GURPS: MegaTraveller

MegaTraveller was the last time that the Traveller universe felt like it mattered to me.

Oh, I know this is going to rile a few, since GURPS: Traveller explicitly retconned and took a shot at the entire MegaTraveller setting, and in-canon, pseudo-erased it from history, and this erasure sort of outlived GURPS Traveller and the retcon became canon in the Traveller timeline. GURPS: Traveller took us back to the good days, past this mistake made in 1987, and back to the late 1970s of the little black books - plus GURPS.

GURPS: Traveller was the best of both games. I love GURPS: Traveller more than I do many versions of Traveller itself, except the original books.

And MegaTraveller never happened.

MegaTraveller marked the beginning of a fall from grace, leading to TNE and, eventually, GDW's bankruptcy. This is where the Traveller game began to lose its way, its identity crisis, and creators searching for what makes a science fiction setting compelling and interesting.

Battletech is popular!

People like Twilight: 2000!

Let's do that!

And what a mistake it was.

But I loved MegaTraveller. I got into this so deeply. This was the first time that Traveller felt real to me; it brought that "immersive universe" home that GURPS: Traveller would later recapture, and it took a black sharpie to a boring, static universe and killed trillions of people and nearly a thousand worlds.

My brother never saw the point in playing this, but I was enthralled by the setting and the active and post-war lore. This was exciting. It gave characters a reason to care. The stories were not "sleepy space trading" and "science missions," but they held real meaning and consequence.

The universe felt alive again.

And it left us with a mess where infinite adventures could happen, and the universe was reset, becoming yours again. We were no longer tied to endless canon, library entries, and that high barrier to entry for getting into this universe. Traveller today has the same problem that Runequest has: you need to know far too much to even get started. The amount of lore and canon you need to absorb makes the setting impossible for new or casual players.

And like Runequest, needing to know so much puts me to sleep, and it makes the Traveller setting feel massive and sleepy itself. There is far too much here to absorb to start playing, and the only way to start playing the game is to ignore 99% of what we have and start a micro-campaign.

But the setting is why we play. Right?

But MegaTraveller was a soft reset that let you remake the universe in your own way. You could take an entire sector, re-roll the world UDPs, and play there. It did not matter anymore. War changed everything. If you played with canon-plus, that was fine, but you could play in an entirely changed universe where every world was random-gen and still be playing in the same universe.

MegaTraveller brought the "shattered universe" model of Battletech to Traveller, but unlike Battletech, there were no cool mechs to stomp around in. The design and combat systems dramatically increased in complexity, so even if you wanted to fight in the starship battles, the system was harder than the original Little Black Book game and took a long time to figure out. The game created a wargame universe and dropped the ball on making it fun and compelling to fight in.

If I were to play in this setting today, I would use GURPS, the Mongoose 2nd Edition rules, or Cepheus.

But why play?

This is a failed experiment, a universally hated setting, and a huge mistake for the game and its lore. There is nothing "to do here" except fight and die for no good reason. This is Star Wars without any fun or cool elements. This is Battletech without mechs. This is punkless Cyberpunk. This is a lousy, brutal, meaningless, space war fought because stupid, callous royals, corporations, and powerbrokers could not get along and share power. There is very little good reason to fight for anything. The problems caused by war are the only thing driving "more war" at this point. This whole thing is a pointless, meaningless, self-sustaining mess I do not want to be involved with.

Huh.

That should sound familiar, and a bit scary.

If you have an appreciation for war stories, Twilight: 2000, and raw, unflinching survival stories, this is a great universe. There is a later sourcebook detailing the downfall of an entire spacefaring civilization, in which worlds with domed cities supporting billions of people are failing due to a breakdown of the universal economy, and people are fleeing for their lives and forced to live in primitive conditions on nearby worlds, often where they are not welcome. Cities on livable worlds are choked with people and refugees from war. Social strife and the breakdown of civilization and technology only get worse as time goes on, as banks fail, consumer goods run out, and food, fuel, and energy become scarce.  Prices for everything are sky-high. 

Technology itself is failing universe-wide.

Entire classes of people live on credit that is slowly running out.

