GURPS: Space Opera

Okay, first up, why?

Space Opera in itself is generic enough science fiction; the early FGU attempt at "D&D in space" was inspired by classic science fiction novels, TV shows, and movies. Why would we even need to play a GURPS: Space Opera when we have much more solid and compelling settings such as Star Frontiers, Star Trek, Star Wars, or even Traveller?

Because with GURPS, we can.

First up, what is Space Opera? What can we even call this? Generic science fiction in space? Even the cover is strange enough. Goggles Guy, space southpaw with a bad haircut, Buck Rogers girl from the NBC Studio Lot, Raptor Man, Badger Wookie, green bald psionic guy with the high collar, not a furry lion guy, and Robbie the Robot. The Death Moon and starships that look like women's razors. Is that a pink space castle back there?

Okay, we are on some serious drugs here.

This is going to be good.

What is Space Opera? Let's check out the introduction.

"The original concept was to create a game that would not need the usually innumerable supplements to its rules but that would be a complete science fiction role playing game. Thus, we wanted a game that would allow players to role play all of the most popular roles for characters in the entire genre of science fiction literature. This called for a game to handle the future warrior and mercenary, the free-trader, the asteroid miner, the planetary explorer and first contact man, and the member of the diplomatic corps/spy service. We needed science and the possibility of scientist characters with medicine playing a major role.

As if this were not enough, the decision was made to base the game on the grand tradition of Space Opera, in the vein of E. Doc Smith and most recently Star Wars from George Lucas. This meant that we would also have to allow for the psionic powers so prevalent in the Lensman series and in Star Wars with 'the force.'" - Space Opera, FGU, page 6

So we have: Lensman, Foundation, Starship Troopers, and other classic science fiction books. We cross that with the Star Trek original TV show, Star Wars, the Buck Rogers TV show, the original Battlestar Galactica TV show, 2001, Flash Gordon, Logan's Run, Alien, Dune, Westworld, and a few other influences, and we have Space Opera.

My MS Paint Art, not Space Opera -Hak

Psionic powers are our "magic."

These inspirations are the "science fiction AD&D" we have always been looking for. They blend a chaotic mix of pop-culture influences, stir them together, and create a generic science fiction universe that should be capable of anything.

And this is not "Mass Effect" since that in itself has become something of a trope for generic science fiction these days, and endlessly copied when nobody has a better idea. The new 5E science fiction game Wizards, which was quietly released to be drilled full of lasers by Starfinder 2, is a prime example.

You see, D&D got in early, so they could mix Greek, Egyptian, Norse, Celtic, Arthurian, and all sorts of other fantasy influences and create a genre. Science Fiction was late to the party, and the franchise players split up science fiction and movies between themselves. We never really got a great "universal science fiction" genre like we had in fantasy. Star Wars took its piece of the pie, Star Trek had theirs, and everyone else was left to scrounge for scraps of the audience.

If we ever had "generic science fiction," Space Opera would be the first known combination of all science fiction genres and the unified universe where it all takes place.

Or, simply put, GURPS Space.

Wait! There is more to this than just saying GURPS Space is your thing. While GURPS Space and GURPS: Ultra Tech will be beneficial, they are not the primary reasons for this mod and conversion.

Or, simply put, GURPS Traveller.

No! Not again! Traveller did indeed beat GURPS out in the early 1980s, then Star Frontiers came and went like a flash, and only Traveller survived. What is even the point of a GURPS: Space Opera? This is just "generic science fiction," right?

Okay, let's check out the back cover of the game. Hey, that is a cool starship, too. We have a couple more clues here.

"For you, as a player, Space Opera offers a selection of species for your character. From a basis of randomly determined characteristics (slanted to favor your character) you take him through his career up to the point when his adventures start. This development system results in a complete and rounded character with skills chosen in a non-random fashion to suit his or her needs.

For you as StarMaster, SPACE OPERA offers rules covering a wide variety of topics from which you may pick and choose those that will best suit the universe in which you wish to play. In this way you can simulate situations from virtually any part of science fiction literature. SPACE OPERA gives you a framework within which to set and develop the adventures which you conceive for the characters. The only limit is your imagination." - Space Opera, FGU, page 2.

We have OSR-like language here. Pick and choose rules? Simulate situations from any part of science fiction literature? A framework to develop adventures for the characters? Okay, we have a few more clues. Still, why play this? And why simulate this with GURPS?

One, I love the world-building in this game. They describe it as a "generic space game," but they actually create their own world. Beyond that, this is a new universe with its own organizations, factions, worlds, and aliens. Granted, very few people even know about this universe and care about it, but it is here and an interesting place.

Our character classes are: Armsman, Technician, Scientist: Research, Scientist: Medical, Scientist: Engineering, and Astronaut. They are an interesting mix, mirroring Star Trek, but not really. I like that Astronauts are the pilots and commanders, while Techs are the higher skill-level technicians, navigators, med-techs, and other non-science specialists. Armsman is a classic 1950s science fiction throwback, like a Starship Troopers-style space soldier. There are lots of scientists, too, which means a lot of science is happening in adventures.

My MS Paint Art, not Space Opera's -Hak

This is like Star Trek if Kirk wore a spacesuit all the time and flew the ship, Scott sat in the engine room in a radiation suit, Bones, Spock, and some new Engineering scientist researched in the lab all day, and another new Armsman character named Carter manned his powered armored suit with a nuclear rocket launcher on the shoulder and a Blaster HMG to use as a personal weapon, along with a flame unit and defensive grenade launcher tubes on the back. One of them, a green trans-human named Jar'Jeel, has psionic powers and acts as the ship's precognition expert.

What a strange crew.

It is like Starship Troopers Trek Wars.

