Power is Earned, Not Given

The best part about GURPS is that there isn't a game designer sitting behind the curtain telling you what your character can and cannot get. I pick a ranger. Well, I have limited choices. I am "allowed" a subclass, which only one of them will be helpful anyway, since I am optimizing my build, and I am not taking 2-weapon fighting if I am a bow specialist.

All the choices are laid out for me.

In a tiny little box.

And then, a few months down the line, you get this strange feeling that you aren't keeping up, and other players are having way more fun than you. Then you go online. And your worst fears are confirmed. Yes, in this edition, the ranger sucks again, and we will be waiting for a book that fixes them, again.

Some 5E variants get the base classes right, like Tales of the Valiant. D&D 2024 features some hilariously overpowered builds and classes, which are intended to sell the game. Even when a game like ToV nails the base classes, I'm still sitting there, getting what the game designer gives me.

Do I want my ranger to do something different? Then I need to multiclass, and I will never reach level 20 in my primary class. There are multiclass builds that are traps and doom your character to never being viable at higher levels of play. Some are horribly broken.

In GURPS, I am the game designer. I have the power. My ranger is precisely who they are. If they want to be a bard for a while, and then a mage, I pay the character point costs and do my best to reflect what my character has learned.

This does come at a cost. I can design a 300-point character who has a few hundred skills, all at 11- and "knows it all," but never really reach the power level of other 300-point characters who spend their points wisely. There is a "design maturity" in play here, not to exploit and have one 24-minus skill, so players are encouraged to spend sensibly and not cheat themselves when handling character improvement. Stick to the skill level guidelines and use those numbers as realistic values for "who is best in the world" in this campaign setting.

Also, GURPS relies on nobody taking advantage of the rules. This is entirely unlike 5E, where designers are often required to prevent players from exploiting the rules. GURPS is a more mature game where the referee and players collaborate to create stories and balanced characters that make sense within them. There are no narrative mechanics or pools; the game does not need them. The character is king in GURPS, and they also define the stories in which they participate.

In GURPS, I earn my power, and if I really want something, it means I do not get the other thing I may wish to have, either. Nobody "gives me powers for free," I pay for them. There isn't a game designer and their magic wand flying around and hitting you every level up to grant wishes.

I want that cool combat reflexes advantage to reflect my years of battlefield experience. In that case, it will come at the expense of my tracking, survival, hunting, wilderness navigation, archery, and other skills I use every day.

I need to make a choice every time. What will be more useful to me? What does my party need? Are we finding ourselves struggling to survive in the wilderness, or do we need me to perform at a higher level in combat?

Every choice is a hard one.

I am not "falling asleep until level three" and grinding XP any way I can. I am not "looking seven levels ahead" and getting bored with my current set of powers. I may have ten character points saved. What am I going to do with them? Do I really need a skill now? Do I wait for that really cool thing? Is there something else I want to learn or do?

And given enough points, my GURPS character can wipe the floor with a similarly epic 5E character any day. The power level in GURPS scales to any level, as long as you can conceptualize it. Refactor your fantasy heroes into superheroes and push them even further. Or start your characters as superheroes in a fantasy setting, just frame the powers as "fantasy superpowers," which is precisely what 5E is doing. Fire blast? That is a magic power. A mage has that. Make it a superpower and call it magic. No spell slots needed, just a FP cost. Want a new superpower? Pay the CP.

You can design your powers any way you want here. Want your ranger to have an "arcane explosive shot?" Design it as a superpower. Buy it with CP. You have it. There is no need to look for a game that does that, or wait for a third-party Kickstarter book, and spend more money.

GURPS is the superior game, especially if you're passionate about game design. You have the tools.

GURPS is also a better narrative game than the overly complex and convoluted systems that are emerging today. They are pretty, but turn out to be bookkeeping nightmares after a few sessions, and you just want your life to be simple again with a character-focused system that puts you in control.

While these "railroad advancement games" can be fun if executed correctly, they are challenging to implement, and we end up with numerous versions and flavors all competing to achieve the same goal. Wizards has been redesigning D&D for the last 25 years and still hasn't gotten it right. People have given up and gone back to the OSR. GURPS has been sitting here all along, and it remains a solid, fun, and compelling game.

