GURPS Gives Me More with Less

GURPS has a core ethos I can use to paint over a high-magic, 5.5E version of the Forgotten Realms and bring the setting back to its roots. It is the difference between a picture made from a prompt and a real painter layering watercolors, with judgment that comes from years of doing the work.

Seeing the Realms as a low-fantasy place again feels like coming home. The setting is no longer about gods, gates, and planes, and no superhero plot is waiting to flatten a town so the multiverse can have another CGI battle. I do not want that scaffolding in the game. It makes “here” smaller.

The map I create with GURPS is the map I want to explore.

D&D 4E made planar cosmology the main setting of D&D. Earlier editions laid the groundwork; 4E institutionalized the idea that around level 10 you become a planar adventurer. Campaign worlds started to feel like MMO starting zones. That is what made Pathfinder 1e appeal to me over that game: it stayed on one world and treated the planes as places that supported it, not a main thoroughfare through the middle of the campaign.

Anytime the multiverse comes up, it kills that precious starting town at the heart of a fantasy game. The NPCs become nobodies. That dwarven blacksmith with the daughter with big dreams fades away. The tavernkeep with the scar and the eyepatch becomes a memory. The special place you defended against gnolls and the first Orc armored division is nothing next to the City of Brass or Sigil. Here is another portal to Ravenloft; want to go on the ride? I have already been on that ride, and they changed the parts I liked.

Unlike 5.5E Forgotten Realms, in GURPS I cannot assume the Harpers or anyone else have automatic access to “level 20” spells and classes. At some point, that high-level framework sitting over the map ruins the storytelling, because I always have to factor it in. In GURPS, the numbers reset. Powerful NPCs and big spells can still exist, but they are under control, and they don't blow out lower-point characters just by being on the page. These are effects out of GURPS Magic. If I say a spell is not in the world, it is not in the world, and that does not feel like a house-ruled variant of the official boxed set.

In GURPS, Elminster still has to approach a ruin with care. Even as a thousand-point character, he can be surprised, bled, and made to respect a threat. A 25-point goblin’s lucky arrow is not a joke he can ignore. He will happily take a squad of a town’s militia - mere 50-point guardsmen - with him into the dark.

The fast-food version of modern campaign settings, stacked with power creep and expansion content people expect to have on the table, is why I do not want to touch those books as written. With GURPS, I have control over the world I present.

In 5.5E I feel I have to take the whole pile and make something out of it. Tales of the Valiant is an impressive toy chest - thousands of monsters and spells - and it is still too much menu for me to wrestle with.

When you lift the massive rules framework off a setting and look at the place again, what do you like? Do the ties to family, clan, and kingdom come back into focus? Does the setting even support those ideas, or does it assume a cosmopolitan freeway running through the front yard?

With GURPS, the focus narrows; I care about one hero, their build and loadout, and I can immerse myself in a world I loved a long time ago and live in that moment again.

Returning With GURPS

I have been shuffling the rest of the game library because I feel 5E is moving away from my interests and fantasy; the classic campaign worlds are being remade into lesser versions, and the fantasy art I grew up with in the 1980s is Photoshopped and censored, and I feel the worlds that TSR built are slowly dying off. There is only so much recycling a property can take before it's no longer what it was. Like paper fibers in a bag, recycle them too many times and what holds the bag together breaks apart into dust.

I can come home with GURPS, though. I can play the original Low-Fantasy world we started with in the Forgotten Realms, give it new life, and just play with GURPS. Low-fantasy Forgotten Realms was one of our best AD&D campaigns: gritty, low magic, and full of danger; family and fealty meant something, and it wasn't this overpowered science-fiction setting wearing Ren Faire garb, with mixed European accents and voice actors everywhere.

When a mysterious horse rider rides up in a battle, someone in the group points, recognizes the family crest, and shouts, "I know his family!" - that is a cool moment. I get that in GURPS. In D&D 5E, all I get is people checking their character sheets and piecing together their next turn's action economy. They mentally shuffle powers and actions like a Magic: The Gathering player shuffles through their deck.

And there are players who won't play anything else except 5E. It doesn't give me much hope in the hobby outside of my small corner of it.

But playing GURPS here gives me hope. Harpers aren't immortal gods who can swoop in and solve every problem with a wish and resurrection. Even they can get speared, take an unlucky hit, and bleed out. Melee combat is a serious choice, which opens up the social and house-family games of courtly intrigue. Walking out to handle the bandits yourself is one way to do it; getting the local lord to lend you five soldiers to back your expedition up is another.

