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.