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.

Step One

I am still sorting through decades of old games and getting rid of the ones that no longer appeal to me. I tried getting on the 5E train, but the entire market is filled with grift, zero care for play balance, and so many divergent ideas and ways of doing the same thing. It feels like end-stage Windows XP when companies started hacking the operating system to improve it. There was no concept like file, operating system, or driver integrity. People hacked new window managers and system services on the thing, and the company lost control of its platform.

GURPS will likely be my game, but all of 5E lost hard this round of sorting. The system can't do one simple thing without needing a hardcover to support it. The 5E game is as bloated as a set of encyclopedias, and none of the books were written to work with each other well.

The Dungeon Fantasy box set covers more than six shelves of 5E books. Once you add the GURPS core books, you can double that to twelve shelves of 5E books replaced with a few GURPS books that don't even take up a quarter of one shelf. The bloat in 5E books, especially with AI art and text, is approaching a level of obscenity and ridiculousness that feels like creators tossing everything and anything out on Kickstarter and praying for the next payday to strike gold.

Pick up a 5E book and read the text. They take one whole column of bloviating to express one class feature or power. None of the writers appreciates conciseness and brevity. They don't care about your time or ability to understand what they wrote, and it feels like a game written and "paid by the word."

The more you buy for 5E, the worse it gets. Even if you stick with official D&D books, the bloat is still a problem. By the time Wizards "redoes" all the 2014 books, the system will be 15 years old, and talk of the next edition will be coming around soon once the current design team is fired.

The Open 5E implementations, such as Tales of the Valiant and Level Up, are a little better, but they still inherit the same library of bloat and grift. Sticking with ToV and only Kobold Press books is a sound strategy, but this has weak software support, so prepare for a lot of hand-done characters.

There is only one 5E left worth playing, and its name is Shadowdark. This game captures that old-school purist, imagination-capturing, one-book-system design in a wonderfully crafted book. This game has a magic to it that very few games replicate. This is "the 5E" for 2025 and beyond.

For old school gaming? ACKS II does the entire genre better than AD&D, streamlines the system, and makes the entire adventure to domain management game easy. This also goes beyond the OSR and presses the reset button on the genre. The OGL is gone, and everything is new again. This is also highly compatible with GURPS, and is more of a "fantasy sourcebook" for GURPS than many other books in the hobby. This is great by itself or with GURPS.

Pathfinder 2 Remastered is also my jam. This game is more complex than GURPS, but the remastered books have a freshness to them, and the design team went out of their way to reinvent monsters and spells rather than just reskin them. There is a great deal of imagination and design work here, and even if you play GURPS, you can appreciate the design and creativity the team put into this.

There is one thing about all the fantasy games left on my shelf, and this applies to Pathfinder 2, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Swords & Wizardry, ACKS II, and Shadowdark. These are games where the designer tells you what to do. What a fighter is. What a wizard does. Everything is laid out for you, there are very few options, and each class "tells you  how to think."

GURPS is so different.

In GURPS, my bard can specialize up into a full fighter. My thief can morph into a wizard. They retain the abilities they had, and can improve a few more they want. Each character is unique and different. Each story is "designed into" each character.

With any of the "leveled fantasy games" you do not get this freedom. Some, like Pathfinder 2, give you ways to mix and match powers and "cross spec" but it isn't the truth and freedom GURPS gives us.

Sometimes it is nice to have "things done for you."

But most of the time, I find my imagination to be much greater than the imaginations of any of the designers of these games, or the games they are trying to emulate. When I want my character to be mine, it is GURPS, and only GURPS.

GURPS in 2025

I am starting a few new GURPS campaigns in 2025, but the end half of 2024 has been tough. Right now, I am cleaning out 40 years of games and putting things in storage. I will unbox a game, put it on a shelf, see if it interests me, and then box it up and realize I don't have time for it or I have better.

Some never go away and never get boxed up. GURPS is one of them.

OSRIC and first-edition dungeon gaming are another. The entire D&D concept has been warped into an unrecognizable state today. This isn't even the same game I remember. When I go back to basics, this is where my inspiration and truth lie.

There is one fork of modern D&D that I like. It started in D&D 4th Edition for us, with the "tabletop dungeon board game" playing a central role in the game. This fork started in D&D 3.5E, went to D&D 4E, and today, it lives on in Pathfinder 2E. The whole "figures, dungeon tiles, and d20 gaming" only exists in that form here, and to be honest, the genre is very close to GURPS' hex-based adventuring.

Pathfinder 2E is a sister game to GURPS. It has pre-chewed character options and adopts polyhedral dice as randomizers. If you want it "on the table" and like that tactical hit, play GURPS or Pathfinder 2E and forget everything else exists.

Everything I like about gaming is lost when you go to the rules-light or theater of the mind games.

Also, a lot has been "done for me" in a game like Pathfinder 2E, and I can spend weeks converting it to GURPS with time I don't have or just open this and play for a while, exploring what the designers did with the game. They have good ideas and fresh takes here, improving the characters I build in GURPS since I have external inputs and things to reflect upon.

