I got your back! More to come! SJG just sent me the solo Conan adventures because I wanted to cover solo play, which it think is one area I think it shines.
@@indus7841 My Favourite was Time travel which let me use all the Historical books. I had a scenario in which Einstein had invented a time Machine and everything kicked off on the Night orson Welles broadcast War of the Worlds..it was a deal of fun. The one I would have loved to have run was Traveller.
Awesome. Happy that you are presenting this. I am a longtime GURPS GM and player (since 1995) and a frequent playtester (as a scientist- I am a geneticist) of GURPS Books, like Low-Tech, Space, Bio-Tech, etc.. Great job with the video!!
Thanks! Yeah they do a great job of presenting tech to RPG. I'm more space opera that hard sci-fi (in RPGs anyway), but for hard sci-fi I cannot think of anything else that comes close to covering tech to such a degree.
I agree. SJG does great work. I had a bunch of GURPS back in the 90s, then got rid of them. They sucked me back in with GURPS Girl Genius, and I've been working on rebuilding my collection ever since, including the Traveller and Ogre books. P.S. I love your Car Wars / Ogre shelf in the background.
You should see my earlier videos where I have the BIG Ogre box looming in the back. LOL! Yeah, I have bought all the versions of GURPS and they have came in and out of the collection. I think this time though, it's here to stay even if it is just the one book.
Been running GURPS since 2004. Just being able to create any campaign setting in any genre in any time period makes it my go to game system. That plus the digital support of GCA has made it far smoother than alternatives. Yes, it requires a bit of work on the GMs part to set-up but is totally worth it.
To me GURPS is not a matter of taking the supplements and using them with other games. Rather it's the core system that I really like. While the 4E books could use an edit and fix some layout and formatting issues, at its heart the rules are really good. Role 3d6 against a modified or opposed skill roll. There is a simicity to it. Unfortunately that simplicity is not easy to see in some of those rules. And yes, the GM has to pick and choose which of the rules to use. I started with GURPS Lite (still free!) and added what I wanted until I built a robust and dynic sci-fi campaign (its motto: "The physics are theoretical but the fun is real."). I took bits from Space, Spaceships, Traveller, Nordlondr Ovinabokin, Robots, Mecha, and some others. GURPS is what you are willing to make it, and ignore the haters.
Generic Universal Role Playing System aka GURPS, hells yeah! Love it, own it, don't play it much these days, too much crunch for my old bones. Yes, SJ got me with his Illuminati mind control powers, I own a shizzle ton of GURPS books: Basic Characters, Basic Campaigns, high-tech, low-tech, fantasy, magic, thaumaturgy, ultra-tech, infinite worlds, Atlantis, atomic horror, transhumanism, alternate-earths 1 & 2, conspiracy X, religion and more...
@@mrgunn2726 Thaumatology and a hardcover 4E Supers are on my watch list. Can't hardly find those two for sale anywhere. Outside of PDFs or reprints that is.
GRRM has touted GURPS as an influence of his books. While I don't know if he has officially written out the sheets you can almost see them behind each of his ASOIAF characters. Which makes me wonder if George's writing method doesn't involve him playing a solo TTRPG with all of them to see how they would react to each scene based on their individual skills, advantages, and disadvantages.
I am so happy to see this, GURPS needs more attention, hoping to do a Fallout GURPS campaign soon once I iron out some kinks in combat encounters I don't like
I've "convinced" my group to switch from dnd to gurps by choosing to run my upcoming campaign in gurps. Then as I looked into it, I've been making remarks about all the ways dnd doesn't account for very specific things the players have been trying to do, like make vital point strikes, swim in heavy armor, all sorts of stuff. And it all started because I became aware of the tyranny of the flat probability of a d20. Like I always knew it was a flat 5% chance for any outcome, but never realized there's a bell curve with 3d6 or 2d10. Then it got bad when the dm for our ATLA campaign had an npc that was supposed to be a good earthbender but always rolled very poorly. We were all able to just accept she's good at it, but watching her struggle to do any damage in battle was frustrating.
Even D&D, when it original came out, used 2d6/3d6 for attribute checks in earlier modules. (I believe the basic rules did not have attribute check in the main rules at the time.) See my video on The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan for that.
GURPS is the first game i saw that has default skills. A character who has not trained in a skill may be able to do it, a little less well than a similar skill, or at a value based on an attribute. For example, learning survival in one type of environment allows a character a lower chance to survive in other environments.
I love running GURPS games. I've run GURPS games for years. My favorite genres are Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Modern Day. I'm a pro DM. What genre should I run next?