With hard choices that force me to think. These are not taken away from me by a game designer who "knows better than I do."

If my ranger wants to go all social skills for the next 50 CP and get involved in kingdom intrigue, that is how the story goes, and how my character develops. In D&D, I gain XP, and my social skills remain the same, yet I somehow improve at killing things? How does that help the story? How does that reflect what my character is actually doing? Am I happier playing this court intrigue storyline with lousy social skills that will never improve, and somehow I can kill the next owlbear easier?

The game forces you to be a better killer with every level, and disincentivizes you to do the things currently happening in the storyline that you enjoy. You are not rewarded with better social skills in any way. You could consider a feat, if the game offers social feats, but that's a weak solution to the problem. And in most cases, you are waiting for the book to come out that has the social feats you want, and it is too late, having spent more money on things the game should have had when you needed them.

Be careful of these games that put your advancement on rails and take personal growth and character development away from you. That does not help the story, make you any better at playing in it, or accurately reflect your character's growth and development.

These games can hurt your storytelling because they refuse to let your characters learn and grow from it.

I want a game that allows my characters to grow in response to the events unfolding in the story, whether through combat, social interactions, exploration, science, survival, repair, medicine, or any other narrative arc in any area a story can go. I want a game that "stays out of my way" and doesn't introduce narrative pools and mechanics that can detract from what we all want to happen. I want a game that forces me to make tough choices as I progress. I like the referee to be freed up to be creative.

GURPS is the superior narrative storyteller game.

My GURPS Shrine

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CDQ4P7TF

A friend introduced me to these shelves, and I got one completed last week that now houses my entire GURPS collection. This is also a sturdy wood-and-steel shelf, capable of holding a significant amount of weight without sagging. These are put together with wood screws, and are not those fiberboard cheap pieces of junk with shelves of books held up by tiny plastic tabs. I have had many of those break apart over the years under the weight of books; it's not funny.

These are pretty shelves, more like display stands, but they give me what used to be three packed shelves of GURPS books, now loosely populated, but still on the mostly-filled side, with books.

The bottom shelf fits all my GURPS 3 books, which are still very useful. The second shelf up is for GURPS 4 and those eras of books. The third shelf up is filled with Dungeon Fantasy, which is my most-played version of the game, conveniently situated at eye level.

That third shelf should be your "star game" to keep it always the first thing you look at when you walk by. I'll wander by and say, "Hey, that looks fun!" There is a reason the highest-priced shelves in grocery stores are located at eye level, since humans will focus on that first every time they go by.

The fourth shelf up is for dice and figurine storage, adding some style and character to my shelf. If I play mecha-suit anime games with GURPS, what is going on that shelf? All my impressive figures to help tell me, "GURPS does this too, come and play!" I can do my fantasy figures, or any of my others, to set the tone of that shelf and the infinite fun it provides me.

This way, I don't need a GURPS: Mecha Suit Gundam book, and I have the figures up there to inspire me to find out what happens next in those characters' stories.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CRRTXQC4

Since this is a free-standing shelf, I will place most of the softcover books in these handy file holders, which are large enough to accommodate even the hardcovers. Once these are full, they act as bookends, and I never have the problem of all my books flopping over to one side or another.

I can also create focused groups of books, such as fantasy or sci-fi, and label them accordingly on the holder. I can also pull the whole file holder out and put it on my table, which means less searching through the shelves, less looking for the book I need, and everything is all together for me in one organized place.

The only downside is having to slide the holder forward and pull a book out, but that's a minor complaint considering the benefits of becoming so hyper-organized and keeping my GURPS shelf clean and organized. The focused collections, with everything not flopping to one side or the other, save me a lot of time, frustration, and keep my shelves more open and airy. 

I find a packed shelf is a shelf I do not use, since I rarely want to pull something out once I cram everything in there. Shelves with some open space and room to breathe are far more usable and playable than an archive shelf packed full to the brim.

Each organizer holds 8-10 of the GURPS books thick enough to have a title on the spine, or about 6-8 of the thicker hardcovers. The very-thin books it can hold are 14-16. This is without being packed too tightly, as I leave some breathing room to pull things out when I want a book.