I would use the species here, since that matches the strange mix on the front cover. I would also use the random home world generation in Book 1, and then skip to the careers. And this is where the next significant bit of world-building is done with all the organizations in this universe. We have:

• Star Force
• Marines
• Commandos
• BOSS (external intelligence agency, civilian)
• BRINT (internal state security, military)
• IPA (interstellar police)
• Survey (space)
• Scout (planetary)
• Explorer (independent, corporate)
• Contact (government civilian)
• Merchant
• PDF (planetary defense)
• Police (planetary)
• Mercenary (independent, corporate)

That is a lot of world-building! This surpasses the achievements of both Star Wars and Star Trek, forming an interesting mix of agencies and organizations that can interact and undertake missions across the galaxy. And this is just the Terran faction! There are more human factions than just the Terran one, as well as alien factions. This universe is enormous. The factions and organizations are very deep.

The split between Survey, which focuses on space exploration, Scouts, which specialize in planetary survival and exploration, and Contacts, which deals with alien cultures and linguistics, is a fascinating division among the scout factions. Having independent scouts is also a cool division.

And this book has a lot of fun expansion books. One of the ones we loved was the Ground and Air Equipment book, which gave you all sorts of tanks, planes, star fighters, rocket launchers, heavy blast cannons, and other toys to play with. This one even features WW2-era old-tech vehicles, making it a fun guide across a few tech levels for the heavy metal gear in the universe, all the way up to 500-ton Continental Siege Unit tanks like something out of Ogre.

This is a book packed full of toys. 

There is an Orc-like race of space baddies, space Soviets, bug armies, a human supremacist empire, space Roman merchants, Hisser snake people, Mekpurr tech-cats, space China aliens, Transhuman knights, and all sorts of strange factions in the universe with room to make your own.

Also, if you ever wanted to use Space Opera ship combat, the game's skill levels from 0 to 10 map easily to GURPS skill levels by subtracting 10 from your GURPS skill, so a 18- skill in GURPS becomes a level 8 skill in Space Opera. So the whole ship combat system is open to you if you want to break out the d100 and do things with this game's naval-war game-like space combat tables. For personal gear and armor, use GURPS Ultra Tech.

This is all of a sudden looking less and less like a generic space game and more like its own setting. 

Okay, still not enough. Sure, you can break down the universe into all these groups, give me a bunch of aliens, stat out a few armored vehicles, and even give me a dozen stellar guides, but why? It is not Traveller, it is not Star Frontiers, it is not Star Trek or Star Wars, it is not Dune, and it was never compelling enough back in the day to really catch on and endure. The system is so obscure and complicated that we need to replace it with GURPS. So, why play this?

One, the concept of a universe that pits a Star Trek-like Federation against a Star Wars-like Empire is a fun one; just a little reskinning, and you have the ultimate fan-fiction universe. You have a group of Space Romans that could easily sub in for a Dune-like faction. You have space bugs, similar to those in Starship Troopers and the Marines. There are places to put Battlestar Galactica's Cylons and Buck Rogers in here, or even Ming from Flash Gordon. If you're looking for the ultimate "clash of the fan fiction" science fiction universe, this is it.

My silly art, not Space Opera's - Hak

If you wanted to play it straight, this is an entirely new universe to explore, with plenty of the work already done for you! This is far more than you get in many GURPS source books, and having a whole science fiction setting that has nothing to do with anyone's movie or TV show is a remarkable thing. It has similarities, but this is a ready-made universe with plenty of factions, aliens, worlds, and adventures to use as a great GURPS setting.

The thing is, with Star Wars and Star Trek, and even Traveller, new players will want to play the "official game" before a GURPS conversion, and that is understandable. With Space Opera, you can come in with GURPS players and have a ready-made setting with plenty of lore, planets, aliens, and work done for you. You can tweak most of this to whatever you want.

Plus, the character types are cool and different. I like the concept of an astronaut being a space pilot and eventually a fleet commander. I love that there is such a heavy focus on science. I really like the focus on the armsman and having a dedicated soldier class that can fill many roles. I even like that technicians are anything from engineers to doctors, all with a non-science focus, but highly capable.

Space Opera, Star Sector Atlas 2, page 49

Downsides? The setting is extraordinary. There is an incoherence to it. Nothing feels connected, and the planet descriptions feel disjointed. The organizations lack identity; they are merely names without history or personality. The setting lacks a cohesive flow or history. The universe thinks like B-movie science fiction, making it hard to relate to or grasp what it's genuinely about. The setting hinges on a false feeling of self-importance. Players will sit there saying, "I don't know what this is or how to act."

In trying to be "all science fiction," the game comes out feeling like "none of it."

I could say the same thing about D&D and fantasy. 

And Traveller is a far more complete and well-laid-out universe. Star Frontiers is a tighter and more focused sandbox. Any "IP science fiction" is easily relatable and instantly playable.

Space Opera, Star Sector Atlas One, page 45

On the plus side, the game features some of the most interesting early 1980s science fiction line art by classic fantasy artists. These are rare and fascinating works from some of the greats we know elsewhere, doing a science fiction flex and doing some fantastic work. This art reminds me of early D&D, and these are rarely seen pieces. They offer amazing glimpses into the hobby back then and the "what could have been" if science fiction had not been dominated by a few big movies and instead been embraced by gaming.

This universe of open, engaging, and speculative science fiction in gaming is entirely owned by Traveller these days. Flipping through the sub-sector guides that Mongoose puts out regularly, I see so many ideas and concepts being expressed, interesting planets and factions crafted, and a universe of possibilities expressed and delivered to an ever-expanding setting.