GURPS, for me, with the fantasy genre? I am still reflecting on what I like about it. There is a "thing" there, a place I want to be; I just haven't found it yet. I don't want to simulate kitchen-sink fantasy, nor do I want to convert endless spells and monster lists. GURPS can do much more than emulate; it can create something new. If I play GURPS in the fantasy genre, I want magic to be strange and mysterious, something that reflects the person. I want monsters to be myth-like representations of human weaknesses and sins. GURPS tells those stories much better than it does, emulating other games.

At least for me.

I am also playing the excellent American Truck Simulator (ATS) on my PC over the holidays and reflecting on how stupid the "Traveller cargo model" is. Science fiction RPGs have been stuck with this 16th-century "the captain buys the cargo and sells it somewhere else" model of merchant campaigning, and compared to ATS, it makes the entire "space game cargo model" seem stupid.

In ATS, you aren't randomly buying air conditioner units in one town and taking them to another, praying somebody wants them. No, a company is hiring you to haul them and get them from place A to place B intact because they need these units there, and they need them there now. You can see why when you drop these cargoes off at job sites, factories, food processing plants, truck dealerships, and every other location in ATS.

You are a part of a larger economy.

And all the while, you are dealing with the little things that could mess this up: fuel, sleep, idiot drivers, produce inspection stations, weigh stations, local laws, what lanes trucks can drive in, and how fast, hazardous cargoes and getting certified to haul them, trailer types, jobs that are just not available, or there are too many good ones, and you need to pick and choose your destination, repairs. You learn the terrain and the skills required to get across it safely. You know all the things truck stops and garages do and need to keep this truck running well.

Even using mirrors, lights, and turn signals is essential knowledge.

And you get to run a company with drivers, and you need to manage garages and trucks.

If you are into space gaming, and your merchant campaigns fall flat because they fall into the "roll cargo, fly somewhere, and sell," play this game to the point where you buy a truck and learn the game. Learn how to back up. Learn how to repair your vehicle. Learn when to gas up and rest. Obey the rules for weight stations and produce inspection stations. Learn the laws and read the signs. Learn how to navigate.

You could "work" for just a company in this game, take their loads, and learn how it feels to be a company hauler. In a space game, if a company is terraforming a world, that is an almost insane amount of cargo, machinery, construction equipment, habitation pods, and other "stuff" that isn't made locally in that target world. And terraforming operations can last hundreds of years, and the "flavor" of the cargo will change over time.

You could just play that as a part of a single campaign and get to know the drop-off points, who lives there, the local space militia and law enforcement, what problems they have, what they need, the company managers on-site, and you will build this world in your mind as you haul there.

Many of today's science fiction games have this "hop around" mentality where "new backdrops are fun!" While ATS has "varied backdrops" in the places you go, it focuses on more than one part of that experience, changing how I think about science fiction gaming.

Just replace the trucks with starships, and you have an excellent science-fiction game.

GURPS would do this type of game exceptionally well, and you don't need Star Trek or Star Wars to support it. Fantasy, for me, is the same way. I don't want D&D to prop up my GURPS Fantasy game. I want to find something GURPS can simulate well, without emulating anything, and focus the experience on that.

GURPS also has "fine-grained" skills, and I will need a crew to cover what I don't know but need. GURPS Ultra-Lite can fill those NPCs just fine, and I don't need to spend days creating a crew. Are we hauling hazardous materials? Let's hire a hazmat specialist for this trip only. Do we know any, and are they on-planet? Would hiring them as a permanent position make sense, since we haul these high-paying loads often?

Let's do the math.

For me, this is where GURPS shines. I get a world model and concept built in my head, like, "What if ATS was a space trucker game?" GURPS makes that dream come alive. However, the idea for the game comes from the outside and doesn't originate in emulating other games. The entire ATS concept "in space" is mind-expanding and strong, especially diving into the level of detail this game forces you to think about.

To me, the kitchen sink fantasy is like the Traveller cargo-hauling model. We assume "it works there" so "we can port it in" without looking elsewhere and asking, "Can't we do better?" ATS has forever changed my mind on merchant campaigns and cargo hauling. Better models exist that can tell better stories. Recycling other games is not how we find them.

I want to find that in the fantasy genre, which must come from outside of "fantasy roleplaying."

The Strengths of GURPS

GURPS is like 5E in that the characters are the strongest part of the game. You could argue that 5E is "GURPS in slow motion" since you are building a character of equal complexity, slowly, over 20 levels. Your choices in 5E are severely limited by the designers, first in class, and second in subclass, and you can only break that cycle through multiclassing. Still, even with multiclassing, you only get 5-10% the design flexibility of GURPS.

And also, in 5E, you pay a lot of money for each option. Playing 5E is expensive, and your design options are sold to you a few per book. If a sixty-dollar book has six new subclass options, and the rest is setting  info and adventures, that is ten dollars per option.

In GURPS, everything comes with the core books. All options. All powers.

In theory. Specialized books for designing powers and magic spells exist, but those give you more. You can theoretically design any power or spell you would need with the core books only, so the expansion books just exist to save you time and provide ideas.

If you are missing a 5E book with options you want, you are out of luck.

In GURPS, it is not really a problem. It may be a little more work and research, but you are not being limited by not having one of the expansions.

You are not slowly paying extra for years. This is the D&D and Pathfinder design model, and it has been costing gamers a ton of money since Wizards took over D&D for nearly 25 years. Yes, you can play with the core books only, but if you want options those books don't give you, you are going to pay a lot of money.

