Realism and High Tech Weapons

I have been playing a lot of Star Wars recently, and dealing with targets who get hit by "blasters." They take a little damage and keep moving. Ouch, my hit points have gone down.

It is a gamist sort of view of weapon damage, health, and wounding - the classic D&D "hit points" sort of calculation, where you can have 30 hit points and get stabbed repeatedly by a knife and still live.

And I look at the blaster again and wonder what that really is. An energy bolt that hot, and with that much energy behind it, should vaporize a huge chunk of flesh from the target. Okay, welcome to GURPS, where that can and does happen. GURPS is far more satisfying with high-tech combat and what these types of weapons do to a target.

Granted, many times it is "tag, you're dead" type combat, but that is how high-tech warfare goes. Look at the battlefields of today with drones dropping grenades, and those hitting point-blank and wiping out whoever they touch. GURPS does sort of boost the lethality of lasers and blasters.

A blaster pistol does 3d(5) burn damage in GURPS and is TL 11. A TL 8 tactical vest as a DR of 12/5 versus ballistic and all other attacks. Raise that to TL 11; it's multiplied by 3, giving DR 36/15 protection. That armor divisor of 5 still cuts that down to a DR of 3, not really taking too much off that 3d attack.

So even if Han Solo had a TL 11 tactical vest (he doesn't), he takes 3d-3 damage from that blaster pistol.

Let's add trauma plates for +69 hard DR. Now we are talking. This is essentially the same item as the Monocrys Tactical Vest from GURPS Ultra Tech (UT, p173), and let's use the blaster pistol against it. Total DR is 84 vs. other attacks; divided by 5, that's 17, so near-total protection against blaster pistols (shoot for the limbs or head).

Time to break out the blaster rifle for 6d(5) damage, and now, on average, we are shooting 4 points per hit through that vest. The blaster carbine, our stormtrooper weapon (UT, p123), does 5d(5) damage, so it is just stopped by the vest, and only gets through if it rolls high.

Unprotected limbs and heads are hamburger to these weapons, as are unarmored targets. If my Star Wars character gets hit by them in GURPS, they are likely near dead or dead if they are unarmored. In most of the other Star Wars RPGs, they get a serious sunburn, lose hit points, grunt, and pretend they are hurt.

In Star Wars, I am "holding my arm," ouch.

In GURPS, "what arm?"

Sure, Star Wars is "for fun" and "it isn't meant to be realistic," but if I am spending time playing a science fiction game, I would want a higher level of realism and simulation. If I use the "not meant to be real" argument, I might as well be playing fantasy.

GURPS sci-fi combat tends to be balanced at the TL it is fought at, given equal weapons and decent armor. Why you would not be wearing decent armor in a science fiction setting is begging to be fried and microwaved by anyone with a personal arm, and it gets worse and worse as you go up tech levels.

And this is why we have cloning and cybernetics in GURPS.

GURPS forces you to look at weapons and energy beams in a realistic light. These are not "toy guns" that "knock someone over and make a puff of smoke" like they do in the movies, but serious weapons of war that, if they hit unprotected body parts, can blow them clear off. They are punching through walls like the MDC weapons of Rifts and setting structures ablaze; these are burn weapons after all. If a firefight happens in the streets of Tatooine, huge chunks are being taken out of walls, and there are likely several buildings and vehicles on fire in the general vicinity. Body parts litter the streets, along with burning corpses.

No, that is not the Star Wars that I remember.

But that is the Star Wars we get with GURPS, if you follow all the rules and don't apply a little creative license, applying that "movie reality layer" to the action. Where this all ends up is like what we got in the Asoka TV series, where a lightsaber can get pushed through someone, impaling them with a weapon that can cut through a steel bulkhead door, and they end up with a small burn on their tummy.

"But, it's hit points damage!"

GURPS, take me away from this insanity! Bring me back to a universe that makes sense, and where pulling out a blaster pistol (or any weapon, for that matter) was a lethal escalation of conflict. Even in GURPS fantasy, sliding out the 3-foot blade of a longsword meant a whole lot more than a non-lethal 1d8 metal stick of D&D 5E.

