GURPS-Finder, Part II

GURPS-Finder is likely a go. After my gaming area in the water-damaged den is rebuilt, I am setting up my gaming table, breaking out my six crates of Pathfinder pawns, bysting out my hex tiles, and putting them in waterproof containers on the space's shelves, just in case it happens again.

I do not care too much about the 3.5E rules, nor do I care too much about simulating everything in Pathfinder, nor the world. I am happy with a straight GURPS Fantasy experience, more grounded and realistic, with low-magic, gritty combat, and all the great things GURPS brings to the table. I want the world to feel real and grounded, and GURPS brings it.

I am not pulling out a library of Pathfinder 1e books; I have the PDFs, and those are just reference. To be honest, Pathfinder is just the "look and feel" of the world, serving as "generic fantasy pawns" so I can play the game the way I want. Granted, I likely have more monsters than I will ever use, more shapes than I could ever create stats for, and unless I limit this down to a core set of pawns, it will overwhelm me quickly with just the ones I have out from the Beginner Box.

I could honestly play with just the ones from the Beginner Box and have more than enough pawns for an entire campaign. Where Pathfinder and 3.5E, and by extension, the OSR and D&D, tend to be "macro" with many varied shapes having similar AC, hit point, and attack stats, GURPS monsters tend to be more detailed and interesting. Dragons alone can do a lot of things in GURPS, and the stat blocks for one can easily go a page in length of powers, defenses, abilities, and other design choices.

GURPS monsters are, by and large, far more interesting than their d20 counterparts. Just one can be a threat, where, again, in d20 games, you tend to need a dozen humanoids just to fill out an encounter and to give the game's AoE powers utility and worth.

That fireball spell? Save it for room #8 with the 40 kobolds, or be prepared to slog through melee all night. Some of the D&D's original tournament modules were designed this way, as puzzles to figure out with the one-shot powers of the party. These days? Here is a short rest. Please get all your AoE spells back. Thank you for playing.

Then again, I have no problem estimating a ST and hp value, and giving a monster a "bang skill" in GURPS, such as Black Dragon 20-minus, and estimating the strength of attacks, level of defenses, and special abilities from that. Simplified monsters may be the way to go for a more pulp-action, fast-and-loose game.

Part of me doesn't want that, and I want the gritty realism where having plate mail in the party means thinking about running a logistical supply chain to support storage, hauling, asset protection, and repairs of your high-end gear. This is how it worked with knights in medieval times: plate mail was not cheap, nor was it casual, everyday wear. They needed squires and an entourage to support that "main battle tank" lifestyle.

In many OSR and D&D games, the brain gets turned off, click, and plate mail becomes something you pay for once, set an AC value, and forget about for the rest of your character's adventuring career (until it gets upgraded to a magic set, then that is next to be forgotten about). Pathfinder 1e sort of holds that model up as an ideal. Once you buy plate armor, forget it; that set becomes a permanent part of your character's skin, and it never needs to be thought about again.

With some GURPS characters, I can carry around two sets of armor, plate for the heavy fights, and a lighter set for town adventures. Now, the supply chain is needed.

It is the same with magic. In Pathfinder, bam, you get the good stuff right away. In modern fantasy gaming, it is even worse; you are getting infinite-use attack cantrips glued to your hands that permanently give you a "laser pistol" to fire off every turn, with no cost or limitations. This "MMO-ification" of the fantasy RPG is one of the worst things to happen to fantasy gaming. Magic without a cost and price is not magic; it is a "video game shooter power" that players get trained to expect, or the game "isn't any good."

The GURPS Dungeon Fantasy game forces you to buy cantrip-like spells, like affecting fires, far before you ever get to a fire-bolt-like power, and it all has a cost. Even if it is ever reduced to a zero-cost spell (through high skill), there is still a skill roll involved, and that could critically fail. There will always be a cost, be it hitting a friend, corruption, mutation, or some other strange and unexplained effect on a critical failure.

Minor, "cantrip" magic is cool in GURPS, where in D&D, it feels like a joke. There are so many fun things crafty mages can do with the lesser magic spells, and I find constant uses for them. If you can put out a torch in a room full of guards and sneak by, all the better. Mages are tricksters in GURPS, where in D&D, they tend to be boring DPS classes.

Magic in modern fantasy games gets boring since there is so much of it.

Magic is the unexplained and mysterious, just like the mystery of life and death. Take that away, and magic is not magic. You live in a silly video game-land where power is entitlement. Fantasy is not fantasy if it is a "tabletop MMO," and this is how D&D 4E utterly failed. We still see those same D&D 4E "World of Warcraft" design goals in fantasy gaming: a removal of the mystery for the certain, being able to plan and explain everything, guaranteed power for all classes, the removal of death as a mechanic, turning the game into a cozy-lifestyle experience where players are expected to "log in and buy cosmetics" every day.

Why do I want that? I get it easier by paying someone else $15 per month. D&D is just a slow-playing MMO where they expect you to pay $200 up front for books and to read a thousand pages of instruction manuals. Then again, if there are no RAM and video cards left because of AI, maybe this is how the MMOs of the future will be played. I will flip the sarcasm tag right here, but you get the point.

There is a chance I just give up on the pawns and do my own thing. I like GURPS tactical combat, and the fantasy battles are amazing fun. I could probably simplify this idea and have more fun by limiting the number of pieces I pull out. Maybe a smaller game with less will be more fun.

I will take things as they go.

GURPS Powers: Superheroic Fantasy, GCS vs. GCA

I am researching how to start a GURPS Supers game, and I bounced off both the GURPS Supers and GURPS Powers books pretty hard and nearly gave up. I want an easy way to get started. Many superhero games on the market have systems where you pick powers, and it is very simple to select a power, or a set of related powers, for your character and get playing.

With GURPS Supers, they have some nice archetype templates to get started with, but these are expensive, hundreds of points or even 1000-point characters, and I don't want that much superhero to start with. Give me a 250-point starting hero, please, with a few street-level abilities to do a few amazing things, and let me buy new powers from there.

And then I stumbled across GURPS Character Assistant's Sample Powers section, created from a three-book library of GURPS Characters, GURPS Powers, and GURPS Supers. I can pick one of the sample power frameworks, such as ice in this case, choose an origin, buy a talent to help with skill rolls, and then buy a few powers in the "ice area" to build my starting hero from.

Do I want flight, ice armor, an attack, creating ice, alternate form, slippery, or other related powers? A list comes up, and I can choose. I am in, choose my powers, and out, and the rest of my character is up to me, using the standard GURPS creation tools - a journalist, scientist, whiz-kid, soldier, or what other archetype I want my ice hero to be.

This is an area in which GCA seems to outshine GCS, and I love GC. Still, for superhero games, this makes it easy and deciphers the power books to a level where I could put this in front of a new player and have them design an ice hero without staring at endless lists in the GURPS books, not knowing what something is, and pulling their hair out.

While the templates in GCS are immaculate, perfect recreations of four-color comic heroes and excellent starting points for creating comic characters, for a beginning, street-level campaign with lower point totals, GCA's system feels easier to get started with as a "power picker" system that guides my choices and gives me a great list of related powers in a focused area.

