GURPS: Battletech Gothic

I like these sorts of spin-off, alternate-universe, and one-off games. For one, I am not so beholden to decades of Battletech lore, and I can make most of the universe up myself. This gives me freedom and latitude when telling stories here that the official universe just does not have. I can play in this universe with a box-set mech-combat game, and use GURPS for the role-playing game, and nobody will care. This is what GURPS does best: take a random idea and turn it into Random Idea: The RPG!

Battletech Gothic is on the table today.

Some called this game "discount Warhammer 40K" and that is sort of inane. You can not like the idea, but it is cool to see new, imaginative, different stuff from companies from time to time, and see them take creative risks. Even as a "discount 40K," this is a cool world. I love the look, feel, and style of this entire set. Warhammer 40K does not own the grimdark future, style, look, or feel. This is also a fun starting point for Battletech that isn't the full universe with hundreds of mechs and factions to deal with, nor will it ever get that deep and complex. It also has room to add your own lore and aesthetics to!

And I know, the Battletech community is split over this, with many so deep in timelines and lore that they lose the universal language of the game. There have been spin-off games in this universe before, and I hope they continue the Gothic line.

I like Battletech Gothic. As a one-off alternate-universe game with a limited set of mechs, it is fun.

Battletech Gothic Universe Primer, p. 63.

I love the mechs, and the entire vibe of bio-tech horrors meets battle-tech was a game my brother and I played back in the 1980s and 1990s, with an alternate Clan invasion by bio-engineered aliens. We had a story going where the clans that fled the galaxy bioengineered themselves to the point of mutation, merging with alien DNA "from beyond" and becoming hyper-violent bio-tech killers. It was a cool story, fit our idea of the Clans at the time, and it was cool to see the traditional houses fighting real aliens rather than "just more humans in mechs."

So, yeah, we were doing BTG back in the 1990s. I like the story here. It hits home for me.

Plus, I can play really interesting stories with GURPS. We have an entire GURPS Bio-Tech book that is perfect for this setting! That, plus GURPS Horror, and a touch of Ultra Tech, and we have ourselves a complete BT Gothic RPG. I have the conversions for GURPS skills to BT on my conversions page, so the wargame rules can stay as-is.

Given that there are no magic elements in the BTG universe, the game being a one-off could mean I could do whatever I want with the setting. While bio-tech should be the power source, there is nothing stopping me from weaving the dark powers of elder space demons and gods through the setting to whisper in the darkness, provide evil divine rituals, and summon forth terrors from beyond time and space. Keeping arcane magic out of the setting and only including a divine power source may be an interesting twist that provides a much-needed mystery and spooky horror, much like Cthulhu, with corruption mechanics and dark incantations to summon horrors. Perhaps there is a "purity of the light" which is humanity's defense against the night, and we allow light-based divine powers to shine.

Doing this weakens the entire "bio-tech brings on corruption and insanity," and the setting becomes more of a "bio-tech opens the door to evil forces."

A better alternative would be to use psionic powers as the game's power system, and this would meld with the bio-tech theme a little better without introducing too many mystical elements. This is a bit more plausible if you keep it mysterious and strange, like the mind is being twisted and warped in ways that no one understands, and powers manifest that are special and rare. Bio-tech plus psionics is a stronger combination and does not introduce godlike elements. Plus, psionics go with science fiction like peanut butter and chocolate, and are one of the best power systems for the genre.

Psionics could introduce a wrinkle into mech fights, since those powers could get through tons of armor easier than weapon fire could. How you approach this will affect the power of the mind, and potentially unbalance the wargame side of the game. You could say there is shielding, or the strong electromagnetic forces interfere (negative modifier) with psionic attacks going into a mech at the pilot. This should be seriously balanced as it may render the entire mech game inconsequential to a powerful psionic, but those wielders of such power may be so rare that it is a special case (and thus, cool).

This is the classic "adept on foot stops a mech cold" movie scene, and that should not be taken away from a player if the moment calls for it, and the attack was successful. Use your judgment, the rule of cool, and don't let it get out of hand. That said, mech weapons are likely lethal to a psionic on foot, so one lucky hit or area-of-effect weapon, and the question will be moot in a cloud of red mist.