I like the strong psionic focus for the setting's "magic." Rarely do you get such a strong focus on the psionic part of the setting, and even in Traveller, the power feels muted and pushed to the back. FGU was never fearful of leaning into psionic powers, and they even have an entire game (Psi-World) on the subject. Psionic individuals are this setting's "magic users" and a significant part of the action. In Star Wars and Star Trek, they are pushed to the back or pigeon-holed into a few roles (in Star Wars, forced to be Jedi or Sith). In Traveller, they are infrequent and the exception.

Space Opera, page 24

In Space Opera, by the rules, 5% of the population are potentially potent psionic users. They can be "awakened" by psionic attack or exposure to psionic power sources (during the game). The awakening process only happens in-game and can never be started with, so this entire system is built into the role-playing and is a pivotal character moment. This is a very cool system and mirrors the science fiction of the day, where a Star Force astronaut goes on a mission to an ancient temple, meets a dying alien master psionic, "unlocks their secret potential," and "everything changes!"

If you love classic heroic science fiction novels from the 1950s to 1980s, with stories of heroism, awakening, and transformation, then Space Opera will resonate with you. Many of today's "class-based games" lack surprises, with every power planned out 20 levels in advance, and there is no mystery or alteration to your character's path or future. You look at Starfinder, and your technician has 20 levels of power planned out for them, and there is no mystery or discovery to the character. Even in Traveller, you are set in stone. Star Frontiers is the same thing; you spend XP to go up boring skill trees.

Only in GURPS and point-based systems do you have that "open character sheet" to freely develop your character. The only "open character sheet" game in d20-land is original B/X, where you can freely add powers to your sheet, such as Old School Essentials. The minute you go to AD&D, those level-based charts start to take over the game, and you lose your open character sheet. By the time you get to 3.5E, the open character sheet is gone completely. Modern games like 5E or Pathfinder? Forget it, your character is centrally planned by a committee.

Today's over-designed, over-planned, go up the pre-programmed level chart games have no mystery or discovery in them. They are tedious and often impossible to balance. They control your character's story. All you are doing is going up the planned power chart and checking boxes. Nothing unexpected or extraordinary can happen to you because of the story.

More of my silly art, enjoy. -Hak

In GURPS? Even in fantasy, my bard can become a mage. My fighter can become a druid. My thief can become a paladin. My cleric can learn archery. Whatever happens in the story is reflected on my character sheet, no clunky multi-classing required. My Star Force medic needs to learn how to fly a ship? I can do that. In class and level systems? Forget it, the designers know better than you.

The different branches and divisions of space forces in Space Opera are not only very cool but also instant inspiration for your own science fiction universes. What if there were independent explorers and they hired mercenary forces? What would a space police force do, especially with their own ships to fight space pirates and work alongside local navies and Starfleet vessels? Even if you do not use the setting, there is enough here to give you a wealth of world-building ideas on your own.

Just drop in GURPS, let me run an open character sheet, and go. 

GURPS: Aftermath

Aftermath was our game in the early 1980s, and it did everything we wanted in a hyper-realistic set of survival-focused rules in a DIY post-apocalyptic setting. This was "AD&D for survivalists," and the rules skirted the line between real-world Cold War survival manuals for nuclear war, and it had that "scary element" to it that put the fear of God into you.

This game is going in the bunker with me. This game could be handy someday if the Soviets ever decided to threaten Western democracies.

Why is that so familiar? 

These days, Aftermath still survives, and you can still get this in print and PDF, but GURPS has replaced the game for me almost entirely. GURPS offers a more complete, easier, and less math-intensive set of rules, making it easier to simulate gritty realities than slogging through the flowcharts and fractional math of Aftermath. The Aftermath PDFs are an excellent source book for the genre, too, and get you into the specific weirdness and world the game tries to create.

GURPS can get plenty detailed and gritty enough, and as long as I have hit locations, sectional armor, critical damage, and results for severing limbs, I am fine.

I love the setting of Aftermath; the world was destroyed in 1980, so there was no "consumer Internet" and no cell phones. There is some advanced science fiction technology in here, but the baseline tech is that late 1970s post-Vietnam-era technology with M-16A1 rifles, UH-1 Huey helicopters, M-1911A1 0.45 pistols, and M-60A1 tanks. The highest-capacity commonly available 9mm pistol was the Browning High Power with 13 rounds, and the SMG of the day was the 9mm Uzi. Many World War II weapons remained in use. The guns were this 1970s retro-tech and iconic for the TV shows of the day. The game also had advanced laser weapons as rare finds.

 

The game features intelligent mutant rats, killer AI robots, rad-zombies, wild zoo animals, androids, AI computers, and a selection of "Not the Ape Planet" humanoid apes. It also had "walkers" like those from War of the Worlds. It was somewhat reminiscent of D&D in that it combined familiar post-apocalyptic tropes into one game, creating a "fantasy" world with all the best options. Just as D&D simulates any fantasy, Aftermath could easily simulate any post-ruin world.

And the world hated you in Aftermath. An old ATM with security systems could try to kill you, before the bears sneak up on you, you are forced to run, you hole up in an old building, accidentally trip a grenade trip wire, and the building is so old it can't stand the force of the explosion and collapses on you. If you survive, you will be buried alive in the water-filled basement, drowning, and the water is contaminated with cholera and radiation. Maybe there are rad-piranhas in there. The flamethrower and M-60 machine-gun equipped killer robots will be by later to torch the pile of rubble and fill it full of lead.

In D&D, traps are typically found in dungeons.

In Aftermath, the whole world is a sadistic trap.

Even if you were lucky enough to be a super character frozen before the end of the world, you would wake up in a cryogenic pod and have to fight off laser-pistol-armed war-bots with a rolled-up copy of Playboy and a jar of Vegemite.