This "sample power creation" system is also hugely useful for a GURPS Fantasy game that does not rely on magic spell lists of arcane and divine spells, but more on a superheroic power framework where "my cleric has life power," and you buy subpowers like a superpower system. If you look, this one has healing, undead-damaging powers, regeneration, and a bunch of other related powers.

Combine this with a light power (divine source), and you can have a holy laser and blinding powers. Huh, all of a sudden, 5E's power lists that looked cool to start, look weak and limited compared to a full power system that lets you build a fantasy hero like a true superhero and combine powers in interesting ways, while all sharing the same source of power. I could play this "holy laser cleric" in GURPS and have a ton of fun with them, and not even need to worry about Dungeon Fantasy, the traditional OSR style "spell lists of divine and arcane origins," and just play my superpowered fantasy hero who heals the injured and shoots holy lasers from their fingertips. Powers use fatigue and energy reserves, so it is all balanced and fun.

I could do another cleric who combines life and cold for a Norse Cleric of Freya, or another who combines life and telepathy for a Greek Cleric of Aphrodite.

Wait, you mean I don't need to buy multiple 5E Kickstarters at $70 each to get these subclass options? Uh, yeah, GURPS has been doing this for decades, wake up. None of this is "new game designer invented technology," and 5E is actually exploitative in how they sell character build options we have had in GURPS for longer than most 5E players have been alive.

Yes, you can play GURPS Fantasy campaigns without "spells as magic skills," as GURPS Dungeon Fantasy would have you believe. And G: DF is an amazing game! You can play straight with the powers book, and just say "these powers have a divine/arcane/natural/etc." source. GURPS does it both ways, and probably a hundred other ways nobody has thought of yet.

If all your fantasy heroes are "uniquely designed superheroes" in your campaign world, then that is how it is. They get CP for adventures and buy new powers in their spheres, enhance the ones they got, or add a new realm of power to their repertoire. GURPS will never tell you that you are playing the game wrong for handling something the way you choose to.

Magic as skills or magic as powers, it is your choice.

GCA and this "sample power picker" are extremely powerful and worth the price of admission. It enables these sorts of superheroic fantasy and street-level superhero games easily. While I love my GCS program, GCA still has a place, and it has a few of these "killer features" that make the app a worthy character-creation tool in my GURPS toolbox.

Dungeon Fantasy Magic vs. 5E Magic

On my SBRPG blog, I went at length to prove that the magic in the B/X and AD&D versions of D&D was far more potent than either D&D 4E or 5E. Relative character power (as you level) is also far better preserved in the original editions of the game.

The problem with "Wizards D&D" is that they scale hit points on a curve as you level, and they have to artificially boost character damage as well, but it never keeps up. This has been true since D&D 3.0. Where in AD&D a single fireball spell can wipe out a room full of ogres, in D&D 5E, it barely touches them. In AD&D or B/X, the fireball is mighty. Is it anything 3 HD or less? That is vaporized with a 6d6 fireball spell when you get it at 6th level, and it scales up as you level.

In general, you are doing half the damage in D&D 5E than you are in AD&D or B/X, and it gets worse as you level up. You need to optimize everything to "keep up," or you will fall behind, and if you focus on roleplaying feats and other non-combat abilities, you will be useless in high-end play. Have fun, and you will be punished for it.

So, the question is, where do Dungeon Fantasy wizards fall in comparison to a B/X magic user or a 5E wizard? As a player who wants to play a spellcaster, what game gives me the most power? Which game preserves my power versus higher-level foes? Which game gives me the most flexibility when casting spells, the types of spells I can cast, and how many times I can cast them? What game gives me the best wizard I can play?

First, we need our baselines for comparison, so let's use the classic 3rd-level spell, fireball, as it is iconic. For B/X, let us use the excellent Old School Essentials.

• Fireball (B/X)
• 3rd Level Spell
• 240' range, 20' sphere
• Gained at level 5
• 1d6 damage per level, save for half, no damage cap
• 5d6 damage total
• 18 points of damage average

For 5E, let's use the SRD:

• Fireball (5E)
• 3rd Level Spell
• 150' range, 20' sphere
• Gained at level 5
• 8d6 damage total, save for half
• 28 points of damage average

For GURPS, let's use Explosive Fireball (DFS29) as our spell.

• Explosive Fireball
• Many spell prerequisites, Magery 1 minimum
• 1/2D 25, Max 50
• Two rolls to cast:
• Spellcasting Skill Roll
• Innate Attack (Projectile)
• Costs:
• Any amount of energy up to twice your spellcasting talent per second
• Up to three seconds
• 1d explosive burning damage per 2 points of energy

So, what does that mean? Looking at some of the starting spellcasting characters in the game, we see they have about 12 mana to use, so if we have magery 2, we could dump 4 points of mana per second into that fireball, for three seconds, and cast it at 12 energy, for 6d6 total explosive fire damage (21 average). This needs a little breakdown, so let's open the Exploits book (DFE46):

• 6d6 damage in the target hex
• Everyone out to 6 x 2 = 12 yards takes damage
• Divide damage by 3 x hexes to the center
• 1 hex = 2d6
• 2 hexes = 1d6
• ...and so on.

Add to this the chance to be set on fire (either one location or all, see DFE68), and there can be some nasty consequences for fire spells in GURPS in general, along with ongoing damage. The GURPS fireball is far more of a "simulation spell" than it is one that just does damage in an area equally.

Additionally, as GURPS, the referee is free to rule on the effect of fragmentation based on the environment. Let's say my wizard casts an explosive fireball into a dining room full of goblins. I am throwing a [2d] fragmentation effect on there (B414).

Yes, this is a sim. As a GURPS referee, you need to "sim when you need to sim."

It is also worth noting that the GURPS fireball scales, and a character with Magery 6 and enough mana can dump 36 energy into the explosive fireball in a 3-second casting, for 36d6 damage. If you have the skill and the mana, the GURPS spell will scale to an insane level of damage, and that is like the blast of a 120mm modern-day mortar.

What does any of this mean? Let's pull a few sample monsters from each game and go up the level chart with them. Let's do B/X first:

• Goblin = 3 hp
• Orc = 4 hp 
• Gnoll = 9 hp
• Bugbear = 14 hp
• Ogre = 19 hp
• Mummy = 23 hp
• Green Dragon = 36 hp

Let's do 5E, from the SRD:

• Goblin = 7 hp
• Orc = 15 hp
• Gnoll = 22 hp
• Bugbear = 27 hp
• Ogre = 59 hp
• Mummy = 58 hp
• Green Dragon (adult) = 207 hp

Let's do GURPS:

• Goblin = HP 12
• Orc = HP 14
• Hobgoblin = HP 16
• Ogre = HP 20
• Troll = HP 20
• Vampire = HP 20
• Green Dragon = HP 50

GURPS hit points tend to be between 10 and 20, and armor and resistances make a huge difference. When you get above 20 HP, you are talking big creatures. The B/X fireball is the most powerful of the group, since monster hit points are constrained and do not scale on a curve. The range is impressive, too. The 5E fireball is the weakest, with most of the monsters alive on a save, and the dragon laughing off the damage.

