Games I Love, Part One

These are games close to my heart, the ones I can dig into and lose myself in. You see my favorites in a few of my blogs, where I drop science daily and let loose a stream of consciousness that few other blogs can unleash. SBRPG is my central home, a jack-of-all-trades blog where anything goes. But a few of my more game-focused blogs go deeper, and that level of consciousness is so rewarding.

GURPS is one, a game I can endlessly dig into and lose myself in. The character design system is the best in gaming, beating the sequined faux-plate mail pants off of 5th Edition any day of the week. Is it retro? Do you need software? Is it deadly and realistic? Is the combat system slow and a bit of a throwback? Yes to all of the above.

Is it so rewarding and deep that I don't even care? GURPS is the end-all, be-all of games. Two books do it all. I do not need thousands of dollars of crowdfunded 5E books selling me slightly altered variants of what I already have. The sourcebooks are some of the best overviews of anything you can imagine ever written.

GURPS was also written in the era of games "beating AD&D at their own game," so it had something to prove. A lot of the games I love today come from this same era and attitude. It is funny how nostalgia and pop culture can't seem to stop kneeling at the altar of nostalgia, and the faux-nostalgia that D&D 5.5E presents as some sort of AAA Gaming Fortnite remake. The OSR worships games I gave up on in the 1980s so I could play these games.

But what if I want to play gritty fantasy or hard science fiction? A realistic western? Ancient Rome? Any historical game? GURPS will go there, and it likely already has sourcebook support. If I want to play in a setting that isn't published anymore, or want better rules for the chassis? GURPS will do all that easily. Do I want to create my own world and develop my own magic systems? GURPS was built for that. I am not forced to take the 5.5E pile of planar stuff, cosplay art, and throwback Vancian magic bolted onto an infinite-cast MMO magic system with video game rest mechanics.

GURPS will let me design my own magic system.

Instead of writing a 14-page backstory, let's design a binder-sized world story with a unique backstory, history, and magic power system. GURPS gives you the tools to DIY. D&D asks you to wait to buy the next book.

Here's another "we gave up AD&D for this" game. Palladium. A game so stuck in the 1980s and 1990s that it brings back the sweet memories of the era. Please never change. I will play in a Ninjas and Superspies game set in the 1980s to a Miami Vice soundtrack forever. No internet and no drones, and cell phones were an oddity the size of a loaf of bread that only worked in a few major cities? Yes, take me back; I got the soundtrack right here.

Palladium Fantasy is another "nah, sorry AD&D, we got better over here" game that answered the armor-damage debate. It came with a fantasy world Wizards of the Coast never repeatedly ruined. The OCCs in this game are unique; they are all specialists, none of them are balanced against each other, and each one feels like "the best in what they do," and that is on purpose.

D&D 5.5E will take a job, such as a chef, and proceed to give them a 1-to-20 rack of combat, utility, healing, crowd control, and adventuring powers to make them a useful party addition to sell you the MMO lie. Palladium will make them a world-class chef and let them die in a dungeon holding a baguette.

Not every job needs to be the same, or have the same level of utility when it comes to killing things. Some have spells with a casting time of days, but nobody else can do this stuff. People call them "trap classes" because new players pick them because they sound cool, then referees throw them into a dungeon (the AD&D mindset on the other side of the screen), and they die. Here's a thought: run Palladium like Palladium, and give those OCCs things they can do. If you want a combat-focused game, pick combat-focused OCCs.

Again, you started to see the lie be crafted in AD&D Second Edition, where they elevated the bard to a full party role. Palladium lives in an era that says, no, some roles will not be artificially inflated to be dungeoning classes. This is MMO design theory: "we have to make any choice a viable one," and the D&D 4E issue of "everything feeling samey" comes up again and again. D&D 5.5E is already starting to feel this way again, but with the added benefit of martials getting the shaft again.

If I play a bard in Palladium, I will be having all sorts of social adventures, and I will never be a door-kicker. That is fine for me, and I can enjoy a game that runs at a different pace. I will never have the raw killing power of a mercenary fighter, nor the defensive nut of a knight, but neither of them will be as good as I am when singing a song and engaging in social hijinks. The game takes on an entirely different character; the OCC creates its own "world inside of a world" it operates in, and while combat works the same, I am not living in a dungeon crawler and pretending to be a social roleplayer.

Every time I play 5E and want to do social roleplaying, my character sheet screams at me to get in the dungeon and stop wasting my time. Palladium fixes that problem by narrowing the focus of OCCs and letting them play in their own sandbox and sphere of influence.

Why not use GURPS? Palladium is faster, uses d20s and 1d100, uses an AC-like AR armor system with "armor hit points", and feels more like an AD&D-style game. One simple core system, the same combat engine, multiple game worlds, TNMT (and back in the day, Robotech) on the side, and you have it all. I get to use all of my dice. I can get a group of AD&D players into Palladium pretty easily since 90% of the concepts are the same or product-improved versions of systems they already know, whereas GURPS will take longer to learn and get used to.

Don't get me started on Rifts. That is another "ultimate game" that I loved. Rifts, GURPS, and Vampire helped kill TSR when Magic: The Gathering sucked the life out of the hobby. Rifts is sort of like Americanized Robotech, and it fills that headspace completely when Robotech went away. We want power armor and weapons that can flatten city blocks, punch through bridge pilings, and few other games (even today) do that as easily as Rifts.

Rifts was the game that your mom bought you if "your mom was cool." This was the 1990s, so it exists in the decade after AD&D died, and brings back a whole other set of memories for me. If you don't understand the games that "killed the original OSR" back in the TSR days, you will never understand the OSR and will instead put it on a pedestal, along with its flaws, which these games directly addressed. Oh, and the end of Stranger Things should have ended with the kids either playing GURPS or Rifts, if they wanted to be historically accurate.

Don't get me started on power armor design systems in other games that require spreadsheets and graphing calculators. Non-starter. Be cool like your mom wants you to be. Play Rifts.

More games in this series are coming. These two were on my mind today.

HAPPY 40th GURPS!

 I went back and checked a few sources, and to the best of my knowledge, this is GURPS' 40th anniversary. This is backed up by SJG, with Origins 1986, July 3-6, being the first release of GURPS:

https://www.sjgames.com/ill/archive/2026-07-03

40 years of great gaming, and only 4 editions, with the 4th lasting more than half of that time?

