Book of Maps: Tor Akul Campaign Setting

This is an interesting book. 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08J21KNJJ

I love these system-neutral campaign setting books, and this one features a huge area of the world, and an amazingly detailed large city map with districts and names of every establishment in the city. If you wanted to run a fantasy-themed urban campaign with GURPS, this is a spectacular resource and place to start, with plenty of gritty and dark fantasy inspirations, especially with such a huge red-light district featured here. A thief's campaign is right up this setting's dark and crime-filled alleys.

The rest of the world is mostly left for you to fill in, with lighter details as you start exploring the world, with many places left to your imagination. The central city and another town are the stars here, and the world is a great tapestry to create upon.

I can't find a PDF, and I don't really want one. There is a certain magic to a book without a PDF, as if it were an ancient find before the digital age, and I am left to leaf through the pages and make of it what I wish. Would a PDF make this more useful? Clearly, yes. Do I need one to play? No.

We get a few dungeon maps with numbers, but they are left for you to fill. We also get maps of the main city, a town, and a keep. We have brief descriptions of various places in the world. Most of it is left up to you. Most of it has an old-school flavor, but it's left generic enough that converting it to GURPS is trivial. We get "levels" of some characters, but no stats, and that can be used as a relative character point value for these NPCs.

This one is Amazon-only, and a strange find by a hobbyist who printed a world for you to make come to life. It has a generic feel, presented in a plain format, in full color, and even the title font is a bit basic. The maps are beautiful, and the descriptions are just enough to get my mind working.

It is also not that expensive, and it is a good starting point for you to fill in the rest. This is also a labor of love, and that enthusiasm shows through the setting. While this is not done by a professional publisher, you can feel the love and attention to detail here in the descriptions. That creator enthusiasm is contagious.

In contrast to the genre-best HarnWorld, where you get every character, map, and door down to the lowest level of detail, this book is more freeform and loose, giving you more room for your imagination and creativity. HarnWorld is clearly the superior setting, far more detailed, with so many more NPCs, a richer history, and more detail in every location.

HarnWorld has a very medieval feel, and it feels more traditional, with humans, dwarves, and elves represented. As for other races, like the more modern ones, you will need to fit them in yourself. Tierflings and Aasimar don't fit in as well here and would stand out starkly against the more realistic world, not to mention Dragonborn, Dark Elves, and other exotic kin. While the big three races have lore and history here, the others you will need to make up yourself, or just leave them out entirely.

Tor Akul is the more freeform setting, with less detail, scarce NPCs, and generic descriptions rather than exacting detail. If you want a generic setting with maps and a few loose descriptions, and you don't want much detail, then Tor Akul is a fine backdrop for your ideas. The capital city map is the star of the show here, where HarnWorld lets you go anywhere, explore, and have maps and NPCs ready to use. I could easily fit exotic kin into this setting and give them a homeland on the map.

HarnWorld is my ultimate GURPS fantasy setting.

Tor Akul is a more generic, malleable, interesting, and "fill in the blanks" setting with a single book and beautiful maps, where you can do whatever you want. If you wanted, the main city map could be dropped into any campaign world and used as-is, and the rest of the world could be ignored.

I like this book; it is inspirational and a fun starter for DIY projects.

My 1000 Point Character

So, to compare against my "wouldn't it be cool" test build of a 14th-level 5E character that ended up with a character sheet 16 pages long, I decided to make my "ultimate GURPS fantasy hero" to see how complex that character would be.

GCA has a wonderful randomization function, so I took four 250-point templates and applied them randomly to my character (knight, wizard, bard, scout). I then spent my remaining points on whatever I felt like. This is NOT how you design a 1000-point character! Taking four templates and mashing them together is possible, but who does that?

But hey, this isn't just a multiclassed character; he is quadclassed.

I had a few repeat skills, strange choices, conflicting advantages and disadvantages, and a general unoptimized mess of everything. He has 160 points of disadvantages. But this does highlight what the worst-designed 1000-point character may look like, and I was shooting for a huge skill and spell list just so the PDF would grow to an insane length. I can always fix the repeats, choose other skills, or combine them. Some polish is needed. And hey, this guy is a 26-minus poet and public speaker with similarly high axe and pickpocket skills. I can't design that in 5E at all.

