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.

GURPS Gives Me More with Less

GURPS has a core ethos I can use to paint over a high-magic, 5.5E version of the Forgotten Realms and bring the setting back to its roots. It is the difference between a picture made from a prompt and a real painter layering watercolors, with judgment that comes from years of doing the work.

Seeing the Realms as a low-fantasy place again feels like coming home. The setting is no longer about gods, gates, and planes, and no superhero plot is waiting to flatten a town so the multiverse can have another CGI battle. I do not want that scaffolding in the game. It makes “here” smaller.

The map I create with GURPS is the map I want to explore.

D&D 4E made planar cosmology the main setting of D&D. Earlier editions laid the groundwork; 4E institutionalized the idea that around level 10 you become a planar adventurer. Campaign worlds started to feel like MMO starting zones. That is what made Pathfinder 1e appeal to me over that game: it stayed on one world and treated the planes as places that supported it, not a main thoroughfare through the middle of the campaign.

Anytime the multiverse comes up, it kills that precious starting town at the heart of a fantasy game. The NPCs become nobodies. That dwarven blacksmith with the daughter with big dreams fades away. The tavernkeep with the scar and the eyepatch becomes a memory. The special place you defended against gnolls and the first Orc armored division is nothing next to the City of Brass or Sigil. Here is another portal to Ravenloft; want to go on the ride? I have already been on that ride, and they changed the parts I liked.

Unlike 5.5E Forgotten Realms, in GURPS I cannot assume the Harpers or anyone else have automatic access to “level 20” spells and classes. At some point, that high-level framework sitting over the map ruins the storytelling, because I always have to factor it in. In GURPS, the numbers reset. Powerful NPCs and big spells can still exist, but they are under control, and they don't blow out lower-point characters just by being on the page. These are effects out of GURPS Magic. If I say a spell is not in the world, it is not in the world, and that does not feel like a house-ruled variant of the official boxed set.

In GURPS, Elminster still has to approach a ruin with care. Even as a thousand-point character, he can be surprised, bled, and made to respect a threat. A 25-point goblin’s lucky arrow is not a joke he can ignore. He will happily take a squad of a town’s militia - mere 50-point guardsmen - with him into the dark.

The fast-food version of modern campaign settings, stacked with power creep and expansion content people expect to have on the table, is why I do not want to touch those books as written. With GURPS, I have control over the world I present.

In 5.5E I feel I have to take the whole pile and make something out of it. Tales of the Valiant is an impressive toy chest - thousands of monsters and spells - and it is still too much menu for me to wrestle with.

When you lift the massive rules framework off a setting and look at the place again, what do you like? Do the ties to family, clan, and kingdom come back into focus? Does the setting even support those ideas, or does it assume a cosmopolitan freeway running through the front yard?

With GURPS, the focus narrows; I care about one hero, their build and loadout, and I can immerse myself in a world I loved a long time ago and live in that moment again.

Returning With GURPS

I have been shuffling the rest of the game library because I feel 5E is moving away from my interests and fantasy; the classic campaign worlds are being remade into lesser versions, and the fantasy art I grew up with in the 1980s is Photoshopped and censored, and I feel the worlds that TSR built are slowly dying off. There is only so much recycling a property can take before it's no longer what it was. Like paper fibers in a bag, recycle them too many times and what holds the bag together breaks apart into dust.

I can come home with GURPS, though. I can play the original Low-Fantasy world we started with in the Forgotten Realms, give it new life, and just play with GURPS. Low-fantasy Forgotten Realms was one of our best AD&D campaigns: gritty, low magic, and full of danger; family and fealty meant something, and it wasn't this overpowered science-fiction setting wearing Ren Faire garb, with mixed European accents and voice actors everywhere.

When a mysterious horse rider rides up in a battle, someone in the group points, recognizes the family crest, and shouts, "I know his family!" - that is a cool moment. I get that in GURPS. In D&D 5E, all I get is people checking their character sheets and piecing together their next turn's action economy. They mentally shuffle powers and actions like a Magic: The Gathering player shuffles through their deck.

And there are players who won't play anything else except 5E. It doesn't give me much hope in the hobby outside of my small corner of it.

But playing GURPS here gives me hope. Harpers aren't immortal gods who can swoop in and solve every problem with a wish and resurrection. Even they can get speared, take an unlucky hit, and bleed out. Melee combat is a serious choice, which opens up the social and house-family games of courtly intrigue. Walking out to handle the bandits yourself is one way to do it; getting the local lord to lend you five soldiers to back your expedition up is another.

Who you know and who you are related to matter. It isn't about entitled power trees that hand you importance. You need to make your own importance in this world that cares little if you live or die.

You have to play a smart and careful game in GURPS, and magic begins with the mundane, almost parlor-trick, acts of manipulation - which can be used to great effect. Magic is about creative use again, tricksterism, and subterfuge. Creating a shadow to make an enemy think someone went down the left hall instead of the right. It isn't about becoming an invincible combat god with maximum damage per turn.

Even being a mage or rogue isn't something you may want to announce, and you could take the secretive route and have a cover while studying magic in secret, or take things on the sly. In D&D, not announcing your class and role is unthinkable. In GURPS, hey, I am an alchemist and crafter of tonics, and I have the skills to back it up. My magic? Very few know about that. Me? Being a rogue? Are you serious? I am a mercenary archer, good sir! The game does not force me to announce my class, or make it so obvious that all my great roleplaying goes out the window.

I don't know; it feels like there is so much wrong with current 5E that I don't even feel it is a relatable game anymore. Sure, I can get into the powers part of it and theory-craft, but that is not why I play a game. Walking into a kingdom with guaranteed godhood and a power tree meant to blow main battle tanks off their tracks isn't my idea of a fantasy game. An OSR game gets me to a better spot with less hassle, but GURPS gives me so much more, plus the skills and roleplaying advantages I need to back up the campaign.

GURPS feels like putting on a special pair of magic glasses that lets you see any world in an entirely new way.

That's why I love this game.

Play Starts at Character Creation

This was a summer of watching my Star Wars hopes come and fade. I got excited enough to start planning a campaign, but the energy never quite arrived. It felt like anti-energy: the Expanded Universe still feels like a better place than the one we have now, and the new material leans harder and harder on nostalgia bait. When you see that bait, it is always the lure and never the hook underneath.

Star Wars feels dead, uninspiring, and tired. I need to put it away for a while.

So I am back to my own science fiction. Back to the old standby: GURPS characters inside a Cepheus Engine universe. Starship rules and procedural generation from one system, character creation and resolution from the other. Clean-room, palette-cleaning, low-level science fiction—getting by, dodging pirates, trying to make payroll and survive.

My own stories will always be more compelling than telling my version of someone else’s franchise. They will be smaller, tightly focused on interpersonal conflict and a local struggle: surviving, making payroll, helping someone who cannot pay you back, or carving out a tiny difference in a galaxy too large to notice. The Jedi and the Rebellion feel vast and increasingly undefined; their original meaning was spent decades ago, and every new version has to dig the same bones up and rearrange them. Being chased by space pirates through an uncharted system and forced to hide on a world no one has named yet means far more to me than any of that.