GURPS is more than just a legendary game; it is an icon and milestone in gaming. They rolled a crit when they developed GURPS.

40 years of amazing gaming, and here is to many, many, many more!

Happy GURPS Day to you!

How GURPS Killed 5E for Me

I still enjoy 5E for what it tried to do, and I still have my Tales of the Valiant books. But if I am playing one game at that complexity level, and simplifying my gaming life to the games I enjoy the absolute most, there is only room in my gaming life for one massive game, and that game is GURPS.

I get more out of GURPS per minute spent with it than I do from 5E.

If the old solo-play adage "everything is playing" is true, then when I am designing a GURPS character, optimizing their points, fine-tuning their advantage and disadvantage list, picking their armor, carefully loading them out as to not over-encumber them, and finely crafting them to fit a role in my game - then GURPS gives me a constant stream of enjoyment at every minute I spend in a character designer.

In 5E, it is just "making big choices" and having the designers and web programmers add another huge list of junk to my character sheet. I make a few big choices, and they keep throwing things I don't want into my shopping cart. I get to decide very little, and all the choices I make are these aggregated, huge ones that feel less like character design and more like picking items off an à la carte menu and ending up with too much food on the table.

And if I want more choices?

In GURPS? The game comes with them all. I have an infinite number of choices at my fingertips. Batteries are included here. With just the core books, I get it all.

In 5E? I need to buy the next book or crowdfunding project to have more choices. I need to pray that they support those choices in the VTT of my choice. I need to constantly spend money to have new choices.

I love ToV, but I am always buying the next crowdfunding book to "have more."

With GURPS, I have it all in two books. Yes, you need to learn the system to make it work well, but it is better than paying $100-200 every 3 months for another 5E book. I learn the system, and save the money.

And GURPS works exactly the way I want it to. Do I want clerics to be like "fantasy superheroes?" Fune, give them a healing power that costs fatigue points, and let them heal whenever they want. Do I want them to use magic and spells? Okay, healing works that way in that framework. I am not dealing with "spell slots" or a class description a dozen pages long with subpaths that I am forced to pick.

Is it more work than being "told what to do?" Yes.

Does it work exactly how I want it to? Yes.

But I get it, some people don't want to do all the work and have "things to choose from." I am like that too, but 5E has grown beyond my ability to support it, since it tries to take over my entire gaming life and library. For those times, I will just play a game like Old School Essentials and a BX system, where everything is chosen for me, and all I need to do is play my role. It is far easier and cheaper than supporting a 5E habit, and I do not need the weight and complexity of 5E to enjoy a game of focused, limited choices.

And guess what? In OSE, you get 90% of anything you would want to play, and a handful of zines fills in some of the missing parts. I can fit more choices and options on a quarter shelf of OSE books than on eight shelves of 5E books. My OSE collection is small, but very expressive and expansive. Sure, every choice isn't as "deep" as a 5E class, but they do 90% of the same thing anyway in play, and the game is more focused on the dungeon turn, exploration, and the classic gameplay loop.

And 5E wants to be a narrative game, not a dungeon crawler. For narrative games where character-focused choices and narrative tools are more important on "damage per turn", GURPS will absolutely be the best choice. GURPS has far more tools for a narrative game than 5E ever will, with self-control rolls, advantages, disadvantages, and a whole host of roleplaying choices I can buy with character points.

What am I losing? Fantasy superheroes. I am a bit tired of that genre, and I prefer the classic, old-school dungeon turn and gameplay loop to that style of play. Also, if I play fantasy superheroes and want a tactical battle game, Pathfinder is a better choice than 5E, and it is balanced all the way to level 20. Draw Steel is another great tactical game. Nimble 5e does the entire genre fast and rules-light.

If I want to "support" 5E, I have Nimble: one small box that contains the entire 5E experience. The fantasy superheroes genre does not have to be a game that eats shelves. Nimble 5E takes the sting out of dropping full 5E, and it lets me keep 5E support on my shelves without a massive library or a huge time investment. It is a small game, like OSE, and it does everything.

Nimble makes putting 5E into legacy support so easy. I am not losing a thing. The game is tiny. It does fantasy superheroes well. It can sit on my OSE shelf and happily support 5E adventures and gameplay without all the books. Nimble does enough fantasy superheroes well enough that I do not miss a thing about 5E. This is also getting an expansion soon, and we will have more to play with.

And unlike 5E, Nimble plays fast. You get to feel more like a hero and less like someone who scans a character sheet, trying to figure out what to do during a turn. Why am I reading my character sheet multiple times during a combat? It feels like trying to drive a car, with the user manual open on the dashboard and flipping to the page for the left turn signal as you roll up to the intersection. And before you make the left turn, you need to have the DMV book open on the seat next to you so you can review the rules for making a left turn.

Is that a free action or a bonus action? Am I allowed to make a left turn on a bonus action? Oops, sorry, left turns are full-round actions. Please watch for oncoming traffic and turn when it is safe to do so. Where is that left turn signal again? Please give me the other book. Why is this car manual 400 pages long? Why do the rules for left turns go on for 12 pages?

And with an easier 5E, I have the time to focus and balance the games I love, meaning I have more time and shelf space for GURPS and OSE. Nimble sits happily alongside my big two games, offering me 5E if I want it. Nimble avoids cluttering my game shelves by being tiny yet feature-packed. It commits no sins and happily lives alongside my best games.

GURPS?

Yes, it is my last, best "big game."

I get more out of GURPS per minute spent with it than I do from a few thousand pages of 5E rules. At most, it is three shelves of amazing books, with only two core books mattering. GURPS gives me narrative "oomph" and power, and outshines 5E in story-based, narrative games. GURPS does social roleplay far better than 5E does, because what I choose during character creation matters. It is not all "classes and powers" in GURPS; my character's "physical and mental profile" is fully designed, whereas in 5E it is just assumed and scribbled in (if at all) in the notes section of the character sheet.

5E cares more about a button on a VTT character sheet you can press to roll a d20 plus skill modifier. I still like 5E, but we have gotten so lost in the woods with this system and VTT support that it no longer feels like the game we were promised in 2014. It is all gimmicks, tools, and power gaming in a JavaScript interface. The game isn't even dungeon-crawling anymore, and it feels like we are just pretending it does.

OSE is defined by the dungeon exploration turn.

Nimble gives me the heart of 5E without the complexity.

