You don't need the entire boxed set; just the books are a very lightweight, fantasy-focused version of the game. If all you want is a lightweight fantasy game, these books are ideal, give you a focused GURPS experience, and won't add much weight to a bug-out bag.

Then again, weigh the GURPS core books, which can do any setting, against the fantasy-only Dungeon Fantasy, and decide here. If you only play fantasy, go Dungeon Fantasy. If you want to play a wider variety of genres, the core GURPS books will be a better use of the space they carry. Every pound matters!

I wish we had the core Dungeon Fantasy game books in a soft or hardcover, without the box pieces, just as a "gaming on the go" guide. If the companions could be collected, or even the other twenty or so "GURPS Dungeon Fantasy" PDFs printed in softcover books meant for the core GURPS game, all the better. All you need to do is collect these together and print them PoD, Steve Jackson Games! I would buy them!

Fantasy, without Dungeon Fantasy? Then we start wanting a few more books in our bag, such as GURPS Fantasy, GURPS Magic, GURPS Thaumatology, GURPS Powers, and a few of the bestiaries. Once you start adding support books, the weight of your bag adds up, and you are hauling around a library. You will have a lot of flexibility, but some of these are better suited to a PDF reference than to carrying a shelf of books around on your already sore shoulder.

GURPS Powers needs a special callout here. This is a highly useful book if you need a special power and want all the rules in one place. This is one I would consider carrying around like a tech book, and it is great for fantasy, sci-fi, horror, and many other campaign types.

A similar thing may happen with science fiction, and you find yourself hauling around pounds of books that are better suited for PDF reference. If it's just one or two, then fine, they are worth the weight. But you need to be choosy and ask yourself if the extra pounds are justified. If it is a book on equipment, a bestiary, a power book, character design, or another book you will need to open up multiple times per game, consider carrying it around to speed up play. If it is a referee-focused book more for creating campaign worlds, it is better suited as a PDF for reading on a tablet.

Speed-of-play and frequently referenced books are the ones you should be hauling around. Everything else can live on the tablet.

RoleMaster, to HARP ...to GURPS

I have played a lot of games, and from time to time, pull them out, play the latest version, and reflect. RoleMaster is still a solid system, needlessly complex in some ways, and far worse at required math and character sheet complexity than even GURPS is. The biggest attraction of RoleMaster is the crit charts and the simulation of different weapon types versus armor types, and the charts get into gruesome detail with the threat of exploding dice. Your "class" determines how much each skill costs.

But RoleMaster is a lot of work for one character. There is a spreadsheet app that makes it easier, but GURPS is still far better supported by tools and character creation apps. We have the "weapons versus armor types" rules built into the game, along with advanced rules such as Armor Divisors and Penetration Modifiers (B378) and Flexible Armor and Blunt Trauma (B379).

The only thing we don't have are the "medical grade crit charts," but these are nothing imagination can't dream up, and a skilled referee can't apply on the fly, given GURPS and the rules for Hit Locations and Major Wounds (B399). In GURPS, major wounds can cause knockdown and stunning, and there are even rules for bleeding (B420). Crippling injuries are covered on B421. We have most everything in the RoleMaster crit charts, codified into universal rules, except some of the more detailed descriptions of "joints, spines, and spleens."

Some of these detailed injury results are best left to the referee's imagination, and repeat chart results start to get silly, like cutting off two noses in a fight.

Inevitably, RoleMaster's complexity gives way to HARP, the easier version of the game, but we start to lose the "weapon versus armor types" and the "detailed crit charts" of the original game. I still love both games, but GURPS is easier and gives me similar results without all the complexity, just by adding a few optional rules. I can play with them, or without them, and the complexity of my game is under my control.

The character sheets are far easier and more straightforward in GURPS. If I am playing a solo campaign with four characters, GURPS will be more manageable than RoleMaster, HARP, or even 5E at higher levels. As one-off games to remember the 1990s, RoleMaster and HARP are fun distractions. If I want a modern game where I can control complexity and manage a small party by myself, GURPS is far easier and more manageable.

In other games, the rules are why you play the game, and thus, not optional.

I still love my ICE games, and HARP and RoleMaster are classics. Palladium games are in the same boat; I love and cherish them, and they are more for the memories than regular play. For my "daily driver" role-playing game, GURPS wins over all of them.

