Mail Room: Adventures Dark & Deep Lite

Is there a new trend for slimming down games? If so, I am on board with this concept all the way. Adventures Dark & Deep is my favorite First Edition reimagination, but the sheer size of a pair of 500-page books might intimidate most new players. A need for a Lite version of the rules, covering core classes and races, and playable up to level eight, was thus created. This book is a lean 174 pages, and gives you the best-of-the-best in terms of characters, monsters, spells, and magic items.

This book is all you need for most campaigns. Most games rarely go into high levels, and the cut material can be found in the other volumes. For "table play" during the first few months, this is the only book you need. Also, having the fluff and variant classes cut does not lose much of anything. The skill system has been cut, but that is more of a mid-to-late game feature in the core rules and is an optional subsystem. The book also needs an index, but I can't complain too hard about that.

This book would appeal to Shadowdark players, which is where I feel it fills an important niche. A complete first-edition experience in under 200 pages? A tight game that is compatible with 90% of the classic first edition adventures? You mean I could go and play any of the classic adventures with a set of rules that gives me the most authentic experience? Granted, you could always buy the AD&D PoD books and do that, but having a game presented in a modern, clean, concise, easily-understood layout that is easily grasped and referenced is a huge plus these days.

I love Gygaxian prose, but there is an argument for lowering the reading level needed to understand and play the game to a more accessible level, and ADAD Lite does that very nicely.

Page-count-wise, this book is a thing of beauty. The entire characters and equipment section only takes 30 pages! Combat is about 12 pages. The spells are 34 pages. The last 100 pages contain GM information, including treasures, monsters, creating dungeons, and how to run the game. Compared to the corebooks, this version of the game is extremely tight and focused, and reminds me of classic OSR games such as Labyrinth Lord or Swords & Wizardry.

The tight control of page count (174 pages) gives us a game that is half the length of the Shadowdark rules (344 pages), but gives us a whole First Edition experience in a comparable level range. The original AD&D PoD books, combined, are 486 pages and can be daunting for newcomers due to their size and reading level. Granted, the Shadowdark experience is much different, and more of a Dungeon-style board game, but for beginners to First Edition gaming, this is an excellent place to get started.

This book is a winner, making it an excellent resource to start a game that eventually transitions into a full ADAD game, and 90% of what you need to start a new campaign. This book is all you need for low-level ADAD play, and the ideal campaign starter book. ADAD Lite is one of the best of 2025 and an excellent gateway book for players looking to go back to the hobby's roots with the 1977-1979 original First Edition releases.

Crafting the Perfect 5E Replacement, Part 15

I don't have the time for 5E anymore. The pages-long character sheets are a complete waste of time, and printing them out would be a massive waste of paper. If I "get on board" with 5E, Pathfinder 2, or any of these other games where the character sheet resembles a small novel, I end up not playing.

I can't support them anymore.

I like them; the rules were well put together, and there are interesting combinations - but it is way, way, way too much. I am a fan of Tales of the Valiant because I value my principles and don't want to support Wizards and their walled garden. However, I struggle to justify supporting the 5E ecosystem, given the monthly fees and digital books required for character designers. My collection of 5E books on Roll20 is a nightmare of options to sort through, and it really gives me nothing more than other, easier games.

It is all too much.

I can't do this anymore.

GURPS does not require monthly fees or double-buying physical and then digital books for VTT support. It is just as complex a game, but the game is far easier to support and manage. Supporting 5E requires you to go all-in on the platform, meaning you can't play anything else.

If I want to "play adventures" with the "5E math," frankly, Nimble 5e is the better choice. This all works, the game is small, it stays out of the way, the character sheets are easy, and the game plays much faster than a complete 5E set of rules, where a variety of "action types" become "distraction types" during play and take a 2-minute turn and stretch out a player's decision making to 30 minutes or longer as players flip through character sheets and books. Nimble is 5E compatible and provides conversion notes for all 5E adventures, monsters, and content.

That is, if I need the 5E math.

And that 5E math is inferior to B/X math, where characters keep power far longer, the hit points do not get out of control, and the damages scale much better. In 5E, you consistently do half the damage you do in B/X, relative to monster hit points. A fighter's 1d8 +1 magic longsword will "keep its power" all the way to 20th level and beyond, and still be able to do good damage to adult red dragons. In 5E, a 1d8+1 logsword is a joke compared to anything past 8th level. And B/X maintains character power without multiple attacks, action surge, or all the tricks you need to do with a fighter to preserve your damage curve in 5E.

