Getting Started with GURPS

GURPS is the oldest RPG that has remained in business and owned by its creators. First published in 1986, it was not the first RPG, the most well known early RPG was Dungeons and Dragons by TSR but they went bankrupt and were bought by Wizards of the Coast and then later in 1998.

Most RPGs are class based and tied to a specific setting. GURPS is point based and designed to work in any genre, any setting. This can be kind of intimidating as there is an incredible volume of available books and since many are not ted to specific settings a new GM may have trouble deciding what to use. That topic comes up a lot on the GURPS Forums and is also addressed by this blog.

So how do you start?

The Players

As a player you do not need any books, though I recommend certain free books,
GURPS Lite is a free streamlined set of rules. It tells you all you need to know to play (or even run) most games. Since it also lists most skills and advantages it also helps you in building your character.
GURPS Combat Cards can be printed and cut up for use at the table. You have more tactical options in GURPS than most games but remembering them all takes at least a few games. The cards explain the maneuvers  and have all the rules so no need to pull out a book.
GURPS Martial Arts Technique Cheat-Sheet These are advanced moves for the skilled combatant.
GURPS Skill Categories is a list of the skills in GURPS Basic organized by categories. This is useful when building a character so you know whats available and dont miss any skill important to your character concept.
GURPS Magic Spell Charts is for the default GURPS Magic system and is really only useful for spellcasters. Spells are learned as skills (meaning you dont forget them, just cast the ones you know as often as you want. As long as you have the energy! And if you run out of energy an hours rest will have you back up to almost full power!

The Game Master

The GURPS Basic Set (2 books) $54.90 for the set in digital format, hard copy also available. is all you really needto run a game in any setting or genre you want.  Or you can choose a Powered by GURPS book for a setting and the section of the rules needed to run it

Powered by GURPS books include Discworld Roleplaying Game, Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game, Vorkosigan Saga Sourcebook and Roleplaying Game, plus a few from Third edition such as GURPS Traveler and GURPS Prime Directive.

Once you have rules you need to choose or build a setting.

I list GURPS settings here  and if you want to build or convert a setting I list books organized by genre that are helpful. Also GURPSLand is another blog, and has a nice pretty list

Basically GURPS has several genre or world building books such as Action, After The End, Fantasy, Horror, and Space that will help you build your world and setting based on the feel you choose.
After that you just add what you want when and if you need it.
Dont like the feel of the default magic system? GURPS provides several others to choose from and even books like GURPS Thaumatology that help you design your own.
Want equipment catalogs? Pick your tech level and choose the books that suit it.
Want to build your own spaceships? GURPS has a series of books and Pyramid articles covering pretty much everything.

Summary

The sheer volume of available GURPS books (and typically one new one each month) can be intimidating.  But really the players just need a free book to get quickly up to speed and the GM just needs the two Basic books Characters and Campaigns for most purposes.  But if you want more detail and options for a particular game there are a lot of choices, but again none are required.

This blog and others, as well as the Steve Jackson Games forums will help you find what you need before you spend your first dollar!

Player Surveys

Inspired by this post https://www.ravensnpennies.com/gamemasters-guidepost-framing-your-preferences-part-i/
So first the categories...
Combat
Interpersonal Relationships
Morality
Subterfuge
Mystery solving
Conspiracies
Heroic Deeds
Exploration
Growth in personal power

The Rating system
0 - Happy and prefer if it never comes up.
1 - I want it very rarely, 1 in 5 games.
2 - I want it rarely, 1 in 4 games.
3 - I want it now and then, 1 in 3 games.
4 - I enjoy this and want it frequently, 1 in 2 games.
5 - I really enjoy this and want it in every game.

So players pick each category they have an opinion on and rate it.
Players can also add categories.
This can help the GM adapt the game to the players preferences.

Why GURPS is actually easier to play than Pathfinder

I started a Pathfinder game last month and doing research by reading material to see what my character could do now, and potentially later I found that Pathfinder is actually harder to play,
I dont mean the combat so much, they are comparable in that GURPS is far simpler if you want it to be but if you want detailed combat with tactical choices GURPS gets more involved. Though I like the choices and fights can be done without checking a single book if you know your weapons and choices.