"But the guards had 20 hit points, it wasn't gonna kill them!"

It seems that, at times, the more superheroic and cinematic our games get, the less connected to reality they are, and the more the entire player base slips into madness. There are times I just want to wash my hands of it all and return to sanity, to games that treat conflict as a serious and weighty choice, and not whack-a-mole with foam-rubber swords.

There are times when I feel GURPS plays faster than D&D 5E, since combat is more lethal and ends sooner, and players are far less likely to engage in conflict because it is so deadly.

With GURPS, I like a harder science fiction campaign, like my GURPS Cepheus game. I sort of want to abandon the science-fantasy elements of Star Wars, especially the modern writing that makes me want to box up my Star Wars games and encase them in carbonite. I have to keep equating classic Star Wars with the OSR, compartmentalizing the modern movies and TV shows, and putting them in their own universe.

While Classic Star Wars is fun, my GURPS Cepheus game feels real to me. There is this "put on" factor with Star Wars that removes it from reality, and the fantasy elements take that grit and realism away, making it feel more like the Flash Gordon movie, campy, pulpy, and unrealistic. If I am in the mood for it, great, but there are times where I want the cold, hard vacuum of space to surround my character like a blanket of fear and dread, where landing on a new world is full of uncertainty and wonder, and walking around a remote settlement armed with a blaster on my character's hip feels like they are there for serious reasons, and if violence breaks out, that could be the end.

That feels real to me.

The rules, characters, skills, and dangers of the technology and universe make this a harsh, unforgiving, and deadly place.

When we are talking about what compels me to play, what makes it all feel real, and why I keep coming back, GURPS will deliver more of that feeling, easier and faster, and without sacrificing the cold, hard math of the future. Those high-tech weapons are all insanely deadly. You need to think seriously about protection and having the strength to haul it around on foot.

There will be times when you go without, and you won't have those high-tech toys to protect you because of local laws and restrictions. You will need to be able to fight with your fists or improvised weapons. You won't be in body armor. And you may encounter those with high-tech weapons while you are at a disadvantage. You will need to use the environment to your advantage and figure out a way to fight back.

I am immersed.

The danger is real.

I am right there, in that world, experiencing like I am in VR.

My character matters; all their hang-ups, weaknesses, strengths, and skills critically matter. This is all highly compelling and excites my brain, making me not want to play, but I need to play.

This is GURPS to me.

Conversion, a Tough Problem

Conversion has always been a tough problem for any generic game I played. You get this rush of excitement, "Let's play X using GURPS!" and then it hits you.

We have nothing.

In some cases, we have something, but it isn't "the exact thing we want."

Starfinder, Star Wars, D&D, Star Trek, Diablo, Warcraft, or any of these other "play them with GURPS" ideas need a ton of conversion to even be viable, and then, getting players to understand those conversions and what went into them is another hurdle.

And this affects any generic game, be it Savage Worlds, Genesys, or any other.

For some genres, generic sci-fi, generic fantasy, and anything covered in a GURPS sourcebook - we have it all. These are good starting points, and we can extend and support about 90% of what we need from here. GURPS does give a lot of "close enough" items that we can either repaint them as "the thing we want" or tweak them just a little to be "good enough."

If you use AI, some AI agents do an amazing job converting anything into GURPS stats. Some of them go wildly off-base, but for the most part, AI is catching up and being able to do a lot of the conversion work for us. I can toss any BX monster stat block into an AI agent and have it easily return "good enough" GURPS stats. The last 10% of tweaking I can do myself, but in 90% of the cases, the stats are instantly there, ready to use in my game.

Ethics is another question entirely here. Understanding that the capability now exists is good for everyone, since it allows us to make ethical and informed decisions, and ask the right questions on sourcing and fair use. This is coming into our hobby much faster than we could ever have imagined.