Nimble 5e is the best implementation of 5E math.

It is just that 5E math sucks.

B/X math is linear and predictable.

GURPS? Mythras? Traveller? Free League games? Linear math.

5E math is on a scaled formula that increases each level like a video game. This is why it is impossible to balance anything in the game. They take away predictable linear damage progression, and now they have to give you CR systems and other balancing tools for their artificially scaled numbers.

Old School Essentials gives me the rock-solid, tested, and sane B/X math. With the Carcass Crawler Zines, I get all the best options of 4E and 5E, including Tieflings and Dragonborn, along with fighting styles for martial characters. With the On Downtimes and Demesnes book, I have access to additional training options. Most of the character options in 5E are included in this set of core books, and adding a few more key options to this library can provide even greater variety than 5E, such as the Into the Wild Omnibus revised character classes, which are very nice.

Do not let the simplicity of B/X fool you; you run an "open character sheet," and anything can be added to a character. The preservation of character power at high levels is there. The game doesn't scale to ridiculous numbers and takes hours to finish a combat.

I still love Dungeon Crawl Classics, but it is taking a back seat to OSE right now. OSE has far better customization, whereas DCC is a heavier game with an extensive and bloated library. I am dealing with library bloat on the DCC (and Shadowdark) side of my gaming shelves, and I need to fix that for the games to be playable again. OSE is tight and contained, similar to Nimble 5e.

But I can create a character sheet on a post-it note or journal page for OSE and play. I don't need to write down much. Everything is straightforward and simple. I have the time and energy to play this, but not 5E.

Off the Shelf: Index Card RPG

Index Card RPG is still such a good game. It is up there with Shadowdark, EZD6, Old School Essentials, and my other "small book games" as one of the perfect "travel RPGs," and this one just does anything.

This is like a miniature version of Cypher System mixed with Savage Worlds without the narrative mechanics. Still, it leans heavily into a few 8-bit video game design theories to create a fantastic game. We are still in d20-land, but effort totals up against hearts, and we focus on "beating rooms" of varied challenges with our characters.

Progression is milestone-based, and gear plays a huge role in character power. This game changes the way you look at OSR games and simplifies the nature of challenges and encounters to an abstract method of resolution, without losing granular detail. The game will also make you a professional encounter designer, and your thoughts on encounter structure will become more fluid and dynamic.

This is a great "toolbox game" that can handle most any setting you throw at it, using the sample settings provided in the book. It is a d20 system without any of the d20 baggage.

It is not a highly detailed game. If you are looking for realistic and gritty combat, this isn't the game for you. If you want deep 5E progression trees (and tons of paid support), this is not the game for you. If you're interested in narrative mechanics, this game might be for you, but it feels more like an 8-bit adventure video game condensed into a digest-sized book.

It feels a lot like the old Legend of Zelda, Neutopia, Metal Gear, Metroid, Castlevania, or other adventure RPG games on the NES or Turbografix-16, but in a pen-and-paper game form. This game features a unique blend of fantasy, space, superhero, western, and other genres, all in a retro, d20, clear-the-board, gather-upgrades, Metroidvania style, built for fun and 8-bit charm.

This sits alongside Old School Essentials on my shelf, and this is a serious Shadowdark competitor as a "pick up and play" fun-first game.

GURPS is Still One of the Best

GURPS is still my number one game. My second-most popular blog, Another GURPS Blog, is well-regarded in the GURPS community, which I am very proud of. I created the site to track my top GURPS resources and serve as a search tool for GURPS YouTube videos, just for my own reference and idea-bouncing-around. It has evolved into a comfortable and functional community site. I am also active on the GURPS Discord as one of the blogger contributors, which is another thing I am proud of.

GURPS is bigger than 5E for me, the OSR, or any other part of the hobby. GURPS is a hobby that allows me to endlessly design characters and powers, have tight rules for ultra-realistic tactical combats, and cover any genre I can imagine with one set of consistent rules.

D&D 5E is not a designer game; D&D is a consumer game, forcing you to endlessly buy and consume more and more. GURPS is a hobby I can lose myself in, much like miniature painting, where I spend hours perfecting a character, monster, or power. I then get to use those designs "on the tabletop" and "see how they work."