Old starships are pressed into service, and they barely work, falling apart and breaking down before they ever reach their destinations. Dead space fleets full of wrecks are scavenged by pirates, salvage crews, scavengers, and the locals just to find spare parts to sell to survive.

Entire star systems are mined and under active occupation. Planets have been wiped out, their atmospheres destroyed, and cities leveled. Some live as feudal primitives on cut-off worlds. Others have turned to savagery and cannibalism. Planets suffer orbital bombardment and years-long sieges. Occupation forces and allied factional groups are everywhere, some with shifting allegiances. Mercenaries sell their services to both sides, and force people into press-gang units that fight with soldiers little more than slaves.

As communication breaks down, misinformation and lies run rampant. Rumor and underground information networks thrive. Entertainment becomes a black market. The throngs of the poor live in shacks built from scrap as the rich turn their skyscrapers into fortress cities. Armored cars take the VIPs from place to place, as riots on the street grow and local governments crack down with more brutal tactics. Computer and communication networks barely work, and the technology required to maintain them fails. Old-tech, like the radio and newspapers, becomes the way people hear about the news.

Environmental disasters are everywhere as the technology to address them fails, and some are deliberately started as sabotage. Fires burn massive parts of forests. Dams are blown up, and massive areas are flooded. Earthquake damage is never repaired. Pollution from massive war economies clogs smog and rivers with poison. Garbage piles up. Roads deteriorate, and bridges fail. Rail networks are held together by duct tape and prayers. Starports and combination junkyards and salvage yards, with some ships abandoned and being scrapped for spare parts, as they never took off and were left where they sat. Massive shanty towns surround starports, where people beg to be taken off-world, try to find jobs, and scavenge for food.

The frontlines are deadly, dangerous places. Rebel and terror groups sow discord and chaos just to weaken popular support. Local governments turn authoritarian to maintain order. The war economy drags on everyone, prices are insane, war profiteers attend rich parties with royals who couldn't care less, and the poor continue to sacrifice for a victory that seems farther and farther off every year.

The rich care less and less, as long as their war investments pay dividends. Resource shipments become legitimate targets of war, along with factories and starports. Random attacks hit civilian infrastructure at any time. The war seems to spread farther and farther from the front lines as time goes on.

Rarely do we ever get a science-fiction universe like this. Sure, Battletech is close, but you can ignore most of that from your mech cockpit. Here, you need to live in it and face the realities every day.

And the war machines profit, and the class of the rich become more and more detached from a universe they destroyed. Some would even say they are happy with the outcome.

Does that sound familiar?

Yeah, it is today.

Or it soon will be.

MegaTraveller was a game 40 years ahead of its time.

GURPS Basic Fantasy: BF1 Morgansfort

Basic Fantasy is one of the most amazing projects and games ever created. Free for everyone to play, a hybrid OSR game that mixes the best of modern mechanics with old school gaming. And the one part most overlooked is that this game was tested extensively, and the math just works flawlessly. People will play other OSR games and come back to Basic Fantasy just because the math and balance are solid here, and there's no wonkiness or silly stuff that breaks immersion.

And the books are free for all to enjoy.

It is one of the most generous communities in gaming, and the books are printed at cost and sold for zero profit. This isn't some $200 botique OSR game meant for crowdfunding profits; this is a movement to keep gaming free for everyone, forever. I wish more communities were like this one.

And this is one of my favorite systems to convert to GURPS. No offense to the creators, these adventures are amazing in Basic Fantasy and should be played there, too. But as a GURPS adventure engine, Basic Fantasy is a snap to convert adventures into GURPS, the AC values cleanly translate into DR values, and you can even use the HD and hp numbers nearly as-is in a hybrid conversion model.

And the adventures, towns, maps, and worlds are so well put together, they are amazing. There isn't too much detail, but there is just enough to get the mind working. They are the perfect blank canvas to work on, not so blank that they are nothing, but with just enough detail to expand and fill in yourself.

They also feel on the low-fantasy side of the genre, where magic is still rare and special. I could play these almost entirely low fantasy with GURPS, even without magic, and they would work perfectly. I like being able to control how much magic is in a setting, and I have a few setting books that overdo it with the magic to a point where the setting feels unusable.