What is the more complicated character sheet?

A 14th-level multiclass 5E character, or a 1000-point unoptimized mess of a GURPS character?

My 1000-point GURPS character came out to a 7-page PDF, with 3 pages devoted to spells. So, really, a four-page sheet had all I needed to play. My 5E sheet didn't have spell summaries like this one! So my GURPS sheet is easier to use, and I don't really need to be flipping through the Player's Guide to look up spells.

And my GURPS character did not have "rules short circuits" like "characters within 40 feet reroll failed inspiration checks," or similar stuff, which 5E is notorious for. Every character sheet in 5E is a potential "nuh-uh" to any rule in the game, and that blows up complexity compared to a skill-based system like GURPS, where mostly all you are worrying about is, "What is the negative modifier for that?"

If I went to 2000 points, I would probably hit a 10-page PDF, most of which would be my spell list. Most of page four was empty, with plenty of room for more skills.

The silly part of this whole episode is that running a 4-person party is likely easier in GURPS than in 5E. In 5E, the beginning is very deceptive, with "simple characters" that "feel OSR." Like a frog in a boiling pot, this quickly grows out of control, and character sheet complexity for each hero grows to more than a dozen pages for each, all with special rules changing how the game is played.

I was probably wrong to assume GURPS doesn't support solo play for four-person parties because of its complexity. With 5E, it is arguably worse to solo there than GURPS (outside of a VTT). In any OSR game, it is likely easier than GURPS. With Castles & Crusades, that is by far the easiest. GURPS is sort of middle-of-the-road when it comes to solo/party complexity, but it is not the worst, by far.

With the 1000-point non-casters having 4-page character sheets, and casters having 4-8 sheets due to spell lists, that is very manageable in GURPS for a four or even a six-person party. At 1000-points. Which very few play at that power level. Also, my character is massively unoptimized, as most GURPS characters grow organically in a few key areas and become much tighter, well-thought-out designs. My character is the worst-case by design, just to bloat that character sheet with junk.

At most, for 250-point characters? A two-page, double-sided sheet, and another double-sided sheet for spells. One sheet of paper at most for a 250-point character. One extra sheet per character for casters.

If I start throwing on extra attacks in GURPS, my turns get slightly more complicated, but not to the degree of 5E, where some report taking 30 minutes to decide what to do during a turn. I would, too, if I had to flip through a 16-page character sheet on my turn. It would take me a few minutes to leaf through all that paper to find what I was looking for. Each turn. Per player. Over and over.

A one-second, one-action GURPS combat turn solves a lot of problems. I can look at a player, count, "zero...one" and then ask them, "What does your character do in that amount of time?"

The character sheets in 5E are way out of control. I get that most people play on VTTs, and all this complexity is hidden behind UI buttons and scripting that hide the rules and interactions.

"It is easy, look!" they say. "The turns go by quickly!"

But that comes at a cost in software support and an online-only model that locks you into a paywall. You need to buy "digital goods" to make it work, often doubling the price you paid for the game. You will lose those goods when the website goes away, and they will all go away someday. Wizards have always designed their games with that "software as a service" model, so the characters and rules end up hideously complicated. 3E, 4E, and 5E are all the same "dozen-page-long" character sheet, endless, special rules mixed in, and forcing you to use software to figure it all out.

And GURPS?

It will still be out here, more playable at higher power levels, with the easier character sheets, and supported by an enthusiastic community. While yes, designing a GURPS character with software makes it easy, what comes out of that software is far more straightforward than any modern D&D version. And I can still create GURPS characters by hand.

And GURPS is easier than D&D at higher power levels since there is far less to worry about, and most of your power is reflected in higher skill levels to perform the same basic tasks.

Is GURPS Really More Complicated?

I was playing with my 5E character designer, and I created a multiclass bard-warlock of 14th level, and the character sheet was pages long, full of special abilities, spells, descriptions of powers, a dozen powers all with differing "uses per day," and tons of special rules for one character. Some of the selections are cool and "not what I would have come up with," but that is part of the fun, being surprised by designer choices and figuring out which one is the best pick for you at this level.

