Still Reaching for the Old Books (And Why That’s Okay)

I’ve had the revised Basic Set on the PDF shelf for a while now, and I still keep reaching for my classic 4th Edition softcovers. The travel ones. The ones that have been to every table with me for the last twenty years.

I love the clearer language. I love the rules updates. Objectively, the new book is better. But after two decades of muscle memory, the revised edition still feels a little strange in my hands. I’m also stubbornly attached to those old covers; the multi-genre inspiration jigsaw that always made me want to run everything at once.

I keep telling myself I just need more table time with it. Change is hard, even when the new thing is an improvement.

For brand-new players? Highest recommendation. Start with the revised book. No question.

For the rest of us jaded veterans who began with GURPS 1.0 (and still get a little misty about 3rd Edition), we hold onto strange things. We’re the Strange Barbies of the GURPS world; hair chopped short, marker tattoos, one shoe missing, thoroughly played with, and still the ones the kids actually want at the table. Beat up, been down the road, seen it all… and stubbornly loyal to what we love.

GURPS Is the Best Low Fantasy Game

While I love Rolemaster, Runequest, Hackmaster, and a few of these other "real fantasy" games, GURPS has killed the entire genre for me. The low fantasy versions of 5E, the Conan game, any of the new "dark and gritty" low magic versions of OSR games, and low-magic variants of D&D? Yeah, those are all gone too.

GURPS killed the genre for me.

GURPS does it all better.

While these books are excellent sources of inspiration, GURPS will always be the system played at my table for them. it works the same way every time, is easy to pick up and run, and has the best combat system - and it works without combat even better than most "combat only" games.

Even a game like Shadowdark, brilliant in its own right, pales in comparison to GURPS. What thief character do I want to play? Shadowdark's d4 hit die, backstabbing, and advantage on a few skill check areas, or my fully realized GURPS thief character?

It is no comparison. My GURPS thief wins every time. This is a character who has much deeper development, a greater sense of who they are in the rules, and a more configurable and customizable skill set than a simple 3d6-down-the-line OSR thief. My GURPS thief also beats my 5E rogue by a mile, since my GURPS thief actually feels like a thief and not an MMO DPS class.

My GURPS thief feels like a real person, someone with a backstory with supporting rules to back that up, and will engage me on a deeper level than any OSR or 5E game. In a solo game, my thief wins by a huge margin, even over games designed to have solo modes of play, like Dragonbane.

When my thief navigates through a world, that character in GURPS will have a much more engaging and deeper experience than my OSR or 5E thief. The "GURPS effect" of feeling like a VR headset was put on you will hit immediately, and I will feel immersed in the world, with everything around me suddenly vividly real, mattering, and my every action has consequences - good, indifferent, or bad.

Sure, my 5E rogue gets "cool powers" - but, so what? Those are only good for combat, and they don't help me tell a story. Most of them are promises I will never play long enough to enjoy, having but never really needing. Or the fact that I only get combat powers means the game forces me down a "choice path" of violence first, thinking later.

GURPS? I can run a campaign out to 500+ points of character abilities and not get into one fight. Combat isn't the focus of this game; perhaps it is stealth and social intrigue in a Venice merchant house? Maybe my character has competent fencing skills and some excellent training, but solves most of his problems through intimidation and Machiavellian scheming.

"He's pulled his sword a dozen times, but never used it."

That is a great GURPS character.

Why all these "roleplaying-focused" streaming shows aren't using GURPS is beyond me. GURPS curb-stomps D&D 5E in terms of roleplaying support and actual in-the-book rules that support character backgrounds. It is not a guess, player choice, or sitting there and making it all up - all the character options for flaws and advantages are in the book, rules written, and ready to be used.

And for realistic, gritty combat? GURPS has dials that turn that up to 11, or down to 1. It beats many of these other "real fantasy" games without even breaking a sweat. You have as many or as few "realism rules" as you want here.

And GURPS is far, far easier than many of these games to create characters for and run.

Skills & Wits

One of the trends in post-2000s gaming is the expectation that everyone will be given special powers. Our games became less about "skills and wits" and more about "powers and progression." Granted, there were always superhero games before the year 2000, but with D&D 3.0, game design became more about power trees and progression paths, often mimicking ARPGs like Diablo in pen-and-paper form.

You see this sort of design culminating in D&D 5.5E, where every class feels like a video game series of unlocks and granted powers, where player skill (and the character's skills) matter less, and it is all about what power I can get next, and where I am going on this class tree.

I am speaking broadly, as if D&D 5E is 90% of the market, and games like it tend to follow the leader, and you will see class designs with special powers granted at each level. This "prebuilt powers on a class list" design is incredibly common in gaming today.

Also, skills have been relegated to a secondary role, often "solving a toggle problem." Passive perception covers, "Do I see something?" A referee calling for an active skill roll, like History, is just presenting a pass-fail problem with very little player input or interest. After a while, it doesn't matter what the skill is or what the roll covers; it is just a binary test in the adventure: you get to read something, or you do not. You can move somewhere, or you can't. You take damage, or you don't.

If you can see a 5E adventure as a decision tree, this is the structure. Skill rolls just force you down decision tree paths. And I get this feeling that in 5E, the primary way you solve a problem is with a power, rather than creativity and skill use.

GURPS hits differently for me. Skills feel more open and more like player tools than pachinko machine pegs. For most things, you don't have the skill. You may know someone who does, though. Many D&D adventures are designed around skills. Since they are so limited, there will be a number of skill encounters that act as toggles or filters, making the roll go this way, fail it, and go that way.

In GURPS and many older games, you don't really have adventures designed so tightly around skills. Skills are there as player tools that could open new paths, but they primarily exist to give players the tools and options to create new narrative paths. Skills feel optional and more player-initiated than adventure-required.

Powers are another thing. Powers force the player to read the character sheet each turn and choose a path for that turn of combat. Choice paralysis also defines modern gaming. You will have high-level D&D games in which players forget their characters have powers they could use.

D&D 5E says to me, "Powers solve problems, not plans."

GURPS was designed in the pre-modern era, and you can even see this design philosophy reflected in other games, such as Palladium and Basic Roleplaying. Characters in these games are more about character skills and player choices, and powers are an extra, special bonus.

If you wanted special powers, you turned to games like Champions or ... GURPS. GURPS sort of stands in both worlds, with a power design and a full-featured system for superpowers. D&D never had the focus on special powers it does today, merging with video games and with powers taking over the mental decision tree for a player when their turn comes around. GURPS, by default, can ignore the power-design system and still run like an old-school "stats and skills" game.

