I decide to give Samiksha a –3 reputation (Agent of the great library) amongst scholars (small class of people) worldwide. I decide that agents of the great Library take a vow of poverty – all wealth is to be used to obtain knowledge for the library, however, since the Wealth attribute also controls starting cash, we won’t lower Samiksha’s wealth value here she’s going to need decent kit to survive her travels.įor Reputation, I decide that the great library has a mixed reputation amongst other scholars and institutes of learning – their work is lauded, but their agents are also known to go to any lengths to obtain works for the library, and will readily resort to theft or other underhanded means if permission to copy a work is denied. Next step is to select my character’s Wealth, Reputation and Status. I’ll probably end up adjusting these values down, but for the time being we’ll try to make the points back via disadvantages. Due to concept, all four are fairly important – most of my 100 points are going to be spent here, but I’ll be able to make some back via taking disadvantages later. There are four attributes in GURPS Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence and Health. Looking a list of Indian names we’ll call her Samiksha which apparently means ‘Analysis’. Now that we have some idea of who we’re playing, time for a name. The Library is located in a pseudo-Indian kingdom. Our character is one of these Library agents, just starting out on her career. To this end they dispatch agents across the known world. There’s a great library, and this library is trying to collect all knowledge, both by obtaining written works and getting written accounts of knowledge that doesn’t exist in written form. As for the world and setting background, let’s rip off the concept of the Library of Alexandria. GURPS, unlike the systems covered previously, uses points based character generation with no random factors.Īs this is a setting-less generic game, I’m going to start with a character concept and some sort of barebones background to act as a guide for what things I should buy.Īs stated at the beginning of this project, the basic concept for any sort of character where choice is allowed is a Warrior-scholar type.
I can’t remember if this information was in the non-revised edition of GURPs I started with, but given that in the early 90s the Internet was still a very mysterious beast, the existence of the BBS shows a lot of tech-savvy and future-vision on the part of SJG. Looking through the beginning my GURPs book, printed sometime in the early 90s – the last copyright date on its frontispiece is 1994, I notice that SJG encourages their readers to get a modem and connect to the Illuminati Online bbs via phone or to telnet in via the internet. One of the strengths of the GURPS line are the high quality setting sourcebooks published for it if you want a gaming orientated resource on a subject, there’s a good chance one has been written for GURPs. It’s not particularly pretty, but it is reliable. If it were a car it would be some sort of little Honda rather than a Jaguar. GURPS uses 3d6 for task resolution, and is a solid though not particularly inspiring system. (Not the fault of the GM or the game, more that it was very late and the players were having a hard time concentrating.) I’ve only played GURPS a couple of times a doomed IOU campaign when I was at uni, and an equally doomed GURPs Cliffhanger adventure at GenCon a few years back.
I remember being amazed by the idea that I could stat out anything with it. The first real RPG I bought was a very second hand copy of the GURPS 3rd basic set when I was about 13 or so. Rejoice O readers, for today I am looking at a game that more than a handful of people will have heard of, GURPS from Steve Jackson Games.