Again, you will eventually get a game with as many options as GURPS, but it will take you 15 years and a few thousand dollars. I have that with Pathfinder 1e, finally.

There is probably a story of someone who has only bought the core two GURPS books in 2020, versus someone who went through D&D 3, 3.5E, D&D 4E, Pathfinder 1e, D&D 5E, Pathfinder 2, and now D&D 5.5E. That person would likely be me (except for 5.5E, which I will never buy into), and I feel stupid for getting strung along so long. Yes, I enjoyed the books and had fun, and that is what matters, but five versions in 25 years means a new library of books every five years. I feel I need to constantly replace my D&D books, and any version of the game breaks quickly.

Versus one library, 2-3 shelves, of GURPS books that keep their value much better.

Another strength of GURPS is its combat. This combat system has held its own since GURPS 1.0, and it really has not changed all that much. Skill has meaning, and fighting a skilled opponent is hard. Your choices matter, and you can use skill to make huge bets - for huge payoffs. You can also take that "arrow to the knee" and start a chain of events where you will never be able to jump that chasm you easily jumped on the way in, and you slowly realize the fact you are not getting out of this dungeon alive.

From a single knee wound. In 5E? Short rest, and it magically heals. And there are no rules for a limb being wounded, so it does not matter anyway, and if a referee pulled this in 5E, the players would accuse the referee of being "unfair" and "breaking the rules." D&D is a videogame. The pen-and-paper mobile game MMO they wanted 4E to be. Death means nothing. Just respawn back at your bastion.

In the OSR, you make a ruling. It takes an imaginative referee to decide a wound that took away 25% of your hit points is that "knee wound" and what that does in regard to jumping that chasm. Maybe you rolled a hit location, in most cases you didn't. There is a lot of "just say" in the OSR, and that requires a bit of skill and experience in refereeing. It also requires a level of maturity from players to accept that ruling and ""go with it." Otherwise, the OSR is like 5E, and many referees just treat characters as a bag of hit points.

In GURPS, it is what it is. It happened. Maybe the hit location was random, and that is where the arrow landed. Maybe your character's legs were lightly armored. These were all choices you made, or things that happened due to the game. There is no "just say" here in regards to combat, but there could be if you play theater-of-the-mind. Still, there is always a way to determine hit location and what happens next.

The immersion in GURPS happens through discovery and realization you may have pushed your luck just a little too far, and now you are fighting a battle of how to get out of there alive. You can still make those OSR "rulings" in GURPS, but a lot of the game makes those for you where you need them. The guesswork and "making stuff up just because" is gone, and the game is easier to run.

Everything in GURPS is "zoomed in" a level, and it is sort of like Rolemaster's level of detail, but more physics-based and logical. When you defeat one foe, you feel a sense of accomplishment. The combat was likely gritty and real-feeling. The threat to your character was real, one lucky hit is all it takes. This is also why most OSR and 5E modules don't convert well into GURPS, there are way too many enemies in those adventures.

Take a module like Keep on the Borderlands, and it is happy to have 20-40 monsters in a room, and many rooms have 6-10 monsters. Some of these combats would take forever in GURPS played in-detail, unless a lot of GM fiat and simplification were used.

Even a game like Savage Worlds will simplify foes into "groups of enemies" and handle them as one. You see a few methods of handling large combats in several games, from D&D 4E's minions, to grouping foes, to keeping hit points low. My B/X mod uses original "hit points as rolled" from B/X, which could lead to goblins having 3 hit points in GURPS. And that is fine! One hit will take the goblin down, which makes the monster like a minion in D&D 4E, and in a dramatic and cinematic sense, that works in the style of game I am running.

For most of these group monsters, I will use GURPS Ultra Lite. Give the monster hit points, an attack skill, an acceptable parry/dodge number, a speed, and an armor value - and you do not need a bestiary or monster manual for any of them. If you want tough orcs, give them a higher STR and more hit points. Roll hit points for every monster, since they may enter the adventure in various states of wounds, health, and recovery, it is not an easy life being a monster.

Most monsters can be converted from B/X sources, once you know GURPS after a few combats. this isn't 5E, where first-level balance is a lot different than tenth-level balance. Numeric balance in GURPS stays relatively similar, which makes conversions a lot easier, and this is also why I really dislike the scaled damages and hit points of D&D 3.0 and beyond. The original White Box, First Edition, B/X, and BECMI hit points and ACs were just fine - and convert easier into GURPS as a result.

Not treating monsters as characters speeds up play, and also keeps the characters as the center focus of the game. The more you focus and play to the strengths of GURPS, the better your game will be. If monsters bog down your game and you find yourself slogging through them and your game feels slow - simplify them!

Focus on the game's strengths: the characters and the combat (if combat is a huge part of your game), and everything else can be simplified to just a few important numbers. You don't need to "port in" everything either, if you are doing a GURPS Car Wars or Star Frontiers, and find the original game's vehicle and ship combat rules work fine, use them! You can always make all skill rolls in GURPS and guesstimate modifiers.

Characters and having the control and design of exactly what you want is the core part of GURPS. This is the part of the game that returns the greatest satisfaction and enjoyment. Seeing how the design interacts with combat and the world is why you put the time into these designs.

