What I LOVE about GURPS

[hal]

Hello Folks,
My last post was somewhat "disparaging" of GURPS, and I got to thinking...

I've been gaming since 1978, and have been using GURPS since 1986. The group I have contains three players plus myself as a fourth (used to be larger but the Grim Reaper has his pick of us and will get us all someday). We've been together since 1980 for one of my members, and since 1983 for another, and since 1986 for the last of us.

31 years people! We've stuck with GURPS because it was good for what we wanted. When my wife had a chance to play a third level fighter in D&D, she hated the fact that there was no real "risk" for her character to go up against a 1st or 2nd level character. For the rest of us, many were the campaigns we COULD play, that were different genre subject matters, and GURPS handled them all perfectly in our eyes.

To that end, I'm starting this thread, asking people to gather here and list their all time FAVORITE books that SJGames ever put out for GURPS. All that I ask is that people use the following protocol:

GURPS 2nd be listed as G2, Classic GURPS, or GURPS 4e when discussing any titles they care to list.

Here goes my favorites list:

Classic GURPS BASIC SET
GURPS FANTASY 1st edition
GURPS HARKWOOD (GURPS 2nd edition)
GURPS CLASSIC MAGIC
GURPS CLASSIC ROBOTS
GURPS VEHICLES 2nd edition (and both supplements)
GURPS CLASSIC CYBERPUNK
GURPS CLASSIC COMPENDIUM I & II
GURPS SWASHBUCKLERS
GURPS CLASSIC ULTRATECH and CLASSIC ULTRATECH II
GURPS HIGH TECH 2nd edition
GURPS CLASSIC SPACE
GURPS Classic Low Tech
GURPS LOW TECH (and its supplements)
GURPS CLASSIC TRAVELLER
GURPS CLASSIC PSIONICS
GURPS TERRADYNE
GURPS CLASSIC UNDEAD
GURPS CLASSIC CONAN
GURPS CLASSIC CABAL
GURPS THAUMATOLOGY
GURPS CLASSIC HORROR and GURPS HORROR (for 4e)
ORCSLAYER (used multiple times over 30 years!)
GURPS CLASSIC VOODOO
GURPS CLASSIC MARTIAL ARTS
GURPS MARTIAL ARTS (for 4e)

and last but not least...

GURPS CAR WARS!



Those are the ones that top my list after 30 years. These are ones that all have been used to good effect in running campaigns for my players. There were many that I was happy to have as secondary reference type books, but those on the list above are the biggies.

That SJGames still remains even after TSR, SPI, GDW, and various other companies have bit the dust, is a good thing. I'm glad to have helped in my own small way by buying those products (some in multiple copies!).

With luck, GURPS 5th edition, should it ever come out, will garner the same level of enthusiasm for SJGames from newcomers to the company product line, that the company had from me over the span of 30 years.

[KarlKost]

My first game was AD&D, back in the 90's with my 11-12 years.
Just about 2 years later, it came Vampire the Masquered...

All cool and fun to spend some time, but... There was something lacking (like a GM who would actually read the rules).

So, at my 15 years, in a new group "what'cha playing? GURPS? Sure I know it!"... If I said that I didnt even knew what the he'll was that they wouldn't let me play

So, my first PC in GURPS... I just let the munchkin flow out of me. A tiny SM -2 grey alien with -8 in all atributes but IQ... And a nighmarish HUGE amount of psi powers. I rather liked that guy, it was my first alien race! The psionic powers only occur during childhood (that goes for up to 500 years), and over time, as they grow old, their psionic powers decrease (until they disappear in adulthood) and are changed by massive physical prowess... Oh, and a tail grows too.

So, my first GURPS char were a psionic "fragile" infant alien

As for the books, there are plenty... But the top of the top, 3 ed cyberpunk were a revelation in my life (oh my god, can I play with machines in a sci fi? Oh my god, thank you GURPS, for freeing me from Fantasy settings!). After that, the 4ed... Man, thats a revolution in the RPG. And lately, Thaumatology has been my inspirational source

[pestigor]

Gurps Burrows and Bunnies
Gurps Conan
Gurps Space 3e & 4e
Gurps Ultra Tech 1e (first version)
Gurps Horror 1e
Gurps Fantasy 4e (back during 3e I was looking for something to help me build a fantasy setting in Gurps I did not care for pre-4e fantasy, though banestorm grew on me in 4e)

Speaking of Gurps Fantasy 4e: I evacuated for Hurricane Katrina with just my Gurps Characters, Campaigns and Fantasy books thinking I was going to be out for 2 or 3 days and I could work up my Fantasy ideas while I'm at a friend of the family's house...little did I know that was my only gaming books for 3 months. Gurps was my sanctuary when I had to rebuild my life.
Gurps 4e got me through the storm and I bought every hard back once life returned to "normal".
My regular group plays another game and are heavily invested in it. They also have a very bad view of Gurps (from bad experiences before I met them) I was hoping Dungeon Fantasy could help me get them to try Gurps in a non-erector set setting, if you get my meaning.

If you notice I joined the forums days before Katrina as I was just getting back into things with 4e.

[Ronnke]

In no particular order.