My loose-leaf folders, containing notes and character sheets, are stored in these organizers, one per shelf, to keep my notes and papers organized. One folder is used for each campaign. This keeps all my notes and campaign information hyper-organized. I would still like to find a Trapper-Keeper-type solution with room for sheets and a legal pad or spiral notebook for my game notes, and I will continue to look for one so I can get my campaigns hyper-organized.

My old shelves fit five of these on a shelf; these new ones can fit seven wide, which allows me to use the lowest shelf as an archive, and the upper shelves can be more open and user-friendly.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CB5SNCJ3

Having a more open shelf means I can store dice on it! I use these clear plastic candy jars, which allow me to sort dice into collections based on color and style, and I place the jars on the shelves next to the books. Nothing gets me in the mood to play like seeing a massive container of pretty dice, ready to grab-and-go. I have a Fall and Earth-colors set for Dungeon Fantasy, as well as a more modern, red, black, blue, and white GURPS set for science fiction and contemporary-day campaigns. The dice for that shelf go on the shelf next to the books, since I have the room.

Yes, I have genre-themed dice sets. What else do you do with this many dice? Sort them and create play sets based on themes! After years of collecting, you eventually end up using these buckets of dice as display shelf kitsch.

Clear containers mean I see them out, all beautifully organized, screaming at me to play with them! They look like candy in there, which is a positive mental reinforcement, and it is another "come play with me" thing that I do on my game shelves.

Additionally, all other games are prohibited from this shelf. There are no 5E books, Cypher books, or any other games listed here. My only exception is Basic Fantasy, which I use for conversions for my GURPS: B/X games.

I also have the excellent Solo Game Master's Guide from Modiphius Entertainment, which is a fantastic book of inspiration that keeps me gaming. This one includes the gem "everything is playing," which helps alleviate the guilt of not being in a game. If you are thinking about campaigns, messing with character designs, or otherwise doing things for the game, that is equivalent to playing GURPS on the hex grid.

I needed a shelf system that was organized and far easier to clean. Here, if I want to completely wipe down and dust the shelves, I pull the organizers out, wipe the whole shelf down, and put them right back. I am not hauling books out and putting them on a table, clearing space to clean another space, only to have the stacks fall over. Cleaning these types of shelves is trivial and takes me far less time and effort since it is so open, and there are minimal surfaces to wipe. Additionally, the Roomba can navigate right under here on its own.

Does any of this have anything to do with GURPS? Yes and no. I call this new, beautiful, amazing creation my "GURPS Shrine," and it keeps me busy. It is designed to be used efficiently and to pull books from. It has room for my figures that represent the games I play. It holds all my dice.

This is an investment in my hobby, and one of the hindrances I found in actually making me want to play my games was that they were so packed into shelves they would collect dust, be untouchable since they would constantly flop over, and look unappealing, like a hoarder's book collection with junk all over the shelves. Dust would collect, and I would not want to touch the entire mess.

Also, we are GURPS players. We are used to lengthy mental calculations, keeping our character sheets organized, optimizing our designs, and calculating every blow in melee combat. The organization appeals to us on a fundamental level. We have the "nerd gene" in our DNA, and I find that having a premium shelf that is amazingly organized sits in my play area like a beacon of light. It resembles a high-end gaming store's shelf, filled with endless fun, including dice, figures, and a variety of other gaming-related items.

If one reason you don't play more is that you wish you were more organized, with your shelves being more attractive and cleaner, this is the way to go.

The Cinematic Campaign

"The 'cinematic' campaign is one where realism doesn’t rule – because if it did, it would constantly get in the way of the story. In a cinematic campaign, swashbuckling heroes can defeat dozens of foes because the story calls for it. Spacecraft whoosh or roar in the silence of space because fast things whoosh and powerful engines roar. Rightness always overrules mere correctness." - GURPS, Basic Set, Campaigns, page 488.

Cinematic here seems to imply "pulp adventure," but in reality, it can refer to any cinematic genre. The rules favor pulp, as it is the best example of a cinematic style, but I argue that any style is a valid one, as long as it is established, adhered to, and agreed upon when the game begins.