Everything else is secondary. If you find something dragging down your game and leading you into endless conversion projects - stop, simplify, toss out, and borrow systems that work better.

GURPS and the OSR

I read a few comments about a few GURPS players who left for the OSR, and I can understand why. Yes, you don't get the fantastic character designs and total control that I love in GURPS. The combats are bland in d20 systems, and GURPS combat is much more tactical and satisfying. GURPS is learning once and running anything.

The OSR, the other hand, is a treasure trove for those who prioritize classic adventures over intricate character designs. It offers a class and level system that point-design games don't. However, this comes at the cost of limited choices, a less robust skill system, and the absence of advantage and disadvantage systems. Character customization is also more restricted.

The games are the way they are to facilitate group play at a table more than a simulation. Having classes makes creating a character and fitting in a party role easy, whereas, in GURPS, you can get a table full of random and unique character concepts with no role to fit into a party structure. Unless you pre-plan the party and pick roles beforehand, of course. Still, an OSR game is faster to pick up and play, providing a sense of reassurance and confidence in your ability to enjoy the game.

Many OSR games are unique prepackaged experiences: one book, one game, and infinite fun. Some are highly random, like Dungeon Crawl Classics. Others are throwback games to a particular time or version, such as Swords & Wizardry or OSRIC. Recreating all the tables, chaos, options, spells, and monsters in these games is a tremendous amount of work, and it is easier just to play the game as-is to experience what it has to offer. Unless you have a conversion system, like my Basic Fantasy mod for GURPS.

Still, there is fun in just turning off my desire to point-design everything and playing a party-based game with clear character roles. I don't mind "plugging into" an OSR game for a while; it is like playing a console game to change things up and experience something new. Games where I can run a character on a 3x5" index card are fantastic.

Part of me wishes GURPS was as plug-and-play as an OSR game, where the character choices were simple, the skill system did not have a few hundred choices, and what you had to write down and choose were a small number of easy options. You can do this through templating, but the framework behind the scenes is still heavy unless you just used GURPS Lite, which is 100% possible.

Most of my GURPS gaming never goes beyond GURPS Lite, and that framework can drive most games. Even Ultra Lite is a fantastic set of rules for NPCs and quick encounters, and you often only need a little more detail. A giant spider? Give it an "entangle and web skill" and use opposed rolls to avoid the effects.

This is also why I like Dungeon Fantasy. It is nice to have a self-contained game focused on one genre, something I can pick up and not be distracted with "other stuff," and I can have a focused experience in the books. I am not dealing with laser pistols or superheroes in the core GURPS book; this is just fantasy. My mind can focus on that, and the book immerses me from cover to cover.

The huge failing of Dungeon Fantasy is that it goes straight for the superhero fantasy experience with 250-point characters, cutting out the entire zero-to-hero run. That zero-to-hero experience is a part of the fantasy genre, as are the fantasy superheroes! That "growing into a character" and "learning the rules through growth" keeps the OSR games compelling. Dungeon Fantasy is very difficult for a newcomer since the 250-point characters are complex, and nearly a full page of GURPS skills and rules to learn on that character sheet.

The Delvers to Grow books are excellent patches for that problem, but they are third-party books fixing a problem the base game has. Still, not only do you have to learn GURPS, but you also need to learn 250-point characters. Then, you can go back and do these starter templates and finally enjoy that experience. This was my experience with Dungeon Fantasy, and it felt the same as being handed a 15th-level character sheet in 5E and told to learn that first before being able to start a 1st-level character.

Part of my frustration with the "kitchen sink" fantasy in GURPS is that it is way more complicated than it should be. What should be a genre where you get a 50-point noob and go turns into a massive project of learning the rules, endless conversions, choices on top of more choices, and becoming a "fan total conversion project" rather than something where you can pick up a book and play.

In a way, the core GURPS books are more accessible for the zero-to-hero fantasy genre than the Dungeon Fantasy game, which feels like the advanced version of the rules for expert players only. In some ways, Dungeon Fantasy is like a GURPS mod for the genre, and while it strips away the parts of the game you don't need, you get a lot of stuff, and it feels like Dungeon Fantasy is a solution that is a part of the problem.

My ideal version of "Fantasy GURPS" would be more the base GURPS core book but focused on the fantasy genre. But that is Dungeon Fantasy?! Yes and no. The core GURPS game standardized starting levels at 50, 100, 150, 200, 250, etc. When players pick an archetype role, such as "fighter," they get the 50-point template, a disadvantage or two, and they get playing. You could offer higher starting point packages for each role if players want more at the start. The book would have every rule needed to play, including combat.

Even the premade character sheets could be pre-filled in at each starting package deal. Print it out, pick or roll disadvantages, and you are playing. A new player does not need to open the book to sort through lists of choices. They should not. Hand them one character sheet and play.

Yes, I can do all this myself with what I have. But that is not the goal. I would love a GURPS book with the utility and ease of use as an OSR game. Even to the point of standardizing combat around GURPS Lite and making most of the combat rules optional advanced rules. The complexity and design of GURPS are not the problem, and mastering GURPS is a lot easier than mastering 5E.