The B/X and GURPS HP ranges being so close means the games are more closely compatible than you think. If you use B/X "rolled hit points" in GURPS, you will get some very weak "mook" creatures at the low end, but some pretty nice fights when you go above 5 HD, and challenging for parties. Ogres and mummys become "boss creatures" that require a party to take down.

With GURPS, that 6d6 fireball at 12 energy tends to be in the B/X level of power, but once you start dumping 20 or even 40 energy into the attack, you begin vaporizing the toughest monsters with a direct hit. While B/X is the most powerful, GURPS can scale to even more powerful, just because the hit points have a tighter constraint.

Damage in GURPS will drop faster to targets farther away from the center of the explosion, so the overall power of a single blast will still be less than B/X. If you averaged damages, the GURPS fireball feels about equal to the 5E counterpart. Still, if you are going to hurl a 36d6 blast, that will be 12d6 to targets in one hex, and 6d6 to two hexes, and so on - out to 72 hexes.

It gets to a point where, uh, if you cast explosive fireball at a particular power level, you are also taking damage since the range is short. At that point, just begin to use GURPS Powers and design them like a superpower, since Dungeon Fantasy is closer in spirit to The Fantasy Trip and meant for fun "hex crawl" dungeon battles. 12d6 is the practical limit for the Dungeon Fantasy fireball because of range.

That is another wonderful thing about GURPS: if you wanted to ignore Dungeon Fantasy entirely and just design "magic superpowers" as your game's spells, you could. Your fantasy world's magic may work a different way. Collect character points, create the spell, buy it, and put a roleplay cost on learning it. In GURPS, you can do that. In B/X and 5E, you are stuck with whatever TSR or Wizards gave you.

Dungeon Fantasy is just one way of doing it. And it is not always the right way. In fact, Dungeon Fantasy may be how just one world in a multiverse of worlds works. The rest may work completely differently, with different rules and laws of magic.

You are free to say "mages can design powers given this framework of limitations" and just let the players go wild, with the referee approving the designs to fit the world's theme. Very few games give you that amount of creativity.

One Great Character Versus Many Simple

First up, I love OSRIC, Old School Essentials, Basic Fantasy, and all my B/X and First Edition games. These are S-Tier games for me; the math is correct, they don't use silly video-game number scaling, and the characters are simple. If I am playing a d20-based fantasy game, these are my go-to games. And I play a lot of solo, so having these "books full of data" makes the game easy for me.

But, in playing solo, why do I want to play simple characters? If I think about this in terms of computer gaming, this is the difference between a Skyrim character and one from an RTS game. I would rather have a fully detailed "CRPG character" in a solo-play tabletop game (with full gear, skills, backpack, magic systems, and ability scores) than a simple "RTS unit" with a few ability scores and no ability to equip or change them (attack, armor, speed).

Granted, playing GURPS solo with six characters begins to overload my will to manage that amount of complexity, as this is like running a six-person party of Skyrim characters and drowning in micromanagement and wishing things were simpler.

But for one to three characters in a "small party" game, GURPS does that fine and gives me a greater level of detail to each, which provides me with a greater level of satisfaction "per hour spent gaming." Running one character in a B/X-style game is a "thing," and I would probably get bored with it pretty quickly. Even four is not that hard, but when it comes down to those "small choices" that I love to make in GURPS, like what eight character points can be spent on, given what my character needs, it's excellent stuff.

In B/X games, so what? My bard has 1,600 XP out of 2,000, and there's nothing I can do with it except wait. What will happen in 400 XP at level two? My combat modifier and saving throws remain unchanged. I gain 1d6 more hit points and a level one spell.

Really?

The character does not get interesting until level five, and most games end around level ten. Even if you accelerate leveling to a rapid pace of one level per session, that is five 4-hour sessions to get to level five, or about 20 hours of solo play, with most of the "small choices" being around treasure and gear. Most of your interactions will not be rules-based ones. By that point, we get our first bonus to-hit, our first second-level spell, better saves, and a few class abilities open up.

An accelerated rate in GURPS is about five character points per session of play, with one to three being normal, but we are going on an accelerated pace to match our "level per session" that we used in B/X. This is a total of 25 character points in GURPS for our theoretical five sessions of play.

GURPS typically "levels up" character power every 50 points, so this is halfway to increasing a tier of power. The wonderful things I could do with 25 character points in GURPS blow my mind. If I engage in more social and performance activities, I can improve those skills; otherwise, I will apply my skills that I learned in combat. I could develop my magic, learn new songs, or improve the ones I have. I could create a new advantage based on my experiences and the story. If I went on a harrowing survival adventure, I could develop new survival skills.

The actions of my character will be reflected in their improvement.

That does not happen in B/X. 5d6+CON hit points, a few spells, some save numbers, and a few class abilities. Gear and treasure will reflect the most significant differences between fifth-level bards.

My bard in GURPS? Specialized in social, combat, magic, survival, or any other area relevant to the campaign I am playing and "what is going on." The character will morph and change to reflect the game I am playing, and be specialized in those areas of campaign interest. If I am doing more of a social campaign, guess what? My bard's skills will improve in social areas, and my character will reflect the campaign. And remember, in GURPS, there are a few areas of social skills, so these can be specialized social interactions (with supporting advantages, and an expansion book focusing on the area).

MS Paint strikes again. -Hak

In B/X? Level five bard, extra hit points, slightly better to-hit, a few class abilities, and spells. No better social skills, magic is a fixed path, and I may get some magic items to help me out? If I need survival skills, I need to find a ranger, and the improvement can't happen inside my character (without houseruling it).

In 5E? Forget it; find a Kickstarter book for $60-100 that improves the social aspect of the game, and add it to the pile of books to fix the system. 5E is notorious for shipping a basic tabletop game that requires a few thousand dollars' worth of add-on books to play the way you want. The grift is so high here that it is off the charts.

GURPS works perfectly, even with just the core books.

And it gives me greater satisfaction with fewer characters.

YouTube: Nosh Solo, Keep on the Borderlands

 

Nosh Solo is doing a fantastic series of solo plays on YouTube, going through the classic Keep on the Borderlands with GURPS 4e. We get seven 100-point characters, built off Dungeon Fantasy templates, going through the adventure. This started a few weeks ago, and it rocks. Let's show our YouTube creators some love and support this weekend!

This is like listening to a fantasy adventure podcast for GURPS, and it inspires me. This is so well done, and it needs more views, comments, likes, and attention.

This is like a look into an "alternate universe" where Steve Jackson Games got the rights to D&D and used the GURPS rules for the game. It is such a different experience, much more story-based, much more gritty and realistic, and a far better "narrative game" than even the "narrative-focused" games we have in the hobby today.

Grounded, gritty, realistic, historical, and hard-hitting fantasy? GURPS does it the best.

And this is one of the best solo plays in GURPS, and it is currently being developed! This hasn't ended yet, and it is time to jump in, follow along, comment, and join in the fun. We have seven so far, and catching up is not that hard and quite enjoyable.

If you start a podcast or live play series this weekend, definitely make it this one.