That preference is not just taste. It recognizes what GURPS actually does well.

In many games that center on powers and skill selections, play begins after character creation. The sheet is a finished tool; the story starts once the numbers are locked. In GURPS, play starts during character creation. The choices you make, what disadvantages you accept, what relationships you define, what private codes and vulnerabilities you write onto the sheet, are already the first moves of the campaign. Those decisions do not wait for the first session. They begin generating consequences the moment they are written down.

Advantages, disadvantages, quirks, and the specific web of relationships a player builds are not flavor text. They are active forces. A Code of Honor, a Dependent, a Phobia, a Sense of Duty, an Enemy, a Reputation: these things do not sit quietly until the plot needs them. They create friction every session. They force choices. They turn “the party hides on an uncharted world” into “this particular group of people, with their particular debts and fears and private codes, tries to hide on an uncharted world.”

When the story stays small and local, those mechanical obligations have room to matter. The pirates are not a faceless faction; they are the concrete consequence of a Reputation or an Enemy someone took at creation. The decision to help a stranded colonist is not a side quest; it is a Sense of Duty check with real costs. Surviving the next payroll is not background color; it is the pressure that makes every disadvantage sharper.

GURPS is at its most alive when the fiction keeps asking the same question the players already answered when they built their characters: who are these people, and what does that cost them? The smaller the stage, the louder that question becomes.

The science-fiction frames that feed this engine best are the ones that keep the camera close and the outside world distant or unreliable:

Frontier and colony stories. A handful of people on a marginal world or remote station. Authority is weeks away. Resources are limited. Every personal flaw has space to become a crisis. The character sheet becomes the real map of the campaign.

Small-crew tramp freighters and working vessels. Not the mythic freighter with a destiny, just a ship that has to make payroll. Crew dynamics, debts, rivalries, and private codes of conduct generate more play than any sector-wide plot. Points spent on Contacts, Enemies, Dependents, and Social Stigma pay off constantly.

Low-myth procedural exploration. Generate the next system, drop the characters into it, and let their specific disadvantages and relationships decide what happens next. The interesting question is never “what ancient secret did we find?” It is “how does this particular group of damaged people react when the air recyclers start failing?”

Personal-scale cyberpunk or near-future grit. Cyberware as both power and vulnerability, identity erosion, street-level or corporate debts that map directly onto disadvantages. The system’s detailed treatment of social mechanics and personal cost makes the internal price of modification feel real.

In all of these, the rules and the fiction are arguing with each other through the medium of the character sheet. That argument is where GURPS is at its most entertaining.

I am not claiming these are the only stories worth telling in science fiction. I am only saying they are the ones that let GURPS do what it does best. When the stage stays small, the character sheet stays loud. The disadvantages keep working. The relationships keep costing something. The choices made in character creation keep mattering long after the first session.

That is the game I want to play right now. Not the recycled myth, not the corporate sequel, not the destiny that was already spent decades ago. Just a few people on a ship or a station or a marginal world, trying to get by, and carrying the full weight of who they decided to be.

Put the big stories away for a while if they have gone hollow. The smaller ones are still waiting, and GURPS was built for them.

The Late Republic Era

The more I read the GURPS: Imperial Rome book, the more derivative Star Wars feels. The Late Republic Era, the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire, is one of the best untapped settings in gaming. You get tough, violent revolts, riots, conflicts between social classes, the inflow of immigrants, and generals marching on Rome to take over the government.

This is a period of Civil War, and it is far better than the muddled, confused, pop-culture mess we get in Star Wars. Soldiers loyal to generals rather than the state? Armies that could decide politics, and used political murder and seizing property as a tool? When a commander left Rome, another would siege the city and take power? Slave revolts in the tumult?

The whole system was breaking down. The Republic was never meant to run a Mediterranean Empire, leading to local generals who became as rich as kings with huge personal armies. Murder and confiscation became commonplace, making compromise harder. Corrupt tax farmers and a massacre i

And Caesar marched on Rome to "restore the republic" and was assassinated, opening the door for an empire? The people grew tired of the chaos and chose an emperor. Just. Fix it.

And the system turned on him.

And they got worse.

It sounds like today, with "lists of undesirables" being shared (be they landowners, rich, the opposition, and so on), and the angry and starving populace set loose on them by proxy. Personal armies of the wealthy run private security. Groups and street thugs formenting riots and civil violence. And the current government couldn't care less and lets the chaos and blood run free on the streets. Those who share the news are factionalized along each side. All this is out of ancient history.

They don't teach this anymore because it is being used as a playbook.

And if the Republic does nothing to stop it, the populace becomes more receptive to dictators to fix it. Letting chaos foment plays into the hands of those who wish to seize power for themselves.

Read history. All of this happened before.

Every Star Wars movie needs to end with the same set of scenes and repeat the same story beats. The entire Star Wars genre isn't a story anymore; it is a formula for a soda or breakfast cereal. I don't get these stories there. It has become a repetitive, predictable, beat-for-beat formula creation where action figures are shaken around in play fights and nothing ever matters. They use history to seed the idea, but they refuse to give us any of the good stuff.

Mithridates VI Eupator was their "Darth Vader" and existed outside the Republic, slaughtering hundreds of thousands in the provinces and waging war on the Eastern flank (in the Black Sea area, again, sounds familiar). This was also the origin of the archetype of the Eastern despot who used poison, mass violence, spies, assassins, and intrigue.

This set up a multi-year series of wars which trained generals in civil war, where generals got the idea they could rewrite the political map. Strongmen inside the Republic were created, setting up the roadmap for dismantling the Republic. The system ended up eating itself.

And forget doing this in D&D 5.5E. If someone doesn't throw up the X sign, the players will gate out to the planes and walk away. There are so many races everyone will be a fantastical outsider. Character builds outshine the setting. D&D is really only good for telling character-centric D&D stories.

GURPS gives me the configuration, control, and historical data to do this type of story right. I can limit magic. I can control backgrounds. The character design system supports campaign connections. Players must engage and interact with the campaign world. GURPS is a dream come true compared to the alternatives.

I am not fighting the system to tell a story like this.

This is how you fall down the rabbit hole of history. You find an era that fascinates you, that pop culture weakly tries to rewrite, and you find the real thing. The imitation now looks illiterate, and the real thing that actually happened is so much better.

Because it is all happening again.

GURPS: Star Wars (Legends)

I ran Star Wars - Legends.

None of this new stuff was real to me, and it was all derivative, made-for-streaming "content." We played exclusively in the now-branded Legends era. In this place, new creators dip in to steal ideas for the nostalgia, while never respecting the stories or original writers of the time. In a way, it feels like D&D, where the new crop of creators can't be bothered with canon or continuity, letting any writer they hire off the street "do what they want" since they feel "it speaks to the new audience."

