GURPS: Miami Vice

I am binge-watching the Miami Vice Blu-Ray collection, and wow, this was a great TV show. Forget all the pop culture, NBC, MTV, and other influences—just as a cop show, this is amazing. It also defined a generation, bringing the 1980s to every corner of America (and the world), and redefined the cop show in a way only Hill Street Blues did for the other, more gritty, 1980s side of the genre.

And I grew up in the 1980s, so this speaks to me.

All the technology, cars, fashion, and weapons are classic 1980s icons. Tubbs uses a 0.38 5-shot S&W Model 38 bodyguard revolver and Crockett's 0.45 8-shot Bren Ten automatic. These aren't your modern, high-capacity guns—these were the 1980s classics, where shots were limited, and the look and style for the show were king.

Even the phones in the first season were mobile radio phones—not tablet-like cell phones; these had pull-out antennae and flip microphones and only worked in large population centers. You could be out in the swamp, wilderness, small towns, or sea and out of range of a tower, so you had no mobile phone. You called dispatch or the station for a records check. And records? City records, police files, real estate records, tax records, prison records, or the library. You had to call or go to these places to get information (if they had it or it wasn't missing), which took time. They were just starting to computerize crime and court records, but those searches still needed a mainframe in an office.

Part of the fun of this setting is the 1980s technology and living without cell phones and the Internet. And no, you can't slam the X card to magically have it since it disadvantages you.

Conceptually, this is the same game style as the classic Gangbusters game. This time, in Florida, in the 1980s, where they have radio phones. It is not booze but drugs and vice. Otherwise, policing is still that gumshoe, hard-boiled detective work where clues have to be noticed, informants need to be talked to face-to-face, and getting information takes time from records frequently in file cabinets. You need to maintain cover identities. Science - if it comes to that - is done in a lab. Things often go wrong.

It has the flash and music of the 1980s, South Miami culture, and lingo. Still, it is the same story of rough streets, ambition, corruption, immigrants, broken dreams, big money, government plots, and a new era in America.

Change.

GURPS does this game style well since disadvantages frequently come into play. You get a straight 3d6 down-the-line OSR game with no system for mental and possibly physical disadvantages, and there is very little to work with to make characters come alive. D&D-style games are combat since they only do combat - so you won't get that tense, making social skill rolls, having your weaknesses used against you, conning the bad guys, setting up traps, and noticing hidden clues with a good roll style of play.

In 5E, one detective always builds for passive perception and expects all clues to be told to him once he enters the room, like he has a clue-detecting radar mounted on his head.

There are mechanics in 5E that ruin entire genres of play.

I'm sorry, but life and policework do not work that way. Tell me what you are looking for and where you are looking, and I will decide if a dice roll is needed and what skill applies. This is still an old-school game; the referee can say, "You guessed exactly it," and forego the roll. Fingerprints on the shot glass? They are there; make a skill roll to copy them into evidence.

Again, you still see a lot of the Gangbusters policing tropes here. There is more science here (no DNA testing yet, but yes, on blood types), but the nuts and bolts of investigations are mostly the same.

I could do this with a lower point limit on characters and a focus on role-playing and drama. These won't be your complicated Dungeon Fantasy, list of spells, and 250-point established heroes. I could do this with 100 or 150-point builds and still have capable officers. And those social and investigation skills will be beneficial! This won't be all combat and shooting, though tossing some martial arts on a character would be entertaining (and valuable for going undercover and those times without a weapon).

Martial arts will be your "magic" in this type of game, just like the classic Ninjas & Superspies game. Want to take down a suspect without a gun? Find a dojo and start training. Spend a lot of free time working out. You will need it. But you will be fantastic.

The game will only get complicated when modern guns and martial arts come into play since those areas are more rules-heavy. Everything else will be straight skill rolls, role-playing, gathering evidence, following suspects, filming and photographing illicit activities, and looking for clues. These cases must be proved in court, so ensure you build that case with an evidence trail. It won't be all "D&D combat encounters in a room" and some lame; read the text box aloud, and the adventure assumes you did the evidence-gathering part.