Get outside, and bandits are riding kangaroos and firing poison crossbows at you. You may find a box of sweaty TNT to throw back at them, but be careful not to drop it or fall down. The game ended when you stepped on a land mine. Finding a case of canned beans was a magic treasure, and you put those on a bandoleer on your vest as extra armor and a statement that you were a bad-ass.

The world was like AD&D through the lens of the old Soldier of Fortune magazine, mixed in there with High Times. Everything could kill you, show no mercy, what is mine is mine, and always be prepared. As I said, there is a weirdness to the entire genre, like a paranoid drug trip through the end of the world.

Trust is the best currency in the world. Just finding a survivor village where you could sleep was worth more than a magic sword or bag of gold in D&D. Often, you traded helping them out for food and shelter. 

We have solid sourcebook support for the genre, too, including the excellent After the End 1 and 2 books for GURPS. These books are like a "best of the best" of topics the Aftermath game covers, and are indispensable. The first book covers characters, and it is a great resource and inspiration for building your survivors. We get barter and standard gear tables, along with reloading rules.

There are rules for mutations here, but not the freaky superhero mutations that Gamma World has. You could easily do a Gamma World with Ultra Tech and GURPS Supers.

The second book covers worlds. They even suggest other GURPS books for "killer robots" or zombies, and have topics on diseases, gangs, survival, scrounging, repairs, and other post-apocalyptic concerns. This is all great stuff, and it goes beyond the original Aftermath rules in many areas. We also get speculative tech in here, like nano-tech disasters, which is a significant modern update for the genre.

Aftermath is a sub-genre of post-apocalyptic fiction from 1950 to 1980, encompassing works like War of the Worlds and Planet of the Apes, as well as 1980s nuclear war movies such as The Day After and Threads. Mad Max was not a popular part of the genre yet, as that is the start of the modern "hero era" of the post-apocalyptic genre, but it is an influence.

There is a theme of the downfall of civilization, and the "original sin" of the Vietnam War serving as a catalyst for the punishment for the coming final judgment of mankind. This is mirrored today by the "original sin" of the Iraq War, and many internalize that guilt and try to destroy today's society in a subconscious guilt response.

Don't laugh; this is a larger societal shift that occurred during the Vietnam War, and it is happening today. You see this manifested by population shifts and encouragement from enemies on the world stage who finance these destructive forces. Like the Cold War, this is a shrinking world pitting history and societies against each other.

You need the almost puritanical and quasi-religious guilt, along with the concept of overseas enemies of a nearly alien society, to have this genre. Otherwise, we aren't being punished for anything, there is no "big bad" who caused this, and we might as well be playing opiate fantasy games to relieve the pain of daily life.

In contrast, today's zombie post-apocalyptic genre does this without the "overseas enemy" and "we did this to ourselves." This is why the Walking Dead genre intentionally portrays humans as worse than walkers, as if to say, "we did this to ourselves," and "we will keep doing it." Zombie stories tap into the self-hate of mankind, a theme you even saw in the original 1950s Living Dead movie.

There is always an enemy responsible in these stories, be it the Reds, aliens, apes, nature itself, or ourselves. In Aftermath, it can be all of the above. Today, we can add AI to that list.

Another game close to Aftermath is the excellent Mutant Epoch (ME). This game leans into that weirdness of the genre and is one of the best examples of that feeling of "strangeness after the end of the world" out there today. If you are not trying to simulate Aftermath in GURPS, this is also one of the best games in the genre today and is worth your time. If you prefer not to have intelligent plants, holographic AI characters, or X-Men-like superheroes, consider staying more grounded in GURPS.

Aftermath walks a line between realism and strangeness, and GURPS does that very well. GURPS handles the aspect of "mental survival" much better than ME, with internal mental disadvantages driving character motivation. In contrast, ME characters tend to be more collections of random skills and powers. GURPS does the "realism" very well, and the skill system is also much more detailed and flexible.

Plus, GURPS gives you far more source books to pull from for the fantastic and strange. I could incorporate GURPS Horror in a post-apocalyptic game for a unique twist, and make the world beset by vampires and werewolves, which brought down society. GURPS will have a greater range of disasters and strangeness to put into the mix.

GURPS is my choice here; the rules are modern, consistent, but have enough grit and depth to satisfy the deadly crunch and medical detail of wounding the genre requires. Aftermath itself is the inspiration of the strange fantasy of that post-apocalyptic genre, and is one of the hallmark games in the genre. Gamma World and Mutant Epoch lean too heavily into fantastic and science fiction elements, whereas Aftermath and GURPS can capture the realistic tone that this specific genre requires.

GURPS: Battletech

A GURPS: Battletech conversion is surprisingly easy mod to create. First up, use GURPS for all personal combat and character rules. Second, play Battletech using Battletech rules. Why change a good thing? This is a fun tabletop game, and if you have the hex maps, figures, and rules, why not just use that?

Battletech uses the six-sided dice we already have. The game is tested and works. We are not designing hundreds of mechs in GURPS Vehicles. Things work and fight as they do in the real game. Why change a good thing?

The real problem is mapping the skills. Battletech uses a skill system of 8 down to 0. This is your base target number for a 2d6 roll, such a gunnery skill of 4 meaning the pilot hits on a 2d6 roll of 4+, and this most always get modified up for range, movement, terrain, and so on. I would map the GURPS to Battletech skills like this:

• GURPS 3-6: Battletech 8
• GURPS 7-9: Battletech 7
• GURPS 10-12: Battletech 6
• GURPS 13-15: Battletech 5
• GURPS 16-17: Battletech 4
• GURPS 18-19: Battletech 3
• GURPS 20-21: Battletech 2
• GURPS 22-24: Battletech 1
• GURPS 25+: Battletech 0

Skills in Battletech cannot go below zero, so the game does have a hard cap. In GURPS, a skill level of 14-18 is an expert, which maps into a Battletech skill of 5-3, and masters are 20+, which covers the 2-0 range. GURPS says skill levels of 25+ are extreme (B172), so setting zero to 25+ makes sense.