But a part of me would hate for "AI to be the answer," and I love doing these conversions myself, even if there are so many things to port over that it is an impossible task to even begin.  There is an art to a great conversion that AI will struggle to ever capture. There is also a fun factor that can't be denied.

D&D 4E, Monster Manual, page 83

Add to that, many data sources have changed dramatically since the early days of the hobby; an ancient red dragon went from 88 hit points in AD&D to about 1,400 in D&D 4E. This came back down in D&D 5E (546 hp, still too many), but still, even AD&D 2E sources (23-184 hp, 104 average) are not the same as AD&D 1E, BX, 3.5E (527 hp), Pathfinder 1e (362 hp), or any other edition of the game. D&D 4E was arguably the "videogame outlier" in all the editions, having massive numbers of hit points to match the MMO-feeling of the game.

One could argue that multi-attacks and scaled damage drove hit-point inflation, whereas the original BX game kept the numbers reasonable. GURPS also keeps damage numbers under control, especially for melee attacks. It makes a huge difference in the OSR-versus-5E comparison. A 1d8 long sword holds a measure of threat against an 88 hit point AD&D dragon, especially with fixed modifiers upping average damage to about 10 points. Versus a 546 hit point 5E dragon, 1d8 is relatively nothing.

And I guarantee you that using the D&D 4E stats as a conversion base will result in a "GURPS: The MMO"- level of damage and hit points compared to using a BX-based source. Conversion is one thing; finding a consistent, untainted source is another. My gold standard is BX and 1E-based sources, and those are my benchmarks since they work the best with GURPS.

Also, conversions don't always have to be on the referee! Players can help too by dividing the work if you all want to build something cool together.

There are a few games with loads of "toys" to play with that are tougher sells, like anything with starships, mechs, or vehicles. For a game like Battletech, I love the original minitatures wargame, and I would rather play that (and convert GURPS stats to Battletech piloting and gunnery levels) than convert everything over to a GURPS Mecha conversion. The same could be said for original Car Wars, or even Traveller's ship combat.

Those original games have well-tested, amazing games to play, and doing a side-grade GURPS conversion of the game's stats is easier, more fun in the long run, and saves me a ton of conversion work. I have ships, cars, mechs, and other toys, ready to go, and many are already familiar with these games and can jump in without knowing too much about GURPS. This lets me pull people in easily; we can use GURPS for the "out of vehicle" parts, and it all blends seamlessly.

And I love playing these games as they were designed. GURPS gives me a reason to bust out my Car Wars pocket boxes and dive into that world. When the battle is over, I shift right back into GURPS and enjoy the best game ever written.

Star Wars is a tough one, along with Star Trek. While a part of me loves a gritty, detailed, and to the metal conversion of these games into the "GURPS reality," another part of me (and the part that likes to play with others), recognizes it is easier to buy the official game, use all the toys they have ready and converted in for us, and just play that without a ton of redesign work. Playing these settings in GURPS is amazing and opens my eyes to so many new possibilities, but when putting a group together, just playing what we have is going to be far easier (outside of the GURPS community).

Still, running an X-Wing battle is going to be tougher in GURPS, especially for newer players, than it will be in a game designed to make the experience accessible. Granted, these games tend to use a lot of aggregation that you would end up using anyway in GURPS. Still, when you start getting into massive problems like simulating a capital ship, both games tend to break down, but the more focused game usually has a way of dealing with the problem within the rules framework.

But a starfighter-versus-capital-ship battle can be done in GURPS if you take reality into account. No, you are not going to be able to defeat a Star Destroyer in an X-Wing. You can fly faster than it. The big guns won't be able to hit you unless you are sitting still. Every combat turn you are near it, you will be dealing with "flak" as laser fire from point-defense batteries. What are you trying to accomplish? Taking out the shield generator? That can be a few turns of dodging fire, fighting TIE fighters, and making a difficult skill roll and a good enough damage roll to disable that one system. Mission accomplished, now try to escape alive. All we needed were X-Wing and TIE fighter stats to run that; the capital ship is more of an "area hazard" than something with game stats.

