GURPS Just Drops In

GURPS fans are familiar with this, but since my other blogs have been gaining a lot of new views, we may be attracting a lot of new readers here, as my sites are like a spider's web of games and interests. There are times when I like to write thoughts for people who stop by and wonder why I cover GURPS and why I consider this game one of the best of all time.

GURPS just slots into anything. While I know Castles & Crusades gets called a "Rosetta Stone" game for any edition of D&D, the real Rosetta Stone game for any setting is actually GURPS. While Castles & Crusades has a modern-pulp game called Amazing Adventures, nothing compares to GURPS and the promise it delivers on:

• Any character.
• Any world.
• Any time.

That last one, any time, is so amazing. Unlike D&D and even Pathfinder 2E, you are limited to one world and a very narrow range of technology. Even if you try to use D&D for a "swashbuckling high seas and pirates" game, you will have characters flinging fireballs and magic missiles, and it will just feel like "a D&D game with pirates." It won't really be anything different than putting pirates in a Forgotten Realms campaign, and you will be back to square one.

Eventually, D&D's meta-setting will creep back into the game, and you will be doing planar travel and leaving those grand-masted pirate ships behind. The entire point of your campaign will be lost. The game's rules are designed for a specific planar progression path, and even these days, extensions such as bastions will hinder you every step of the way. What good is calling your bastion a "pirate fort" if it can never be attacked and destroyed? Who cares about pirates if mind flayers and beholders are sailing around on much-better spell-jammer ships?

In GURPS, I can work with my players to define a game, including the appropriate character types, the technology level of the game, and the campaign's flavor. If there is no magic, there is no magic. If the only way of travel is tall ships, walking, and horses, that is it. If the game focuses on pirates and the navies of early colonial nations, that is the game. If the players are the commanders of a pirate ship, we can use generic NPCs for the crew, and do not need to create every character on the boat.

And I can do all of this with the basic GURPS books, and the extra sourcebooks exist to do more of the work for you in researching the area of interest. You buy a sourcebook, and you now have an "expert resource" to draw from! This makes your period-specific game even more authentic and realistic, and provides suggested ways to handle the different challenges of playing in such a setting. You get setting ideas, character options, history, flavor, settings, special game systems, and adventure suggestions. The book reads like a wealth of information and resources, engaging your mind and sparking excitement about exploring a world like this.

One of the biggest challenges to GURPS is getting fluent enough in the system to "get there." However, the most straightforward approach is to download the free GURPS Lite, invest in a sourcebook, and simply wing it to the best of your ability to start to see if you like it. Yes, you will likely be "playing it wrong," but there is nothing wrong with that! We all start playing any new game completely wrong, and the process of learning something new is fun.

You will be creating basic characters, rolling 3d6 or less, sailing around on pirate ships and having swordfights, firing your flintlock pistols, hearing the roar of the cannons, and completing a sample boarding action to steal the treasure of a corrupt and wealthy merchant king.

Accept that you are doing it wrong, have fun, and use that experience as a springboard to learn different parts of the game that interest you, step by step.

Now compare this with the D&D and 5E models. You want a pirate-themed game! Let's either wait for a Kickstarter project or go search DriveThruRPG for a 5E pirate-themed supplement. If it is a Kickstarter, we are likely waiting a year for fulfillment and out a hundred or more dollars. If we want a hardcover on DriveThruRPG, that is about the same price as these days, given shipping.

Let's say we can find one. Let's hope it is well-researched and generic enough that we can use it for our setting. It may be tied to its own setting and have shark-men or something, which may be cool, but all of a sudden, our historical game is out the window unless we want to limit character options.

Now, let's set up our game. We want a historical game, so here comes the massive list of "no's" in character creation. We need to cut out most of D&D's race and class options just to get something close enough to what we want. None of what remains is a perfect fit for the characters we want, and eliminating certain classes and powers will significantly alter the game and disrupt the balance. D&D will continuously fight us when a character levels up, and you need to tell a player "no" on every option.

D&D's spells and default world model will fight you, too. You need to start banning planar travel spells, all of the gods, healing magic, spells that replace cannons, most of the magic items, various monsters that just don't fit, and the ban lists just go on and on. Just to get a new player into the game will require them to read a list of banned options and items as long as a book report. The game's balance will be broken. It will likely work for the first five levels, and then the game will break apart, and the challenge will be gone, or so impossible that people will wonder why they are playing this freakish mess.

And we don't have ships, cannons, history, a world, ship battle systems, and there is so much else we need to buy or create ourselves. Forget it, let's just play D&D with this set of rules. It is too much work trying to make it do anything else.

It is a lot of work just to play that pirate RPG that you may have seen in a movie and wanted to explore.

Becoming fluent in GURPS, a game that people say is "notoriously complicated" (it really isn't), is far easier than modding even the core books of 5E to do a new idea. D&D is only suitable for D&D. Even teaching GURPS to new players is easier than modding 5E and paying tons of money to Kickstarter books that will never support the simple thing that you want.

