GURPS as a High Fantasy Game?

Sure, why not?

Give them a pile of points and let the players go to town crafting fun, high-magic powers, special fighting abilities, and racial innates. This is an easier game for those used to the GURPS system, especially those who have played superheroes in the system before, but this is completely possible. Or, do your first game like this, make the powers all minor ones that aren't on a cosmic power scale, and have fun with it.

I saw a video on a GURPS Fantasy game that skipped GURPS Magic (and Dungeon Fantasy) and just gave clerics a "healing power" that cost fatigue points, almost like a superpower. It just works, and that power can be improved and enhanced with character points later. You don't need a full 5E "power tree" and class system to do high fantasy powers; you can just buy them "as powers" and assign whatever magical power source you want to them.

In fact, you can do better in GURPS: design your "fantasy vampire hero" with all sorts of classic fantasy powers, like mist form, turning into a bat, hypnotism, strength, limited invulnerability, and just play your character like that. No "character class," no "race that levels up" - just a powered fantasy hero that can do all sorts of cool stuff, and you begin from there.

In GURPS, you are less of a character in a video game, and more of a character in a movie. You have starting versions of "all your cool powers," and you go from there. If your "high elf magic archer" has power shot, storm of arrows, long jump, stealth, dual wield, whirlwind, and arcane shot as powers, that is what they have. Design those (it is easy), get permission, and give them to your character. She does not "get those from a class"; she just "has them because that is her unique archery style," and she is unique and cool.

Every character in the world can have a unique power set and type of abilities, or you can create standardized templates and give them to everyone who trains like that, thus creating something like a "class." This is your choice. Or, you can start her with "the archer class" and add a bunch of unique powers to her, and have something like a "hero character" out of the Warcraft universe. Maybe she is a banshee archer with "spirit shot", "soul blade", and "bone storm" as special powers, in addition to the standard archery template.

While 5E doesn't require you to think and gives you powers from a list, your choices are very limited, and you end up the same as everyone else who made the same choices.

GURPS is far, far better than 5E when it comes to customization and crafting special powers. Anything you can imagine, you can do. Some don't have the imagination to play like this, and that is fine, but there is a part of me that wants to play a unique hero with a custom power set. Imagine if a 5E crowdfunded book promised you could "design your own class" and "design your class's powers and abilities?" You would be all over that book and excited!

Well, GURPS does all that today. And it isn't that hard to learn. All you need are the core books, and I would recommend GURPS Fantasy and GURPS Powers to make it all easy and give you a list of sample powers to start with. You will have far more than 5E gives you in terms of characters, and you may want to pick up a GURPS Fantasy bestiary as well to have a few monsters.

From there, your high fantasy game could begin tonight, and you could be adventuring in an entirely new world. And honestly, you will have far more customization than 5E gives you, and far better characters that support GURPS' inbuilt roleplaying mechanics without external narrative dongles like inspiration, hope/fear, or story points.

The only hurdles are getting used to the game's core rules and understanding the power system in GURPS. Once you get a basic understanding here, there is nothing holding you back.

GURPS is a far better high fantasy game than many realize.

GURPS: Bundles of Holdings!

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/G4Essentials2026

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/G4Infinite

We have two GURPS bundles on the Bundle of Holding; they are really worth checking out if you are new to GURPS. Jump in now, and open your mind to a universe of gaming!

GURPS Classic: Imperial Rome

Hugely underrated, and if I ask any AI about historical Rome gaming, GURPS Classic: Imperial Rome is always mentioned as a prime resource. While games like ACKS are "Rome-like" games, GURPS presents the real thing. And while the "Greek lineage" of fantasy tends to be more about monsters, magic, the gods, and myth, the "Roman model" is all about war, politics, lineage, rulership, empire, dominion, factional intrigue, riots in the streets, and power.

There are no monsters in the Roman model of roleplaying other than other humans, political factions, armies, and interests rooted in money and power. Monsters and major non-human factions would distract from the core purpose of playing in a Roman game, and even magic is a cheat that would circumvent the purpose of raw, brutal, and vicious political power. 