That is death for a franchise.

The new audience isn't interested in what you have to sell.

How they used to do this is get the older audience excited, and the new audience would latch on to see what the buzz was about, and from that point forward, new stories that could speak to a younger audience could be created. Simply "rewriting the whole thing" but "for a new audience" never works. Lucas knew you could never tell the same story twice, which is why none of the original movies were ever beat-for-beat recreations of each other.

Yet, here we are, with beat-for-beat recreations built by investor money to farm nostalgia.

We played Star Wars roleplaying during the 1990s, when it was fun; the novels and comics were the only source of "new" Star Wars, and writers were free to run with new ideas and shape the franchise's future. I hate to use the word "franchise" here, since it cheapens the creative effort by making it sound like a fast-food chain.

Which is where we are.

Star Wars is Arbys or Taco Bell.

What I remember is a good Star Wars, where the galaxy serves as a setting for sharing universal stories. These days, the setting feels more like a lead weight than a benefit. I can get better science fiction stories out of Cepheus Engine these days. The aliens here are more mysterious, the space empires more vile, the rebels more heroic, the battles more personal and real, and the whole universe doesn't feel like a "put on" or something fake crafted for audience engagement.

Star Wars is where D&D 5E is these days: a medium curated to deliver a certain, preset, on-rails, audience-pleasing "experience" that only delivers mindless action, flashy CGI powers, fake monsters and robot fights, and more flash than substance. Cepheus Engine feels real, like the player's starship could get blown up by space pirates, and the campaign ends then and there. With Star Wars, I am back in D&D 5E land, with heroes that can never die, and adventures that feel like they're on rails with the ending predetermined.

I am free to tell the stories I want to tell in my GURPS: Cepheus Engine game.

In Star Wars, I feel beholden to outside forces, to tell only stories that creators and a wider audience would approve of hearing. It is a strange feeling, like I couldn't tell a story where "the Empire rises," "they hunt down the Rebels," and "crush them all" in an "Evil Star Wars" campaign of a resurgent Empire. It isn't a story that would go over well with many. Still, as a literary vehicle and tragedy in the genre of Greek parables about how dreams can be corrupted and die, it is a solid moral tale of hope turning into despair and ruin, yet again.

Maybe the galaxy realizes "things were better under the Empire" and the influence of Hutts and space pirates in this new, open, and lawless frontier where the Rebels sit on the dying embers of the Death Star's destruction is not enough to sustain people's hopes and dreams, and that running a galactic government free of corruption and grift is a harder task than hopes and good feelings shall ever sustain. The glow of good feelings fades when it is time to run the tax machine, space police, and military, and to get a million planets to agree on policy, as the criminals rob everyone blind and make their own deals with worlds and consortia.

Eventually, the planets will get sick of the constant theft, corruption, and grift, and they will cry for the Empire to return and for security to be restored across the galaxy. I honestly believe that Star Wars stories using the tired old WW2 metaphors should be banned; they have been done to death, and we are ready for new stories where things are not so simple. Forcing creators to think outside that "lazy narrative box" would be a good thing for the stories they tell there.

This is not to diminish the evil and power of the WW2 metaphors, but they are far too easy for creators to fall back on, the science fiction equivalent of an English teacher putting a red X on the phrase "many people say..." They are overused narratives, crutches that frame things in a tired, overdone, and overused framework. I want writers to move beyond the easy answer for evil and write things that generally disturb and terrify them within this storytelling setting.

In my GURPS: Cepheus game, I can do that. Refugees fleeing a war that a planetary governor turns back since accepting them would strain his planet's resources so hard that his entire government would collapse. In Star Wars? I don't think we ever had a story about refugees fleeing a war or a dying, domed city. Even though "war" is in the title, we never get anything beyond "space WW2 evil R bad."

In a storytelling sense, where meaningful stories can be told, Star Wars is dead.

But it wasn't in my 1990s game. We had amazing stories, just like that one, where the Empire sometimes played a neutral role or even came in to save the day, however reluctantly. They were looking for the same space pirates, too, when a sector fleet hyperspaced in and started blasting the space pirates the players were fighting. The players were the ones who tipped the Empire off, and then that situation played out. The Empire was "helping" in a sense, and the players fled the battle, the pirates too distracted to give chase.

And the Empire could win over territory in my game, and they did, as planets lost faith in the Rebels to hold together a galactic government. The agents of the Empire would walk in, diplomats, causing chaos behind the scenes, and then being the ones to help fix it all. The Rebels hated them, but the fight was real, and neither side was magically guaranteed victory just because "they R good."

Our Star Wars game in the 1990s was one of the best Star Wars games I ever ran, and my players were addicted to this universe since it felt real to them. Like a great OSR game, when it becomes a "dungeon simulation environment," and the world does not care if you live or die, your survival depends on your actions and a little luck, my Star Wars universe had that same OSR mentality.

You make your future and fortune here.

You are not guaranteed power and success, and your character can (and will) die, unlike D&D 5E's curated hero-path experience. Like modern fantasy gaming with too much focus on heroes and the heroic path, I want to forget these fake, MMO-like curations and return to a simulated world where nothing cares if my character lives or dies, and my success is my own to make.

This is the difference between a visual novel with one true path and a game like Minecraft, where you make your own stories from what you are given. I play one and forget, and the other I keep returning to so I can create more.

The universe doesn't care whether one side is seen as good and the other as evil. Those who put in the hard work will get the fruits of their labor. The universe is inherently neutral and a deadly, chaotic, and harsh environment for civilization to live in. Planets are not predetermined to see "rebels R good" and "empire R evil" - they will default to self-interest and survival in a universe burning in war and conflict. Nor will all Imperials act like mustache-twirling villains; some are in there to survive and protect their homes. Some have legitimate, genuine reasons to keep serving. Some areas of the Empire will be "less evil" and will almost seem like good guys, depending on leadership. They will constantly fight the "evil side" of the Empire and seek a middle path in conflict resolution.

It is heresy to even say that, since the ideologues are sharks in the water.

But I am a writer. And writers hold the truth as a core tenet and a reason to live.

If it is true, then it is true, and I am not changing my words to please others.

And there will be a wicked side of the Empire that seeks to corrupt its soul, Sith cults that seek to turn the war into a blood sacrifice. Same with the Rebels, the Hutts will promise resources and free access as long as they ignore their crimes and sins. Do you sell your soul for victory and let the innocent suffer, for the Hutts to sell slaves and drugs, and for corruption to run rampant? Or would you, knowing, lose the fight to a new planet coming to your side since you know it would stain your soul to make that deal?

Again, I can't tell these stories in Star Wars anymore.

I could use GURPS to run a gritty, morally gray Star Wars game, and that would be a great throwback to my 1990s experiences, delivered with punch and style. The holy grail of any generic RPG is to "play Star Wars" with it, and GURPS does it perfectly. Just because one side of the other wears the uniform does not mean they can be trusted; we need to know the person under the clothes first. Where their heart is will determine good or evil. The rebel commander who makes deals with the Hutts and the Imperial Administrator who refuses to let the Sith cults enter his sector and wishes to keep the preservation of civilization as their goal are both strong character archetypes.