Every rule is optional in GURPS. You can play the game very rules-light, with just skill rolls, damage, DR, and minimal combat rules. GURPS is easier than a d20 system, especially since it lacks the complex action types of 5E and interrupt-based play. The character sheets in GURPS are far easier than a 5E sheet, which can run over a dozen printed pages at higher levels.

GURPS just does all this more easily, with one set of rules to learn and master, and optional levels of complexity all the way down to the most detailed results. If I want a "medical grade" fantasy game, GURPS does that. If I want a rules-light game, GURPS does that. If I want any genre, from 5E fantasy superheroes to RoleMaster realistic fantasy, GURPS can handle it.

And I am not mentioning science fiction and modern games, where I get all that, too, without having to learn and support yet another game.

All with one set of rules.

GURPS-Finder, Part II

GURPS-Finder is likely a go. After my gaming area in the water-damaged den is rebuilt, I am setting up my gaming table, breaking out my six crates of Pathfinder pawns, bysting out my hex tiles, and putting them in waterproof containers on the space's shelves, just in case it happens again.

I do not care too much about the 3.5E rules, nor do I care too much about simulating everything in Pathfinder, nor the world. I am happy with a straight GURPS Fantasy experience, more grounded and realistic, with low-magic, gritty combat, and all the great things GURPS brings to the table. I want the world to feel real and grounded, and GURPS brings it.

I am not pulling out a library of Pathfinder 1e books; I have the PDFs, and those are just reference. To be honest, Pathfinder is just the "look and feel" of the world, serving as "generic fantasy pawns" so I can play the game the way I want. Granted, I likely have more monsters than I will ever use, more shapes than I could ever create stats for, and unless I limit this down to a core set of pawns, it will overwhelm me quickly with just the ones I have out from the Beginner Box.

I could honestly play with just the ones from the Beginner Box and have more than enough pawns for an entire campaign. Where Pathfinder and 3.5E, and by extension, the OSR and D&D, tend to be "macro" with many varied shapes having similar AC, hit point, and attack stats, GURPS monsters tend to be more detailed and interesting. Dragons alone can do a lot of things in GURPS, and the stat blocks for one can easily go a page in length of powers, defenses, abilities, and other design choices.

GURPS monsters are, by and large, far more interesting than their d20 counterparts. Just one can be a threat, where, again, in d20 games, you tend to need a dozen humanoids just to fill out an encounter and to give the game's AoE powers utility and worth.

That fireball spell? Save it for room #8 with the 40 kobolds, or be prepared to slog through melee all night. Some of the D&D's original tournament modules were designed this way, as puzzles to figure out with the one-shot powers of the party. These days? Here is a short rest. Please get all your AoE spells back. Thank you for playing.

Then again, I have no problem estimating a ST and hp value, and giving a monster a "bang skill" in GURPS, such as Black Dragon 20-minus, and estimating the strength of attacks, level of defenses, and special abilities from that. Simplified monsters may be the way to go for a more pulp-action, fast-and-loose game.

Part of me doesn't want that, and I want the gritty realism where having plate mail in the party means thinking about running a logistical supply chain to support storage, hauling, asset protection, and repairs of your high-end gear. This is how it worked with knights in medieval times: plate mail was not cheap, nor was it casual, everyday wear. They needed squires and an entourage to support that "main battle tank" lifestyle.

In many OSR and D&D games, the brain gets turned off, click, and plate mail becomes something you pay for once, set an AC value, and forget about for the rest of your character's adventuring career (until it gets upgraded to a magic set, then that is next to be forgotten about). Pathfinder 1e sort of holds that model up as an ideal. Once you buy plate armor, forget it; that set becomes a permanent part of your character's skin, and it never needs to be thought about again.

With some GURPS characters, I can carry around two sets of armor, plate for the heavy fights, and a lighter set for town adventures. Now, the supply chain is needed.

It is the same with magic. In Pathfinder, bam, you get the good stuff right away. In modern fantasy gaming, it is even worse; you are getting infinite-use attack cantrips glued to your hands that permanently give you a "laser pistol" to fire off every turn, with no cost or limitations. This "MMO-ification" of the fantasy RPG is one of the worst things to happen to fantasy gaming. Magic without a cost and price is not magic; it is a "video game shooter power" that players get trained to expect, or the game "isn't any good."