Wildcard/Bang Monster Skills

When I do my quick-and-dirty B/X monster conversions from old-school games such as Basic Fantasy, I will assign them a hits value based on my conversions, give them a base damage value based on hit dice, and then for most everything else, combat skills, special attacks, defenses, and other powers - I will just assign the monster a simple wildcard "bang skill" that is a catch-all skill roll for anything the beast is likely to do.

These are explained in the GURPS Basic Set Characters book (B175), and they are meant to group together like skills for a simpler game. An example is the skill Detective! in the game, which groups together all specific skills in their area, such as the ones a detective is likely to know.

So, in this case, a goblin gets the Goblin! skill, and a giant spider gets the Giant Spider! skill. If my goblin needs to make an attack roll, be sneaky, disengage, set a trap, hide, or do sneaky and stabbing, I would use the Goblin! skill. For my giant spider, that skill covers ambushes, hiding, wall crawling, web throwing, entanglement in spider webs, spider poison, scampering away, grappling, seeing in the dark, sensing movement, and spinning webs around a grappled character.

The critical part of this second case is that the wildcard skill covers "monster superpowers" that a monster should naturally have. Want to resist the spider poison? Opposed HT roll (Contests, B375) versus the bang skill, or you take the damage or effect. Web entanglement? Opposed ST roll versus the bang skill.

You can even use the Margin of Victory (B375) as a modifier to the effect roll, such as a spider poison being death on a loss difference of 6 or greater, damage for a failure of 3-5, nausea on a failure of 1-2, and no damage for any success.

I typically set this skill to 11+ the monster's hit die rating in B/X rules, and the Basic Fantasy set is just as good as any to use for this, plus the PDFs are free. That is a good baseline, and some "zero hit die" monsters, such as goblins, will just default to an 11-minus roll for everything.

If a power needs an exceptional modifier, let's say my Giant Spider! skill is at a 12-, I could modify STR-based rolls by a +4 (to the skill level) if I want that spider to be stronger in terms of grappling and STR-based checks. These one-off modifiers are easier to track than a complete design, and they add a little extra flavor to the monsters beyond just assigning a bulk skill level for everything. I could throw in a +2 skill level to web-based rolls if this type of spider is primarily known for its web-spinning and throwing powers.

More hit dice? That is going to be a higher base skill level and a more brutal monster to fight. Please remember that parry and dodge ratings are exceptional and should be rated in the usual GURPS manner (see my B/X conversion page), or else the fights will quickly become frustrating as high-level monsters will always be able to dodge and parry any attack coming their way.

One to three special case modifiers are enough to give any monster a custom feeling that avoids it from being too generic. If a monster is really good at flying, give it a bonus there, and so on. You can also add penalties, such as making an unintelligent monster, like an ogre, penalize its IQ-based rolls, perception, and other areas where you want it to be weaker. This makes ogres that are easily tricked, or ones you can try to sneak by while they are sleeping.

For the effect value, I will calculate a base damage or effect die roll based on the hit dice, but otherwise, most results can be figured out using opposed skill rolls, like "spiderweb strength versus character ST."

The best part about wildcard monster skills is that they can be used for mobster thugs in a 1920s Noir game, alien creatures in a science fiction game, enemy soldiers in a WW2 game, planar creatures in a plane-walking campaign, robots in a steampunk game, armored clone troopers in a space opera game, zombies in a post-apocalyptic horror game, orcs in a fantasy game, or any monster or enemy for other setting or world imaginable.

I can even rate "non-monster" things, like traps or automated gun turrets with a similar system, as long as an opposed skill roll can be used to defeat it, there is no reason a puzzle, computer security, or a lock can't be given a wildcard skill. The characters make an opposed roll to beat it. This differs from the GURPS way of doing things by rating tasks with a difficulty modifier (easy, hard, etc.), but it gets us to the same place just as easily (and maybe with an extra die roll for the opposed side).

I do not need a massive bestiary for every world I visit, and this makes GURPS a faster and easier game to run for any genre than games that require huge monster books, such as D&D. While large, detailed bestiaries are nice and an invaluable resource (thank you to our devoted fans and community members who pour hours into these and generously share them), GURPS gives us the tools to "wing it" when those resources are not available, or we just need to have something quickly and off-the-cuff.

GURPS becomes very easy to run with the tools the game gives us; all we need to do is figure out creative ways to apply them to our games.

GCA: Random Characters

While I love the GURPS Character Sheet (GCS) program, the paid-for alternative on Warehouse 23, GURPS Character Assistant (GCA), is also a good option.

One of the best functions of the GCA alternative is the "Create Random Character From Template" option in the top menu. This option takes a template, preferably one of the more expensive ones, and randomizes the choices so you can create a random character to begin playing with.

Of course, if there are potential synergies, such as weapon master (or fast draw) in a weapon the character is not skilled with, I am allowed to go in and fix those, and do a few clean-up items. If something is game-breaking, I will change it. But I keep things as they are, and if my knight is a shield, spear, and flail user with a sling as a ranged weapon who gambles and has a criminal background - that is who I got.

Spells and gear I will need to add myself. I will let the character's skills guide me, especially for spells. If a wizard has elemental or demon lore, that will change the spells I choose. I will need to build a gear loadout for each character.

Random characters are fun! They force me to play with weapons, skills, advantages, disadvantages, and builds that aren't my typical choices, and challenge me to optimize that build with future character points. If you are an experienced GURPS player and want to challenge yourself outside your comfort zone, play a random character and build them into a viable one.

Also, I am not as attached to these characters as I am to my "pet characters", which I tend to stick with game after game. Random characters will be much more fun since there is little chance that I will want to protect them, and another amazing random creation is a button-click away. After a while, I will be invested in them and want to protect them, maybe, but still, I won't care as much if their story ends, and I need to start another.

I am starting to play through some excellent Basic Fantasy adventures with the GURPS rules, such as the Morgansfort campaign. Now, these adventures and Basic Fantasy are great games, and I can enjoy these adventures with many old-school games, even classics like Old School Essentials or Castles & Crusades. Since I source all my old-school monsters and treasures from Basic Fantasy and convert them to GURPS (see my B/X Conversions page), this works easily for me.

Doing this playtest will likely force me to update my conversion page. Still, there are many good suggestions for quickly adapting B/X monsters to GURPS without needing expansive bestiaries written for the game. Are they perfect? Not by a long shot. Do they work? They should, and with powers that are more like bang skills, like a spider's "entangle 13-" or "venom 11-" powers, they should work well enough, and not every monster is the same (or should be), and even powers can vary. Some spiders won't have entangling or venomous powers.

This is my issue with most kitchen sink fantasy bestiaries, and after a while, players know what to expect. A monster "outside the norm," like a mana spider that shoots magic missiles, will be seen as cheating by the referee, or a goofy one-off. For me? Mana missile 14-, 1d6 damage, 6 shots, and uses spider stats. I'd give them a one-use 12-minus magic web spell. Monsters are not supposed to be familiar. That next fire beetle may explode after it dies. You just don't know.

Much of today's fantasy games contain bad habits or false assumptions that D&D forced on us, and we follow them without questioning. Part of the fun of fantasy gaming is not knowing what to expect. D&D has enshrined all its goofiness and has become predictable and boring. This recycled fantasy culture gets boring. Yes, it is iconic. But this place isn't where fantasy gaming started, and it is not the place in the unknown that makes us fear the next monster in the dark.