I just want to play a pirate! Give me a saber and some daring-do sword fighting skills and acrobatics! Give me a flintlock pistol to fire a single shot off as an attack option! Let me swing on a rope over to the other ship and join the fray! I want to be a pirate!

Okay, D&D says, you are a fighter. Are you wearing plate mail? Because you need plate mail. Even if you are a rogue, are you sneak-attacking? Picking locks? The D&D class abilities are all wrong for this! Nobody wears a plate on these ships; it is too heavy to swim in, and that is certain death by drowning! And don't give the excuse of "well, I have quick-release straps." Good luck with that when you are dropping like the ship's anchor into the cold darkness, and rolling to remove each piece.

Even in 5E, each piece of plate armor would be an action to unhook, with a roll that can fail for each, and that can add up to dozens. The armor is lost forever. If you are wounded, you likely won't even get a few pieces off before you drown. Even healthy people would struggle, and it would be a miracle to survive. You would need to pull off a Houdini-like escape.

In GURPS, here are the handful of skills you need. You have a few ability scores. Over there are your hits and move score. This is how combat, parries, and dodging work. Okay, now you know the game. Here comes a merchant crewperson with a saber. Now you can fight them in one-second combat rounds. Do one thing and don't worry about "action types" or "action economies." What one thing do you do? Close? Do defensive? Draw your flintlock so you can fire next turn? Can you quickdraw your flintlock and fire in the same turn? Do an all-out attack?

All the combat options are built into GURPS' combat system and not hidden in subclass abilities across a dozen classes. They are not hidden in feats. Anyone can accomplish these things if they possess the necessary skill levels. GURPS combat is easier than D&D, since nothing is off-limits and every combat option is universal.

But I have superpower-like abilities in D&D! If that is a part of your game, give casters "magic superpowers" like fire bolts, magic shields, healing hands, and other powers. You don't even need to use the spell and magic system. GURPS does that too. If you want a realistic world with no magic, you can do that too. If you wish to have a special magic system, just a thaumaturgic or shamanistic one, you can do just that, too. You don't have to "take the whole bag" of the D&D spell and magic system.

Becoming fluent in GURPS, which is not particularly difficult, is far easier than modding D&D.

And once you do, you unlock the ability to create any game, in any world, at any point in time. If you want to make "My Favorite Movie: The RPG," you can do that, too, without D&D getting in the way.

So many doors are open to you once you grasp a few simple GURPS concepts. All of these are in the free copy of the GURPS Lite rules.

Playing D&D is like playing a video game.

Playing GURPS is like getting an education and being able to make any video game you can imagine.

Starfield

I have an admission, I just started playing Starfield. Are you this late to the game? Past its first expansion? Past the paid mods? Past the point where all the modders supposedly gave up on the game? Past the point where all the YouTube channels are trying to bury this game with clickbait videos?

Yes, I am that late.

I will avoid all the previews and trailers of movies and wait for the film so I can be surprised. I will not spoil the experience. I'll wait for a game to patch up and "get good" before committing serious time, and I'll avoid the playthrough videos. I will avoid spoilers.

Now I am playing, and for the first few hours, I am enjoying the immersion.

And I know, the game is broken, gets repetitive, has serious flaws, lacks depth, and all of the other things I have heard about it are likely true. The hardened, jaded gamers are probably right on this one, and I will likely end up feeling that way, too, by the end.

But there is one thing I love about this game.

It is the illusion of living in a science-fiction universe.

Granted, I know nothing, and I will eventually see how fake everything is, how this is all a Hollywood stage set, and how this is just a huge ruse and the wool is being pulled over my eyes. You are living an elaborate lie. All these systems are just fake, and you have not hit the grind where you hate everything in this synthetic digital life.

And yes, getting your first starship for free was strange, maybe it was a mod, I don't know. Also, how people immediately trust you and give you jobs and positions of power is also strange, but a game has to be a game, you know. I also have a few mods that liven up travel with POIs and combat encounters, so this will be more like an RPG experience where travel is combat-filled, allows exploration, and is engaging. There will be a lot to do out here.

But I am enjoying this "magic trick" for what it is, for the first few hours that I do not know better, and I am actually in a living, breathing, science fiction universe where I am a tiny person in a sea of stars.

Then I thought of GURPS: Space, since this is totally GURPS: Space. This is what living in a science fiction RPG is like. I don't like the "make it Star Wars" mods for this game, since it's not Star Wars. This is our best example of a generic science fiction universe (minus intelligent alien life) that we can see, explore, and exist inside of. We have human factions, alien monsters, and a mind-boggling number of worlds. We have cities and outposts. There are corporations and space criminals. We have space stations and ships flying around out there in the stars.