And GURPS cares more about the character than the character sheet.

My life feels better with just my best games on my shelf, and the ones I can support.

Coming Home and Less is More

The thing I love about BX is that it will never get any more complicated, slow, in-depth, or heavy than it already is. There are implementations of "heavy classes" in BX, where they go into an almost 5E level of depth in a class design, but the base gameplay is not affected as much as you might expect.

There is no dozen-page character sheet hidden by thousands of pages of JavaScript code on a VTT, making the game playable. This "backend code support" that makes 5E work is also what will kill the game. 5E was never designed to be played by hand, and once you get to a certain character level, you will find out why. Like a mobile game that eventually forces you to buy something to play more, 5E, after a few levels, requires you to sign up for some online service somewhere to "make it all easier to manage."

BX never, ever, needs a VTT or a digital character sheet.

5E is an inferior game for designing software code support into the game's requirements.

"All you need are pencils, paper, dice, some friends, an imagination ...and a subscription website with a few million lines of JavaScript code maintained by Wall Street."

Yeah, it is that last part that makes it a hard no from me. The problem is, I liked the websites! Roll20 is cool! Shard is amazing! Foundry VTT is mind-blowing! They were cool ways to play the game, and massively convenient. The maps and tokens are cool. Roll20 with the multi-game support is amazing.

I don't have time for any of it, though.

And a game that requires that much time from me is going to be a net negative in my life, and I will eventually need to cut the game off to make myself happier. Sorry, subtraction theory as a life-improvement strategy is a valid way to deal with a life that asks too much of us.

Yes, "D&D makes me happy" is a valid statement for me.

"5E sucked every free moment from my life" is also a true statement.

To make myself happy, I make a dramatic choice, kick 5E to the curb. Stick with an easier game that does "most of the same thing." Eliminate the constant revenue drain of VTTs and crowdfunding projects. Box up, sell, or store all the 5E books. Stick with a few, small, easy, simple OSE books.

Subtraction theory is life simplification.

Less is more.

Pathfinder 1e was this way for me. I enjoyed the heck out of that game. My library got too big, and the game died. The game needed software to build characters. It is in storage now. OSE does most of what it did, and exists as two tiny books on my shelf. One thing I found with these "huge games" is that they often try to make up for weak stories, worlds, and adventures with hyper-detailed characters. With BX, I need compelling adventures, worlds, and stories to engage players. I can't "fall back on the rules" to maintain interest, which often happens with 5E and other big games.

If OSE and BX do 80% of what 5E and Pathfinder do, and take ten times less time, space, shelf, software support, and "head space" requirements - then OSE and BX are the winners for me.

And BX is such an easy game; I can store the entire thing "in my head," like a micro "operating system," and run it from memory. From here, I have science fiction with Stars Without Number or White Star. I have the cyberpunk genre with Cities Without Number. I have post-apoc with Ashes Without Number. I have a few different fantasy games: Old School Essentials, Worlds Without Number, and Swords & Wizardry.

Even without OSRIC and ADAD, I have enough here to keep me busy for a lifetime. GURPS is a guilty pleasure of mine, my last "big game" that isn't actually all that big. That is non-negotiable and sticks around. If I am playing a game with complicated, in-depth characters and relying on "rules interest to drive game interest," I am sticking with the best character-building game ever invented, GURPS. GURPS killed 5E for me. If I am playing one game that in-depth, GURPS will kill anything else that it is put up against.

Plus, I don't need game designers to tell me what my characters can do. I decide that. I am the game designer. I always do a better job. And GURPS can be played with just two books; it is never a huge game if you take it on the road. With 5E, I do not have a choice.

Swords & Wizardry sticks around as "AD&D Lite," honestly. It is math-compatible with OSE, gives me a huge monster list for both games, and is a different way to play. If I have a world that feels more "1E" then S&W will do nicely; otherwise, OSE covers it.

OSE, S&W, Without Number, and even the 2d6 sci-fi games like FTL Nomad exist happily with each other, and alongside GURPS. A collection of "tiny games" and one heavy one that does it all makes a nice library where I can sell everything else off, and be happy again.

Less is more.

GURPS, Castles & Crusades, and Dungeon Crawl Classics

My seven shelves in my room are my gaming shrines.

5E just left the room for my storage shelves, and it is likely heading into the garage this week. I can't support a game where my characters finally get interesting, only to have the character sheets be dozens of pages long. Sorry, I can't support that. I don't have the time, and I don't play digitally. 

I am left with my three best games.

GURPS is my toolkit, the best character creation system in gaming history. Forget what game designers "think" I should have in a class build, I am just going to pick it myself. After you are fluent in GURPS, there are a lot of games you don't need, and you begin to see the held-back character options that these game companies pull on the community as another way to drain your wallet on a slow drip.

You are the game designer. And the idiots in these companies that tell you they know better can pound sand. You can do it better here, and they give you the tools. I don't need Kickstarters to sell the parts of the game they left out, or the things I need to build great characters; none of the modern grift is needed.

If you don't like GURPS, Champions, and Hero System are nearly the same thing. Buy a robust, useful, and buildable point-buy system and stop being taken for a ride by modern game designers. You are smart enough to do it all yourself, and you frankly should stop wasting your time.

Even with character creation programs, my character sheets are typically a page-and-a-half long. That isn't too long. For a game with enough depth to enthrall me and give me complete control of my character designs, GURPS works better than any 5E alternative.

Another reason I love GURPS is that I have eight crates of Pathfinder pawns. The hex-based combat system in GURPS is amazing, and I have mega-hex tiles from The Fantasy Trip to play on. This is my miniatures and figure-based gaming these days. I play a variant, GURPS Dungeon Fantasy version of Pathfinder 1e (original Golarion), with low magic and brutally realistic characters, and I have fun here. Am I creating my own stats for monsters? Yes, but I don't care, and I can always convert the BX monsters to GURPS and be close enough.

GURPS-Finder, original 3.5E Golarion is the way to go. This is the best version of the world as I remember and began to love it, before it was ruined by retcons, the removal of savagery for boring, modern, pedestrian writing, and the fear of upsetting others ingrained into the world.

My pawn storage will fill the space 5E vacates on my upstairs storage shelves. 5E went the way of Pathfinder 2. I don't have a group to manage complexity, so I can't play the game, and it would be too much work to slog through it myself.