If you are smart and deal with things realistically, you can play a game like this with minimal conversions. You can also push most starships "into the background" if they are not that important to the action, and just treat them as background props. Realistically, how many damaging hits from TIE fighters can your fighter take? What makes sense story-wise? A small ship, maybe 3 hits. A medium ship, maybe 6. A failed defense or piloting roll on a successful hit causes one point of damage. Things work mostly like GURPS ranged combat, but with an extremely aggregated and simplified combat system running the battle.

In a system like that, I could give the Starship Enterprise 36 hits, and make the ship's phasers do a d6, and photon torpedoes do 3d6 damage. Shields block 6 points and take a turn (skill roll) to come back after they are brought down. That sounds about right, and feels like what I saw in the movies. Test it and see how it goes!

And I guarantee you that how a movie writer writes these scenes is based more on feelings and narrative weight than on any technical stat or simulation. This "quick system" is likely getting you closer to "movie reality" than any to-the-kilogram vehicle design and simulation of the battle. Players will be able to understand their ship reeling after two unprotected torpedo hits took half their ship's systems down, and the damage control teams are struggling.

The quick system will be easier for the narrative flow.

And the quick system will feel more like the movie, and you can flex your game design chops and build these "aggregate systems" pretty quickly and make sure they are fair and understood by the players.

What are the hits of the vehicle? How much damage do the weapons do? How do defenses work? How do things work with attack and defense rolls? What are the factors of speed, range, and movement? Most of this will work like GURPS, only scaled to a vehicle or starship scale (and those will be relative scales, such as small craft or capital ships).

Propose a system to the players, try it out, tweak it if it doesn't seem right, take their creative input, and write it down as its own minigame if you like it and it makes your game easier. Almost every board and wargame began life as a minigame, notes on a piece of paper.

Anc conversions don't always have to be a science. I know, GURPS loves its reality simulation, but there are times that the "art" of an aggregation of a complex system will do just fine, fit the need in the moment, and tide you over until your full simulation is ready to go. You may decide to stick with the "quick rules" and just focus on playing.

The trick is to recognize how much work you want to do, where you can save time, and where aggregating a system is better for gameplay and more reflective than reality than a full simulation.

Conversion is both a hard problem to solve and a very easy one - it all depends on how you approach it.

GURPS: Star Wars (Legends)

I ran Star Wars - Legends.

None of this new stuff was real to me, and it was all derivative, made-for-streaming "content." We played exclusively in the now-branded Legends era. In this place, new creators dip in to steal ideas for the nostalgia, while never respecting the stories or original writers of the time. In a way, it feels like D&D, where the new crop of creators can't be bothered with canon or continuity, letting any writer they hire off the street "do what they want" since they feel "it speaks to the new audience."

That is death for a franchise.

The new audience isn't interested in what you have to sell.

How they used to do this is get the older audience excited, and the new audience would latch on to see what the buzz was about, and from that point forward, new stories that could speak to a younger audience could be created. Simply "rewriting the whole thing" but "for a new audience" never works. Lucas knew you could never tell the same story twice, which is why none of the original movies were ever beat-for-beat recreations of each other.

Yet, here we are, with beat-for-beat recreations built by investor money to farm nostalgia.

We played Star Wars roleplaying during the 1990s, when it was fun; the novels and comics were the only source of "new" Star Wars, and writers were free to run with new ideas and shape the franchise's future. I hate to use the word "franchise" here, since it cheapens the creative effort by making it sound like a fast-food chain.

Which is where we are.

Star Wars is Arbys or Taco Bell.

What I remember is a good Star Wars, where the galaxy serves as a setting for sharing universal stories. These days, the setting feels more like a lead weight than a benefit. I can get better science fiction stories out of Cepheus Engine these days. The aliens here are more mysterious, the space empires more vile, the rebels more heroic, the battles more personal and real, and the whole universe doesn't feel like a "put on" or something fake crafted for audience engagement.