As a referee, I will hold players accountable for what they gathered and expect them to keep a list of the evidence and cases they build. In classic D&D, players drew a map. In a crime game, they create a case to prove guilt. Sometimes, it will be cut and dry, but they must do that homework if they take down a slippery money launderer. This could be as simple as a "list of evidence" on paper; you don't need to go all out. Ultimately, that evidence will be a positive modifier to convict, while the bad guy's legal team will use their skill roll to contest that all. You don't need to roleplay the case, do the contested skill roll, make the determination, and tell the players the outcome.

If you fail, well, get them next time.

GURPS makes this game easy, and I don't need to buy a game off DriveThru and mod it to play this genre and time. And if you want genre support, excellent 3rd Edition sourcebooks are still perfect—like GURPS Cops. This will give you all that gritty police procedure that will help make your game more authentic. Miami Vice is listed in the Bibliography.

Why play another game for this? The sourcebooks are here. Why learn a new rule system? To have YouTube or social media cred? To have a book of art? Give me a break. I keep one system in my head. It has excellent sourcebook support and works. No extra money was spent. It doesn't need to be (let's just play D&D instead of this) 5E. I have many 5E games that make the mistake of thinking the game is about genre and story instead of providing compelling character builds - which takes more playtesting and money than most small companies have.

GURPS is not the best system for everything, but it is the best system for anything you want to do.

Don't fool yourself into thinking the "officially licensed system" is the one you are waiting for. I have been burned by too many of those, and they all go out of print and become unsupported - never to be sold again or put in PDF.

If you want a more action-oriented game, pick up the 3rd Edition book for GURPS SWAT and play a tactical team fighting drug runners. They could even work alongside the Vice team and be the big guns they call in when things need serious firepower to resolve. Remember, the equipment will be mostly the 1980s vintage guns and protection, and you may be using M-16A1s with 20-round magazines, no drones, no computers, and working with spotters and walkie-talkies - but that is a fun limitation that sets the game apart. While Miami Vice is not listed in the inspirations here, playing a tactical team in that era alongside the Vice Squad would be a fantastic campaign.

Also note that in a tactical team campaign, you won't be gathering evidence or doing detective work; this is a game primarily about takedowns and combat. It may not feel different from a modern tactical team game since the 1980s will mostly be window dressing to the battles, and you won't interact much with the suspects and witnesses. The more meaningful game is the footwork and detective part, but playing a second set of tactical characters may be fun, too, to add to the mythos and world. Two sets of characters could also free detective characters from becoming "combat specialists," leaving those large gunbattles to the experts.

You could even play the SWAT raids as tactical minigames, with no role-playing focus, and possibly the PCs on the board. Let the PCs play the SWAT team and their characters.

Of course, this is always a vigilante game to be played in this setting, which my brother and I did during the early 1980s. That is out of scope, but we played in this world then with a fun renegade soldier vibe. It was always fun to run those takedowns and hustles and disappear before the good guys showed up. It was like a Batman meets the Punisher game, and it was fun.

That said, I want to play a game like this. GURPS lets me jump right in and do it.

Great Video: More GURPS 1s Combat

This is another great video today from EasyGURPS discussing the one-second combat round and how to keep combats from turning into silly slap fights.

Worth watching to make your combats more fluid and realistic!

GURPS as a Solo Game

When the pandemic hit, my first priority was collecting GURPS books. I feared significant supply chain disruptions would impact printing, and I am happy that did not happen since I could get 100% of the 4th Edition books I wanted, plus a best-of-the 3rd Edition greats on subjects that have yet to be revisited since.

Only once did GURPS get put in a storage crate, and it only stayed there for a short time. I will do this to games to see "if I really miss them." The great games find their way out since I can't live without them. The chaff and junk can stay there and eventually be sold to someone who enjoys them more than me.

But why buy and collect GURPS?

This was always a game I could come back to. It will give me a lifetime of enjoyment, and I can play it solo and enjoy stories without end. The game does not really need a community. Pathfinder 2, 5E, and a bunch of others? No community, no game. Pathfinder 2, especially, was built for community play since every class and build needs a "table advocate" to understand how it works to its fullest. If a player specializes in clerics (or fighters, rogues, etc.) and memorizes all the rules around them, your table will have much more fun.

