GURPS

Let's start with some background - I have a few GURPS books, but I've never actually played any GURPS. And a while back, I bought the Martial Arts book. To my great surprise, that book even had rules for the (in the Western world) obscure martial art called Shorinji Kempo, which I practice myself in real life. And what's even more surprising was the fact that book's description of it was 99% accurate.

This seeded the idea that I could try to create a version of myself in GURPS, but where I try to stay true to reality. In other words, the character would be a software developer with the skills to match, and a Shorinji Kempo black belt.

Well, then the next logical step would be to solo play with that character (I'm an active solo RPG player, just not with GURPS yet). And since the PC is based on me, the game world could be based on the real world too. I'd live in the same town, have the same family and friends, etc. That way I wouldn't have to do much in the way of world building.

But then I could divert from reality and make up stories about conspiracies (or whatever) happening in my local area that I could come across and get drawn into. Perhaps there's a secret underground network of tunnels under the city center, connecting various buildings. Who built them, and why? And who's using them now? Why the secrecy?

I think this could be an interesting exercise. If I wanted to, I could do real life research about the history of my town for inspiration, even visiting locations to take photos, and so on.

Am I crazy for finding this idea interesting? Has anyone done anything similar?

Hello again helpful GURPS people!

I've been doing more reading and working to get the foundation of my first GURPS Cyberpunk campaign put together, and I ran into a bit of a conundrum. When players are putting together their characters, are there any rules about how implanted weapons differ from weapons used normally? Like if a player wanted to use a mono-wire whip that costs $5,000, would there be a different cost for having it implanted in their hand? Or if there's a chip they could get that allows them to use a power like the sandevistan, I don't know how to handle that since powers are point buy but it would also cost money...? I've tried looking in the books for any rules or recommendations, but if they exist then I think I've missed them.

Hello!

So I've never actually played GURPS, but I recently re-discovered some old Counter Monkey videos from Spoony that I watched back in the day. There were numerous times where he mentioned how good of a system it is, and got me particularly hyped to try out the Cyberpunk/Cthulhu-Punk modules with my friends. Since then I've checked out several books like the 4e Basic Set, Ultra-Tech, Horror, etc.

After looking through and getting the general idea of how combat works (I think), there's one thing that kind of seems worrying; players only getting 1 action per turn. Since my friends and I have mainly just played Pathfinder for the last decade, I'm concerned that they won't be interested in going from that system with 3-action turns to GURPS' 1-action system. With that in mind, I was curious if anyone else ran into that issue, and also if upping it to 2-actions per turn just ruins the game completely? But like having a bit of a limitation on it, such as making it move-and-do-X but not allowing double moves or double 'do-X' actions on the same turn

By 'logographic languages', i mean ones where words are represented through unique symbols, such as Chinese.

How much do you allow mages to pump up their missile spells when using the default GURPS magic-as-skills system? Particularly with casting level 15+ (enough to get a discount) and a few levels of Magery? The GURPS FAQ 4.3.3 here mentions that the total cost of the full charging time is discounted once - so at casting level 15 you can charge a 1 die fireball for 1 second for free, but you cannot cast a free 3 dice fireball by spending 3 seconds charging it - that would instead cost 2 energy points.

But what about the upper end? GURPS Basic Set page 240 says you can “invest one or more points of energy in the spell, to a maximum number of energy points equal to your Magery level”. Suppose a PC with Fireball-15 and Magery 2 spends 1 second creating a 2 dice fireball. This has cost them 1 energy point. Does this mean they could instead spent 1 second investing 2 energy points (their maximum Magery) into a 3 dice (discounted price) fireball? I saw this idea posted on the GURPS wiki here, but I haven’t found anything discussing this idea elsewhere.

Peter V. Dell'Orto has mentioned that even allowing the discount to apply to each charging turn hasn't wrecked his game, so I'm not worried about the balance component of 1-2 extra dice of damage; I'm just curious what other GMs would permit at their table.

I grabbed a copy of the 3rd ed Basic Set, but its a little intimidating haha.

Any recommendations for me to bring to a oneshot night to show why Gurps is neat?

For me at least, it's TL7. I just love that Space Race vibe.

Let's kick off some activity here with a question:

How much crunch do you, personally, like in your games?

Ultra Lite? Lite? Basic Set? Every book you can get your hands on?

Light on combat, heavy on skills? Vice-versa? Light overall with some aspects way more fleshed-out? Heavy overall with some aspects way more simplified? Are there specific mechanics you like to take full advantage of? Mechanics you like to gloss over?

No wrong answers, let's just get some discussion going