Converting

BX hit points and damage are very compatible with GURPS, and if an orc has 4hp, let him have that, and he becomes a BX-style mook in GURPS that typically goes down in one hit. I am not looking for everyone to have 10 hit points in GURPS, and 1-2 HD creatures will often have less, but by the time creatures get 6+ HD, they will be tougher in GURPS, almost like boss monsters, and it will all balance out.

If a basilisk has 6 HD in BF, that will be 6d6+12 hit points in GURPS, or about 34 hit points on average. a DR of 5, and ability scores of about 16. Attack skill will be 17, and powers that total 30 character points. I have a B/X conversion page that works pretty well. The only difference is that converted creatures will be a little tougher at higher levels, but if you treat them as boss monsters, they will be fine. Lower-level creatures will go down fast like mooks, but that is fine in the genre, too. GURPS is deadly enough that a 2 hit point goblin with a skill of 12 can kill you pretty quickly on a critical hit with a shortbow.

Mind you, get access to one high-tech firearm, and even that 9 HD dragon with 63 hit points, a skill of 20, and a DR of 9 is going to go down fast. To those with bows and pointy sticks, that dragon will be terrifying and take dozens of men's lives and a few siege weapons to take down, if it is even possible, or the dragon doesn't flee early.

This is a converted reality versus the actual baseline GURPS reality. The world will have that "video game" feeling in places, but this is how the gods decreed the world, so it shall be. GURPS Ultra Lite fills in most of the rest.

My conversion is more "GURPS in a BX reality" than "GURPS in a realistic reality," where GURPS drives the engine of a BX-style world, BX values are imported from standard bestiaries, and the differences between high- and low-HD creatures create a natural balance. There will always be "hero orcs" generated like characters, but the rest are background extras in a Peter Jackson movie, left with their converted HP and HD ratings.

This also saves me a ton of conversion work, while leaving the door open for me to create custom hero monsters with the character creation tools. Oh, and kudos to the GURPS community that does these amazing conversions! If you want to play with "real reality" stats, please visit those sites and creators and support the amazing work they do.

The GURPS Campaign

I would start in Morgansfort, even as just a hired bow guard on the walls, and run a campaign telling his story. Since there is a refugee component to the setting, with new settlers arriving, I would expand the fort by adding wooden houses huddled around the outer walls, and place the newcomers in them.

The castle itself is a bit small for a few hundred people, and putting them gathered around the fort for protection makes sense. There are humanoid attacks, so the fort's defenders would ring a bell and rush everyone inside before slamming the gates shut. This puts pressure on the new workforce outside the walls to be digging an outer defensive moat with pikes, and putting up a temporary wooden wall before a large outer stone wall can be constructed.

There is room for it on the local map, and the cliffs on the water could be left open for now. There could be an argument on how large the outer walls should be, if they should stay 120 yards from the fort, or extend out all the way to the road. The scattered farms would also need to be considered, and they would need to expand dramatically in the near future. We need the wall. The humanoids keep attacking. The refugees are not safe out there. And we need to keep everyone fed and productive while putting every able-bodied person to work.

And that is it.

That is the campaign.

Keep it simple, use the included dungeons as a source of adventure, but leave the main story of the first few months, the building of the wall, and all the struggles around that, along with fending off humanoid attacks and finding their source. Keeping the game simple will ensure its success, and give me room to go any way I want with it. If the players want to train soldiers from the new arrivals, great. Do they want to direct the construction of the wall?

Do they serve as peacekeepers and constables among the new arrivals? Is there tension among the refugees, or between them and the town? Are the workers cutting logs getting attacked? Are the farms being raided while starvation looms? Is there a clan of dwarves in the hills who could help with stone, if they get help (or gold) for their services?

And since this is BX, could the orcs or goblins be negotiated with? Turned against each other? Could you find a good dragon who could scare them off (in trade for a favor)? Or perhaps find fae and get them to help, and not attack those cutting trees down for the town?

Keeping the starting point simple ensures longevity and playability.

