After a long Hiatus, Welcome to GURPS

The Act of Creation and Revising Old Friends

Well, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? I’ve been a busy little girl! I took a dive into solo-role playing gaming, and I’ve been having a blast— despite not actually playing just yet. Just learning! So, what have I been studying?

GURPS (Fourth Edition). That’s right. I initially bought this game system last year and took a quick breeze through it. And for whatever reason, it didn’t resonate with me. I don’t remember what I was looking for at the time, but I do remember I also picked up the Hero System shortly thereafter. But what rekindled my passion for a crunchy system like GURPS, when I thought I was looking for a Narrative based system? Making my own role playing system. Part II.

After reading through the game Teenagers From Outerspace (hence, now to be referred to as Teenagers) I realized that what I was looking for was a game that focused on comedy. After all, that’s my favorite type of campaign to play in. Lots of stupid, slapstick comedy that makes people groan. And while I got quite the number of giggles out of reading Teenagers, I began looking for other systems. I really liked the Science Fiction genre that Teenagers offered. So, I began looking for Cyberpunk games. I missed playing the totally unhinged, uncouth, Lindsey whats-her-name. I had a blast playing such a psychotic character— and behave in ways that are totally taboo in Normal Society. So, I looked at Cyberpunk Red, a sister-game to Teenagers, made by the same creator, Michael A. Pondsmith, under the studio R. Talsorian Games, but that wasn’t quite what I was looking for. I also glanced at Mekton while I was at it too. Saved for when I want a truly crunchy Mecha game. Thanks, Mr. Pondsmith!!

These games somehow led me down the genre of unhinged comedy games. And I found a game called Macho Girls with Guns, by Greg Porter, published under Blacksburg Tactical Research Center. I fell in love, but more importantly, I felt inspired. I mean, if this guy back in the 80s can put together a role playing game, all 12 pages and make a dent in the Industry, well then, so can I!

A Concept of a Plan?

Over the past couple of weeks, I began putting together a company concept. Something that I don’t necessarily need right now, but will be incredibly handy for later. The problem is, I’ve been watching the Industry. Truth be told, table top role playing games aren’t nearly as popular as they once were. It seems that consumers of role playing games migrated to the digital realm. Video games are my competition, among other things. But that’s okay. Because a couple years ago before I started looking into creating my own role playing game, I was dabbling with Unreal Engine, and developing video game… we’ll call them concepts. (Yeah, yeah, I know. Horrible word.)

I know me better than most people do. And I have realized, especially over the past couple years that I may be more ADHD than [people] originally thought. I tend to pivot back and forth on various projects. This is not a weakness, because I can use this as the opposite. A strength. This blesses me to with the ability to build a structure that allows me to pivot within a number of creative areas, whether that be table top role playing games, video games, or even non-interactive things like general fiction and animation. If you can’t see where I’m going, that’s okay. I’m blind as a bat too.

And if you haven’t figured out that I adore anime, we both need to see a doctor! I need to create something that allows me to work with fluidity within the anime industry, but with a high creative presence. So I got to work defining this concept. I came up with a Studio name, [Classified] (until further notice). I got a mission statement and a few ideas written down for future projects too! But, back to where I was originally going when I first started this article. In looking at various mechanics for the game system I want to create (there’s really only five or six truly unique dice mechanics), I discovered what I was looking for, and believe it or not, GURPS has it, straight out of the box: A Roll Under mechanic that features a bell curve. Why is this important to me?

I Play With Myself?

The primary reason I want a roll under mechanic is because I enjoy playing games asynchronously, and usually that’s via Play by Post using a forum. This is important because when playing alone, you don’t have immediate access to a Game Master— the person who makes decisions about what you can and cannot do within a game, and by extension, this means the Game Master is responsible for determining any Target Numbers that a Player needs to beat in order to do the thing. But playing in an isolated fashion, this need can truly slow down or even completely stop a game’s progression. Rolling Under helps to alieveate the delay on obtaining a Target Number. You simply roll under your Stat or Skill or whatever it is that you need to beat. The other piece to this is I wanted a bell curve, as do most other Players. This is where the type of dice used matter upon creating a role playing game. We don’t want to do a shit-ton of math. Typically, I’d say just roll a Percentile. That gives a lot of room to succeed or fail, and everybody feels fairly comfortable with units of 100. It’s clean. And probabilities are pretty easy to calculate. But the problem with the Percentile is that it’s swingy, and can be faily flat and boring. Every number has an equal chance of probability of landing as the result. A bell curve eliminates this. By using more dice, there’s a higher probability that a middle number will be the likely result. A bell curve. But as I mentioned above, we ain’t mathin’!

