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{{Game Infobox
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The '''Generic Universal RolePlaying System''', usually shortened to '''GURPS''', is a [[RPG|roleplaying game]] made by [[Steve Jackson Games]]. It has loads of numbers and expansion books. GURPS is the quintessential universal system; it is so flexible that you can bend it in half, fold it through itself, and then tie it in a 4-dimensional knot. It is the paragon of the [[simulationist]] category of games. All simulationist games since GURPS secretly aspire to kill GURPS and wear its skin while drinking the blood of its delicious heart. Its detail is surpassed by [[I.C.E.]]'s [[Rolemaster]] series, but GURPS doesn't suffer from the Table Within a Table Within a Table Within a FUCK YOU problem inherent in the game of Rolemaster. Whenever someone asks /tg/ which system to use for a campaign, there will ''always'' be some autist there to recommend GURPS, regardless of how appropriate it actually is.
The '''Generic Universal RolePlaying System''', usually shortened to '''GURPS''', is a [[RPG|roleplaying game]] made by [[Steve Jackson Games]]. It has loads of numbers and expansion books. GURPS is the quintessential universal system; it is so flexible that you can bend it in half, fold it through itself, and then tie it in a 4-dimensional knot. It is the paragon of the [[simulationist]] category of games. All simulationist games since GURPS secretly aspire to kill GURPS and wear its skin while drinking the blood of its delicious heart. Its detail is surpassed by [[I.C.E.]]'s [[Rolemaster]] series, but GURPS doesn't suffer from the Table Within a Table Within a Table Within a FUCK YOU problem inherent in the game of Rolemaster. Whenever someone asks /tg/ which system to use for a campaign, there will ''always'' be some autist there to recommend GURPS, regardless of how appropriate it actually is.


The basic premise behind the system is that you create your character and customize all of his abilities using points that you get both at creation and as your character progresses. There are assloads of physical, mental, and social defects that can be used to get more character points to channel right back into your advantages. It uses the d6 exclusively, with most checks being 3d6 and [[roll under]]. This can be augmented in difficulty by increasing or decreasing the target numbers. A roll of a 3 or 4 is a critical success, while an 18 is always a critical failure. SJG put out a free .pdf synopsis of the rules called "[http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/lite/ GURPS Lite]", which is enough to play a barebones version of the game.
The basic premise behind the system is that you create your character and customize all of his abilities using points that you get both at creation and as your character progresses. There are loads of physical, mental, and social defects that can be used to get more character points to channel right back into your advantages. It uses the d6 exclusively, with most checks being 3d6 and [[roll under]]. This can be augmented in difficulty by increasing or decreasing the target numbers. A roll of a 3 or 4 is a critical success, while an 18 is always a critical failure. SJG put out a free .pdf synopsis of the rules called "[http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/lite/ GURPS Lite]", which is enough to play a barebones version of the game.


[[Image:KALI_MAAAAA.JPG|thumb|left|KALI-MAAAAAA!]]
[[Image:KALI_MAAAAA.JPG|thumb|left|KALI-MAAAAAA!]]
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One irritating fact you'll discover as you collect GURPS books is that although the system uses real-word measurements, the different authors have never agreed on whether they should use Imperial or metric units. Keep a conversion chart handy. Fortunately the main book includes one.
One irritating fact you'll discover as you collect GURPS books is that although the system uses real-word measurements, the different authors have never agreed on whether they should use Imperial or metric units. Keep a conversion chart handy. Fortunately the main book includes one.