GURPS also has the advantage of being stronger for narrative roleplay than dedicated games such as Daggerheart or Cypher System. The mental and physical advantages and disadvantages can be easily modeled in a realistic character, as seen in a movie script, with precise directions and character studies for the actor. Unlike other games that rely on "hope and hate dice" for narrative action or intrusion mechanics to drive the plot, GURPS lets characters drive the narrative.

Is my thief light-fingered and can't resist pilfering that diamond necklace? Well, make a self-control roll, and let's see what happens. As a player, this can put my character in a bad situation, or a morally questionable one if my thief gets away with the snatch, but I will need to live with the consequences.

That is just how the game rolls.

Now that I have the necklace, what should I do with it? Does guilt force me to find a way to return it? Can I find a fence to get rid of it? Is it a problem if the guards search me just because I'm carrying it? How do I explain my way out of that? Do I sneak back into the wealthy manor to place it behind a makeup table and let them think they just lost it? Will selling it bring us the money we need for weapons, magic training, and armor? What should I tell other players about where I got the money? If the paladin with the honesty trait is in the party, what will they do if they find out? Would the bard who loves helping the downtrodden want us to give the money to those less fortunate? Would the paladin even go along with that? Would the halfling in our party wish to steal the necklace from my thief and use it to buy expensive food?

That one failed self-control roll is going to have a butterfly effect through the narrative, which means I don't need "narrative dice" or "intrusion mechanics" at all. Having those extra systems is too much, and since the character's motivations are pivotal to the narrative anyway, we do not need them.

That one self-control roll, whether it fails or passes, can spawn a million actions, reactions, plots, and adventures.

In GURPS, a character's "personality profile" is the spindle, the center of the vinyl record, around which everything else, including the narrative, spins and rotates.

Games that remove the narrative from being character-centric try to foist external story mechanics, some game designers' "great idea," onto what should be a character-focused narrative system. They get very abstract and "Euro-gamey" with narrative point pools, tokens, dice, special cards, announced intrusion events, scene-based meta-conditions, and all sorts of external flash, outside interference, and cruft.

Every external narrative system in today's games is "designer hubris" and intruding on your ability to tell stories together. You don't need any of it. They are trying to sell you a solution to a problem you don't have. Storytelling is built into your DNA. Use it.

GURPS is very simple. It avoids getting in the way of the story and the character's personality factors that drive the narrative. The narrative in GURPS is "what just happened," not "the abstract meta-story game mechanics control system."

Now, when I play, I am careful not to "load up" a character with too many of these self-control roll disadvantages, since having more than three is sort of a pain. Two is typically good, and I only really call for one roll per session, per disadvantage, per character. You don't want to make these too powerful and all-controlling, and the times you roll should mean something. When you roll a self-control roll, it should make a significant difference, and if it fails, the failure should have the chance to create meaningful fallout in the narrative.

A greedy character doesn't need to roll a self-control roll when finding a chest of gold, but demanding a larger share for "obviously taking on more danger during the adventure" would be a good character moment for them.

All these make solo play very easy in GURPS. I have all the tools right here to figure out how my character reacts to a situation. In Old School Essentials? Well, my thief can pick locks, climb walls, and avoid fights. What does the game provide to help me determine motivation? Nothing, but this is the OSR, and it is BYO-motivation, which is as it should be, but for solo play, GURPS gives me so much more and makes running a party of diversely motivated characters trivially easy.

Oh, and if you play GURPS using just the GURPS Lite rules, it is as easy as B/X D&D. For the most part, 95% of the rules you will ever need, along with character design concepts, are right here. Don't fret the 5% unless you are a miniatures wargamer and a realism freak. However, the game can go there and provide immersion and realism, if you want to go that deep. But you don't have to.

If I only have time to play one game, it will be GURPS.

SBRPG Remastered

Looking back, if I were to remaster and re-release SBRPG, I would keep the majority of the game as-is. There is an argument to "update everything" and make everything perfect, but there is also a desire to preserve the original as much as possible.

Except for the horrendous art.

And, the entire thing needs to be grammatically checked, with more precise language. The tools today are significantly better than the spell-checkers and grammar books we had back in 2005. The original was created with the old Aldus Pagemaker software, and today, Libre Office is the only software that can open those files, but it is not a perfect conversion. My best bet is to rebuild the entire book in Adobe InDesign, copying the text from the PDF, and then going chapter by chapter.