The game needs to be focused, present experiences that players expect to see, and offer enough options to make it feel right.

It is an accessibility issue, and OSR games do that very well.

Please Let Me Design the Character I Want

In my recent gaming adventures, I've delved into the world of Tales of the Valiant, a new 5E game by Kobold Press. It's a compelling alternative for those who may not be fans of Wizards. However, the electronic character sheets in Hero Lab, while functional, seem to have been left in a state of limbo, with no new updates or content for months. I have not been able to buy anything for the designer since it came out (remember this point).

I still like ToV for the "clean room" 5E it is, and it lacks the barrage and drama of D&D 2024/5. It is a good system if you are stuck using 5E.

I am also comparing it to Pathfinder 1e, the classic 3.5 system that refuses to die for me. Pathfinder 1e is my peak, all time best, d20 fantasy game. Having a complete set of books for this makes it hard to play this "D&D style sword & sorcery" with GURPS, so I use GURPS for dark fantasy, gritty fantasy, and other fantasy genres. Pathfinder 1e has never been topped, and I know how broken this game is. Like GURPS, it has exploits up the wall, and we house rule and disallow the obviously broken parts.

So, why bring these two up?

I can design fantastic characters in Pathfinder 1e with the Classic Hero Lab. I did a dual-wielding, short-whip plus short sword drow cleric who wears leather armor. She came out great, so I said, hey, let's try to design her in 5E!

No, please, no, don't.

The 3.5 rules have a relatively open feat list, which allows you to give clerics a two-weapon fighting feat and even weapon finesse to reduce her penalties to a +0 on each hand, so she is doing a d4 and d6 attack every turn with a DEX of 15. All she needs is combat casting, and she is complete. Though I could replace her weapon finesse feat with that, give her a -2 in each hand, and improve her combat casting. At low levels, I will cast spells out of combat and stick to hitting as much as possible until I get that feat when the spells get good.

But designing her in 5E? The designers know better than you. Trying to get a cleric proficient in martial weapons is hard enough, and dual-wielding is out of the question. I was trying to design her with my tools and ran into these "not in our design" roadblocks at every turn.

The trouble is, she is a valid character archetype! I could see a drow cleric like that in my world, using her whip to pull enemies toward her for a quick stab with the short sword. The problem is that most 5E designers can't, and they don't allow you to design anything remotely creative or fun. Between 2024 D&D and today's versions of the game, your options and creativity have gone down to what the designers allow you to do and nothing more.

In ToV, I am the classic D&D plate priest or the cloth-wearing World of Warcraft priest.

She is boring and, in some games, limited to blunt weapons only.

Again, the West Coast "big tech" design philosophy of D&D and these other d20 games comes up, and I feel I am playing a mobile game that won't let me do this with one type of currency and not something else with another. The shell game of 5E involves the designers laying out a maze of options for every character build, forcing players to go to Internet forums to find the best one. Eventually, the really broken stuff gets errata, and the best stuff is the new balance baseline for the next monster book. Everyone else "doing their own thing" gets left behind and seen as amateurs.

More often than not, the designer of a 5E game tells you what you can't do rather than what you can.

Pathfinder 1e, though my all-time great, still needs to catch up in many places, and I had to pay a lot of money for books and Hero Lab expansions (remember what I said?) to get any level of flexibility. This is another pillar of West Coast design theory, taking away as many options as possible in the base game and forcing players to pay to get them back, one at a time.

You can design your dream character once you give the company and its partners a few thousand dollars. This also puts the "sunk cost" strategy in play, where the whales will be vocal about "defending their investment" online, and you get these vocal advocates on social media who have the incentive to turn the hobby into a combat sport to justify all the money they wasted on a West Coast design.

I am being sarcastic and cynical here, and that scent of vinegar is in my words since I am cleaning my coffee maker today, but all this is true. I spent a few thousand dollars on Pathfinder 1e over the years, and I only now have the flexibility I have with the eighty-dollar Dungeon Fantasy boxed set.

I created her in Pathfinder 1e; the flexibility comes within 10% of GURPS. Pathfinder 1e has a lot of options, and I can build a wide variety of character types, but GURPS just blows any of these "dungeon crawl" games out of the water in terms of character design.

Very little here tells me what I can't do.

90% of GURPS is options telling me what I can do.

If it doesn't exist, I can design and have it myself. In West Coast games, I pay for a few options at a time and hope I get what I want someday. In GURPS, I have the full power of the game designer.

I can design her in GURPS easily, and better than even Pathfinder 1e with a bunch of custom spells she can use in her unique fighting style. Is she "system optimal" in GURPS? No, there are clearly better combat builds than hers, but her distinctive style of whip-and-short-sword is a fun, classic drow, evil-fighting style I can see enhanced by her dark cleric magics that I can give her in Dungeon Fantasy.

In Pathfinder 1e, I don't have many "combat enhancement" spells as a cleric, whereas, in GURPS, I can make a bunch of new whip and short sword spells if I don't have them.

The only thing West Coast games have over GURPS is ease of use. I can pop in and play with Pathfinder 1e, though character design takes just as long with as many books as I have. Still, when I play, there are many tables and random charts to make playing the game easy, along with giant lists of monsters and treasures. I have samples of NPCs created. All the spells are there. The magic items are plentiful. Everything is done for me. Though 90% of it I will never use, it is there.