Modern D&D and its "magic and monsters" model does not do court intrigue that well. Even Star Wars, trying aimlessly to "simulate an empire," misses all of the intrigue and deep politics of the inner workings of a real empire, how it works, who supports it and why, and the motivations of those who stand to benefit from fostering and supporting such a system. Star Wars presents us with a "grand space wizard" who has force lightning and mental powers, and that is nothing in comparison to a true empire. Magic is distracting us from the "why" emperors maintain and hold power, a cheap and easy explanation we are told to buy into, and it breaks the story model.

Real empires? All about greed, money, power, faction, family, and control. Many times the power is an illusion, and those who question the illusion are deemed threats to the republic. Money and power are the root of all evil, and that never changes.

And a game in Rome is going to get dirty, since there are topics here that modern D&D frowns upon. Gender differences (based on marital status), slavery, and many taboo topics "inappropriate for today's audiences" are fully frontal and presented in the raw here. If you can't stomach historical gaming, then D&D and modern story gaming will be better for you. Don't get offended; it is what it is. We can't change history books because we don't like what is in them, nor should we, since we will end up repeating the same mistakes if we forget the lessons of the past.

There is a question of whether gaming is a proper place to discuss and explore these topics, but gaming has always been a safe place to explore difficult ideas like this while keeping our safe distance and perspective. The moment you confuse a game and reality (as corporate "identity gaming" seeks to do), these subjects become forbidden topics. If you can keep a proper distance and historical perspective, gaming gives you a way to explore very difficult themes in a safe, firewalled environment where you can live history the way it was and gain a perspective on where the world was and why we live in the world we live in today.

Also, a warning about the setting. Popular culture and Hollywood tend to paint the Roman era in very salacious and fantastical undertones for shock and spectacle. This isn't excusing what they did; they were evil in many senses of the word, but understand that much of the marketing and stories from this time are purely for spectacle and have little basis in reality. Also note that many of the accounts of the figures, events, and conflicts of the era are sparsely documented or presented by wildly biased writers. In a sense, this era was the birth of modern media, where what historians wrote was often used to control the record of the past to benefit a desired future. We are just left with the shocking accounts and twisted narratives serving a forgotten purpose, and those need to be taken with a grain of salt the size of a salt mine.

Again, another lesson that can be learned here is that history is written by the victors. You can get into a situation like with Caligula, someone that in the modern era "everybody knows" is a deviant madman, but all we know about him is through surviving accounts. What if the man was a young 24-year-old reformer who may have had a few issues, who focused on eliminating graft and corruption, and those who were "on the take" and profiting from the corruption ran him out of power by inventing salacious stories about him to turn the populace against him?

What do we know? The man had a very short reign as Emperor, and he was assassinated. Certain events were recorded as happening, such as wars and proclamations. Much was written about him posthumously, a lot of it salacious. He was replaced by a safer, more acceptable, older relative. Is any of it true? The events we can corroborate, such as wars, the line of succession, and other items recorded in records, are more likely true, while opinions from others with their own agendas are likely shaped by perception and the desire to create a narrative.

There will be places in interpretation where your view of the facts will be "just as true" as what anyone else has written. Know where the historical record is solid, and know where it becomes opinion and rumor. Find that line, and be cognizant of when you cross it, or if you need to.

A good historian will say, "we don't really know," and that what we read "could have been true" or "it could not." Trying to pin down history as something certain about something that specific, especially that far back, will have many problems. What we have in the historical record is what we have, and we can uncover a lot of truths there, but the more we deviate from "what we know for certain" is where the realm of interpretation and fiction are introduced, and our stories move into being less real and our take on what we see.

Understand the difference between the historical record and hearsay, and how that affects perception. Even the GURPS book mixed the "Hollywood version" of the setting, as seen in popular culture, with the historical record. It is unavoidable, since this is what we see in movies and TV, and often, real history is dry and boring. Use a time machine and drop someone from today into actual Rome, and it will likely be a boring, day-to-day existence, with them wondering, "Where is all the crazy stuff I saw on TV?"