Star Wars is where D&D 5E is these days: a medium curated to deliver a certain, preset, on-rails, audience-pleasing "experience" that only delivers mindless action, flashy CGI powers, fake monsters and robot fights, and more flash than substance. Cepheus Engine feels real, like the player's starship could get blown up by space pirates, and the campaign ends then and there. With Star Wars, I am back in D&D 5E land, with heroes that can never die, and adventures that feel like they're on rails with the ending predetermined.

I am free to tell the stories I want to tell in my GURPS: Cepheus Engine game.

In Star Wars, I feel beholden to outside forces, to tell only stories that creators and a wider audience would approve of hearing. It is a strange feeling, like I couldn't tell a story where "the Empire rises," "they hunt down the Rebels," and "crush them all" in an "Evil Star Wars" campaign of a resurgent Empire. It isn't a story that would go over well with many. Still, as a literary vehicle and tragedy in the genre of Greek parables about how dreams can be corrupted and die, it is a solid moral tale of hope turning into despair and ruin, yet again.

Maybe the galaxy realizes "things were better under the Empire" and the influence of Hutts and space pirates in this new, open, and lawless frontier where the Rebels sit on the dying embers of the Death Star's destruction is not enough to sustain people's hopes and dreams, and that running a galactic government free of corruption and grift is a harder task than hopes and good feelings shall ever sustain. The glow of good feelings fades when it is time to run the tax machine, space police, and military, and to get a million planets to agree on policy, as the criminals rob everyone blind and make their own deals with worlds and consortia.

Eventually, the planets will get sick of the constant theft, corruption, and grift, and they will cry for the Empire to return and for security to be restored across the galaxy. I honestly believe that Star Wars stories using the tired old WW2 metaphors should be banned; they have been done to death, and we are ready for new stories where things are not so simple. Forcing creators to think outside that "lazy narrative box" would be a good thing for the stories they tell there.

This is not to diminish the evil and power of the WW2 metaphors, but they are far too easy for creators to fall back on, the science fiction equivalent of an English teacher putting a red X on the phrase "many people say..." They are overused narratives, crutches that frame things in a tired, overdone, and overused framework. I want writers to move beyond the easy answer for evil and write things that generally disturb and terrify them within this storytelling setting.

In my GURPS: Cepheus game, I can do that. Refugees fleeing a war that a planetary governor turns back since accepting them would strain his planet's resources so hard that his entire government would collapse. In Star Wars? I don't think we ever had a story about refugees fleeing a war or a dying, domed city. Even though "war" is in the title, we never get anything beyond "space WW2 evil R bad."

In a storytelling sense, where meaningful stories can be told, Star Wars is dead.

But it wasn't in my 1990s game. We had amazing stories, just like that one, where the Empire sometimes played a neutral role or even came in to save the day, however reluctantly. They were looking for the same space pirates, too, when a sector fleet hyperspaced in and started blasting the space pirates the players were fighting. The players were the ones who tipped the Empire off, and then that situation played out. The Empire was "helping" in a sense, and the players fled the battle, the pirates too distracted to give chase.

And the Empire could win over territory in my game, and they did, as planets lost faith in the Rebels to hold together a galactic government. The agents of the Empire would walk in, diplomats, causing chaos behind the scenes, and then being the ones to help fix it all. The Rebels hated them, but the fight was real, and neither side was magically guaranteed victory just because "they R good."

Our Star Wars game in the 1990s was one of the best Star Wars games I ever ran, and my players were addicted to this universe since it felt real to them. Like a great OSR game, when it becomes a "dungeon simulation environment," and the world does not care if you live or die, your survival depends on your actions and a little luck, my Star Wars universe had that same OSR mentality.

You make your future and fortune here.

You are not guaranteed power and success, and your character can (and will) die, unlike D&D 5E's curated hero-path experience. Like modern fantasy gaming with too much focus on heroes and the heroic path, I want to forget these fake, MMO-like curations and return to a simulated world where nothing cares if my character lives or dies, and my success is my own to make.

This is the difference between a visual novel with one true path and a game like Minecraft, where you make your own stories from what you are given. I play one and forget, and the other I keep returning to so I can create more.