GURPS? No classes and no special rules around them. It lacks 5E's "classes by committee" design, where any designer can toss any power in any class in any expansion - even in adventures. In GURPS, all characters are mostly the same; they develop differently along the same framework of point-buy choices. In 5E or other games? Who knows how the mechanics will change when you introduce a class? And that is another thing to remember and keep track of. If you buy too many 5E books, your mind will blow up.

GURPS characters still work the same way to the maximum point level, and nothing introduces special rules you need to allocate "mental RAM" to keep track of. I can't handle all of Pathfinder 2's dozens of "tagged conditions," nor can I process 5E's infinite class options that each change how the game works.

GURPS, when you understand it all, is a more rules-light game than either 5E or Pathfinder 2 since the designers of the latter two games need self-control to control the game's complexity. This is the "West Coast" game model where the game becomes a "Windows installation" and some tech-company scheme to turn it into a live service to keep you paying money and "lock out" competitors by making the game so complex and take up so much shelf space you don't have room for any other game in your life, mind, or collection.

"Midwest Games" are like the original D&D, GURPS, and Castles & Crusades. Games designed with this model can be created by designers on the coasts (and anywhere in the world). Still, historically, this is an apt way of describing these games since this is where their origins are. These more humble games tend not to take up a lot of space, have the sensibility not to be a boorish space consumer in your life and house, and tend to be plain-spoken and "are what they are." They are also not trying to sell themselves as "lifestyles" but recognize themselves as "games."

This West Coast tech-company mindset is destroying roleplaying by trying to sell it as a lifestyle and social platform. Monopoly is not a social platform, nor is D&D.

GURPS is one of those down-to-earth games. I have two shelves of GURPS books, but I only need two to play and last a lifetime. Even the basic Dungeon Fantasy set is a complete game that can last decades. And like these Midwest roots, a lot of the game is DIY. In that spirit, you can see where this "make your own game" vibe comes from. You even see that in the older editions of D&D. The canning, gardening, patching your own clothes, sewing your own things, fixing your own house, building an addition to your home, fixing your own car, and that self-reliant vibe permeates GURPS. You are creating your own game every time you play.

That was my feeling during the pandemic. Become self-reliant, even in my gaming.

If they ever made a 5th Edition of GURPS, you know it would be a trash fire of West Coast live service tech company nonsense. You can never get away from it these days. People get ideas of how to put gamers over a barrel for more money, and it kills games. It looks and sounds fantastic, and the community seems behind it all, and the excitement is there. But it is driven by corporate and community grift, slick presentation, us-against-them anger marketing, and mental manipulation.

I would rather be a self-reliant and self-sustainable gamer than buy into another social media grift.

Creativity is like the ability to grow your own food. That can feed you for life and help you live a healthier and more fulfilling life. Rely on fast-food chains for your primary food source, and guess what? You become overweight, unhappy, and reliant on them for survival. You "can't have fun" unless "you buy the next book for Paizo or Wizards." I know the core books are a lifetime of enjoyment for those games, too, but you would be surprised how many D&D and Pathfinder consumers are collectors and never play the game - or say the only fun is the next thing I can buy.

I fell into that trap. I know. All it got me was a garage full of books to sell, and money lost I could have better spent on retirement.

Better to realize it late than never.

I am creative enough to have my own fun without the guilt that I "am missing out" since the only thing I am missing out on is being taken advantage of again.

And I enjoy GURPS for almost any game or genre.

Dungeon Fantasy is GURPS 4.25

The combat section writing in Dungeon Fantasy is so cleaned up, with clear options listed under every action type for how far you move, what attacks you have, and what defenses you can use, that I am starting to see Dungeon Fantasy as the GURPS 4.25 rules, at least in the area of combat.

The movement for All Out Attacks is crystal clear, and the rules have been improved and clarified over the GURPS Basic Set.

GURPS Basic, All Out Attack, Movement:

Movement: You may move up to half your Move, but you can only move forward.