Having a living, breathing, visual model of a universe is an inspiration.

This is cool.

Know when inspiration grabs you, since it is the ambrosia and nectar of the gods when it comes to roleplaying and creating universes and adventures. This is what drives us, these magic feelings where we feel anything is possible, and all I need are the tools to express it.

GURPS is the best toolbox in the world to build dreams with.

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.

The Weird Fantasy Genre

With weird fantasy, one of the best games that tries to dive into it is the great Dungeon Crawl Classics game. The dungeon is not supposed to be "the normal," as entering the dungeon is more like Alice stepping into the looking glass. This is the upside-down world, where nothing should work or seem normal, and a place apart from reality, like a near-death perception-altered experience.

D&D 5E turns dungeons into video-game levels, boards in a strategy guide to clear. This comes from D&D 4E, which is why modern Wizards D&D is not D&D. The classic D&D experience is defined by that "Beyond the Looking Glass" dungeon crawl, of a dungeon master using their twisted imagination to create an out-of-body experience in other players' head spaces.

I have had my 5E groups go through a dungeon without fear. All my AD&D groups had fear.

Making D&D into "influencer fantasy" with slavish influencer art and the yoke of nostalgia guts the game's spirit and power. Wall Street has stripped D&D of its identity. D&D 2024 is not D&D. It is a tabletop game influenced by Diablo IV.

Is it fun? Yes. Like a video game is fun.

Dungeon Crawl Classics tries to achieve this by using strange dice and random charts, but the charts ultimately define and limit the experience. True out-of-body existential discovery and horror cannot happen if everyone knows the results on the charts.

The charts will prevent you from truly discovering and realizing what we all once knew with these games in the 1980s. The Satanic Panic happened because more and more people were being enlightened (look up the late-80s enlightenment movements, like crystal therapy, and so on), and AD&D 2nd Edition was created to put the genie back in the bottle. Wall Street stopped mass spiritual enlightenment in 1989 when D&D was at its height of cultural influence.

Note: This is not what I actually believe, but to get in touch with the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, this is where your thinking has to go. A game is a game, but many in spiritual movements latched onto AD&D as a transcendental tool. Religious groups responded to this and pushed back. 

To get into the proper gonzo mindset, you must free yourself from the idea that tabletop games are simple replacements for video games (2000-2020) or consumer-driven, identitarian lifestyle gaming (2021-present). When you feel "the game is more than just a game," then you have the proper mindset. 

All that sounds crazy, but trying to understand that concept and theory will put your mind in the correct mode to run weird fantasy games. This is not just a video game with goofy stuff or some superhero power fantasy where you are "meant to kill the monsters." Kitchen sink fantasy, while fun, ultimately leads to "videogame-ism" and puts you into a mindset where you will never reach this higher state of enlightenment.

Wall Street took over D&D and made it "safe" again. Even DCC refuses to go to some places, and keeps itself safe for every audience. The collection of things considered to be in "kitchen sink" fantasy shrinks as controversial topics are bleached from the genre, such as half-races and succubi. And stale and controlled is what most of today's "gonzo fantasy" becomes. It is a commoditized fantasy, featuring goofy elements like silly hats, big mustaches, talking bananas, and strangely drawn art. You get the visuals right, but not the heart and soul.

With kitchen-sink fantasy, I love how familiar it is, but the world it creates feels like any version of D&D. Gonzo goes a step beyond that. For me, it is a starting place, a doorway to that more enlightened, mind-altering, and almost spiritual place. It is the "normal" from which we jump into the "abnormal."

True gonzo fantasy is like stepping through the Looking Glass.

Part of me dislikes the kitchen-sink genre since it leans too hard on D&D's tropes. Our games become nothing more than "D&D simulators" compared to our stories and imagination. Yes, they are D&D simulators coaxed in realism, but GURPS can do so much more than power a simulator.

Shadowdark does a little better, and it "gets" what the dungeon should be, if in an abstract form, where "the dark" is a powerful, evil, irrational metaphysical force that wants to consume the party and all that is good. We are making progress, but we are not yet where we need to be.

However, Shadowdark also begins with a more humanistic and ordinary world. We can't enter an altered state of heightened perception if we start out in that "101 fantasy races eating cupcakes in a town" mess of fantasy art we get in D&D 2024 these days, which looks more like a Target ad than it does D&D art. We must start with a more "our world" humanistic, grounded base to get that stark difference and experience that perception shift.

These people playing as anthropomorphic dragons or gentrified orcs will never experience a heightened reality because identity swapping dulls their experience and senses. You are so focused on your new self that you never see the outside or witness the stark differences between realities. If a human begins to change into a dragon, that is special. Who cares if you get to start as one and be the same as everyone else?

In GURPS, we have tools to help us journey towards true, authentic, pre-1989 weird fantasy thinking. One of the best is GURPS Cabal, designed for more conspiracy-minded campaigns and urban mysteries. But trying to imagine all these strange planes and dimensions intermixing with a medieval world where they don't even know science yet...

