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.

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.

I've been gaming and GMing for over 37 years. I've played a LOT of systems, at least a good three dozen for sure. In terms of running, for the last decade, I've tended towards lighter games or more "narrative" ones (so, Burning Wheel is a favorite, but it sure as hell isn't light).

Anyway, I've noticed for the last five years my gaming has been fine, having fun, but there's something missing, a level of detail that I find helps me GM better, and most games are just missing it. I like to have something to hang my hat on, so to speak, and like it when the system gives me answers to questions when running it. This won't be news to anyone, but a lot of the lighter system but the onus on the GM to say what's what and so on.

I tend to run politics heavy games, where we see intrigue, social stuff, and mass comabt a lot. It's my thing. Thing is, most games don't really go into the weeds on, for example, social abilities (like having allies or enemies or whatever), and if they do, it isn't terribly well taken care of or an after thought. I won't talk about the fact that most games don't have mass comabt systems at all, or if they do, again, its an after thought.

So what led me back to GURPS?

Recently running a fantasy game set in Terrinoth, using Savage Worlds, my usual genre and style, so all the stuff mentioned above. SW is a fine game; we ran three good sessions with it, but it isn't, for me, satisfying. Why? I'm missing detail. The die spread for certain things makes it feel like there isn't much room for movement. Like, the characters are nobles, but they aren't at the same level. No way to model that in SW (you pick Aristocrat as an Edge, maybe Famous or Rich and that's that). Everyone more less used Persuasion for every social situation (only Intimidation and Taunt are there, but they don't like being mean to get what they want, so...). No real way to model levels of Wealth (I mean, there is a Wealth system, but it has 5 levels (and you default to one of them) and the last level is generally unreachable except temporarily, and anyway, there are almost no rules behind it).

Mind, this isn't a dig at SW - it works very well for what it does, and it isn't meant to be stretched into the granular places I want it to, which is the point. From the beginning of the game I regretted picking SW (it was the "easiest" choice) and that turns out, later, to have led to some things in game that are "uninformed" at the level I'd usually like. Which is the point.

GURPS lets me dial up or down, as I wish. Do I want to get into lots of Wealth levels and having that make a difference? I can! Do I want lots of ways to talk people into what you want (Diplomacy, Sex Appeal, Fast Talk, Carousing, etc.)? Then I can say here are the skill you use. Basically, in SW, I started adding skills and other things to, essentially, make it more like GURPS. So I just switched to GURPS.

So, for those of you who play lots of other things, what always leads you back to GURPS?

Those are just examples, but I hope you see where I'm going. Vermissilitude. Detail. I was missing them.

I want the powerlevel of the party to be similiar of that of the Teen Titans from the original Cartoon Network show

Would Gurps be good and how many starting character points would you suggest giving to the players?

For context, one player of mine wishes to be the ship itself in a space fantasy campaign we're running, they would like the feel of taking a management-esque role that doesn't have them directly walking about or interacting with objects, but rather manipulating every bit of said ship from a distance, in the safety of their core (think the AI role in Space Station 13), how would one deal with this?

Things needed: Technopathy with all of the ship's more complex appliances, mass surveillance and a lack of mobility (It can of course pilot the ship itself, but the hardware it runs on stays static within it).

recently been rewatching some jojos with a freind and was wondering how you would make a time stop abillity which best reflected what starplatinum was able to do.

for non jojos people, its literally just the abillity to stop time and interact with the enviorment even in destructive waves, for 2/5/10 seconds depending on the character. we have seen this abillity be used to stop time and flick away bullets, punch holes through people, and feign teleportation, but of the options there are to stop time in gurps very few allow for that.

stasis in the power book if stacked with 20+ aoe could be used to stop time but you cant interact with or destroy objects in that stopped time, the jumper stopped time from those creator notes posted have the same limitation. Altered time rate is also suggested as a way to simulate seconds outside of time, but people can percieve you, they can defend attacks made by you, its just closer to super speed then it is stopped time, youd have to have things like invisiblity with accesibllity to an activated altered time rate and even then things can still escape your attacks, hear your movement, all that stuff its just very convuluted.