And the conflicts these character types create are far better than the stories we get today.

They make me question the jingoistic side-isms that plague Star Wars these days and force people to think of others as people, not as cartoon characters.

I want the true, old-school simulator universe.

I want players to question motivations, not look at clothing.

I want the notion of good and evil to be in what lies in someone's heart. The players need to work a little harder to know what that is. For some of today's games and writers, that is too long a bridge to cross.

I do not want a world where we determine hearts by the labels we attach to either side.

The universe is not that easy a place.

Nor are its conflicts.

GURPS: Mixtape

What am I wading into?

This isn't clickbait.

First up, an interactive movie as a game, there is nothing wrong with that. We see visual novels do this all the time. Mixtape is nothing new.

The game's high review scores? Well, only if you take video game review sites seriously, which I would be surprised if anyone does anymore, given that the majority of them are likely written by AI at this point. For all I know, that string of 10/10 scores could have been one site's AI copying the other. Who knows nowadays?

The game is not my cup of tea, so I am not going out of my way to bash it. There is no point. It sort of is what it is, and I am betting we see more interactive movies in this format. But hiding in this mess is a genre we can pull out for our games, and one of the best genres that many games ignore.

Where I want to go with this is that GURPS is the coming-of-age story, which, to be frank, GURPS does better than any other game out there. You could write a $200 crowd-funded 5E book ($1000 for the premium edition) for coming-of-age stories and still get nowhere near what GURPS brings to the table.

Hands down.

GURPS does these games insanely well, and there is no competition. GURPS slays other games in narrative and character-focused stories and tools. You get it all here. And you can do this with the two corebooks, no extra books needed.

And if teens in my high school can figure GURPS out, 5E players, you can too. Come join the party!

Let's say our story begins with our 18-year-old characters in their last week of high school. All stories start here. If you need inspiration, have an AI write a "teen movie" character background for you, and give it something useful to do besides copy game reviews.

Where you should start is on page B20, with the age modifiers in GURPS. Past fifteen, there are no ability-score changes, so they can be pretty average, 50-point characters, with the Dead Broke, Social Stigma (Minor), and Patron (Parents) choices. Just like the game recommends.

And a whole boat-load of disadvantages to deal with that reflect the difficulties of teenage life. This is where you're going to have the most fun. You may end up getting a bunch of character points from these, but I would not buy skills too high, since you want to reflect inexperience in practical knowledge.

Failed self-control rolls, cliques and rumors, dealing with parents and authorities, and struggles with self-image disadvantages will make your game shine. GURPS was made for this.

They haven't been through college yet, so you are not buying up medicine or any other profession to a post-college level. Sports, social skills, athletics, nerd stuff, gaming, technology, and those typical teen skills are fine within limits.

You may want to buy "teen skills" they will eventually forget, like video game skills and being an expert in Pac-Man. Those character points will likely be forgotten as the character grows older and starts to suck at Pac-Man. But for a teen, these sorts of "forgettable skills" define who they are and are important to that part of life. This also does not create pressure to buy a full set of professional adventurer skills, which may make the character boring when they are in the arcade and need to excel at Street Fighter or Dance Dance Revolution.

The dumber and more specifically silly the skill, the better it will be. Every group needs a character who is extremely proficient at launching spitballs out of a straw. Who knows, you may need that to flip a light switch in a room you need to sneak through, or knock a set of keys off a jailhouse wall. When you are down to your last three spitballs, you will know why you are the master spitballer and the chosen one.

Stupid, dumb, specific, and "why would anyone have that skill" type skills are the best for these sorts of games. The more useless and stupid, the better.

It is extremely easy to create a basic 50-point character for a game like this, and since the game won't likely center on combat, it will be mostly social roleplay, skill rolls, and dealing with those struggles and stupid plans and silly dreams so common in the genre. If there is combat, it will mostly be non-lethal fistfights, karate tournaments, rumbles behind the lunchrooms, and other things that are likely to leave their egos bruised.

Also, act insecure! If you get insulted or lose a fight, take some time to brood and lick your wounds. Struggle with that failure. Deal with being made fun of or embarrassed! This is a solid way to earn a role-playing award and extra CP, instead of acting like an invincible player-character all the time. You don't always want to bull-rush past failure, try and try again, and figure out a way to "win quick" after losing a fight. Wait a while, plot your revenge, and win in the end through a crafty plan and iconic moment.

Remember that scene in American Graffiti where one of the Pharaoh's street gang attached a cable to the back axle of a cop car? That is the sort of revenge you should be plotting. It isn't lethal; it is slapstick fun, with a ring of innocence and pranksterism. A pie to the head quarterback's face in front of everyone at assembly is going to be the best revenge, and you don't need to look through a weapons chart to make it happen.

Think like characters in a typical teen movie.

Give yourself goals and a "bucket list" to accomplish before the week runs out. Reward checking those off with character points! Time should be working against you, and you will need to prep for the prom and graduation during the week, so making skill rolls related to those will have an impact on the final day. Those activities will take time, too, like getting fitted for a suit or dress, class photos, passing the final test you need to graduate, winning the last game of the season, hacking the school computer to change your grades, or whatever else you put in here for school goals and personal ones.

This is stupid fun, as it should be!

It isn't overly violent or filled with death and destruction, but these games don't need to be. Loss and failure in these games will probably hit harder and land closer to home for many, since "not getting the girl" will probably resonate with many a lot more personally than losing your dwarf to a spiked pit trap. The laugh-out-loud moments will also be insanely stupid and fun, and you can even pull from your own life to add to the chaos - or the things you secretly wished you could do back then.

And if you ever get bored with the campaign, or want "somewhere to take this" past graduation, GURPS gives you the tools. Alien invasion? Transported to a fantasy world? Mystery detectives? Invaded by the Russians? Government conspiracy and cover-up of another dimension? Taken to fly starfighters in a space war? Break into a secure government missile system? Taken to Dinosaur Island? A strange but friendly alien is discovered and hunted by the Men in Black? Discover a secret treasure cave filled with pirates? Discover the goth clique is actually vampires?

At this point, I am listing movie and TV plots from the last 40 years, but you get the idea.

Pick up a random GURPS sourcebook, throw the teens into that, and go with it.

When the news is filled with negativity, try to find the rainbow here. Mixtape may be an average, not interesting game for me. This is another victim of overhyping. People will tear this game down for clicks and views. It is unfortunate, but whatever. I can't change the Internet, but I can look for silver linings.

But the genre is worth so much more.

And highlighting the fun we can have with the games we love and the ability to tell our own stories?

Priceless.

Good stuff.

And perfect for GURPS.

GURPS: MegaTraveller

MegaTraveller was the last time that the Traveller universe felt like it mattered to me.