Battletech skill rolls do not change.

Could you, inside the cockpit, need to make a self-control roll or some other GURPS skill roll? Yes, you could. Anything that does not touch the Battletech rules and dicing systems is fair game. 

The only two skills you need in Battletech are piloting and gunnery, and those would map into GURPS as Driving/Mecha/TL 11 and Gunner/Mecha/TL 11. That Gunner skill is different than GURPS' specialties in rockets, machine guns, beams, and so on, so this is a minor rules tweak to group all mecha weapons as one skill.

The only two other skills in Battletech are Driving Skill and Anti-Mech Skill, and those can be easily mapped from GURPS skills, with combining all anti-mech weapons under a Guns/Anti-Mech/TL 11 skill.

That skill mapping table is all you need. Now play Battletech as Battletech, and when you are outside the cockpit, use GURPS for everything else. Since mech combat is at a different scale, the conversion works well and both games coexist nicely.

The Tech Level of Battletech is about TL 11, with typical personal weapons and armor covering a few levels below that. The Battletech RPG does have lasers, blasters, and Gauss weapons, so this is firmly TL 11 in personal weapons and armor. Just use GURPS Basic Set and GURPS Ultra Tech for your weapons, armor, and gear list, it will be easier.

This is a quick, easy, simple, and fun mod that lets GURPS be GURPS, and Battletech be Battletech. Now go forth, make your mercenary band some credits, fight for your house, and repel the clan invasions with some heavy metal gaming!

And, of course, have the best RPG powering the personal game.

GURPS: Star Frontiers, Update #5

The GURPS: Star Frontiers (SF) project is as easy as just playing GURPS Space at a TL10^, or it is a slog of conversions to get everything just perfect. I am opting (for now, since GCS is not working for me currently and I am back to GCA), to go with the former.

SF has always been a TL10 setting, with no blasters and only lasers. This also means that starships (GURPS: Spaceships) at TL 10 have engines that produce 1G acceleration per engine mounted in a ship's mounting space (a total of 20 spaces), and antimatter reactors that provide 4 power points per space used. This closely matches the SF ships in capabilities, without delving into the Star Wars-like TL11 super-reactionless drives, which grant 50G acceleration per engine space.

At TL11, this transition moves beyond the technology of Star Frontiers, and we are delving more into Star Wars technology levels. At TL12, this is Star Trek.

GURPS Spaceships will be your best bet for ship design, since the systems are simplified and streamlined. Even the space combat system in here is a lot better than in other books. I get trying to use Knight Hawks directly and converting, but another part of me wants a better system.

The Blaster Issue

TL11 is also when we get into blasters, and those have an armor divisor of (5), which is brutal, even to the TL11 lighter armors that characters wear. Since blasters do burn damage, they use the lesser of the two values on the High and Ultra Tech Armor Chart (B284-285), and remember, armors with the [3] note get higher DR values at tech levels past when they were introduced.

Star Frontiers features lasers, not blasters, which begins to push projectile weapons far off the stage and diminish their significance. So let's stick to TL10.

The TL10 Tactical Suit

A TL10 tactical suit has DR 30/15 (1.5x multiplier), and a TL11 tactical suit has DR 40/20 (2x multiplier). The first number is used only against piercing and crushing attacks, while the second applies to all other attacks.

So our TL10 laser pistol does 3d(2) burn damage, and our TL10 laser rifle does 5d(2) burn damage. We round down for character feats and combat results, so the DR 15 tactical suit protects against 7 points of damage. It still provides us with a good measure of protection against a 3d(2) laser pistol and halves the damage of a 5d(2) laser rifle.

The TL 11 Tactical Suit

Okay, let's move on to TL11 and blasters, as well as the same tactical suit. A TL11 blaster pistol is 3d(5) damage, and the rifle is 6d(5). Even with a 20 DR TL11 tactical suit, that divisor of (5) knocks the suit down to 4 points of protection, giving some protection against the pistol and almost none against the rifle.

The Battlesuit

To protect against blasters, you start to need full TL11 battlesuits at DR 140/100. With the divisor of (5), that puts the battle suit at 20 DR, which makes pistols worthless, and rifles have a slight chance of getting through. You need that heavy blaster of 8d(5) for battlesuit combat, and that is on average an 8-point penetration.

Mount a TL11 light force screen on that battlesuit (UT191), and you gain 200 points of semi-ablative DR, which will withstand a few hits before the operator is scrambled.

Battlesuits at TL10 are somewhat unusual at 105/75 DR, and you need to consult GURPS: Ultra-Tech to find a weapon that can penetrate them at that tech level, specifically the semi-portable plasma gun (UT128), which deals 20d(2) burn damage. So, halving our battlesuit DR to 37, the average of 20d is 70 damage, which fries the inside of the suit like an egg. Traveller players know this weapon well, the feared PGMP, plasma-gun man-portable.

The heavy plasma gun at this TL is also an option, dealing 3d5 (2) damage on average, for a total of 55 points of damage against the 37 DR, resulting in 18 points of penetration. Portable railguns (UT142) work, too. Battlesuit combat is out of scope for Star Frontiers and better suited to Traveller. Still, it is fun at TL10 to try to find things to crack these battlefield nuts.