But all this complexity starts to add up.

While my 500-point GURPS character can have a half-page of skills, the character by itself is not really all that complicated. Even with tacking on superpowers, those are pretty straightforward without the paragraphs of special rules that 5E loads on every ability, like text was free, and there is no need to unify and streamline the design system.

Everything is a special case in 5E.

Every 5E ability comes with a few paragraphs of text.

If you multiclass, it starts piling up fast.

By 6th level, a 5E character feels on par with a 250-point GURPS character. Past that point? The 5E characters start to grow exponentially heavier as paragraphs of descriptions of powers and abilities pile up. I would rather play a 500-point GURPS character than a 14th-level 5E character, just in terms of character sheet complexity.

In GURPS, I will have a few skills at 20-minus or above, and those do not introduce character sheet complexity, but unlock depth in the combat actions you can take at a high level of difficulty.

My 5E character has abilities that have fixed uses per long rest, proficiency bonus uses per long (or short) rest, sometimes are modifiers, are piled full of subclass features, and others are flat bonuses.

My 14th-level 5E character is a 16-page PDF. That could easily reach 24 or 32 pages by the 20th level, and that is not counting spell descriptions. I need all those pages to play, and I am flipping through them all during a turn. In reality, it is a horrible play experience. If I don't "scan my abilities," I will miss one. It is easier to "learn as you level" and repeat them as you gain them, learning how the design works and slowly training yourself on your build.

Now, let me run a 4-person party in 5E and multiply that 16-page character sheet by four. All of a sudden, the amount of character sheets I am managing is getting to the size of the player's guide, and it would only take a dozen characters to reach a book-sized pile of character sheets. This has not changed since D&D 3E, and every game based on the Wizards' design theory runs you dozens of pages for one character sheet at higher levels. Even Pathfinder shares this legacy.

Go digital or go home, and if you are playing in a character party? Four PDFs open, each with a dozen or more pages. I dare say playing GURPS feels like a rules-light game at this point, just in comparison to the pages of character sheets you are dealing with in 5E.

GURPS? Filling four pages of character sheets for a single character is very rare, and that is pushing it; most of the important information is on the first sheet, with maybe some skills running onto the second page. If I have powers, most likely they use an energy reserve (from myself or an item) or fatigue to power abilities.

For a 250-point character, I am averaging a two-sided sheet, and most of the time, a page and a half. Some 250-point characters I can fit on one side of a sheet of paper.

Even if I have superpowers in GURPS (as fantasy powers), those will be a lot more straightforward and easy to understand than your average 5E subclass ability, where 5E has no standard of design and can do almost anything, or modify any part of the rules.

Also, in GURPS, I am making myself more complicated by buying piles of small power-point powers, or I can invest in a few expensive powers or high-level skills. In 5E, I have no choice but to take what they give me. I can control complexity far more easily in GURPS by not going overboard and keeping my character straightforward and streamlined.

GURPS is the more concise and straightforward game, especially for higher-powered characters.

Solo Play, Depth, Dungeons, and Design

I love the depth GURPS gives me in terms of characters. But I can’t run that many of them at one time. It leads me to more solo games since I can manage the data for one or two characters pretty well, but three or more becomes a lot of work.

Some genres suffer because of this. I like fantasy, but running a “large party” game in GURPS feels so slow and data-intensive that my games never last long or even get off the ground. I will solo play one character in a GURPS fantasy game before I run a large party all by myself.

To be fair, 5E, Pathfinder, Palladium, Rolemaster, and many other games have this problem, too. I will never run a party in these games since the data load, storage, and character sheet requirements are far too high. Even character creation time is a huge issue. And some of these games do not solo all that well, since party roles are required for playing adventures.

If I don’t have tank, healer, rogue, wizard in my party, forget playing the adventure. So the game needs four characters at a minimum, and that eliminates many games for me playing them solo, since running four heavier characters is something I don’t have time for. Mega dungeons often require 12 or more characters.