They can't even explain combustion or bacteria. How will they understand a strange point in space where two dimensions cross and the rules of how the world works are entirely different in one or more ways? What happens when a figment of a reality comes close to our own and only affects one aspect of mental perception? There could be a place where you try to write in your native language, and all that comes out is strange alien gibberish.

This place will never be explained, and you will never tell the characters the real reason why. They may never figure out the worlds they inhabit. We have enough trouble in this world trying to figure out the unexplained. Imagine a world of myth, trying to make sense of it all.

Of course, players forget history in modern gaming, and fantasy worlds are just Ren Faire-dressed modern worlds. Of course, these worlds have scientific knowledge because ...magic! GURPS players know about and respect Tech Level, so you will find a player base here with a more profound understanding of history and the progression of technology.

Another great resource is GURPS Powers: The Weird, which initially explores the concept of weird science. However, the later chapters touch on topics discussed in the Cabal book and delve into this genre's power types and sources. You get some great power ideas that places, people, or monsters could have, such as illusions that can heal or harm, scale adjustment, and other strange, mind-altering ones that break your perceptions of reality.

Mix all this with GURPS Fantasy (or Dungeon Fantasy), and try introducing "the weird" into a game world. Don't make "everyday magic" a part of the world; keep wizards and other casters mysterious and rare. Magic is not understood, accepted, or a technology metaphor. It is not used in everyday life by everyone. Magic can be feared as "something that steals your soul" - even if you rely on it for convenience. Wizards must keep their work secret for fear that someone may stab them in the back for being a devil worshipper.

Then, introduce the weird.

Make the population fearful. Make the strange happening truly strange and not reproducible by "simple magic." Something else is going on here. You will begin to experience the reality warping sensation of seeing characters deal with something they can't explain, and their players can't either. What do you do next if you can't explain it, dispel it, understand it with divination, go into a dungeon and turn it off, or wish it away? D&D assumes you have perfect knowledge and control of your world, and that everything on the spell and power lists will be able to solve every problem in the universe.

This is how it was with AD&D for us, of which the excellent Adventures Dark and Deep is my stepping stone. When we entered that dungeon as characters, we felt like we were stepping out of this dimension and into another. There was a transcendental experience that was more than playing a video game or running a simulation. The dungeon door was the portal to another universe. Today, the above game carries on that mantle.

GURPS was created in that era. When we played GURPS, we stepped out of this world and into another on a different path, but it was there. This was when we stepped into another world entirely, created using the alchemical parameters of the game, and felt like we were somewhere else. While in AD&D, the dungeon served as a metaphor for moving into another reality, in GURPS, entering a world nobody had ever seen before was referred to as a "dimension shift."

GURPS is the more mind-expanding game, and it doesn't need the dungeon metaphor for the shift.

But you still need to build the grounding metaphors, establish the parts of the everyday world to relate to, and then contrast the differences between the world we perceive and the one we cannot.

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.

How You See the World

GURPS is unique in its approach to character development. It starts with an average zero-point character, a ten in every ability, no skills, and the default chance to do everything. This character is a nobody and an everybody, representing the baseline average person. As the game progresses, this character can pick up skills through education and evolve into something more, reflecting the theme of heroism, sacrifice, and the potential to change the world.

GURPS is a very down-to-earth, holistic, almost traditional view of life. It is a game that models the "base character" around us, something very relatable and familiar, and it can model an average life. This is one reason I love GURPS; the default character is not some marketed, overly fantastical CGI hero with artificial power. There is no "level chart" with a pre-programmed track of "amazing powers." The starting zero-point GURPS character is like you and me.

And then something magical happens.

You can be that fantastical hero, that ultimate warrior, or that circus acrobat rogue. You can unlock the secrets of magic or the power of the divine. Slowly, point-by-point, your character becomes more than average and ordinary; your character becomes fantastic. It is not the same "assumed progression" as a level-based game; your mage could veer off into becoming a stealthy rogue for a while. Your bard could don plate mail and become a front-line fighter. Your nature-loving druid could pick up sailing and pirate skills.

GURPS stands out for its organic character development. It does not rely on multiclassing or layering artificial progression tracks. Instead, it allows you to unlock the secrets of power naturally and delve as deep into each one as you desire.

You unlock the secrets of power naturally and explore each one as deeply as you want. With each point spent, you go further in your chosen direction, and it does not even have to be combat or magic. You could become a skilled alchemist, artist, performer, historian, or another role, and your "adventuring abilities" could support that field of study. A long time ago, in the 1980s, someone said this about GURPS, which is still true today:

In GURPS, you can design a scientist character and have them be as fun to play and essential to the party at the table as a fighter.

