GURPS: The Best Rule

"Make up the skill."

One of the best pieces of GURPS refereeing advice I know of are these:

• Make up the skill!
• Make up the power!

No character designer, point-buy, or calculators are needed. The game is even easier than most d20 systems once you figure this out, especially 3.5 or even 5E. Do you have a ghoul you want to give paralysis power to? I could open up the book and design the power, or say, Paralysis 12 or less!

You are done.

No monster manual is needed. No need to open GURPS Powers or Basic Set Characters.

Pick a number, make it up, and you are done.

If you know how the underlying power system in GURPS works (see Affliction, B35), you know paralysis is an affliction, with an HT+1 roll per second to resist (minus the affliction level, whatever you set that at). So roll a 12 or less to inflict paralysis, and then allow HT saves (each turn) to resist.

You can get creative with these "make it up" abilities and mix them with skills and powers. Let's say you are trying to run a classic "Friday the 13th" style monster and give the evil creature a "do something stupid 13-" area effect ability. So, when the monster is close, the camp guests and counselors can be "forced" to do something stupid on a successful ability roll, "I will go down in the basement alone and check!". Characters can resist with the appropriate ability score check.

You are done.

No need to design that power; it is what it is and does what it does.

Any d20-style monster ability can be simulated this way. Want to create fire breathing? Find a weapon like that in the rules and use that, or pick several dice as an Innate Attack if you want to get fancy. So you can pick a range and number of dice for damage, and you are done - no need to design anything.

Knowing the advantage system and how resistance rolls work helps since you can loosely base abilities on things in the game - but it is optional.

Feel free to "say what it does" and "make it do what it says," and you are done.

A monster that eats metal and rusts it into dust? Would that take hours to create using the game's power design system? No!

Rust iron and steel objects, roll an 11 or less!

GURPS is a lot easier than a lot of people make it out to be. A lot of it is old-school sensibilities and make-it-up-as-you-go rulings.