GURPS fans are familiar with this, but since my other blogs have been gaining a lot of new views, we may be attracting a lot of new readers here, as my sites are like a spider's web of games and interests. There are times when I like to write thoughts for people who stop by and wonder why I cover GURPS and why I consider this game one of the best of all time.
GURPS just slots into anything. While I know Castles & Crusades gets called a "Rosetta Stone" game for any edition of D&D, the real Rosetta Stone game for any setting is actually GURPS. While Castles & Crusades has a modern-pulp game called Amazing Adventures, nothing compares to GURPS and the promise it delivers on:
- Any character.
- Any world.
- Any time.
That last one, any time, is so amazing. Unlike D&D and even Pathfinder 2E, you are limited to one world and a very narrow range of technology. Even if you try to use D&D for a "swashbuckling high seas and pirates" game, you will have characters flinging fireballs and magic missiles, and it will just feel like "a D&D game with pirates." It won't really be anything different than putting pirates in a Forgotten Realms campaign, and you will be back to square one.
Eventually, D&D's meta-setting will creep back into the game, and you will be doing planar travel and leaving those grand-masted pirate ships behind. The entire point of your campaign will be lost. The game's rules are designed for a specific planar progression path, and even these days, extensions such as bastions will hinder you every step of the way. What good is calling your bastion a "pirate fort" if it can never be attacked and destroyed? Who cares about pirates if mind flayers and beholders are sailing around on much-better spell-jammer ships?
In GURPS, I can work with my players to define a game, including the appropriate character types, the technology level of the game, and the campaign's flavor. If there is no magic, there is no magic. If the only way of travel is tall ships, walking, and horses, that is it. If the game focuses on pirates and the navies of early colonial nations, that is the game. If the players are the commanders of a pirate ship, we can use generic NPCs for the crew, and do not need to create every character on the boat.
And I can do all of this with the basic GURPS books, and the extra sourcebooks exist to do more of the work for you in researching the area of interest. You buy a sourcebook, and you now have an "expert resource" to draw from! This makes your period-specific game even more authentic and realistic, and provides suggested ways to handle the different challenges of playing in such a setting. You get setting ideas, character options, history, flavor, settings, special game systems, and adventure suggestions. The book reads like a wealth of information and resources, engaging your mind and sparking excitement about exploring a world like this.
One of the biggest challenges to GURPS is getting fluent enough in the system to "get there." However, the most straightforward approach is to download the free GURPS Lite, invest in a sourcebook, and simply wing it to the best of your ability to start to see if you like it. Yes, you will likely be "playing it wrong," but there is nothing wrong with that! We all start playing any new game completely wrong, and the process of learning something new is fun.
You will be creating basic characters, rolling 3d6 or less, sailing around on pirate ships and having swordfights, firing your flintlock pistols, hearing the roar of the cannons, and completing a sample boarding action to steal the treasure of a corrupt and wealthy merchant king.
Accept that you are doing it wrong, have fun, and use that experience as a springboard to learn different parts of the game that interest you, step by step.
Now compare this with the D&D and 5E models. You want a pirate-themed game! Let's either wait for a Kickstarter project or go search DriveThruRPG for a 5E pirate-themed supplement. If it is a Kickstarter, we are likely waiting a year for fulfillment and out a hundred or more dollars. If we want a hardcover on DriveThruRPG, that is about the same price as these days, given shipping.
Let's say we can find one. Let's hope it is well-researched and generic enough that we can use it for our setting. It may be tied to its own setting and have shark-men or something, which may be cool, but all of a sudden, our historical game is out the window unless we want to limit character options.
Now, let's set up our game. We want a historical game, so here comes the massive list of "no's" in character creation. We need to cut out most of D&D's race and class options just to get something close enough to what we want. None of what remains is a perfect fit for the characters we want, and eliminating certain classes and powers will significantly alter the game and disrupt the balance. D&D will continuously fight us when a character levels up, and you need to tell a player "no" on every option.
D&D's spells and default world model will fight you, too. You need to start banning planar travel spells, all of the gods, healing magic, spells that replace cannons, most of the magic items, various monsters that just don't fit, and the ban lists just go on and on. Just to get a new player into the game will require them to read a list of banned options and items as long as a book report. The game's balance will be broken. It will likely work for the first five levels, and then the game will break apart, and the challenge will be gone, or so impossible that people will wonder why they are playing this freakish mess.
And we don't have ships, cannons, history, a world, ship battle systems, and there is so much else we need to buy or create ourselves. Forget it, let's just play D&D with this set of rules. It is too much work trying to make it do anything else.
It is a lot of work just to play that pirate RPG that you may have seen in a movie and wanted to explore.
Becoming fluent in GURPS, a game that people say is "notoriously complicated" (it really isn't), is far easier than modding even the core books of 5E to do a new idea. D&D is only suitable for D&D. Even teaching GURPS to new players is easier than modding 5E and paying tons of money to Kickstarter books that will never support the simple thing that you want.
I just want to play a pirate! Give me a saber and some daring-do sword fighting skills and acrobatics! Give me a flintlock pistol to fire a single shot off as an attack option! Let me swing on a rope over to the other ship and join the fray! I want to be a pirate!
Okay, D&D says, you are a fighter. Are you wearing plate mail? Because you need plate mail. Even if you are a rogue, are you sneak-attacking? Picking locks? The D&D class abilities are all wrong for this! Nobody wears a plate on these ships; it is too heavy to swim in, and that is certain death by drowning! And don't give the excuse of "well, I have quick-release straps." Good luck with that when you are dropping like the ship's anchor into the cold darkness, and rolling to remove each piece.
Even in 5E, each piece of plate armor would be an action to unhook, with a roll that can fail for each, and that can add up to dozens. The armor is lost forever. If you are wounded, you likely won't even get a few pieces off before you drown. Even healthy people would struggle, and it would be a miracle to survive. You would need to pull off a Houdini-like escape.
In GURPS, here are the handful of skills you need. You have a few ability scores. Over there are your hits and move score. This is how combat, parries, and dodging work. Okay, now you know the game. Here comes a merchant crewperson with a saber. Now you can fight them in one-second combat rounds. Do one thing and don't worry about "action types" or "action economies." What one thing do you do? Close? Do defensive? Draw your flintlock so you can fire next turn? Can you quickdraw your flintlock and fire in the same turn? Do an all-out attack?
All the combat options are built into GURPS' combat system and not hidden in subclass abilities across a dozen classes. They are not hidden in feats. Anyone can accomplish these things if they possess the necessary skill levels. GURPS combat is easier than D&D, since nothing is off-limits and every combat option is universal.
But I have superpower-like abilities in D&D! If that is a part of your game, give casters "magic superpowers" like fire bolts, magic shields, healing hands, and other powers. You don't even need to use the spell and magic system. GURPS does that too. If you want a realistic world with no magic, you can do that too. If you wish to have a special magic system, just a thaumaturgic or shamanistic one, you can do just that, too. You don't have to "take the whole bag" of the D&D spell and magic system.
Becoming fluent in GURPS, which is not particularly difficult, is far easier than modding D&D.
And once you do, you unlock the ability to create any game, in any world, at any point in time. If you want to make "My Favorite Movie: The RPG," you can do that, too, without D&D getting in the way.
So many doors are open to you once you grasp a few simple GURPS concepts. All of these are in the free copy of the GURPS Lite rules.
Playing D&D is like playing a video game.
Playing GURPS is like getting an education and being able to make any video game you can imagine.