The old "d20 Star Wars" game was put out by Wizards, and one of the design goals was to make technician and pilot characters "just as fun to play" as combat characters and space wizards. Part of the complaint against many sci-fi games was that "starship crews and technicians were useless" in ground-based adventures, and they had the "Shadowrun hacker problem" of only being useful in a tiny part of the game that sidelined the rest of the party.

Shadowrun and Cyberpunk have had this issue for decades, but they created the problem with lists of programs, such as magic spells and dungeon maps of computer systems, that hackers had to explore in VR. They made a mini-game inside the game for one player.

In GURPS, you can give your scientist or mechanic a few combat skills if you want, and this is if "combat is seen as fun" at your table. If combat isn't fun, you do not need all these combat abilities that d20 games force on you. That 20-sided die has a bloodthirsty legacy, and while this is a strange way to look at the hobby, I get the feeling that a d20 is mainly rolled out of hate and violence. The die is so synonymous with murder-hobo play-styles that entire games are now being designed to "streamline and gamify combat" better than D&D.

Combat in D&D-style games is getting to be like the worst parts of gun culture, fetishizing "what bullet gives the most stopping power and killing potential." Which d20 game makes violence the most enjoyable and "fun?" MCDM RPG eliminates the to-hit roll! Nimble 5E makes combat fast and fun! Tales of the Valiant gives you "luck points" for missing stabbing someone with a knife! Here is your D&D multiclassing optimization build for maximum damage per turn! Fun-death-fun!

Every argument against video games in the 1990s becoming an orgy of death and violence applies to d20 tabletop gaming today.

And they make it worse by gamified violence with abstract mechanics. Some tabletop games will have a "killing spree" mechanic, and it will go too far.

I love my 5E books, but they go too far with the death and violent focus. They are too focused on power. They try to cover it up with happy, colorful, diverse art, but once you lift the veneer, you will find it is stuck on there with the blood of hundreds of monsters, intelligent humanoids, and animals.

But it comes back to that "average Joe or Jane" character I started with. Violence to them is out of the ordinary, shocking, and deadly. It is a last resort. Combat in GURPS is, by default, deadly, so you look for other ways around the problem. This is old-school play more than B/X does old-school play. In GURPS, you can't have a few hundred hit points and laugh off repeated stabs with a knife like in D&D. In B/X, you can have 80-100 hit points and AC of -2 and laugh off dozens of goblins and kobolds. And in 5E, it gets even worse.

Even if you gain much "combat power" in GURPS, you are still rooted in reality. You are good; you can dodge and block many attacks but are not invincible. You still need to be careful. A pile of hit points, AC so high you can't be hit, and an action economy that stacks the deck in your favor will not save you from a lucky shot. One goblin with a lucky strike can take down your 500-point superhero.

You still need to think and role-play, and you still need to approach conflict intelligently. Your non-combat skills are just as necessary as your combat ones, no matter how much combat power you accumulate. In fact, in GURPS, your non-combat skills are often more critical since adventures typically involve solving a series of problems based on real situations.

If you get a scientist or hacker character in a d20 game, that character is seen as "unfun" and "dragging the party down." The character "monopolizes game time in a single-person minigame" or is "only useful once per adventure for a single skill roll."

GURPS lets me create worlds that aren't bloodthirsty d20 slaughterhouses. Breaking away from that mindset is hard, so I picked up an old-school module like Keep on the Borderlands. This adventure feels like a pen-and-paper ARPG, a killing and grind-fest that I remember fondly, but these days, tossing a fireball into a room full of 40 goblins feels more like a war crime than an adventure. I love this module. It is an essential old-school primer written by Gygax himself, but these days, we have adventures that better fit my idea of roleplaying and what I like in a game.

Trying to play old D&D modules with GURPS feels very strange. I feel as if I am taking people from the real world and dropping them into a peculiar "crazy circus of death and looting." It is almost a "wonderland of madness and infinite power gain," sort of a maniac beyond the looking-glass world where death and killing are entirely justified by the acquisition of power and wealth.

Anything is justified to reach the next level, right?

It sounds like something a blood-soaked Mad Hatter would say.

I would roleplay with the orc and goblin tribes, convincing them to leave the area and find a better way of life—to "leave the maze" and settle the land somewhere else. My GURPS playthroughs are strange, alignment-less negotiation sessions in which my heroes aren't the "kill them all" tropes but sensible, pragmatic, what-are-you-doing realists who try to solve the problem there rather than "go through the keyed rooms and gotta kill & loot them all."

If the temple of evil is keeping you here, then help us destroy it. Then, you can be free of this evil prison and forge a (possibly good) life elsewhere.

Again, my characters aren't the B/X or 5E tropes.

They act like real people would. That 10-point every-person comes to mind.

It tells how a game's design and "content" can lock you into a power-hungry and bloodthirsty mindset and behavior. It is also a story of how these companies can lie with art, flowery words, or comfort-food nostalgia. Players have been "killing their way" through Keep on the Borderlands for 50 years!