Then again, I started with GURPS 1.0, so special powers were always something found "in other books" rather than something in the core rules. GURPS 4 changes all that and is an excellent all-in-one game. And in GURPS, you design whatever power you want, whenever you want, and work with the referee to get or have it. If you have the free character points, you can play.

Still, for me, GURPS feels like a "skills & wits" game.

Realism and High Tech Weapons

I have been playing a lot of Star Wars recently, and dealing with targets who get hit by "blasters." They take a little damage and keep moving. Ouch, my hit points have gone down.

It is a gamist sort of view of weapon damage, health, and wounding - the classic D&D "hit points" sort of calculation, where you can have 30 hit points and get stabbed repeatedly by a knife and still live.

And I look at the blaster again and wonder what that really is. An energy bolt that hot, and with that much energy behind it, should vaporize a huge chunk of flesh from the target. Okay, welcome to GURPS, where that can and does happen. GURPS is far more satisfying with high-tech combat and what these types of weapons do to a target.

Granted, many times it is "tag, you're dead" type combat, but that is how high-tech warfare goes. Look at the battlefields of today with drones dropping grenades, and those hitting point-blank and wiping out whoever they touch. GURPS does sort of boost the lethality of lasers and blasters.

A blaster pistol does 3d(5) burn damage in GURPS and is TL 11. A TL 8 tactical vest as a DR of 12/5 versus ballistic and all other attacks. Raise that to TL 11; it's multiplied by 3, giving DR 36/15 protection. That armor divisor of 5 still cuts that down to a DR of 3, not really taking too much off that 3d attack.

So even if Han Solo had a TL 11 tactical vest (he doesn't), he takes 3d-3 damage from that blaster pistol.

Let's add trauma plates for +69 hard DR. Now we are talking. This is essentially the same item as the Monocrys Tactical Vest from GURPS Ultra Tech (UT, p173), and let's use the blaster pistol against it. Total DR is 84 vs. other attacks; divided by 5, that's 17, so near-total protection against blaster pistols (shoot for the limbs or head).

Time to break out the blaster rifle for 6d(5) damage, and now, on average, we are shooting 4 points per hit through that vest. The blaster carbine, our stormtrooper weapon (UT, p123), does 5d(5) damage, so it is just stopped by the vest, and only gets through if it rolls high.

Unprotected limbs and heads are hamburger to these weapons, as are unarmored targets. If my Star Wars character gets hit by them in GURPS, they are likely near dead or dead if they are unarmored. In most of the other Star Wars RPGs, they get a serious sunburn, lose hit points, grunt, and pretend they are hurt.

In Star Wars, I am "holding my arm," ouch.

In GURPS, "what arm?"

Sure, Star Wars is "for fun" and "it isn't meant to be realistic," but if I am spending time playing a science fiction game, I would want a higher level of realism and simulation. If I use the "not meant to be real" argument, I might as well be playing fantasy.

GURPS sci-fi combat tends to be balanced at the TL it is fought at, given equal weapons and decent armor. Why you would not be wearing decent armor in a science fiction setting is begging to be fried and microwaved by anyone with a personal arm, and it gets worse and worse as you go up tech levels.

And this is why we have cloning and cybernetics in GURPS.

GURPS forces you to look at weapons and energy beams in a realistic light. These are not "toy guns" that "knock someone over and make a puff of smoke" like they do in the movies, but serious weapons of war that, if they hit unprotected body parts, can blow them clear off. They are punching through walls like the MDC weapons of Rifts and setting structures ablaze; these are burn weapons after all. If a firefight happens in the streets of Tatooine, huge chunks are being taken out of walls, and there are likely several buildings and vehicles on fire in the general vicinity. Body parts litter the streets, along with burning corpses.

No, that is not the Star Wars that I remember.

But that is the Star Wars we get with GURPS, if you follow all the rules and don't apply a little creative license, applying that "movie reality layer" to the action. Where this all ends up is like what we got in the Asoka TV series, where a lightsaber can get pushed through someone, impaling them with a weapon that can cut through a steel bulkhead door, and they end up with a small burn on their tummy.

"But, it's hit points damage!"

GURPS, take me away from this insanity! Bring me back to a universe that makes sense, and where pulling out a blaster pistol (or any weapon, for that matter) was a lethal escalation of conflict. Even in GURPS fantasy, sliding out the 3-foot blade of a longsword meant a whole lot more than a non-lethal 1d8 metal stick of D&D 5E.

"But the guards had 20 hit points, it wasn't gonna kill them!"

It seems that, at times, the more superheroic and cinematic our games get, the less connected to reality they are, and the more the entire player base slips into madness. There are times I just want to wash my hands of it all and return to sanity, to games that treat conflict as a serious and weighty choice, and not whack-a-mole with foam-rubber swords.

There are times when I feel GURPS plays faster than D&D 5E, since combat is more lethal and ends sooner, and players are far less likely to engage in conflict because it is so deadly.

With GURPS, I like a harder science fiction campaign, like my GURPS Cepheus game. I sort of want to abandon the science-fantasy elements of Star Wars, especially the modern writing that makes me want to box up my Star Wars games and encase them in carbonite. I have to keep equating classic Star Wars with the OSR, compartmentalizing the modern movies and TV shows, and putting them in their own universe.

While Classic Star Wars is fun, my GURPS Cepheus game feels real to me. There is this "put on" factor with Star Wars that removes it from reality, and the fantasy elements take that grit and realism away, making it feel more like the Flash Gordon movie, campy, pulpy, and unrealistic. If I am in the mood for it, great, but there are times where I want the cold, hard vacuum of space to surround my character like a blanket of fear and dread, where landing on a new world is full of uncertainty and wonder, and walking around a remote settlement armed with a blaster on my character's hip feels like they are there for serious reasons, and if violence breaks out, that could be the end.

That feels real to me.

The rules, characters, skills, and dangers of the technology and universe make this a harsh, unforgiving, and deadly place.

When we are talking about what compels me to play, what makes it all feel real, and why I keep coming back, GURPS will deliver more of that feeling, easier and faster, and without sacrificing the cold, hard math of the future. Those high-tech weapons are all insanely deadly. You need to think seriously about protection and having the strength to haul it around on foot.

There will be times when you go without, and you won't have those high-tech toys to protect you because of local laws and restrictions. You will need to be able to fight with your fists or improvised weapons. You won't be in body armor. And you may encounter those with high-tech weapons while you are at a disadvantage. You will need to use the environment to your advantage and figure out a way to fight back.

I am immersed.

The danger is real.

I am right there, in that world, experiencing like I am in VR.

My character matters; all their hang-ups, weaknesses, strengths, and skills critically matter. This is all highly compelling and excites my brain, making me not want to play, but I need to play.

