This Is Your Life

Imagine a 10-year-old you, and a time traveler walks up and tells you exactly how your life will go. The schools you will attend, the loves you'll lose and find, your spouse, all your travel, your career, your accomplishments and failures, your children, your grandchildren, and when you leave the world.

You would probably spend your life either waiting for it to happen or fighting predetermination with every step you take. You would be bored or unhappy, maybe both, and then begrudgingly accept your fate. But life's surprise would be gone.

Why am I playing games that do the same thing? A level track from one to twenty, with the character's ending state decided before the first session starts. In a classless system, the sheet records what you have done instead of predicting what you will do. No set progression path lies ahead.

The future is open.

D&D and most other level-based games put you on the rails and push you toward a predetermined end. The remaining variables get smaller as you climb: the chance of death drops, the rewards become more predictable, and the main questions left are whether the character dies or retires. Multiclassing is the common workaround people invent because the system otherwise doesn't let the character change. It is a patch, not a feature of the design.

Sometimes I look at a level one to twenty track in D&D 5E, and I never begin the game. Part of me says the surprise is ruined, nothing can change this path, and while my story and adventures may differ, this progression is set in stone before I ever begin.

I play a lot of solo games; surprise and the unknown keep me going.

Play any classless, skill-based game and the difference is immediate. GURPS is my favorite, but the same principle runs through BRP, Hero System, Dragonbane, and others. No track waits for you. A bard can train as a knight and, after enough points spent on the things that matter, become a full knight who still knows a few songs. A rogue can learn wizardry. A cleric can pick up acrobatics. A ranger can take up druidic powers. An illusionist can learn bardic magic. None of that requires a special class, a prestige path, or a crowdfunded supplement that adds a new subsystem.

You may start as one thing, but you could end up as anything.

The same freedom applies to larger changes. A character can become corrupted and turn half-demon, or undergo a transformation and gain angelic wings and powers. Both come with advantages and drawbacks. Vampirism and lycanthropy work the same way. You design what you want and keep going. You do not take levels in the new state.

Many third-party 5E books introduce transformation states or pseudo-leveled systems for corruption or form changes. With GURPS, I don't need them. My lycanthropy can have a transformation curse, an uncontrollable rage, and it can have superpowers I can put points in, if I want. I can buy off the rage and have it as a "heroic" second form, with the same weaknesses to silver and other werewolf banes. A lot of these third-party 5E options don't give you that freedom. GURPS does.

My characters can change. And I can control what that is.

Realistically, only GURPS, Hero System, and possibly BRP could pull that off. GURPS is the cleanest and focuses on the character, which is why it is my best game for these stories.

A warrior can settle down and run a kingdom. Suddenly nobility, law, and administration matter more than another attack. In one campaign, a fighter spent two sessions settling a border dispute that had been simmering for months. He walked away with points in Diplomacy and Law instead of a free combat ability. That is what the game had become for him, so that is what the sheet reflected. He was not getting better at fighting while he ran the day-to-day work of a dominion. He was getting better at the things he was actually using.

What happens in the game is written on the character sheet and shapes it. The sheet doesn't dictate what the character should do next. The player and the table decide that.

Your future is not set. You make it. No level track awaits you, and no milestone reward waits. You do not know what is coming.