Oh, I know this is going to rile a few, since GURPS: Traveller explicitly retconned and took a shot at the entire MegaTraveller setting, and in-canon, pseudo-erased it from history, and this erasure sort of outlived GURPS Traveller and the retcon became canon in the Traveller timeline. GURPS: Traveller took us back to the good days, past this mistake made in 1987, and back to the late 1970s of the little black books - plus GURPS.

GURPS: Traveller was the best of both games. I love GURPS: Traveller more than I do many versions of Traveller itself, except the original books.

And MegaTraveller never happened.

MegaTraveller marked the beginning of a fall from grace, leading to TNE and, eventually, GDW's bankruptcy. This is where the Traveller game began to lose its way, its identity crisis, and creators searching for what makes a science fiction setting compelling and interesting.

Battletech is popular!

People like Twilight: 2000!

Let's do that!

And what a mistake it was.

But I loved MegaTraveller. I got into this so deeply. This was the first time that Traveller felt real to me; it brought that "immersive universe" home that GURPS: Traveller would later recapture, and it took a black sharpie to a boring, static universe and killed trillions of people and nearly a thousand worlds.

My brother never saw the point in playing this, but I was enthralled by the setting and the active and post-war lore. This was exciting. It gave characters a reason to care. The stories were not "sleepy space trading" and "science missions," but they held real meaning and consequence.

The universe felt alive again.

And it left us with a mess where infinite adventures could happen, and the universe was reset, becoming yours again. We were no longer tied to endless canon, library entries, and that high barrier to entry for getting into this universe. Traveller today has the same problem that Runequest has: you need to know far too much to even get started. The amount of lore and canon you need to absorb makes the setting impossible for new or casual players.

And like Runequest, needing to know so much puts me to sleep, and it makes the Traveller setting feel massive and sleepy itself. There is far too much here to absorb to start playing, and the only way to start playing the game is to ignore 99% of what we have and start a micro-campaign.

But the setting is why we play. Right?

But MegaTraveller was a soft reset that let you remake the universe in your own way. You could take an entire sector, re-roll the world UDPs, and play there. It did not matter anymore. War changed everything. If you played with canon-plus, that was fine, but you could play in an entirely changed universe where every world was random-gen and still be playing in the same universe.

MegaTraveller brought the "shattered universe" model of Battletech to Traveller, but unlike Battletech, there were no cool mechs to stomp around in. The design and combat systems dramatically increased in complexity, so even if you wanted to fight in the starship battles, the system was harder than the original Little Black Book game and took a long time to figure out. The game created a wargame universe and dropped the ball on making it fun and compelling to fight in.

If I were to play in this setting today, I would use GURPS, the Mongoose 2nd Edition rules, or Cepheus.

But why play?

This is a failed experiment, a universally hated setting, and a huge mistake for the game and its lore. There is nothing "to do here" except fight and die for no good reason. This is Star Wars without any fun or cool elements. This is Battletech without mechs. This is punkless Cyberpunk. This is a lousy, brutal, meaningless, space war fought because stupid, callous royals, corporations, and powerbrokers could not get along and share power. There is very little good reason to fight for anything. The problems caused by war are the only thing driving "more war" at this point. This whole thing is a pointless, meaningless, self-sustaining mess I do not want to be involved with.

Huh.

That should sound familiar, and a bit scary.

If you have an appreciation for war stories, Twilight: 2000, and raw, unflinching survival stories, this is a great universe. There is a later sourcebook detailing the downfall of an entire spacefaring civilization, in which worlds with domed cities supporting billions of people are failing due to a breakdown of the universal economy, and people are fleeing for their lives and forced to live in primitive conditions on nearby worlds, often where they are not welcome. Cities on livable worlds are choked with people and refugees from war. Social strife and the breakdown of civilization and technology only get worse as time goes on, as banks fail, consumer goods run out, and food, fuel, and energy become scarce.  Prices for everything are sky-high. 

Technology itself is failing universe-wide.

Entire classes of people live on credit that is slowly running out.

Old starships are pressed into service, and they barely work, falling apart and breaking down before they ever reach their destinations. Dead space fleets full of wrecks are scavenged by pirates, salvage crews, scavengers, and the locals just to find spare parts to sell to survive.

Entire star systems are mined and under active occupation. Planets have been wiped out, their atmospheres destroyed, and cities leveled. Some live as feudal primitives on cut-off worlds. Others have turned to savagery and cannibalism. Planets suffer orbital bombardment and years-long sieges. Occupation forces and allied factional groups are everywhere, some with shifting allegiances. Mercenaries sell their services to both sides, and force people into press-gang units that fight with soldiers little more than slaves.

As communication breaks down, misinformation and lies run rampant. Rumor and underground information networks thrive. Entertainment becomes a black market. The throngs of the poor live in shacks built from scrap as the rich turn their skyscrapers into fortress cities. Armored cars take the VIPs from place to place, as riots on the street grow and local governments crack down with more brutal tactics. Computer and communication networks barely work, and the technology required to maintain them fails. Old-tech, like the radio and newspapers, becomes the way people hear about the news.

Environmental disasters are everywhere as the technology to address them fails, and some are deliberately started as sabotage. Fires burn massive parts of forests. Dams are blown up, and massive areas are flooded. Earthquake damage is never repaired. Pollution from massive war economies clogs smog and rivers with poison. Garbage piles up. Roads deteriorate, and bridges fail. Rail networks are held together by duct tape and prayers. Starports and combination junkyards and salvage yards, with some ships abandoned and being scrapped for spare parts, as they never took off and were left where they sat. Massive shanty towns surround starports, where people beg to be taken off-world, try to find jobs, and scavenge for food.

The frontlines are deadly, dangerous places. Rebel and terror groups sow discord and chaos just to weaken popular support. Local governments turn authoritarian to maintain order. The war economy drags on everyone, prices are insane, war profiteers attend rich parties with royals who couldn't care less, and the poor continue to sacrifice for a victory that seems farther and farther off every year.

The rich care less and less, as long as their war investments pay dividends. Resource shipments become legitimate targets of war, along with factories and starports. Random attacks hit civilian infrastructure at any time. The war seems to spread farther and farther from the front lines as time goes on.

Rarely do we ever get a science-fiction universe like this. Sure, Battletech is close, but you can ignore most of that from your mech cockpit. Here, you need to live in it and face the realities every day.

And the war machines profit, and the class of the rich become more and more detached from a universe they destroyed. Some would even say they are happy with the outcome.

Does that sound familiar?

Yeah, it is today.

Or it soon will be.

MegaTraveller was a game 40 years ahead of its time.

GURPS Basic Fantasy: BF1 Morgansfort

Basic Fantasy is one of the most amazing projects and games ever created. Free for everyone to play, a hybrid OSR game that mixes the best of modern mechanics with old school gaming. And the one part most overlooked is that this game was tested extensively, and the math just works flawlessly. People will play other OSR games and come back to Basic Fantasy just because the math and balance are solid here, and there's no wonkiness or silly stuff that breaks immersion.