If you are playing a GURPS: Back to the Future game, you need that fish-out-of-water, time-travel, slapstick humor level of genre. I usually have three qualifier words to describe my settings, and I stick to those as a universal rule. If something conflicts with a rule, then it "gets in the way of the story" and is changed. In Back to the Future, people aren't getting shot and stabbed, so that does not happen like it would in real life. If it does (in Doc's case), it is the "bullets make someone fall down" sort of moment, like an old-time Western TV show, and it gets later retconned.

However, GURPS gives us the freedom to establish these cinematic parameters and reach an agreement on them before play. Unlike modern "dramatic narrative systems," this is done more traditionally, and the narrative parameters affect every aspect of the game, allowing players and the referee to equally adjust outcomes, actions, and suggestions on what happens next.

In a GURPS: Looney Tunes game, the destructive weapons from ACME, Inc. would not be treated as realistic weapons or devices of destruction. If a player wanted to come up with a slapstick gag of their own, it fit with the theme, and it made people laugh, then let it be.

Since society, for the most part, has lost its imagination (due to the Internet, AI, YouTube, smartphones, and so on), we see newer games go out of their way to replicate a theme through their rules. Games require the "training wheels" of narrative control to establish a theme and tightly control the action through extensive lists of "dos and don'ts," along with mechanical systems, in an attempt to reproduce free-form imagination. In a modern Looney Tunes game, you would likely use a currency of "Looney Points" that allows you to make toon-based special attacks, and have to look through long lists (or desks of cards) of "gags" and "slapstick moments" to throw a pie in someone's face.

You see this in Daggerheart with special attacks from characters needing "hope points" to trigger. The cool attacks, best special moves, and other narrative moments are controlled via in-game currency. In my GURPS: Looney Tunes game, if my fire-breathing dragon has a "fire breath," I buy that as a power, give it a fatigue cost, and we are good. Now, my dragon can breathe in everyone's faces and turn them into a charcoal briquette. Yes, fire breath is a "narrative power," but it is just a power, and we can put any cost on it we want, as long as it fits the theme.

But note this game design strategy. You give up something, your ability to use your special attacks and powers, and give control of that to an in-game system. In GURPS, we are used to "characters being the master of their destinies" and being able to spend FP for powers, and those resources being internal character components. In Daggerheart, we are in narrative game land, and now parts of our characters exist externally and within the current context of a game and session.

Internal versus external designs, make note of this. GURPS primarily relies on the former.

GURPS being GURPS, you could invent a "hope" secondary ability score, start it at zero, and throw points in there on even rolls, give the referee fear on odd rolls, and use it as an alternate fatigue source. Or you could make some abilities "hope-powered" for a -20% modifier to their cost, since this pool controls activation. There, now we have GURPS: Daggerheart.

It is not as elegant or "design slick" as the Darrington Press game, but GURPS exists in a tinkerer's universe, where we love our strange, bolted-on, and hacked-together creations. We are more like coders on this side of the hobby, and we will kludge together rules and subsystems to simulate any experience in our game, since the tools we have been given are amazing and powerful.

Where other games give you these "drag and drop" game creation tools that can't do much beyond what the creator allows, GURPS is more like a full C++ or Java coding environment. GURPS is one of the first "Professional RPG systems," with Champions being the other.

I saw a GURPS Fantasy mod that gave clerics a "healing touch" superpower that cost fatigue instead of using spells. No skill roll needed, no buying spells as skills, just pay the fatigue cost and heal. Is this a valid way to do magic? Shouldn't we be using the systems in the book in the magic chapter, or Dungeon Fantasy spells? This is GURPS. If it works, it is magic. Whatever way you want to do it is right.

Which circles back to cinematic campaigns. We had to go down the "design rabbit hole" to prove a point; any method to get to a desired outcome is valid in GURPS. You can design a magic system a hundred different ways, and as long as it works for you and fits into the game's framework, it is a sound system.

So if you establish your cinematic campaign parameters and use them to move results to "rightness" rather than "correctness," then you are on the right track. In Looney Tunes, if you put your face in front of a pirate cannon, humor will result! You won't be simulating realistic terminal ballistics and rolling tons of damage dice, just say "something silly happens" and make up the funniest result, and move on.