When you boil it down, lists are just worthless lists.

The character is the heart of the game.

And if a game limits my character, it limits my fun.

Genre and the Centralization of Character

What is a genre? Does character serve genre? Or is it the other way around?

GURPS takes a unique approach, placing the character at the core of the game. Everything in GURPS, including the genre itself, revolves around the character sheet. The core of GURPS is character creation, which is the game's heart.

But aren't other games centered around character creation? Not really. I like GURPS because of the moment when the movie is blurry and the director focuses the lens on the main character in the film—the character. GURPS gives this "deep focus" where the hero is the most important element of the game. Experience, genre, and even the rules of "life" serve the central character concept.

Some games that use a generic-style character creation system tightly tie themselves to the genre and game world. Examples include Runequest, Traveller, and other games that tightly tie the experience to a setting.

GURPS's design has an almost "old school Hollywood" feel. The player is an actor taking a role, and the character on the sheet is the role being played. It doesn't matter if James Earl Jones is playing an evil sorcerer in Conan or a government official in a Tom Clancy movie; he is the player and brings everything he can to each role he takes on. Those two characters are so different, showing the actor's grasp of the role, character, depth, and range of this actor's profession.

Contrast this with modern games, which assume "you are the character" and the rules never allow you to live beyond yourself. Or they enable you to cosplay an internal identity, but it still is you under that face paint and foam rubber facade.

There is a massive difference between costume and make-up, who the character is on the inside, and their life experiences. Many players will say, "A dwarf is someone with a Scottish accent," and stop there. There isn't a life experience; you aren't acting; it is just a silly voice.

In GURPS, the character sheet is the "actor's notes" on who this person is. A part of the experience is living "outside the genre," and the character and how that character is played define the role and go beyond genre. An actor brings so much more to a role than a face and a voice, but the character the actor plays is also "not the actor."

In GURPS, I give myself a kleptomaniac or greedy disadvantage. I may not have a greedy or thieving bone in my body, but as an actor, I need to figure that out and use my life experiences to make this "role" come alive at the table.

That dwarf in GURPS will have a list of advantages and disadvantages outside of that silly accent. He may feel guilt over a loss in his past life. He may hold a grudge. He may have dreams. He likely has deep flaws.

Another troubling part about today's games is that they "sell a life experience" as the game. Life experiences happen outside the game, and they are what you bring to it to enjoy the game better. You end up playing every game with yourself as a character actor, playing yourself. You don't have range; if someone hands you a character sheet with something outside your life experience, you can't play that character.

Even if a game is about a list or a subsystem experience, you still need to bring your "acting chops" to a table and not let the game - or even your own self - define the character you play. That character sheet is the heart of the game; in GURPS, this focus is built into the game.

It's interesting how some games prioritize different elements over the character, like most generic fantasy games, many sci-fi genres, and even some modern Euro-style fantasy games. In these games, the 'lists' they provide are the core experience, and the collection of things 'is' the experience. D&D has embraced this approach, with licensed IPs taking precedence over generic fantasy elements. Mind flayers, beholders, and copyrighted content are featured as the 'bad guys' rather than generic villains like dragons or evil sorcerers. This caters to the players' preferences, but it's important to note that not all list games' are 'generic fantasy.'

This also covers Star Wars, Star Trek, and other sci-fi games that feel more like the 'list' of licensed IP gets put before the character. You play those games to experience the genre simulation. Understanding this variety of game elements can make you a more knowledgeable RPG player or designer. Many GURPS games fail since referees need to convert everything to have a complete experience.

Some games are such vast lists of stuff that it would take decades to convert them all over. Yes, you do not need to convert for a great experience, but there is still that feeling that a phonebook's content needs to be converted to have "all the options."

A mechanical system is built and placed before the characters in some games. In a game like Forbidden Lands, this fantastic "world generation engine" is mixed with preset encounters in the book, creating a dynamic game experience. The characters are the impetus of action and change, but the character sheet is not the "center of the world." You can still bring your "acting gravitas" to a game like this, but the natural appeal of the game is experiencing the "random systems" inside of it and seeing what world it creates for you.

These games aren't bad or wrong; they are just different. Games like The Walking Dead or Twilight: 2000 are incredibly fun, like a hybrid role-playing wargame and board game. They are the closest we can get to having a video game of the experience, and they give us resource subsystems and abstracted mechanics and deliver a more extensive simulation than "just a character."

You can play Twilight: 2000 with GURPS, sure. But the game delivers so much more than just one character. Again, this is a focus thing. Are we more focused on a character or the entire event around them? For some, playing through the whole event without the "character as focus" delivers the experience they want.

We can also borrow these generation systems and play the game using GURPS rules. This works as long as you can define where one game stops and the other begins. You still lose something, but you gain what you like about GURPS.

But there are times when I want my experience to center on that character and how I bring them alive with my ability to translate what is on that sheet, through my life experiences, to a character in the game who is not me.

Most of what is in GURPS, the advantage and disadvantage lists, are things outside my experience, the "not me" things I need to translate to make a character come alive.

