Podcast Episode 2 - Introduction to GURPS

EnragedEggplant:

Hello, I'm EnragedEggplant, welcome to the second episode of Only the Parts You Need, a GURPS podcast. The topic of this episode is the Introduction to GURPS.

“Introduction to GURPS” is a very difficult topic to talk about, as there is a lot that needs to be said, compared, and explained, and it’s hard to find a good starting point. First and foremost, it must be said that GURPS is a system that the GM can adjust in any way he wants, or use one of the ready-to-use genre books, such as Action, After the End, Dungeon Fantasy, or Monster Hunters. The generic nature that allows running games of all genres, styles, and tones requires the GM choose rules and components he wants to use from the vast array of options, as many of the options are not meant to be used with each other. I feel like this should be stated right in the introduction of the GURPS Basic Set, but it is not, unfortunately, which can lead to some misunderstandings. However, this is stated in the introduction of How to be a GURPS GM, a book that was released much later. The book layout in general is frequently criticized.

    GURPS has a default setting - Infinite Worlds that is an “everything goes” kitchen sink, at least at the first glance. While I really like the setting and feel like it’s well written, I believe that it leads the new players to believe that GURPS was made for such “everything goes” games. As a result, new GMs and players try running such games, use everything available, get overwhelmed by the number of rules and options, have a bad game, and become discouraged from trying GURPS ever again. While the current edition of GURPS is a relatively modern system, it retains the property of old-school wargames that are not very accessible to newcomers and work much better when an experienced player leads you through the process, like Advanced Squad Leader, for example. Although, it is still very much possible to learn the game from scratch and with no outside help - I did it that way.

    GURPS has four key points that you should be familiar with when deciding whether you want to use it or not:

1. GURPS has precisely one task-resolution mechanism: “Take a score, add a modifier, and roll three six-sided dice under the result.” No other dice are used, but sometimes you have to roll more or fewer than 3 dice, for example, when rolling damage.
2. It is a point-buy system. Every advantage, disadvantage, skill - everything costs a certain positive or negative number of points that are taken from a single pool (or multiple pools, if you’re using certain optional rules).
3. Every game of GURPS is different, as the combinations of rules and options (most of which are optional) that the GM uses can create different tones and styles - from gritty and realistic to cinematic and over-the-top games. The modularity of the system allows the GM to add or omit certain parts that he likes or does not like. For example, if the GM wants more detailed combat, he adds rules from GURPS Martial Arts. If he want to have magic in his setting, he adds one of the various magic systems. If he want a simplified combat system, he removes the tactical combat chapter entirely. If he does not like called shots, he removes hit locations. If he wants detailed and realistic firearm combat, he adds rules from GURPS Tactical Shooting, but if he wants cinematic gunslingers, he adds rules from GURPS Gun Fu. And so on, and so forth.
4. While GURPS is generic, it is grounded in real life, by default trying to give the game a “heroic realism” style. If there is something one could do in real life, you probably can either find the rules for it or estimate them with relative ease. This quality is in part accomplished by thorough research that goes in the production of most books. Many books are very entertaining to read even if you’re not planning to use them, or even use GURPS.

    It should be said that GURPS can handle almost every setting, but it might not do every genre right. However it can do a lot of genres quite well. For example, modern-time action hero games, historical games, sci-fi games, fantasy games, social or merchant-based games. It can struggle with high-power superheroes games in the hands of new GMs.

    Let’s say that your GM told you everything about his game and asked you to make a character. Usually, the GM provides the starting point total, disadvantage limits, advantages and disadvantages that you are required to have, a list of forbidden advantages, optional rules that will be used in the game, and, perhaps, a list of skills that should be had by at least one party member. The GM might also provide a list of character templates that you should be using when creating a character. Templates do help new players by providing familiar archetypes, and limiting decision paralysis that is a problem often encountered in GURPS. Personally, I’m not a fan of character templates as I feel that they limit your options too much, but I still like to use them as starting points for character creation.

    Characters built on the same amount of points can be vastly different. Combat is one of the most common ways of conflict resolution, but having the same point total does not mean that the characters will be identically effective in combat. One example that is often brought up is a 25-point warrior that put all his points in combat skills versus a 250-point lawyer with points in non-combat skills and advantages. If the GM wants the characters to not differ much in combat effectiveness, then he should create appropriate templates or just state his intent outright. Test combats against each other or typical enemies after character creation and the following adjustments are a good option too. If you are playing Dungeon Fantasy, then you can use Combat Effectiveness Rating from Pyramid #3-77 to gauge combat capabilities.

One of the common mistakes made by new players is taking disadvantages that they won't enjoy roleplaying and that they don't want to come up in play. GURPS does not consider a disadvantage that does not actually penalize you a disadvantage and hence, suggests against providing extra points for it. Typically, disadvantages are taken to flesh out the character, make him or her feel more real, not to cheat the system to get more character points. Also, I've noticed that many players see the disadvantage limit and try to force as many disadvantages into their characters as they can, which can result in both roleplaying difficulties for the players and difficulties for the GM trying to come up with engaging adventures for such characters. Thus, if the GM says that you can take up to -100 points in disadvantages, it doesn't mean that you should. Character progression usually is slow in GURPS, so keep in mind that it might take a while to buy off disadvantages that you don't enjoy.