In the game's rather long lifespan, a truly impressive amount of settings and sourcebooks were made, including but not limited to [[Alpha Centauri]], settings where you play Men In Black, Fantasy (including [[Banestorm]], the original GURPS core setting), multiple SF settings (notable licensed one: GURPS Vorkosigan Saga), several books on conspiracies, historicals covering WW2, Ancient Rome, multiple other ancient cultures, joke settings (GURPS: IOU illustrated by Phil Foglio!), adaptations of a couple other games, (Notably the Classic World of Darkness (Vampire, Mage, and Werewolf), Traveller and Castle Falkenstein) and a couple books that are just collections of multiple settings. If you've got a group who feels like playing something different every month, GURPS has got you covered for the next decade or so. Most of these were written for third edition (aka "GURPS Classic"); the rules for which tend to be janky at best. It's strongly recommended that you convert these to fourth edition, which rolls in a number of sanity-saving rules patches from the Compendium sourcebooks and just makes playing anything that isn't mundane 100-point schmucks much easier. New stuff occasionally still comes out, but it's slowed to a trickle compared to the old days and what has been published is almost all genre sourcebooks.
In the game's rather long lifespan, a truly impressive amount of settings and sourcebooks were made, including but not limited to [[Alpha Centauri]], settings where you play Men In Black, Fantasy (including [[Banestorm]], the original GURPS core setting), multiple SF settings (notable licensed one: GURPS Vorkosigan Saga), several books on conspiracies, historicals covering WW2, Ancient Rome, multiple other ancient cultures, joke settings (GURPS: IOU illustrated by Phil Foglio!), adaptations of a couple other games, (Notably the Classic World of Darkness (Vampire, Mage, and Werewolf), Traveller and Castle Falkenstein) and a couple books that are just collections of multiple settings. If you've got a group who feels like playing something different every month, GURPS has got you covered for the next decade or so. Most of these were written for third edition (aka "GURPS Classic"); the rules for which tend to be janky at best. It's strongly recommended that you convert these to fourth edition, which rolls in a number of sanity-saving rules patches from the Compendium sourcebooks and just makes playing anything that isn't mundane 100-point schmucks much easier. New stuff occasionally still comes out, but it's slowed to a trickle compared to the old days and what has been published is almost all genre sourcebooks converted from Classic in the most half-assed manner possible.


=== Notable Supplements ===
=== Notable Supplements ===
*'''Powers''': Almost mandatory for any campaign where PCs have any kind of supernatural abilities.
*'''Powers''': Almost mandatory for any campaign where PCs have any kind of supernatural abilities. The magic system of GURPS core quite frankly sucks, so you really want either this or Thaumatology below if you're playing more than hard realism.
*'''*-Tech''': Weapons and gadgets and gear porn, oh my. Unlike most splats of this nature (looking at you, [[Cyberpunk 2020]]) these books actually spend some time helping you think through the ''implications'' of the various gadgets they introduce for your campaign, not just acting as a shopping list for your local [[munchkin]]. Series includes High-Tech (modern and near-future), Low-Tech (Stone Age to Early Modern), Bio-Tech (organic technology including [[PROMOTIONS|sex bioroids]] and that living spaceship from Lexx), and Ultra-Tech (bullshit sci-fi stuff).
*'''*-Tech''': Weapons and gadgets and gear. Unlike most splats of this nature (looking at you, [[Cyberpunk 2020]]) these books actually spend some time helping you think through the ''implications'' of the various gadgets they introduce for your campaign, not just acting as a shopping list for your local [[munchkin]]. Series includes High-Tech (modern and near-future), Low-Tech (Stone Age to Early Modern), Bio-Tech (organic technology including [[PROMOTIONS|sex bioroids]] and that living spaceship from Lexx), and Ultra-Tech (bullshit sci-fi stuff). Fair warning: Ultra-Tech is balanced for space opera flavor, ''not'' compatibility with the rest of the system, so if you try to use it in the same campaign as High-Tech or corebook equipment without tweaks bad things will happen.
*'''Thaumatology''': Supplement to the supplement GURPS Magic and your one-stop shop for just about every kind of magic system humans have come up with so far, from runes to rituals to voodoo.
*'''Thaumatology''': Supplement to the supplement GURPS Magic and your one-stop shop for just about every kind of magic system humans have come up with so far, from runes to rituals to voodoo. [[Magnus the Red|Magnus's First Magic Textbook]]. Everything you need to know about where [[Warp|magic can come from]], histories of magical practices, magical laws, syntactic magic and more. Also very useful when working with multiple systems of magic and you want to integrate them together.