The universe doesn't care whether one side is seen as good and the other as evil. Those who put in the hard work will get the fruits of their labor. The universe is inherently neutral and a deadly, chaotic, and harsh environment for civilization to live in. Planets are not predetermined to see "rebels R good" and "empire R evil" - they will default to self-interest and survival in a universe burning in war and conflict. Nor will all Imperials act like mustache-twirling villains; some are in there to survive and protect their homes. Some have legitimate, genuine reasons to keep serving. Some areas of the Empire will be "less evil" and will almost seem like good guys, depending on leadership. They will constantly fight the "evil side" of the Empire and seek a middle path in conflict resolution.

It is heresy to even say that, since the ideologues are sharks in the water.

But I am a writer. And writers hold the truth as a core tenet and a reason to live.

If it is true, then it is true, and I am not changing my words to please others.

And there will be a wicked side of the Empire that seeks to corrupt its soul, Sith cults that seek to turn the war into a blood sacrifice. Same with the Rebels, the Hutts will promise resources and free access as long as they ignore their crimes and sins. Do you sell your soul for victory and let the innocent suffer, for the Hutts to sell slaves and drugs, and for corruption to run rampant? Or would you, knowing, lose the fight to a new planet coming to your side since you know it would stain your soul to make that deal?

Again, I can't tell these stories in Star Wars anymore.

I could use GURPS to run a gritty, morally gray Star Wars game, and that would be a great throwback to my 1990s experiences, delivered with punch and style. The holy grail of any generic RPG is to "play Star Wars" with it, and GURPS does it perfectly. Just because one side of the other wears the uniform does not mean they can be trusted; we need to know the person under the clothes first. Where their heart is will determine good or evil. The rebel commander who makes deals with the Hutts and the Imperial Administrator who refuses to let the Sith cults enter his sector and wishes to keep the preservation of civilization as their goal are both strong character archetypes.

And the conflicts these character types create are far better than the stories we get today.

They make me question the jingoistic side-isms that plague Star Wars these days and force people to think of others as people, not as cartoon characters.

I want the true, old-school simulator universe.

I want players to question motivations, not look at clothing.

I want the notion of good and evil to be in what lies in someone's heart. The players need to work a little harder to know what that is. For some of today's games and writers, that is too long a bridge to cross.

I do not want a world where we determine hearts by the labels we attach to either side.

The universe is not that easy a place.

Nor are its conflicts.

GURPS: Lite Fantasy Characters

One project I have been working on is a set of generic GURPS: Lite characters that cover the archetypal fantasy roles, so I can put them out for free and give people "something" they can use to try GURPS. GURPS Lite is great, but it needs pre-gen characters and a few monsters to have stuff to play with. Otherwise, this is just a design system, skill rules, and a combat engine with no toys to play with.

I got a sample "fighter" done for about 200 points, and I want a ranger, rogue, monk, and maybe a non-magical bard. There is no magic in Lite, so these will be martial characters, but that is fine. I need a few classic OSR monsters, too, like goblins, orcs, a giant spider, and a few other classics.

Keeping magic out of the game will keep it mysterious, and also allow us later to choose our magic system, so that feels like a better way to move forward. I would love to have a pre-gen cleric and mage, but I am sticking to what we have in Lite.

I am only using what they have in GURPS: Lite, which are the project's ground rules! If a skill, piece of gear, or advantage is not in there, I don't use it. People need to be able to download Lite, grab a few pre-gens, and play along for free.

Once I have these, I can use them as examples of play here on the blog and have a standard set of characters for those examples, rather than getting so deep into theory and game planning.

You know, I would love to see a new version of GURPS: Lite called GURPS Fantasy: Lite, more focused on fantasy gaming and including a bunch of OSR standard monsters and magic items, plus a small magic system to try out. Put that out as a free product, and let people have toys in the box to play with, and directly compare the GURPS experience against D&D 5E.

That is, in essence, what I am trying to do here with GURPS: Lite. Partly for others, and partly to have standardized characters to run play examples with.