It also gives the players the freedom to go in any direction imaginable.

Some may just want to "up and leave this dump."

Others will stay.

Some will head out to learn the secrets of magic.

Others will eventually make this the seat of their new domain.

That is fine by me.

I don't need "the magical stairs" and the "1000-year curse" with the "planar concordium" coming into play here. Some 5E modules go way too hard on the planar, multiversal, and high-magic stuff, and they lose me. I do not need any of it. I want humanistic, relatable, down-to-earth stories of struggle and sacrifice. In 5E, my characters would get so powerful that they would cease to care about Morgansfort. This is 5E's problem: You get so godlike that the world is beneath you. Why would the town ever trust people who get planar bastions at level 5 and are never seen again?

In GURPS, I can have an 800-point character who still cares about this place. That character is still very grounded and real to the world. While they may be around the world on adventures from time to time, this will always be home, and they will never outlevel it.

That keeps me coming back to turn the next page of adventure.

How Does a GURPS World Work?

In BX, if there is one constant about "how the world works," it always boils down to one simple mechanic: the X-in-6 roll. Wandering monsters, finding secret doors, trap activation, listening for sounds, forcing open a door, and anything else not a percentage thief ability is always an X-in-6 check.

In fact, anything in BX is an X-in-6 check. Is the market open today? Is the door locked? Are there shields in stock? Can I find a medicinal herb nearby? Will the duchess see me? Is there a guard patrolling near here? Does the rope break this turn? Do I get run over by a stampeding bull? Does the potion bottle roll off the ledge? Are we lucky enough to find front row seats at the arena? Is the food spoiled? Is the weather bad today?

In BX, any question about the world is answered with an X-in-6 check.

And the different systems are not unified, and that is okay. Not everything has to be a floating strike zone, like it is in 5E! The higher level you go, somehow, the harder everything gets, and this is an endemic problem in any game that uses DC values. Why is it that at level 20, all the doors are DC 20 in adventures when they used to be DC 10? It is DC inflation, I guess.

The X-in-6 check is the universal way to interact with a BX world when there is an open question and the referee hasn't said otherwise. This is one constant about BX worlds: any question, if not determined by a referee to be one way or the other, is an X-in-6 roll.

X-in-6 is an old-school rule, and GURPS can use it without a problem. At this point, it is a pretty well-accepted referee tool, but it does run counter to how 5E does things with slapping a DC on everything. 5E does not use X-in-6 and prefers skill checks and DCs.

X-in-6 in GURPS

GURPS can borrow this rule, but there are specific rules for stuck doors, ability and skill checks, and other checks that supersede X-in-6. And GURPS, by default, uses a 3d6 reaction roll table, whereas BX uses a 2d6 table. But GURPS uses all types of rolls, and in the Campaigns book I can find 1d6, 2d6, and 3d6 charts a-plenty, so there is no standard X-in-6 rule, though you are free to borrow it and use it for GURPS if you like.

In GURPS, rolling high on oracle die (or dice) and reaction tables should be the good results, while rolling low is the bad result. This comes from the reaction roll table and should be uniform across all other types of rolls. If you have a 1d6 roll in GURPS, treat it as a 6+ for a 1-in-6 result with the best outcome. A 2d6 chart? A 12 should be the best result.

Where BX has a 1-in-6 chance for a wandering monster, GURPS would be that roll of one, also. But if the outcome were looking for a positive or beneficial result, put that at the high end of the die, and start at 6 and go down, such as 6+, 5+, 4+, and so on.

Keep the low results bad, and the higher results good.

This also allows you to use a dumbbell die (DBD), with 1 being bad, 6 being good, and everything else neutral. Are you rolling for encounters or wandering monsters? Toss a DBD; most of the time, it will be nothing, but you have two special results you can interpret. This DBD method also preserves the GURPS low-high and bad-good chart alignment, and feels more GURPS to me.

You can also eliminate one side of the DBD if there is no result on that side. A random roll to see if something good happens? Roll a 6. A random roll to check for a bad outcome? Pray you don't roll a 1. This way, a DBD can handle three types of rolls (good only, bad only, and bad-good-neutral) in a consistent manner with one die.