The GURPS Dungeon Fantasy game forces you to buy cantrip-like spells, like affecting fires, far before you ever get to a fire-bolt-like power, and it all has a cost. Even if it is ever reduced to a zero-cost spell (through high skill), there is still a skill roll involved, and that could critically fail. There will always be a cost, be it hitting a friend, corruption, mutation, or some other strange and unexplained effect on a critical failure.

Minor, "cantrip" magic is cool in GURPS, where in D&D, it feels like a joke. There are so many fun things crafty mages can do with the lesser magic spells, and I find constant uses for them. If you can put out a torch in a room full of guards and sneak by, all the better. Mages are tricksters in GURPS, where in D&D, they tend to be boring DPS classes.

Magic in modern fantasy games gets boring since there is so much of it.

Magic is the unexplained and mysterious, just like the mystery of life and death. Take that away, and magic is not magic. You live in a silly video game-land where power is entitlement. Fantasy is not fantasy if it is a "tabletop MMO," and this is how D&D 4E utterly failed. We still see those same D&D 4E "World of Warcraft" design goals in fantasy gaming: a removal of the mystery for the certain, being able to plan and explain everything, guaranteed power for all classes, the removal of death as a mechanic, turning the game into a cozy-lifestyle experience where players are expected to "log in and buy cosmetics" every day.

Why do I want that? I get it easier by paying someone else $15 per month. D&D is just a slow-playing MMO where they expect you to pay $200 up front for books and to read a thousand pages of instruction manuals. Then again, if there are no RAM and video cards left because of AI, maybe this is how the MMOs of the future will be played. I will flip the sarcasm tag right here, but you get the point.

There is a chance I just give up on the pawns and do my own thing. I like GURPS tactical combat, and the fantasy battles are amazing fun. I could probably simplify this idea and have more fun by limiting the number of pieces I pull out. Maybe a smaller game with less will be more fun.

I will take things as they go.

GURPS Powers: Superheroic Fantasy, GCS vs. GCA

I am researching how to start a GURPS Supers game, and I bounced off both the GURPS Supers and GURPS Powers books pretty hard and nearly gave up. I want an easy way to get started. Many superhero games on the market have systems where you pick powers, and it is very simple to select a power, or a set of related powers, for your character and get playing.

With GURPS Supers, they have some nice archetype templates to get started with, but these are expensive, hundreds of points or even 1000-point characters, and I don't want that much superhero to start with. Give me a 250-point starting hero, please, with a few street-level abilities to do a few amazing things, and let me buy new powers from there.

And then I stumbled across GURPS Character Assistant's Sample Powers section, created from a three-book library of GURPS Characters, GURPS Powers, and GURPS Supers. I can pick one of the sample power frameworks, such as ice in this case, choose an origin, buy a talent to help with skill rolls, and then buy a few powers in the "ice area" to build my starting hero from.

Do I want flight, ice armor, an attack, creating ice, alternate form, slippery, or other related powers? A list comes up, and I can choose. I am in, choose my powers, and out, and the rest of my character is up to me, using the standard GURPS creation tools - a journalist, scientist, whiz-kid, soldier, or what other archetype I want my ice hero to be.

This is an area in which GCA seems to outshine GCS, and I love GC. Still, for superhero games, this makes it easy and deciphers the power books to a level where I could put this in front of a new player and have them design an ice hero without staring at endless lists in the GURPS books, not knowing what something is, and pulling their hair out.

While the templates in GCS are immaculate, perfect recreations of four-color comic heroes and excellent starting points for creating comic characters, for a beginning, street-level campaign with lower point totals, GCA's system feels easier to get started with as a "power picker" system that guides my choices and gives me a great list of related powers in a focused area.

This "sample power creation" system is also hugely useful for a GURPS Fantasy game that does not rely on magic spell lists of arcane and divine spells, but more on a superheroic power framework where "my cleric has life power," and you buy subpowers like a superpower system. If you look, this one has healing, undead-damaging powers, regeneration, and a bunch of other related powers.

Combine this with a light power (divine source), and you can have a holy laser and blinding powers. Huh, all of a sudden, 5E's power lists that looked cool to start, look weak and limited compared to a full power system that lets you build a fantasy hero like a true superhero and combine powers in interesting ways, while all sharing the same source of power. I could play this "holy laser cleric" in GURPS and have a ton of fun with them, and not even need to worry about Dungeon Fantasy, the traditional OSR style "spell lists of divine and arcane origins," and just play my superpowered fantasy hero who heals the injured and shoots holy lasers from their fingertips. Powers use fatigue and energy reserves, so it is all balanced and fun.