Dungeon Fantasy, All Out Attack, Movement:

Movement: You may remain stationary, turn in place to face any hex, or run forward. If you turn or move forward, you must do so first and then attack – not vice versa. If you move forward, you may move up to two hexes or expend movement points (p. 33) equal to half your Move (round up), whichever is more, and may not change facing at the end of your move.

After reading through these rules and watching a few YouTube videos, I understand all of them now. The above section looks like a patch from some heavy playtesting, where a dungeon-focused game raised some hard rules and questions about how things should work. Some of these may also be pulled from rules clarifications in expansion books.

However, some rule options, like the ranged combat options under all-out attack, were not included to simplify things. So this isn't a 4.5, but more of a 4.25, where you still need the basic set to have all the attack options. I want to see a GURPS 4.5 with this clean-up and update, but I am wary of changing a great set of rules and losing what made it special.

In 5E, complexity is built into the characters, whereas as you level, you collect all sorts of bonus actions and other interrupt-based powers and abilities. GURPS sticks the complexity in the rules, which have the same complexity as your skills increase. More options open up to you as your skill increases since your success chances go up to make some moves viable combat options.

Campaign Planning Form

The assumption that "every world must be accessible" hurts GURPS. The core book, Campaigns, has a chapter on an Infinite Worlds campaign that tries to tie everything together. Still, this chapter establishes a "multiverse reality" that confuses many players, as if everything has to be in everything.

In turn, I find myself putting everything in there when creating campaign worlds because why not?

And I never start them since I am discouraged and unhappy.

I was working on a GURPS Pathfinder game, and the source material felt overwhelming. What do I include? Where do I start? How do I narrow this down? Conversion becomes a thought experiment that eventually becomes a source of disappointment and a negative experience.

Incredibly confusing is "leveled content," such as an adventure module for a party of five between levels 4 and 7. Even if those numbers were correct, which in D&D varies widely, different classes are far more potent at certain levels than others. Even if you say 25 CP = 1 D&D level, what do you do when you enter the module? Are the 250-point Dungeon Fantasy starters at level 10?

A 25-point goblin could take down a 250-point character with one lucky hit. GURPS's balance is far flatter than any version of D&D, which is good. When you convert a module, use the suggested level to set the rough "point limit" and then use it as a narrative flow for encounters and challenges - don't try to convert every number and monster over to GURPS; estimate and capture the flow. Many of the ratings in D&D-style games mean very little, and the "leveled nature" of the game creates many problems.

I am much happier when I limit the options, focus, and scope of a campaign world before I even start and set those parameters up before play. We have a tool for that, the Campaign Planning Form.

This form (found here) needs more love and attention, and I rarely see it mentioned. If I converted a module from any OSR or D&D game, I would use this sheet to lay out the game's parameters. I would also forget about any "setting" the module was supposedly set in and just assume the GURPS campaign is only the module, and that is it for scope.

Are you trying to run a GURPS or Dungeon Fantasy campaign for Keep on the Borderlands? Then forget about the setting, Mystara, and focus only on the module as the campaign. Pay close attention to the campaign planning form's sections on valuable and useless character types and appropriate and inappropriate professions. If you want to play this more as a band of sneaky thieves than kick-in-the-door barbarians, the sheet can help get everyone on the same page.

You can add other notes on this sheet, like stating whether the equipment and price list are from Dungeon Fantasy or you are using it in a game like Basic Fantasy. Will the monsters be taken from GURPS sources or converted from Basic Fantasy? Are some sources more for inspiration? Are some of the adventures you will be playing? Are there some informational resources? List them all on the sheet with notes.

Will magic items be converted from an OSR source or pulled from an official book like Dungeon Fantasy: Magic Items? There can be a lot of sourcebooks and resources in a converted campaign, and using a sheet like this to list and categorize them can help keep your game from drifting off in scope and pulling in resources you never really intended to be brought into the game.

If we circle back to GURPS: Pathfinder, that setting goes the entire range of tech levels once you throw the lands of super-science ruins (Numenera) into the world. Androids walk around here. Some things I just don't want to handle in a Pathfinder world. I like the fantasy setting, and the S3 Barrier Peaks-style adventure feels better suited for a more focused science-fantasy setting, like a Gamma World. If I were doing the science-fantasy Iron Gods adventure path in Numenera, I would limit the campaign and scope to that. You may even set a base tech level for different areas, shops, and NPC factions.