So what does all this techno-babble have to do with GURPS again? Easy. GURPS uses 3d6 (three six-sided dice), and success is achieved by rolling under your Stat or Skill. This is awesome. But GURPS offers yet another awesome aspect.

One thing I like about Narrative based systems is the complete freedom I, as a player, have in fleshing out a character concept. I’m not boxed in by pre-built options, such as Classes, or a collection of Skills with access to Special Abilities and Stat modifiers. For example, Fate uses Aspects. These are just simple little phrases or facts about my character, the setting, or whatever, right? And these Aspects affect the game. Queerz!, is another game that uses a similar mechanic, known as Tags. But there’s a problem here. Often, I feel overwhelmed by the limitless freedom. I need guardrails. Part of the beauty of GURPS is that it’s also considered a Modular game. It presents everything in small pieces, and you only take what you need. Granted, the core book (two actually) are over 300 pages a piece, but they present everything you could typically need to begin role playing. And if that’s not enough, there’s over 200 separate expansion books that detail everything from magic and low-tech world building to nano-technology, constructing space ships, and creating galactic empires.

Reinventing the Wheel…

And now I’m re-creating a favorite character concept of mine. Miss Lindsey Shadowstorm, originally from the game ShadowRun (Fourth Edition) was an unhinged bitch, to put it mildly. Part Weapon Master, part Bomb Specialist, part Covert-Ops, part Martial Artist, she was deadly serious, uncouth as people come, and a pipsqueak. Because when I saw Neoteny, I was like, yes. The Cherry on Top of the Cake! So here’s this leather-clad, pigtail doting, Heavy-weapon Spy walking around Seattle with a pair of Uzis, but doesn’t look a day over twelve. Yeah, she’s totally unhinged, and the Ageism is the perfect prejudice that would make her totally rude and crude. She’s tired of the harassment and chose to do something about it.

However, GURPS doesn’t have Qualities such as Uncouth and Neoteny, or even Mood Hair— at least not known as by those names. I’ve discovered it really makes learning a new system easier if you try to recreate a character concept using the new guidelines. This forces you to really look deep down at all the variants and options to see if you can do the thing. Needless to say, I was able to find similar Disadvantages (and Advantages) for Lindsey’s recreation. But, GURPS offers things that ShadowRun couldn’t possibly consider, and I got really excited by these new offerings.

Jumper. This Advantage comes in a couple different flavors, but essentially it allows a character to Jump through time. I can move backwards or forwards though time, much like how somebody with teleportation can change locations at will— this can also be done with an optional modifier!. Well, I saw this and I’m like, this could be very interesting! So, I took Lindsey’s original concept, a badass bitch, and propelled her waaaaay into the future. 3065. I created an entire new world, that’s under an alien invasion, because why not? And of course, Humanity is loosing. Desperate times call for desperate measures, right? So I figured, a thousand years is, like, a really long time for technology to develop. We’re already messing with genetics today. Imagine the possibilities of Corporate Greed going on for another thousand years. (Goddess, help us all.)

While messing with Lindsey’s genes, they also managed to fuse her with a house cat. This is only because I adore the playfulness that cat-girls offer. A very anime-centric trope. And all this mucking around with her biology could cause some complications, and would give her the Jumper ability that I want her to so badly have. And to top her craziness off, one of the Limitation to the Jumper ability is the option to Jump naked— meaning you can’t bring anything with you. Because if she were able to bring a Disintegration Rifle back to 2025 with her, all hell would break loose, wouldn’t it? And we can’t have that. And because I’m a Character Sadist, yes, poor Lindsey is going to suffer from humiliation and embarrassment. But this only adds to her Uncouthness (which GURPS calls Callous)!

But Can I Do the Thing?!

Oh, but don’t worry, I’m still going to be creating my own game system. Like I said above, I’ve got ideas! But one benefit to learning GURPS and playing it, is that it’s an old game system. It’s been out for well over three decades, so there’s an established player base. Maybe I’ll be able to find at least one other player who’s as crazy as I am, and we can zoom around the Milky Way causing all sorts of chaos!

Yeah, I’m still over at my new and improved forum stirring up trouble. Stop on by sometime and let’s chat. I’ll even pour ya a coffee.

And I know that I created an entire subsection here, just to say these two things, but really they don’t fit anywhere above here. After all, this is the end of the article. So why are you still reading this junk anyway?