And I know once people see the difference, they will likely stick with GURPS and have a better game and character experience.

It does not need all that much, just a handful of archetypes and a few spells, a sampling of monsters, and some treasures to grab hold of. It needs a few rules for running a GURPS dungeon. We need rules for light, searching, breaking down doors, torch times, disarming traps, and the dungeon standard tasks. It needs to cover the basics and nothing else. It needs pre-gens to "grab and go" with, and monsters to throw down on the table on night one.

Focus on "factors that ensure a game's success" and the questions that will come up at a table of inexperienced players (think of how Shadowdark addresses these sticking points for players), and you will have a winning product that serves as an entry point to our hobby.

GURPS: Mixtape

What am I wading into?

This isn't clickbait.

First up, an interactive movie as a game, there is nothing wrong with that. We see visual novels do this all the time. Mixtape is nothing new.

The game's high review scores? Well, only if you take video game review sites seriously, which I would be surprised if anyone does anymore, given that the majority of them are likely written by AI at this point. For all I know, that string of 10/10 scores could have been one site's AI copying the other. Who knows nowadays?

The game is not my cup of tea, so I am not going out of my way to bash it. There is no point. It sort of is what it is, and I am betting we see more interactive movies in this format. But hiding in this mess is a genre we can pull out for our games, and one of the best genres that many games ignore.

Where I want to go with this is that GURPS is the coming-of-age story, which, to be frank, GURPS does better than any other game out there. You could write a $200 crowd-funded 5E book ($1000 for the premium edition) for coming-of-age stories and still get nowhere near what GURPS brings to the table.

Hands down.

GURPS does these games insanely well, and there is no competition. GURPS slays other games in narrative and character-focused stories and tools. You get it all here. And you can do this with the two corebooks, no extra books needed.

And if teens in my high school can figure GURPS out, 5E players, you can too. Come join the party!

Let's say our story begins with our 18-year-old characters in their last week of high school. All stories start here. If you need inspiration, have an AI write a "teen movie" character background for you, and give it something useful to do besides copy game reviews.

Where you should start is on page B20, with the age modifiers in GURPS. Past fifteen, there are no ability-score changes, so they can be pretty average, 50-point characters, with the Dead Broke, Social Stigma (Minor), and Patron (Parents) choices. Just like the game recommends.

And a whole boat-load of disadvantages to deal with that reflect the difficulties of teenage life. This is where you're going to have the most fun. You may end up getting a bunch of character points from these, but I would not buy skills too high, since you want to reflect inexperience in practical knowledge.

Failed self-control rolls, cliques and rumors, dealing with parents and authorities, and struggles with self-image disadvantages will make your game shine. GURPS was made for this.

They haven't been through college yet, so you are not buying up medicine or any other profession to a post-college level. Sports, social skills, athletics, nerd stuff, gaming, technology, and those typical teen skills are fine within limits.

You may want to buy "teen skills" they will eventually forget, like video game skills and being an expert in Pac-Man. Those character points will likely be forgotten as the character grows older and starts to suck at Pac-Man. But for a teen, these sorts of "forgettable skills" define who they are and are important to that part of life. This also does not create pressure to buy a full set of professional adventurer skills, which may make the character boring when they are in the arcade and need to excel at Street Fighter or Dance Dance Revolution.

The dumber and more specifically silly the skill, the better it will be. Every group needs a character who is extremely proficient at launching spitballs out of a straw. Who knows, you may need that to flip a light switch in a room you need to sneak through, or knock a set of keys off a jailhouse wall. When you are down to your last three spitballs, you will know why you are the master spitballer and the chosen one.

Stupid, dumb, specific, and "why would anyone have that skill" type skills are the best for these sorts of games. The more useless and stupid, the better.

It is extremely easy to create a basic 50-point character for a game like this, and since the game won't likely center on combat, it will be mostly social roleplay, skill rolls, and dealing with those struggles and stupid plans and silly dreams so common in the genre. If there is combat, it will mostly be non-lethal fistfights, karate tournaments, rumbles behind the lunchrooms, and other things that are likely to leave their egos bruised.