Though, to be honest, why we play this setting is to see all that crazy stuff we saw on TV.

11mm Brass Dice

I got these 11mm tiny brass dice off Amazon, and I am very impressed with them. They are a touch smaller than a standard plastic 12mm die, but are far heavier, though not as heavy as a full 16mm metal die. They still have a good weight, and I would recommend a dice tower or large neoprene pad for rolling them on, but they are great little dice.

The only difference is that they are an oriental layout instead of an occidental layout. With the oriental layout, the two faces are over-under instead of corner-to-corner. The pips are slightly different from the picture, too, slightly larger but uniform in size on all sides. It took me a little while to get used to counting the 2 sides, but once I did, it was a faster read of the dice since the 2 is a very unique face. Studies have shown that they are easier to read quickly since the 2 and 3 sides are very different. In a traditional die, the difference between the three and the two is the placement of a single dot, whereas in oriental dice the pattern is entirely different.

If you think of it as "half of a 4," split right down the middle, it makes more sense.

I use them with one of these mini-dice towers, and they make a satisfying sound and roll very well through them. The one shown is a touch too deep to reach into, and that annoys me with larger hands, but I just use the tower part and the bottom as a backstop about 8 inches away. I have one of those large gaming mousepads on my table surface, so my play area is metal-die safe.

This smaller tower is small enough to travel with, so that is a plus.

Also, using a dice tower is another solo-play tool since it is harder to cheat rolls, tell myself that was a terrible shake of the dice and it wasn't really a roll, and want to reroll the dice. A dice tower roll is fair and final, means a lot more, and makes you put in slightly more effort in rolling, making trying to take back a terrible roll so much more difficult. Yes, I am probably putting micro dings into the wood of the tower, enough to give it character, but not damage it unless I put a hundred million rolls through the thing.

The sound of the roll in the wood is super satisfying, and that aural feedback makes solo play incredibly fun. This is positive feedback, and rolling dice with a tower seems like it is a slight waste of time, but trust me, it is much more fun to roll dice this way and get that ear-pleasing ka-chunk-ka-chunk sound with every roll that is like comfort food for my ears.

I like metal dice since they also have a finality to them. I am far less likely to reroll metal dice than I am plastic ones; I don't know what it is, perhaps the weight and impact of the roll feels greater, and I take it more seriously than a plastic die. If I am rolling a critical miss on 3d6, that feels like a final judgment with metal dice, and I am obliged to not cheat that roll and apply it as it lies. The fact that metal dice also damage surfaces makes me also not want to reroll them, and that special care in rolling them makes me more often play the dice as they lie.

To me, metal dice are the best solo play tools. I will not change a roll when no one else is looking. The roll is final.

So, size, metal, and dice tower aside, what is so cool about these dice? With a small dice tower, these feel like the most random dice I have ever used. I am getting a wide variety of rolls, whereas with some plastic dice I feel are really concentrated around the middle results, the distribution curve feels closer to reality. I am getting a good number of low and high rolls, whereas with some plastic dice I feel they tend to only roll high. I am rolling 17s, 4s, 6s, and 15s regularly, and the distribution of results feels very spread out.

I know most of my rolls are in that middle range due to the bell curve, but with some sets of dice I rarely roll the ending numbers on either side, whereas with these dice I see those results just enough to feel the dice are fair and all numbers are showing up. With some sets of plastic dice, I very rarely see low rolls like 4, 5, or 6. Some plastic dice feel "D&D weighted" for ability score generation, where I am constantly rolling high and wondering why these dice never work well for GURPS, where roll-low is the way we play.

But these dice will regularly roll low or high in equal amounts, and still stick mostly down the middle for the majority of dice rolls. They feel very fair, and with the tower, the rolls feel incredibly fair and random. Larger metal dice are harder to roll since they are inherently more dangerous and weighty, whereas the smaller metal dice feel just right to me. A 16mm solid metal die can ding a book, whereas these feel like they won't do too much damage if they bump into something.

