100,000 Lifetime Page Views

Thank you to the GURPS community and fans for helping us hit this milestone. We rolled over 100,000 lifetime page views on this blog last night, and we are on our way to a million. My main SBRPG blog has 1.5 million lifetime views (we hit 1 million this summer, and we have accelerated since), and according to Google's AI, only the top 5 or 6 tabletop hobby blogs ever reach 1 million+ lifetime hits. It helps that we have been around for 15+ years on SBRPG and have kept things consistent.

GURPS is my second top-performing blog, and it still moves the needle in views and attention. That is good news for GURPS in a hobby dominated by 5E and D&D; we do good traffic here, and GURPS feels mainstream. Daily blog posts and GURPS discussion show the world that people play here and share ideas and adventures.

And I know blogs are nothing compared to YouTube's reach and power, but blogs are still a core part of the hobby, especially for the old-school crowd and those who like to read. I like to write, keep writing, and practice and share every day, so blogs are part of my hobby. I can't watch YouTube videos at work, but I can read a blog. Not all engagement is video content.

One million lifetime views for a GURPS blog will be a huge achievement, a major feather in the GURPS community's hat, and we get closer every day.

Vehicle Combat and the Lure of Simulation

As kids, we played day-long sessions of Car Wars at card tables, sixty cars, four maps taped together, and nobody sneezed or the hurricane destroyed the map. The hobby has a strong desire to simulate something as complex as multi-car vehicle combat, or even starship combat.

We want to be Luke Skywalker, flying into the Death Star trench and fighting off TIE fighters heroically in our X-Wing. That myth is as strong in our souls as the World War II fighter ace was for another generation. In the modern era, most of it is still a myth and has been eclipsed by drone warfare and cruise missiles fighting the wars, but the imagery and desire to be the pilot going in guns blazing still proves the myth is stronger than reality.

But, given a roleplaying context, what is "ship combat?" In a narrative sense, it is a skill roll, like a character in a movie: roll extremely high, and you do something amazing. Want to make your submarine quieter than the one hunting you? It is a captaining roll, followed by a helm roll, and maybe an engineering roll to silence the boat's engines and pumps. That "making the sub silent" has nothing to do with a wargame subsystem, but narratively it is three skill rolls, modified by how quietly the sub naturally runs.

I didn't need submarine statistics or a fully designed GURPS Vehicles design to figure that out.

World War II destroyer versus frigate? Well, the destroyer will outgun the smaller ship, but lucky shots happen, so I am going to put the outcome of this fight on 1d6: on a 1-4 the destroyer wins, and on a 5-6 the frigate wins. Roll a reaction roll at the end of the battle to see how catastrophic the damage is to the loser, and another to see if the victor got away unscathed.

Character skill rolls do play into this. If the characters are crewmembers on the frigate, they will need to get creative and roll very high to shift the battle's outcome. If someone makes an amazing gunnery roll and beats the roll by 8 or more? That may win the fight with a lucky shot to the other ship's magazine. A successful helm roll may reduce the damage the frigate takes. Engineering may lessen the impact of damage once taken.

None of this needed hardcore ship statistics. Just knowledge of statistics and a rough approximation of odds in a ship-versus-ship battle. Then it layers a narrative fiction layer on top of that and says character skill rolls matter and affect the outcome in realistic ways.

Doing a torpedo run on a battleship? That is a floating island fortress filled with AA; nine out of ten times, you get shot down. High skill rolls are the only thing that changes the narrative outcome, and they fit the mythic fantasy of the fighter pilot we have in our heads.

Again, I don't need battleship stats or even the torpedo bomber. Just a rough idea of the likely outcome, and the realization that high skill rolls should change the narrative path. Reaction rolls can serve as a "reality check" on the outcome: what is expected versus what actually happened.

Similarly, in Cepheus, two similar-sized ships: one a pirate ship versus a free trader? That pirate ship is designed to pick off merchant ships all day, versus a free trader with 60% of its space filled with cargo. That pirate ship will win that fight 5 out of 6 times, especially if it doesn't have to haul off cargo; it can just call in a pirate hauler to clean up. Versus larger cargo ships, the odds drop, since the smaller pirate vessel can't do enough damage to disable the merchant freighter, only damage it and peel off before help arrives.

This doesn't need starship designs or a ship combat system, just logic and fairness.

The dice take it from there.