Why shouldn't I do the same?

Stop.

Why should you?

The GURPS Version Always Feels Right

Every time I engage in a conversion, the unique allure of the GURPS version becomes apparent. In GURPS: BattleTech, the actions, thoughts, and intricacies of every task take on a new level of enjoyment and satisfaction. The thrill of repairing a mech in BattleTech with a few skill rolls is heightened in GURPS, where a plethora of technical skills is required to fix the machine, each repair task presenting a unique challenge.

Traveller, in comparison, offers a different experience. Under GURPS, starships and exploration take on a more tangible and immersive quality than under the Traveller 2d6 system. The extensive skill list and deep character design in GURPS elevate immersion to a level I never thought possible in a tabletop game.

This leads to a thought-provoking question: does abstraction hinder immersion?

If you take a game like FATE or Cypher, where everything is abstracted, a cyber-security door and a roomful of goblins are rated using the same numeric system and rolled against as a "challenge" - is immersion ruined? The "so what" factor kicks in; who cares if this X is challenge 15? Isn't it different from the 12 we faced a few rooms ago? Roll a few dice, abstract a concept even more, and roll a few more.

Yes, suspending disbelief is needed, but rules-light and heavily abstracted games stretch that concept too hard for me. Nothing means anything anymore. If you can "get into it" - great - but if you are not motivated, what does anything matter anymore? It is all a rules-light, abstract, who-cares mush of concepts, special game terms, and pools that conceptualize things like health, power, social status, and stamina.

I love Cypher, but I must wrap my head around it and get into it. Everything makes sense when I am in the zone, linking obstacles to difficulties and abstract resolution methods. When I want a game that gives me immersion, the additional "abstraction layer" that needs to be layered on top of everything to make the game work ruins immersion.

I also love Savage Worlds, which, in a way, feels like "rules light GURPS," but it needs a specific "Savage Worlds OS" to be loaded in my head for everything to work correctly and the abstraction concepts to be able to drive the world. There are also a lot of "toys" in this system, like cards, chips, and other items, which I find a bit cumbersome when playing solo. This game was made to play with a group, and the toys enhance the group-play experience. This is a fantastic game, one of my all-time greats, but it could be better for solo play (for my taste).

The abstraction is still here, but not to the degree that a FATE or Cypher would stress to make the game concepts work. It is more of a rules-medium game with an abstraction layer on mechanics.

GURPS lets me go to the metal and get the total immersion hit that I crave, and it requires me to slow down and enjoy one or two characters. I don't need to simulate a party of characters in GURPS to play solo; just one or two, with a maximum of three, is acceptable. 

Do I need a starship crew to support my space captain? Create them all with GURPS Ultra Lite and put them on an index card. Seriously, they will all still be 100% compatible with the complete rules set, and I save a lot of time creating characters that do not need that much detail. Why waste time for the one or two moments in a campaign where possibly one skill a crew member has matters? If one is an engineer, the skill works for that; roll it, apply a negative modifier if it is unfamiliar or a "related skill," and move on.

But I am not abstracting them; there is a difference between simplified and abstraction. I could apply hit location, damage, and wounding effects if I wanted to "zoom in" and use the full combat rules with an Ultra Lite character. That UL character can be a full-game character in a pinch; I need to make a few trivial assumptions.

This is not like I am creating a 12-minus goblin, having the goblin roll 12- to attack a PC and requiring PCs to roll a contest versus a 12- to "defeat" them. Though, you can do that. The Ultra Lite way is to put an X- on a creature's attribute, give them a +4 skill if needed, assign an HT value, and be done.

You are not abstracting, just simplifying. The "GURPS OS" you need is still there, with minimal abstraction. This "OS" is also smaller than games with heavy abstraction layers, and things are easier to understand. Any abstraction translates between a simplified attribute and skill system and the game. You can still shoot a crossbow into that goblin and use the complete rules to simulate that strike if needed. Otherwise, knock the goblin down in defeat and move on.

Armor Class is an abstraction; you must explain it to every new player of B/X or 5E.

Armor subtracting damage is a "natural rule" and works the way people expect the real world to work.

But you are not abstracting the world, challenges, swarms of wasps, raging currents, orcs, dart traps, or any other challenge. The "simulation way" inside of GURPS still runs the show. There is very little or no abstraction between you and the world.

It's Just Roll 3d6

Some people play GURPS by just "rolling 3d6." For example, in a d20 game where the group does not care about the rules, they ignore most of them and "just roll a d20." Character creation only exists to generate skill and ability levels, and 90% of the rules are ignored to just "roll 3d6" or less for things that come up during play.

This is the GURPS Lite model of play, where the Lite rules are just a system to generate skill levels, make rolls, and run a simple combat system. Most GURPS groups stay close to the Lite combat system and ignore most of the book's advanced (and optional) rules.