And if I don't feel like doing it all myself? Castles & Crusades beat out all my OSR games with a system that is so straightforward and easy, it does fantasy gaming in the blink of an eye, and remains compatible with all the best of my OSR adventures. Yes, the designers are in control here, but the design is so good that it was the last game Gary Gygax played in, and it has stood the test of time for 20+ years. Great things don't need to be constantly rewritten and rereleased.

All the silly charts and tables in OSR and 5E are gone. The save system is the ability score system, and those scores mean something. Everything else is so streamlined that the game puts your characters and the story first, not artificial builds ot systems for VTTs. You are not buying the game a few times on different VTT platforms just to have the privilege of designing characters.

C&C also has an amazing pulp game called Amazing Adventures, which feels like a d20 version of Savage Worlds, and covers modern, pulp,m or science fiction settings just as effortlessly. The game has a lot of tools it can bring to the table, and this could be your only game, and you would not need to touch anything else.

C&C is the best OSR game in a sea of pretenders, designers trying to outdo each other, and crowdfunding chaff. You don't need much else once you have tasted the best.

Oh, Dungeon Crawl Classics takes a lot of heat in the OSR community, but those of us who know, oh, we know. Frankly, I don't care about the company's policy of including everybody, who cares? Everyone can play together, and should.

I love the game because it embodies the spirit of playing it as we did in the 1980s. It embraces the nerd culture, the outcasts, the gamers in the smoke-filled van with the neon felt paintings, and the whole end of the hippie counterculture that ended up in fantasy gaming. D&D has become corporate and soulless, while DCC's soul is what keeps the game's heart beating strongly.

If D&D lost its soul, DCC cut it out, took it, and owns it.

And the designs here are fun to play with. This is designed for fun at conventions and around the table, where D&D can turn into a game of Advanced Squad Leader, with deciding what to do during a turn. DCC designs each class with resources, special dice, and fun things to contribute to party-based play. The dice are amazing, quirky, cool, and fun. The emergent play and random tables are a shot of unpredictability in a hobby where D&D can feel like a long slog, feeling more like Warhammer 40K than a fantasy game where players play imaginary characters.

Strange and hilarious things can happen in DCC.

In D&D, I rarely have anything cool happen other than killing things with the same boring, predictable, the party wins outcome. D&D is boring in comparison. I would rather be heavy metal swords & sorcery than I would some overdesigned character build with a character sheet longer than my arm.

There is no shame in DCC, you can have bare-chested barbarians and chainmail bikinis here, and no one will tsk-tsk and judge you. Orcs, goblins, and kobolds are evil here and worship demons (which are also evil and not character options). Werewolves are lycanthropes and insane killers on the full moon, and not character options. Modern games with this demon, noble monster, and animorphic influences bore me, and the worldbuilding is not great. Tieflings are the demon-blooded spawn of Satan. Frankly, we are sick of it all and just want a game that embraces the Gen-X spirit and tosses out all the tail-tucking and pretentious BS rampant in gaming these days.

These are the games that have endured multiple rounds of purges and reorganization.

These will be the games I carry forward, and most of the rest, save for a few exceptions, can go to Goodwill.

GURPS is Beating 5E for Me Now

While I love 5E and Tales of the Valiant is a strong implementation of the system, for the types of stories I tell, GURPS wins hands down. The 5E character sheets get too long, they are too much, and I find myself flipping through over a dozen pages of information (every turn) just to run a character effectively.

With GURPS, my character sheet is a single, double-sided character sheet. If I am going onto a third page, that is a complicated character. Rarely do I need four sides of a sheet of paper. And 90% of the information I need is on the first page of that sheet.

No wonder 5E player turns are 30 minutes long for some; they are reading a short story just to process their turn. Shadowdark shines in comparison. Why does 5E have such huge character sheets? Do a PDF printout from the Shard Tabletop of your sheet and count the pages, especially for characters above 10th level. Multiclass characters are worse. Subclass features can have special rules that are found nowhere else in the book.

With GURPS, all of the rules are in the books. Your character sheet only contains choices and the numeric values that affect them.

I used to feel GURPS characters were the complicated ones. Now I am not so sure.

With 5E, all of the rules are on your character sheets, and it reads like a rulebook. I own games with shorter page counts than some 5E character sheets.

The multiclass problem hits me hard in 5E, especially when a character changes their lifepath mid-arc. A scout (ranger), who later becomes a knight (paladin)? I am leveling up as a ranger, then need to swap, and I am overall weaker than a paladin who started at first level, but has some ranger utility? I have overlapping choices? I will never get my 20th-level ability?

With GURPS, it is no problem, just start training in the new areas and organically grow. Whatever you spend your character points on is what you get. Want an "ultimate paladin ability?" Go design it with a superpower, and be the only one in the world with it.

It is near-impossible to fit my ideas into a rigid class-and-level system. Multiclassing makes things worse.

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.

D&D Without Alignment is Pointless

The newer editions of 5E are becoming increasingly difficult to like. Level Up A5E, Tales of the Valiant, and a game I won't play, D&D 2024, all remove alignment. Level Up A5E does the most creative thing, adding a destiny system, but it feels too narrow of a tool instead of alignment, which says so much while using so few words. ToV and D&D 2024 eradicate alignment.

What is the point of these games again?

Alignment held together the world models, the fight between good and evil, the maps of the worlds, the beliefs of the peoples, the behaviors of the monsters, and the entire story of the game. Why adventure? Why does the world work in the way it does? Why do demons exist? Are the undead not evil? Are angels not good?

Every campaign setting we love is built off the alignment system. You can't just pull that all out and expect people to be able to tell the same stories there. These worlds don't exist to mirror the current day, and every classic adventure breaks if the concept of good and evil do not exist. The Temple of Elemental Evil becomes "The Temple of the Elemental Perspective." The Keep on the Borderlands is populated by humanoid monsters, and those are no longer monsters listed in the Monster Manual.

Now, I play a few games without an alignment system and love them, such as GURPS. What is the difference? In GURPS, you are defined by your actions, and your disadvantages drive behavior. Why shouldn't D&D be any different?

D&D should be different. This is why we love this game in particular. It reflects a broader conflict in the universe between the forces of good and the forces of evil. This conflict is built into our DNA, and to deny it is to worship nihilism and death. D&D is the story of the battle between good and evil.

Remove alignment, and the game is nothing.