These have larger pips (than what is shown), and they're painted in, too, so they are very readable.

These are my favorite GURPS dice for my Old West campaign. They feel authentic, and while not the classic "cowboy layout" of the occidental dice, the oriental style feels more Hong Kong cinema and action-authentic to me. They look like little side-by-side double-barrel shotgun choke holes, so they have a fun aesthetic to them for this style of cowboy games.

Highly recommended, not too expensive, very satisfying, not too heavy, and the feel of these is very nice. The side-by-side 2 faces are an interesting quirk, but not too hard to get used to. Also, the antique look of brass dice is very authentic for my Wild West game.

GURPS: Zero-Level Funnels

A few games have the concept of "zero-level funnels" in the system, most notably Dungeon Crawl Classics and Shadowdark. The game has a mode of play where zero-level characters (without a class) are rolled up randomly, and each player gets a few of them to control, such as four, and they get a random profession (farmer, baker, butcher, gong-farmer) that determines their starting "skill" and equipment. A character may get a chicken and a pitchfork as starting gear, while another may get a bag of flour and a rolling pin.

The result is a hilarious "last person standing" style of play where characters are sent into danger and sacrificed to solve the adventure's challenges, traps, hazards, and puzzles. The characters with terrible ability score rolls are typically disposable mooks, while the highly desirable characters are held in reserve in the hopes they survive.

The characters that survive become the choices for player-characters, who are graduated to first level when the campaign begins.

You can do a zero-level funnel in GURPS pretty easily. I would stick to very low-level character point totals, 25 or 75 maximum. If you have GURPS Character Assistant (GCA) from the Warehouse 23 store, create a library with GURPS Basic Set, GURPS Fantasy, and GURPS Magic, and you can apply randomized 75-point templates from GURPS Fantasy as your starting characters. They have archers, bards, knights, holy men, and a good selection of fantasy archetypes.

If you ever get duplicate skills or selections from a randomized template, don't worry about it; just play with what you got. When your zero-level funnel is done, then allow players to "rebuild" the character with a few extra character points (maybe allow a total of 100), and give them a chance to clean up the skill list, add a few they want, and clean things up to make a platable and well-rounded hero. Stick to most of what was there, and you could make tweaks like replacing a few disadvantages that don't make sense and cleaning things up so the character fits how they were played in the funnel, while getting rid of things that make the character unplayable.

If your character survives, this is the part where players can "create a level one character" and make those tweaks. Do not care about balancing points, either; if some come out 60-point, and others 120-point, just roll with it. When it is time to create "level one" character, pick a ceiling above the highest surviving point total, and set the design point limit there. So if you have characters from 80 to 120 points as your "level one pool," then set the ceiling at 150 points, and let them design for that.

My random "spellcaster" ended up with two spells, detect magic and lend energy, along with bad temper, bloodlust, overconfidence, and gluttony. This guy will be a hoot to play as he steals food from the monsters, and if he is ever denied a chance to chow down, flies into a fit of rage and starts trying to kill everyone in the room. I dare say this is a more hilarious character than anything I would get in DCC or Shadowdark, just due to GURPS' excellent disadvantage system creating memorable personalities to throw into the meat grinder.

His spells? Well, he can lend others energy and detect magic, so if he is ever in a funnel with a magic trap, he will be useful. He does not have a direct attack spell, but, hey, it is a funnel; make do. If a referee is feeling generous, throw a spell scroll with an attack spell in the funnel somewhere and allow a CP spend on the spot to buy it.

My barbarian came out pretty useful, an impulsive pirate from an uneducated, mundane background. He can also throw sticks! The radioactive wasteland could be interpreted as a magic-blasted wasteland from some mage war in the long-lost past, but as a mundane background, he doesn't know why the land was blasted raw; it just is what it is. Hey! We are getting worldbuilding happening here, too! I would consider this barbarian a keeper. At only 58 points, I have a lot of room to tweak and build with when he "graduates" to a "level one" hero.