If you dont find ice age to be a cool concept you are a borning person. (Speaking about hypothetical person here not the person in vid) i have been looking for the perfect system and rule books for the dinosaur/prehistoric campaigns. Cavemen and dinosaurs is always fun, if you cant have fun with the ice age book, gurps dinosaurs, and some bullshittery then i feel sorry for anyone objecting.
@CastleArchon ye I got the PDF and the dinosaur expansion, can't wait to crack it open. The dinosaur source book even has rules for playable dinosaurs, which not sure how that will work.
@@CastleArchon yep in the gurps dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures source book on page 61 of the cretaceous section there is a small paragraph called "dinosaurs as PCs". it talks about the possibilities depending on situations in which the GM thinks its possible.
What's wrong with Ice Age? Some people (including myself) do like the idea of a Stone Age adventure in the vein of Quest for Fire or the Earth's Children series. Also, no love for Swashbucklers? And not just the pirate aspect, but also the musketeer and highwaymen parts.
@CastleArchon Cool. Another one that really catches my attention is Cliffhangers, which is modeled on pulp fiction from the 1920s and 30s, the type that inspired Indiana Jones and its imitators. My tastes tend towards the things I liked as a kid. Old West also looks like another good one.
Oddly enough one of GURPS' biggest downfalls is its over encompassing genre, or specifically it's lack of one. While yes you can play any genre, world, or system with it, most players won't. Why work to make a Firefly 'verse in GURPS when you could just play the Firefly RPG? Many people buy into the name and will play whatever official game the IP produces over that which has the ability to best encapsulate the story and the mechanics of the world. Which brings up the other problem, the name. By itself GURPS doesn't ring bells to know what it means. At best it sounds like a disease or some type of phlegm or mucus. You hear Traveler, D&D, Rolemaster, Pathfinder, Star Fleet Battles, Macho Babes with Guns, TMNT, etc and you can get a good guess on what the game will be like. Hearing "GURPS" you get next to nothing. Far too late, nearly 40 years later, but it would be nice to have a name change to something that rolls better off the tongue and doesn't need an immediate breakdown of what each letter in the anagram means. Best Roleplaying Encyclopedia of Accurate Simulation in Tactical Scenarios. Calling it BREASTS would draw a lot more interest in the game. "I picked up a new BREASTS book and am so excited to start playing." (Definition needs work but you get the point.)
I must admit that I didn't pay attention to GURPS until the early 90s due to the name itself. Great system, but starting a title with "Generic" isn't very attention grabbing.
I have a question... I played GURPS 3e for many years and loved it. No criticisms whatsoever. But then I got 4e and for a while didn't really see any difference. But the more I read it and thought about it, the more I realised that it provides a MUCH more powerful toolkit than 3e. So my question is simply this: Why do you prefer 3e?
Just because GURPS _has_ an answer, doesn't mean the answer is good... Want to make your caster a little safer from all those ranged threats? Give them Reflect Missile. It's right there in the core book and everything. For the duration, which is long, any missile targeted at your caster hits the attacker in the same way it would have hit your caster. No chance, no ongoing cost, no visual cue that anything is amiss, just sharpshooters braining themselves. Yeah, my first GURPS character was a sharpshooter. I dipped after that. That isn't to say you can't use GURPS to make a good game, but you end up picking and choosing what is allowed and what isn't. So much that it's about the same work as starting from scratch. Nor is the core game math very good. It isn't terrible, it just isn't special either.
That can be true. With an ambition for being able to tackle ANY setting, there have been more than one problems along the way. Even now, as I cling to my 3rd edition book with glee, I understand the problems some had with passive defense. However, the worth of diving in to figure out these things means tons toward understanding these games better. I get the same enlightenment from delving into microgames from 1970's for understanding wargaming.
@@CastleArchon That is certainly true. I learned a fair amount digging into _why_ I found GURPS unsatisfying to play. That understanding helps when digging into a new system to know if I should spend serious time on it or not.
Be sure and include the increased range for the return trip of the missile. Most high powered firearms won't matter at short range, but I can easily see this causing a shot to miss yourself or being pushed into the half damage category.
@@emrek99205 Range cannot make it miss. 'If the attacker's "to hit" roll is successful, he hits himself". This includes absurd cases like throwing a rock off a cliff at a target far below. The best you can manage, if the GM is reasonable, is the returned projectile does no damage if it should be slow, but given the kinetic energy involved in the rock example, _nothing_ in the spell indicates this must be the case. It also does _nothing_ for you if it's an explosive, or some type of magic missile. This is the fundamental problem I have with the system. By trying to have a rule for everything, even if you don't bog running the game down trying to actually _find_ the correct rule for everything, you just end up with absurd edge cases. Ultimately, the actual group at the table has to take responsibility for making the game how they want, which is the same no matter what system you use. But if you aren't using a "rules for everything" system like GURPS, you can skip past the "that's not what the book says" level of arguments.
