This is a monthly r/GURPS thread for anything and everything related to your own campaigns. Tell us how you and your friends are making out. Update us on the progress of your game. Tell us about any issues you've run into and maybe we can help. Make suggestions for other players and GMs.

So you’re telling me I can unironically be a foul smelling dwarf who suffers from chronic depression and is terminally ill who just so happens to have a John Deere 4020?

And the only thing stopping me is the gm?

Am I getting that right?

I've noticed that the discussion around GURPS online is often far more about the system than the gaming! So I thought it could be nice to chat about what we're actually doing a little.

I'm currently running self-contained episodic adventures for my friends in between a regular D&D game featuring a group of 4 time cops. We've done two so far: one in ancient rome, and one in the old west, and our adventuring party features a victorian illusionist, a victorian doctor and detective, a samurai, and a scribe from new-kingdom egypt.

We use the basic set with a minor addition from Martial Arts (targeted attacks as learnable techniques). I've chucked out TL and familiarity as incredibly boring. I made a handy dandy explainer of what techniques are and how to design them, which my players all ignored as too complicated.

They've taken a little while to warm up to the system but are now enjoying it. The gcs character sheets still overwhelm them a bit, but I coach them through it OK. I've struggled a bit with power level: I started them off with 150pt characters that I made based on their descriptions of what they wanted to be able to do, and they're maybe a little underpowered for the kind of antics I have planned for them. I've basically started treating all skills as almost-wildcard skills / am being very generous with defaults.

I hooked the victorian illusionist (who basically described his character concept as 'hugh jackman in the prestige') up with Gadgeteer but its been a bit of a dud: he's felt unwilling to seek out the resources and facilities he'd need to make cool gadgets. I'm rejigging his sheet to free up 25 points for Quick Gadgeteer for the next game.

I’m looking at a fantasy campaign that starts at 250 pts and the characters ascend to become gods. I would love to use an atlatl or woomera with bolas and nets on the side. Has anybody used these before? I feel the call of swing impaling damage… Diffuse and homogenous enemies would take very little damage.

Spears weighing 4 lbs each puts an end to the woomera, I think. Maybe if I get the ability to summon spears to me.

Shapeshifting in GURPS Magic offers the template for the spell, but doesn't offer any examples. They suggest a simple cost for most animal forms, but also suggest using the Character Point cost of an animal to price the spell.

Is there an index of animal templates with point costs? I know there's the NPC templates in Basic, but they don't have a full point cost connected to the stats (plus they seem extremely bare bones.)

Partial Shapeshifting requires the Animal Form in question as a prerequisite. For instance, Tiger Paws would require Shapeshift Other (Tiger).

I'm a little peeved that there aren't example Shapeshifts in the book. Even in the index would be fine.

I'm looking for inspiration and ideas, anything might help

I'm building a character that relies on its allies to live. The actual character is "useless" he is a brain in a jar that does nothing but allow the party to communicate telepathically.

I've given him 4 allies to allow him to actually exist in the world, I am aware this is a lot of moving parts for roleplay at this moment it's purely hypothetical with no campaign in mind. I am heavily accounting for the potential players having agency above the allies

I want to have a generic party of allies, tank, rouge, fighter, mage. The tank and rouge I'm set on with an Alphonse Elric inspired tank and a large snake as the rouge but the mage and fighter I'm really stuck on.

If anyone has any creative or interesting ideas please comment them below I will greatly appreciate them

So, I have an 'everyone is supers' setting where the player character is in university.

Due to the school environment, the setting's might makes right ideology is amplified, since economy isn't really a factor, and groups are rarely able to be big enough to overcome gaps in power - leaving it up to individual power where you sit.

But, power isn't an absolute determiner - there's a lot of factors that can determines who wins a fight, even when the fight is the one on one duels that are used to determine your place in the university's student hierarchy.

This leads to a fair bit of fluctuation, which makes it kinda hard to map it to an advantage like rank, even though a high place in the hierarchy gives benefits quite akin to a high rank - it's just too easy to lose your position if someone challenges you, and you fail to beat them. And then it's also too easy to gain a higher position if you manage to beat someone previously above you (even if it was by luck - you'll hold that position for at least a bit before having to defend it, whether against others, or against its previous holder again)

Are there any systems or anything anywhere in GURPS' catalogue that'd be good for managing this, and representing it mechanically?

Game: GURPS

World: Homebrew

Genre: High Fantasy

So my problem is that I have the cultures of my world fairly locked in and I want to create gods and explore the cultures more through the lense they put on their shared gods.

But before creating the shadows of the gods as it were I still need to create the gods that cast those shadows (the gods are real)

So I need a template/seed for a believable pantheon or at least something like these are the core domains you need to hit for it to be believable.

I looked on youtube for videos on this, thinking there should be a great wealth of knowledge but I keep finding things that:

Call out dnd gods as stupid

Call out anthropomorphic gods as stupid

Are ok is general presentations on monotheism/politheism but not helpful to write your own

Call out general tropes that I know to avoid in the first place

Are uber specific showcases of the author making gods that don't teach you how to make your own

I haven't been able to find a sort of Hello World base to adopt for my own needs.

So, I'm trying to replicate the Wild Magic shown in The Obsidian Trilogy, by Mercedes Lackey & James Mallory. It works a lot like Divine Favor does, except that every act of magic comes with a task that you must do afterwards. The more vague you are in your request the better.

A few examples from the first book (Spoilers beware but I'll try to be vague)

- A wildmage wanted to escape somewhere. The granting of this was done by transforming them into a bird. The task? The bird was endangered and they helped add to the population. This task took about a year to complete, but it was a MAJOR ask.

- Someone was injured, poison, only bee venom but still. The burden of the healing was shared between the mage and the target. The task of the mage was to inform an old woman that the target was to aid her in her daily chores for a year and a day.

The limits of what one can and can't do is left up to what an individual wishes to risk. Theoretically one could lift mountains but will be tasked with moving mountains in exchange. And that assumes the physical energy cost doesn't outright kill you.

I was tempted to treat this simply as divine favor, but the energy cost, sharing the burden, and reliability seemed to warrant a community ask.

Thanks in advance ^^

I managed to nab a stack of second hand third edition gurps books from a local game group for 8 pounds (so about ten bucks). I got the basic set, technomancer, undead and spec ops. The game is on fourth edition (so I've heard), how good is compatibility between editions? I'm not fussed about playing an older edition of the game to try it out then switch to the newer one if I think it would be worth it, but if I don't even have to bother it would save me money! Either way I'll definitely try out third edition as I have these nice books now.