Back and Away

I keep coming back to GURPS for what I love, and then I step away when the ask gets too big. For games like fantasy, GURPS hits a perfect spot of simulation and low-magic fantasy that I love. Blades and training matter, while low-magic parlor tricks can be used to great effect. We don't have to cast fireball in every fight. The relationships feel real, and the disadvantages carry weight. Who the character is and how they feel matter.

As it leans toward science fiction, I feel the heavy weight of simulation drags the game down. Even a world like Car Wars is better off with the board game running the vehicle combat, and GURPS running everything else. For Cepheus, it is the same for me: give me a simple ship combat system based on Traveller, and I don't need all this detail and detailed designs. GURPS can run my free traders, but for the ships, give me something I can handle quickly, without a spreadsheet and calculator.

The skills also weigh my science fiction games down. There are too many. Yes, someone has to handle hazardous materials safely, but in Traveller, engineers, scientists, and doctors deal with them all the time, and those skills cover it. I could easily rule that at the table, but then I'd need to create custom skill lists for players, and they can't easily use off-the-shelf software tools without further instructions.

While I love the depth GURPS gives me in science fiction and the VR-level immersion, I sometimes feel like picking skills becomes a slog. For the average player, it feels like too high a barrier to entry without picking a pre-gen or template.

I can run an entire starship crew in a 2d6 Traveller game. In GURPS, I am lucky to design three full player characters before I start to feel fatigue. This is a solo game, and I am playing alone; with others, it would be a different story.

GURPS sci-fi almost feels like the personal-scale version of science fiction, better when it simulates the small and personal, but when you get into space battleships and starfleets, it feels like too much. One planet, surviving, relying on my skills, repairing my gear, and that personal struggle of survival, almost like the classic Volturnus series of adventures? Yes, that is where GURPS shines for me.

Another thing to consider: that list of a dozen Traveller characters with UPP and skill lists isn't as interesting as a single GURPS character. That one spacer with personal struggles, hang-ups, and special advantages is much more fun to play crash-landed on a lost world. The bulk crew list, with its numbers and skill levels, isn't as compelling.

In a classic trading game, a 2d6 Cepheus or Traveller game gives me everything from a subsector generator to cargo charts and encounter tools. That is a campaign in a book, and I can feasibly run a free trader game myself. This is where I don't want the details, and I just want to simulate the system.

There is a guilt there in the middle, and I need to answer it with the question, "What is the most compelling game?" For the personal struggle, one spacer crash-landed, relying on the skills I actually bought; GURPS is still the better game. The free trader can stay in one book. The guilt is just me wanting both at once.

GURPS: Forgotten Realms, Part 1

We're playing in a GRUPS: Forgotten Realms campaign. Where do we start? For me, I started with the gray-boxed set back in AD&D, so that is where I will start. A few ground rules are needed.

The only campaign material we will use is AD&D, first edition, Forgotten Realms books, campaign settings, and adventures. By the time AD&D 2nd Edition came out, the floodgates opened, and power gaming started. In the 2nd Edition campaign setting material, we get Planescape, Spelljammer, and a bunch of linked mini-campaign settings mixed in here. 

Another reason to put a gate on the 2E adventures and material is that this is when the huge novelization push began, and the 2E books begin to creep towards a high-magic setting and power level. I do not want the modern-day Forgotten Realms, especially the world of Baldur's Gate 3, and I don't want the world to feel like the pen-and-paper version of a video game. Larian did an amazing job, but that is not the world I started with back in the 1980s, nor is it how I see D&D.

It does pain me to see where this world went today. It is everyday modern fantasy, with magic that isn't special, power is handed out for nearly free, and nobody fears death. Combat isn't even a serious choice; it is the default one. Something feels deeply wrong with that.

This isn't to say some of the 2nd Edition material fits or would be perfect, and there was more good than bad, but if we want a solid foundation, we will stick to AD&D 1E and stop there, with 2E material only on a per-book basis.

We want to begin in a low-magic, grounded, family-and-kin-matter, feudal world where people die for their kingdom and lords. Monsters are the spawn of chaos and demons; the gods are distant and disconnected from the world. No more gods and their entitled children walking around here! That ruined our world when we took it to 2E, and the GMNPCs from the books flooded our game and killed all interest in this setting.

