One of the things I want to do with this blog is talk about other games, especially games that were influential in my development as a gamer and game designer. Today, I’m thinking about GURPS from Steve Jackson Games. I started playing GURPS in high school, right as I began buying my own RPGs. It was the first game I played after an elementary and middle school of playing D&D. Not even AD&D. I had a blue box Expert Set and faked what I needed from the Basic Set. Whoops. I forgot I’m supposed to be talking about GURPS.
I found GURPS years ago at Wargames West, my local game store at the time. It has since permutated into Active Imagination, and when I go there and refer to it as Wargames West, it makes me look and feel old. But GURPS blew me away – no more switching systems to switch genres, no classes, no levels. It was a true next-generation system. And as the years went by, the GURPS virtues of realism and detail made me an ever-bigger fan. I have dozens of sourcebooks and have run many campaigns in the system. But not recently. In fact, I haven’t played since 4th edition came out. What got me thinking about it again was my son.
Wait, what does that have to do with GURPS? Actually, it sort of has to do with D&D. I think my son was eight or nine when we first started to play D&D. I chose D&D because it had a couple of redeeming characteristics for teaching a kid to play RPGs.
- It lent itself to a constrained adventure format (dungeons).
- It provided informative splats that told him what his characters could do (classes).
- It was simple enough to play, with a single resolution mechanic (d20).
- I could find tons of free material online, so I needed neither expensive adventures nor time to create my own.
Character creation, though complex, had relatively constrained choices. I handled the complexity.
He really enjoyed playing (so, mission accomplished) and played a time or two with some friends of his who’s dad also plays. He wanted to play with the rest of his friends, most of whom had never played and don’t have parents who are roleplayers. So, for a birthday party about a year and a half ago, I ran a game of Pendragon for him and a bunch of his friends. (Why we ran Pendragon is an entirely different post. This one is about GURPS, remember?) I ended up running that game of Pendragon at least once a month for a year. At the next birthday party, my son decided to take the reins and started GMing a rather huge D&D game for everyone. I was grateful to not be running a game for so many kids, he was happy to be in charge, and the kids liked the likeable things about D&D listed above. So, six months later, the dungeon he’s been running them through is winding down and he starts thinking about running his own campaign, in his own world. Which brings us, at last, to GURPS.
When he started asking me about how to accomplish various things in the systems he’d used, I started thinking about other systems he could use instead. And one kept coming back up in my thoughts: GURPS. “But it’s so complicated!” I’d think. And then I’d grab a sourcebook and remember that it wasn’t that complicated. “But he already knows the other systems!” I’d think. And then I’d tell him “Well, in GURPS, you would <blank>.” And he’d think that was great. I started looking at all the wonderful campaign-creation tools that had appeared for GURPS over the years, and thought, “Geez, why not just run it in GURPS?” Which was, of course, the right answer.
So, we started going through my sizeable collection of 3e books. He already had in his custody an extra 3e Basic Set, so he had that part covered. I was consistently impressed with both the system for its excellent array of worldbuilding tools, and with my son for his enthusiastic willingness to grapple with a much more extensive ruleset. The process has certainly gotten me excited about building a campaign with some of those shiny, unused 4e books sitting on my shelf.
GURPS was the second or third RPG I ever played, after D&D and maybe T&T (it’s hard to remember back to fourth grade from these staggering heights of age), and the one I stuck with most consistently for many years. So even though GURPS is drastically different from my in-development (and as yet woefully unnamed) system, it obviously had a lot of impact on me, my play style, and me expectations. For instance, by way of the disadvantage system, a GURPS character gives a player on how to play a character – a brief psychological profile expressed in game terms. “Alfie? He’s such an innocent he makes an easy mark, a terrible liar, but so greedy you should count your fingers after shaking hands!” That’s the sort of information you’d get right from the sheet, not from some separate backgrounder.
So, here are some things that GURPS does that I want my system to be able to do:
- Handle any genre and / or setting
- Allow freedom in character creation and development
- Retain a small number of core mechanics (GURPS uses 3d6 for practically everything except damage rolls)
- Provide players with roleplaying information right on the sheet
Of course, if I wanted to replicate the big G, I could just use a photocopier. So that’s obviously not my goal. More goals for this system will be posted soon. An then, I can start talking about how I try to achieve them and whether I think I succeed.