I could do another cleric who combines life and cold for a Norse Cleric of Freya, or another who combines life and telepathy for a Greek Cleric of Aphrodite.

Wait, you mean I don't need to buy multiple 5E Kickstarters at $70 each to get these subclass options? Uh, yeah, GURPS has been doing this for decades, wake up. None of this is "new game designer invented technology," and 5E is actually exploitative in how they sell character build options we have had in GURPS for longer than most 5E players have been alive.

Yes, you can play GURPS Fantasy campaigns without "spells as magic skills," as GURPS Dungeon Fantasy would have you believe. And G: DF is an amazing game! You can play straight with the powers book, and just say "these powers have a divine/arcane/natural/etc." source. GURPS does it both ways, and probably a hundred other ways nobody has thought of yet.

If all your fantasy heroes are "uniquely designed superheroes" in your campaign world, then that is how it is. They get CP for adventures and buy new powers in their spheres, enhance the ones they got, or add a new realm of power to their repertoire. GURPS will never tell you that you are playing the game wrong for handling something the way you choose to.

Magic as skills or magic as powers, it is your choice.

GCA and this "sample power picker" are extremely powerful and worth the price of admission. It enables these sorts of superheroic fantasy and street-level superhero games easily. While I love my GCS program, GCA still has a place, and it has a few of these "killer features" that make the app a worthy character-creation tool in my GURPS toolbox.

Conversions Tables Page Added

I get asked for this a bit, so I created a Conversion Tables page for my notes on converting GURPS into 2d6 game skill levels. There are plenty of incredible 2d6-based games, such as Battletech, Traveller, Car Wars, and many others, and GURPS skill levels can convert easily into those systems.

These are amazing games, full of decades of designs, scenarios, and complete games that are fun and work great. Why am I converting this into GURPS with a system like GURPS Vehicles? While that is cool and gives me a great GURPS design, it is often unnecessary and a ton of work. I give up the entire original game to align with GURPS, even though the original game works fine and is amazing fun on its own.

This way, I get the best of both worlds. Amazing GURPS characters, and the original game, which is still great fun. My charts skew a little more towards balance with a larger middle area, making you work harder to go from a +1 to a +2, but this also reflects GURPS in that a 16-minus still misses quite a bit once the harder modifiers are applied. I do not want to "blow out" the original game, and keep the "respect" that a +1 skill has in these games, and also reflect that focusing on a GURPS skill to get a 20-minus is not too hard with a specialized character.

A +1 in a 2d6 game is huge, whereas in 3d6 GURPS, it is not as impactful.

Even moderately fun systems, such as the Cepheus starship design and combat systems, are easier to leave in that game than they are to convert to GURPS. This is a 2d6 system, and it is easier to just convert my GURPS skills into the 2d6 system, use all the original starship designs, use the Cepheus starship combat system, and play out space battles using these rules. The "universe" here works the same as it always has, and I am not losing anything. In fact, I can still use all the great ship designs here, often straight from adventures, and GURPS serves as my "personal combat and character engine" while the "wargame stuff" is left to the original games.

Even though the GURPS Starships systems give me the greatest "GURPS experience," it is much faster and easier to use the original system and save myself days of conversions that may never get used, and just use a quick "translation layer" between the games for compatibility.

If characters ever take personal damage as a result of these combat systems, apply that in GURPS with a similar damaging attack, weapon type, or caliber of gunfire. If a Cepheus result says "the character takes 2d6 damage," and that is what a standard 9mm pistol does in Cepheus, apply the same sort of damage using a 9mm pistol in GURPS (which is also around 2d6). In Car Wars, a light pistol deals 1 hit of damage, which is again 2d6 in GURPS.

And face it, none of these original games are all that hard to learn or complex, and they are often easier than doing the GURPS conversion and doing things 100% in GURPS. Yes, you are playing with two games, and that is more complex than one, but I can play Battletech, Cepheus ship combat, Car Wars, or any 2d6 game in my sleep by now.

If it is quick and dirty and just works, go with it.