Monsters are at the gates of civilization, and the armies of the Realms are battling to clear lands, establish forts, and spread civilization as other lands fall to the hordes. A major, established city that "has never ever been touched in lore" could (and should) fall during a campaign. Sorry, Arabel or Waterdeep, you are paid for and could be burned to the ground. The refugees will start flooding the roads, and the entire map will be turned upside down.

I do not care about IP or "this goes against lore" - back in 1987, the lore we all point at and hold as sacred on the golden altar of Wizards IP was never written down, and the setting was very much up to us to write the history for.

So, why GURPS? Couldn't you do this in AD&D 1E or an AD&D 1E clone, such as Adventures Dark & Deep? Couldn't you do this in 5E? I can't do this in 5E without the bad habits forming and the world instantly turning into high magic at level three. With AD&D or Dark & Deep, I have more time, and while the game has deadly, realistic grit, it would also feel very authentic.

But still, at higher levels, we start down the high-magic road. We also go into a place where a fighter can have 50 hit points and shrug off arrows and repeated stabs from longswords. I get it: the heroic fantasy genre needs these conventions, and they make it easier for players to engage with the world. Still, even 1E, with all its deadly, save-or-die, low-hit-point, limited magic, starts to pull away from the grounded reality I want. By level 5, the game is fighting me again; magic isn't mysterious and special, and we are moving back into high fantasy. By level 10, with several magic items on each character, there is little thematic difference between that and a 5E starting character.

I want a world where one arrow from a 25-point goblin can kill a 500-point combat master. Maybe the arrow has poison on it, or it will infect a wound; they are nasty creatures. This is why they are wiped out to the last one, and that is the world that these types of settings are based on. Back in "real history," things were brutal and savage, and there was no room to leave monsters alive for the good feelings and positive vibes. They would be back next year to burn the village and take slaves. And do worse.

Should that be in games? It is my choice, so it is. If we divorce our fantasy games from the reality they are based on, I feel we lose something, and the Disneyfication of the entire genre begins. D&D these days is so far down that road that the game is unrecognizable.

I also want suspicion. People in my version of the world will be suspicious of magic. Shocking, I know, coming from today's fantasy games. Elminster will be accused of selling his soul to demons to gain power, and other mages will do the same, taking the fast road to arcane knowledge. Of course, he should stand as an example of how to study magic the correct way, but even he isn't such a cut-and-dried character. Mages have to make sacrifices and deals to reach that next level of power.

GURPS lets me do that. An OSR game does not.

GURPS also lets me define divine power and create real tension between different gods and the populations that worship them. The followers of gods on modern-day Earth don't always get along, so why should Fearun be any different? With distant gods, we are keeping the divine mysterious, miracles rare, and faith powerful. The less power divine magic holds, the stronger it will be in the campaign. Faith and religions matter. Elves that worship the moon goddess will be seen as strange, dwellers of glades where no sun shines, and emerging at night to pray to their goddess. Other elves may shy away from them or think they are strange. Some may feel they are a bit too close to the Drow for comfort.

Real tension exists here! This makes a moon elf faction a serious and interesting group in the world. Where they hold land is a meaningful, powerful, and important faction. This isn't "just a background choice in the player's handbook," but a choice with real weight and meaning behind it. Those moon elves are different and a bit strange. A goddess gives them real power. They are taken seriously. They don't like dealing with outsiders, and they don't tolerate sun gods or their followers in their lands.

How all these new fantasy games turn meaningful cultural backgrounds into supermarket cheese choices makes me tired of them all. Do I buy cheddar or Swiss? American or provolone? It doesn't matter; it is all cheese. Give me my strong cultural backgrounds tied to the map, a god, and a culture. Putting XY and Z together and saying, "here is my fantasy shape," devalues the entire world and every choice you make in it.

Oh, and we are tracking loads and encumbrance here. You would do that in real life, too. Set your combat load, what you are dropping in the backpack, and what is on the horse. You would do that in real life too, if someone asked you to walk 4 miles out of town to investigate a hole in the ground. Modern gaming makes you lazy and puts your mind in dependency mode, where the game tracks encumbrance for you.

But to be fair, if you put in the effort, I will give your gear superpowers and not make you roll to pitch a tent or use a rope in a normal situation. Your gear will exist to "instantly solve problems," and you will not have to make that roll. If you have a tent and camping supplies, guess what? You can make a camp. I won't be a pain about it, and I'll give you that rest (as long as encounters are rolled for). Bandages? Food? Water? Mirrors? Poles? Chalk? Oil? Spare bowstrings? Spikes and a hammer? That gear list has a huge list of "gimmies" if you spend the time tracking and storing them on your character.