*'''[[GURPS Infinite Worlds]]''': The core setting for fourth edition. Technically the fourth edition version of '''GURPS Time Travel''', but nobody cares at this point. Almost every other GURPS book (big exception: Transhuman Space) has an excuse for you to buy it tucked somewhere in the Infinite Worlds setting.
*'''Cabal''': GURPS' answer to the "[[Mage: The Ascension|occult societies plumbing the cosmos]] [[Vampire: The Masquerade|and lording it over the normals for kicks]]" genre, courtesy of occult-horror guru Kenneth Hite. Takes the otherwise bog-standard Kabbalah template and blends in elements of Golden Dawn to build an all-killer-no-filler cosmology and magic system. Totally clowns on the World of Darkness by making all the things that go bump in the night fit into a cohesive whole, even if the GM still has to do a lot of legwork.
*'''[[Reign of Steel]]''': Essentially the setup for ''I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream'', except instead of just nuking everything AM makes 17 copies of itself that it's subsequently forced to share the planet with after human civilization goes bang. There's also a number of resistance cells taking the fight to the machines Terminator style.
*'''[[GURPS Infinite Worlds]]''': The core setting for fourth edition. Technically the fourth edition version of '''GURPS Time Travel''', but nobody cares at this point. Almost every other GURPS book (big exception: Transhuman Space) has an excuse for you to buy it tucked somewhere in the Infinite Worlds setting. Infinite Worlds is by far the biggest setting in GURPS as it covers the GURPS [[Multiverse]], which in and of it self contains almost every other GURPS setting ever released. Covering how the multiverse is structured and everything in it, the multiverse is made up of various alternate Earths where things either happened slightly differently or wildly diverged. The travel between worlds is undertaken primarily by paratronic technology, where people can travel a certain "distance" across the multiverse before stopping. The setting primarily revolves around the operations of two main factions; [[Ordo Chronos|Homeline]], a universe where paratronic technology was revealed to the world in the 1990s and was quickly privatized under the United Nations, and the [[Tau Empire|Centrum]], a socialist technocratic society from a world where the White Ship disaster and subsequent Anarchy period never occurred but nearly nuked itself to oblivion around 1900 AD. The two factions are caught up in a somewhat cold war due to their drastically different motives behind paratronic technology. Homeline uses paratronics for both fun and profit, opening trade between worlds to strengthen the economy while funneling technological advancements from other worlds back to Homeline for them to take advantage of, plus some colonies on uninhabited worlds. [[Spheres of Expansion|Centrum however uses paratronics for conquest, subverting the societies of otherworlds to bring them in line with Centrum's beliefs while opening them for colonization and exploitation.]] The 2 factions are in conflict but considering neither of them have anywhere near the amount of population needed to conduct a full on multiversal war, they instead conduct covert operations on a very large scale to incontinence the other as much as possible. The entire setting is huge and is continually expanded by [[Steve Jackson Games|SJG]] and probably needs a dedicated page at some future date.  
*'''[[Technomancer]]''': Urban fantasy du jour. The Trinity tests set magic loose in the world, and humanity does what it does best: systematize it, weaponize it and commercialize it. The US breeds dragons for military use, Stalin is a lich, magical elixirs are sold at the corner drugstore and there are killer penguins that hate you in Antarctica. Some of its assumptions haven't aged well and there are a number of spells that might as well be named "[[Magical realm|Fulfill Obscure Fetish]]" but overall it does a good job of considering the long-term implications of magic in the modern world while still providing good adventure fodder.
*'''IOU - Illuminati University:''' Once upon a time, Steve Jackson Games ran an ISP and BBS, back when the internet was a small enough thing that an RPG company could do that and not immediately go bankrupt. The elegan/tg/entlemen who used the BBS wrote up a parody setting for play-by-post games [[/tg/ gets shit done|and Steve thought it was good enough to publish]]. Illuminati University is like every other college you've been to, except it sits on top of a nexus between pretty much every reality there is. This means the entire place effectively has the Weirdness Magnet disadvantage, and you can take classes in such things as World Creation, [[Paranoia|THE]] Computer Science, and Dirty Tricks. Features lots of amazing art from Phil Foglio. And before you ask, you're not cleared to know what the O stands for.