This archer does not even have a ranged weapon skill. Since he has overconfidence, maybe he lied and thought he could make it as an archer without knowing how to fire a bow, and just got by winging it, and is now stuck in a terrible situation. He has leadership, too, so maybe he figured out he could get an officer's role without doing too much archery. Even a "junk" character like this can become a memorable and hilarious personality with a little imagination.

The lying archer seemed like a randomized, mistake, garbage character, but now I imagine him with a compulsive lying disadvantage and never buying him archery, yet carrying around that bow and pretending to know what he is doing. He has a smallsword, so have him fight that way if needed, and he can pump that skill up to be a highly effective close-in fighter who is still useful to the party. Buy bluff and intimidate skills and let him use the bow to threaten others and get his way, if push comes to shove. He never knows how to shoot the thing, but he uses it as a tool to get things done.

This is GURPS. You can get away with this here, and the design system supports it. The tactic of bluffing with a bow you don't know how to use is supported in the rules, and you can pump these skills and abilities up to a high level and support them with force-multiplying advantages.

You can't do this in D&D 5.5E, DCC, or Shadowdark.

My randomized "mistake" characters are coming out better than my boring optimized designs.

GURPS is hands-down cool.

We don't have great random starting equipment tables in GURPS, so borrow one from another game. You don't want to be buying and equipping four randomized characters, so either do a cold start, such as all the characters being stuck in a cell without gear and organizing an escape from the goblin fortress, or some other cold start where the characters wander into trouble and must find, steal, or figure out gear. As an option, give everyone their highest-trained weapon as a starting item. You can also create your own tables.

Once you can get beyond character generation and use the randomized template characters, you get over a huge hurdle to running a funnel. From there, it is just printing the characters out, handing them to players, and letting them use their imaginations.

And with these types of quirky, randomized, sometimes hilariously limited characters, your funnel experience could be better than it is in games that directly support the funnel-style adventure. Letting players figure out randomized disadvantages and skill lists, and come up with stories? This is insanely fun! Running the angry glutton mage or the lying archer through a funnel is going to be a fun game to play and outshine experiences in other games.

And you can do zero-level funnels better in GURPS.

GURPS Is the Best Low Fantasy Game

While I love Rolemaster, Runequest, Hackmaster, and a few of these other "real fantasy" games, GURPS has killed the entire genre for me. The low fantasy versions of 5E, the Conan game, any of the new "dark and gritty" low magic versions of OSR games, and low-magic variants of D&D? Yeah, those are all gone too.

GURPS killed the genre for me.

GURPS does it all better.

While these books are excellent sources of inspiration, GURPS will always be the system played at my table for them. it works the same way every time, is easy to pick up and run, and has the best combat system - and it works without combat even better than most "combat only" games.

Even a game like Shadowdark, brilliant in its own right, pales in comparison to GURPS. What thief character do I want to play? Shadowdark's d4 hit die, backstabbing, and advantage on a few skill check areas, or my fully realized GURPS thief character?

It is no comparison. My GURPS thief wins every time. This is a character who has much deeper development, a greater sense of who they are in the rules, and a more configurable and customizable skill set than a simple 3d6-down-the-line OSR thief. My GURPS thief also beats my 5E rogue by a mile, since my GURPS thief actually feels like a thief and not an MMO DPS class.

My GURPS thief feels like a real person, someone with a backstory with supporting rules to back that up, and will engage me on a deeper level than any OSR or 5E game. In a solo game, my thief wins by a huge margin, even over games designed to have solo modes of play, like Dragonbane.

When my thief navigates through a world, that character in GURPS will have a much more engaging and deeper experience than my OSR or 5E thief. The "GURPS effect" of feeling like a VR headset was put on you will hit immediately, and I will feel immersed in the world, with everything around me suddenly vividly real, mattering, and my every action has consequences - good, indifferent, or bad.

Sure, my 5E rogue gets "cool powers" - but, so what? Those are only good for combat, and they don't help me tell a story. Most of them are promises I will never play long enough to enjoy, having but never really needing. Or the fact that I only get combat powers means the game forces me down a "choice path" of violence first, thinking later.