Attack with a sword? Roll 3d6. Did you hit? Damage minus armor, next player goes.

GURPS is as rules-light as you want it to be. You can get in groups and games that make you feel you need to follow every wounding rule, every by-the-book modifier, and every "how to play this right" sort of feeling coming at you - but in practice, you really don't need to live up to a "perfect play" standard in this game. This is an old-school game, and the rules are suggestions.

Is there always a by-the-book way? Yes. But, from the How to Be a GURPS GM book:

Everything in GURPS is optional – we say so all over the place. We specifically say things like “as long as the GM is fair and consistent, he can change any number, any cost, any rule,” “everyone must realize that an epic story is apt to transcend the rules,” “don’t let adherence to a formula spoil the game,” and “if there is only one ‘right’ answer to fit the plot of the adventure– then that’s the answer.” The rules are only there for when you need them to help advance the game. Most of the time, you should be doing that by talking and roleplaying and telling a story.

Make a ruling and move on. You, your group, and your game will be fine.

You will also find GURPS to be much more flexible than your average 5E game due to the above.

GURPS Lite is all about efficiency. It follows the same 'gameplay loop' as a d20 game but without many action types and bonus actions that can bog down a 5E turn and drag out combats. The one-second combat turn in GURPS Lite is a game-changer, allowing a single action to significantly accelerate gameplay. In contrast, games like Pathfinder 2 and DC20, with their three and four actions per turn per player, can lead to a sluggish pace as players strategize and execute combos and multi-attacks.

Consider this: in GURPS Lite, a simple action like 'I draw my sword' or 'quick draw skill roll and attack' can be executed in a single one-second turn. Compare this to the time-consuming process of planning movement, a spell, a few attacks, another action, or any combination of three or four actions during a turn.

The time taken during a turn in tabletop games is directly proportional to the number of actions allowed, squaring the time taken to the number of actions allowed. One action takes one unit of time, two actions take four units of time, three take nine units of time, and four take sixteen units of time. One-action and one-second turns are the peak of efficient game design.

When you determine that each monster has multiple actions during a turn, six goblins now have 18-24 actions for the GM to decide every turn (and roll for!). Where do people find the time to play these games? They sound great on paper, but I doubt these games can be played quickly. They make B/X and GURPS look like rules-light games during play, which, comparatively, they are.

Modern games love to "ignore the referee" regarding ease of play. While character creation is straightforward and fast in many d20 games, the time taken per turn is atrocious and a complete slog. People think GURPS is a slog during turns, but it isn't. Character creation is the slog, but this is why we love the game. No game gives you this much control and customization.

GURPS skill rolls and combat turns are no different than a B/X-style game. In most turns, you decide on an action; often, you don't need to roll for it - just say what you do.

Also, with a one-second turn, there may be long pauses between attacks. If you watch modern battlefield footage, count the seconds between shots soldiers take. In many cases, there is a 1-6 second delay between every shot (or even 2-12). Not every combat will be this "video game alpha attack," where an attack happens every second.

In many cases, "do nothing" is a valid turn action, especially for untrained fighters, and it is also pretty standard in real-life warfare.

If you are doing a "dungeon combat" and have a bunch of goblins, you could roll a d6 for each one of them and delay their actions, or a d3 if they are more skilled at battle. Goblins engaged in combat on the frontlines would attack every second, but the ones in the back would often delay actions randomly. Even an archer supporting the frontline troops will delay firing for the best possible shot and throw in an aim action or two as they wait for an opening.

Those delays also open up opportunities for players to roleplay. What do you do if the battle quiets a few turns while everyone repositions? Demand surrender? Surrender? Propose a truce? Disengage?  Refortify? Intimidate the enemy? Bring up a heavy weapon or call for help? Ask for help against a common enemy? Offer gold to stop fighting? Does the enemy make those offers? Combats may not last "until death," and in many real-world fights, this is true, too.

Also, the best possible action isn't always what happens. A few goblin archers may fire arrows down a hall to deter movement. They may shout insults, bang drums, or hide to wait for a better opportunity. They could throw food, rats, or chamber pots at the party. They could be arguing with each other. These "delays" are great roleplaying moments with a lot of personality. Not every enemy is this "programmed AI bot" that moves towards every enemy and attacks at the first chance like a computer controls them.

This happens with modern d20 games, where multiple actions encourage "micromanaging and optimizing turns." These games are based on card-game design, not reality. GURPS is reality-based, and the dis-optimization of player and enemy actions increases the game's realism. It feels incredibly counter-intuitive, but it makes sense when you step back and consider real-world battles and hand-to-hand fights.

Wake up from this modern d20 gaming "mind lock" of turn optimization and to-the-death battles.