Horror will also be a part of the setting! This is the easiest part to forget, but bio-horrors mutating innocents afflicted with the virulent mutagen will force horror rolls in viewers, and there will be insanity and corruption spread by these forces. Normal humans could morph into monsters in a few minutes, but the process may take days as they slowly go insane and grow horns and claws.

There will be a lot of misinformation, fear, mystery, and "dark powers" floating about in these "space dark ages," and the horror rules should be used to spread a sense of fear and a lack of understanding of what they are "really" dealing with.

Horror becomes more important once you introduce mystical and magical elements. Horror and science work in a 1950's "what has science done" sort of way, but the metaphysical, the afterlife, and the nature of the human soul cut much deeper. If the nature of abominations is Satan, witchcraft, black magic, and the actual rise of Hell upon the universe, then Horror will strike much harder in the hearts of players.

The bio-tech and mutations should be created by mad science, and there should be a fear of "what have we unleashed?" The entire "Gothic" aesthetic and worldview from the Dark Ages should be incorporated, and one of the best ways to do so is to sidestep 40 K's influence and go straight to the historical source. We have an excellent guide with GURPS Middle Ages I, and the idea of adopting the chivalric titles, the aesthetic, the power of the church, and even "withccraft" is a cool idea.

This is one of the things that would make me lean more towards magic than psionics, having actual space witches present in the setting with dark, evil powers. This also pushes the idea that the abominations are beasts from actual Hell, leaning more on quasi-religious Doom tropes than adopting the entire "mad science and psionics" theme, which can also feel overdone and Saturday-morning cartoonish.

Having abominations side with witches and warlocks, even though they could crush them physically, is such a cool trope that it is worth using, and it makes that other side much more "evil" and "servants of chaos and discord." The idea of space knights and inquisitors rooting out witches and evil within the masses of poorly-educated space peasants who work in Gothic factories is such cool "RP fodder" that it is worth using. Secretive underground cults corrupting the people and nobility are cool ideas, especially when brought into the Battletech universe.

Back in the day, Battletech had a strong medieval theme of knights and warhorses, nobles and houses, and lately it feels more like Call of Duty meets Soldier of Fortune than it did in its original chivalric roots.

I do like going with the idea of nobility, titles, a strong Church, heraldry, and the power of witchcraft and demons being the "great unknown." Purity of faith, body, and mind becomes a defining feature of knights and the warrior class, while giving in to base desires and power will lead a man down the road to Hell. Draw upon the stories and tales from the Bible. Ignore 40K and "out 40K" them.

Adding witchcraft to BTG changes the game. It makes the abominations more magical creatures pulled from Hell and beyond. I suppose you have two choices here:

• Bio-Tech + Psionics
• Bio-Tech + Magic

The settings art and feeling are more the "mutants and mayhem" sort of vibe, which aligns well with Bio-Tech + Psionics. My gut feeling is don't do magic, and do psionics. Leave "demons" and other mythical beings as whispered mysteries, or things twisted minds pretend to be.

Bio-Tech and Psionics, it is then.

Both will use GURPS Middle Ages I for the "look and feel" and to pull civilizational facets from. It is so easy to fall back into Mechwarrior norms, but keeping the setting tech level high, while the "everyday life" tech level is far lower, may give you the contrast you need to make the setting work. There should be a conflict between the destitute, poor, indentured life of peasants and the house nobles, knights, and the other "warrior elite."

Battletech Gothic Universe Primer, p. 54.

I would almost paint everyday life as something out of 1984, where the average person needs to go to a "broadcast center" to watch TV communally, and the difference between rich and poor is very stark. Most days would be spent working on farms and in factories, with long periods of forced labor, and entertainment would be either communal broadcasts or live sporting events. Most of the population would be growing food in fields or hydroponic centers. Huge factories would churn out the machines of war, choking the skies with smoke. Thousands of laborers would come in and go in massive, around-the-clock shifts to keep the industry of war cranking along. Strip mining, oil rigs, deep mining, forestry, salt mining, and other massive resource mining operations would scour the land.