I love the depth of GURPS, and I can get more out of a single, in-depth character solo than I can four simplistic characters in a BX-style game. This is another trap you can fall into with too-simple games, why play four simple characters solo if they are all boring? When it comes down to it, one detailed character solo is more fun for me than an army of cookie-cutter drones.

That said, most fantasy adventures are not solo, and playing combat-focused adventures as a social or skill-focused character is not all that great. The character design will determine what the solo adventure comprises. Solo adventures in GURPS tend to “play to the audience” with that being the character’s skills and abilities.

A social bard? Lots of city adventures, guild drama, playing at bars, opera house intrigue, learning songs, finding compositions, and other music-based adventures.

Solo play like this can be fun and very in-depth if you adjust your expectations. Especially if you blend with light combat and pulp-action.

Finding a kitchen sink fantasy adventure like this? I would rather buy a setting book and use that as a backdrop, since the default fantasy assumption is that “four against the world” gameplay of the traditional fantasy party with the four primary classes.

When I do solo fantasy play, one in-depth character is all I need.

But I have that “being left out” feeling if I pull in traditional fantasy adventures. Those are more for balanced parties and not me and how I like to play.

You could make the same comparison with a fighter who specializes in fortress defenses and siege weapons. There is a lot of gameplay on the front lines of the borderlands in remote forts under siege by humanoid armies, and that character bringing their knowledge to bear in constructing defenses and directing defensive weapons against the hordes trying to breach the walls.

I would not really name a classic fantasy adventure for that character that cover those narrow areas, but, again, as a tailored and specific story, this is great in GURPS. That character in a mega dungeon? Probably useless.

This is the core of my issue with today’s fantasy games. And “square peg in the round hole” 5E barista and magic school adventures only highlight the problem. These games elevate the dungeon experience as the pinnacle of fantasy gaming storytelling. The skills in 5E are all dungeon-focused. All the game does is dungeons. The same can be said for many OSR games.

And shoehorning in “cheap combat” into a barista adventure only makes the problem worse. The barista part is so boring and uninteresting that we need combat in there to spice things up.

While the dungeon is also a metaphor for the heroic journey, and that fish-out-of-water moment of the hero, many games focus on that to the point where other styles of play get excluded.

It feels like a strange argument to make, both for barista adventures in system that make that style of play interesting (like GURPS), and against games that focus so narrowly on the dungeon that barista play is excluded.

I suppose people try to make 5E and games like it do too much. It takes 5E two or three shelves of books to make it do the same thing GURPS does in two core books.

Also, fantasy feels like it is stuck in a dungeon rut for me. The stories I like to tell don’t need a wall to each side and one way forward. They are more like fiction and character focused. There is a reason that fiction based on traditional D&D dungeon adventures tends to be tedious. Few want to read a book about clearing an 80-room mega dungeon. That is a lot more fun to play on than read, unless it is watching a live play and watching people act and play roles.

It is a feeling of where I am in gaming is in a different place than what many games offer, and that some genres for me feel stuck in a rut. My games tend to be more like fiction, storytelling around a single character in an interesting world.

GURPS does that well.

Gen Z Arriving at College Unable to Read

https://futurism.com/future-society/gen-z-literacy-reading

Wow, check out the above article.

Kids get to college, and they can't read?

We hit on this topic before on this blog, and it sort of has to do with GURPS and how the game will be 10 to 20 years from now, and whether roleplaying games in their current form are even a sustainable hobby. Is GURPS doomed to grow old and die alongside its players? One could also argue that D&D, in its current form, is an unsustainable game, so the problem is hobby-wide, and we will probably see this more and more as the years go on.

Or rather, it is what we won't see that will haunt us. A lack of new players since the reading comprehension level required to play and understand GURPS is lost in an era three decades ago.

I am imagining a rebooted Back to the Future, told today, and them going back to the 1980s, with Doc Brown telling Marty, "Back in the 1980s, when kids knew how to read!"

I have a sister in primary education, and it really is this bad. And no, throwing away more money to people who do nothing and sit in offices all day is not the answer. This is part of the problem, to be honest. Huge parts of society have turned into 1984-like do-nothing bureaucracies, with people sitting in offices or on videoconferences all day, being paid to do nothing important.