Who you know and who you are related to matter. It isn't about entitled power trees that hand you importance. You need to make your own importance in this world that cares little if you live or die.

You have to play a smart and careful game in GURPS, and magic begins with the mundane, almost parlor-trick, acts of manipulation - which can be used to great effect. Magic is about creative use again, tricksterism, and subterfuge. Creating a shadow to make an enemy think someone went down the left hall instead of the right. It isn't about becoming an invincible combat god with maximum damage per turn.

Even being a mage or rogue isn't something you may want to announce, and you could take the secretive route and have a cover while studying magic in secret, or take things on the sly. In D&D, not announcing your class and role is unthinkable. In GURPS, hey, I am an alchemist and crafter of tonics, and I have the skills to back it up. My magic? Very few know about that. Me? Being a rogue? Are you serious? I am a mercenary archer, good sir! The game does not force me to announce my class, or make it so obvious that all my great roleplaying goes out the window.

I don't know; it feels like there is so much wrong with current 5E that I don't even feel it is a relatable game anymore. Sure, I can get into the powers part of it and theory-craft, but that is not why I play a game. Walking into a kingdom with guaranteed godhood and a power tree meant to blow main battle tanks off their tracks isn't my idea of a fantasy game. An OSR game gets me to a better spot with less hassle, but GURPS gives me so much more, plus the skills and roleplaying advantages I need to back up the campaign.

GURPS feels like putting on a special pair of magic glasses that lets you see any world in an entirely new way.

That's why I love this game.

Games on the Coffee Table

FATE is on the coffee table. The GURPS books sit on the shelf beside it, and it's not a small shelf. On a weeknight, I play what I have in front of me.

I want something that starts when we sit down. FATE does that. You write a few things about the character, you write a few things about the scene, and you are already in the middle of a sentence. I have been looking at first-edition Cypher for the same spot on the coffee table. One number for the challenge, one pool to spend, and you can name the problem after you have already put dice on it. FATE still wants a skill written somewhere. Cypher pulls a difficulty number out of thin air, and it works.

GURPS will do a rules-light night. I have done it. Fifty points, a short list, and run with GURPS Lite. It is not the same night as opening FATE. Even when I swear I am keeping it small, I will open GCS and get lost in the weeds. I love doing this, so it is part of the play, but I get dragged into the detail-loop of balancing a load and armor profile, dropping the backpack for an extra point of Move, and suddenly I am designing down to the last point and pound.

That is usually when I put GURPS back and pick up the other book.

Some nights I don't want the detail, and just want the story and moment. Cypher does that well, while FATE has a quirky dice system that is the star of the show.

FATE is the four dice with plus and minus, and the new aspect you throw on a person, a room, or the whole evening. That loop is why I keep coming back: a fun night filled with laughs and silly stories. What it will not give me is grit or weight to make a compelling campaign.

Cypher is the one that will tell anything. Some of the best Road Warrior games I have run were first edition, and I never filled out a GURPS vehicle write-up or unfolded a quarter-inch Car Wars map. This motorcycle is a level 2 threat with a light weapon. That one is level 2 with a medium weapon that will starve. The van is level 4 and has guns.

The tension rises as pools run dry and the rests are eaten up. Then you notice the level 2 bike is the same number as a level 2 goblin, and the number does not care which one you meant. I start wanting a weight, a range, a real magazine. Cypher will carry a long arc better than almost anything I own. Starting it, or coming back after months away, can feel empty. Sometimes I love that single number; other times I stare blankly and wonder what I am doing.

Getting into the Cypher mindset, or getting back into the game, is not always easy. Wanting the grit and detail of a full simulation will also fight you.

GURPS can be a middle ground, but how I play is more on the simulation side. This is why I love the game. Playing a GURPS Fantasy game where every last arrow in that quiver matters, where you need to drop that backpack in a fight, and where your armor coverage matters. Am I wearing a helmet? Do I need to buy one? How can I survive this fight? Everything in GURPS gets personal, like a fight against a gnoll, and it stays out of the macro and aggregation and rolls in the dirt of the simulation. GURPS gives me the real experience: I want the little things to matter, and it stays out of a fantasy land of abstraction.

But to be honest, some days I just want the abstract, and wading through the details feels like too much after a long day. I pick games that don't fight GURPS, but instead give me quick moments of inspiration or fast, 30-minute thrill rides. They sort of belong together, and they don't. In my living room, they all get along well.

GURPS at Our Table in the Late 1980s

In the late 1980s, I watched GURPS replace AD&D at our table. All the kids were switching, and it felt like a relief not to fiddle with class and level just to play. Science fiction and modern games never sat right in that frame; in GURPS, they felt natural, and we loved that.