Take the Industrial Age grit and grease, the strip mining and expansionism of the Railroad Era, the myth and fear of the Middle Ages, the savagery of World War I, the hopelessness of Orwell, the creatures of Lovecraft, and blend that with Battletech. Add to that, plenty of mutations and strange deformities among the population, and morphed races of new kin, and you have an interesting "Battletech Mutants" setting that would work well.

That description above is far different from the 40K aesthetic, which has really morphed into something else these days. The 40K world tends to be more "World of Warcraft"- like and self-referential these days, reflecting the modern world, while grounding Battletech Gothic in a sense of history would give it a unique identity and feeling. Cranking BTG back to historical reality would give it a leg up on what 40K had morphed into, and honestly, leave 40K to be 40K; it is fine as is and has plenty of fans.

Battletech Gothic Universe Primer, p. 24.

BTG can be something different and special.

GURPS Middle Ages I and the Bible are your "holy shield" against the idea being called "discount 40K," since you are going back to the source era and material, drawing on the stuff that 40K ripped off. Don't copy, but go back to the source code and rebuild. This is why history is so important, and we should not rely on "cultural recycling" to base our ideas upon. They don't own the history, look, or aesthetic. They just put giant plastic shoulder pads on it and made it smell like model glue. I love you, 40K, but you are not the be-all and end-all on the idea.

This is a fun universe, small enough and limited enough to not overwhelm a conversion, compatible with a translation layer between GURPS skills and the wargame, and with plenty of room to create my own lore. I can add psionics and mutant races to the setting, like dragon and serpent people. I can flavor the world as a mix of Braveheart, Mad Max, OG TNMT, and 1984. I can have mutant mayhem-style characters and personal battles, adding mutant powers like personal armor, tails, horns, and other powers to my GURPS character builds.

Yes, this is not Battletech.

But it doesn't have to be to have potential.

It's fun.

It is strange.

It is off-putting.

But most of the cool things I first encountered were all of those things.

I've Played 5E Science Fiction

I saw the Traveller 5E Backerkit today, and I did not pull the trigger on that. It is a pricey set of books: $350 for the core books, and $1,000 for the all-in. The cost for these 5E crowdfunding projects is very high these days, and this won't ship until October of 2027. That is a long time to wait for books, nearly a year and a half.

And for $1,000, I can buy nearly every GURPS PoD book ever printed.

I played 5E science fiction: Esper Genesis and the Level Up Void Runners Codex. There is also Ultramodern5, a total conversion mod of 5E into cyberpunk and science fiction. The only thing 5E science fiction has going for it is monster compatibility, which I honestly never use. While the gee-whiz powers (psionic or techno-mage, typically) are cool, I never found 5E science fiction all that interesting. The last best version of "level-based science fiction systems" is Starfinder 1e, which was the last big set of 3.5E level-based science fiction gaming.

So, 5E science fiction has been done a few times, and what Traveller 5E brings to the table is the universe, the ships, and the entire Traveller feeling. I bought the original LBBs at the store. To me, Traveller will always be a game played with two six-sided dice.

All of these games play mostly the same, and you fall into a "space adventurer" motivation. You play to level, and you level to play. That MMO factor is the fun of the game, where you are buying abilities, gearing up, collecting powers, and buying that next feat or unlocking that next power. It is the exact same motivation as 5E; preplanned character power drives you.

All my level-based science fiction campaigns typically start off with a lot of energy but fall apart quickly. I get the first few levels, and the huge mountain to climb quickly discourages me, and I realize that levels are not why I play science fiction.

There is a mental break for me here; levels do not equal motivation in science fiction. In fact, they feel like more of a reason not to play, an unnecessary mountain to climb, an artificial game construct to hold you back rather than enable you. I feel I can't do things because I am not at a high enough level to, and I don't feel this in fantasy.