For me, GURPS works well and gives me that "immersion feeling" that I crave when I convert a setting to GURPS. This was reported from players of GURPS Traveller as well, even though people played the same setting with the original 2d6 rules, once they switched to GURPS, it almost felt like people were "in VR" and actually experiencing the world in person.

GURPS is highly immersive, with a level of detail and reality that makes you feel like you are in the world, looking around, watching people walk by and doing their things, hearing the sounds and smelling the smells, and living there. I can't explain why this happens, only that it has been reported many times, and I also get that feeling.

This is the GURPS Reality Immersion Field.

It exists.

I will likely expand the setting a little; the encounters and adventures mention traders on the roads, but I have no other towns near the fort to trade with, so I may add a few places of my own. The setting is perfect for expansion, so I shall create a few more towns and link this to the city to the north.

A solid, expanded, old-school adventure with random characters and GURPS?

This sounds like fun.

GURPS = Easiest Realism Fantasy

The common theme of many realism fantasy games is how hard they make everything, especially character creation. I took a trip into Rolemaster recently, and while the charts and game are cool, the character creation bogs the system down with a lot of unneeded math and crunch. GURPS is relatively straightforward in comparison.

Realism fantasy is different from deadly or gritty fantasy because there is an assumption that combat will be detailed with realistic effects of damage applied. Shadowdark is a deadly and gritty fantasy game. Still, since it uses the 5E engine, Shadowdark is not necessarily realistic, and it takes more work and referee assumptions to get there since the game does not give you the simulation systems you need for a realistic fantasy game.

Shadowdark is very gritty and deadly, but it does not give me the tools to run a game with a high amount of realism, nor does it give the players that much to work with in terms of skills and combat options to have the things they need to reciprocate and solve problems realistically.

Shadowdark is more of a board game than a simulation. GURPS is more of a simulation.

There is some cosmic war between Rolemaster and GURPS, of which I am unaware. Regardless, the system's goals in the fantasy genre are very close to providing gritty, deadly, realistic, skill-based fantasy play. GURPS has better combat options and fewer charts, whereas Rolemaster has the crit charts. GURPS can be played from a character sheet, whereas Rolemaster can't.

Rolemaster makes these internal assumptions that guide certain races and heritages, making certain professions and skills easier for those backgrounds. The game builds a "hidden" set of best paths and ideal combinations into character creation and advancement methods. In a sense, this is the game's "traditional fantasy cred," where dwarves don't make great wizards, and the other sets of fantasy tropes are created through the game's character system.

GURPS has none of that. You play as a zero-based human or a racial fantasy template and begin designing for it or adding templates until you are done. Unless you put them in there, the game has no internal assumptions of who can be the best at what. If you wanted dwarves to be unable to use arcane magic, put that in the dwarven racial template for your world as a disadvantage.

Playing a gritty, realistic fantasy game is far easier in GURPS than in any other system. The "critical effects" can be mostly made up on the spot and become readily apparent with high damage rolls. Do 20 points of damage to a head with a warhammer, and it is easy to describe what happens without flipping through 50 pages of charts. The same goes for melee critical misses, and spell critical hits and failures.

And for spell corruption, I could tag that system as a Modifier as a Limitation, tag it with Unreliable (16+ for -5%, or just say critical misses), and then put a corruption (or divine disfavor) mechanic on there for another -15%, and take -20% off the cost of all spells and spell-like powers (non-serious and temporary effect would likely reduce this down to a -10%). Or I could "say it is so," ignore the design system, and say this is like GURPS Horror. There are dozens of ways to do this, all of which are valid if you are consistent.

I have an imagination; I don't need all these charts. Are they inspiring? Yes. Are they required to play? No, and the character can limit your imagination by making you dependent on them.

Psychological limitations and those internal battles also play a considerable role in realistic fantasy, and GURPS delivers those with the game. The social factors play into the game as much as the skills and abilities, giving me a much stronger game than just providing characters and crit charts. Of course, Rolemaster is more than just those parts; GURPS has all the pieces I need built into the game's core, and they work the same for any genre or setting.

GURPS gets me to realistic fantasy nirvana more easily than any other game. Once people understand character creation, everything else is easy and flows logically. I don't need to learn a new system to do this, either, or support a game like Dungeon Crawl Classics that requires a few dozen dice to play and players constantly asking, "What do I roll?"'

With GURPS, I have that game.

GURPS vs. Realism Fantasy

There is a genre of dungeon-crawling games that relies on high-simulation elements, such as Rolemaster United (RMU), and in a roundabout way, Dungeon Crawl Classics with its rudimentary "crit charts" for warriors and other classes. A few other games try to walk the realism route, but none does it as well as GURPS. Where RMU models weapon attacks versus armor, GURPS models damage types after they penetrate armor. RMU requires a chart for each weapon and a crit table for each damage type.

GURPS is less descriptive but just as deadly. Still, it is not hard to make up descriptions of damage types and special effects, especially if the damage goes overkill. Hits to the arm or hand may cause someone to make a DX roll to avoid dropping a held item. Face hits may damage teeth, eyes, ears, or the nose. Blood may get in an enemy's eyes. A hit to the leg could cause a target to lose balance.

Most crit charts can be replaced with imaginative referee rules.

These rulings will be more logically consistent and appropriate than a chart will force on you.

Your crit effects will be better than the ones in the book and will also reflect the reality you are trying to make happen in your game. Doing slapstick comedy? The orc's pants drop and reveal underwear with hearts all over it, and he trips and falls over. Doing gritty realism? You stab the orc in the eye.

It is the same with "magical mishaps" in many of these games, and being forced to roll on corruption charts that could have tentacles popping from the wizard's body. Dungeon Crawl Classics, Shadowdark, and Warhammer FRP all do this. In GURPS, you can critically fail a spell roll. Guess what? Make up an effect.

You can and will do better than any of these charts.

90% of the time, the corruption or mishap effect will be better than anything you can find on a chart in these games. You will miss out on the WTF ones that don't make sense, but if you open up your imagination and think just a little, you could do better than any of the charts in these games.

You could go subtle, like townspeople start acting strangely around your wizard, or you could go freak-gonzo and have your caster grow demon horns. You could roll a reaction roll to see how subtle or severe the effect will be, if you don't have a clue. You could even do things not on the charts, like warp reality and move a door from one side of the hall to another, and mess with the player's minds. When the characters exit the dungeon, they will find that the entire dungeon has moved 1,000 miles to the north. Maybe a group or retainers they never hired is waiting for them outside the dungeon and asking for a treasure cut. Perhaps the town they came from, they went back to, and discovered it was destroyed 100 years ago.

I told you that you can do better than the charts that ship with these games.

Your imagination is 1,000 times better. Don't buy games primarily intended for people who don't have vivid imaginations, and expect the book's limited subset of random chart results to be better than yours.

And trust yourself.

If your "crit result" or "corruption effect" does not seem "as good as one in a book," then tell yourself that your imagination will always be better than what someone else can come up with. If you doubt your idea, roll one die, and make it a 50-50 chance you use it or come up with something else. Come up with two and roll between them; it is either a bleed effect of the leg, or you cut the orc's boot laces off, and a piece of footwear flies off (possibly hitting a nearby goblin in the face).

