Skip to main content

Whither Writing for GURPS?


To expand a bit on my comments here on how it's difficult to write new rules for GURPS:


It's not hard to add entirely novel rules to GURPS. The problem, in my own writing and gaming, is finding a need to add entirely novel rules. Mechanically, it's not necessarily hard to write new rules. GURPS is heavy on "find the appropriate trait, modify for circumstances, and roll that number or lower on 3d6." And there's always room for special cases. For example, Tactical Shooting and Technical Grappling add a wealth of gritty detail to shooting things and grabbing people, if you're into that kind of thing, and even with the basic magic system, basic psi, a magic-as-advantages approach, RPM, and variants to be found in Thaumatology, there's always room for new approaches to extra-normal abilities.

No, what I'm talking about is finding topics on which new, general rules can be written where none existed before, or broadly applicable rules for notable adventuring topics. GURPS is densely written, so it takes some unpacking, but there's an astonishing breadth there. For example, fighting, as a general thing, is covered perfectly well in the Basic Set. Might some people want more for a campaign emphasizing detailed combat? Sure. Martial Arts and all that aren't necessary, even though they're pretty nifty. Infinite new magic systems could be written to reflect various views of the supernatural, but magic as a thing already has more coverage than I'll ever use. Social interaction? Social Engineering provides lots of welcome detail, but Basic's treatment is really quite good for the few pages it covers. Basic likewise has reasonable coverage of common physical feats like swimming, climbing, lifting and throwing things, and so on. Chase scenes? Emergency repairs? One character helping out another using a related skill? Action 2 has you covered. Bestiary? OK, there aren't a lot of general rules for making beasties, but there are plenty of examples scattered across various different books (some might take exception to the products on offer and their organization, certainly, but there's a significant amount of available information).

So what's left, in terms of general rules? Not a lot. When I'm confronted with an adventuring situation, it's rare that I can't find at least some applicable rule. There's room for some general design systems, notably for vehicles, weapons, and armor. I think there's also space for GM-centric world-building rules. City Stats is an excellent example. Possibly something similar could be done with environments. It'd be interesting to see generic rules on transportation and trade networks, helping the GM come up with everything from travel times and costs for PC travel to plausible markups for imported goods to adventures based on the act of going from point A to point B. Mostly, though, there are focused rules dealing with specialized circumstances and vast room to expand on the system with worked examples based on the already-solid basis the existing rules provide.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Briefly, How To Play GURPS

For a long time, I’ve maintained that GURPS, despite its reputation for complexity, is actually pretty simple in play. I was thinking recently that I should see if I can express the fundamentals of playing GURPS in a short, easily digested form, and so here I am.   This does not address a more general “how to play rpgs” for those who know nothing on the topic. How to approach GURPS, at that level, isn’t necessarily a lot different from how to approach D&D or TFT or any other RPG system. It doesn’t get into optional and campaign-specific sets of rules or equipment. Rather, this is stuff applicable to playing GURPS no matter what the campaign is. It also doesn’t address how to build GURPS characters, which is a vastly more complicated topic. Rather, this is about how to engage GURPS rules when you’ve already got your character sheet and are sitting at the table to play. It’s a trifle over 1000 words, which I think isn’t too bad.   How To Play GURPS Most of what you’ll need t...
Post a Comment
Read more

More Nattering About Writing Historical RPGs

omeone made the mistake of asking me to expand on some things I'd said about writing historical rpg material, so you all must suffer for it. I write a lot of historical rpg stuff as well as entirely fictional setting material. So why make historically themed games rather than just making stuff up? Well, because it's an effective way of achieving the purpose of writing settings and adventures in general. The purpose of settings and adventures, I would aver, is to give players things to do in a convincing context. Convincing context doesn't necessarily mean realism. Players have different levels of understanding of what's "realistic" in different situations and are more or less sensitive to how closely those situations adhere to reality. For example, I'm a history and culture guy. Put me in SF campaigns (which happens with some regularity) and the specifics of how reaction drives, orbital mechanics, and subatomic physics work entirely escape me. I don't,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Tour dCollection

I love dice.  It's a common affliction of gamers, but it's a particular thing for me. They're interestingly shaped, emblematic of my hobby, and modern ones are tiny works of art which appeal to even people like my non-gaming lovely and talented spouse (who has gotten me a great many of these over the years, because she knows what I like). I was recently asked about my dice collection, which has been accumulating for rather more years than I like to think, so here's a more or less historically guided tour. Back in The Olden Days (tm) of the first tabletop roleplaying games, polyhedral dice weren't easily available, nor were they initially sold as gaming accessories. They were originally sold as scientific equipment, used by people like statisticians and mathematical researchers who needed to generate random numbers (there's a fascinating paper here on the history of dice as randomizers in scientific work; the dice we use owe a lot to the reconstruction of post-w...
1 comment
Read more