I think GURPS is great but... having supplements for so many things caused some contradictions between them so you need to be careful which ones you pick for your setting and then resolve any areas where there are overlaps. GURPS 4e did try and bring things together and resolve them in the core books but it's still not 100%. GURPS Traveller supplements are *THE BEST* Traveller setting source books!
In 2024 SJG has/will come out with 6 more books for GURPS. One every two months. It is not a dead game at all even if it is an overlooked game and not as popular as it should be.
I’m so glad you posted this video. There is so few GURPS content, us, the “younger” gurpsers are starving
I got your back! More to come! SJG just sent me the solo Conan adventures because I wanted to cover solo play, which it think is one area I think it shines.
I have about 100 GURPS Books from 1st-3rd Eds as my gaming reference. Also GURPS Traveller is best Traveller
@@jamesmaclennan4525 your rabbit hole is deep indeed
@@CastleArchon Well it's being dug for the last 50 years.
@@jamesmaclennan4525 GURPS Traveller is indeed the best Traveller.
Whats your favorite setting? Whats your favorite setting you havent run?
@@indus7841 My Favourite was Time travel which let me use all the Historical books. I had a scenario in which Einstein had invented a time Machine and everything kicked off on the Night orson Welles broadcast War of the Worlds..it was a deal of fun. The one I would have loved to have run was Traveller.
I haven’t even watch the whole video, but 💯. If you need to figure out how to solve a problem, GURPS likely has an answer for how you can handle it.
Awesome. Happy that you are presenting this. I am a longtime GURPS GM and player (since 1995) and a frequent playtester (as a scientist- I am a geneticist) of GURPS Books, like Low-Tech, Space, Bio-Tech, etc.. Great job with the video!!
Thanks! Yeah they do a great job of presenting tech to RPG. I'm more space opera that hard sci-fi (in RPGs anyway), but for hard sci-fi I cannot think of anything else that comes close to covering tech to such a degree.
My basic set arrived yesterday. Love these books as a game, as a reference, just for reading or staring at on the shelf, haha.
I've played the staring game myself with some games, dreaming abut a great game in the future.
When I run DnD, I’m constantly telling the PCs “oh I got that idea from GURPS”. It’s a hard game to teach, but so much inspiration!
I hope to make video about bridging that gap of teaching.
I kneel
I played ice age yesterday! Was just a one shot but i did.
@@indus7841 congrats! What was the idea of the adventure?
I agree. SJG does great work. I had a bunch of GURPS back in the 90s, then got rid of them. They sucked me back in with GURPS Girl Genius, and I've been working on rebuilding my collection ever since, including the Traveller and Ogre books.
P.S. I love your Car Wars / Ogre shelf in the background.
You should see my earlier videos where I have the BIG Ogre box looming in the back. LOL!
Yeah, I have bought all the versions of GURPS and they have came in and out of the collection. I think this time though, it's here to stay even if it is just the one book.
Been running GURPS since 2004. Just being able to create any campaign setting in any genre in any time period makes it my go to game system. That plus the digital support of GCA has made it far smoother than alternatives. Yes, it requires a bit of work on the GMs part to set-up but is totally worth it.
To me GURPS is not a matter of taking the supplements and using them with other games. Rather it's the core system that I really like. While the 4E books could use an edit and fix some layout and formatting issues, at its heart the rules are really good. Role 3d6 against a modified or opposed skill roll. There is a simicity to it. Unfortunately that simplicity is not easy to see in some of those rules.
And yes, the GM has to pick and choose which of the rules to use. I started with GURPS Lite (still free!) and added what I wanted until I built a robust and dynic sci-fi campaign (its motto: "The physics are theoretical but the fun is real."). I took bits from Space, Spaceships, Traveller, Nordlondr Ovinabokin, Robots, Mecha, and some others.
GURPS is what you are willing to make it, and ignore the haters.
Generic Universal Role Playing System aka GURPS, hells yeah! Love it, own it, don't play it much these days, too much crunch for my old bones. Yes, SJ got me with his Illuminati mind control powers, I own a shizzle ton of GURPS books: Basic Characters, Basic Campaigns, high-tech, low-tech, fantasy, magic, thaumaturgy, ultra-tech, infinite worlds, Atlantis, atomic horror, transhumanism, alternate-earths 1 & 2, conspiracy X, religion and more...