As I mentioned before, it seems to be a good practice to work with the new players on their first characters before they read the rules, instead of letting them trod off into a silo to do everything by themselves, and ultimately getting completely overwhelmed because there is too much to read when they don’t have any direction. While doing that, it’s important to be able to say “no”. You have to get them into the game as fast as possible, so that they can learn only what they need to learn. Whether you abstract that behind a template or “tell me four things you want to be good at, and four problems you have” is six in one hand, half a dozen in the other. You have to narrow the scope of what they need to learn - for example, there is no need to learn car collision or radiation rules in a low-tech game.

The scope of the game is important, the GM must decide on it and the rules he is using, but players have to abide by it too. For example; if a GM is running an archetypical medieval fantasy game, and a player decides he wants to play a psionic alien, the GM needs to be prepared to say "no", even though GURPS does support playing psionic aliens in medieval settings.

Mechanically speaking, GURPS characters consist of basic attributes, secondary characteristics, advantages, disadvantages, skills, and techniques. There is only four basic attributes - Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Health. Strength determines how much the character can lift, how hard he hits in melee, and how many hit points he has. Dexterity plays a part in determining the character’s speed and Dodge values, and is the base of many skills. Intelligence determines perception, will, and is a base of many skills. Health determines how many fatigue points the character has, how resistant he is to physical ailments, plays a part in determining the character’s speed and Dodge values, and is the base of several skills. One of the latest Pyramid issues has rules for the fifth attribute - Quintessence, that governs supernatural abilities; and there are some fanmade houserules regarding introducing additional attributes or separating Intelligence from Perception and Will, but we are not going to touch that in this episode.

Advantages are positive traits that the character possesses. They can be passive or active, have static costs or have leveled costs. Advantages are split into physical, mental, and social, and additionally split into mundane, exotic, and supernatural. The categories speak for themselves - advantages range from having your right arm being stronger than the left one and having acute hearing to having powerful patrons or contacts to abilities to launch explosive fireballs. Technically, positive basic attributes and secondary characteristics also are advantages. Advantages can be modified with enhancements and limitations that increase or decrease its cost, respectively. Thus, you can make your fire attack homing, make your mind control only work if you maintain eye contact with the victim, and so on - the possibilities are endless. The list of advantages is very long and new players often feel overwhelmed, when in reality they usually never have to read it all. I suggest for the first time to just skim the chapter, stopping only to read things that caught your eye, or just ask the GM “what advantage do I have to take to be able to do the thing I want to do”? On the other hand, when I was reading the Basic Set for the first time, this huge list impressed me and made me keep reading - I was excited to see what the system has to offer. It can be different for different people. It’s rare to have a game that allows the whole range of the advantages - many are quite specific. For example, you’re unlikely to need Temporal Inertia in a game with no common time travel, Vacuum Support in a game with no space travel, or all exotic and supernatural advantages in a realistic game about mundane humans.

The next chapter covers the disadvantages. They can represent physical or mental defects, negative social standing. The name “disadvantage” might be misleading, as some disadvantages can represent “good” traits, such as Truthfulness and Honesty. The disadvantageous part of such traits is that they limit your agency somewhat, forcing the character to behave in a certain way. It should be repeated that you should not take disadvantages that you won’t enjoy roleplaying. Just like the advantages, some of the disadvantages will not be appropriate or useful for all settings and games. For example, Magic Susceptibility will not be relevant in mundane realistic games, and so on.

The next chapter covers skills and techniques. Most of the tasks you’re going to do in the game are resolved by rolling against your skill level. Skills have the attribute they are based on, difficulty, and, possibly, required or optional specialties (sometimes even two) and technological level. Skill level depends on how many points you have spent on it, on the attribute they are based on, and the difficulty, which can be confusing at first. For example, Interrogation is an Average difficulty skill based on IQ. According to the table on the page 170, to upgrade the skill level to IQ+1 you have to pay 4 points. Thus, if you have spent 4 points and have IQ 11, your Interrogation skill level will be 12. If you then decide to upgrade your IQ to 12, your skill level will rise along with it. Almost all skills default to other skills or attributes, so you can use them even if you haven’t put any points in them. For example, Bow defaults to DX-5, so if you have DX 12, you can use Bow at skill level 7 without putting any points in it. This whole thing might seem complex at first, but you quickly get used to it.