Similarly, if you are playing a GURPS: Rom-Com game, you will abide by the "romantic comedy" cinematic campaign parameters, and everything in the game will be seen through that lens. Don't just think this is for pulp adventures or comedy, GURPS can do it all.

Note the use of the word "lens" here, which is a constructive framework for describing cinematic campaign parameters to players. People understand "we are using a comedic lens" to grasp that concept.

Also, if you are playing a GURPS: Slasher Movie game, you could force everyone to take a "do something stupid" disadvantage, which requires a self-control roll. The Final Girl (or Guy) does not need to take this one, either. Now you will have someone heading down to the basement when the power goes out, looking for the fuse box. Here is a hint: don't always kill off the character who fails this roll. Let them turn the lights back on, make it back upstairs, and kill off a character who was smart and stayed upstairs but wandered off to grab a snack.

That is an example of using the tools GURPS provides to simulate a genre within the design system we were given. The "cinematic parameter" means all but one of the characters at the table must take that "do something stupid" disadvantage. Roll for it, or draw straws. Let players decide how many points they will get for that disadvantage, too, whether they are "slightly stupid" or "completely foolish." If you play this right, the most foolish of the group will be getting everyone else killed, and the players will be rooting for that character to get it next.

In a Rom-Com game, you could use similar disadvantages to shape character actions, and create a pool of character archetypes with templates, such as: the too-cool guy, the wing man/girl, the bestie, the cheerleader, the nerd, the jock, and so on. Yes, they are stereotypes, but they are also genre conventions. In a modern narrative game, they will create these for you and put them on cards for you to use, fill them full of special rules, and invariably sell you more in expansions. In GURPS, we have the tools to do this all for free.

However, we only put in the work when we need to. If we're playing a Rom-Com with these character archetypes, go ahead, put in the work, and make it happen! If all you want to use are "cinematic parameters" to achieve the same effect, that is fine too; save yourself some design work and just get started with those ground rules. If you want to create custom disadvantages with "compulsive behaviors" like jock, cheerleader, and so on, do it that way. When a character has a moment to do something "the most nerd way," and it would make things more difficult or hinder the character (these are still disadvantages), then make a roll when it feels right.

In a way, the default parameters of GURPS are characterized by "hardcore realism," which is how the game earns its reputation. However, the game needs to start from this point to reach every other, and you are often paring back the rules to make things work as you want them to. The game instructs you to do this on page 489, under the rule "Damn the Rules, Full Speed Ahead!" Run a game with wildcard skills (page 175), talents (page 89), and ability scores. Ignore most of the rules and run GURPS Lite combat and skill resolution. Now you have a B/X-style game that is simple, fast, and fun.

You can develop your Rom-Com game the same way: make a list of talents, wildcard skills, archetype disadvantages, and let players throw together characters out of those parts. You do not need to spend a few hours building characters with the character creation tools and worry about buying levels of driving, languages, fashion sense, and computers. Doing this will likely turn players off. If the genre says "simple, archetype characters," then that is how you will play the game and build characters.

Doing things this way also dispels the biggest myths about GURPS: that the game takes forever to create characters, is overly complicated, forces you to sort through hundreds of skills, has complicated combat, and only supports hardcore realism. None of that is true.

Play the game straight from the book, just like it is in 5E? That will happen. But the game goes out of its way to tell us not to do that. Every rule is optional. You build games with these rules. You pick and choose. The game is a toolbox, and you don't always use every tool in the box to do a job. If all you are doing is hanging pictures, all you need is a hammer, perhaps a drill, and a screwdriver for mounting picture studs. Do you need to use the pipe wrench, strap wrench, or blowtorch? For most nails, the hammer will do.

Taking a little care in setting up your game and deciding how you want to play it will make the game more enjoyable to play and share with others.

Dice Towers

https://www.amazon.com/Cherry-Dice-Tower-Tray-Tennessee/dp/B0BCX9VZ6G/

This is my dice tower, while there are many like it, this one is mine.

There is nothing else like a real, natural, made-in-the-USA, handcrafted wooden dice tower. This is not plastic; it's not cheap, and it's solidly made in a woodshop. Warning, this is expensive, and it is the price of a costly gamebook. It is worth it so much, though.