Is There a Standard?

But is there a standard in the books on how a GURPS world works? Is it always a 3d6 reaction table roll if you don't know the answer to a question? Not really. If you are using a d6 and an oracle, you have a 50% chance of getting a yes/no answer. Or a 33-and-1/3% yes, maybe, and no question using two numbers for each.

There is no standard for random tables, and you are free to use 1d6, 2d6, and 3d6 tables as often as you want. For an oracle roll, keep it simple: a 1d6, low is bad, high is good.

What defines a GURPS world comes down to science, math, and physical values such as distance, time, and temperature, as well as other "hard" values. This is always the default, since GURPS is, at its core, a simulation engine. These values drive modifiers for skill rolls. GURPS is a skill-based system. This is its engine and heart.

BX tends to blend the oracle die with set probabilities for specific events or outcomes. When in doubt, the entire world works on a 1-in-6 chance, modified up for probability. BX keeps the oracle die and the universal resolution mechanic as a unified system, while combat is different.

In GURPS, the oracle die, or dice, are separate from the skill resolution (or self-control) rolls. They are two different things that work on opposite high-low scales. Skills are skills, and these define the game. You will never be rolling a 1-in-6 chance to unlock a door in GURPS, it is always a skill. If the referee wants to put a random chance the door is unlocked? That can be an oracle die and not tied to the skill system, roll a 6 on 1d6.

The rest of the world is based on real numbers and math.

Skills are skills, and always 3d6 roll low.

An oracle die is kept apart from the skill system and is its own thing, and feel free to come up with any table you want. Keep these roll high.

And GURPS is GURPS.

GURPS, Narrative, and the 5E Experience

I play BX, and it feels like "a dungeon game." I obey the strict dungeon exploration turn order, mark off the turn record sheet, let the burned torches flicker out and light a new one, and roll diligently for wandering monster checks. This is what 5E wants to forget: the minigame that is dungeon exploration.

This is why we play.

I love counting off turns, the resources ticking down, the creative use of equipment, the problem-solving, the XP for GP, avoiding fights, cheating the monsters, and getting the creatures in the dungeon into no-win fights.

Our lives are on the line here; we are not looking for a fair fight! Where 5E players are playing "king's chess," BX players are "backstabbing mobsters and cutthroats."

And unlike 5E, we can't sit quietly for ten minutes and heal a spear thrust impaling someone's face. The healing game in 5E is beyond stupid, and it is World of Warcraft. If you die, you might as well "respawn at town" to finish the gameplay dynamic.

Just be honest about what your game is. If death is impossible, just write that into the rules.

I am mostly done with mainstream 5E. The game is too heavy, too complicated, a mess of designer good intentions, and it keeps breaking when I try to get the system to do what I want. 5E is a wannabe narrative story game wearing AC, hit points, and a level system that the designers think will excite you, but every level, it ends up disappointing you more and more, with nothing to look forward to, and it's a waiting game to get the next power to make you more invincible and even more powerful.

I tried liking 5E many times. Every time I played, I got bored, and the character sheets ended up a dozen printed pages long. I can't support that, nor play it alone. If I am playing a game that deep, GURPS will win since I get more out of it than I put in. And a thousand-point character in GURPS is only four pages long. I start to get recycling anxiety around printing 5E character sheets on paper.

I am a better "game designer" than 5E designers, especially with a character I know by heart. I know their exact powers. I know the skills they have. I know this character and the design team are not "telling me" who my character is or what they can do.

I am not fitting my character concept and abilities around "what the game tells me my character knows."

In GURPS, I am fitting my character concept and abilities around "what I know."

The 2024 version of D&D removed all the ranger's "soft powers" around exploration and focused on combat abilities, mainly because those are the easiest to support in a (failed) VTT. So, what, now? My ranger is stupid when it comes to survival. Or is that just "flavor text" that the game doesn't supply rules for anymore? In GURPS, I get my ranger abilities back, I can pick exactly what they are, and improve them to super-heroic levels if I want.