The character building is what I was surprised by. Old D&D you pretty much added a proficiency and HP as you leveled up, maybe some new spells depending on class. Pathfinder adds variety (which I like) but uses a Feat and skill system where you get new choices at certain levels. Trouble is your limited in choices and amounts and some require others as prerequisites.  Choose the wrong thing and you may never be able to get a specific desired one.

In GURPS which is point based instead of class and level based you have two character design techniques.
1) Normal is pick from whatever is allowed in the campaign that you have the points for, This lets you customize in a wonderful way but can be overwhelming and lead to decision paralysis.  You have so many options, it can be tough to decide what to choose.
2) Professions use templates with shortened lists, so similar to a class system but more choices are available. This makes building pretty quick as each profession is designed for a certain party role and the most important abilities are required in the template or at least strongly suggested. Good templates offer lenses or a paragraph describing subtypes to help the player choose.
As you gain experience you add items from the template and ignore other options. That helps protect party niches and roles.

Summary

GURPS is frnt loaded, meaning you do most of the work in the beginning, Pathfinder is back end loaded meaning you start really simple and add later. This makes GURPS more complicated when starting (Though that is reduced if you use templates) but your more adaptable as the game goes on and you can choose more freely. Pathfinder you pretty much need to plan ahead and have far less choices that will make your character unique and special.

The Green New Deal

The Green New Deal is getting a lot of talk right now, which is why the resolution was put forward. Its not an actual bill and if it had passed the Senate it would have done nothing. It is simply put a Mission Statement. If you work or have worked for a large corporation you'll be familiar with them. They are a statement of intent and purpose, often meaning little and being a marketing tool.
Thats what this resolution is, a marketing tool to get people talking about it and declare some peoples values and goals in a broad sense.
The Green New Deal basically says that Climate change is a recognizable and immediate threat to the world and the United States of America (something the Pentagon, NASA, and others have been saying for over a decade).
It purports that to combat it in time we need a national initiative on the level of FDRs New Deal.
So the goal is not just to reduce emissions but to avoid economic collapse, whether from ignoring the problem as we have been doing or changing things. The cost to change grows every year we delay or EPA regulations are rolled back and the economic growth potential grows slimmer as other countries take up the opportunities we have let slip through our fingers.

Jobs

The coal industry has been dying for awhile now as other forms of energy become cheaper and easier to get. The Conservative answer is subsidizing the companies, meaning taxpayers pay to keep them in business. The Progressive answer is to let the free market take care of the companies rather than prop them up and retrain the employees.  Ideally using the money that has been going to the companies. The difference is that as those workers get new jobs they generate tax and local revenue as consumers when they get new jobs instead of costing more money when they get laid off.

The oil and gas industry is still thriving, though we also subsidize them. This industry is not going away anytime soon, even if we cut back on emissions. However it will go away and living in Oklahoma I can tell you that workers are laid off all the time, then sometimes rehired. Its effectively seasonal work for many nonadministrative personnel. As the price of oil changes so do the number of employees!

Further we KNOW that the amount of oil and gas is limited and getting whats left costs more each and every year.  Also we leave our country vulnerable to threats from the Middle East and elsewhere. Oil funds terrorism in many countries and is a significant national threat,

Renewable energy sources such as wind, water, and solar power are getting cheaper each year (though the Trump administration is working to counter that trend by imposing tariffs on components and curbing research), and more people are working in these fields as well.

Look at the jobs data below, more people are working in green energy than oil and gas extraction

Environmental Costs

Every year we see huge costs for disaster relief efforts, both money spent and lives lost or uprooted. Besides the big tax bill were paying out, local economies suffer from lost revenue and even the national economy suffers. How much?  2017 cost the US $306 billion in 2017 and $91 billion in 2018! Think what we could do if we just cut that in half! And as storms get more severe, sea waters rise, and farmers suffer from droughts and floods because the weather is less predictable and keeps swing towards extremes the costs as taxpayers and consumers just keeps going up.

A dramatic effort now can slow and perhaps reverse the change, had we started in the 1970s when we first knew of the problem it would have been easier. But that is what happens when you keep borrowing money or procrastinating a problem, it just gets worse. Hiding our heads in the sand wont resolve the problem.

And for those hoping thoughts and prayers will solve the problem, why should God fix the mess we made for ourselves? God gave us a beautiful and wondrous planet, its sacrilegious what we have done to it regardless of what your Faith is.