Tracked gear is free superpowers. Treat it as a part of your character build.

I need to break from the OSR and 5E thought chains. I need a system that forces players to rethink magic, combat, skills, and power. I need my world to focus on family, faction, religion, king, and kin. Even the OSR comes with a set of baked-in assumptions about power and combat. A level 8 fighter can shrug off a good number of shortbow and dagger attacks. In GURPS, that is never the case. You will get a resurrection spell at this level. In GURPS, I can make that spell as rare as finding the Holy Grail.

GURPS makes escaping the matrix of "modern fantasy groupthink" effortless. Everything changes, and you can't take anything for granted. Playing GURPS in the Forgotten Realms feels like "putting VR goggles on" and actually living in the world.

Returning to GURPS Cepheus

Why not Traveller? I don't want the Imperium or all that framework. I get more enjoyment out of these at-cost, bare-bones framework games than I do from huge encyclopedic volumes that span shelves, with book after book of stuff I won't use. 

This Cepheus Engine SF-RPG, Basic Fantasy, and White Box FMAG are my current "go-to" GURPS references. Why? I simply need the basics, and nothing else. No fluff, little art, and few settings or examples of play. They are inexpensive and very fast to flip through and reference, almost like a rules appendix that I can dive into to pull a few systems and items from, and then duck out without spending a lot of time in the book.

SRD-based gaming feels so good to me. It is not because I don't like supporting creators; I will pick up the book and support it, but I appreciate complete, excellent SRDs, and they are very fast to use. I love the survivalist, holistic, DIY aspect of SRD gaming. Just give me the basics, and I will make the rest myself.

I don't want a coffee-table art book; I want a game manual. The fancier these books get, the harder they are to use at the table. But I get it: companies want to push us online and onto VTTs, so printed book quality suffers as the market shifts to collector sets. The VTT website will be the "real copy" of the game, the one most people see and use, while the physical book is just something to sit on a shelf.

Shifting back, why this? Also, why GURPS with this?

For one, I could play with a 2d6 system just fine, Cypher, or any other. What would happen is that after a few sessions, because I didn't invest much in the character, I would lose interest, and the game would fade away. For others, a convention, quick play, hotel distraction games, or one-shots? Cepheus is fine and works.

I love the simplified ship designs here, and the 2d6 starship combat. It works and stays out of the way, giving me enough crunch and detail to feel satisfied, but staying relatively generic and aggregated so I am not wrestling with vehicle designs in GURPS or huge range modifiers in space combat. GURPS benefits if you can park a wargame on top of it for the big stuff, be it Battletech, Car Wars, Cepheus, Knight Hawks, or any other macro-system tactical game.

If I can play "real Battletech" and then convert the pilot and gunnery skill levels from my GURPS characters, I am happy. Just because a game "isn't GURPS" doesn't mean we need to convert it, or it can't be fun on its own. Same thing with Car Wars or any other tactical miniatures game. If they work, we can play them and have fun, and we can play these wargames with others without any interest in GURPS; it is a win-win.

For characters? GURPS gets me invested. This is the same sort of thing that happens with some people and 5E. While they bounce off BX characters, 5E gives them enough choice and depth to keep them coming back for the next session. For me, 5E is a game I always try to like, but every time it fails, I end up storing the books again. Depth that leads to immortality and choice paralysis is a horrible game for me. I'll solo-play characters with a dozen printed character sheets each, and I will give up. With level 8 characters, that can easily go up to 16-20 printed sheets (with spells), and suddenly my collected character sheets are longer than a typical 64-page game from 1980.

With GURPS? Two sides of one sheet of paper, and you rarely get onto a third or fourth, unless you have spells or a lot of special powers. GURPS has relatively easy characters with an amazing amount of depth, which is a winning combination for me.

And Cepheus gives me a built-in sandbox where I can iterate through play. If I have no ideas and I am not using an AI, then just give me a book full of tables and let me run with it. While GURPS is the perfect game engine for a simulation, Cephus is a fine sandbox to play it in. This is also sort of the Battletech effect: I love giant mech combat, and adding the personal side of it with GURPS makes both sides that much better.