My GURPS ranger is so skilled that he can build an igloo McMansion and survive for years on an ice sheet. It is a two-story house with a grand bedroom and an ice piano in the foyer. It even has a heated swimming pool that we have no idea how it doesn't freeze or melt through the ice shelf.

That may seem so over-the-top and stupid that it seems impossible.

But there is a way to do that in GURPS.

That survival skill is going to be loaded up with so many custom modifiers (or the easiest way is a custom Cosmic modifier at +50%) that the skill itself will be prohibitively expensive to level, but hey, where there is an idea, there is a way in GURPS.

In 5E? Forget it, you are stuck with what the book gives you. Or doesn't give you.

Your ranger in 5E is stuck with an overloaded Hunter's Mark and is freezing to death.

My GURPS ranger is sleeping in his ice canopy bed, perfectly warm, and looking forward to a breakfast stored in the refrigerator that never needs power.

GURPS is the better fit. My beat-up softcovers are well-loved and on my play shelf. There is nothing like a dog-eared and shopworn copy of GURPS; every bump, nick, and crease is an adventure had. You know this book lived a great life and provided endless adventures - and it still has a long life ahead! Dinged books aren't imperfect; they have character and are signs of love and use.

And, honestly, GURPS is the better narrative game. We have advantages and disadvantages here that directly impact character actions and the story. 5E has nothing except a very weak inspiration mechanic that is really only useful for combat or avoiding consequences. I can play rules-light GURPS, just "skills and 3d6," and have a far more engaging and immersive narrative experience than 5E. The only thing 5E supplies is a pre-made framework of fantasy superpowers based on class templates. That does not replace strong narrative tools and systems.

Where GURPS Shines for Me

The specific. The details. Every little thing matters.

Knowing the rules. The hex-grid. Facing. Movement.

Building towards a mathematical advantage.

To me, this is where GURPS shines. The heart of GURPS is not point-buy or the best design system in gaming; it is the hard math between the hex grid, movement, carried weight, and using your skills to push your playing piece around that grid to achieve specific story objectives without dying.

Like The Fantasy Trip, the heart of GURPS lies in the same place. GURPS just lets you go so many more places than TFT. You can run a purely narrative game with GURPS, sure, and it works amazingly well. You can do theater of the mind with GURPS, and again, it works well. GURPS just does whatever it wants, and it does it well.

High fantasy or low? 5E doesn't even do low fantasy, and the last time they tried it broke the setting. Limit the gear of martial classes to wood, bone, and bronze, and the magic-based characters walk all over them by level five. In GURPS, oh yeah, this is good. The difference between a move of 3 and 4 could kill you.

GURPS is far, far better than 5E because you are not beholden to the whims of a game designer who tells you how you should build your character. You are the game designer. You design your character for what you want them to do.

Some games have a tight, highly tuned, very enjoyable gameplay loop, such as BX or Shadowdark. You play these games for that gameplay loop. I still enjoy the BX style of play, the counting down six exploration turns that a torch lasts, the regular wandering monster rolls, the forced rest turns, and encumbrance versus movement. That is a classic gameplay loop, and I enjoy it like a fine wine. It is very structured, and it clashes with today's narrative superhero fantasy games to the point that they are not even the same game.

The classic BX exploration, turn, and combat round game loop is very similar to a Car Wars Classic game. Every turn matters. You stay in that framework the entire session, tick off a time-tracking sheet, and never break out of it unless you shift into travel mode.

For the most part, in a dungeon, you are doing the exact same thing as you do in the one-second turns of GURPS, but you are in the 10-minute exporation framework of BX. You burn torches and oil for light. Lose your light, and that is like a SCUBA diver losing their air. It becomes a fight to survive when that resource runs low.

GURPS does that, but not really for the structured exploration turn. You can do that if you want, and you have experience running exploration turns. But that structure isn't in the game, and assumes you will port it in if you like it a lot. GURPS is that shapeshifter that will impersonate other games when it wants to, but you need to have experience in BX within that structure to know it even exists.

This is the invisible problem with GURPS: it is often a role-playing game you go to after other role-playing games that you like fail terribly. Maybe there are parts of them that you like, such as the BX exploration turn and the combat rounds, but you are expected to preserve those parts and translate the rest into GURPS.