This is GURPS to me.

Conversion, a Tough Problem

Conversion has always been a tough problem for any generic game I played. You get this rush of excitement, "Let's play X using GURPS!" and then it hits you.

We have nothing.

In some cases, we have something, but it isn't "the exact thing we want."

Starfinder, Star Wars, D&D, Star Trek, Diablo, Warcraft, or any of these other "play them with GURPS" ideas need a ton of conversion to even be viable, and then, getting players to understand those conversions and what went into them is another hurdle.

And this affects any generic game, be it Savage Worlds, Genesys, or any other.

For some genres, generic sci-fi, generic fantasy, and anything covered in a GURPS sourcebook - we have it all. These are good starting points, and we can extend and support about 90% of what we need from here. GURPS does give a lot of "close enough" items that we can either repaint them as "the thing we want" or tweak them just a little to be "good enough."

If you use AI, some AI agents do an amazing job converting anything into GURPS stats. Some of them go wildly off-base, but for the most part, AI is catching up and being able to do a lot of the conversion work for us. I can toss any BX monster stat block into an AI agent and have it easily return "good enough" GURPS stats. The last 10% of tweaking I can do myself, but in 90% of the cases, the stats are instantly there, ready to use in my game.

Ethics is another question entirely here. Understanding that the capability now exists is good for everyone, since it allows us to make ethical and informed decisions, and ask the right questions on sourcing and fair use. This is coming into our hobby much faster than we could ever have imagined.

But a part of me would hate for "AI to be the answer," and I love doing these conversions myself, even if there are so many things to port over that it is an impossible task to even begin.  There is an art to a great conversion that AI will struggle to ever capture. There is also a fun factor that can't be denied.

D&D 4E, Monster Manual, page 83

Add to that, many data sources have changed dramatically since the early days of the hobby; an ancient red dragon went from 88 hit points in AD&D to about 1,400 in D&D 4E. This came back down in D&D 5E (546 hp, still too many), but still, even AD&D 2E sources (23-184 hp, 104 average) are not the same as AD&D 1E, BX, 3.5E (527 hp), Pathfinder 1e (362 hp), or any other edition of the game. D&D 4E was arguably the "videogame outlier" in all the editions, having massive numbers of hit points to match the MMO-feeling of the game.

One could argue that multi-attacks and scaled damage drove hit-point inflation, whereas the original BX game kept the numbers reasonable. GURPS also keeps damage numbers under control, especially for melee attacks. It makes a huge difference in the OSR-versus-5E comparison. A 1d8 long sword holds a measure of threat against an 88 hit point AD&D dragon, especially with fixed modifiers upping average damage to about 10 points. Versus a 546 hit point 5E dragon, 1d8 is relatively nothing.

And I guarantee you that using the D&D 4E stats as a conversion base will result in a "GURPS: The MMO"- level of damage and hit points compared to using a BX-based source. Conversion is one thing; finding a consistent, untainted source is another. My gold standard is BX and 1E-based sources, and those are my benchmarks since they work the best with GURPS.

Also, conversions don't always have to be on the referee! Players can help too by dividing the work if you all want to build something cool together.

There are a few games with loads of "toys" to play with that are tougher sells, like anything with starships, mechs, or vehicles. For a game like Battletech, I love the original minitatures wargame, and I would rather play that (and convert GURPS stats to Battletech piloting and gunnery levels) than convert everything over to a GURPS Mecha conversion. The same could be said for original Car Wars, or even Traveller's ship combat.

Those original games have well-tested, amazing games to play, and doing a side-grade GURPS conversion of the game's stats is easier, more fun in the long run, and saves me a ton of conversion work. I have ships, cars, mechs, and other toys, ready to go, and many are already familiar with these games and can jump in without knowing too much about GURPS. This lets me pull people in easily; we can use GURPS for the "out of vehicle" parts, and it all blends seamlessly.

And I love playing these games as they were designed. GURPS gives me a reason to bust out my Car Wars pocket boxes and dive into that world. When the battle is over, I shift right back into GURPS and enjoy the best game ever written.

Star Wars is a tough one, along with Star Trek. While a part of me loves a gritty, detailed, and to the metal conversion of these games into the "GURPS reality," another part of me (and the part that likes to play with others), recognizes it is easier to buy the official game, use all the toys they have ready and converted in for us, and just play that without a ton of redesign work. Playing these settings in GURPS is amazing and opens my eyes to so many new possibilities, but when putting a group together, just playing what we have is going to be far easier (outside of the GURPS community).

Still, running an X-Wing battle is going to be tougher in GURPS, especially for newer players, than it will be in a game designed to make the experience accessible. Granted, these games tend to use a lot of aggregation that you would end up using anyway in GURPS. Still, when you start getting into massive problems like simulating a capital ship, both games tend to break down, but the more focused game usually has a way of dealing with the problem within the rules framework.

But a starfighter-versus-capital-ship battle can be done in GURPS if you take reality into account. No, you are not going to be able to defeat a Star Destroyer in an X-Wing. You can fly faster than it. The big guns won't be able to hit you unless you are sitting still. Every combat turn you are near it, you will be dealing with "flak" as laser fire from point-defense batteries. What are you trying to accomplish? Taking out the shield generator? That can be a few turns of dodging fire, fighting TIE fighters, and making a difficult skill roll and a good enough damage roll to disable that one system. Mission accomplished, now try to escape alive. All we needed were X-Wing and TIE fighter stats to run that; the capital ship is more of an "area hazard" than something with game stats.

If you are smart and deal with things realistically, you can play a game like this with minimal conversions. You can also push most starships "into the background" if they are not that important to the action, and just treat them as background props. Realistically, how many damaging hits from TIE fighters can your fighter take? What makes sense story-wise? A small ship, maybe 3 hits. A medium ship, maybe 6. A failed defense or piloting roll on a successful hit causes one point of damage. Things work mostly like GURPS ranged combat, but with an extremely aggregated and simplified combat system running the battle.

In a system like that, I could give the Starship Enterprise 36 hits, and make the ship's phasers do a d6, and photon torpedoes do 3d6 damage. Shields block 6 points and take a turn (skill roll) to come back after they are brought down. That sounds about right, and feels like what I saw in the movies. Test it and see how it goes!

And I guarantee you that how a movie writer writes these scenes is based more on feelings and narrative weight than on any technical stat or simulation. This "quick system" is likely getting you closer to "movie reality" than any to-the-kilogram vehicle design and simulation of the battle. Players will be able to understand their ship reeling after two unprotected torpedo hits took half their ship's systems down, and the damage control teams are struggling.