That was the quiet stretch from 1987 to about 1992, before Vampire, Cyberpunk, and Rifts showed up and before Magic: The Gathering landed in the mid-1990s. For a while, GURPS was what we played after we put AD&D down.

I love the OSR, and I love my AD&D, but even we gave it up for Aftermath, GURPS, and a few others. We were part of that crowd looking for something that fit better. It is hard to set the OSR on a pedestal when I lived through the years when people were already hunting for the next game. AD&D will always be my best memories of the hobby.

D&D has always treated the job as the important part. GURPS leaves room for the person as much as the job.

You can run it hard or light, but the default is one-second combat turns, tight actions, short lethal fights, and a character build that has room for the person sitting behind the sheet.

I watch 5.5E hand out Strength because you were a Farmer and Dexterity because you were a Wayfarer. I could haul furniture in a city and want the Strength bump. I could grow up rural and know nothing about farming. D&D still throws a canned life at the table and waits for a nod.

GURPS rejects that. You design the character with your history as a guide and your imagination as fuel.

The Book of Dreams

I get the feeling GURPS has a lot of potential as "the game where you get to be creative." Not as an engine to run other game settings, or as a historical simulator, but as a general place of creative expression and for coming up with fun characters with interesting powers and abilities. I remember when I first saw a cleric design use a healing superpower as their holy healing ability, and the "class" didn't use traditional GURPS magic mechanics.

My first thought was, "That is not the way to do it."

Then my second thought was, "Why not?"

It works; it is quick and easy, and it communicates the concept without pulling in a massive subsystem. A cleric could be seen as a character with a collection of "holy powers," no matter where they come from. Yes, they are still essentially a superhero, but again, who cares? If that is what a "cleric" is in this world, so be it. GURPS should be a place where, as long as you are working inside the systems given, that is the "right" way to do it.

It is a more positive, holistic direction, and it fits the design and focus of the new book. I am also reducing my sarcasm here (with help) and trying to refocus on GURPS being a "creation engine" that beats 5E at its own game. If 5E is the "ultimate fantasy character creation system," then GURPS can be "the ultimate anything character creation system." It takes a more positive direction, focusing on GURPS not as "the game you go to when other games fail" but as "GURPS being the best character creation system ever, come and play with us!"

People play 5E because they feel they can be creative and make cool character builds.

GURPS is a much better game for that.

But the tone should be positive and supportive. We can be the "ultimate supportive creative place" and do things with character builds that 5E would take yet another crowdfunded book to accomplish. I am sorry; I am slipping into my sarcasm again, but yeah, 5E is an expensive hobby if you want more character options. The core two GURPS books (one, now) give you infinite "5E character option books" in just a small, focused game. You can spend $2-3000 on 5E books and not have 10% of what the base GURPS game gives you. GURPS will take a little more work to get started, but you will be happier having learned it and built it yourself.

That is not the point, though. It is not "look how much money you need to waste on 5E"; it is "we have such a cool, creative, and fun place over here." I spent a lot on 5E books, and I hate people telling me I wasted my money. I bought them because I felt something. In many cases, I am still looking for it. Sometimes the books I have stop being used as 5E books and become more inspiration for GURPS creations. They still see use.

The goal is to live up to that "book of dreams" feeling on the new GURPS revised hardcover.

One Extra Second

Most of the time we treat a skill roll as a snapshot. The lock is there. The roll happens. The door is open, or it isn’t.

The book already gives you another handle. Extra Time (Basic Set, p. 346) is not just a combat option. On a non-combat task, taking twice as long is +1. Four times as long is +2. Eight times is +3. You can keep going. The table stops you before the math does.

A lock that would be skill-12 in a hurry is skill-13 if nobody is kicking the door. A first-aid roll with the patient already stable is not the same roll as the one you make while arrows are still in the air. A Mechanic check on a quiet afternoon is not the check you make with the engine on fire.

You do not need a new rule. You need the sentence: “How long do you actually have?”

If the answer is “as long as we want,” give them the +1 and keep playing. If they actually take four times as long, that is the +2. If the answer is “the patrol turns this corner in twenty seconds,” they roll the number on the sheet. The difference is the scene, not a house rule.

Be careful dragging it out much longer, or it stops being Extra Time and starts being a lifestyle. Sure, I can take a week to clean the house. At that point I am not careful. I am hiding from the vacuum. The book does not owe that a +5. The book owes that a dirty kitchen.

This also keeps complementary skills from doing work they don’t have to do. Two characters hovering over the same lock is useful. So is one character who simply isn’t rushing. Use both when they apply. Don’t spend the first one because you forgot the second exists.