The plans are made, politicians sell them as a panacea, the checks get signed, and years later, we find out nothing was even done, and the money is gone. Big words, no action, zero follow-up, and wasted money. People in these failed bureaucracies will probably find it easier to pay protestors to make it seem like people are angry that the failed system is finally being held accountable. Those who don't have the energy or attention to fix what is obviously broken will get defensive. Some will want to pour more money into the failed system.

It is a lose-lose-lose game.

It is like buying things on Amazon; you feel good when you hit the buy button, and it is all downhill from there. Same with fixing education: announcing the plan and celebrating its passage is as good as it gets. Then, the bills come.

Sorry, I am a Gen-X roleplayer; when I roll the dice, I expect a result, and accept the outcomes of my actions. Same with the money I pay in taxes for education, I expect results and accountability. We were so poor that we had to cut up cardboard boxes by hand to make Car Wars counters. I don't like wasting money, or when others waste mine.

Now, part of this education article I linked feels like a clickbait headline, but they did their homework and linked their sources and citations. It is not every student; we are seeing an increasing number of them. And the article mentions reading, but I feel this extends into critical thinking, math, history, and many other areas that lie under the surface.

A strange thought I had is, "Do people only know how to play D&D since they watched Critical Role?" In a society where "all learning is based on YouTube videos," this would explain D&D's continuing popularity. People can't learn other games since there is no "video training" for them.

It sounds inane, like I am stupid for putting this out there. But I read these articles, and what else can I assume? Gen Z can't read the article, but I can. If someone makes a YouTube video about it, I guess this exists. If a game has live play, it has a shot of catching on.

Pretty books won't do the job anymore. Only collectors will buy them.

And I see games moving toward a rules-light, easier-to-learn mode. The new Conan RPG is very easy to pick up, teach, and play. This is where designs will head in the future. Single-book, streamlined, easy-to-play, and experience-focused games that compete with cell phones and streaming video.

It boggles my mind to think of what a rules-light GURPS would look like. More like Savage Worlds, but keeping the 3d6 roll-under system? Fewer rules in every chapter? Extreme streamlining and more abstract character options? Part of me feels like it could work, while still keeping what makes the system feel like GURPS intact. The Fantasy Trip is partway there.

But we still need to worry about comprehension and the next generation of players.

At some point, to preserve our society, we should put all K-12 education on YouTube and make it free. Let AI grade the papers. Education is a human right, but remove the profit motive from it entirely. Those who want to succeed at life and enrich themselves will find it. As it stands now, with education behind a government-protected paywall monopoly, the system is failing us, and articles like this are proof. Like Linux, education should be open-sourced and free for all. This is our right as humanity.

Part of how we can help GURPS is to start channels, teach people how to play, do live plays, and even stream solo content for people to enjoy. We can't fight a failed educational system or the entrenched bureaucracies around it, promising to fix it, but we can go to where the future players are and help show them the light.

Play GURPS. Share GURPS. Stream GURPS. Teach GURPS.

Yes, this is the moment where I realize writing a blog is a waste of time for helping new players find the game.

They won't be able to read this.

GURPS, Narrative, and New Players

I could not teach my sister how to play GURPS. We ended up playing Cypher System together because it was much easier for me to communicate with her, show her how to play, and explain the character creation and combat systems. With GURPS, it was always another explanation of "why" and me trying to "sell" her on "why this is better."

She is the sort of player who just wants to roll a d20 to see whether she can do something. She understood Cyber's pool systems and the concept of reducing difficulties to avoid rolls. She loved the concepts of GM and player intrusions, and that whole "storyteller meta" framework the system is built around with XP as narrative currency.

Cypher, in some ways, is very close to being a "narrative card game," and I bet the entire system could be card-based and played from them.

Granted, the difference between GURPS' 3d6 and Cypher's d20 is that the latter is adding dice together, and a roll-under versus a roll-over. The largest difference between the games is rating challenges, and Cypher being more of a meta-currency pool system for abilities. GURPS is the far better simulator, where Cypher is so heavily abstracted that it is closer to a FATE.