The quick system will be easier for the narrative flow.

And the quick system will feel more like the movie, and you can flex your game design chops and build these "aggregate systems" pretty quickly and make sure they are fair and understood by the players.

What are the hits of the vehicle? How much damage do the weapons do? How do defenses work? How do things work with attack and defense rolls? What are the factors of speed, range, and movement? Most of this will work like GURPS, only scaled to a vehicle or starship scale (and those will be relative scales, such as small craft or capital ships).

Propose a system to the players, try it out, tweak it if it doesn't seem right, take their creative input, and write it down as its own minigame if you like it and it makes your game easier. Almost every board and wargame began life as a minigame, notes on a piece of paper.

Anc conversions don't always have to be a science. I know, GURPS loves its reality simulation, but there are times that the "art" of an aggregation of a complex system will do just fine, fit the need in the moment, and tide you over until your full simulation is ready to go. You may decide to stick with the "quick rules" and just focus on playing.

The trick is to recognize how much work you want to do, where you can save time, and where aggregating a system is better for gameplay and more reflective than reality than a full simulation.

Conversion is both a hard problem to solve and a very easy one - it all depends on how you approach it.

GURPS: Mixtape

What am I wading into?

This isn't clickbait.

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

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

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

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

Hands down.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Think like characters in a typical teen movie.

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

This is stupid fun, as it should be!

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

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

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

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

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

But the genre is worth so much more.

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

Priceless.

Good stuff.

And perfect for GURPS.

Where GURPS Shines for Me

The specific. The details. Every little thing matters.

Knowing the rules. The hex-grid. Facing. Movement.

Building towards a mathematical advantage.

To me, this is where GURPS shines. The heart of GURPS is not point-buy or the best design system in gaming; it is the hard math between the hex grid, movement, carried weight, and using your skills to push your playing piece around that grid to achieve specific story objectives without dying.

Like The Fantasy Trip, the heart of GURPS lies in the same place. GURPS just lets you go so many more places than TFT. You can run a purely narrative game with GURPS, sure, and it works amazingly well. You can do theater of the mind with GURPS, and again, it works well. GURPS just does whatever it wants, and it does it well.

High fantasy or low? 5E doesn't even do low fantasy, and the last time they tried it broke the setting. Limit the gear of martial classes to wood, bone, and bronze, and the magic-based characters walk all over them by level five. In GURPS, oh yeah, this is good. The difference between a move of 3 and 4 could kill you.

GURPS is far, far better than 5E because you are not beholden to the whims of a game designer who tells you how you should build your character. You are the game designer. You design your character for what you want them to do.

Some games have a tight, highly tuned, very enjoyable gameplay loop, such as BX or Shadowdark. You play these games for that gameplay loop. I still enjoy the BX style of play, the counting down six exploration turns that a torch lasts, the regular wandering monster rolls, the forced rest turns, and encumbrance versus movement. That is a classic gameplay loop, and I enjoy it like a fine wine. It is very structured, and it clashes with today's narrative superhero fantasy games to the point that they are not even the same game.

The classic BX exploration, turn, and combat round game loop is very similar to a Car Wars Classic game. Every turn matters. You stay in that framework the entire session, tick off a time-tracking sheet, and never break out of it unless you shift into travel mode.

For the most part, in a dungeon, you are doing the exact same thing as you do in the one-second turns of GURPS, but you are in the 10-minute exporation framework of BX. You burn torches and oil for light. Lose your light, and that is like a SCUBA diver losing their air. It becomes a fight to survive when that resource runs low.

GURPS does that, but not really for the structured exploration turn. You can do that if you want, and you have experience running exploration turns. But that structure isn't in the game, and assumes you will port it in if you like it a lot. GURPS is that shapeshifter that will impersonate other games when it wants to, but you need to have experience in BX within that structure to know it even exists.

This is the invisible problem with GURPS: it is often a role-playing game you go to after other role-playing games that you like fail terribly. Maybe there are parts of them that you like, such as the BX exploration turn and the combat rounds, but you are expected to preserve those parts and translate the rest into GURPS.

That can be hard for players who don't have the concept, especially new players. They will see GURPS and look at all the math, the lack of structure outside of combat, and say, "Why bother?" GURPS assumes you BYOB for game mechanics that you love and cherish, but you have to have a B to BYO. The BX exploration turn is my B. I can bring that into GURPS, and even keep the wandering monster checks and strict light rules, and things become amazing. I can eliminate the resting turns and use fatigue instead, keeping that inside GURPS.

Every little thing matters again, but I have a bit of structure that forces it to matter.

Why do you have a move of two? You are killing us back there. Hand some junk off or drop it, we need to be able to move! The structure of the exploration turn will turn overloaded characters into liabilities quickly. 5E, and truthfully, some OSR games ignore encumbrance entirely and break the exploration turn framework, and they go full "combat action game." I can't play those, since that relationship between movement and weight defines us as humans, especially on vacation, in air travel, or on hikes.

GURPS can be relaxed and tell you, "Do theater of the mind, I do not care." The world is like a movie, and nothing matters except what happens on the screen.

Or GURPS can drill down like a second-by-second man-to-man wargame and give me the grit and blood of an epic fight. Or it can fall anywhere between, and shift identities like a chimera, giving you the exact level of simulation you need at the moment. Stay drilled down for an entire session and count the seconds. Or zoom out and say a month passes.

And GURPS can simulate that BX game loop, and kill you with encumbrance and light. Or you can ignore it. You have the freedom, since GURPS is freedom.

But with a little structure to force certain things to rise to the top, GURPS can be incredible.

Replication versus Storytelling

I suppose with science fiction, I am far more interested in storytelling than replication. I could go all-out with a Starfinder conversion, but what am I doing? My Star Frontiers conversion is closer to my heart, and Starfinder just feels like too huge an undertaking; it would be "just to have" rather than something I really want and need.

I would love to have a great Starfinder conversion, don't get me wrong.

Still, even Star Frontiers feels limiting to the stories I like to tell using science fiction. It is a great classic universe and sandbox, and simulating the universe would be a nostalgic throwback, but I have to ask myself, "Why am I playing science fiction?"

Many science fiction games can't even answer this question.

You will get this huge game, full of space monsters, starships, classes, gear, and starmaps, yet it will strangely feel empty, like there is nothing to do. The hook isn't strong, the obvious isn't as obvious, and there is no "why" answering the question of why you should live and adventure in this universe.

With some science fiction games, it is all about money, and that is a motivation, but not one that really drives me. Original Traveller and Space Opera fell into that category for us. Other games, especially Starfinder, are about levelling and "powering up" with better gear. Star Frontiers falls into the "pulp adventure" category, like Savage Worlds or Amazing Adventures, and those are the sort of self-driven motivations I like.