This dice tower is why I game.

This isn't cheap plastic; it's more like a furniture purchase, specifically for gaming. It stores well as the tower is not connected to the base, and it fits perfectly in the tray for storage and travel. This is costly, yes, but buying a premium gaming accessory will encourage you to use it, and making it a quality item that lasts will prevent you from buying junk that keeps breaking.

The wood on this is thick! This will last a few hundred years, unlike some of the plastic and fiberboard trash I see these days. It is also made of natural wood, stained, and is a beautiful item.

The noise this thing makes is pure happiness. My sister, when she visits, loves the sounds this makes when the dice tumble through and make those thunk-a-lunk dice on wooden sounds that resonate through the tower, and it is one of the most pleasing sounds I can ever imagine in gaming. To make those die roll "sound effects" with every roll is so soothing, fun, and enjoyable, it makes me want to play more just to hear these affirming, positive, happy sounds of dice on wood.

When they spill out, it is so much better than a VTT animation. This is real. This is something happening, like a live event, something real and tangible.

Using a dice tower puts weight and impact into my rolls. It is hard to "just cheat and roll again" to get the result I wanted once they spill out of the chute. Rolling flat on a table is so easy to say, "Well, I did not roll them well enough, so this horrible roll is invalid, and I can roll again."

Rolling again and again ruins solo play.

I am sorry! I do that! If I did not roll the dice well, I will reroll them, and once I do that, doing it again and again is too easy a terrible habit to slip into. This is one of my gaming sins, and I confess. I know this ruins my game, as it's one more step into fantasy fulfillment and "just making things happen that you want."

From that point, I quit the game because there is no challenge, and it was boring to play solo if "all that happens is what you want to happen."

With GURPS, not taking a roll back affects balance, and it especially hurts self-control rolls. If my character succumbs to a weakness, that is a key narrative point that should never be taken back, since, well, I got points for that! I earned extra points for my character, and if I cheat on the self-control rolls, then I am cheating the system; those disadvantages should not have given me all those valuable character points.

Dice towers discourage cheating yourself in solo play.

If an enemy rolls a hit, don't take that back. If I miss or roll a critical failure, don't take that back. A dice tower makes it much harder to cheat yourself, since there is a positive auditory reinforcement, a slight amount of time taken for the dice to fall, and the result being truly random and not "take-backable."

Also, a dice tower, since it takes a little more time than a table roll, will reduce the number of times you roll, and force you to "only roll for things that matter." I have played d20 games where I got into a quick series of a dozen d20 rolls, trying and retrying the same thing until I got the result I wanted. Like teaspoons of sugar in a cup of coffee, it is too easy to keep "spooning it in" and ruining the drink. There is a theory of "only making important dice rolls" in a game, and a dice tower helps make that happen.

There are some things you should not roll, and the referee should just decide them and move the game along. Don't drop those dice in the tower unless you really should. Dropping the dice in is a contract with yourself that this roll means something important, and it will not be taken back.

If you play solo or even with a group, the dice tower is something a VTT can never replicate or do, and it is a wonderful, almost delightful gaming accessory that I can never game without.

Reading Level?

I brought this subject up on my SBRPG blog, and YouTube content creators are now picking up on it. This was initially targeted at D&D and how the reading comprehension level of that book drops with every edition. The game seems almost too simple at this point, not in its rules, but in the language it uses to present them.

Shadowdark requires even less reading comprehension to understand, and is far better situated than over a thousand pages of D&D 2024 reading. I saw videos on YouTube where 3rd-graders were reading and playing Shadowdark far better than many 50-year-olds. It is not just the level, but the amount you require players to read that will take your game from being "for everyone" to "the 2% that could read through a thousand pages and grasp it."

Even I, with ACKS II, a game I got recently, find myself struggling to read over a thousand pages of stuff in that game. The game is beautiful and one of the best OSR games ever written, but I find myself intimidated by it and prefer the easier dungeon-style games that don't require much of me. There is another factor in this equation of "people rarely have the time" - even among those with the level of reading needed to enjoy your game, today's world takes so much time from us, we seek the easier games, just because playing something is far better than playing nothing.