None of the charts in these other games likely have that boot crit, but that happens in combat. I just made it up. It is just as valid a result as anything in those games.

Some of the charts in these games are interesting, such as random tavern names and other miscellanea. Those are mostly useful and fun idea generators. Charts that affect gameplay or limit critical effects and failures to a subset of results should be scrutinized as possible replacements for your imagination.

GURPS EverQuest: Lessons Learned

Using old strategy guides, a few others and I worked on converting EverQuest to GURPS. A friend wanted a Shadowdark conversion first so she could play with her friends and a few EverQuest players, so we started that conversion. Shadowdark is like "rules light" 5E, and I get why it is popular; it is 5E without wasting all the time and money.

Shadowdark is simple enough that once EverQuest characters are boiled down to basic abilities, we can use that as a framework for a GURPS conversion since we won't need to dig through our source material and all these ancient, yellowed strategy guides we picked up on eBay.

We are avoiding the D&D 3.5E version of the game to keep D20 out of the conversation. The strategy guides are the source of truth here. The spell lists will be the ones from the game, and we will make a formula to convert those into each game, which is easy because we can just make a guideline chart based on levels and what the spells should do.

So, we got the first five classes converted, and...?

Umm...

Let's stick with Dungeon Fantasy characters. Even the spells are "meh," and the Dungeon Fantasy ones are better if you choose each class spell list with a theme. A shadow-knight with a pain, stun, and wither limb power is much more thematic and fun than the EverQuest spell lists. I can design good GURPS characters and stick to a theme when picking spells. In any D20 game, you design all the options first and tell players, "This is all you get."

My GURPS characters feel more like real characters in this world, and honestly, the setting is better than the EverQuest game rules and spells. Even in our Shadowdark game version, we must make up "cool thematic powers" for each class to give them some "zing" and playability. Otherwise, these are straightforward B/X style classes with a hit die, progression chart, and a skill list.

As-is, the Shadowdark version of the conversion feels plain, and it needs sprucing up outside the rules of EverQuest to make it attractive and worth playing. Let's invent an extraordinary power for a druid, like animal friendship? Let's give the necromancer special powers, too. We must give them more than a spell list and an allowed set of weapons and armor.

Also, casters in the Shadowdark version of the game will end up with hundreds of spells from the strategy guides and be far more potent than the martial characters. Even if you only say, "Pick ten memorized," and cast them with Shadowdark rules, they will still be insanely powerful.

GURPS and Dungeon Fantasy?

The characters as I designed them are perfect, thematic, and feel realistic and gritty. Even my friend says she likes the GURPS characters better than our converted ones, even though our Shadowdark version is much more faithful to the game. My GURPS characters are much more open to different progression paths, whereas my Shadowdark characters are stuck in a class and five rolls on a talent chart over ten levels, and that is it.

Using GURPS eliminates playing with her friends, but given people's time and attention these days, it may be a lost cause, hoping they will play any pen-and-paper game with her. I will jump at the chance, of course! But for those in her online gaming circle, I severely doubt they will even play Shadowdark. Most people who play 5E will play D&D on the Beyond platform and have no interest in Shadowdark or EverQuest, nor would a complete 5E conversion even be worth doing.

GURPS is better for characters; even if you use stock GURPS spells and powers, you can get closer to feeling than design. That is the thing with GURPS conversions, stick with GURPS stuff first, and you may find it does the job better than an item-by-item perfect total conversion.

My druid could learn to become a bard in GURPS. Just spend the points over there and sing to woodland creatures, if you want. In Shadowdark, you are stuck in one class with minimal customization options.

The EverQuest setting is still a classic, and the strategy guides have maps, monsters, and zone information. We are sticking to the first three expansions in the classic, maximum level 60 era of Kunark, Luclin, and Velious. Even with zero EverQuest spells and powers and just using stock Dungeon Fantasy and designing for "close enough," the conversion is already a home run. Monsters? The level is just "toughness" or a point value; we can use GURPS Ultra Lite to create them.

The only advantage Shadowdark has is that the monster list works well and fits EverQuest's game world. The exploration and play systems are tight. The game is D20. It is easy to hand a player a character sheet and just play. Getting friends to play Shadowdark is easier.

The advantage of GURPS?

Everything is better here, even without a complete conversion. The characters feel better, play better, advance better, and feel realistic and fantastic. The world is just "the setting we play in." The classes are just "frameworks we design within." The different spells aren't a problem since the Dungeon Fantasy spells are better than the MMO's math-based, button-mashing, circa 1999 computer game standards. If you wanted one spell, designing it would not be a problem.

Do you play with GURPS fans or solo?

Choose GURPS.

GURPS: EverQuest - A Tale of Two Necromancers

So, I was designing characters for my GURPS: EverQuest game, and as luck would have it, one of the characters was a necromancer. Regarding exceptional cases, players will always pick the one that makes your life the hardest. But in this case, it wasn't that hard, but it did bring up a massive issue with Dungeon Fantasy Spells versus GURPS Magic.

Dungeon Fantasy defaults to a lower magic power level, a low fantasy feeling, where magic has actual costs, and its effects are limited in scope and often at the time of the impact. The Dungeon fantasy game has necromancy spells, so we can use those for our skeleton summoning caster, right?

Let's open Dungeon Fantasy Spells and see what we have. And we are hit by this line, under Necromantic Spells, page 59.

Rituals for creating or becoming undead exist, but no reputable temple or guild teaches them.

What? Okay, "by-default you-are-the-hero" assuming game, let's start hacking these spells to let our necromancer work at least halfway decent. And, we referees are much less reputable than the magic guilds in this game. We will have to change a few spells, but don't panic; GURPS lets us do this and not have an army of 5E Internet people come down on us saying we have homebrewed our game, which is terrible. In GURPS, homebrewing is the standard and sane thing to do.

This is a vast difference from 5E or Pathfinder 2, where you are not supposed to change rules. GURPS assumes you hack the game, just like any sane old-school game.

We need to slightly change two spells to do this: Command (Spirit) and Summon Spirit. Command Spirit will be used to grab a random wandering undead and make it ours. If this is a random skeleton or zombie wandering in EverQuest, that would cost 5 for "fodder" creatures (10 for worthy undead like ghouls, and 20 for boss monsters like vampires), last for one minute, and cost 2 per extra minute to maintain (half, and we round down for everything not a cost or weight). When you run out of power and haven't sent the undead away, it will turn hostile (or you can roll a reaction). This is lower power necromancy, where you won't control a skeleton for long.

The other spell is Summon Spirit, which costs a lot more, 20 to cast and 10 to maintain. This cost can be halved if you are over the corpse and halved again if over the site of death. So casting this over a fallen soldier in battle would only cost 5, and wandering around a graveyard would cost 10. This is a pretty hefty cost, and it has a hefty maintenance cost, too (but in the best case, it would still be only 2 per extra minute). So if you can't find a random wandering undead, you need to go make one not-so-fresh. Also, summoning like this and stopping maintenance means the undead just falls down and goes away.