The most significant hurdle to playing GURPS is narrowing it down. Use the Campaign Planning Form to collect your ideas, inspirations, and resources and distill them into a plan for your game that will help you focus the idea you are trying to express and focus it like a laser onto the story you and your group are trying to tell.

Great Video: Differences Between GURPS and Dungeon Fantasy RPG

Here is a fantastic video about the differences between GURPS and Dungeon Fantasy RPG. There seem to be many patches and improvements in DFRPG, and since I base my games more on DFRPG than GURPS Basic, there is a lot of great information here to digest.

It is easy to feel overwhelmed by all the combat details in videos like this, but much of this falls under the "use it if your game does" level of information. If you are not using judo, grappling, or any of these detailed combat rules, don't worry about this. But if you are, this is a great resource!

Conversion Notes

The more I play GURPS and master the system, the more I am done with other games. Yes, I know, it is always good to play new things and experience different games, but I have been down this road with game publishers for decades. Some games promise up the world but only deliver a fraction of the B/X town-to-dungeon experience. Some games are written and are 90% similar to B/X, and the encumbrance rules have been changed because the designer never liked the original system.

It reminds me of all the bands that sprung up in the 1990s that sounded like Soundgarden or Pearl Jam. There were some good ones, but everything sounded the same.

B/X compatibility is excellent, and it lets me easily convert to GURPS. B/X Damage and hit points are similar to GURPS and can often be used straight. A 3-hp goblin is more like a minion, and I don't mind those low values for some monsters since they speed up combat (or they could be sickly or wounded from a tough life). Even if you look at GURPS Dragons, hits never exceed 100, so the B/X scale of an ancient red dragon having about 88 hp works, and once you factor in modern firearm damage, a 6d6 fireball fits into GURPS nicely and is quite lethal. Armor? AC minus nine, and it works. Skill, parry, and dodge you can estimate, based on HD.

Be careful with AD&D 2E and higher hit points and HD; they increase quickly with each edition, tripling at 4E and doubling in 5E—which is still too much.

Any B/X adventure can be converted to GURPS on the fly. It is beyond simple. I added a page for my B/X conversions today.

Magic items? Most are used as-is, and magic weapons and armor can apply their bonus to damage, hit, or DR as needed. If a magic sword does an extra 1d6 fire damage, use it like that. If it is broken, fix it.

Saves? A resistance roll in GURPS.

Spells? I stick to the ones in Dungeon Fantasy and use these casting and effect rules. If one comes up in a module, I use the closest one. Magic is an easy system to swap out in any OSR game.

Basic Fantasy 4th Edition is such a great GURPS resource that I keep it alongside my GURPS books. It is the best conversion base and reference work for OSR gaming. It is worth playing as-is! But if you wanted to use it as a sourcebook for Dungeon Fantasy, that works too.

However, many of the OSR and OSR-like games are based on gimmicks (especially with all the random tables in games these days) or the designer's house rules. We are in the age of personal preference; if you like dried strawberries in your cereal, you eat this; if you don't, you eat that. Designers ask us to get passionate about minor differences. Am I really supposed to get behind your version of B/X because it has different encumbrance rules and a few other minor changes?

I am at the point now with B/X and OSR games. They need to bring something new to the table. I have enough of them, and many are just a few house rules away from each other.

YouTube, DriveThru, and Kickstarter keep many of these games afloat. Very few are worth buying into, and I can say that, having bought many of them. A few are based on a passion for how the games used to be played, and these are always the ones that rise to the top since the designer understands the relation of the source material to the inspirations. Cepheus Deluxe is like that for me in regards to 2d6 sci-fi.

Get the best in the OSR game genres and use GURPS for the rules. Cepheus Deluxe is an excellent example of classic 2D6 sci-fi, and Basic Fantasy is my best OSR source game. I have a few new B/X games, but Basic Fantasy's free status and community project will make it accessible and have a future long after every other OSR game goes away. And it was recently rewritten to eliminate all OGL material, so it is safe.