And the books are free for all to enjoy.

It is one of the most generous communities in gaming, and the books are printed at cost and sold for zero profit. This isn't some $200 botique OSR game meant for crowdfunding profits; this is a movement to keep gaming free for everyone, forever. I wish more communities were like this one.

And this is one of my favorite systems to convert to GURPS. No offense to the creators, these adventures are amazing in Basic Fantasy and should be played there, too. But as a GURPS adventure engine, Basic Fantasy is a snap to convert adventures into GURPS, the AC values cleanly translate into DR values, and you can even use the HD and hp numbers nearly as-is in a hybrid conversion model.

And the adventures, towns, maps, and worlds are so well put together, they are amazing. There isn't too much detail, but there is just enough to get the mind working. They are the perfect blank canvas to work on, not so blank that they are nothing, but with just enough detail to expand and fill in yourself.

They also feel on the low-fantasy side of the genre, where magic is still rare and special. I could play these almost entirely low fantasy with GURPS, even without magic, and they would work perfectly. I like being able to control how much magic is in a setting, and I have a few setting books that overdo it with the magic to a point where the setting feels unusable.

Converting

BX hit points and damage are very compatible with GURPS, and if an orc has 4hp, let him have that, and he becomes a BX-style mook in GURPS that typically goes down in one hit. I am not looking for everyone to have 10 hit points in GURPS, and 1-2 HD creatures will often have less, but by the time creatures get 6+ HD, they will be tougher in GURPS, almost like boss monsters, and it will all balance out.

If a basilisk has 6 HD in BF, that will be 6d6+12 hit points in GURPS, or about 34 hit points on average. a DR of 5, and ability scores of about 16. Attack skill will be 17, and powers that total 30 character points. I have a B/X conversion page that works pretty well. The only difference is that converted creatures will be a little tougher at higher levels, but if you treat them as boss monsters, they will be fine. Lower-level creatures will go down fast like mooks, but that is fine in the genre, too. GURPS is deadly enough that a 2 hit point goblin with a skill of 12 can kill you pretty quickly on a critical hit with a shortbow.

Mind you, get access to one high-tech firearm, and even that 9 HD dragon with 63 hit points, a skill of 20, and a DR of 9 is going to go down fast. To those with bows and pointy sticks, that dragon will be terrifying and take dozens of men's lives and a few siege weapons to take down, if it is even possible, or the dragon doesn't flee early.

This is a converted reality versus the actual baseline GURPS reality. The world will have that "video game" feeling in places, but this is how the gods decreed the world, so it shall be. GURPS Ultra Lite fills in most of the rest.

My conversion is more "GURPS in a BX reality" than "GURPS in a realistic reality," where GURPS drives the engine of a BX-style world, BX values are imported from standard bestiaries, and the differences between high- and low-HD creatures create a natural balance. There will always be "hero orcs" generated like characters, but the rest are background extras in a Peter Jackson movie, left with their converted HP and HD ratings.

This also saves me a ton of conversion work, while leaving the door open for me to create custom hero monsters with the character creation tools. Oh, and kudos to the GURPS community that does these amazing conversions! If you want to play with "real reality" stats, please visit those sites and creators and support the amazing work they do.

The GURPS Campaign

I would start in Morgansfort, even as just a hired bow guard on the walls, and run a campaign telling his story. Since there is a refugee component to the setting, with new settlers arriving, I would expand the fort by adding wooden houses huddled around the outer walls, and place the newcomers in them.

The castle itself is a bit small for a few hundred people, and putting them gathered around the fort for protection makes sense. There are humanoid attacks, so the fort's defenders would ring a bell and rush everyone inside before slamming the gates shut. This puts pressure on the new workforce outside the walls to be digging an outer defensive moat with pikes, and putting up a temporary wooden wall before a large outer stone wall can be constructed.

There is room for it on the local map, and the cliffs on the water could be left open for now. There could be an argument on how large the outer walls should be, if they should stay 120 yards from the fort, or extend out all the way to the road. The scattered farms would also need to be considered, and they would need to expand dramatically in the near future. We need the wall. The humanoids keep attacking. The refugees are not safe out there. And we need to keep everyone fed and productive while putting every able-bodied person to work.

And that is it.

That is the campaign.

Keep it simple, use the included dungeons as a source of adventure, but leave the main story of the first few months, the building of the wall, and all the struggles around that, along with fending off humanoid attacks and finding their source. Keeping the game simple will ensure its success, and give me room to go any way I want with it. If the players want to train soldiers from the new arrivals, great. Do they want to direct the construction of the wall?

Do they serve as peacekeepers and constables among the new arrivals? Is there tension among the refugees, or between them and the town? Are the workers cutting logs getting attacked? Are the farms being raided while starvation looms? Is there a clan of dwarves in the hills who could help with stone, if they get help (or gold) for their services?

And since this is BX, could the orcs or goblins be negotiated with? Turned against each other? Could you find a good dragon who could scare them off (in trade for a favor)? Or perhaps find fae and get them to help, and not attack those cutting trees down for the town?

Keeping the starting point simple ensures longevity and playability.

It also gives the players the freedom to go in any direction imaginable.

Some may just want to "up and leave this dump."

Others will stay.

Some will head out to learn the secrets of magic.

Others will eventually make this the seat of their new domain.

That is fine by me.

I don't need "the magical stairs" and the "1000-year curse" with the "planar concordium" coming into play here. Some 5E modules go way too hard on the planar, multiversal, and high-magic stuff, and they lose me. I do not need any of it. I want humanistic, relatable, down-to-earth stories of struggle and sacrifice. In 5E, my characters would get so powerful that they would cease to care about Morgansfort. This is 5E's problem: You get so godlike that the world is beneath you. Why would the town ever trust people who get planar bastions at level 5 and are never seen again?

In GURPS, I can have an 800-point character who still cares about this place. That character is still very grounded and real to the world. While they may be around the world on adventures from time to time, this will always be home, and they will never outlevel it.

That keeps me coming back to turn the next page of adventure.

GURPS is Still Home, Urban Fantasy

I am in a few other games, and my blogs reflect my current interests. But I keep coming back to GURPS. This game does not let me down. I will think up a concept in another game, and I have to jump through a dozen hoops just to get to that point. In some games, it is not possible at all. In others, you need to OSR "say it is so," and you won't have rules for what you want to make happen, nor a good way to handle it.

You just guess and keep moving on.

While that is old-school, I like having rules to cover things I wouldn't expect to need to handle. A good example is urban fantasy, which ranges from the overt of Shadowrun to the Covert of Vampire: The Masquerade. Shadowrun was an early GURPS game for us, the first edition we could not figure out, and there were way too many dice to roll, floating target numbers, and we just gave up and converted it all to GURPS.