There is a Rules Update that I would incorporate to update the core mechanics based on the feedback from players. There are core fixes in here I want as well. The nine Bonus Web Content books would also be folded into the core system, along with the unfinished tenth book. There are a few areas I want to clarify, especially creatures and monster design, which need a dedicated chapter.

Now, the game is also 532 pages long! We had people buy this just because they wanted to play "an RPG the size of a phone book," and we delivered, long before Kickstarter was a thing, and the industry standardized on 500+ page books. Today? The 500-page book is being phased out, with core games either transitioning to A5 size or being condensed to 150 to 200 pages.

An A5 SBRPG Mini would be a fun project. The original design of SBRPG was as a Car Wars-sized pocket-box game. It grew to a phone book-sized manifesto of gaming. A condensed version could be A5-sized, but the whole game is more comfortable in a full-sized book.

Would I split this into a Player's Book and a GM book? Frankly, at 500+ pages, the game is already three or four books in size, and one 500-page book starts running into the limitations of print-on-demand technology. One huge book is far less playable, but it is also not ideal to flip through a library when you want to play the game. Also, a 200-page POD book will last longer since there is not as much wear and tear on the glue and spine.

I could split this into five books: Player's Guide, World Creation, Book of Powers, Book of Rules, and Book of Stuff. This is a non-standard split, too, since the core game rules would be apart from the class, race, and character creation information. The Book of Rules would cover skill rolls, combat, movement, tasks, and other essential information that needs to be a quick reference guide for the entire table to use.

The Book of Stuff would gather all the gear, vehicle, weapon, and starship information. Again, it makes sense to put the gear-related items in one book, and this also includes starting packages for gear on the first pages, to make starting play easier. The magic item and treasure bonus web content would go in here, and this is where the enchanted and power treasures would live.

I'd like to explore the concept of "magic items in modern and sci-fi settings," but with a twist: these items would be unique, powerful, and high-tech, offering bonuses without the magic feel, which can break immersion. A noted gunslinger's 0.45 Peacemaker could begin to get its own bonuses to-hit and damage as it "levels up," and the weapon itself takes on a legendary status as it is used and grows in power. Items may have levels, too, but they are far more simplified, have a smaller range, and are easier to use than characters.

Power design? Not all games use it. Put it in its own book.

World creation is also a huge deal, so it gets its own book.

There is no Referee's guide! We have shared ownership of game worlds, so we don't really need one. I could write a dedicated book for this, but that would require the most new material. I would avoid today's trite "this is how you behave in a social situation" sort of Psychology for Dummies guide that many RPGs write. We're familiar with a lot of that material, and it's also covered in other books. There are already great books on the subject, and this information changes every five years as people come up with new theories and different things become touchy subjects. A real referee's guide would focus on keeping players engaged with the world and rules, how to run enemies and create adventures, and the "ground game" stuff that referees need to drive engagement.

What else would I add? A seventh book, the Best Bestiary, because that is a massive weakness in the original system, and I am an idiot who loves to write books. Great games are defined by their monster books, and actually designing that level 14 rattlesnake that can entangle and mind control people would be a hilarious example of the insanity that happened in our games.

Also, the rules for how to design and "level up" monsters need to be written. This concept is almost identical to class design, but it requires formalization, including how creature statistics increase with the creation of a "level 5 goblin" in your game. In practice, you should be able to just say "level 5 goblin" and use that in a game, and be able to assume everything from powers, stats, gear, and skills from that one level number.

SBRPG was a lot like "reverse GURPS and D&D 3.5E meets a JRPG," which was one of the strengths of its design. You could just throw down a "level 14 wolf" and play. The thing may have a sonic howl attack that could level a two-story house, but that's just what you'd expect from a JRPG. Also, rolling ten attacks on one 3d6 dice roll and being able to hit five targets with that same roll is so darn cool. We had some mechanics that were far ahead of their time, even today.

It also never used the OGL, since we hated that thing back in 2005. There is no reason an open system can't use the licenses found in software, and Linux has been doing this for ages. Linux is free and open, but Ubuntu is a copyrighted trade name that defines a specific version of the Linux system with a set of defined features for that distribution.