A great simulation can be a motivation for adventuring, too, especially a very well-done conversion with highly compelling GURPS templates. There is nothing like getting a great, blue-collar, GURPS template, like an astronaut, and taking that character through a crisis and a small adventure, especially in a universe where that sort of adventure would not normally "be a thing" like in Starfinder, where the game is mostly mixed combat and exploration, with light roleplay, and very sparse skill use (typically meant to overcome obstacles).

This is that "immersion factor" that GURPS can create.

Can you do a "chef adventure" in Starfinder? Sure, but I would bet 100cr that another group of space goblins is in there somewhere as a toss-in combat encounter, there is a map, and it breaks down into pawns moving around and trying to get to an end boss. In GURPS, you have the skills to do a really great chef adventure, with history, ingredient knowledge, cooking, and even social skills coming into play, along with various advantages and disadvantages.

GURPS throws the brakes on a typical "d20 experience" and forces you to slow down and enjoy the journey, and all the skill rolls, failed self-control rolls, and encounters along the way. With d20, it feels so streamlined and abstracted that I lose the smaller details, and I just want to clear the next room, search for treasure, and move on.

In GURPS, the small things matter more. Even my character, the advantages and disadvantages, my skills, and who I am with my history. My gear is part of my character build, and my loadout matters. Where gear is stored, and weight matters a great deal. A lot of games hand-wave off gear and encumbrance, and in GURPS, you aren't wearing armor you can't carry.

Plate mail isn't an AC entitlement; it is heavy! Some of these games ignore how heavy a suit of plate mail is, and you can walk around fully decked out in plate armor at a D&D STR of 10 and never suffer a movement or encumbrance penalty. The rules supersede reality and even common sense, and "because the numbers," we end up with a situation where character armor is maxed out because the rules would break if plate mail were casual clothing. Even a full suit of chain mail is heavy. I rarely have a GURPS fantasy character who can wear plate armor because the STR requirement to move is so high.

A lot of fantasy games "go silly" due to the math, and they drift off into unreality-land. Sure, a plate pauldron and chestplate count as "plate mail," and the rest of your fantasy outfit can be Hot Topic. "It's fantasy," they say, and there is a point where it is "too much fantasy," like how an abstract rules light game is "too simplistic" to the point where nothing means anything anymore. If everyone can wear suits of plate mail weighing 75 pounds and move around like they are in jogging shorts and a tank top, I check out.

Seeing a 5E player's face when I tell them their character in a suit of heavy plate has a move of 2 because they are heavily encumbered is priceless. Yeah, that armor you are wearing is as heavy as two of the boxes of Pathfinder books that I own. "But it's fantasy!" does not cut it anymore. Fantasy needs to be based in reality to even qualify as fantasy, or we fall into a kid's game of "nuh-uh" and "I am Godzilla, so it doesn't affect me."

I am honestly tired of the "it is fantasy" argument being used to ignore reality. Yes, fantasy is why we are here, even in science fiction, but fantasy is at its best when we have that contrast between the "grounded world" of reality, and then the fantasy of fantasy that makes everything seem so special and amazing. Using fantasy to say "reality does not exist here" makes everything meaningless and unrelatable. It devolves into "nuh-uh" -isms, and the argument comes up again and again, the next time to justify something more outrageous and often, game-breaking.

"I can wear plate mail with an average strength and move around normally!" No, sorry, you can't. Spend the points on a decent STR and give something else up, and you have "earned" that "fantasy." For many GURPS fantasy characters, just managing to wear DR 2 heavy leather is a major victory, and plate mail is an endgame goal.

I can carry around a heavy machine gun all the time!

Of course, they would let me into the bar with it!

This is a fantasy!

Again, our Car Wars experience was our wake-up call decades ago. No, they won't let you into the bar carrying heavy weapons or explosives, and if you think you can try because "this is fantasy," those running the place will likely unload on you. This is Car Wars. Life is cheap. Few care about your feelings. Please roll up a new character, and try to make them less stupid this time. Or they may have been smart, who knows? The world doesn't care, and I am not pulling punches.

In GURPS, your gear and loadout are half of your character build. Character power is not all contained in the rules and "oh my gosh" powers the book throws at you. Games that ignore the encumbrance rules are an instant red flag, and you will likely see the game bestow all sorts of kewl powerz on you to distract you.

This is also why some of these kewl powerz games are difficult to translate into GURPS, since they rely on a baseline of divorced reality that wildly differs from GURPS'.

The same applies in science fiction. A lot of games feel like they can treat armored battlesuits like casual jumpsuits, and I get it. Mass Effect does that (due to limitations in the character model and its simplification). Still, it breaks my immersion to have armored battlesuits as everyday clothing. I like those armored suits to feel special, to have to store them on a rack and put them on before a fight, and to be forced to fight without them when on shore leave or in social situations that go wrong. I feel the same way about heavy weapons, being forced to wear casual armor, and carrying screens in lower-threat situations.

Yes, you can ignore it all in GURPS and play "rules light," but I love the game's simulation aspects. They create new build options, gear loadouts, and being a character is more than a progression chart and powers. Part of my storytelling is gear and the character's equipment.

Many science fiction games get it wrong. Your high-level power armor becomes your everyday outfit. You haul around laser-heavy machine guns to bars, and have enough space explosives strapped to you that you could level a starport hangar. Despite an average STR, you can carry around an armory and a heavy weapon that weighs 50 pounds.

We had the same problem with Car Wars roleplay 40 years ago. The character is not the car, and the 3 DP "body armor" can't be worn everywhere. Pretty soon, you need to get out of the car, visit a bar in everyday clothing, and live your life without four wheels under you at all times.

Once we realized that, the world of Car Wars came alive. The world was a real place, and not just a map of quarter-inch squares, with a grid line every inch.

Immersion forces you to think about how your character equips themselves and how that affects their movement through the environment. It affects social reactions and can be forbidden in many places. You are forced to store your good gear, and you have to decide where in the game world to store it. You can't just throw expensive weapons and armor all in a cart and leave it parked on a street corner, and the "high-level game" in science fiction involves having your own ship, base, or secure vehicle to store gear in.

This is why medieval knights had bodyguards, squires, a trunk holding their plate mail, a few warhorses with horse armor, and an entourage. Just to support "full plate," they had a supply chain following them around, and the budget in gold to roll in big.

GURPS science fiction is really good and thinks about all this stuff, and it forces me to slow down and think about it, too. Other games? They fall into the rules-light trap and hand-wave away the complexity.