Well, what about GURPS? Is that nothing? In a way, GURPS always piggybacked on the concept of alignment from D&D and inherited those concepts. GURPS Dungeon Fantasy goes this far in its glossary:

"Devil, The: Godlike boss of all Evil. Wants your soul." - GURPS, Dungeon Fantasy, Adventurers, page 4.

That is a remarkably bold statement, and it draws upon a wealth of biblical lore that underlies much of fantasy. This is the core of the fight between good and evil, and it boils everything down into something anyone can understand. Remove evil, and your game becomes far less understandable and relatable.

Dungeon Fantasy goes even further: 

"Elder Thing: Any entity that exists outside time, space, and standard concepts of Good and Evil. Causes madness."

"squid: Euphemism for Elder Things. Squid cults (foolishly) worship such entities."

"monster: Any being that tries to slaughter adventurers right back."

- GURPS, Dungeon Fantasy, Adventurers, page 4.

There is worldbuilding going on here that mirrors the old AD&D setup, and it is clear what constitutes a monster. There is no lack of clarity here, either. Evil is evil, and the creatures beyond space and time exist in a realm of madness nobody with a human mind can understand or even comprehend. I love the theory that Elder Things are outside the realm of evil, and are just wickedly cruel and heartless beings, which does make them evil in a sense, but it gives them something more than just an alignment tacked on there.

This modern design theory of putting "feelings and emotions" on everything, even Elder Chthonic Gods sitting around talking like people in a coffee shop, is just lame, stupid, and childish writing. It isn't relatable; it's just dumb, and it shows what a waste college has been for these writers, who have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars learning nothing. The funny quip and the writing for a Tweet have surpassed deep thought, lasting emotion, and reflection. I'm not angry; I just feel sad that a generation grew up this way.

Educate yourselves. The classics already solved all the problems we have today. Read poetry if you need to find the meaning of life. All the secrets of life were discovered long ago, and they are in books hundreds of years old.

You will find no mental nutrition in the works financed by Wall Street corporatists.

It is a vapid, soulless, empty and meaningless life designed to keep you consuming the escapist opiate.

GURPS simulates and inherits so much from other games that if you were using GURPS to simulate a D&D world, you would just "bring in alignment" and have it in your game, either the 3-axis Original D&D or the 9-axis AD&D, whatever you want. Just because GURPS does not have alignment does not mean it is not a part of the game, and this is a key concept to understanding how GURPS works.

And Tales of the Valiant, you are in this camp, too. I want Open 5E to succeed, but why did you have to listen to them? I can port in alignment here, too, but I would have liked to see that theme of the battle between good and evil upheld in one of the modern Open 5E games. Even the title of your game assumes heroism and valiance. Why couldn't we have something more than a nebulous "default hero assumption?"

I have another game on my most-played shelves that sits there and screams fun at me. The concept of good versus evil is built into this game's DNA, woven directly into its spell system, highlighted in its classes, and reflected in the elder beings you deal with. This is Dungeon Crawl Classics. There is no "ripping out the battle of good and evil" here, since the entire game was written to put that battle at the center of everything - from those you deal with, to the magic you cast, to the heroes you are destined to be (or die as).

I love the OSR types who criticize this game for the company trying to market DCC to a modern audience. How else will the contemporary audience learn about fantasy gaming, and how it reflects the battle between good and evil? They sure aren't getting it in college. Let them find it through gaming.

Welcome to what we already knew; we are happy to have you finally join the fight.

The Bible tells us souls can be redeemed and saved. All of them, not just the few that play the games we like. In this eternal battle between good and evil, we must reflect on our values and continually invite people into the light. Pride is a sin that many in the OSR succumb to, and we should strive to be better people and more inviting. Without the Bible and, by extension, the classic fantasy stories that retold these tales, roleplaying games would not exist.

This is not a fight about worldviews, gaming purism, modern language, or sides; it is a battle for control of human truths. Some of those are muddled by gaming fads and wrapped up in this battle, but only one "rulebook" stands as the core truth of life. My Bible sits on my gaming bookshelves. It is a core book. It will also dispel any argument made against it. It is the single best magic item I have in my home.

D&D's loss of the battle between good and evil will be the inscription on its headstone.

I love Tales of the Valiant, and while it can coexist with DCC, the fact is that DCC is the better game, with a stronger heart and rock-solid core ethos. ToV gave up the moral fight to be with the cool kids crowd, but that will not last since there is nothing brave about a fleeting fad. You can deal with evil in DCC to gain power, but you will deeply regret it. This is a choice the game presents to you, and it serves as a valuable lesson. Where else will new gamers learn this?

Not in D&D. Not in ToV. Not in any of these new games that cowardly pander to social media.

DCC and the OSR will kill Open 5E for me if this trend continues.

Open Quest Redux, and GURPS

Open Quest has put Mythras in storage. This is just the more accessible and complete game, especially compared to Classic Fantasy Imperative and the base Mythras book (still too small type to read easily). I want Mythras to rock, but as they convert to the ORC license and get material reprinted and cleaned up, it does not feel like either Mythras or Classic Fantasy is there.

Open Quest stands out for its simplicity and directness, a design choice that sets it apart from other games. Its most intriguing aspect is the absence of traditional classes, which paves the way for a unique gaming experience. This is akin to the fun and diverse play options offered by GURPS, where the lack of classes opens up a plethora of exciting possibilities.

The one thing that keeps me from using 5E for many stories is classes. I will have a more social or story-based campaign, and a character that should not be "becoming more and more of a killer" is suddenly becoming one and not improving social and story skills. I like the concept of a character "falling behind" in fighting power because they aren't getting into fights and having to go back and train to compensate for the lack of combat ability.

All of this is slowly pushing me back into GURPS. Open Quest is a great game, one of the best BRP-style dungeon games on the market. But for how I play, it would still fall short. It would be better than 5E for me, but GURPS is the king of character builders. GURPS also lets you design a 1,000-point historian with zero combat power; in that element, they would be the best in the world.

I get it; 5e is fun from a "structured play" aspect.

But when I tell stories, they are never structured. Do you mean to tell me that if my mage spends six sessions in social situations, talking, solving problems, and not casting a spell - the XP will be enough for them to get a level and be a better killer and user of magic?

I didn't even use one spell!

Now I know more?

What is even dumber is that I have zero social skills and problem-solving abilities. Here is some killing power! Thank you for being social and solving all those problems!