GURPS? I can run a campaign out to 500+ points of character abilities and not get into one fight. Combat isn't the focus of this game; perhaps it is stealth and social intrigue in a Venice merchant house? Maybe my character has competent fencing skills and some excellent training, but solves most of his problems through intimidation and Machiavellian scheming.

"He's pulled his sword a dozen times, but never used it."

That is a great GURPS character.

Why all these "roleplaying-focused" streaming shows aren't using GURPS is beyond me. GURPS curb-stomps D&D 5E in terms of roleplaying support and actual in-the-book rules that support character backgrounds. It is not a guess, player choice, or sitting there and making it all up - all the character options for flaws and advantages are in the book, rules written, and ready to be used.

And for realistic, gritty combat? GURPS has dials that turn that up to 11, or down to 1. It beats many of these other "real fantasy" games without even breaking a sweat. You have as many or as few "realism rules" as you want here.

And GURPS is far, far easier than many of these games to create characters for and run.

Skills & Wits

One of the trends in post-2000s gaming is the expectation that everyone will be given special powers. Our games became less about "skills and wits" and more about "powers and progression." Granted, there were always superhero games before the year 2000, but with D&D 3.0, game design became more about power trees and progression paths, often mimicking ARPGs like Diablo in pen-and-paper form.

You see this sort of design culminating in D&D 5.5E, where every class feels like a video game series of unlocks and granted powers, where player skill (and the character's skills) matter less, and it is all about what power I can get next, and where I am going on this class tree.

I am speaking broadly, as if D&D 5E is 90% of the market, and games like it tend to follow the leader, and you will see class designs with special powers granted at each level. This "prebuilt powers on a class list" design is incredibly common in gaming today.

Also, skills have been relegated to a secondary role, often "solving a toggle problem." Passive perception covers, "Do I see something?" A referee calling for an active skill roll, like History, is just presenting a pass-fail problem with very little player input or interest. After a while, it doesn't matter what the skill is or what the roll covers; it is just a binary test in the adventure: you get to read something, or you do not. You can move somewhere, or you can't. You take damage, or you don't.

If you can see a 5E adventure as a decision tree, this is the structure. Skill rolls just force you down decision tree paths. And I get this feeling that in 5E, the primary way you solve a problem is with a power, rather than creativity and skill use.

GURPS hits differently for me. Skills feel more open and more like player tools than pachinko machine pegs. For most things, you don't have the skill. You may know someone who does, though. Many D&D adventures are designed around skills. Since they are so limited, there will be a number of skill encounters that act as toggles or filters, making the roll go this way, fail it, and go that way.

In GURPS and many older games, you don't really have adventures designed so tightly around skills. Skills are there as player tools that could open new paths, but they primarily exist to give players the tools and options to create new narrative paths. Skills feel optional and more player-initiated than adventure-required.

Powers are another thing. Powers force the player to read the character sheet each turn and choose a path for that turn of combat. Choice paralysis also defines modern gaming. You will have high-level D&D games in which players forget their characters have powers they could use.

D&D 5E says to me, "Powers solve problems, not plans."

GURPS was designed in the pre-modern era, and you can even see this design philosophy reflected in other games, such as Palladium and Basic Roleplaying. Characters in these games are more about character skills and player choices, and powers are an extra, special bonus.

If you wanted special powers, you turned to games like Champions or ... GURPS. GURPS sort of stands in both worlds, with a power design and a full-featured system for superpowers. D&D never had the focus on special powers it does today, merging with video games and with powers taking over the mental decision tree for a player when their turn comes around. GURPS, by default, can ignore the power-design system and still run like an old-school "stats and skills" game.

Then again, I started with GURPS 1.0, so special powers were always something found "in other books" rather than something in the core rules. GURPS 4 changes all that and is an excellent all-in-one game. And in GURPS, you design whatever power you want, whenever you want, and work with the referee to get or have it. If you have the free character points, you can play.

Still, for me, GURPS feels like a "skills & wits" game.