I don't want to simulate that.

Is GURPS Really More Complicated?

I was playing with my 5E character designer, and I created a multiclass bard-warlock of 14th level, and the character sheet was pages long, full of special abilities, spells, descriptions of powers, a dozen powers all with differing "uses per day," and tons of special rules for one character. Some of the selections are cool and "not what I would have come up with," but that is part of the fun, being surprised by designer choices and figuring out which one is the best pick for you at this level.

But all this complexity starts to add up.

While my 500-point GURPS character can have a half-page of skills, the character by itself is not really all that complicated. Even with tacking on superpowers, those are pretty straightforward without the paragraphs of special rules that 5E loads on every ability, like text was free, and there is no need to unify and streamline the design system.

Everything is a special case in 5E.

Every 5E ability comes with a few paragraphs of text.

If you multiclass, it starts piling up fast.

By 6th level, a 5E character feels on par with a 250-point GURPS character. Past that point? The 5E characters start to grow exponentially heavier as paragraphs of descriptions of powers and abilities pile up. I would rather play a 500-point GURPS character than a 14th-level 5E character, just in terms of character sheet complexity.

In GURPS, I will have a few skills at 20-minus or above, and those do not introduce character sheet complexity, but unlock depth in the combat actions you can take at a high level of difficulty.

My 5E character has abilities that have fixed uses per long rest, proficiency bonus uses per long (or short) rest, sometimes are modifiers, are piled full of subclass features, and others are flat bonuses.

My 14th-level 5E character is a 16-page PDF. That could easily reach 24 or 32 pages by the 20th level, and that is not counting spell descriptions. I need all those pages to play, and I am flipping through them all during a turn. In reality, it is a horrible play experience. If I don't "scan my abilities," I will miss one. It is easier to "learn as you level" and repeat them as you gain them, learning how the design works and slowly training yourself on your build.

Now, let me run a 4-person party in 5E and multiply that 16-page character sheet by four. All of a sudden, the amount of character sheets I am managing is getting to the size of the player's guide, and it would only take a dozen characters to reach a book-sized pile of character sheets. This has not changed since D&D 3E, and every game based on the Wizards' design theory runs you dozens of pages for one character sheet at higher levels. Even Pathfinder shares this legacy.

Go digital or go home, and if you are playing in a character party? Four PDFs open, each with a dozen or more pages. I dare say playing GURPS feels like a rules-light game at this point, just in comparison to the pages of character sheets you are dealing with in 5E.

GURPS? Filling four pages of character sheets for a single character is very rare, and that is pushing it; most of the important information is on the first sheet, with maybe some skills running onto the second page. If I have powers, most likely they use an energy reserve (from myself or an item) or fatigue to power abilities.

For a 250-point character, I am averaging a two-sided sheet, and most of the time, a page and a half. Some 250-point characters I can fit on one side of a sheet of paper.

Even if I have superpowers in GURPS (as fantasy powers), those will be a lot more straightforward and easy to understand than your average 5E subclass ability, where 5E has no standard of design and can do almost anything, or modify any part of the rules.

Also, in GURPS, I am making myself more complicated by buying piles of small power-point powers, or I can invest in a few expensive powers or high-level skills. In 5E, I have no choice but to take what they give me. I can control complexity far more easily in GURPS by not going overboard and keeping my character straightforward and streamlined.

GURPS is the more concise and straightforward game, especially for higher-powered characters.

Gen Z Arriving at College Unable to Read

https://futurism.com/future-society/gen-z-literacy-reading

Wow, check out the above article.

Kids get to college, and they can't read?

We hit on this topic before on this blog, and it sort of has to do with GURPS and how the game will be 10 to 20 years from now, and whether roleplaying games in their current form are even a sustainable hobby. Is GURPS doomed to grow old and die alongside its players? One could also argue that D&D, in its current form, is an unsustainable game, so the problem is hobby-wide, and we will probably see this more and more as the years go on.

Or rather, it is what we won't see that will haunt us. A lack of new players since the reading comprehension level required to play and understand GURPS is lost in an era three decades ago.

I am imagining a rebooted Back to the Future, told today, and them going back to the 1980s, with Doc Brown telling Marty, "Back in the 1980s, when kids knew how to read!"

I have a sister in primary education, and it really is this bad. And no, throwing away more money to people who do nothing and sit in offices all day is not the answer. This is part of the problem, to be honest. Huge parts of society have turned into 1984-like do-nothing bureaucracies, with people sitting in offices or on videoconferences all day, being paid to do nothing important.

The plans are made, politicians sell them as a panacea, the checks get signed, and years later, we find out nothing was even done, and the money is gone. Big words, no action, zero follow-up, and wasted money. People in these failed bureaucracies will probably find it easier to pay protestors to make it seem like people are angry that the failed system is finally being held accountable. Those who don't have the energy or attention to fix what is obviously broken will get defensive. Some will want to pour more money into the failed system.

It is a lose-lose-lose game.

It is like buying things on Amazon; you feel good when you hit the buy button, and it is all downhill from there. Same with fixing education: announcing the plan and celebrating its passage is as good as it gets. Then, the bills come.

Sorry, I am a Gen-X roleplayer; when I roll the dice, I expect a result, and accept the outcomes of my actions. Same with the money I pay in taxes for education, I expect results and accountability. We were so poor that we had to cut up cardboard boxes by hand to make Car Wars counters. I don't like wasting money, or when others waste mine.

Now, part of this education article I linked feels like a clickbait headline, but they did their homework and linked their sources and citations. It is not every student; we are seeing an increasing number of them. And the article mentions reading, but I feel this extends into critical thinking, math, history, and many other areas that lie under the surface.

A strange thought I had is, "Do people only know how to play D&D since they watched Critical Role?" In a society where "all learning is based on YouTube videos," this would explain D&D's continuing popularity. People can't learn other games since there is no "video training" for them.

It sounds inane, like I am stupid for putting this out there. But I read these articles, and what else can I assume? Gen Z can't read the article, but I can. If someone makes a YouTube video about it, I guess this exists. If a game has live play, it has a shot of catching on.

Pretty books won't do the job anymore. Only collectors will buy them.

And I see games moving toward a rules-light, easier-to-learn mode. The new Conan RPG is very easy to pick up, teach, and play. This is where designs will head in the future. Single-book, streamlined, easy-to-play, and experience-focused games that compete with cell phones and streaming video.

It boggles my mind to think of what a rules-light GURPS would look like. More like Savage Worlds, but keeping the 3d6 roll-under system? Fewer rules in every chapter? Extreme streamlining and more abstract character options? Part of me feels like it could work, while still keeping what makes the system feel like GURPS intact. The Fantasy Trip is partway there.