This is, again, low-magic necromancy, so I am okay with it. Only high-powered necromancers can create undead, and they will need power items to burn off some of this cost. Also, remember, if your skill is above 15, you reduce the power costs by one; if it is above 20, you reduce it by two (and one point per five points of skill above that). So, a skill 20 necromancer in a spell will reduce maintenance costs by two, keeping that skeleton around free of any maintenance power cost.

What I thought was unworkable, is now workable, and you can have a necromancer with a skeleton "pet" that sticks around indefinitely without a power cost. Lower-level necromancers are struggling to maintain control and must pay a hefty fee to keep the pet as a companion.

This does not change the rules too much and lets you use the existing spells without adding new ones to a character creation program. This is also a very low-magic solution, and it also aligns well with the Create Animal spell on page 19, with a cost to cast and maintain per minute.

A solution that only makes a minor change to a few spells enables our necromancers (or demonologists) to work, and it has a similar spell in the same book? This very workable solution fits what we already have in the game and keeps the same power level intact.

It feels good when you can hack a mod like this with the books you have, and it creates a balanced and fair solution. I like high-skill necromancers maintaining rabble undead for free, and remember that those maintenance costs go up with minor or significant undead, so even higher-power necromancers need to spend power on maintaining control.

So let's use Dungeon Fantasy 9, Summoners, to fix our necromancer problem. This is a good supplement for the game, but it is much closer to the default GURPS Magic power level and feels super-heroic and high-powered. This uses the Zombie spell from GURPS Magic, which costs 8 to cast, has no upkeep cost, and the undead stays around until destroyed. Control Zombie in this book costs 3 and lasts indefinitely.

Wow. Do you mean our necromancer just pays 8 powers to cast this spell and has a pet undead forever? Yes. This makes low-level necromancers (and summoners) insanely powerful. They do not have to worry about maintaining control of power expenditure, and there is only a minor benefit to a high skill level. This starts to make a difference with "major" undead

This is the difference between Dungeon Fantasy's power level and the regular game GURPS Magic power level. In Dungeon Fantasy, you have (in general) a lower level of power, whereas in the main game, you have the complete GURPS Magic system - which is more on the level of superhero magic. Coming from 5E or PF2, you would expect all magic systems in the game to be unified and one power level. This is not true, and also it is a huge thing to grasp when you want to understand GURPS.

GURPS is a toolkit, and there are systems in the game that do the same thing but on wildly different power levels. It is up to you as a "game creator" to pick the best systems for your game and lay those out for the players to work with. Yes, you can have two fantasy games in GURPS, one where the characters are gritty survivors in a low-magic world and another where they are flying around like superheroes. Looking at all the GURPS books and games you can buy, you don't realize this at first, but after you do a few character designs you begin to see the differences and can make good choices for your game.

"Making good choices for your game" is another thing you should keep in mind as a GURPS referee, and this is another alien concept for 5E and PF2 players to grasp. GURPS is closer to a "game programming language" than it is to an "everything is done for you" experience.

So, TLDR?

Dungeon Fantasy Spells are low-fantasy magic.

GURPS Magic is superhero magic.

GURPS: Everquest

EverQuest is one of those games that is more of a setting than it is a game. The MMO has been going on decades, and the definition of "what a class is" and "what classes have what powers" is a subject really only for the hardcore players, and even then, the endgames is where the action is at, and the numbers are so high damages are in the billions these days.

It is an easy setting for a game like Dungeon Fantasy to simulate, and you can get away with all of the standard Dungeon Fantasy templates as the standard EverQuest classes. Not many will really notice, and to most, a fighter is a fighter in this sort of setting, and the setting is why they are playing. This is almost the opposite of D&D, where people will play more for the classes than the setting, but here, you give me a Dungeon Fantasy wizard, and yeah, that could be an EverQuest wizard easily with very little suspension of disbelief.

The only notable must-haves for this world is Dungeon Fantasy 3 (The Next Level) for shadow elves and other backgrounds you may wish to reskin, and there is also the unholy warrior here for a nice shadow-knight template. Dungeon Fantasy 9 (Summoners) is good for beast-lords  and necromancers. To be fair, these are more "advanced classes" for a game like this, and you can add these in later as needed.

Playing in the classic EverQuest setting is the huge appeal here. There is also an alternate timeline for EverQuest II, and all that really changes is the map and current events. They are both pretty much well interchangeable except for the story and the places you can go.

Monsters are pretty well much standard fantasy monsters, and there are fewer than most OSR games when you start. A lot of these will be goblins, orcs, gnolls, skeletons, giant rats, fire beetles, spiders, and your typical MMO creatures. If you want to simulate the special dungeons you will need a strategy guide with maps and monster lists.

Plenty of online resources exist for EverQuest.

You can "wing it" pretty easily in a world like this, and inventing new dungeons in this world will be pretty simple, as you can just say there are forts, caves, villages, evil temples, and other places not in the main game that are in your world. If you are trying to do a "Guk-like" dungeon, just makes it a twisting maze of hexes with evil frogs, trolls, and other swamp beasts living in there. No one is going to call you out for things not being perfect, they will be happy to play in the setting and not worry about the specifics.

Close enough in Everquest is just fine as long as you get the major cities, locations, and places correct. You can play a "softer lore" setting and include other fantastical races not normally playable, like the Minotaur-like Tizmaks, or the otter-like Othomirs, and be just fine, too. Again, it really does not matter much how closely you play the lore to the game, the game as it is today is very little concerned about lore outside of the RP communities.

You can run an entire campaign out of one of the major cities and be just fine, with limited visits to other locations. Your players, their experiences with the game, and their interests will drive where you need to focus on. There will be factions, conflicts, and races that will play the starring role here, and there are some great ones. The dark elven city of Neriak, the good city of Qeynos, and the evil Freeport are all amazing locations, and they don't really have to be "lore accurate" in terms of maps and locations. If you get the flavor and feeling right, that will be great for most players. These locations have changed over the years, and even during each game's lifetime, and there is also the limited part of the city each game can simulate - so you are free to expand and make up as much as you like about these places.

If you ever played these games, the maps are pretty primitive, so anything you imagine will definitely be an improvement. EverQuest 2 has a few more "interesting points of interest" so you may run into those expectations, but for the most part you will be fine, or the players can help you with lore. Most hardcore fans will be thrilled to play in this setting, and will be more than willing to help out fill in the details.

These games are also free-to-play, so if you needed to log in and see a place, it is certainly possible.

The normal Dungeon Fantasy magic items are also "good enough" for this setting, and you don't need a complete magic item list for the game out of a strategy guide, unless you really want to, or have a favorite item you want your character to get their hands on. Dungeon Fantasy (Magic Items) is a good resource to have here, and you can do some fun items, like making musical instruments as "casting items" (or bonus items), and you can outdo the original game pretty easily. Dungeon Fantasy 8 (Treasure Tables) is also an excellent resource for creating treasures and magic items.

I like this conversion since there isn't that much pressure to "rebuild the MMO" in the GURPS rules. Bog-standard fantasy will cover most of the pieces you need, and you really only need a few flavor locations, gods, and foes to get the feeling right. The games have progressed decades of expansions, and it would be impossible to recreate everything exactly how it exists in the game.