That can be hard for players who don't have the concept, especially new players. They will see GURPS and look at all the math, the lack of structure outside of combat, and say, "Why bother?" GURPS assumes you BYOB for game mechanics that you love and cherish, but you have to have a B to BYO. The BX exploration turn is my B. I can bring that into GURPS, and even keep the wandering monster checks and strict light rules, and things become amazing. I can eliminate the resting turns and use fatigue instead, keeping that inside GURPS.

Every little thing matters again, but I have a bit of structure that forces it to matter.

Why do you have a move of two? You are killing us back there. Hand some junk off or drop it, we need to be able to move! The structure of the exploration turn will turn overloaded characters into liabilities quickly. 5E, and truthfully, some OSR games ignore encumbrance entirely and break the exploration turn framework, and they go full "combat action game." I can't play those, since that relationship between movement and weight defines us as humans, especially on vacation, in air travel, or on hikes.

GURPS can be relaxed and tell you, "Do theater of the mind, I do not care." The world is like a movie, and nothing matters except what happens on the screen.

Or GURPS can drill down like a second-by-second man-to-man wargame and give me the grit and blood of an epic fight. Or it can fall anywhere between, and shift identities like a chimera, giving you the exact level of simulation you need at the moment. Stay drilled down for an entire session and count the seconds. Or zoom out and say a month passes.

And GURPS can simulate that BX game loop, and kill you with encumbrance and light. Or you can ignore it. You have the freedom, since GURPS is freedom.

But with a little structure to force certain things to rise to the top, GURPS can be incredible.

Fun with GURPS Ultra-Lite

I copied the text from GURPS Ultra-Lite, pasted it into a LibreOffice document, and made a one-page rules version of the game. This was one of the best ideas I've had in a while, and it makes a perfect "GURPS on the go" game that replaces a bunch of rules-light games, such as FATE, Index Card RPG, BX, and others. I keep this by my computer, along with my dice, and I can quickly test ideas in GURPS and run short scenarios with minimal time investment.

Yes, it is not "full GURPS," but it does not need to be. Ultra-Lite works with the full GURPS rules. I can sit here with a printed-out copy of the referee's screen and pull in tables, modifiers, and as many rules from the full game as I want. I can convert between the UL "levels" and CP pretty easily, so I can use the advantages and disadvantages in this rules-light system.

If an idea really clicks, I can graduate this to full GURPS and bust out my character sheet program.

If it doesn't, hey, at least I played GURPS today, kept in the mindset, and had a little fun.

Ultra-Lite also works great alongside GURPS for quick NPCs. Need a quick Battletech pilot, 40K marine, or Car Wars driver for a roleplaying moment, but you don't want or need a full RPG for the system (if there is one)? And you don't want to haul out the full set of GURPS books and force players to go through a session zero? Ultra-Lite will fill that need perfectly, and you can have instant characters, keep in the GURPS mindset, and play whatever scenario comes into your head with the system.

If it gets interesting, start pulling in a few more GURPS rules to cover situations, like fatigue points, fright checks, critical hits, reaction rolls, or other systems from full GURPS.

If you really start to love the idea, upgrade the game to full GURPS and start that campaign!

But try starting an idea with Ultra-Lite first. You can even stay here, making up systems as you need them, and pulling in character and tables from other games to fill in the gaps. Let's say you run a BX-style dungeon game using Ultra-Lite. I would make "magic user" and every other class a skill. You can use the charts of Vancian magic if you want, too, or just come up with a quick FP cost for spells and handle it more like GURPS. Thief skill? You can do thief-ing things with that and use thief weapons to make attacks. Cleric skill? Cleric stuff, religion, influencing followers, and divine magic.

It all works.

In fact, Ultra-Lite is my best "NPC and monster" generator for my full GURPS games, and few know I even use it that way. The giant spider? It has the "Giant Spider" skill at a +3, and can use that for combat, spinning webs, entanglement attacks, leaping, setting ambushes, and other spider stuff. Zombies, ghouls, skeletons, goblins, orcs, mimics, medusae, and others all have "monster skills" that I use in my games, much like a GURPS "bang skill," but these also cover special attacks and powers. When in doubt, make an opposed roll against a GURPS attribute.