The Rules-Light Tyranny of Simple Skills

Both Traveller and Star Frontiers have this problem. This one came up in my GURPS Star Frontiers campaign, derailing my game. Here is your typical starting SF character's skills:

• Beam Weapons 1
• Technician 1

Usually, you pick a combat skill plus your specialty- a medic, technician, computer, robotics, or whatever. In Traveller, you get similar skills, but the skill list is more extensive, so you typically start with 4-10 skills in various areas. Still, the levels and specialization focus areas are similar to Star Frontiers. Traveller's skill list was better, by far, but SF was designed for a younger audience. SF did more with the skills, offering actions in each skill that you could attempt at various percentages.

However, trying to convert SF to GURPS poses a problem. I had characters I wanted to recreate, and my first attempts are rebuilding them were these "good at everything generalists," which frankly had no focus and sucked. If you are designing a generalist in GURPS, stop and rethink your design. You won't be happy with it.

The character I was trying to rebuild was a technician, pilot, and beam weapons "action hero" type guy.

He ended up a sci-fi, do-it-all generalist with a two-page skill list, and I was not happy with him. In Traveller, your character can die in character generation; in GURPS, your character can "die" in character generation, too; you can blow it and have the character come out terrible. It is like cooking dinner, failing terribly, tossing it all, and ordering takeout.

You can get through GURPS character creation and have a mess of a character that can't be played. That is a terrible feeling. Sometimes, I would rather play a 50-point know-nothing scrub and earn my character points to learn what comes at me. GURPS takes time to learn. But what takes even more time is re-learning how to roleplay.

You enter the world of GURPS, and your world expands exponentially. Things you would "brush off" in a throw-away rules-light game suddenly become matters of life and death. You can't get the cargo-bay ramp closed. Who cares?

The door will tear off when the ship tries to get enough speed to accelerate into orbit.

All that atmospheric pressure blowing in the ship will cause the lower deck to explode from within.

And the ship will fall back to the ground, tearing itself apart as it loses structural integrity.

In a rules-light game, whatever, the hard technician skill roll, fix it, take a 20, and get flying. Some games don't handle the above situation; like in a Star Wars-type reality, you can fly around with a door open forever since the rules and the genre don't care.

But in hard sci-fi? Close that ramp, or it will be game over.

And if no characters can perform a hard hydraulics skill roll? You are stuck. Or try something else, like shutting the ramp and welding it shut. You lose the ramp, but it is better than losing the ship. All mechanic skills default at a -4 skill level, so a 16- turns into a 12-, and modifiers further lower that.

Does someone on your crew know hydraulic repair?

Not a problem.

That one small situation that would have been a throwaway moment in a rules-light game becomes a critical area of knowledge your character can pick up and become good at. This "world expansion" happened to Traveller players who picked up GURPS Traveller, and all of a sudden, the universe felt incredibly large, and everything felt "real" all of a sudden - like putting on a VR headset and being teleported into the world.

I get it. Rules light players are sitting there, groaning and wondering why "elevator repair" is such a big deal. It is a big deal to a GURPS character, especially a technician dealing with blast doors, hydraulic lifts, ramps, starfighter storage systems, docking clamps, massive cargo lifts, landing-bay doors, and deck-sized lift systems.

You look at Star Wars; every shot inside the Death Star has hydraulic systems in the frame.

Rules light players laugh, but we know this skill is worth its weight in gold. Combine this with knowledge of security systems, computer hacking, and electronics, and my character is now "the door guy."

I can't do that in Traveller or Star Frontiers. The former is more straightforward to accomplish this, but not to the detail and level of GURPS.

Which returns to my character design. Maybe I never knew him to the level of understanding who he really was. The generalist character in GURPS sucks. That character doesn't need anyone else, and they will never be great at a few things.

Even if you design NPCs using GURPS Ultra Lite to help the PC in a few areas, that is preferable to being a generalist. Doing this speeds up play, and since the Ultra Lite rules are legal at my table, it allows me to mock up "party members" and crewmates for PCs quickly and play with one fully designed character and a team of UL NPCs as the ship's crew.

Heck, most aliens and monsters will be UL NPCs, too. If an alien has a power, such as a mind control power, make it a simple N-skill roll and get playing. Throw some ! bang skills in as well, as needed, for NPCs. There is no need to break out the powers book for this. UL handles 99% of NPCs.

However, simple skill systems and rules-light games sell themselves as "easy," but I rarely find them to be worth much. 5E's skill system is like this, too. It does not work well for me, and I can't customize it and buy into areas I want to specialize in after character creation. What's worse, with a simple skill system, I never get to know the character and the world's interactivity is reflected in the game's skill system.

Simple skill system? A simple, less interactive, flat, and unengaging world.

The deeper and more in-depth the skill system, the better the world becomes. One-to-one skills reflect immersion in the world. The better the skill system, the better the world. This is where rules-light falls down hard. The worlds are flat and uninteresting, meant to pretend you can interact with them with a skill system so simple it barely tells you anything.