This sounds like a complete rewrite, but it is and isn't. George's words need to be preserved and kept intact; he is half of this game. How things work can't change. The quirks and silly stuff need to stay in there. It will ship "broken" in many ways, and honestly, that is what a future version 3.0 will address.  Many will prefer this 2.0 version, too, but it needs to be as close to 1.0 as possible to be that.

But a part of me loves silly, broken, crazy games.

And it needs to be made available again for people to read and enjoy.

Except for the horrendous art.

Off the Shelf: Mythras Classic Fantasy

There is a move away from D&D and d20. I even feel this. I'll explore various d20 games, including 5E, OSE, an AD&D clone, Shadowdark, OSRIC, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Pathfinder, and Swords & Wizardry, all of which share the same problem.

All of d20 is the same game.

d20 games rely on a sterile combat system: d20 versus AC and hit point damage.

To give it any feeling, you need to embellish the heck out of it. At a point, I lost interest and wanted the d20 vs. d20 monotonous rolling to end, and the "hit point battle" to be over with. Rest up, heal to maximum, and get on with the subsequent encounter, please.

In 5E, it gets worse. To "fix the problem," they turn each class and subclass into an ivory tower —a hyper-complicated, specialized, and unique white elephant that requires learning an entire rules subsystem that exists in no other class. It drives me up a wall, like the designers think they can "write games inside of classes" to shadow-puppet and pretend the game has depth.

Some of these class designs are more complicated than the entire game of Shadowdark.

Yet, the base combat rules for everyone else are just as plain, tasteless, and boring as they always are. Everyone else gets to whittle around with basic attacks.

MS Paint FTW. -Hak

And in almost every classic adventure module, they will throw a few dozen monsters in a room, and I just don't care. The age of slogging through the slop fights of a party of eight versus two dozen monsters makes my eyes water, and I just want to walk away. Yes, d20 is easy and abstract. But it is boring.

A one-on-one fight with GURPS, Rolemaster, HARP, or Mythras is far more engaging and enjoyable. Give me a system where I genuinely care about my actions and the impact on my character. Give me a system where combat is deadly, and I have to think hard about whether I want to go that route.

Oh, and some of these other games have minion rules, so you don't need to track everything (GURPS, B417; Mythras, p111). Large cinematic fights are possible. Minions are a popular house rule for D&D 5E, but this is a holdover from D&D 4E, which was designed for those rules, and some of the class designs were built to be "minion mops."

And don't make the system so hard that it takes hours or a computer to figure out a character sheet. A computer sucks the life out of "pen and paper" games, when they should be on "pen and paper." I love GURPS, but I only use the character creation software. Any version of 5E has transitioned into a subscription and digital sales model, making it too expensive to play. I don't want pen-and-paper gaming to be "only for the rich" like most of entertainment is these days. Don't laugh, live sports of any kind are getting to be very expensive.

GURPS has the advantage of two very usable and supported computer systems: a paid-for system and a donor-supported system.

Mythras is a fantastic mix between a d100 system and B/X D&D, and we don't need any software.

Mythras Classic Fantasy strikes a balance between the d100 Mythras rules and simulating a classic fantasy experience with them. The technology level between the Bronze-age Mythras game and this isn't as wide as you think; plate armor and crossbows exist in each, and you get more tinkered "repeating crossbows" and other gadget-based gear in Classic Fantasy than you do Mythras.

The difference lies in the "classes" which act like a GURPS template out of Dungeon Fantasy, and the magic systems, which are closer to a B/X game. The power level in Classic Fantasy is higher, but at low levels, it is comparable to core Mythras.

Like GURPS's Dungeon Fantasy, Classic Fantasy "simulates" classes in the d100 system, where base Mythras is more "like GURPS" in that you get skills, and you do whatever you want. Classic Fantasy also simulates divine and arcane magic. A part of me finds Mythras' five magic systems fascinating, and I could build far more character types around them. A "thief" in basic Mythras could learn Mysticism and have monk-like powers to run up walls and deflect projectiles. That is cool.

In Classic Fantasy, you would need a monk to do all that cool stuff, whereas we can have a "magic thief" in Mythras. Oh, and in GURPS, too, we can do that there easily, just find powers that do that and spend the points. In Classic Fantasy, your thief would need to "learn" the Mysticism skill in-game and take that path of magic. This is possible after you start the game and are willing to make some adjustments later.

Mythras and Classic Fantasy are very compatible, and you could mix character types and magic systems. The magic in Classic Fantasy scales to a higher power level, but I need to test that.