If a game has a unique wargame-like system, like a ship combat system in Star Frontiers (or even car combat in Car Wars), use that instead of the one in GURPS Space. Use GURPS for the skill rolls and apply a -1 or -2 per hex to hit the penalty (I need to test this). The same goes for Cepheus's ship combat. Ship design, combat, and internal damage all work like Cepheus—but make all skill rolls with GURPS and throw modifiers on there as needed.

GURPS is used for the skill rolls.

The unique system is used for everything else.

Only use GURPS for characters. This way, the classic Knight Hawks ship combat will look and feel like the game, but your GURPS characters will make the skill rolls. I wish I figured this out before my game blew up, but I can always restart at the point it blew up.

But I like a one-source system for everything since my mind is beginning to think and work in GURPS. When I play other games, I see how GURPS does the same things better and with less effort. Some of these "invented systems"—especially the ones that come from story-gaming—are so abstract and gamified that they make no sense.

Beware the games that need to invent abstract concepts to patch rules in other games. I like Level Up Advanced 5E's "supply" system to eliminate tracking food and water, but really? How hard is it to track food and water by day and weight per day and leave it at that? It won't matter in many games, or it can all be left on a horse. When it comes to survival scenarios, you can make it an issue. Or in genres where survival is paramount, like post-apocalypse (or worlds like Dark Sun), tracking these supplies and finding new sources will be life and death.

Require a skill roll to replenish them if you are in an area of abundance, or just say they top them off.

Otherwise, ignore food and water. If I were playing GURPS: Miami Vice, would I require players to track them? If I were playing a similar-themed fantasy game of constables in a large fantasy city, playing Magic Vice Cops, would I need them to track these supplies?

This is where a lot of GURPS's unfair criticism comes from: people taking one specific rule and applying it in every case. You would never do it in D&D, so why is GURPS any different? Sorry, your two vice cops are lying on the corner, starving! You should have kept food and water in your sports car! The rules are the rules!

When you realize that most all rules in GURPS are optional, and if you cut them all out, the game is like B/X in complexity, and 5E is a horrible mess of layered rules and interrupts, you will begin to understand the GURPS mindset.

I can play GURPS using GURPS Ultra Lite and still be playing GURPS, and these characters will be compatible with the whole game. I can use the above one-page rules for all my NPCs and monsters and use them in a game where the characters play by the complete rules.

I can run a nearly complete GURPS game off the 32-page GURPS Lite free PDF, and the rules you need to understand are only half the size of this book—the other half is character creation. Give me a break; GURPS is a rules-light game.

It has a few hundred pages of optional rules and a few thousand pages of optional setting rules, none of which are needed to play. It is lighter in rules than even a game I love, Savage Worlds, which requires you to understand many abstract concepts to get fluent in the system. Savage Worlds' speed comes at the price of programming your brain to work with the game. I still love it, but getting back into the game requires loading that information into my memory.

I can't say any of this about 5E.

5E is over 1,000 pages in the first three books; you only get the basics. Most of them are monsters, spells, and magic items—but you begin to need thousands of dollars of add-ons and third-party 5E books to give the game a good level of customization.

In the core book, GURPS does it all.

And I get so much more depth and customization in GURPS than I could ever buy, no matter how much money I spend on 5E (or even the OSR). I like 5E and love the OSR, but there is no contest here for the better game.

At least not for me.

Delvers to Grow

The Delvers to Grow book series I can't praise highly enough. If you enjoy the low-level, deadly OSR-style dungeon crawls, the Dungeon Crawl Classics 0-level peasants surviving against all odds, and the zero-to-hero gameplay style - these are the books to get!

They take Dungeon Fantasy and turn the game from a difficult-to-grasp 250-point epic hero adventure into something more accessible and approachable for new players. I recommend an experienced GURPS referee because you are navigating the Dungeon Fantasy set plus DTG. For new GURPS referees, stick with either base Dungeon Fantasy or GURPS Lite (or Campaigns & Characters) and learn that first.