This was a fun game; admittedly, I ran it much more post-apoc than vanilla Shadowrun, where the megacities were the last bastions of humanity and the wilds were overrun with ruins and monsters. It kept the focus on the cities, and anytime the group had to venture out into the wildlands, it was a paramilitary-style operation. There were semi-secure land routes on major transit corridors, but those were constantly under attack by monsters and strange magic surges.

Vampire, we played it by the rules; the system wasn't too bad, and we knew some LARP groups in college, so it was all cool. Still, if I were to play any Urban Fantasy today, GURPS would be my best bet. There is so much to mix in, and you need a cross-genre game that can pull in elements of fantasy, science fiction, hacking, modern weapons, martial arts, magic of specific traditions, and so many other areas that combine to make the genre work. While the "book powers" are incredible, they are nothing I could not do in GURPS just as easily, and I would have far more options to choose from.

d20 tried to do urban fantasy, but it came off strange. Sort of like, "here are 3.5 modern rules, now, um, do Shadowrun with it." We tried to make this work, but it never felt right. The Urban Arcana setting was interesting, but it felt like off-model Shadowrun. 3.5E Greyhawk was a lot more fun and classic for that system, at least for us.

Again, GURPS does this better, and the only thing that would come close is something like Cities Without Number, with fantasy races shoehorned in there. This would work, but again, it would feel like "off-model Shadowrun" and sort of strange. It would be easy, since I would import BX fantasy races and play, but it would feel a bit pointless. It needs a story and a reason for existing beyond "let's do it."

What GURPS does better is in the unknown. With all of the above, you know what you are getting into. In Vampire, you are getting the classic conflicts and clans. With Shadowrun, you are getting the mutated fantasy races, magic, and monsters. With Urban Arcana, you are getting D&D 3.5E with cyberpunk seasoning.

With GURPS?

I have no clue what I am getting into. I can limit it down to "secret vampires" or open it up to "fantasy races in a modern world." If each of these games exists on a slider bar of "secret world" to "everything in the open," then GURPS does them all. Better yet, the extent of the secret conspiracies and what could be going on in the shadows can be anything.

Some people won't play urban fantasy in GURPS since they have no clue what they are getting into. I love it, but some are more comfortable with predictable things. I critique kitchen-sink fantasy for being too predictable and like comfort food for fantasy gaming. I love it, it is what I grew up with, and I will never stop being a fan. But I have done it for a few decades. There are times when I want to be surprised, like when I started gaming and did not know all the monsters by heart. With Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, Vampire, and many other games, I know them. It feels like walking into a McDonald's and knowing what I am going to order.

Easy? Familiar? Comfortable? Yes.

Unexpected? Risky? Discovery? No.

There has to be a balance between the familiar and the new. I like my orcs and goblins, but I like new things, too. I want to be surprised.

Also, when it comes to Cyberpunk, I want the world to be mine, not knowing all the same mega-corps by heart, and I want to figure them out for myself. Cities Without Number is an excellent resource for GURPS, too, since you can use the random tables in there for any game and just enjoy a randomized, procedural world with surprises around every corner. With vampire clans or werewolf tribes, all I would know is that "they are out there" and nothing about them until I meet them.

Randomize them all, and figure things out when we get there. Yes, if I were playing with others, there is a benefit to having a lot of work done for me. But solo? I need to be surprised, or I will get bored.

I like the unpredictable and new.

No other game does that like GURPS.

GURPS: Old West, Adventure Ideas

Yee-haw! Today, we are rustlin' up adventures and adventure ideas from a few different Western-themed RPGs and converting them all over to GURPS. There is a severe shortage of stock, no high-falutin' magic, none of that supernatural mumbo-jumbo, rough and tumble Western adventures, but there is gold in them thar hills if you know where to look.

So we are looking for Wild West adventures with no magic, and they don't have to be for GURPS. They just need a plot, characters, situations, and an adventure progression. A great campaign starting location is also a massive plus for our adventure cattle drive. We will do all the converting to GURPS ourselves; getting our hands dirty down here on the wagon train isn't anything new to us 3d6 cowboys.

The fact that I started this roundup with the classic Boot Hill meant something. Well, there are five solid adventures for that system, y'all can throw a lasso around and round up for your Old West adventure collections. These also have the advantage of being free from all that hocus-pocus magic and weird west tomfoolery, and they are a straight-shootin, rootin-tootin good time.

Now, Mad Mesa here is a solo adventure! This means you can create yourself a GURPS 4th Edition cowpoke, saddle hand, saloon gal, vagrant, cattle rustler, bank robber, or some other man with no name and run him or her through this adventure all by your lonesome! You can read the entries, make your choices, and perform minimal conversions to make all this work according to GURPS rules.

Heck, rustle up a free copy of GURPS Ultra Lite (GUL) if you wanna create bad guys for your six-gun to blast at! This is right fine for creating NPCs as well, and even vamints like wolves and rattlesnakes can be quickly thrown together using this little book of guidelines. This works seamlessly with the full GURPS rules, and will get you quick stats for any character in this here solo adventure, or any of these other adventures you rustle up.

I hear you saying, Prove it! Alrighty, here's my GUL rattlesnake for ya, using three levels as my base:

• ST: Weak (8 HP, d6/2 damage)
• DX: Agile (12)
• IQ: Dull (8)
• HT: Hardy (14)
• Rattlesnake Skill: 2 levels (+8)
• Rattler Poison: 1 level (+4)

Wut? Reading GUL, that rattler will attack at a -6 for a skill that needs training, so that blasted snake in the grass's base attack will be DX + skill - 6, or doing the math we get: 12 + 8 - 6, or a 14- to-hit. Pretty dangerous! It doesn't do much damage (d6/2 + 2), but the poison is where it gets you.

I used a skill level to give that varmint a special ability for rattler poison, which I am sure you could find in one of the GURPS bestiaries, but I treated it like a skill here for a quick-and-dirty pick. If a creature has a special attack or ability, treat it like a skill and throw a level or two at it. Note: Use a contested roll with the skill level for poison creature HT + skill - 6 versus character HT, which is 14 + 4 - 6 = 12- on a contested roll.

Yes, skills can utilize any ability, and even multiple ones, such as a giant spider with a web attack that has a to-hit based on DX and an entanglement level based on ST. And skill levels can be used to buy creature special abilities, attacks, and defenses. Damage? Use the STR table for the ability, plus levels of skill.

Of course, that snake is dumb as a box of rocks, so you could distract it by tossing a river stone past it and watching it snap at it, and that may give you a chance to bean that scaley viper with a camp shovel. Just remember to skin the thing for meat and its hide; the town trading post may give you a few buffalo nickels for that.

That rattler works with the full GURPS rules, too! And your players will be none the wiser, you are building these with the quick ruleset and not flipping through books to find this critter. This will mean faster play, a still true-to-GURPS experience, and using a supported and official system to guesstimate NPC and creature statistics. Guesstimate is one of those words that those folks from Philly use, and it means to spit in the wind and get a hankerin'.

