A week ago I decided to learn GURPS. With being back at work, all hobby stuff slows but I’ve not been standing still.
Earlier in the week I played through the Dungeon Fantasy solo adventure from Pyramid Magazine 3/104, “Trapped In The Tomb”. This was pretty straight-forward and, in order that I don’t spoil it for you, I’m not going to share the solo notes. It took about an hour to play through and used a pre-generated character, being overall fairly entertaining. What I learned, or rather what was reinforced in my mind, is that GURPS is a very simple system to play.
Since then, I have been stumped on what to do next.
I feel that my next step is to create at least one character using a template. Which template, however, has been a matter of indecision. At the end of my last report, I was thinking about rounding out Pieter and Marcus using some templates from GURPS Fantasy. I quickly shifted away from that, however, towards my original aim of eventually running a modern-day game… and was considering using the Investigator template in GURPS Basic Set.
The truth of the matter is that while I want to believe I’ll be able to get a game going using GURPS, there are only two venues available. One is my regular D&D group and the other is the school D&D club. The regular group is pretty entrenched in playing fantasy right now, while the teenagers are going to have short attention spans and short sessions.
My best bet for a “try it out” game is probably the students because they are less concerned with ongoing campaigns… and it’s the start of a new academic year. The downside is that the first session is Tuesday and I am not at all ready. Of course, I could wait a week or three… not that I want to wait.
What do I want to run?
Honestly, I’d like a break from the traditional fantasy genre. I’d like a game with guns. Three ideas come to mind which genuinely interest me:
- Modern-day to near-future conspiracy-paranormal investigation, like Dark*Matter or Dark Conspiracy
- Military post-apocalyptic survival in the vein of Twilight: 2000
- A kind of Star Trek gets re-written “First Contact” science-fiction exploration
The easiest to implement is probably the second because I can grab GURPS After The End to set it up, using the templates and materials there to create characters in a post-apocalyptic setting.
Next easiest would be the modern-day game because I can probably find a wide-range of templates from across several products to pull characters together.
Least simple would be the third idea, although I could access GURPS Prime Directive and GURPS Space for some ideas.
Right now, I am feeling indecisive. My heart wants to leap straight into writing a scenario and prepping pre-gen characters… but my head is telling me to create one character myself and keep learning the game step-by-step.
Advice and comment welcome.
I am myself, as a DM, hitting that place where I really don’t want to do traditional fantasy anymore.
And so I’ve decided on Fantasy in Space! Starfinder, baby. It’s d20, so the rules are similar to what I (and more importantly, my players) are familiar with, and there’s guns. Swords too, for those blokes that like that sort of thing.
I’m enjoying reading about your GURPS experiences. I tried a couple GURPS campaigns a while ago (an XCOM-type campaign, and then a post-Apocalyptic campaign), and what I came to realize was that I prefer a more structured experience-point and leveling experience.
We’re preparing to do a Starfinder experiment ourselves. I’ve not done any proper roleplaying in while so this is part of getting our feet re-wet. I’ve always had a fascination for the genre mixing that can happen in a Space Opera. Worlds are at various levels of development which helps with constructing scenarios. This might be especially true in a setting where a galactic empire, or federation, had rules governing first contact and rules for interacting with cultures of various levels all along their incorporation. That allows for some artificial variance of style and techniques by having teams participate in missions with different, and very well defined, rules of engagement…. “sorry about that Gunnar …. Betsy, your favorite heavy laser death spewer… is not allowable equipment for this job…. how is your archery these days?” Or “Madame X, decks are not going to work out here and all electronic survelliance devices must be …. discreet… and self eliminating if discovered….”
All was going to plan until the vampires showed up……
Hiya, UbiquitousRat!
I’ve enjoyed your posts on finding your way into GURPS. I’m curious if maybe you’ve seen any of the material at http://www.themook.net/gamegeekery/gurps-grab-and-go/. It’s designed specifically for gamers in your situation, so if you had, I’d love to hear what you found useful or what you’d do differently?
Good luck on the continued exploration!
Hi Mook!
Nope – I’d not come across that website and the material. Many thanks for the link and suggestion. I’ll check it out!
Yay, impending feedback! Lol — appreciate it, hope you find some of it useful.
First Impressions are positive. For me, the most useful bits might be the scenarios / adventures. I am tempted to grab the Alien one and use it – everyone knows Alien, right?
Other things need more time to evaluate but I like the page having links to other articles. Thanks! At first blush, the quick-start character creation sheets might be useful… although, for some reason, I am hesitant about using Wildcard skills.
I feel like Wildcard skills are pretty situational, great for some games not for others. It definitely changes the “feel” of a game to have, say, “Pirate!” instead of “Cutlass, Merchant, Navigation, Survival (Sea),” etc…
Apologies if you get this twice. I tried once before but the internet ate it. Then it said I’d put in a duplicate comment when I tried again. Sometimes my iPad hates me, I’m sure. So I’m trying a 3rd time from my ‘outer.
Anyway: I have likewise have found the posts of value. Last time I was in any way skilled in GURPS it was 3rd Ed. So this is a big help and encouragement to get back into it. Mook’s resources look good too. Thanks Mook.
Setting? I think After the End looks fine. I have 2 rpg groups, one I play in and one I GM for. The first is running low on GMs as everyone is busy these days, so I was thinking since they like GURPs that might be a good system to use for them if I were to volunteer to help out with the refereeing load. Thus this set of posts is quite timely for me. And ‘after the end’ could work for them.
Alternatively, since my player groups are all on the older side, I was thinking of doing modern like you were, except a little retro: the 1960s-80s. And Using you-tube to re-watch such espionage classics like Callan or The Sandbaggers to recapture the feel somewhat. You might choose other things from what is on You-tube, but its a great resource for look and feel for lots of things. From that, once you have the basics, I don’t think it’d be that hard to do up some NPCs and modify templates to fit. Just depends how time poor you are. The big advantage of the 1960s, or periods like the 920s or 1890s (used to great effect by call of cthulhu), is that technology isn’t so overpowering. Thus PCs mean more by contrast.
I’m playing Trapped in the Tomb now, in short bursts. Also the solo adventure For Love of Mother-Not. Both good for GURPS beginners.