But if you want the 0-level horror movie, please let us survive this tense dungeon crawl where you are poking rats with pitchforks and trying to take advantage of every combat rule possible to help you survive, including using a shield-wall fighter. The spear and pitchfork party members stand behind your tank to poke enemies to death - this is where you start.

There are also specialized advantages for OSR trope builds, such as the missile mage, which fires bolts of magical energy every turn. The designer knows the OSR style, builds, and tropes well and combines them with pure GURPS tactical realism and goodness.

The specialized build books are also highly worth it and dive into the tactics each character needs to survive. Some things that may differ in the OSR versus Dungeon Fantasy are also discussed, such as how "mind control bard" builds at low levels are not as effective and may find all of their spells being resisted - making relying on them a risky proposition.

Also, gathering intelligence and using research and lore skills are much more critical in GURPS. Knowing monster physiology may help you identify weak spots, vulnerabilities, and other bits of lore that can help your attackers gain an advantage. Knowledge skills in GURPS are moneymakers and difference-makers in combat. Do you find ancient runes on a wall in D&D? Use a skill roll, decipher them, and hope they give you a clue on how to solve a part of the current dungeon. In GURPS? Make a high-quality etching of them, research them, write a book on them to put them in context, and sell that for 500gp. They may give you a clue, but any information in GURPS matters.

An excellent GURPS referee will use knowledge, lore, mysteries, and information to make them matter in story, combat, and tactics. The intelligence game is one of the "table legs" of a great GURPS experience.

The Strong Delvers build book offers good melee advice from OSR games, and you may need to be made aware that things work differently here. GURPS is a much better set of melee combat rules than D&D could ever dream of being, so you can get away with 2-person tactics like the shield wall and attacker who stands behind them with a reach weapon and makes all-out attacks to decimate the enemy. Don't ignore close combat or fear weapons that must be readied!

Also, how things work in other games differs from how things work in GURPS. Some OSR games will create character archetypes that highlight and build a character around a part of the rules. The Pathfinder iconic characters are like that when you convert the builds in, they will be flawed. The thief, Merisiel, is like that, a low-intelligence, high DX stabby, thrown-weapon thief. Since her IQ is low, skills that depend on those, like traps, could be better. Even her character description, "not the smartest knife in the drawer," hints at her low IQ.

In Pathfinder, her low IQ has little effect on her trap detection and disarming abilities. In GURPS, I would not rely on those skills with her, which shows a flaw in the system. I would take along another thief for traps. She is a typical D&D "combat thief" with inferior IQ-based thief skills. As a result, she would not be my first pick if I had a choice of thieves—I want one with the skills our party lacks.

Similarly, many Pathfinder iconic characters show flaws when designed in GURPS. Valeros has too many weapons and looks like a mess of dual-wielding, bow, dagger, and other options for which he needs more focus. GURPS likes you to have weapons options (especially for close combat), but he looks like he would spend a few turns sorting out what weapon he will be using before the battle begins. He is better converted over, but I still see areas where he could focus more on parry and dual-weapon fighting than trying to be a generic, do-it-all D&D fighter. If he focused on one fighting style, he would be a killer.

D&D and Pathfinder put a low value on knowledge skills or gameplay that relies on those areas. The rules hide the effects of low IQ on skill use and push you into violence and combat. The passive skill system even takes rolling and ingenuity out of the game, making it an assumed action reliant on the DM remembering everyone's passive numbers.

The Fast Delvers book focuses on the different types of thieves and also gives good hints for surviving combat. Rely on light armor, movement, and ranged weapons! GURPS does a fantastic job with combat styles and blending information with battles. The social game is ten times better than D&D or Pathfinder. Where newer 5E-style games (Level Up Advanced 5E or Tales of the Valiant) are introducing "social advantages" in background picks, GRUPS and Dungeon Fantasy go hard and give you a complete character design system that puts their "pick and get one thing" systems to shame.

If you are doing OSR-style fantasy games, this is a no-brainer—get these books; they are amazing. The production quality is ultra-high, the content is packed full of amazing options, and the frameworks rework the game into an easy-to-play, deadly, and addicting low-level dungeon game.

Get these books.

They are 100% worth it if you like fantasy gaming in GURPS.