This is why when I play a genre with GURPS, I focus more on the character than a generic list of stuff I need to convert over. I drill down on a character; the world and "junk in it" are secondary. I have books with stuff in them that I can use, and all the GURPS sourcebooks provide 90% of what I need. Most of the other 10% is something reskinned and "flavored" as something else. Converting things becomes an impediment to the fun of the game and also does not play into the strength of the system.

GURPS is a system that puts a character sheet first in an infinite plane of blank hexes. How those hexes appear, what is in them, and how you interact with them is the lens that genre and worldbuilding create.

But the character sheet is the pivot point in which everything else revolves.

Basic Roleplaying vs. GURPS: Disadvantages

One thing Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying could do better, compared to GURPS, is character disadvantages. They have a "character failings" system regarding superpowers to increase the "point budget" to buy superpowers. Still, these need to be integrated into the main game as a system that nets extra character or skill points.

You could make a house rule saying the points in character failings can be applied as ability score points or give 5% per point in skills since a 5% bonus in a sharpness spell would cost a point in an item (times five for always on). Still, this is a hack and invites min-maxing.

Played as-is, BRP does not have a character advantage or disadvantage system, and the characters come off as ability scores and skill lists. If you have a disadvantage, it is roleplaying only, and you note it as a part of your character background.

BRP has a "passion" system that can be a double-sided trait (BRP p214). It forces "self-control" roles and acts as a positive inspiration system in certain situations. This is the best way to handle these in the system, though these are more mental and social traits than physical ones. The passion system in BRP is like a skill and can improve over time (or decrease to 0% and be removed from the character). It can be gained at any time through situations and role-playing.

If a character sees a village destroyed by necromancy and has an extreme reaction, that character could get "Hate: Necromancy" as a passion at 60%, and that will guide the character's actions, improve or weaken, and be a part of that character going forward.

Passions are also how devotion to a deity and a paladin's code of honor work in the game. To go against it, you need to fail the roll (and this may force a check later to lower the passion by 1d6%). But passions can be rolled like a skill to gain temporary inspiration for an action or scene, so they work both ways.

GURPS does a better job with character disadvantages across the board; they cover more situations (social, mental, and physical), and the disadvantages can be added to templates. There is more "English" when creating a minor disadvantage versus a quirk or a full-blown major disadvantage.

One issue that GURPS does not cover is temporary disadvantages that can change during play. The system in BRP is more suited for this since the percentage values constantly change. Passions can go away or become more severe over time. You can always "buy off" a GURPS disadvantage, but the system in BRP is more "gamified" and serves as a roleplaying hook (that can be used for temporary advantages as well).

The passion system in BRP was not built to factor in physical limitations or concepts like corruption. These are more role-playing backgrounds or things for which you need to create new systems.

And I am not house ruling these or creating a system to work them in. These are well-understood and translate to any game without teaching people new rules or explaining lists of house rulings. They can be used in adventures, templates, and character designs without a problem.

One of the annoying parts of the GURPS disadvantage system comes with Dungeon Fantasy characters, where that system forces me to take bucketloads of disadvantages that almost seem like character stereotypes. I will end up with these 250-point characters with 50-75 points of disadvantages (or even 125), and the characters feel heavily weighted down with baggage (I hate to call it that, but it is). Playing a character with five 12-minus self-control roles feels like a chore, and some overlap, like charitable versus compulsive generosity and honorable versus some of the codes of conduct (and even selfless).

I prefer my GURPS characters to have fewer disadvantages, like the one or two defining negative traits, which are no more than 30 points. Players should be worrying about those one or two weaknesses and not something that looks like a skill list packed with disadvantages. This adds to the already complex Dungeon Fantasy character templates, and I get the feeling DF was designed for GURPS experts and not the target audience of "players coming from D&D," as the game would be better suited to serve.

Dungeon Fantasy is a fantastic game, but it misses the target of being a system you can use to convert D&D players to GURPS. The 250-point templates are capable but more meant for experienced players. Ideally, the system should give you class abilities in 50-point increments, and you should start at 50 points, with your first milestone happening after your first adventure and getting you to 100 points. Disadvantages should be limited to 25 points at the start.

A 250-point character with 30 spells is a lot to learn and understand if you are new to GURPS. By contrast, a beginning caster in BRP has 4 or 6 spells (normal and heroic power levels), which come from skill points (starting at INT x 1% and improved by spending points). Also, a BRP character with a collection of 3-18 ability scores and a list of percentage skills is much easier for new players to pick up and learn than a 250-point GURPS character. Players can get into BRP games like Call of Cthulhu much faster than they can GURPS.

GURPS does a better job here, as these rules are built into character design. I like GURPS's freedom in defining a character's "roleplaying characteristics."

BRP is a more straightforward game, with a softer system that is either listed in a character's background (not pointed) or vectored out using the passions system. BRP is also meant to "bolt on" optional rules and modules more than GURPS,

GURPS Compared to...

There are only a few old-school games I compare GURPS to. I would not compare this to 5E since 5E is less of a role-playing game and more of a tabletop MMO. This started with 4E, and you see it today with the lists of "best and worst classes in the 2024 PHB." MMO culture has taken over 5E, and it is in its "peak World of Warcraft" phase where "you play the game because your co-workers do." You don't like it or would stick with it; it is just the "hot thing" to do to be active in social circles. Most of the YouTube content I see for 5E isn't story or lore; it is all MMO theory-crafting.