But we still need to worry about comprehension and the next generation of players.

At some point, to preserve our society, we should put all K-12 education on YouTube and make it free. Let AI grade the papers. Education is a human right, but remove the profit motive from it entirely. Those who want to succeed at life and enrich themselves will find it. As it stands now, with education behind a government-protected paywall monopoly, the system is failing us, and articles like this are proof. Like Linux, education should be open-sourced and free for all. This is our right as humanity.

Part of how we can help GURPS is to start channels, teach people how to play, do live plays, and even stream solo content for people to enjoy. We can't fight a failed educational system or the entrenched bureaucracies around it, promising to fix it, but we can go to where the future players are and help show them the light.

Play GURPS. Share GURPS. Stream GURPS. Teach GURPS.

Yes, this is the moment where I realize writing a blog is a waste of time for helping new players find the game.

They won't be able to read this.

GURPS Shelf Cleaning Complete

That was a bit of work. Instead of one packed shelf, GURPS now has two shelves, and the game has room to breathe. I use bookends to let some of the books free-stand, and I use my plastic hexagonal dice containers to store dice alongside the books. As I pulled everything off, I dusted and cleaned it, which is essential. A dusty and cluttered shelf is a net negative for a game, so I regularly clean them and give them love.

The entire shelf looks like it is begging for someone to come along and play. I am a very visual person, so I like a shelf that appears less like storage and more like a game store display. The shelf needs to look fun and serve as a "call to action" for what is on it. Some of my books sit on wooden display stands to stay face-out, like the stands used to display fancy plates. I really go all out with my shelves, and keeping them looking accessible and fun is part of my hobby.

If someone walks by, they will know I am a hardcore GURPS fan, and I am proud of it.

One shelf is devoted to Dungeon Fantasy and holds all my fantasy-oriented books, along with the Basic Fantasy books and adventures I play with the system, using my BX conversion guide. I have the excellent Dungeon Fantasy books from Gaming Ballistic on this shelf, too, another highlight of my collection.

I display a few fantasy art books alongside the fantasy-gaming-themed books on this shelf, and it makes for an enjoyable display. Some of these are admittedly Conan-level muscular guys and savage female warriors like a Tor fantasy novel cover, but I grew up on these paperbacks, so they are cool and fit the style of world that is true to my heart.

I still feel the "No Armor, No Problem" rules (Bulletproof Nudity, B417) should stay in GURPS, since they are a mainstay of the savage fantasy genre, but I understand if they want to modernize the game; it will be sad to see them go. In my game, these rules will stay and apply to all genders equally. The original GURPS Conan adventures are some of the best ever made, and capture the genre far better than any d20 game ever made.

I love GURPS Conan. GURPS melee combat, plus a savage Conan-style world, is some of the best stuff in gaming. You can drill down into being a melee god, and it actually shows with your slaying power. Skill versus skill matters in this game, where in traditional D&D combat, it feels like whack-a-mole d20 versus AC on both sides. I can fight defensively and tactically in GURPS, and it works.

I like Basic Fantasy since this is one of the best versions of BX out there, playtested and number-crunched, and it mostly stays out of the way when I want to use the monsters, treasures, locations, and adventures for my GURPS game. Many are coming home to this great game, tired of the endless stream of OSR retro-clones, and just wanting something that is freely shared, works, and does not push the next crowdfunding campaign.

I love Basic Fantasy for its simplicity and expandability, and also serving as a "no frills" base to use with GURPS. Where 5E tends to strip over itself with constant rules and character expansions, and page-long stat blocks, Basic Fantasy keeps it clean and easy, and I can focus on the story and action with a minimum of throwing out paragraphs of rules and exceptional cases for character builds.

I have my 5E game, Tales of the Valiant, on my other two shelves. That is the game where I choose to delve into that level of depth and complexity, but the raw and clean nature of GURPS and fantasy keeps me coming back for more.

For fantasy, the combo of Dungeon Fantasy plus Basic Fantasy is my one-two punch that delivers. I get the depth and fantasy combat sim of GURPS, the simple adventures and easily convertible stat blocks of Basic Fantasy, and two great games that work well together and rarely get in each other's way. To have an entire shelf devoted to my collection, all my fun containers full of dice, and my fantasy art books creates a compelling "fun center" that is a part of my hobby that serves both as a source of pride and a functional "fun center" to game from.

My other shelf is GURPS and my science fiction comics. Most of my third-edition books are stored on the bottom shelf here, too. Something is amazing about using GURPS to play retro-future science fiction, like the serials of the 1950s, pulp-action, two-fisted, Martian agents teaming up with Earth gangsters, alien monsters creeping about in caves, and rocketing off to planets in the next galaxy, which captures my imagination.

This genre captures my imagination even more than Star Frontiers, which I love. Where Star Frontiers feels more like 2001 meets Star Wars, the retro-pulp genre of science fiction feels more open and speculative to me. Anything can happen in retro-pulp science fiction, where the more modern we get, the more sandbox-like the settings become, and I feel the sense of endless wonder draining from my adventures and the game becoming inwardly focused on politics and corporate greed.

Star Frontiers is a great setting, but it stopped at Volturnus and had a few modules past that, but it never became much more. The game needed a follow-up world of adventure, more on Volturnus, or another great module series that captured the laser-pistol space-explorers genre. Yes, you can have an open universe in Star Frontiers where "anything can happen," but the later adventures felt more inwardly-focused than enabling outward expansion.

Even Traveller, with its random subsector generation, felt more "what is out there" than Star Frontiers, and encouraged outward-focused exploration. Traveller fell down assuming space was settled, and games like Stars Without Number do the "random system generation" with themed planets and adventure seeds much better.

While I love Alien, there is only so much 1970s anti-corporate cynicism I can take. Corporations these days are bad enough, from insurance companies to greedy AI-bubble VC tech firms. Why do I want to roleplay that? I roleplay to escape this world, not live a virtual life in it again. Of all the anti-corporate genres in role-playing, Cyberpunk does the genre the best, since the game's core concept is built more around fighting back instead of suffering underneath it.

The retro-pulp sci-fi genre feels like fantasy to me, with laser pistols replacing longswords. It is an escape from this world into a universe of infinite possibilities. Anything goes. I can invent a new "Solarion Empire" or purple-skinned space aliens in a star system and run infinite adventures with them as the bad guys and source of intrigue. I can drop a savage "John Carter" world anywhere I want to crash-land on and meet the local aliens.

There are times when sandboxed modern science fiction limits my imagination more than it stimulates it, and that modern pessimism and negativity feel like a wet blanket. There are times when I want it, and other times when I don't.