I have a game in which I am doing X, Y, and Z, which gives me more power to do A, B, and C.

That sort of "no reward play" leads me to quit. I will never get rewarded for XYZ (social and problem solving), never do ABC (combat and killing), and at every level, it gets worse. Nothing helps me do XYZ, and I get worse at it as my combat power goes up like some JRPG character on a preset, hardcoded into the ROM progression track. They will never be good at anything other than making a damage number go higher and higher.

Some classes force you into killing. My fighter isn't given many social skills since the game has a built-in death bias towards some classes. This bias is lame and has been the fatal flaw in D&D and class-based games for 50 years.

This is why we left D&D in the 1980s for GURPS.

If the king sends my character to stop two warring tribes, I can approach it however I want. I could get history books, spend character points on specialized history skills for each tribe, and come at them knowing everything they are about. Your tribe did this 300 years ago, but this tribe still holds your sacred hunting ground; let's make a swap and figure this out peacefully.

Or I could go combat, get tactics and battle leadership skills, pick a side, and wipe the other out.

I could go stealthy and subterfuge.

I could go 100% diplomatic.

I could use history against them.

Anyway, there is a skill that can support my problem-solving.

You get a typical 5E module, and it is either an OSR-like "dungeon atlas" to kill through, or all of the above solutions have to be "thought of" by the writer of the adventure and put in there as options they choose for you - since 5E characters kill first and think later. 5E Adventures presents killing as the first solution and has to go out of its way to show a few non-violent options (if they do at all, since combat is "fun," just like a video game).

Open Quest would do this style of play nicely in a d100 BRP-style framework. You control your advances. Thus, you control the areas in which your character improves.

GURPS is still the master of this style of play. It has everything Open Quest doesn't, but in some ways, doesn't need. However, I still like being able to design characters down to the point, buy advantages and disadvantages, and specialize in skills most games would dismiss as "needless, pointless detail."

If I am playing a game where needing to know specialized things matters?

It matters a whole lot.

Class Structure

Staying with 5E, even the Open 5E versions, is hard. However, it is easier for groups to play class-based games since roles are easier to define. You are the mage, rogue, fighter, and healer. These roles are iconic and easily adopted. You can pick a class and play.

Class and level games are better for groups.

I play solo.

The 5E game structure gets in the way. I still like A5E and ToV and will keep and support them, but I need to see myself playing them regularly since I have better. Even with ToV's pillars of play support, I have games designed decades ago that do far better overland survival and social encounters.

New games are not always better.

I am slowly switching to GURPS and Dungeon Fantasy for my fantasy gaming, and I could not be happier. A more deadly system with fewer hit points, more combat options, and better character customization than anything I could ever get in 5E, no matter how much money I spend. I control how much magic is in the world, not the game designers.

The big difference here is that the rules aren't meant to be exploited but intended to be used. Sometimes I feel D&D has gotten too "Magic: The Gathering," where every class, subclass, multiclass combo, and option can be exploited and abused for maximum winning potential. The game is defined by the abuse of the rules.

I am also looking at Runequest. The BRP system does not have classes either.

Can GURPS be abused and exploited? Yes, but the exploit and abuse culture isn't ingrained here. A group can say build cheese and ban it, or pare it down to a level that works, doesn't blow out the game, and makes it unfun for everyone. Put a cap on Dodge and Parry. If someone is getting too many attacks, reduce them. Or you can play blown out, and every group will have a different feeling on how they like things to work. Put a cap on character points and disadvantages. This game has many ways to limit character power and complexity, and it isn't hard to recognize builds that exploit an area of the rules.

Then again, one-trick ponies in GURPS who put all their points into one combo usually die quickly once they realize a balanced character is better for survival. One freak ice storm will promptly sort out the cheese builds, so natural selection will care for characters who abuse the rules.

I am doing a GURPS Pathfinder game because I have all of the pawns for PF 1e and like that set. This is in the original world; the 3.75E rules never happened, and we are in the early days of the world. The world isn't 3.75E at all; it is more the classic Dungeon Fantasy and GURPS magic systems, where magic is still a mystery and strange to the world. It isn't low magic, more like medium magic. Magic isn't typical or every day, but some practice and are known - and feared.

One thing D&D gets wrong about magic is "free" arcane magic. Cleric magic can anger the gods, and you get turned off, so you may have to do quests to keep in good favor. Wizards and sorcerers are free spigots of magic power, and it leads to abuse. While I like DCC's costs to magic, the actual cost of magic should be societal, and reaction modifiers to magic should be based on the cultures and suspicion levels. Demons should offer "free spells" and "free character points" - just take this slight disadvantage, and more power can be yours! That should be enough to make the general population mistrust casters, and those seen playing with "evil magic" like necromancy could be run out of town or killed.

I hate the D&D and Pathfinder neutrality towards evil magic. My character is a necromancer and proudly proclaims it! I am a warlock who serves the elder gods of madness! What do you mean the town is trying to lynch us? Even druids could be seen with suspicion, and that has historical precedent. Witches? There is a lot there to unpack. Good towns will not see their characters as welcome, and they could even be hunted as enemies.

But you are punishing players by taking away options!

I'm sorry, but the town does not like you. They don't want you raising dead grandpa to use as a minion.

Too often, modern fantasy games put your mind in a state of the "MMO stupid zone" and force you to treat every option as equal and acceptable to all cultures. But it is fantasy! That is not a blanket excuse since fantasy can mean so many things - to put one definition on the word is highly rude to others who may have other points of view. Fantasy is what the group says it is, and it can be anything.

So, players need to be careful about how they build their characters. Even a thief with a kleptomaniac disadvantage could cause serious trouble for a party. Certain disadvantages are minor, while entire power systems and character types may have the peasants getting out the pitchforks and torches.

This also opens up evil campaigns if you look at it another way. Go to the World Wound and join the forces of evil. Start your beginner adventures there, spreading corruption and darkness. The rules do not "default to a heroic reality." If you play an evil demonologist, go live that life and get stabbed in the back—maybe. Stab them in the back first and prove your worth; this is evil.

This is another problem with 5E rulesets, the default hero mentality. Even the art is overly happy and heroic. The game isn't a simulation of anything; it is that typical "heroes doing dungeons" thing. GURPS doesn't have alignment; it has social and mental disadvantages. The world will react to your actions accordingly.