GURPS doesn't compete with 5E. They're games, but the reasons for playing GURPS differ entirely. GURPS is a platform for creativity, character building, power crafting, and world creation. GURPS's focus on realism and simulation sets it apart, which can truly immerse you in the game. The depth of this game can keep you engaged for years, making the old-school games I compare seem vastly different.

The first would be Old School Essentials, standing in for the game GURPS replaced in the 1980s, which would be D&D and AD&D. OSE is a fantastic game, and I still play it as my B/X game of choice. But given the same characters, a cleric in OSE versus a cleric in Dungeon Fantasy - the GURPS-based game will always win. Level-based games could do better in terms of realistic character simulation.

GURPS will be my primary go-to game if I spend serious time in a fantasy setting with a few characters when playing solo. The characters will be more profound, the combat better, and they will feel real to me. Running a sizeable solo game with 4-6 characters in GURPS is challenging, so this may be when I use OSE instead. I could always create the rest of the parts as GURPS Ultra Lite characters, which I do for most NPCs.

However, most people gave up on AD&D and D&D in the late 1980s because the level-based system with Vancian magic felt old and could not express people's characters well. Contrast that with today, when people have an idea for a fantasy character, they run to D&D Beyond, and that game defines what a fantasy hero is in their minds.

Today, I hold OSE and Shadowdark on equal footing, and they are both classics.

Rolemaster is another game I compare GURPS to, and this game makes GURPS look like a rules-light B/X implementation. We played this (and Rifts) in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the universal reaction to it was, "Why are you playing this?" They were excellent, and we enjoyed the depth that Rolemaster gave us. We loved the charts.

Rolemaster takes a lot more time to learn, create characters for, and play than GURPS. I still like the system; it feels like an old "auto repair manual" that diagrams how a transmission is taken apart and rebuilt. The game has that "complexity level" that GURPS has, but the downside is the time needed to invest and play this game.

Rolemaster ended for us in the late 1990s when it was revised to RMSS and RMFRP and bloated to hundreds of skills. The "how to play" parts were all given flowcharts, and the characters became hyper-detailed and unmanageable. Rolemaster is still fun, even if just to read and imagine.

Basic Roleplaying competes with GURPS for my interest and playtime these days. I love the concept of needing to use skills to improve them, and while you can simulate this in GURPS by disallowing improvement on skills you did not use, in BRP, it is a core feature of the system. BRP is generic, it does every genre well, and combat and characters are straightforward and simple.

BRP invites tinkering and adding to the game, and it is very hackable and modifiable. People say this is a "game you build games from," but that isn't all true. The book, as-is, is very playable and runs any genre perfectly. If you mod "after play starts," you save yourself building things no one will use, and you are in and playing without investing too much time in creating a game and pushing people to play it.

Like GURPS, BRP will do anything to make the characters feel complex and realistic. They will learn as they go, forcing them into dangerous situations where they need to rely on skills they aren't good at but want to improve. The "character sim through story" in BRP is one of the best in gaming since you watch those skills level up and risk yourself next time doing something you pray you can improve. That "character sim" is even better than GURPS since it is organic, happens naturally through play, and does not rely on balancing points and builds.

BRP's not using point-builds is a huge plus, and there are times when I just want to create a character, not worry about points, and just play, having the characters learn and grow as they go. BRP is also easier to run 4-6 characters in than GURPS, so I can do a "party sim" here like in OSE.

BRP also drives Runequest (we played 3rd) and Call of Cthulhu (5th). Both games were fantastic in the 1980s and 1990s and opened doors for us that D&D could not. Considering CoC is the 2nd most popular RPG in the world, the rules have staying power and appeal to many.

BRP needs the genre support books and options of GURPS, forcing you to do a lot of work if your conversion is extensive (which is usually a mistake). You can also use the GURPS sourcebooks with BRP. I didn't say that! Well, I did. GURPS works well with many games, even as just sourcebooks.

BRP is one of the games I have that takes away time and attention from GURPS, and that says a lot about it. And yes, it is worth playing independently without needing "game design beforehand."

BRP works as a game and a toolkit, playing very well.

Rifts is another game I compare GURPS to, along with the entire Palladium Megaverse and the Palladium FRPG. This was another game we loved in the 1980s and 1990s. It belongs in this group; even though I am not playing it currently, I have fond memories.

A few other 1980s and 1990s games, from Shadowrun to Vampire, need to be included here. I am going by my feelings of the time and era; if this were a list of games in the modern context, I would have Savage Worlds on this list. 

Sorry, Stranger Things kids. If you want to do a final season right, you will all be dropping D&D in the late 1980s and playing GURPS or one of the other games on this list (or BattleTech). By 1989, D&D wasn't cool anymore, and the sanitized AD&D 2nd Edition was hitting the shelves (just like sanitized 5.5E today). Level-based games were inferior and limiting.

Magic The Gathering took off in the mid-1990s, and I remember local game stores dropping RPGs for MtG space. Roleplaying has never recovered since then, and part of me feels the hobby died then and never really came back—not like it was. You can only live through an era once.

GURPS is still my go-to game for most solo play. It best captures what I love about the hobby.