Luckily I have already gone down that rabbit hole. However, I should know better than to think I am immune from going back down. Gotta stay vigilant!
@@CastleArchon So hard.... All hail the hypno-toad! 🐸👀 🤣🤣🤣
@@mrgunn2726 Thaumatology and a hardcover 4E Supers are on my watch list. Can't hardly find those two for sale anywhere.
Outside of PDFs or reprints that is.
In all honestly playing an Ice Age game is something I would very much like to do.
Now that I think about it, Ice Age was actually my first GURPS book that I ever bought
GRRM has touted GURPS as an influence of his books. While I don't know if he has officially written out the sheets you can almost see them behind each of his ASOIAF characters.
Which makes me wonder if George's writing method doesn't involve him playing a solo TTRPG with all of them to see how they would react to each scene based on their individual skills, advantages, and disadvantages.
Love me some gurps:)
I am so happy to see this, GURPS needs more attention, hoping to do a Fallout GURPS campaign soon once I iron out some kinks in combat encounters I don't like
Funny , I was just looking at my old Traveller books today.
I never knew that Traveller was so popular when I was a kid. Star Frontiers was my bag. Certainly different as it was more space opera feeling.
I've "convinced" my group to switch from dnd to gurps by choosing to run my upcoming campaign in gurps. Then as I looked into it, I've been making remarks about all the ways dnd doesn't account for very specific things the players have been trying to do, like make vital point strikes, swim in heavy armor, all sorts of stuff. And it all started because I became aware of the tyranny of the flat probability of a d20. Like I always knew it was a flat 5% chance for any outcome, but never realized there's a bell curve with 3d6 or 2d10. Then it got bad when the dm for our ATLA campaign had an npc that was supposed to be a good earthbender but always rolled very poorly. We were all able to just accept she's good at it, but watching her struggle to do any damage in battle was frustrating.
Even D&D, when it original came out, used 2d6/3d6 for attribute checks in earlier modules. (I believe the basic rules did not have attribute check in the main rules at the time.) See my video on The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan for that.
GURPS is the first game i saw that has default skills. A character who has not trained in a skill may be able to do it, a little less well than a similar skill, or at a value based on an attribute. For example, learning survival in one type of environment allows a character a lower chance to survive in other environments.
@@ausferret yeah I thought that was a pretty cool feature myself.
I love running GURPS games. I've run GURPS games for years. My favorite genres are Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Modern Day. I'm a pro DM. What genre should I run next?
Horror would be one to try. The books on that were pretty good. Wild West too.
If you dont find ice age to be a cool concept you are a borning person. (Speaking about hypothetical person here not the person in vid) i have been looking for the perfect system and rule books for the dinosaur/prehistoric campaigns. Cavemen and dinosaurs is always fun, if you cant have fun with the ice age book, gurps dinosaurs, and some bullshittery then i feel sorry for anyone objecting.
Ice Age is available in PDF format at the very least.
@CastleArchon ye I got the PDF and the dinosaur expansion, can't wait to crack it open. The dinosaur source book even has rules for playable dinosaurs, which not sure how that will work.
@@grendel8342 Playable Dinosaurs? I don;t remember seeing that! LOL!
@@CastleArchon yep in the gurps dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures source book on page 61 of the cretaceous section there is a small paragraph called "dinosaurs as PCs". it talks about the possibilities depending on situations in which the GM thinks its possible.
What's wrong with Ice Age? Some people (including myself) do like the idea of a Stone Age adventure in the vein of Quest for Fire or the Earth's Children series. Also, no love for Swashbucklers? And not just the pirate aspect, but also the musketeer and highwaymen parts.
Swashbucklers is one of the ones I am considering if I go down the rabbit hole.
@CastleArchon Cool. Another one that really catches my attention is Cliffhangers, which is modeled on pulp fiction from the 1920s and 30s, the type that inspired Indiana Jones and its imitators. My tastes tend towards the things I liked as a kid. Old West also looks like another good one.
@@robertcorbell1006 Oh yeah I forgot about that one.
What is the prisoner
It was a wild psycho-drama about a secret agent that gets captured with different ways to get information out of him. Trippy. pshycho
One of the greatest pieces of narrative art. Very 60’s, but if you’re into Orwell and Huxley it’s perfect
@@michaelweigand9346 oh i love huxley
I think that GURPS 3rd edition is better than 4th edition.
Oddly enough one of GURPS' biggest downfalls is its over encompassing genre, or specifically it's lack of one. While yes you can play any genre, world, or system with it, most players won't.