When you remove the Pathfinder 1e rules (or 5E, for that matter) and really think about how this world could be, your mind opens, and you realize there is much more depth here than that heroic party of level-one adventurers killing rats and goblins.

Good Video: GURPS combat too slow? (Basilisk fight)

Here is a good video, an excellent example of GURPS combat. This dispels the myth of GURPS combat being overly complicated. This is a combat with no character sheets, done all in mind, with assumed skills and average hits and abilities.

What stands out the most is how the combat is similar to 5E. Make a roll for something (like willpower or stealth rolls) occasionally. Roll to-hits. 5E's action types and interrupts are the complexity of that game, while here, those are gone and replaced by "knowing your attack options" and "remembering the movement and to-hit penalty."

Otherwise, GURPS is 90% similar to the flow of 5E. In some ways, it is more straightforward, and the complexity you learn gives you so much depth to your tactics that it is worth the effort to understand - and it isn't all that much to learn (the three all-out attack options and the movement/attack penalty).

The thing about 5E is that when you level up, the turns get slower since your character complexity scales up steeply. In GURPS, the complexity starts at slightly higher but is pretty much linear as you improve. Once you understand the system, GURPS is likely easier to run high-level fights than 5E and faster since the combats are more deadly.

Win-win.

Dungeon Fantasy & GURPS

I was redesigning some of the Pathfinder 1e iconic characters using Dungeon Fantasy, and I had this moment. The iconic Pathfinder characters are perfect in GURPS; they're shockingly good.

I am slowly getting system mastery over characters in this area, and I can express a lot of different weapon combos and fighting styles, along with quick draw options, special attacks, amped skills, advantages to support special combat moves, and armor training to increase protection.

I look at Pathfinder 1e, B/X, 5E, or even Pathfinder 2E. Why?

I feel like a computer programmer going back and being asked to use a "toy" programming language to complete a task. What do you want me to do, roll ability scores, pick a class, and roll hit points?

Why?

I can't do anything with this.

Merisiel was a good example; her bio says, "She isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer." But she solves all her problems with her knives. High DX, drop IQ for skills and abilities. Her IQ thief skills suffer, but her DX ones are great. Her sleight of hand, traps, concealment, and other IQ skills are below average. Her stealth, climbing, and escape skills are all 18-20. Her knife skills are equally high, giving her options for special attacks.

I don't get that in Pathfinder 1e; maybe she has fewer skill points. So what? Well, um, some of the DEX skills she could have bought with those skill points from INT, she can't buy - so she could be better at them. Sorry! INT gatekeeps DEX skills in this version! In GURPS, she buys points in skills linked to DEX. If her IQ is low, so are her IQ skills.

I can work on those and improve them or lean into DX and combat abilities. She may need to do social things. Perhaps she will learn magic? Does she go more dodgy or more armor-skills? I don't know.

The campaign will determine how she progresses.

And every campaign will be different.

She could progress a million ways depending on the story she goes through.

I am not looking at a thief progression chart and planning it all out. I don't know what's coming for her. She could get corruption and a disadvantage and gain dark shadow magic powers. She may lean more into thief IQ skills and need to disarm traps and do all sorts of smarts-thief stuff.

For solo play, this is super high motivation. Her starting character sheet is just that, a starting point. I will probably copy this starting character and use a duplicate for her first campaign. It is a good design that meshes with her gear, skills, and backstory. If I learn things, I can tweak her starting build.

She can go infinite ways, depending on the story's needs and how I will take her.

I look at 5E and B/X, see those build paths and skill progression charts, and sigh. There it is. It is all planned out for me. No imagination, story, or future experiences are needed. Follow the charts or the best build paths on some forum somewhere or multiclass away - you will be fine. You will have high DPS. Your passive perception will spot all traps. That old list of thief skills will always be 50% since modules scale in difficulty anyway.

I am not interested in soloing along a preset path.

I can't do anything with this.

I get this sad feeling that today's players think they know what roleplaying and character-building are. They think multiclassing, some broken class combo the play-testers never found, is "good character building." They don't even know 1% of the joy of building a character and not having a path to follow. The freedom of making your own build. Yes, there are broken things in GURPS, too, but once you find those, you can avoid them for the game's good. Or only dip into them a little and not lean so hard it breaks. But there are a million other ways every character can go.

In level-based games, my fighter will get 5 levels of roleplaying and story XP and somehow be better able to fight and kill. It doesn't even make sense. How did that happen?

If you don't have a say in your character builds, I can't say you are truly roleplaying.

You are just pushing a build along a level track predetermined for you.

And very little that happens to you matters anyway, since your character doesn't reflect those experiences.

Dungeon Fantasy vs. Pathfinder 1e

 

The two fantasy games I have fighting it out on my most-played shelves are Pathfinder 1e and Dungeon Fantasy. 5E is off to the side, and I am waiting for Tales of the Valiant to drop. Unsurprisingly, the final two on my shelf are the games that give me the best character-building options.

Pathfinder 1e has a decade of options and choices.

Dungeon Fantasy has infinite choices.

A traditional class framework is where I begin in Dungeon Fantasy, a 250-point build that gives me the equivalent of a level 5-8 Pathfinder 1e character - the established hero. In Dungeon Fantasy, you aren't starting out as a level-one cannon fodder newbie. This leads to the game being less new-player friendly, but you start off pretty capable and the baseline established hero.

The excellent Delvers to Grow series of books for Dungeon Fantasy solves the complexity problem by creating lower-point starting builds. These are way less capable and will have a higher mortality rate, but the complexity is lower, and the things you start with are much less, so you can grasp game rules better without choice paralysis.

Pathfinder? I like the build system, and I loved the original 1e world before it turned into a modern steampunk setting, an overly safe and non-triggering space. The new world feels far too contemporary for me; the age of adventure is over, and we have moved into the 20th century. The 2010s version of Golarion is far superior to the 2020s, and it still feels like Conan - it is epic, whereas the Pathfinder 2E world feels like a tourist attraction with Harry Potter vibes. The new team just can't recapture the spark of the classic world, and they changed it so much that it lost the feeling of classic 1970s fantasy.

The 2E rules are better than 1e. They are just not my thing.

The 2E world is a YA novel.

I am slowly getting the feeling that what I will be doing is a GURPS-Finder campaign.