But that "high-tech personal armor game" gets dodgy at TL11, and the regular adventurer armor and weapon types work better with the lower armor divisors of lasers of TL10. If you use TL10 Gauss weapons, that is an armor divisor of (3), and the armor becomes slightly less effective. Even TL7 battle rifles with APHC ammo do 7d(2) pi-, which can punch holes in DR 30 TL10 battlesuits. The armor and gun game at TL10 is still functioning within the range required for Star Frontiers to maintain that mix of weapons and provide interesting personal combat without automatic one-hit kills.

Why All the Math?

5E players are probably reading this and have their eyes glazed over at this point with all this number crunching. Hey, this was the 1980s and 90s, and we didn't have smartphones; we only had graphing calculators. And those were cool. Nerds did math, and we loved it.

Why are we going through all this trouble of matching up armors and weapons? Well, part of the Star Frontiers genre was "fun space combat," and we need to ensure that map-based battles against robots, space pirates, alien creatures, and evil space aliens go relatively smoothly. At TL10, a mix of energy weapons and projectile weapons is still feasible, the armor game feels compelling, and people aren't walking around with one-hit-kill disintegrators.

We are trying to create a "D&D in space," which is what the original game aimed to do, targeting a younger audience. The balance between energy, melee, and projectile weapons needs to be kept. For us, the universe and its adventures were a success, and we remained in this universe for decades afterward.

Hardened Armor?

There is a solution with advantages for high armor divisors, but it requires careful consideration. On page B47 under Damage Resistance, there is an option for Hardened armor, which reduces the armor divisor by one step.

This could be applied to personal armor if you found it too weak, and would increase the armor "point cost" by 20% per level. A (2) would become a (1), a (3) would become a (2), and a (5) would become a (3). This will seriously alter your DR game with high-tech weapons, and possibly unbalance combat, but it is an option within the rules. I wouldn't go overboard with this, but it is a tool in the game that can pare down those high penetration divisors.

Just call them "advanced materials" and double the cost of the armor. Make it lose 1d6 of DR per penetration (due to the hardness making it shatter easily), or adjust the balance accordingly.

Two levels of Hardening on a TL11 tactical suit would take a (5) penetration blaster down to a (2), give us a DR of 10, and even the odds a little against that 3d blaster pistol and 6d blaster rifle. That would be my limit for TL11 weapons and hardening, but it puts some "gameplay" into the armor game at those TLs and solves the "cracked like an egg" problem of high-tech energy weapon combat.

You may want to limit this to "just energy weapons" (15% instead of 20% per level) since these armors are already tough against piercing and crushing damage. GURPS provides us with tools to adjust things if they feel like they are detracting from the fun in our games.

This is what fluency in the system gives you: access to the best tricks and tips on how to optimize the system's performance. The more you learn and play GURPS, the better it gets.

YouTube: Nosh Solo, Keep on the Borderlands

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wildcard/Bang Monster Skills

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Cinematic Campaign

"The 'cinematic' campaign is one where realism doesn’t rule – because if it did, it would constantly get in the way of the story. In a cinematic campaign, swashbuckling heroes can defeat dozens of foes because the story calls for it. Spacecraft whoosh or roar in the silence of space because fast things whoosh and powerful engines roar. Rightness always overrules mere correctness." - GURPS, Basic Set, Campaigns, page 488.

Cinematic here seems to imply "pulp adventure," but in reality, it can refer to any cinematic genre. The rules favor pulp, as it is the best example of a cinematic style, but I argue that any style is a valid one, as long as it is established, adhered to, and agreed upon when the game begins.

If you are playing a GURPS: Back to the Future game, you need that fish-out-of-water, time-travel, slapstick humor level of genre. I usually have three qualifier words to describe my settings, and I stick to those as a universal rule. If something conflicts with a rule, then it "gets in the way of the story" and is changed. In Back to the Future, people aren't getting shot and stabbed, so that does not happen like it would in real life. If it does (in Doc's case), it is the "bullets make someone fall down" sort of moment, like an old-time Western TV show, and it gets later retconned.

However, GURPS gives us the freedom to establish these cinematic parameters and reach an agreement on them before play. Unlike modern "dramatic narrative systems," this is done more traditionally, and the narrative parameters affect every aspect of the game, allowing players and the referee to equally adjust outcomes, actions, and suggestions on what happens next.

In a GURPS: Looney Tunes game, the destructive weapons from ACME, Inc. would not be treated as realistic weapons or devices of destruction. If a player wanted to come up with a slapstick gag of their own, it fit with the theme, and it made people laugh, then let it be.

Since society, for the most part, has lost its imagination (due to the Internet, AI, YouTube, smartphones, and so on), we see newer games go out of their way to replicate a theme through their rules. Games require the "training wheels" of narrative control to establish a theme and tightly control the action through extensive lists of "dos and don'ts," along with mechanical systems, in an attempt to reproduce free-form imagination. In a modern Looney Tunes game, you would likely use a currency of "Looney Points" that allows you to make toon-based special attacks, and have to look through long lists (or desks of cards) of "gags" and "slapstick moments" to throw a pie in someone's face.

You see this in Daggerheart with special attacks from characters needing "hope points" to trigger. The cool attacks, best special moves, and other narrative moments are controlled via in-game currency. In my GURPS: Looney Tunes game, if my fire-breathing dragon has a "fire breath," I buy that as a power, give it a fatigue cost, and we are good. Now, my dragon can breathe in everyone's faces and turn them into a charcoal briquette. Yes, fire breath is a "narrative power," but it is just a power, and we can put any cost on it we want, as long as it fits the theme.

But note this game design strategy. You give up something, your ability to use your special attacks and powers, and give control of that to an in-game system. In GURPS, we are used to "characters being the master of their destinies" and being able to spend FP for powers, and those resources being internal character components. In Daggerheart, we are in narrative game land, and now parts of our characters exist externally and within the current context of a game and session.

Internal versus external designs, make note of this. GURPS primarily relies on the former.

