There are some persistent myths that are most common to GURPS newcomers that straight up baffle me. This post will be focused on dispelling some, and be focused around 4e. The intent is to focus on stuff that is pretty objective rather than subjective, because of course opinions and experience can vary a lot. I also intend to turn this into a video in short order.

These myths can be dispelled by simply checking out the official SJG distribution platform Warehouse 23.

One of the most profoundly confusing myths that somehow persists is that there are no monster manuals or pre-made Monsters for GURPS. Without getting into the plethora of fan made content, there are probably more monsters and character stats than most other published systems on the market. There are 5 volumes of Creatures of the Night, which expands on GURPS Horror which itself a subject by subject analysis of horror with monster stats for many different types of creatures organized by theme. Then we have Dungeon Fantasy, Dungeon Fantasy RPG (which is basically compatible), and Gaming Ballistic Products (which are official). There are entire books set aside for monster stats, and Gaming Ballistic even has a table for using its Nordic Monsters stats for some popular monsters from the Genre of Dungeon Fantasy/Heroic Fantasy. There are other Genres that are similarly covered. Action has a guide for generating stats for NPCS and some stats that are usable for the genre without any real tweaking. There are also few stats readily available for “SciFi”. This is arguably a gap, but functionally speaking isn’t because with often 0 effort you can transfer many creatures/monsters between genres if having “monsters” is necessary for your game. Its also very easy to create your own stat blocks on the fly with a baseline familiarity with the game, but I’ll cover that in a different post and isn’t relevant to the misconception.

Another common issue folks run into is the perception that GURPS has no adventures. This is a common complaint that couldn’t be further from Truth. What can be an issue is GURPS not having a pre-made adventure that fits your exact original world, but thats an inevitable hazard of having a universal system and there is a lot of advice available and existing adventures can be used as an example. Simply put there are two pages (at the time of this post) of adventures on the warehouse 23 website. This doesn’t include the extensive list of adventures in the Pyramid issues, nor does it include the fan made adventures of which there are many anthologies set aside by the community I plan to make a post about.

For the sake of completion I will include campaigns. This isn’t as common of a misconception, but I’ve run into it. GURPS 4e genre books are campaign guides. There are also setting based campaigns for 4e such as Madness Dossier. These aren’t standalone nor are they guides that will do everything for you, but they do exist and there is quite a variety of them. They are also typically very useful to mine ideas and mechanics from for your own campaigns.

The most pernicious of all myths surrounding GURPS can be dispelled by simply reading the introduction to basic set.

There is a notion that GURPS is this hyper complex game that you just have to play right or that the community is about you NEEDING to use the rules and as many as them as possible. As a whole this isn’t the case, but more importantly people who are saying so aren’t playing or describing how to play GURPS as intended by the publisher, editor, and writers of GURPS. All that is needed to play is describe in the Introduction which includes a 1.5 page quick start rules that is all you NEED to play GURPS. Everything else is entirely optional. They suggest you make stuff up if you get confused and go back and read everything when you have time and not try to bite off the entire system in one go. They also suggest a rules medium approach to picking and choosing which rules you want to use in your campaign. Want to not have hit locations? Great. Want to not? Overtly optional. Want to roll for initiative? There is pyramid for that? Want to roll a d20 instead of a 3d6? There is a pyramid for that? Want your characters to be cool badasses that do movie stuff? Throw in some cinematic rules. That isn’t to say there aren’t better and worse ways of doing things, or that there aren’t consequences that are likely to be perceived as quite negative from moving away from basic set play. An extreme example would be ignoring range penalties, which basically makes ranged weapons go from the most powerful option in the game for dealing damage to basically unstoppable in most circumstances. But ignoring enemy HP below 0 is just a cinematic switch in the Action series, which among other things radically expands suggestions for making GURPS a fast and loose game. Another option from Dungeon Fantasy, which I am a big fan of for action as an alternative to BAD (a system for assigning simple modifiers to anything everything is basically:

…With Spikes – The modifiers assigned to a task are equal to the combined qualifiers in the description. For example: a tall rusty fence slick with rain would be a -3 task modifier to climb because of “tall” “rusty” “slick” descriptors.

One notion that is sort of true for GURPS books is the art tends to not be the stuff that most people like. There are some folks that do. However, I would like to take a moment to recognize Gaming Ballistic and their products. They have made books of the highest editing and art quality in the industry. It is a shame they don’t get more exposure and I suggest everyone invest in their products which are high quality mechanically and artistically, and have Douglas Cole’s experiences of writing for GURPS working heavily in its favor by providing very functional and simple rules for a variety for anything from memorable monsters to making using a shield more realistic and/or badass.

There have been many attempts by the GURPS community to create a satisfying experience for the more exotic and over the top martial arts in GURPS. This can be challenging because GURPS’ baseline assumption is “Cinematic Realism”, and WUSHU is typically very much style over substance. This might push many towards using narrative systems to run WUSHU, which is entirely appropriate for many groups with this goal, however there is potential for GURPS to fill this niche and do so exceptionally for some varieties of WUSHU.

For Naruto and similar titles GURPS may even be the ideal option. It has recently occurred to me that one of the best ways of representing this, which has been explored before but to my knowledge not in quite this way, is to use GURPS Magic to represent quick abilities such as showcased in Shonen of this variety. What hasn’t to my knowledge been done before is what I think is essential: go ‘Scorched Earth’ on the spell list and start over. GURPS Magic spells are largely a collection of legacy spells intended to portray wizards. This leaves them with a lot of built in assumptions and baggage. We will need to create new spells to put in new colleges appropriate to the setting. The idea is to use this to represent only the low level and not the powerful slow magics of the settings, but both are possible if desired. The details of this process are outlined in Thaumatology but boil down to fiat. Next we need to modify the Power Source to match our setting. Then we use Thaumatology to switch the spells to magic as techniques (Optional, but recommended).

Now that we have a spellcasting system built using GURPS Magic as Techniques we have what we need to mix the spells into Martial Arts Styles we will generate for the setting using the GURPS Martial Arts genre book. What should result is a bunch of styles with iconic/appropriate magical abilities that are techniques of the school skills. When paired with mandatory styles this can be used for a Dojo/School style campaign, to police niche protection, or to just provide flavor and obstacles for new abilities.

I have many further ideas regarding this topic and may expand upon this idea at a later date. I have several more posts that are related and intended to cover different takes and options for other aspects of said settings.