The one-page sheet sits by my computer every day, giving me a quick and fun way to play GURPS whenever I want.

Handling Disadvantages

Disadvantages with self-control rolls can derail a session, but that is not a bug; it is a feature. You got the character points, so you paid the price. A good yardstick is one to three rolls per session, but only when the disadvantage is relevant. If a disadvantage is not relevant, it is not a disadvantage, such as a "fear of deserts" in a game that happens on an ice world, or "angry with orcs" on a fantasy world with no orcs. It is also easy to go overboard in calling for rolling in mildly relevant situations.

This is sort of how we always handled disadvantages, being fair while keeping them meaningful. You got the points; it has to mean something, but a disadvantage shouldn't be used punitively against a player or their character.

But one to three rolls (per session) seems fair; this is how we handled them, and you don't always have to trigger the disadvantage during a session or adventure. My rule is that the disadvantage must be meaningful in the story. If a disadvantage would cause a delay, change plans, derail the story, or result in some other serious consequence, it is worth considering. Situations that matter need dice rolls.

If it is minor and does not matter in the context of the current story, like "likes to live the high life" and the character is on vacation, fine, don't roll, just spend a little more money to cover it.

And players can elect not to roll and just indulge or succumb to the motivation! This is good roleplaying, and it saves the game from being subservient to the dice. Give the player a CP award for good roleplaying at the end of the adventure, especially if it made the entire situation more difficult, memorable, or more fun.

Roleplay over rolls!

Some self-control rolls have durations, such as once every 10 minutes. A "party animal" at a party will need to keep making rolls, or they will join in. If they are trying to get something important done, like sneak into an office and sort through a file cabinet, they will need to keep making rolls every so often as long as they are there.

When you can use a self-control roll to increase tension, forcing periodic checks, use it if it makes sense.

Do not use self-control rolls or disadvantages to make a character unplayable. There is such a thing as a horrible design in GURPS, with a character taking 10 different disadvantages with self-control rolls, and them becoming unplayable due to the amount of distractions they need to roll for; moderation is key. But a character should not be punished for taking one and then "having it constantly used against them." This requires a good handle on refereeing and fairness, and not overusing a disadvantage by forcing the player to roll for things that aren't important or by constantly forcing checks.

Also, be fair and apply disadvantages equally. It is easy to fall into a habit of "picking on the most fun character" with the iconic disadvantage, but other players made these picks too, and you should not favor one over the other. You get characters that will stand out and "be the most fun," but resist the urge and give everyone's disadvantages time to impact the game.

Also, I always throw a secret "reaction roll" in any failed self-control roll. How bad is it? In a critical failure, things could go completely sideways, but there is a chance something good could come of it. A critical success may mean our gambler, who gave in to an urge, gets invited to the "high stakes room" where a contact is made, or they meet a fellow gambler who turns out to be a valuable NPC to know.

The advantage-and-disadvantage system is one of the best parts of GURPS, which makes it so different and more fun than 5E, and we loved it because it gave our characters realistic mental and physical traits that impacted the story. Today's games are more concerned with "power builds" and what a level system can give a character at every level.

GURPS cuts differently, and we loved this system. It always made our games more than "just playing through an adventure," and the characters' reactions changed depending on who they were. That room with the gold goblet? A greedy character would take it for themselves, while a pious one would donate it to a church. A normal character may take it for gear and supplies. A character uninterested in wealth would ignore it. The pious and greedy make a grab for the goblet first, and the shiny treasure may make them forget to check for the trap that will trigger when it is taken, or it may incur a penalty since the gleam of gold is so distracting.

This stuff matters.

In a d20 game? That goblet and trap are there, and a part of the room description. The characters, be they paladins or thieves, really don't matter since they are all the same inside their heads. The "best player syndrome" makes my thief extra careful and incurs no penalty for my paladin, considering the danger it may cause. My paladin can't even "search for traps" in a modern game, as it isn't a skill the designers typically give them.

GURPS makes it all matter.