GURPS being GURPS, you could invent a "hope" secondary ability score, start it at zero, and throw points in there on even rolls, give the referee fear on odd rolls, and use it as an alternate fatigue source. Or you could make some abilities "hope-powered" for a -20% modifier to their cost, since this pool controls activation. There, now we have GURPS: Daggerheart.

It is not as elegant or "design slick" as the Darrington Press game, but GURPS exists in a tinkerer's universe, where we love our strange, bolted-on, and hacked-together creations. We are more like coders on this side of the hobby, and we will kludge together rules and subsystems to simulate any experience in our game, since the tools we have been given are amazing and powerful.

Where other games give you these "drag and drop" game creation tools that can't do much beyond what the creator allows, GURPS is more like a full C++ or Java coding environment. GURPS is one of the first "Professional RPG systems," with Champions being the other.

I saw a GURPS Fantasy mod that gave clerics a "healing touch" superpower that cost fatigue instead of using spells. No skill roll needed, no buying spells as skills, just pay the fatigue cost and heal. Is this a valid way to do magic? Shouldn't we be using the systems in the book in the magic chapter, or Dungeon Fantasy spells? This is GURPS. If it works, it is magic. Whatever way you want to do it is right.

Which circles back to cinematic campaigns. We had to go down the "design rabbit hole" to prove a point; any method to get to a desired outcome is valid in GURPS. You can design a magic system a hundred different ways, and as long as it works for you and fits into the game's framework, it is a sound system.

So if you establish your cinematic campaign parameters and use them to move results to "rightness" rather than "correctness," then you are on the right track. In Looney Tunes, if you put your face in front of a pirate cannon, humor will result! You won't be simulating realistic terminal ballistics and rolling tons of damage dice, just say "something silly happens" and make up the funniest result, and move on.

Similarly, if you are playing a GURPS: Rom-Com game, you will abide by the "romantic comedy" cinematic campaign parameters, and everything in the game will be seen through that lens. Don't just think this is for pulp adventures or comedy, GURPS can do it all.

Note the use of the word "lens" here, which is a constructive framework for describing cinematic campaign parameters to players. People understand "we are using a comedic lens" to grasp that concept.

Also, if you are playing a GURPS: Slasher Movie game, you could force everyone to take a "do something stupid" disadvantage, which requires a self-control roll. The Final Girl (or Guy) does not need to take this one, either. Now you will have someone heading down to the basement when the power goes out, looking for the fuse box. Here is a hint: don't always kill off the character who fails this roll. Let them turn the lights back on, make it back upstairs, and kill off a character who was smart and stayed upstairs but wandered off to grab a snack.

That is an example of using the tools GURPS provides to simulate a genre within the design system we were given. The "cinematic parameter" means all but one of the characters at the table must take that "do something stupid" disadvantage. Roll for it, or draw straws. Let players decide how many points they will get for that disadvantage, too, whether they are "slightly stupid" or "completely foolish." If you play this right, the most foolish of the group will be getting everyone else killed, and the players will be rooting for that character to get it next.

In a Rom-Com game, you could use similar disadvantages to shape character actions, and create a pool of character archetypes with templates, such as: the too-cool guy, the wing man/girl, the bestie, the cheerleader, the nerd, the jock, and so on. Yes, they are stereotypes, but they are also genre conventions. In a modern narrative game, they will create these for you and put them on cards for you to use, fill them full of special rules, and invariably sell you more in expansions. In GURPS, we have the tools to do this all for free.

However, we only put in the work when we need to. If we're playing a Rom-Com with these character archetypes, go ahead, put in the work, and make it happen! If all you want to use are "cinematic parameters" to achieve the same effect, that is fine too; save yourself some design work and just get started with those ground rules. If you want to create custom disadvantages with "compulsive behaviors" like jock, cheerleader, and so on, do it that way. When a character has a moment to do something "the most nerd way," and it would make things more difficult or hinder the character (these are still disadvantages), then make a roll when it feels right.

In a way, the default parameters of GURPS are characterized by "hardcore realism," which is how the game earns its reputation. However, the game needs to start from this point to reach every other, and you are often paring back the rules to make things work as you want them to. The game instructs you to do this on page 489, under the rule "Damn the Rules, Full Speed Ahead!" Run a game with wildcard skills (page 175), talents (page 89), and ability scores. Ignore most of the rules and run GURPS Lite combat and skill resolution. Now you have a B/X-style game that is simple, fast, and fun.

You can develop your Rom-Com game the same way: make a list of talents, wildcard skills, archetype disadvantages, and let players throw together characters out of those parts. You do not need to spend a few hours building characters with the character creation tools and worry about buying levels of driving, languages, fashion sense, and computers. Doing this will likely turn players off. If the genre says "simple, archetype characters," then that is how you will play the game and build characters.

Doing things this way also dispels the biggest myths about GURPS: that the game takes forever to create characters, is overly complicated, forces you to sort through hundreds of skills, has complicated combat, and only supports hardcore realism. None of that is true.

Play the game straight from the book, just like it is in 5E? That will happen. But the game goes out of its way to tell us not to do that. Every rule is optional. You build games with these rules. You pick and choose. The game is a toolbox, and you don't always use every tool in the box to do a job. If all you are doing is hanging pictures, all you need is a hammer, perhaps a drill, and a screwdriver for mounting picture studs. Do you need to use the pipe wrench, strap wrench, or blowtorch? For most nails, the hammer will do.

Taking a little care in setting up your game and deciding how you want to play it will make the game more enjoyable to play and share with others.

GURPS: Star Frontiers, Update #4

Damage types.

Silly, pedantic, element-based damage types.