Where Cypher shone for her is the "I do anything" nature of the system. She could pull a Player Intrusion for any whacky idea, or pull out a one-use Cypher to do something incredibly stupid and hilarious. GM Intrusions were "uh-ohs," and she debated whether to accept them. She loves to laugh and joke around, and Cypher, being an extremely improvisational system, worked very well for her.

I played Call of Cthulhu with her once, and that system is closer in GURPS to being a "sim," and she wasn't as engaged. I had to prod her into different tasks, and she felt she didn't have as much agency in a simulation-style system. For the most part, she was "waiting" to be told what she could do, rather than taking action. Part of this was learning a new system, but the speed of a more narrative-focused system gave her instant engagement with Cypher.

Granted, in GURPS, my skill with the system gives me as much "narrative engagement" as I have in Cypher. I know I can "do anything" and "attempt any action" to shift the narrative. I don't need the narrative pool systems in Cypher for GURPS, and I can create challenges where the pass-or-fail nature shifts the narrative accordingly.

Fail at convincing the town guards you aren't a threat, and they will let you in the gate.

In Cypher, I would set a difficulty, determine the pass/fail paths, and let the players bid it down and roll, if needed. Rolling for anything is a potential "failure state," so avoiding rolls is a part of the game.

In GURPS, I would do most of the same, though there is no pool or bidding down involved, unless good roleplay warrants a bonus on the roll. Rolling for things in GURPS isn't really a failure state unless you treat the potential for critical failures as a complication.

There is also an argument to be made, "In GURPS, don't roll, but roleplay."

In Cypher, this event is more of a milestone, which can create complications or shift the narrative, so "being let in the gate" becomes a more important event in the scheme of a narrative game. Be aware of simulation games that push the action "closer to the metal" in combat and skill checks, while narrative games float on the surface and place greater emphasis on cause and effect through narrative elements.

So, with experience, the "critical path" of narrative decision and outcome is very similar across the games, with Cypher inserting pool mechanics between the player and their actions, creating a translation layer that is both good and bad.

Some players hate narrative pools since they force your mind outside of the game, causing you to "step out of character" a moment to "deal with the rules," and then you need to "jump back into the character's headspace." For new players, they are not as into "character headspace immersion" as we hardcore players are, so that translation layer with the pools helps ease them into the concepts of narrative control and manipulation.

With GURPS, I can stay mostly 100% in "character headspace" and do not need to "jump out" to deal with pools and the rules. I can stay in-character, make my skill rolls, and use my referee-mind or an oracle to control the narrative. Each GURPS character is a miniature game design, and capable of the things that we design them to do. Do I want a social character with a few combat abilities? I can easily have that in GURPS.

I can stay immersed and make decisions based on character headspace. I can navigate the narrative and try to direct it in my favor with successful skill rolls, actions, and roleplay.

This is also why some players, when they report how it feels to play a game like GURPS Traveller, say they feel they are "putting on a VR headset" and "actually being in Traveller" for the first time, versus the more abstracted 2d6 system. That deep sense of immersion is where GURPS wins many over.

Where Cypher shines is the gamification of narration. A new player knows, "if I trip a Player Intrusion, I get to say what happens." Also, "If a GM Intrusion happens, things may not go my way, but I will gain a resource for later." New players are trying to find their way, and the game around narrative control gives them a good handrail for navigating games where characters plus randomness in a situation creates story.

Where my sister, as a new player, did not care as much about "deep immersion" as about "what can she do" and "what is happening next?"

In GURPS, we are closer to the sim level, and where this shines is in the blend of light-skill-roll gameplay and one of the best and most detailed combat systems in gaming. As an experienced player, I don't need the narrative systems in Cypher, but I still find them enjoyable, even in solo play. Where GURPS shines is in giving me "perfectly defined characters," whereas Cypher uses archetypes to abstract and generalize characters. Again, archetypes are easier for new players to grasp, and GURPS and its point buy are better for a more skilled player.

I love new player experiences in games, especially when contrasted with experiences in the games I like. Our next game together will be GURPS, and I will report back on how she felt about the game. Now that she knows a little more about our hobby, will she latch onto the sim and immersion elements of GURPS, or will she be happier with Cypher's gamified narrative?

I guess we shall see.