Space Beyond: Setting Up With GURPS

Last weekend I took the plunge and pitched a GURPS science-fiction game entitled, “Space Beyond”. On Friday I saw three of the four players for a character-making session. In-between there was a truck-load of prep.

I’ve been using the very helpful “How To Be a GURPS GM” along with GURPS Basic Set to come to grips with the system. At heart, it’s a simple and straightforward game with hundreds of options… and it’s the options that have always caused me to balk.

I followed the advice: I got a clear picture of what I wanted to set up; I chose some character templates to help the players (and me) build characters; I insisted that we reverse the usual character-making processes.

A Clear Picture…

The advice is that, with GURPS, you need to know what you want to build before you turn to the rules: have a clear picture in your mind of what your character (or whatever) is all about; then you build it.

That being said, I wanted to offer a player-led collaborative game too. This means that, although I am moulding things as we go, the players are making many of the big decisions. I wanted space for them to take it in their own direction.

We began with a pitch and some focus:

You are applying to crew a new class of small, corporately-owned exploration vessels. Your mission will be to explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, and boldly sell them everything they never knew they needed… or bring back the best of the resources you discover.

I proposed that they play the command crew of the vessel and decided to pitch some character roles: Commander,  Ship’s Engineer, Pilot-Astrogator, Ship’s Doctor, Security Officer, Science Officer. For each role I took some advice from Norris Wilkins, over on Google+, to use the character templates from GURPS Interstellar Wars as a baseline. Although I pinched them from another setting, those templates really helped to crystallise the character types.

To help me focus, I wrote up a Campaign Plan using the format at the back of GURPS Basic Set and shared it with the group.

Defining The Space

With the character limits set, the next thing was to define two further elements: the society of the player characters and the shape of the space they were going to explore.

Although there are a lot more details, this was the basic outline of the society that early discussions seemed to propose:

Mars is a corporate enclave run exclusively by The Corporation. Phobos is the location of the fairly extensive FTL Shipyards.

There are four layers in Martian Society: Beggar, Worker, Manager, Elite. These social classes are based on business acumen and achievements. In short, you are either hired by The Corporation, and shipped out to work on Mars, or you were born on Mars and assigned a role by the company.

Officially, there are no Beggars on Mars but anyone who cannot work is “fired” and must fend for themselves without a legal form of income. The growing under-class are called Beggars.

From there, I gave each of the four class layers a point of conflict with another social class, some taboos, some visuals, verbals, and complexities. This was as per the advice of Brian Jamison’s Gamemastering. It’s a useful approach largely because it gives you what you need to play without taking too much time.

Next, I decided on the FTL Drive – a modified version of the Traveller Jumpdrive – and made sure to grab out the necessary rules elements to share with the players. I altered the way this hyperspace drive works slightly to fit what I wanted for the exploration game. In short, I made it a little more flexible to allow two parsec jumps.

Lastly, I grabbed the local area map from Interstellar Wars and then renamed several of the worlds. I don’t want to play in the Traveller setting, but I am happy to save time by stealing a map:

Choosing Starships

The GURPS Spaceships range is great! I grabbed the basic book of the shelf and opted to utilise the simple ship-building rules. I also grabbed a .PDF of Spaceships 5 – the tome on exploration ships – and selected a good TL9 ship design as a basis.

Modifying to fuel the FTL drive for this setting, I adopted the Constellation-class both to save time and because it feels nicely different. This further helped to shape the setting. Because the spaceship design is not suited to even low-orbital flight around large masses, I decided to install two 100-ton dropships in its hanger bays – I grabbed the Helldiver-class armoured landers and used them out of the book.

Ready For Characters

At this point, I was ready for Friday night’s session – three chaps building characters. It went pretty well, although I am still kicking myself for not being brave enough to truly interview the players one-to-one… and we have three characters.

The players added loads of flavour:

• The Corporation is now named: Kōngjiān Corporation.
• The Chinese government is sponsoring Kōngjiān to explore interstellar space.
• Our Security Officer is also the political officer and a member of the People’s Armed Forces.
• All three characters are Chinese.
• The starships got renamed: the Lu-class ship is called “CSS Tian Lao”, for example.

Obviously, the characters come with background details that I need to curate into the setting notes – such as people and places the players have devised – and that’s my next step. Once I’ve got all the details into MyInfo then I can begin to plan the first adventure… ready to game on 21st July.

Game on!