This feels different than kitchen-sink fantasy or B/X conversions since there are more current expectations there that you have a near-complete set of conversions of monsters, magic items, and the standard tropes. We have a feeling that we need to be "much closer to the rules" with B/X conversions to GURPS than does a setting like EverQuest, where in all honesty, if it played and sounded like an "EverQuest the streaming TV show" it would be more than fine in most player's eyes.

This feels more like a novel of TV show conversion than a "game into another game" conversion, which makes the work a lot easier, and sets the expectations bar pretty low. The "realistic feeling" of GURPS will also be a plus here, and put a more realistic lens on the setting than a typical d20 or 5E game, and yes, there was a D&D 3.5E game for this world. 

GURPS will do the setting far more justice and give us some hardcore "grind and simulation" which is what the original game was all about back in the day. I don't want 3.5E "bags of hit points" for this setting. I want realism and drama, and that movie-like feeling that GURPS does so well.

Genres & Games Reorganization

GURPS survives every reshelving and storage run with my library. It occupies my "best shelf" constantly, and I don't see it ever moving. Other games come and go, and the biggest loser this season is 5E; that game is far too huge for its own good; my collection is nearly a dozen boxes, and the game is bloated, unplayable, and makes the sin of relying on computerized character creators to manage it all. The more you buy for 5E, the less happy you are since nothing is supported in one place.

At least with GURPS, I have the GURPS Character Sheet (sidebar link; please support the project), which covers everything the game has published and everything I will ever add to it.

Losing 5E freed up space on my shelves for a few other fantastic games. GURPS, of course, does them all, but some are still worth playing and checking out. I am finding that the "alt boutique" style games, which take one game and slightly tweak it to "play better," are also becoming big losers in this round of shelf shuffling.

Why do I need Castles & Crusades, Shadowdark, Old School Essentials, Swords & Wizardry, and many other games (that I still love) when I have OSRIC and my PoD copies of AD&D (not for play, just for Gary's wisdom)? OSRIC is my Rosetta Stone, while AD&D is like Lord of the Rings.

Sometimes, I want to return to those first days, fire up the time machine, and be there again. None of the new games, OSRIC, or my inspirational material does that. Compared to the OG game, it is all "second source photocopies." AD&D powers the time machine, and OSRIC gives me the rules.

And yes, I get it. Why not just play Dungeon Fantasy? I have everything I need right here, plus GURPS! While I love Dungeon Fantasy, we did not need this in the 1980s when we had GURPS. In fact, GURPS was superior to AD&D, and it did not have to "play to the genre" since GURPS was every genre and every type of game rolled into one.

The "dungeon fantasy" genre was really championed by D&D 3.0 when Wizards took over and turned D&D into a board game, which was cool. They rolled it back massively with D&D 5E, and the game is more theater-of-the-mind. Back in the day, this was "fantasy roleplaying" and not "dungeon roleplaying," if you get my drift. There is a clear difference between the "fantasy" and the "dungeon" genres, and extending this further, D&D 5 is in the "epic heroic" genre more than it is in the other two and arguably closer to the storytelling game FATE.

Sometimes, I feel "playing to a genre" lessens the game. I enjoy Dungeon Fantasy a lot. Still, if I am in my time machine, I am comparing GURPS (3.0) with AD&D. I am limiting my comparisons strictly to the "fantasy" genre without having to pull in all the "needed lists" that must be present for the "dungeon" genre to feel well supported.

Need examples of the fantasy genre? Go back to the classics. Robin Hood, Conan, King Arthur, and even John Carter. GURPS does these out of the box, even with the basic rulebook. You have characters, a low technology level, rare magic, monsters, sword swinging, and many skill tests.

AD&D started more in the fantasy genre, then it was overtaken by the dungeon genre, slowly developing the "dungeon genre," which was once seen as a lesser genre than fantasy. If your game "only did dungeons," it felt less capable. Given that D&D 3.0 elevates the "dungeon genre" to something akin to a professional sport, this comparison is completely flipped on its head. The "dungeon" is seen as "fantasy," and the traditional fantasy genre has been forgotten or is seen as a lesser genre - at least within gaming.

These days, Pathfinder 2 holds the torch for the dungeon genre, given its massive development efforts, strict balancing, and almost religious adherence to its standards and tropes. This is the standard-bearer game. D&D 5 has moved on to epic heroic storytelling and is in the "live play" genre. Even though D&D 3.5E is in the same tactical dungeon genre, Pathfinder 2 is supported and works hard to fix the near-constant imbalance issues. D&D 3.5E is still very broken. 

Pathfinder 2 recently ditched the OGL and SRD, and the game is better for it.

GURPS and Pathfinder 2 are tactical dungeon battle games where "builds matter on the board."

You are not in the dungeon genre these days if you are not delivering a tactical board game. This is mainly due to expectations, and the complexity of character builds in these games. You need to "prove your build on the board" in a dungeon genre game, and there is no real good way to do that in theater-of-the-mind gaming. Especially if part of combat is positioning, pushing, reaction attacks, line of sight, vision, movement, and any "on the map tangible" design element.

Pathfinder 2 goes the extra mile to codify skill use in combat and gives those defined actions to attempt. Pathfinder 2 is the model future GURPS development should follow. Clearly define everything that can be done, and then balance the heck out of it. While you are at it, make every choice equal and enjoyable.

The most significant difference is that Pathfinder 2 puts everyone on the same level of progression regarding combat power. GURPS lets you make that choice yourself. Pathfinder 2 is the more straightforward game to balance and creates encounters for, but that comes at a price.

GURPS does both fantasy and dungeon genres well, with a realistic filter over the game. It also delivers a tactical board game. The fantasy genre gets forgotten in the hype, marketing, and advocacy. In GURPS, you can lean into the storytelling side more effortlessly than in Pathfinder 2. My "Robin Hood" does not need a "class built with archetypes" and a "carefully crafted combat style." My Robin Hood needs skills and abilities to "do that RP stuff."

Suddenly, Pathfinder 2 feels like overkill to play Robin Hood or King Arthur.

Even Dungeon Fantasy feels like overkill, to be honest. Why am I messing with all these class templates? Why 250 points? Where is the "enemy disadvantage" for the sheriff and his men?

The average customer in the gaming market cares very little for any of these distinctions; they just want to play "Critical Role" or "Robin Hood," and they will pick up any game with a fantasy scene on the cover. They will notice if the game makes them do too much work to have the experience they seek or if parts are missing, ones they expect to be there to deliver on the promises in their heads.

GURPS is the best middle-ground in all of these cases. You can have tactical play and depth. You can have rules-light story-gaming. You can have the classic "fantasy" genre without all the dungeon cruft, or if you use Dungeon Fantasy, revel in the "dungeon" genre.

But it isn't the "best in class" game in the tactical or dungeon genre, and it could be argued that it is a matter of choice in the story-gaming genre. GURPS (base rulebooks) is still the best-in-class game in the traditional fantasy gaming genre and has been that way since the 1980s.

I can design my Robin Hood or John Carter character and not worry about classes, tactical abilities, class templates, or +1 swords; I can define a character through skills, abilities, advantages, and disadvantages—and I'll be playing the superior game for the fantasy genre.