i did consider a cosmic 600+ attack with an accessibility in stopped time to fix this but its very convoluted, so i gave up. Then, working on something else i was zooming through martial arts and stumbled upon the solution, bullet time. The bullet time rules have everything that was needed, rules for bating away and catching projectiles, the ability to make unreactable attacks, being imperceivable or a blur, all at the cost of 3 character points.

so my question is, how would you make all the aspects and rules of bullet time, into a character advantage which can be done multiple times at the cost of fatigue points or an energy reserve, this is obviously unbalanced but I wanted to know if there was a mechanical way to do this as a power RAW

I looked in the first few pages of search results,but couldn't find answers to these questions. Hopefully someone can answer them.

1. Linked Attacks

Link on page 106 says if I buy two attacks with the same range I can have them use the same attack roll. That would mean I don't have to, right? And if I don't, can the attacks target different enemies? For context, I'm trying to build a classic battletech missile spam, where each missile could fire at different targets, or all at the same one, or a combination of both.

2) Link/Follow-up and Alternative Attacks

Alternative Attacks says if I have two attacks that are really just different forms of the same attack, I can pay the full cost for 1, and 1/5th the cost for the others. Do follow-ups on the second attack cost their full cost, or 1/5th the cost (assuming the base attack and it's follow up together cost less than the other base attack)? For context, a different player wants a weapon with different ends to have a different element each; a burning follow-up on one, and potentially an affliction in the other.

3) Stacking Afflictions and Alternative attacks

Continuing with Alternative Attacks, would afflictions bought as alternative attacks stack with each other? Another player wants a hallucination affliction, a drunk affliction, and a pain affliction. Multiplicative costs an absurd amount, and this would give a similar effect for a small fraction of the cost. At the same time though, they would all be competing over the same action.

4) Reload/Preparation/Limited Use and Alternative Attacks

The box on page 61 says if one attack is drained, disabled, or neutralized, all of them are. If one attack has limited use or requires recharge, does using that attack prevent you from using all alternative attacks by default? None of the other players nor I actually want this right now, but I'm curious, and it's easy to come up with examples. A gunblade would use ammo with the gun part, but not the blade part. A solar powered attack might be usable indefinitely, but also let you drain your "battery" for a stronger attack.

5) General philosophy of Alternative Attacks

When should attacks qualify as Alternative Attacks? The little box on page 61 says you can treat them as different settings of the same attack. If player A wants laser vision, and a melee pressure point jab that stuns, and player B wants an electric touch stunning attack that can also shoot beams of lightning, one of them seems like different forms of the same attack, and the other seems like two different attacks. Does player A end up paying a lot more for what is essentially a flavor difference, or does everything qualify for Alternative attacks as long as you can't use extra attack or link with them?

Thanks for the help!

Video version with audio and images: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x90at2frlA

Do You think that all Satanists are just edgy atheists liking metal music? Do You think that Scientologists are the worst real life cult? Do You think that nobody is crazy enough to seriously worship eldritch abominations? I invite You to watch our video about the Order of the Nine Angles. You can use them as bad guys in Your RPG scenario/story/horror video game, whatever.

Academics have found it difficult to ascertain "exact and verifiable information" about the ONA's origins given the high level of secrecy it maintains. As with many other occult organisations, the Order shrouds its history in "mystery and legend", creating a "mythical narrative" for its origins and development. The ONA claims to be the descendant of pre-Christian pagan traditions which survived the Christianisation of Britain and were passed down from the Middle Ages onward in small groups or "temples" which were based in the Welsh Marches – a border area which is located between England and Wales – each of which was led by a grand master or a grand mistress. Sounds like anothe New Age pagan group? Well, ONA members consider themselves „traditional satanists”. And they are not Laveyan Satanists, aka atheists who like edgy, dark vibes.