The skill list is enormous, covering everything you can imagine - from skills that have very limited and questionable uses, like Speed-Reading and Typing, to various weapon skills, to Administration, Free Fall, Theology, etc. As always, you don’t have to use all skills in your game. For example, a low-tech game causes most of technological skills to become irrelevant. If that’s still too much for you, you can use the optional wildcard skills that cost more, but are much more broad. That is a great solution for cinematic games, where you expect a person that is good an a specific thing to be good at all related things. For example, the Detective! wildcard skill replaces Criminology, Detect Lies, Forensics, Interrogation, all specialties of Law, Observation, etc., and the Gun! wildcard skill replaces all specialties of Beam Weapons, Gunner, Guns, and Liquid Projector, as well as all related Fast-Draw skills. New players often overspecialize and put a lot of points into a single skill, and that’s usually a bad thing, because skill improvement grants diminishing results, and realistically a person with a skill level of 14 is considered to be an expert.

Techniques… I don’t recommend them to new players. I suggest to skip them until you have at least some experience. They are quite hard to get your head around at first, let’s not talk about them in this episode.

Let’s talk about the combat system now, as combat often is an important part of the game. As I have said before, by default GURPS assumes “heroic realism” and the default rules reflect that. Turns are not represented by abstract rounds or actions, but are granular 1-second intervals, during which a character usually can perform only a single maneuver. This might take time to get used to, if you are used to thinking that a combat turn not spent on an attack is a waste.

Even the default rules might seem quite complex compared to what some other systems might provide. You might want to take things slow at first, especially with newer players. GURPS Combat Cards might come in handy if your players are physically present. I would also recommend running a few test combats with the player characters against typical enemies or against each other to help the players familiarize themselves with the combat system.

Here’s the basic attack resolution sequence:

1. The attacker makes a roll against his combat skill.
2. If he succeeds, the defender is allowed to make an active defense - Dodge (derived from Basic Speed), Parry (derived from weapon skill), or Block (derived from the Shield skill).
3. If the defender succeeds, he is unaffected by the attack. If he fails, the attacker rolls damage.
4. Damage Resistance of the defender is subtracted from the damage rolled, and, if any damage goes through, the defender takes injury.

    That’s the basic gist of it, but it gets much more complex and fun with hit locations, injury modifiers, deceptive attacks, feints, etc. If that’s still not enough, you can add rules from GURPS Martial Arts, other supplements, and Pyramid articles.

    Since GURPS is not a level-based system, hit points of humanoid characters do not vary that much, usually. This prevents hit point bloat and makes it that every landed hit counts. If this is not what you’re looking for, then you can use optional cinematic rules that can make combat much less deadly.

    GURPS supports both board-less combat, so called "Theatre of the Mind" and grid combat, what the books call Tactical Combat. Both have ample support, though for groups transitioning to GURPS from D20 and other games, it should be noted that Tactical Combat uses a Hex Grid. While hex grids have some advantages over square grids, for example, the lack of sometimes confusing diagonal distance calculations, it might be difficult to use when playing without any virtual tabletop software. I know that there are game mats, erasable transparent sheets, and other helpful tools, but I’m way too used to playing with a sheet of paper torn out of a notebook and a pencil. I have only played GURPS using virtual tabletop software, such as Roll20 and MapTools, so I have not experienced any difficulties with drawing a map on a hex grid.

    In general, I’m a big fan of the GURPS combat system - you can do anything you can imagine, because the rules are grounded in reality and there are no artificial barriers that forbid you from certain actions. Combat can be as complex and as deadly as you want it to - just like with every other aspect of GURPS, you just have to decide what feel you want to accomplish and choose appropriate rules.

    I believe that’s all I have to say for now. I hope that this short introduction to GURPS will help you determine whether you want to use the system or not, and help you get a general feel of the system as a whole.

Legendsmith:

I do have some thoughts of my own to add.

I think a great way to introduce GURPS is to talk about why I use it.

When I have a campaign or setting concept, I already know how I want the key points to be and usually, I can make GURPS do it that way. I don't need to describe it in GURPS terms, I make GURPS describe it in my terms. I can't do that in D&D, because D&D only works on its own terms. This is an important distinction, and one of the greatest strengths of GURPS. However, this does mean that I have to do more work than a D&D GM has to, especially if my concept diverges drastically from GURPS' default of cinematic realism. Super high power games that feature awesome powers like Demigods are, as Enraged Eggplant already mentioned, much more work for the GM, just because he has to define so many different traits and powers. But then again, there's the game books like Monster Hunters to help with some of things that are quite demigod-level. For the GM who likes running his original settings, GURPS is great, especially if those are historical, feature gritty themes, or have a kind of heroic realism vibe.

I also have a fair bit of experience in running GURPS with tactical combat in offline, face-to-face groups. I have a transparent hex grid map, and wet erase markers to draw on it. It's quite straightforward to use, and simply being able to draw on the map makes mapmaking quite easy. Before I bought the map I simply printed hex grids onto paper. I found that my players adapt to the hex grid quickly and easily, as it's quite intuitive. The only thing they struggle with is the number of options in combat, but as a GM it's easy to just introduce them to each option one at a time, or print cheat sheets, or use combat cards.

Thanks for joining us for episode 2. A GURPS Character Sheet program tutorial was meant to be part of this episode, but some difficulties with video codecs have prevented me from including it. Once it's re-recorded, it will be uploaded as a different video. See you next time.