My MS Paint Art. Not AI. -Hak

Another interesting fact about Mythras is that every "combat special move" is open to all characters, and none of them are locked behind a class. You are living in a world where the only way to defend yourself is to stick a blade in someone else, stick arrows in their body and make them bleed, or crush their skull with a club. It is reasonable to assume that most people in this world who fight can trip someone, attack a piece of armor, attempt a disarm, bash, bypass armor, force a bleed, or impale a target.

This stuffy, "only my class can shield bash" sort of "King's Rules of Warfare" that D&D and most d20 games assume is sterile, boring, and unrealistic. Please, the only thing you are allowed to do on a turn is reduce the goblin's hit points and end your turn, no more, no less. Please refrain from attempting to "break the system" or being unrealistic by attacking the goblin's head. What are you, some sort of barbarian? We have rules, here, good sir!

D&D was made for kids, and it shows. There is only so long I can eat food and entertainment made for the youth before I want something more sophisticated and mature. Even today, the brutality of D&D is hidden behind "the hit points," and the game turns a blind eye to what is really going on. You "touch someone" with a "metal stick" and they "fall down."

In the real world, fighting with blades and bludgeons is a very messy and serious business to be involved with. The "happy idiots" in the D&D 2024 art do not do the genre any justice, instead making the game seem sterile and boring.

More MS Paint Art. No AI needed. -Hak

Yes, I know, let people stunt in d20 games, and then be as descriptive as you want. But stunting is a house rule, and other games have better rules for this. I can target an unarmored location in GURPS, and get a combat special in Mythras that lets me do the same thing. My cleric is bringing my mace straight down on the goblin's unarmored head. Just like all the other characters in the art of D&D books, who never wear a helmet and think a dyed Supercuts hairstyle or a pair of cosplay Tiefling horns will protect them from a brain injury.

I am done with D&D's style over substance.

And games that give me the experience I want are out there, and do all this work for me.

The whole "flashy era" of D&D from 2014 to 2024 was garish, cartoonish, and unrealistic. This was the worst era of modern D&D by far, and it introduced the walled gardens, cringe lifestyle marketing, and paywalls. D&D 3.5E was the best version of D&D that Wizards ever put out, hands down, but it was horribly broken when compared to AD&D.

And even the OSR has inherited many of these problems, if not with the flashyness, but the boring, stale, d20 combat rules that are just number games disguised as roleplaying rules.

There comes a point where I look so hard to replace 5E, that I end up replacing all of d20 as the solution. GURPS is one answer, and Myrthras is the other.

Off the Shelf: M-Space

There is a video by Black Lodge Games (https://youtu.be/umTGzLa-QyI?t=5170) where they talk to the creator of Mythras, Lawrence Whitaker, and the game M-Space was mentioned as being one of their breakout success stories of a game using the Mythras Gateway license.

The M-Space game is said to simulate anything from Star Wars-like science fantasy to "hard science fiction" settings. I don't know if I would include Traveller in "hard science fiction" anymore, since it has leaned into the pulp adventure side of the genre these days, but it still could be on the fringes.

M-Space was also described as "liminal," as in a state of transition between states, and even a liminal space. The entire look of the game is liminal, which is a perfect presentation for a science fiction game, to capture those moments in-between, the quiet snowfall on a city a million light-years from Earth, as people go about their business in the day-to-day.

What is here is here, and what is now is now.

It is almost "anti-corporate" science fiction in a way, the perfect "blank paper setting" that does not rely on Alien, Star Wars, Star Trek, Guardians of the Galaxy, Firefly, or any other of a million licensed IP properties sold to us like Twinkies, Pizza Hut, or Cheerios as "the future." Even science fiction roleplaying games do this, with Starfinder and its Muppet-like races cavorting about, Traveller with its Imperium, or other games with their "this is not Alien" sort of settings.

Everyone is either trying to "sell a vibe" or "copy someone else."

In a sense, it is a more challenging design goal to come up with a "blank sheet of paper setting" for science fiction than it is to copy someone else's look and feeling. M-Space does that perfectly with its liminal presentation, creating an actual "blank state" world where anything could happen.

This also has that "Tales from the Loop" feeling of the everyday mixed with the fantastic. That game also has these liminal qualities, where the everyday is blended with the strange in a seemingly normal world that is not all that normal after you spend a few moments taking it in. But to the people there, everything is normal, and nobody is walking around with their mouths open, saying, "Whoa!" every five minutes. This isn't a Hollywood movie, and we aren't stupid.