The ONA believe that humans live within the causal realm, which obeys the laws of cause and effect. They also believe in an acausal realm, in which the laws of physics do not apply, further promoting the idea that numinous energies from the acausal realm can be drawn into the causal, allowing for the performance of magic. The Order promotes the idea that "Dark Gods" exist within the acausal realm, although it is accepted that some members will interpret them not as real entities but as facets of the human subconscious.These entities are perceived as dangerous, with the ONA advising caution when interacting with them. Among those Dark Gods whose identities have been discussed in the Order's publicly available material are a goddess named Baphomet who is depicted as a mature woman carrying a severed head. Another of these acausal figures is termed Vindex, after the Latin word for "avenger". The ONA believe that Vindex will eventually incarnate as a human – although the sex and ethnicity of this individual is unknown – through the successful "presencing" of acausal energies within the causal realm, and that they will act as a messianic figure by overthrowing the current forces and leading the ONA to prominence in the establishment of a new society. Nyarlathothep?

The ONA arose to public attention in the early 1980s. During the 1980s and 1990s, it spread its message through articles in magazines. In 1988, it began publication of its own in-house journal, titled Fenrir. Among material it has issued for public consumption have been philosophical tracts, ritual instruction, letters, poetry, and gothic fiction. Its core ritual text is titled the Black Book of Satan. It has also issued its own music, painted tarot set known as the Sinister Tarot, and a three-dimensional board game known as the Star Game.

The group largely consists of autonomous cells known as "nexions". The original cell, based in Shropshire, is known as "Nexion Zero", with the majority of subsequent groups having been established in Britain, Ireland, and Germany. Nexions and other associated groups have been established in the United States, Australia, Brazil, Egypt, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Serbia, Russia and South Africa.

The Satanism, the ONA assert, requires venturing into the realm of the forbidden and illegal in order to shake the practitioner loose of cultural and political conditioning. It should undermine society and establish its own „Imperium”. ONA texts such as "The Dreccian Way", "Iron Gates", "Bluebird" and "The Rape Anthology" recommend and praise rape and pedophilia, even suggesting rape is necessary for "ascension of the Ubermensch". And all of this is not some posturing by wannabe villains „huhu, we are so evil!!!'. The FBI officially considers ONA nexion 764 and its offshoots terrorist organizations. According to Global Project Against Hate and Extremism", "[764] operates within the framework of the broader ONA, which advocates the destruction of society through criminal acts such as violence, sexual assault, murder, and terrorism [and] is implicated in a network of online cults that exploit and groom children." https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/28/new-york-satanic-cult-764-fbi As of November 2023 Finnish police was investigating at least three terrorism cases connected to ONA. Russian Sergey Chulkov ("Nosferatu") allegedly raped a 14-year-old girl — several times in his car, then in an apartment on Moscow Zavodskaya Street. Chulkov is a member of a Russian nexion according to the police, was arrested with ONA literature and was tattooed with satanic occult symbols. In December 2024, a high school student in Guadalajara, Mexico broadcasted himself attacking his classmates with an axe. His social media posts showed his allegiance to the Order of Nine Angles, including blood pacts. 23-year-old Hugo Figuerola, member of the ONA, was arrested in late February 2025 in Spain for threatening a mass shooting and bombing in Valencia, A Wisconsin teen is alleged to have killed his father and mother on February 11, 2025 and planned to assassinate Donald Trump to "save the white race" and start a revolution. The teen was also in possession of ONA material and identified himself as a member of ONA. https://www.fox6now.com/news/wisconsin-teen-homicides-plot-assassinate-trump

So, when You are watching a horror about some satanic evil global conspiracy, and someone says „actually, real life Satanists are not like that”, You can answer „actually, some of Satanists are exactly like that”.
ONA members describe themselves as Satanists, but their core concept – existence of the acausal reality, which denies established rules of logic and science and bizarre „Dark Gods” which are connected to it and which are dangerous to be contacted, makes them potential antagonist in the Lovecraftian story as an eldritch cult, just using „Satan” as name recognizable in the culture (well, is Satan not just one of the faces of Nyarlathotep?). And their behaviour sounds very similar to the credo of the cult of Cthulhu: „Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom”. Want to give Your players real chill? What about making their characters fighting ONA, and when they will go home and do the search on Internet, be shocked by the revelation that those mad degenerates actually exist and are just as evil as those in the game?

This is just small fragment of the full, free brochure full of the RPG Lovecraftian inspirations from the real life, culture, history and science: https://adeptus7.itch.io/lovecraftian-inspirations-from-real-life-and-beliefs