• GURPS Traveller
• GURPS Conan (plus the 4 solo adventures)
• GURPS Humanx (plus the solo adventure) <-- I particularly wish this license returned to GURPS Classic.
• GURPS Fantasy/Banestorm
• GURPS Harkwood
• GURPS Espionage
• GURPS Space
• GURPS Vehicles
• GURPS Cyberpunk
• GURPS Robin Hood

I started back in the late 80s with Palladium, Robotech, AD&D, Traveller and of course GURPS. Different systems have come and gone but GURPS has been a constant in my life and is now my go-to system for everything. What I love about it, is the wealth of information available and the fact I can, and have, played anything my imagination conceives.

The above books were pretty much the foundation from which my love of GURPS grew. The reality is, that list is far, far longer. I've been fortunate to never be wanting for old or new players and I hope this continues until the end of days.

[GM Joe]

Oh, man. Too many to list! But here are a few:

0e: Man-to-Man
Classic: Bunnies & Burrows
Classic: Covert Ops
Classic: Espionage
Classic: IOU
Classic: Steampunk
Classic: Transhuman Space
Classic: Traveller
Classic: Witch World
Classic: WWII
4e: All of it, but I particularly appreciate the Basic Set -- it's the best version of GURPS ever. And I love all four Tech books. And then there's Mysteries, the Action series, Social Engineering...

[Refplace]

Too many to list so here are some highlights.
GURPS Basic Set First Edition. Magic as skills? Awesome and the way you had to learn basic magic before doing more advanced spells, plus could always have access to a spell as long as you had energy or knew it well enough to cast for free appealed to my gaming group enough to get them to try it.

Third Edition stuff...
All the GURPS World books were at the least interesting but my favorites probably were GURPS Witchworld, GURPS Humanx, and GURPS Voodoo the Shadow War.
GURPS Timeline was used in a friends time traveling Hero game.
GURPS Spirits and GURPS Religion which were helpful for world building and had a few things I did not know from other sources.

Fourth Edition...
GURPS Powers, GURPS Psionics which inspired me by showcasing the Power Stunt and Default Powers rules.

[ULFGARD]

There are so many good GURPS books out there. A short list:

• GURPS Classic Voodoo
• GURPS Classic Traveler Starports
• GURPS Classic Cabal
• GURPS Classic Space Atlas 4
• GURPS Classic Cops
• GURPS Classic Religion
• GURPS Thaumatology
• GUPRS Thaumatology Magical Styles
• GURPS Powers The Weird
• GURPS Power Ups 6 Quirks
• GURPS Thaumatology Ritual Path Magic

Plus pretty much the whole DF & MH lines. DF has been wonderful for my fantasy game and I'm now running a MH game.

I'd still have to say that Starports is one of my favorite all time supplements. I've used bits and pieces of it in almost every science fiction game I've run since it came out.

[Gollum]

For the 4th edition, in that order:

• GURPS Lite
• GURPS Basic Set
• How to b e a GURPS GM?
• GURPS Martial Arts
• GURPS High-Tech
• GURPS Horror

For the 3rd Edition:

• The two Compendia, even if they are not useful since the 4th edition.
• GURPS Goblins
• And many others.

Yes, GURPS Goblins is a musth have! There is a lot of humor inside, of course, but also a lot of little things that can be useful in every campaigns, like the brilliant rules to determine what is the weather like with a dice roll.

[johndallman]

• The GURPS: WWII line.
• Thaumatology.
• Cabal.
• High-Tech, its add-ons and Tactical Shooting.
• The Power-Ups line.
• Social Engineering and its add-ons.

[simply Nathan]

General things I like about GURPS:
Active Defenses and armor working "correctly" to my JRPG sensibilities.

Being able to make wizards with arcane healing spells, not being restricted from armoring wizards.

Disadvantages to help flesh out characters (even if I think most give too many points compared to what they do).

HP based loosely on strength and mass instead of being an abstract construct that people sometimes tell me D&D HP is supposed to be - basically, GURPS HP works the way I always envisioned it from playing other games anyway.

Having good framework from which to make a holy man archetype something other than a wizard with better equipment and a different spell selection. Combined with earlier points, ability to meaningfully distinguish between a priest, a white mage, and a white mage who happens to be a very pious individual.

Making anthropomorphic animal races is really easy without needing to be too abstract.



Favorite books:
GURPS Lite, combining both versions to get even more content (such as stats for my knight's horse and being able to play with a wizard or buy lockpicks for my thief). Basically, any GURPS I can get for free I will take.

GURPS Magic for the extensive spell list even if most of it is stuff I wouldn't use/allow in a given campaign.

GURPS Martial Arts for giving me boomerangs, edged rapiers, late katanas, falchions, Heroic Archer, and a bunch of nifty combat options.

Dungeon Fantasy 1-3 for simply being excellent and helping direct my design towards what I want to play myself. I base my general race design principles around the templates from DF3 even if I don't use them as-written.

Tons of books I like for exactly one thing they give me and saying the rest is a nice side benefit - Charged Scrolls in DF4, extended equipment shrinking rules in DF Loadouts, animal templates in DF Allies, low-powered templates in Henchmen, a couple races and Perks from Bio-Tech, species generation tables in Space, etc. Even a GURPS book that sounds like it would be useless to me always has nuggets of very useful gold in it.