Given my time, I will always give GURPS the most of it, because the time I spend with this game gives me the most enjoyment per minute I put into it. This is another factor to consider. I rarely have time for other games unless they are so simple I can play them with a few core concepts. Dungeon Crawl Classics and its simplified 3.5E rules are a far better side game for me than Pathfinder 2, AD&D, or even 5E.

This is a tangential point, but I would opt for an easier game that doesn't take as much time to learn over a harder one. Part of the target market who can read your game will opt for the easier one, just due to modern societal time pressures.

Are all classic RPGs doomed because of America's dropping reading level?

Now, when I say "all," I am explicitly referring to GURPS in this context and this space. GURPS is written for a higher level of math and reading comprehension than most games; it is (by my best guess) at the 8th to 10th grade level in terms of writing and math skills required to play the game, which encompasses less than half of the population. Math skills are likely higher at the end of that range. While GURPS does not require calculus, a grasp of algebra makes the game a lot easier.

Approximately 54% of the US population reads at a 6th-grade level or below, and math skills are likely to be similarly low. For most of them, GURPS is out of reach, and a thousand pages of D&D, even at a 6th-grade reading level, are also pushing your player base to a fraction of what it could be.

Growing up in the 1980s, these numbers are shocking to me. Then again, I have a sister who is a teacher at these grade levels, and she says that school systems will fail students up to the next grade without the basic required skills, just so the school districts can look good and meet their quotas.

The school systems no longer care.

Society doesn't care that they don't, either.

Nobody has the time to.

The educational system in the US is failing, and year after year, the skills in reading, math, and comprehension are dropping. Fewer and fewer will play the old games because fewer and fewer will understand them.

I am not talking about current players or anyone on the GURPS Discord! We have already invested, we love the game, and we know how it works. We had friends to teach us, or we loved the game so much we figured it out for ourselves. Even if we had a lower comprehension level, we used the game to teach ourselves what we needed to know and forged ahead. We did this in the 1980s as kids with AD&D. We looked up Gygax's words in the dictionary to figure them out.

It is the next generation, and the one after that, and future players of the game that I worry about.

It is the direction of the next version of GURPS, if it ever happens. We won't have a choice; the game will most likely be written for a very low reading comprehension level, and the math will be simplified to such an extent that today's players will be shocked at how "dumbed down" our favorite game has become.

But don't blame the game publishers; this is pure survival we are talking about. As the country forgets what education is, it fails to hold high standards and excellence in education as an ideal that we should all strive for.

This may sound political, but it really isn't, and it shouldn't be. It is a scary statistic that we can see in new games, and how simple they seem to be getting, versus the older games our community cherishes, which we find mentally stimulating. This is why many classic gamers tend to be older; the games were written at an educational level that we grew up with.

Everyone wants education to be held to a gold standard, and we should require more of our students than the levels we were held to. Sadly, even discussing this issue can evoke anger and divisiveness, and people often give up because no one has the time to dedicate to fixing it, and there will be too many who will exploit the system to benefit themselves.

This is one of those moments that makes me fear for the future of my favorite games. It is a sort of "change or die" moment, not caused by the game, but by a larger societal issue outside of our control. It makes me feel helpless, and like the things I love will be enjoyed by fewer and fewer people as time goes on.

Cinematic Combat Rules

The Cinematic Combat Rules (BX417) are ...kind of fun.

I forgot that GURPS had these, and I had always ignored and skimmed over them. However, upon taking the time to reread them, I was surprised to find that very few other games have these, and they work on a deeper mechanical level than I had expected.

Please never censor the Bulletproof Nudity rule; this applies to males as well as females, and it perfectly explains any 1980s movie like Rambo, where the hero can walk around shirtless and still never have anything hit them. Even the topless rule could be applied to men with large enough pectoral muscles (STR 14+). This rule is also highly Conan, and keeps those genre characters from walking around in field plate armor everywhere they go. He-Man characters also use this rule, along with Schwarzenegger in Commando, so it is not salacious - just a part of many genres.

The Cannon Fodder rules are the D&D 4E minions rule decades before that existed.

Cinematic Knockback and Explosions are perfect. Again, this is Rambo and Conan.

