7-8 Settings to Give a Tour De GURPS

[DAT]

So if you as a GM were going to pick 7 or 8 setting to run adventures or encounters in to give players a feel for the breadth of GURPS, a Tour De GURPS if you will; or you as a Player were to pick 7 or 8 settings that you would like to play an adventure or encounter in; what would they be?

My List:
1) Dungeon Fantasy (GURPS DF line)
2) Age of Sail Pirate (GURPS Swashbuckler/GURPS Martial Arts)
3) 1930s or Modern Monster Hunter (GURPS MH line)
4) Supers (GURPS Supers/GURPS Powers)
5) Modern action adventure (GURPS Action! Line, GURPS Gun Fu)
6) Post apocalyptic (GURPS Reign of Steel/GURPS AtE)
7) Space Opera (GURPS Space/GURPS Traveller line)
8) Transhuman Space (GURPS THS line)

Some of the ones I considered:
- Bunnies & Burrows
- Ice Age Hunters (GURPS Ice Age/GURPS Low-Tech)
- Conan (GURPS Conan)Bunnies & Burrows
- Banestorm
- Gladiators (GURPS Imperial Rome)
- Fantasy Japan – Samurai, Ninja, and Magic (GURPS Japan)
- Robin Hood (GURPS Robin Hood)
- Discworld
- Scarlet Pimpernel
- Old West (GURPS Old West/ Deadlands)
- Steampunk (GURPS Steampunk, GURSP Castle Falkenstein)
- 1920s/1930 horror (GURSP Horror)
- WWII (GURPS WWII line)
- Vietnam (GURPS SEALS in Vietnam)
- In Nomine
- Land of the Lost (GURPS Land Out of Time)
- Black Ops (GURPS Black Ops)
- Modern Military (GURPS Special Ops/GURPS High Tech)
- Zombie apocalyptic (GURPS Zombie)
- Autoduel (GURPS Autoduel)
- Cyberpunk (GURPS Cyberpunk)
- Retro Space Opera (GURPS Tales of the Solar Patrol)
- Mecha (GURPS Mecha)
- Star Trek (GURPS Federation, GURPS Prime Directive, Klingons, Romulans)
- Vorkosigan Universe (GURPS Vorkosigan Saga …)

Excluded becauses of licensing
- Alpha Centauri
- Chtorr (GURPS War Against the Chtorr
- Blue Planet (GURPS Blue Planet)
- Hellboy
- Horseclan
- Humanix
- Lensman
- Myth
- New Sun
- Planet of Adventure
- Planet Krishna
- Prisoner
- Riverworld
- Vampire the Masquerade (GURPS Vampire: The Masquerade, Mage, Werewolf, etc.)
- Wild Cards
- Witch World

What are yours?
-Dan

[mook]

Answers likely to change day to day, but today I'd go with:

1) Dungeon Fantasy (usually in the Forgotten Realms)
2) Space Opera (usually Star Wars)
3) Old West
4) Spies (Bond, Kingsman, etc.)
5) Special Forces (modern military)
6) Feudal Japan (cinematic Samurai vs. Ninja)
7) Bunnies & Burrows
8) Horror (things that go bump in the night)
9) Kitchen Sink/Anything Goes (either Cynosure or my homebrew)

That seems like a good tour to me, and they're all genres I enjoy running. I might squeeze Supers in if the players really wanted it, but wouldn't normally be in my top ten.

Originally Posted by DAT

Excluded becauses of licensing

I wasn't sure why this would matter.

[DAT]

Originally Posted by mook

... [Excluded because of Licensing] ... I wasn't sure why this would matter.

I am thinking ahead to a MIB Con/Demo game that may use parts of this.

[(E)]

In a non commercial setting I would include a, look how well gurps can model "insert popular world here"*

1. Basic fantasy, with a gritty lens. Maximum focus.
2. Cinematic over the top modern mash. Maximum options
3. Single concept game worlds. This is Fuedal Japan with monsters.
4. Just about one historic event. for example. This is the sacking of Rome.

*From books, TV, Movies etc

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by DAT

I am thinking ahead to a MIB Con/Demo game that may use parts of this.

t means you cant buy most of those anymore but there still good for play and even better if you can pick one that fits the con theme or guest list.
For that matter as an MIB I would try to adapt something to fit the guest list or theme anyway.

[whswhs]

Well, here's what I've actually run using GURPS.