I like the rules I enjoy, and the character builds in Pathfinder 1e are good; in a GURPS-like system, they are great. My starting builds are just that, starting points. I can take them in any direction I want from there. If I wish my wizard's following 250 points to be all fighter abilities, so be it.

This is the "taking a character in a new direction" thing, which is why I love GURPS. With d20 level-based games, my story is done at level one - at least in progress. I can read the book, plan my path, and then go through the required number of dungeons to start up the level chart. I know where this character is going; it is a matter of time before the boxes are checked, and I have a level 9 sorcerer.

With GURPS, my sorcerer could get involved in a ton of roleplaying and court intrigue, and all of a sudden, I am spending my following 40 points on social abilities. And I am not "looking for a bard to do it" - I need to improve my character's abilities in those areas. This makes it much more solo-friendly since my character morphs into a set of powers, skills, and abilities I will need for what is happening now and whatever I encounter.

My character's advancement path is their history of adventure.

It's not some book's pre-planned path for me.

It is tough; I have a lot of Pathfinder 1e books, and I like to feel like I am using them. But I greatly appreciate the OG Golarion setting more than the Pathfinder 1e rules. Recolored through a GURPS lens, OG Golarion would rock. You don't have these level 20 superheroes running around sneezing on goblins and killing them without a worry. The artificial power inflation is gone, and everyone exists on a flatter power scale.

But these days, games with pre-planned character progression tracks are lame. This is the same feeling I had in the late 1980s when GURPS 3e killed AD&D and the heavily censored AD&D 2nd Edition. Everyone was playing GURPS after AD&D died.

GURPS, Battletech, and Vampire were three reasons TSR filed for bankruptcy.

The biggest was Magic: The Gathering.

You can also put Rifts and Shadowrun in that group somewhere.

D&D is not immune, nor was it ever.

The arguments against level systems and pre-planned level-based advancement are the same today as they were then. Today, people have given up on being creative and wanting to create their own characters and are content with "gaming the systems" that other people design for them.

Today's gamers? Breaking a game with an exploit is good character design.

Using GURPS to run Golarion is like "Pathfinder: The Movie" or an HBO series set in that world. A producer or director will first tamp the power level to make it realistic and believable. Those who play the game will sit in the theater and wonder where the teleport and wish spells went, and those would have never been even in the script since they would have ruined the movie. Magic will work differently, the fights will be more realistic, and everything will feel "off" to people watching the movie.

Game worlds and movie worlds are night and day.

GURPS is the game every setting ends up with. After everything goes out of print or is pulled from the shelves for licensing issues, GURPS will give the world a system to call home.

The Joy of Equipment to the Last Pound

I am in the minority on this, but, oh, do I enjoy creating equipment load-outs for my character to the last pound. In many games, they write for the "please make it easy" crowd; those games just don't do it for me. They will simplify encumbrance straight out of the game, handwave it to coins to movement, or ignore the weight of essential gear.

Yes, crafting an equipment load takes time.

But this is just as enjoyable as character creation, especially if your weight matters. And you are playing a system where you can point-buy your strength up to levels where your combat statistics and movement improve, and you can see that improvement on the battlefield. GURPS and Dungeon Fantasy are like that. My low-level tanks are slow and unable to dodge. They are designed to drop those backpacks to at least get to light encumbrance so they can get an extra point of movement.

My first priorities are buying strength and the character's basic movement allowance. If I get magic gear that is lighter, great. If I can upgrade the armor, I need to recalculate. I may earn money for new stuff, and shopping is a character improvement.

Look at that loadout. I added six rations after this and spent 12 copper, but those went in the backpack, and I am ready to go. This loadout is "dressing for success" in an old-school game - and your weight allowance game is the difference between life and death.

I've lost half the people reading this by now; I know that equipment list is atrocious. This is the GURPS Character Sheet, by the way (please support the creator on Patreon, this is an awesome application, far more worth subscriptions to anything), and it makes organizing and picking gear easy. I organized the list so pouches would go on the belt, the backpack would be last in case I wanted to drop to get to light encumbrance, and my weapons and armor would come first.

She is a cleric with a light spell; no torches are needed (sorry, Shadowdark). This candle-like light isn't torch-worthy, but it will keep her out of the dark. And I know the image below is a plate mail set when my gear says scale. This is later in her career.

Note to gamemastering games like this. Don't you dare make those heavily armored orcs have a complete, unencumbered movement allowance! That is not fair! If the players are tracking to-the-pound weight allowances, knock points off the move/dodge EVERY humanoid enemy depending on their armor and load. Stronger enemies will have fewer points knocked off, but armored (usually fast) goblins may suffer more.

This isn't D&D where goblins can run in full plate at full speed.

If I am running one or two characters in a solo play, I can manage this. That gear list is a part of the character design. My gear will force character point spending. If my STR goes up, my move and dodge improve, and so will my melee damage, so I get a triple benefit. Better equipment will change her load out, especially magic items.

Gear, once set, usually doesn't change all that much. Typically, it will be "X pounds of treasure carried" in a dungeon, and when the adventure is over, we go shopping and recalculate our gear. This is also "character improvement" without raising the power level as characters improve their gear and optimize.

In games like GURPS, I don't give out too much magic treasure. I am rethinking that and will be more generous in my solo games since magic items are fun.

If you simplify the gear game, a lot starts falling apart. The Fantasy Trip simplifies gear but has the GURPS assumptions built in. Armor sets movement rate. You have limited slots for items; some take up more 'item slots' than others. The gear game is here, and it matters. It is simplified for multi-unit skirmishes, but the design principles are the same.

Dungeon Fantasy and GURPS are built on that core assumption, but the game goes into more detail. You track encumbrance, and strong characters can negate the movement penalties. There is a concept of dodge linked to the encumbrance level. You can drop backpacks before you go into battle. You can increase base speed. Character points let you play with these values so you can level up and tweak your gear load and build.

Some games handwave it all off for simplicity, and there is a market for that. I find that many 'ease of use' OSR games toss out that complexity, and there isn't much to replace it. Movement and hauling treasure, the core of the OSR dungeon game, is simplified to an extent where all the tactical (and escape) options are meaningless. It becomes walk up and bonk each over the head until the bag of hit points is depleted. Having archers to target fast enemies isn't needed. Your tanks being slow isn't a consideration in tactics, battle movement, and evasion.

It's all just too simplified to the point of being bland.