Flesh Wounds is a fantastic rule that consumes character points, and I wish more parts of the system used CP as a resource.

Infinite Ammo is often seen in TV shows like Miami Vice, where a character fires a revolver 10 times without reloading, and you see this again and again. A silly continuity mistake becomes a part of the genre and thus becomes a rule in the game. I love it.

Melee Etiquette is another fun rule, and this can be seen in classic swashbuckler movies, such as those starring Errol Flynn. From a cinematography point of view, it is easier to coordinate and frame the one-on-one fights. You can even see some of this silliness in the new Star Wars movies, where melee combatants stand in the background twirling their swords with no targets near them, spin away when they have an obvious opening, or stand in the background attacking air. You bet I could not find a modern example of this, did you?

TV Action Violence is another fun rule. Expending FP and losing the next turn puts a character on the defensive, and it is not a foolproof defensive tactic. It can explain why Gandalf gets into a fight with an orc and just stands there, blocking with his staff again and again, until one of the melee or ranged characters is freed up to deliver a killing blow. Losing the next turn makes this less useful in melee, though the Flesh Wound system could come into play should a hit get in.

I added all of these rules to the GURPS Character Sheet so I could tag them to my character sheets if a character is in "TV or Movie Land" and is following all or some of these rules.

Why do I need a pulp adventure game again? GURPS does it all.

GURPS, never change, you are full of silly and strange rules that I love.

GURPS: Star Frontiers, Update #4

Damage types.

Silly, pedantic, element-based damage types.

One thing about role-players is that they fetishize damage types far more than they should. Science fiction games often fall into this trap, but you see this in 5E with all the damage types there, with 13 types being in the game.

Starfinder had eight types, but weapons have levels, and every three or four levels, every weapon type was repeated, with most of the damage types represented. So there would be eight level 1-3 pistols, eight level 4-6 pistols, and so on. Sometimes you needed a cold pistol, other times you needed that electricity pistol. Starfinder's weapon lists were massive, easily filling hundreds of entries, and adventure paths would add dozens more weapons for no good reason.

The game also had two armor class values, energy and kinetic.

The Esper Genesis game falls back on the 5E tropes, but unless a monster has a resistance or weakness to that type of damage, the damage is just damage, and who cares? You have one AC value. Of all the science fiction games, this one does things the most "5E way," and you are not worrying about damage types for most attacks.

And we get to Star Frontiers. You can combine a suit and a screen to layer defenses against different types of damage. Of suits, you can do with either laser or ballistic/melee protection. With screens, you get protection against laser, ballistic/melee, electrical, and sonic attacks. Typically, all our characters wore suits that provided ballistic and melee protection, as well as a screen for lasers. This way, you could rely on the suit for protection in more social situations, such as a fight in a space bar, and then, when the lasers started flying, the screen was turned on. Electrical and sonic attacks were rarer, so those tended to be the ones that got through your defenses more often.

Star Frontiers combat meant "turning on your shields" in personal combat, and making sure you had the correct resistances to damage types in your group. GURPS really isn't about that, and it is a different style of combat in the system that is more armor-focused. We have force screens in Ultra Tech that can function similarly, with a DR 60 (for personal conforming, TL 12^, super science), and you can specify an energy type for a 50% cost reduction. Star Frontiers is not a TL12 setting, though. For a TL 11 field, I would halve the DR to 30.

The conversion is at a point where, if I try to convert mechanics, I will be here doing these little conversions forever, trying to tweak it and make it work, but inevitably breaking something else. One of the things is that GURPS has solved many science fiction gaming problems with the rules the game already contains. GURPS is a well-tested and well-designed system that works, taking into account numerous science fiction tropes and pieces of gear and technology.

I am not giving up on this, but if I want an exact simulation of Star Frontiers, that would require a significant amount of design work. For most people, just use GURPS Space and flavor the setting with the Star Frontiers races and setting, while using GURPS to replace the gear and tech lists entirely.

For the average game, tossing out the Star Frontiers gear, which TSR designed for their "attack versus defense" game, is the way to go. GURPS is far better designed, written, and put together for science fiction gaming the way it is, and more people should just use the races and universe.