Also, act insecure! If you get insulted or lose a fight, take some time to brood and lick your wounds. Struggle with that failure. Deal with being made fun of or embarrassed! This is a solid way to earn a role-playing award and extra CP, instead of acting like an invincible player-character all the time. You don't always want to bull-rush past failure, try and try again, and figure out a way to "win quick" after losing a fight. Wait a while, plot your revenge, and win in the end through a crafty plan and iconic moment.

Remember that scene in American Graffiti where one of the Pharaoh's street gang attached a cable to the back axle of a cop car? That is the sort of revenge you should be plotting. It isn't lethal; it is slapstick fun, with a ring of innocence and pranksterism. A pie to the head quarterback's face in front of everyone at assembly is going to be the best revenge, and you don't need to look through a weapons chart to make it happen.

Think like characters in a typical teen movie.

Give yourself goals and a "bucket list" to accomplish before the week runs out. Reward checking those off with character points! Time should be working against you, and you will need to prep for the prom and graduation during the week, so making skill rolls related to those will have an impact on the final day. Those activities will take time, too, like getting fitted for a suit or dress, class photos, passing the final test you need to graduate, winning the last game of the season, hacking the school computer to change your grades, or whatever else you put in here for school goals and personal ones.

This is stupid fun, as it should be!

It isn't overly violent or filled with death and destruction, but these games don't need to be. Loss and failure in these games will probably hit harder and land closer to home for many, since "not getting the girl" will probably resonate with many a lot more personally than losing your dwarf to a spiked pit trap. The laugh-out-loud moments will also be insanely stupid and fun, and you can even pull from your own life to add to the chaos - or the things you secretly wished you could do back then.

And if you ever get bored with the campaign, or want "somewhere to take this" past graduation, GURPS gives you the tools. Alien invasion? Transported to a fantasy world? Mystery detectives? Invaded by the Russians? Government conspiracy and cover-up of another dimension? Taken to fly starfighters in a space war? Break into a secure government missile system? Taken to Dinosaur Island? A strange but friendly alien is discovered and hunted by the Men in Black? Discover a secret treasure cave filled with pirates? Discover the goth clique is actually vampires?

At this point, I am listing movie and TV plots from the last 40 years, but you get the idea.

Pick up a random GURPS sourcebook, throw the teens into that, and go with it.

When the news is filled with negativity, try to find the rainbow here. Mixtape may be an average, not interesting game for me. This is another victim of overhyping. People will tear this game down for clicks and views. It is unfortunate, but whatever. I can't change the Internet, but I can look for silver linings.

But the genre is worth so much more.

And highlighting the fun we can have with the games we love and the ability to tell our own stories?

Priceless.

Good stuff.

And perfect for GURPS.

Backerkit: GURPS Ring of Fire

https://www.backerkit.com/call_to_action/b9369f92-a3a3-4da2-b507-00a7eca112b6/landing

The location is Grantville, West Virginia. The year is 2000 . . . or is it? Residents of this quaint town suddenly find themselves transported to 1632 Germany during the Thirty Years’ War. What happens next? You’ll need to play GURPS Ring of Fire to find out!

Wow, color me surprised, a major Backerkit launch for GURPS? An alt-history extravaganza, crossing timelines, with a Larry Elmore cover?

Wow. Wow. Wow.

Linked, added to the sidebar, and please check this out if you are a huge GURPS fan. We are in for a great 2026! I am on board!

GURPS: MegaTraveller

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

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

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

And MegaTraveller never happened.

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

Battletech is popular!

People like Twilight: 2000!

Let's do that!

And what a mistake it was.

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

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

The universe felt alive again.

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

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

But the setting is why we play. Right?

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

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

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

But why play?

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

Huh.

That should sound familiar, and a bit scary.

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

Technology itself is failing universe-wide.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Does that sound familiar?

Yeah, it is today.

Or it soon will be.

MegaTraveller was a game 40 years ahead of its time.