I do want to create a space for some of my classic crime and horror comics and play those using GURPS as well. One part of the hobby that gets lost for many on D&D YouTube is the inspiration it draws from outside the hobby. Yes, the classic adventures are fun, and random charts are great tools, but returning to the hobby's storytelling roots, where it all started, brings me great joy. Back in the 1970s, when role-playing games were just getting started, all they had were stories like this and "no way to play them." So they created games to play and drew inspiration from these stories.

In GURPS, that skull-headed Frankenstein mummy thing and that wizard-looking guy would be frightening NPCs, and worthy of a few rolls on the fear table. They could be deadly in combat, and the wizard likely has a few spooky magic spells. You should take care in a period game of the 1950s, where the weapons characters could bring to bear are a 0.38 revolver, a double-barrel shotgun, and a lever-action 30-30 rifle.

If any guns were allowed to start, given character backgrounds. Remember, part of the genre is beginning with everyone "like things are normal," and not everyone walks around with two M1911A1 pistols, a trunk full of guns, body armor always in the back seat, and ready for action. Monster hunters or bank robbers? Sure, go to town. Classic 1950s horror movies? Certain archetypes would have specific "movie prop" guns, such as a farmer with a double-barreled shotgun or a police officer with a revolver. A doctor or professor? You will need to find or buy a gun and have a reason that makes sense in the plot, without foreknowledge sneaking in. And if you can even use it effectively, it will be a question, as not every archetype will (or should) be a recreational shooter.

And that flying monkey thing could be deadly, too, or a constant pest that spies on you from a treetop for its master. Just this one image conjures up infinite scenarios and ideas for a GURPS Horror game, and I love it.

Well, my GURPS shelves are set for a fun 2026, and here's to a fantastic year of gaming and writing to come.

GURPS Shelf Cleaning, Inspirations, and Sources

I have a strange relationship with my game shelves. I like to keep them clean and unpacked, and I am huge on organization and displaying books on display stands. If a shelf gets too packed, it turns into clutter, and I don't want to pull a book out and play with it. I keep them loosely packed, display dice in clear plastic candy containers, and make the "display" a reflection of my hobby and interests.

I will put classic science fiction, crime, and horror comics on my shelves next to my GURPS books, as if they were GURPS supplements, and say, "Look, play me with GURPS!" This is another part of my hobby, taking inspiration from outside of gaming, before the days when everything was turned into a role-playing game, and "going back to the source." I have a story, art, and inspiration. Now, turn this into a story that can be explored using GURPS.

GURPS is my key to unlocking infinite stories in these worlds.

This is also why I am careful around conversions and sourcing ideas from role-playing games into GURPS. Yes, I have a BX game going where I do conversions, but D&D already draws from so many original sources; it is so many generations removed from those inspirations that the ideas have gone through several stages of change and rounds of aligning with the D&D ideal.

Even Star Wars is a retelling of many original stories, remixed in a new way, but we are at the point where even these stories are endlessly pulling "from themselves" and adding nothing new. Stranger Things can be seen as a show inspired by many of the great movies and TV shows of the 1980s, a "tribute show" in a way. Still, it needs that source material of dozens of pieces of 1980s media, arguably all of it better than the remix, to maintain relevancy.

The best quality metric with remixes is always, "Are you adding something new?" The moment a remix starts pulling more from itself than from its sources, or adding the magical "something new," it begins to fall into a self-referential trap of irrelevance. You need to know "the old show" to understand "the current show." The nostalgia trap begins feeding upon itself.

There is nothing wrong with Star Wars as a storytelling framework for science fiction. Just as there is nothing wrong with superhero stories as a framework for many genres, from exploring empowerment to watching the Rome-like fall of those seen as gods. Where I am careful is around elevating the current characters and stories into a god-like mythology, where there are no other smugglers than Han Solo, and no other supersoldiers than Captain America. The fact that player characters exist in role-playing games means there can always be another, and they can be greater (or not) than the ones that we already have.

Captain America, Han Solo, and Batman are just one example of an archetype. Role-playing games differ from media properties that elevate their "licensed IP" as the paragon of the ideal, all for profit. Role-playing games are typically centered around the players and their ideas, with their characters taking center stage. Yes, a player could play Captain America, but they would diverge from the Hollywood version almost immediately. I will always encourage a player to use them as inspiration and to do something new, from their imaginations.

I prefer superhero games where all the heroes and villains are new, original ideas, and not tied to any IP. There is nothing wrong with the licensed ones; it is just my preference, as I have more freedom to explore a character when it is not tied to decades of history. If "America Man" rises or falls because of his actions, that is his story, and it won't be second-guessed or contradict a story from an issue back in 1972. The character can even die in my game, and his story will end there.

Captain America is a zombie, doomed to be retconned, recast, and resurrected for all of time. The idea is strong, the character is iconic, but a part of me likes to "live and let live" and let the human underneath tell a complete story: live a life, have an arc, succeed or fail, and pass on the legacy or tarnish it forever. That is just me, I like stories, and I am more of a humanist who likes generational stories.

There are times when I prefer to go straight back to the original stories and sources, and pull the ideas in without them being filtered and translated several times, losing the original magic that made them special and new. Yes, what I am doing with GURPS is "remixing these stories," but there are as few generations of retranslation as possible between me and the original idea. The "telephone game" of translations and retellings can twist and warp the original idea into something completely alien.

Also, there is a trap of seeing a monster in the D&D context rather than the one in your head. Orcs always have one hit die and are thus weak. A bugbear is a three hit die monster with the following abilities. Those were the original interpretations by the D&D designers back in the 1970s. Should they be your interpretations? Do you have your own feelings on how challenging a particular monster should be? Or do you defer to the D&D numbers and abilities?

One way is not correct or wrong, but I do want people to ask themselves that question before adopting the "D&D version as the definitive standard for all of fantasy." It is good to question assumptions.

My GURPS shelves are currently feeling packed and cramped, and I don't have room for my inspirations. GURPS to me is more than just one game, or "the game you play other games with." I guess this is what makes GURPS different for me, rather than "just another game." With a game like Rifts or Palladium Fantasy, I am playing in their universe with their stuff.

With GURPS, I am telling my own stories with my own stuff.

I go back to the original sources for inspiration. I am careful around second-generation or deeper resources, retellings, and reinterpretations. I question other designers' work and ask myself, "Is this what I feel is right for me and my stories?"

I make room on my shelves for my inspirations. I reduce clutter and remove distractions that detract from the story I am trying to tell.

For me, GURPS is my storytelling tool and I surround it with the stories I want to tell.