Things in liminal worlds "just are" to the people there. While they may seem fantastic to us as observers in this world, to the characters in that world, they are just a part of everyday life.

This is why liminal art and concepts make for such a strong science fiction presentation. They invite us to "cross over" too and experience the other world, where everything around us seems normal and everyday. This is not a comedy, space opera, puppet show, licensed IP experience, Star Knights, space federation, or pulp adventure reimagination.

While M-Space could be any of those, it "clears the lane" for you to fill all that in yourself. Even the structure of the universe is undefined; this could be anything from "near space" science fiction between the Earth and Mars with a handful of space stations and colonies, or "far flung" science fiction in a million inhabited worlds in a sea of stars of unimaginable size and population.

Like a 4X space game where you set the universe size to something far too huge for you to manage and end up with ten thousand worlds you need to micromanage, this game can give you that sense of overwhelming magnificence where you realize the universe is too expansive for you to wrap your mind around and consider the individual places.

But the game can also take place on Earth and a single Mars colony, a narrow simulation of a single place and moment in time in a giant universe, but a very narrowly focused area and situation.

M-Space is both definite and infinite at the same time.

This is that liminal quality.

So, why play this when you have GURPS Space? This is harder to answer. M-Space is Mythras, that 3d6 stats and d100 skill resolution, Runequest-style game that blends the familiar qualities of 3d6 D&D with the early-era TSR d100 games like Gangbusters, Star Frontiers, and Top Secret. The Runequest style "mixed 3d6 and d100" system is what D&D and the TSR games should have morphed into, using all the polyhedral dice, but ditching the d20 versus AC for to-hit rolls, and adopting a more simulation-oriented approach.

Mythras is the perfect blend of B/X D&D and the early-era TSR d100 games.

It eclipses and goes far beyond BRP and the Runequest-style d100 systems, becoming something of its own. This is where D&D should have gone instead of morphing into the video-game-like D&D 3.5E.

Once you know this, Mythras becomes something very familiar and very special.

GURPS is a 3d6 system like Champions, and does a fantastic job at being anything it wants to be. Where any given Mythras game needs to be rewritten to support a genre, GURPS does not, and it plops down on the couch and says, "Yup, I can do that" like a John Belushi-type character out of a Saturday Night Live skit. The humor lies in GURPS repeating that line for any profession someone in the skit suddenly needs, whether it's a plumber, electrician, beautician, hair stylist, psychologist, doctor, physicist, or any other profession. The punchline is that the character doesn't look like they are that, but they actually are, despite their outward appearance.

M-Space is the Mythras version of liminal science fiction. It is the physicist who wears the lab coat, tie, and pocket protector. It wears thick glasses and carries a clipboard. This was designed to "do that" and has that look we expect. We can play GURPS and "just have everything," but there is a comfort in the familiar that puts us in a particular frame of mind. We can expect "GURPS stuff" to happen in GURPS. In M-Space, we really have no clue.

GURPS also requires a knowledge of the "GURPS way," such as knowing all the special combat options and rules, which give you all the cool attacks and options. In M-Space, "combat specials" appear during fights, but can be communicated with a simple player handout. However, the entire game operates on a percentage-based system, allowing a new player to navigate with a character sheet and minimal rules knowledge.

What is your chance to "do science?" It is the percentage on the character sheet. In GURPS, it is N-minus, but you need to know modifiers and 3d6 probability, plus a lot of point-building experience for creating characters. With M-Space, it is simply "roll scores, write down secondaries, and assign a pool of points to skill," allowing you to start playing, which is trivial for new players.

GURPS will allow for a greater and more in-depth roleplay experience with its advantage and disadvantage system, and this is a strength of the system. M-Space and Mythras are B/X evolved, foregoing internal point modifications for internal factors, but this is ultimately replaced by a universal system for passions, which drive motivation. The passions system in Mythras and M-Space replaces the need for mental advantages and disadvantages in GURPS. It is not as tightly defined and specialized, but it is a more flexible and modifiable system that evolves with the character as play goes on.

GURPS is a box of generic Legos that you can assemble into anything you want.

M-Space is the box of Space Legos, and a blank sheet of paper on which any science fiction story can be told.

It is the familiar.

Yet different.