Why work to make a Firefly 'verse in GURPS when you could just play the Firefly RPG? Many people buy into the name and will play whatever official game the IP produces over that which has the ability to best encapsulate the story and the mechanics of the world.
Which brings up the other problem, the name. By itself GURPS doesn't ring bells to know what it means. At best it sounds like a disease or some type of phlegm or mucus. You hear Traveler, D&D, Rolemaster, Pathfinder, Star Fleet Battles, Macho Babes with Guns, TMNT, etc and you can get a good guess on what the game will be like. Hearing "GURPS" you get next to nothing.
Far too late, nearly 40 years later, but it would be nice to have a name change to something that rolls better off the tongue and doesn't need an immediate breakdown of what each letter in the anagram means.
Best Roleplaying Encyclopedia of Accurate Simulation in Tactical Scenarios. Calling it BREASTS would draw a lot more interest in the game. "I picked up a new BREASTS book and am so excited to start playing." (Definition needs work but you get the point.)
I must admit that I didn't pay attention to GURPS until the early 90s due to the name itself. Great system, but starting a title with "Generic" isn't very attention grabbing.
I love gurps. My group dnd. I would even play a pathfinder just to not olay dnd
I know the feeling. I am going to do a video about trying to convert players over.
I have a question...
I played GURPS 3e for many years and loved it. No criticisms whatsoever.
But then I got 4e and for a while didn't really see any difference. But the more I read it and thought about it, the more I realised that it provides a MUCH more powerful toolkit than 3e.
So my question is simply this: Why do you prefer 3e?
I have yet to do a video on that, but your question will make me get off my butt and get it done! :)
Just because GURPS _has_ an answer, doesn't mean the answer is good... Want to make your caster a little safer from all those ranged threats? Give them Reflect Missile. It's right there in the core book and everything. For the duration, which is long, any missile targeted at your caster hits the attacker in the same way it would have hit your caster. No chance, no ongoing cost, no visual cue that anything is amiss, just sharpshooters braining themselves. Yeah, my first GURPS character was a sharpshooter. I dipped after that.
That isn't to say you can't use GURPS to make a good game, but you end up picking and choosing what is allowed and what isn't. So much that it's about the same work as starting from scratch. Nor is the core game math very good. It isn't terrible, it just isn't special either.
That can be true. With an ambition for being able to tackle ANY setting, there have been more than one problems along the way. Even now, as I cling to my 3rd edition book with glee, I understand the problems some had with passive defense. However, the worth of diving in to figure out these things means tons toward understanding these games better. I get the same enlightenment from delving into microgames from 1970's for understanding wargaming.
@@CastleArchon That is certainly true. I learned a fair amount digging into _why_ I found GURPS unsatisfying to play. That understanding helps when digging into a new system to know if I should spend serious time on it or not.
Be sure and include the increased range for the return trip of the missile. Most high powered firearms won't matter at short range, but I can easily see this causing a shot to miss yourself or being pushed into the half damage category.
@@emrek99205 Range cannot make it miss. 'If the attacker's "to hit" roll is successful, he hits himself". This includes absurd cases like throwing a rock off a cliff at a target far below. The best you can manage, if the GM is reasonable, is the returned projectile does no damage if it should be slow, but given the kinetic energy involved in the rock example, _nothing_ in the spell indicates this must be the case. It also does _nothing_ for you if it's an explosive, or some type of magic missile.
This is the fundamental problem I have with the system. By trying to have a rule for everything, even if you don't bog running the game down trying to actually _find_ the correct rule for everything, you just end up with absurd edge cases. Ultimately, the actual group at the table has to take responsibility for making the game how they want, which is the same no matter what system you use. But if you aren't using a "rules for everything" system like GURPS, you can skip past the "that's not what the book says" level of arguments.
I think GURPS is great but... having supplements for so many things caused some contradictions between them so you need to be careful which ones you pick for your setting and then resolve any areas where there are overlaps. GURPS 4e did try and bring things together and resolve them in the core books but it's still not 100%.
GURPS Traveller supplements are *THE BEST* Traveller setting source books!
3rd edition is fantastic! It's an easy read, easy to find things, great layout. 4th edition is a slog, it's dry, dull, it's a huge turn off.
I think it's a layout issue. The three columns just doesn't work.
I love GURPS. Unfortunately it's not supported any longer.
Not sure what you mean. They come out with more stuff for it. They recently came out with Meta-Tech.
GURPS 4e is totally supported. It's had at least monthly releases since it came out on Warehouse23.
In 2024 SJG has/will come out with 6 more books for GURPS. One every two months. It is not a dead game at all even if it is an overlooked game and not as popular as it should be.