If yer' not using GURPS Ultra Lite fer' your games, you are doin' a whole lotta work you don't need to be doin. Most NPCs and critters don't need to be designed using a fancy character sheet program, and these rules we got in this one-page game work just fine for 95% of anything you need.

Want more proof? Here's my GUL grizzly bear, and I will use five levels since these are supposed to be very dangerous predators of the wilds:

• ST: Very Strong (18 HP, 3d6 damage)
• DX: Agile (12)
• IQ: Dull (8)
• HT: Hardy (14)
• Grizzly Skill: 2 levels (+8)

Woo doggy! That grizzly attacks on a 12 + 8 - 6 = 14- but does a whalloping 3d6+2 damage per hit.  This is a massive, legendary bear; for normal ones, I could do one less level of ST for 2d6+2 damage and 14 HP, and up the DX by a level.

Wait one second! You designed a rattler and a grizzly using the same GUL design system, and did it in less than a minute? And these work well enough with the main rules; no one knows the difference? That's faster than flipping through a 5E Monster Manual and taking 30 minutes to read a whole stat block! People who say GURPS is too complicated are full of hogwash. Making NPCs and monsters in GURPS is easier than 5E, B/X, or any other game on the market.

In fact, GUL is the key to quickly playing and converting these adventures on the fly, with a minimum of fuss and reference. Yes, if you have the GURPS Bestiary and want to run a full rattlesnake, be my guest, but this works just fine for our needs.

Pardner, I ain't doin' any more work than I have to so I can run these here Old West adventures, nor does having perfect stats matter all that much. Just look over yonder at D&D-land; they keep changing their monster stats every five years for the last fifty.

We got Mad Mesa, The Lost Conquistador Mine, Ballots and Bullets, Burned Bush Wells, and Range War for a complete campaign of adventures to play with GURPS Old West and the 4th Edition rules. You will get a decade of campaign gaming out of these five adventures alone, and they are worth checking out.

Some of these are right excellent campaign starters and home bases in their own right, with Ballots and Bullets featuring a small city as its home base of operations. While you can play through the main adventure, creating linked adventures for an epic campaign set in any one of these adventures would fill out a whole pickle barrel of adventure time for your cowpokes.

BH4 and BH5 are from the third edition Boot Hill, but they are still fine additions to your Wild West adventure library.

If I were looking for adventures and campaign starters, you couldn't get any more classic and good old-fashioned clean fun than these classic Boot Hill adventures. The old game's rules are so simple that they don't take up too much of the book, and you can just drop GURPS right in and make your own stories with one of the best generic universal role-playing games this side of the Rio Grande.

https://www.amazon.com/Definitive-TV-Western-Collection-Television/dp/B003ANP8CO/

Another downright mother lode of adventure ideas is any of these huge DVD collections featuring westerns, cowboy TV shows, and all sorts of rough-ridin' adventures. Sure, you've got to mess with those old-fashioned "movie disc" thingies, and maybe round up one of those movie disc players. If y'all can operate a remote and hook up one of those HDMI cables, you are gonna have a good time.

The quality won't be like a new-fangled 4K masterpiece, since some of these shows are as old as the hills, but all the work is gonna be done for you when you pop in a disc and turn an episode of some random TV show into a GURPS adventure idea.

Those writers from the golden age of Hollywood, creating these "moving pictures," will probably be tickled pink that you are reusing their plots and stories for your "silly dice games." And these TV shows are so old; none of your players are going to know better. Use the GURPS Ultra Lite system and create characters, no good outlaws, and critters from the stock footage included in these films, and you will have some right good gaming.

And if you can't get your hands on this, there are loads of 10 and 25 Western movie collections to get your grubby hands on, and you can score them used or dirt cheap at places like Oldies.com.

https://www.oldies.com/Western-Movies/collection.cfm

What is this? A place you can pick up Western TV shows on DVD for as cheap as $2 per disc? And the Blu-rays are $4 each? I will stop trying to sell you things now, and I won't be getting any money for it. However, deals are available, and there are some amazing collections and affordable discs to own. If you are a fan of the genre, you will love having these to enjoy. 

Additionally, physical media remains a viable option in an age of streaming services, where content can be easily taken away. People have lost entire libraries of films they thought they owned forever.

Popping in a TV show or movie you never saw in your favorite genre is a far better experience than YouTube or random scrolling to find entertainment. Plus, all these do qualify as adventure ideas, NPCs, locations, and scenarios for you to use in your games.

Other western games are hit and miss for adventures, such as the 2d6-based Rider and the Hero System Western Hero (WH). The WH game does have a 44-page section in the back with campaign information, a few scenarios, and adventure seeds, so this is still a worthwhile idea book for creating period adventures using Western tropes. This is not as useful a book as the Boot Hill adventures, which I recommend getting first, but it still has a few good bits in the campaign section, as well as maps of trains, buildings, houses, and other period locations.

Rider has a dozen pages of basic information on adventure creation, along with the familiar act structure. Most of the book is 2d6 rules and careers, so it is not as useful as adventures written for the genre. This is not as helpful for GURPS referees and is more akin to a 2d6 version of the Cepheus Engine, designed for playing Wild West games.

The book is enormous; most of it consists of 2d6 rules, but there are some nice d66 charts for encounters, patrons, and rumors. I wish there were more charts for creating solo adventures, plots, factions, and other Wild West scenario pieces. This one is not as useful, but it is still an interesting game. Western Hero is the better buy.

https://www.amazon.com/National-Geographic-West-Stephen-Hyslop/dp/142621555X

I know I am done selling things, but this is another book in my collection. There are times when beautiful coffee table books, like the one above, inspire me. Just looking at the illustrations, pictures, and reading the stories is worth more than a written adventure, film, TV show, or a game designed to cover the subject, but you need that extra thing to make it feel real to you.

The Old West is more than "playing generic fantasy" and spinning up cowboys to shoot things. It is a love of the genre, the tropes, being a part of a massive sweeping change, and those frontier stories of seeing the last open expanse on Earth being settled. This wasn't just "them 'mericans" doing the settling, either; this was the entire world flooding in as immigrants, the European powers, banks, and the crushing power of the world moving in on a massive land rush for what would become a nation.

But in this grand, sweeping, oil painting of moving West, one you would see on a saloon wall, there are moments for personal stories, struggles to survive, tales of souls fallen to evil, lawmen and those who bring justice, pioneers, settlers, trappers and hunters, wagon trains, cattle drives, saloon gals, railroad workers, share croppers, townsfolk so poor they lived in dirt hovels and sewed clothing out of burlap sacks, farmers, ranchers, investors, schoommarms, cowboys, marshals, bandits, and so many others living a dream in a grand experiment and moment in time that did not last forever, but left its mark on us all.

Playing an Old West game is more than simulating a cowboy movie or screaming yee-haw!

It is about a more profound love of the genre, of this being a uniquely "American fantasy" with legends, myths, stories, giants, gunfights, and a mythology all its own.