The original Traveller and Star Frontiers games never had levels, nor did they ever need them. For me, fantasy games are where level-based systems, the almost video-game-like tiered progression, and the hero's story shine. I could make a similar argument that the GURPS-style "no level" fantasy is more compelling and better at supporting stories than the level systems of 5E and most OSR games.

What drives me in science fiction stories is the classic themes of exploration, commerce, war, discovery, mystery, and interpersonal character arcs. GURPS does all these the best, and removes the "level chase" from the equation, leaving me just with characters and story.

There was a GURPS review once where the writer said, "GURPS is a game where your scientist character feels just as powerful as the soldier with the machine gun." That is exactly what I want in a science fiction game! I don't want this "combat progression arc" to hang over my head, and make some characters better than others in combat, or having to bolt-on combat powers to science characters just to give them combat parity.

While yes, that machine gun soldier will be able to kill hordes of alien bugs, there will be moments in this adventure where the scientist's findings will be critical for the success of the mission. Perhaps the scientist will be able to identify the resonance of the colony reactor causing the bugs to attack and devise a solution to dampen it and make the bugs peaceful again. The team will need to reach the reactor via an ATV crawler to set up the dampers; the driver will deal with all sorts of hazards, and the engineer will need to be guarded as they install the system. The doctor will be tending to wounds. Everyone is ultimately critical to the mission's success.

Everyone is important, and no artificial combat balance is needed. No "magic science powers" need to be invented to achieve class parity; adding rules and complexity to a genre that does not need them.

I prefer a more cerebral, story-based game where power and levels are not the driving force behind why I play. I like putting the brakes on progression and enjoying the character build I create, and GURPS gives me the best character building in all of tabletop gaming. Plus, my GURPS character sheets are far shorter than 5E, which can run 12-20+ pages at level ten and higher. Even with special powers and 1,000 points, my character sheets in GURPS run 4-6 pages, and that is being generous with spell lists.

Oh, and we will need VTT or a character creation software written and supported for Traveler 5E, which is the Achilles heel of the system. Without software, forget creating characters; it's always an extra digital purchase and subscription. With GURPS, we have great character creation programs, both paid for and community-supported (please support the GCS creator!)

And GURPS gives me a far better selection of powers. I can use "space magic" or do full psionics. I can do bio-tech powers or space crystals that give superpowers. I can wield divine power systems granted by elder space gods. I have as many powers as GURPS can provide, and those power sources can be anything I can imagine. GURPS, like Champions, is, at its heart, a superhero game, and those are the best for magic and powers.

Nothing beats a point-buy superhero game. I can create any space monster or space power I want. I am not limited by the books, nor do I have to wait for expansions and new crowdfunding books.

And while most 5E games depend on powers for the flashy abilities, GURPS does a no-power science fiction game perfectly. While classic Traveller (and Space Opera) was psionics only, Star Frontiers had no powers. A lot of these 5E science fiction games "bake in" a power system that the game depends on, and it is intrinsic to character balance and gameplay. You are stuck with it if you play that version of 5E science fiction. With GURPS, I can easily have no power systems, one that supports the setting, or all of them.

Trying to mod a 5E game is painful, since you are telling players "don't pick these classes" and playing a game that feels like less than the full experience. Also, balance issues will come up if you use a 5E game that depends on magic for combat mechanics and balance, and you remove it to play hard science fiction.

I can also customize the power system to make it "depend on spice" or "channel the power of ancient aliens" or whatever I want in GURPS, so players will experience a unique and referee-curated mystery of how that power works and is sourced from, if the true secrets are even revealed at all. Once you spoil the secret, the power system loses its mystery, like linking The Force to space bacteria.

I like the concept of Traveller 5E as a "5E sandbox space game," and I wish them well. For 5E players, this is a much-needed break from D&D. I find the price to be very high, and the nearly 2-year wait to be excessive. But GURPS is my science fiction game of choice, and Traveller will always be that lightweight 2d6 system that we loved in the late 1970s.

And GURPS will be the best way to play it.

Or any science fiction game I can imagine.

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.