The cheap version of “cinematic competence” is not a wildcard and not a talent. It is the party agreeing that this job can take a minute.

Three Feet Tall and Still a Problem

Basic Fantasy’s goblin is not Banestorm’s taxpaying citizen and not quite the DF3 racial template. It is dungeon chaff that becomes a problem in a hole. Convert the book in front of you.

Source: Basic Fantasy RPG r139, p. 104.

The box: AC 14 in leather and shield (11 natural), HD 1−1, one weapon for 1d6, Move 20'/30' unarmored, Darkvision 30', Morale 7. They stand 3 to 3½ feet and weigh 40–45 pounds. One in eight is a 3−3 warrior, one in fifteen in a settlement is a 5−5 chieftain in mail, a lair of 30+ gets a 7−7 king, and 1-in-6 (2-in-6 with a king) is a shaman with Cleric spells at 1d4+1. Dire wolf riders exist. Morale ticks up with a warrior or the king.

Those hyphenated Hit Dice are hit-point modifiers, not a second stat. Monsters roll d8s; 3+2 is 3d8+2, so 5−5 is 5d8−5. Attack bonus, saves, and XP still use the whole number of dice, except 1−1 counts as “less than 1 HD” on the XP table. That is why fodder is 10 XP and the king is 670.

The one decision that matters

Official GURPS goblins are almost always SM −1. BFRPG wrote a smaller animal. Three feet and forty-five pounds is SM −2.

Keep it. Reach C on most one-handed weapons, a short stride that still looks quick, and ST 8 that is dense rather than frail. If you would rather line up with DF3, stand them up to about four and a half feet, ST 9–10, SM −1, and stop calling it a BFRPG conversion.

Darkvision 30' is not GURPS Dark Vision. Thirty feet is a hallway. Night Vision 5 is the honest translation.

Natural AC 11 is unarmored human. No hide DR.

Morale 7 is Cowardice (12). Leaders buy it off or take Fearlessness. The +1 / +2 morale rules then fall out of the sheet.

Package and patrol

Goblin [−15]
ST −2 [−20]; DX +1 [20]; IQ −1 [−20]; HT +1 [10].
SM −2; HP +1 [2]; Per +1 [5].
Night Vision 5 [5]; Resistant to Metabolic Hazards (+3) [10]; Sharp Teeth [1]; Silence 1 [5].
Ugly [−8]; Cowardice (12) [−10]; Social Stigma (Monster) [−15].

Fodder: ST 8 DX 11 IQ 9 HT 11; HP 9 Will 9 Per 11 FP 11; Speed 5.50; Move 4 in kit, 5 stripped; Dodge 8, Parry 8, Block 8. Leather (DR 1), light shield (DB 1), cheap shortsword or spear, slings in the back rank. Shortsword or Spear-12, Shield-11, Sling-12, Stealth-12, Brawling-12.

Damage is 1d−3 cut / 1d−2 imp. They do not win duels. They win numbers, darkness, and the gallery over your shoulder.

Do not import the d8s

Rolled BFRPG hit points are not GURPS HP. Fodder at 1d8−1 feels like GURPS fodder — one honest hit ends them — but a 7−7 king’s 7d8−7 is ogre meat in a child-sized frame. GURPS HP is mostly mass. BFRPG HP is also boss budget.

Leave ST on the body. Buy the ladder as skill, armor, and a little Extra HP:

Role	ST	HP	Kit
Fodder	8	9	leather, small shield, weapon-12
Warrior (1 in 8)	9	11	same kit, weapon-13, Cowardice bought down or Fearlessness 1
Chieftain (1 in 15)	10	14	mail, weapon-14, Tactics-12, no Cowardice
King (lair of 30+)	11	16–18	mail, weapon-15, Combat Reflexes, Fearlessness 2
Shaman	8	9	fodder body, IQ 11, PI 1 or 2, boring, useful clerical spells

A lone goblin is a nuisance. Eight with slings and Night Vision 5 is a problem. The king in a doorway with two warriors is the actual fight. When the king drops, Cowardice does the rest.

Dire wolf: Basic Set wolf, a little Extra HP, same Night Vision so the pair can hunt at 3 a.m.

The other goblins

Banestorm p. 192 is 19 points, IQ +1, Night Vision 9, Impulsiveness. He pays taxes. DF3 is the PC-viable cousin: SM −1, Rapid Healing, goblin-kin stigma. Use those when someone wants to play a goblin. Use this one when you want the Basic Fantasy encounter table to survive contact with 4e.