Campaigns either in published settings or in worlds of my own creation:

Alien first contact in the 1930s
Present-day British teenagers stray into Faerie
Mysterious events in a 20th century American town
Private investigators in Transhuman Space
Fencing students in early 18th century Paris
Atlantean privateers on the Pearl Bright Ocean (GURPS Cabal)
High-end supers keeping the world safe from ultrapowerful supers
Present-day consulting criminals
Cosmic horror in Transhuman Space
Swashbuckling adventure in a world ruled by the Chinese Empire (GURPS Alternate Earths)
Magic students at Worminghall University
Seafarers exploring a bronze age world with multiple races and animistic magic

Campaigns in borrowed worlds:

David Brin's Uplift universe
Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, ten years later

[rnadams2]

For one-off/demos I would concentrate on popular genres and settings, because a) they'll garner attention, and b) they won't require much exposition to bring players up to speed. They also showcase GURPS's ability to do anything, including favorite franchises and genres. My suggestions are:

• Dungeon Fantasy, because it's what's expected from a classic RPG.
• Monster Hunters, maybe in the vein of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Supernatural, because it's what's expected from a modern RPG.
• Dystopian Future (Hunger Games?), because YA novels in the genre are huge.
• Space Opera, either Star Wars, Star Trek, or Firefly; Mass Effect if you think the audience is savvy to it.
• Modern Action; something audacious (A-Team? Mission Impossible? Burn Notice?).
• Four-Color Supers! Avengers, Justice League, or X-Men.
• Emergent Supers, like the Heroes TV show.
• Pirates! Because pirates!

I've included copyrighted settings/franchises because I'm not sure it would really be an issue. If you're wary, though, just add "something like" to the suggestions.

[Donny Brook]

Here's a list based on existing settings:

Neuromancer (Gibson) (vintage cyberpunk)
Pleistocene Exile (May) (future-retro psionic weirdness)
Known Space (Niven) (hardish science space opera)
Takeshi Kovacs novels (Morgan) (slick modern space-opera-punk)
Market Forces (Morgan) (a fun take on autoduelling)
Lankhmar (Leiber) (down and dirty sword and sorcery fantasy)
Roma Aeterna (Silverberg) (alternate history - present day Roman Empire)
DC's Vertigo Universe (dark fantasy comics)

[Mr_Sandman]

After looking at my suggestions, I realized that they are less about the total breadth of games that GURPS can play, and more about the variety of genres that GURPS can really stand out in, compared to other games.

1. Elizabethan/Renaissance era with supernatural elements and secret magic -- I think this really shows the range of GURPS. It can have sword and board fighting, fencing, firearms that don't overwhelm melee combat, heroic archers, pirates, border reavers, court intrigue, espionage, ghosts, fairies, witches and witch hunters. I like Path/Book magic for secret magic and think it fits this setting particularly well, but RPM with no or very rare Path Adepts could work too.

2. Street-level supers -- Using the optional rules for more gritty and harsh realism, mixed with unrealistic powers is, I think, a sweet spot for GURPS. It shows off how GURPS "reality-checked" default assumptions create a grounded base to add fantastic elements onto. Four-color can be done, but GURPS doesn't do as well with comic-book setting logic without a good amount of thought about what optional rules to use, character parameters, and careful campaign planning/prep.

3. Hard-ish science fiction -- Anywhere on the hardness scale from Transhuman Space to a 2300AD or Aliens type setting. The level of detail GURPS provides for skills and hardware make it shine in this kind of setting.

4. Lower-powered, low-tech fantasy -- The genre of the ancestor of GURPS (The Fantasy Trip), and still genre where GURPS is very strong.

5. Gladiators -- GURPS has the tactical combat rules to make the fights hold interest over time as a major component of the action. I'd add in the Last Gasp action point rules. Slow natural healing and crippling injuries rules add lasting impacts from individual fights. GURPS also has the ability to play out the performance, social and economic aspects of running and promoting a ludus.

6. Military adventure -- from Napoleonic to near future, because of the same detail on skills and hardware that works for hard sci-fi. Pulling Rank provides support for playing PCs within a military organization. This genre has an added benefit for GURPS that not many other popular games support it. Naval adventures don't work quite as well because they would involve ship-to-ship combat, and there are issues with ships being too fragile in the basic set rules, and the lack of the Vehicle Design System.

7. Monster Hunters -- shows some of the range of GURPS by getting into more over-the-top, high-point characters and cinematic action rules, without downplaying the threat and danger of going up against supernatural predators.

8. Psi-ops -- Espionage/special ops with psionic powers. GURPS has good rules for mundane equipment, firearms combat, martial arts, psychic powers and psi-tech that all still work when you put them together.

[LoneWolf23k]

Sorry for the Thread Necromancy, but just found this on an unrelated search, and I realized there was an unmentioned option that's perfect to show new players the wide range of settings GURPS can cover:

GURPS Infinite Worlds.

You can run a campaign of I-Cops being sent on a variety of worlds to deal with things like missing scouts, random criminals, Centrum plots, Raven Division incursions, Cabal Conspiracies, etc. And you need never operate on the same world twice. Fight Pirates in the Caribbean in one mission, hack the secrets of a cyberpunk Megacorp the next, and go fight Zombies in an Apocalyptic Wasteland the day after.