One thing about role-players is that they fetishize damage types far more than they should. Science fiction games often fall into this trap, but you see this in 5E with all the damage types there, with 13 types being in the game.

Starfinder had eight types, but weapons have levels, and every three or four levels, every weapon type was repeated, with most of the damage types represented. So there would be eight level 1-3 pistols, eight level 4-6 pistols, and so on. Sometimes you needed a cold pistol, other times you needed that electricity pistol. Starfinder's weapon lists were massive, easily filling hundreds of entries, and adventure paths would add dozens more weapons for no good reason.

The game also had two armor class values, energy and kinetic.

The Esper Genesis game falls back on the 5E tropes, but unless a monster has a resistance or weakness to that type of damage, the damage is just damage, and who cares? You have one AC value. Of all the science fiction games, this one does things the most "5E way," and you are not worrying about damage types for most attacks.

And we get to Star Frontiers. You can combine a suit and a screen to layer defenses against different types of damage. Of suits, you can do with either laser or ballistic/melee protection. With screens, you get protection against laser, ballistic/melee, electrical, and sonic attacks. Typically, all our characters wore suits that provided ballistic and melee protection, as well as a screen for lasers. This way, you could rely on the suit for protection in more social situations, such as a fight in a space bar, and then, when the lasers started flying, the screen was turned on. Electrical and sonic attacks were rarer, so those tended to be the ones that got through your defenses more often.

Star Frontiers combat meant "turning on your shields" in personal combat, and making sure you had the correct resistances to damage types in your group. GURPS really isn't about that, and it is a different style of combat in the system that is more armor-focused. We have force screens in Ultra Tech that can function similarly, with a DR 60 (for personal conforming, TL 12^, super science), and you can specify an energy type for a 50% cost reduction. Star Frontiers is not a TL12 setting, though. For a TL 11 field, I would halve the DR to 30.

The conversion is at a point where, if I try to convert mechanics, I will be here doing these little conversions forever, trying to tweak it and make it work, but inevitably breaking something else. One of the things is that GURPS has solved many science fiction gaming problems with the rules the game already contains. GURPS is a well-tested and well-designed system that works, taking into account numerous science fiction tropes and pieces of gear and technology.

I am not giving up on this, but if I want an exact simulation of Star Frontiers, that would require a significant amount of design work. For most people, just use GURPS Space and flavor the setting with the Star Frontiers races and setting, while using GURPS to replace the gear and tech lists entirely.

For the average game, tossing out the Star Frontiers gear, which TSR designed for their "attack versus defense" game, is the way to go. GURPS is far better designed, written, and put together for science fiction gaming the way it is, and more people should just use the races and universe.

GURPS: Star Frontiers, Update #3

The conversion for GURPS Star Frontiers is still coming along, and I am still working through the equipment list. Some items, like the gas mask and life jacket, come from other GURPS gear lists. The equipment list is elementary, but with a few unique items. Many items seem stuck in time, like they were pulled from an 1980 Sears catalog with camping supplies, so this is a retro-future game. No one would notice if I added a thermos, portable cooler, and survival stove to this list.

Sharp-eyed viewers will note I am using GURPS Ultra Tech power cells. The 20 SEU power clip in Star Frontiers is directly equivalent to the C Cell in GURPS, and in our game, we had "mini power clips" and "micro." The GURPS rules have these, so it is easier to use the GURPS cells and have a wider variety of batteries for power items since no one is sticking a pistol-clip-sized battery in their watch.

You can call the C Cell a "power clip," but it is still a C Cell.

A "power belt pack?" A plastic battery case with a D Cell, belt hooks, and a few power ports. The "power backpack?" The same thing, but with an E Cell in a backpack harness.

I have the doze grenade in there but have not vectored out the effects. This will require a designed superpower-style effect. It is funny how every "standard equipment pack" comes with a single gas grenade that puts people to sleep and a spray hypodermic, which is essentially a reusable syringe. If we were talking "what we know today," then every dose of a drug would be its own single-use injector. A "stim dose" should be one plastic, self-injecting, single-use dose.

But remember, we are stuck in the 1980s here with this game. It is too easy to say everything is this hyper-slick "Iron Man tech" where helmets nano assemble and every piece of gear looks super modern and sleek. That is modernist garbage, Unreal Engine 5 asset flips, 3d Studio Max sci-fi items, and VFX slop. Not everything has to "look and feel" like super-science modern tech. You will lose what makes the original setting special and extraordinary.

We will stick to the spray hypo and single-dose cartridges.

We saw the original Traveller turn into Mega Traveller, and they did the same modernization. Back then, we said the entire game looked "California-ized." We loved the retro-1950s original look and feel of 70s Traveller, and to see the game turned into modern sci-fi made it feel like the game lost something. Computers weighed tons, and could never be carried around with you. You radioed back to the ship if you wanted someone to look up something from the ship's database.

If we want the game to feel as it did, we are sticking to the retro-future, early-80s pastiche, cut off at 1982. Even Aliens is out since it is from the late 80s, along with Return of the Jedi from 83. We are stuck with Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Buck Rogers, Battlestar Galactica, Alien, Tron, E.T., The Thing, Flash Gordon, Logan's Run, UFO, and Blade Runner. There are some Roger Corman films here, as well as Thundarr and Planet of the Apes.

Also, note that in Star Frontiers, there is a subspace radio. This is faster than light communication, at 1 LY per hour. This changes a lot, and news can spread quickly in this universe, with most planets learning of major news within a day. Distress calls can be "phoned home" to planets. The consequences of this were never explored in the game, so to keep lore-accurate, there needs to be a strict rule for the limits and capabilities of communication in this universe.

In GURPS-speak, Star Frontiers is closer to a tech level 7+2, like Tales of the Solar Patrol, a 6+3 setting.