Summary

The Green New Deal is a least a declaration of intent, until most of Congress and the President are replaced nothing will actually get done. Our politicians are bought and paid for and will just keep kicking the can down the road and let another generation deal with the consequences. Working now to resolve the issue means hard work, tough decisions, and sacrificing bribes by the oil and gas industry. As a voter it is up to each and everyone of us to check the policies of our representatives, and check where they get campaign donations from. Remind them they are supposed to work for American citizens, not international corporations. 

Its possible to lessen the impending disaster, it might even still be possible to prevent it, but every year we delay the chances go down and the costs go up.

The Green New Deal is simply patriotic, it proposes we help Americans and America itself by creating new jobs in energy, manufacturing, construction, and service sectors (boosting the economy far more than a billionaire or corporate tax cut) and including ideas such as safety nets for retraining, keeping our healthcare promises to those coal miners who sacrificed for us, and improving the quality of life for every American.

Relevant links

AWEA says 105,000+ jobs now
The Solar Foundation says 242,000+ jobs in 2018

Various Bureau of Labor Statistics

Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey 2018

So based on those numbers in 2018 Oil & Gas extraction =784k. Coal Mining =78k

Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction: NAICS 21

Oil and Gas Extraction: NAICS 211 About 150,000 (Seasonal)

Careers in Wind Energy

Careers in Solar Power

Careers in Geothermal Energy

Green Careers

Industries by Supersector and NAICS Code

This week in GURPS

Two kickstarters just completed and fully funded.

Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 2 

Funded with 1,019 backers at $54,741 which will produce a new monsters book and reprints of the original DFRPG boxed set. The DFRPG line now has the boxed set, a players bundle (Adventurers and Spells) and a couple of adventures out, with more on the way.
So the boxed set has solid support, plus of course is fully compatible with the rest of GURPS, especially the Dungeon Fantasy line.

The Citedel at Nordvorn by Douglas Cole

Funded with 600 backers at $26,030 which is a mini setting full of adventure ideas and linked to past and upcoming adventures for DFRPG. Also included is an updated and streamlined version of his Dungeon Grappling rules, including some new spells.

Upcoming GURPS Books

The playtest for GURPS Powers: Totem and Nature Spirits completed a few weeks ago and I submitted my revised draft today. I feel the play test went well, Some things got some positive and surprising nods, others received constructive criticism and requests for clarification or expansion. Its always easier for the author to know what he means than the readers to interpret it!

Shamans are IMO a very under served profession in any RPG I have seen, mostly they get treated as druids with different spells.  This book wont resolve that, but its a step in that direction and is useful for any profession and was written with the Dungeon Fantasy and Monster Hunters series in mind.

The playtest for GURPS Monster Hunters: Power-Ups 1 is scheduled to end this week and will offer many goodies for Monster Hunter fans when it comes out.

Next in line for playtesting are a GURPS Social Engineering item, a new GURPS High Tech item (thats around modern day, with Low Tech being preindustrial and Ultra Tech being science fiction), and a GURPS Disasters item.

Aside from those freelancer items, look for more, Dungeon Fantasy 20 and the Pyramid Dungeon Collection should be out soon as well.

A heads up.
Bruno just created a sortable table of Rasputin monster data.
https://treasuregenerator.azurewebsites.net/treasure.html

I added it to my Monster and NPC page as well.

Review of GURPS Steampunk 3: Soldiers and Scientists

The latest installment in the GURPS Steampunk line came out last week and I have read it and offer up my comments.
First off, this book is big. Lot bigger than I expected in fact.
It has 6 new styles, some for martial arts, some for guns, and appropriately enough one for Wierd Science and another for vehicles. Gismos get a nice lengthy treatment with several new modifiers and some clarifications so your cane toting spy knows just what he can have in that secret compartment.
Also included is a discussion on minority groups and various societies (organizations).
Thats Chapter 1!
Chapter 2 is the bulk of the document and includes templates, lots of templates.
50 point templates, 13 of them.
75 or 100 point templates, 15 of them.
150 point templates, can you guess? Nope, 5 :)
There is some other stuff here, various bits of fluff and crunch but the real meat of this chapter (and I suspect a lot of the authors hours) is in those 33 templates. 
Some are fairly classic, a few really unique but all show a lot of care in the selections possible.

While Steampunk is way behind Dungeon Fantasy its now a solidly supported genre within the GURPS system.

Other Reviews

Rogers Review