*'''Transhuman Space:''' Welcome to the future. A hard-SF transhumanist setting that doesn't insult your intelligence and dodges the axe-grinding and grimderp associated with [[Eclipse Phase]]. ''Lots'' of background info and research involved, and some of it (especially the memetics section) has turned out to be terrifyingly prescient.
*'''[[Banestorm]]''': Welcome to <strike>Erf</strike> <strike>[[Greyhawk|Oerth]]</strike> Yrth. Ages ago this was a fairly standard fantasy setting until some elves decided to be fantasy-Nazis and tried a ritual to kill all orcs everywhere. Instead it nuked a good chunk of the continent and ''The Wizard of Oz''-ed all the stock fantasy races that weren't living on Yrth already-- including humans. A thousand years later and Yrth is the only fantasy world where dolphins talk, goblins pass the collection plate around after Sunday Mass and elves are fading for reasons that are 100% their own fault instead of just because Tolkien did it. Also full of random things like hang-gliding orcs who revere "[[wikipedia:Amelia_Earhart|the Air Heart]]" as a culture hero.


== Big bag of empty words ==
::*'''GURPS Infinite Worlds''' is also a follow up to 3 other books, '''GURPS Time Travel''', '''GURPS Alternate Worlds''' and '''GURPS Alternate Worlds 2'''.
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=== Criticisms ===
Some of the criticisms of GURPS include:
*That genre you want to emulate? The rules for it are scattered across half a dozen different books. Or alternatively, you could emulate setting, ''but'' not it's genre.
*The default magic system sucks. One reason GURPS Thaumatology is so popular is because it tells you how to scrap it and replace it with a magic system that's actually playable.
**This isn't helped by 4e's GURPS Magic easily being one of the worst mainline GURPS books, as it's a poorly edited half-assed conversion from 3e.
**Offensive magic is play-testes against Low-Tech weapons, since offensive magic is weaker than High-Tech weapons - to the point, that it looses in power to most pistols. Assuming same points, user of technological weapons (Signature Gear + custom war vehicle + good crew for it) or even foot soldier is stronger than spellcaster in direct combat.
*Damage and DR sometimes gets real wonky. This is hardly a problem at all with low-tech games or high-tech games (modern firearms and armor are very well-researched), but when it comes to futuristic tech, GURPS' designers don't know what the fuck they're doing. Ultra-tech armor is pathetically fragile, comparing unfavorably to modern armor (with vehicles it's especially bad), while ultra-tech weapons have damage values seemingly assigned more or less at random with no regard for consistency.
**Generally, it can be one tad hard to determine TL of certain setting. Although, that's problem of all technology scales.
**On top of that, characteristics of weapons and armor of most futuristic pre-existing settings (derivative works, third-party settings, etc) are different from what GURPS considers standart. As such, their characteristics would either need to be calculated from scratch, or end up being grossly incorrect.
*Strength scales poorly at superhuman levels. If you want to have an ST of 20 and be four times as strong as an average man, you have to pay 100 points. Fair enough. But if you want to have an ST of 100 and be as strong as a hundred men? It costs 900 points! And it sure isn't nine times as good as having an ST of 20. Heck, even if you have 900 points to spend, there are much more cost-efficient things you could spend those points on.
**GURPS Supers tries to address this with a super-effort enhancement, allowing you to spend Fatigue Points to temporarily enhance your Strength by insane levels. How well this actually works as a patch, both thematically and gameplay-wise, is [[Skub|controversial at best]].
**Knowing Your Own Strength, a popular optional rule from Pyramid #3/83, redoes ST scaling to be logarithmic. From the average ST of 10, every +10 ST makes you ten times stronger. Want to be as strong as a hundred men? Now it only costs 200 points. But while it keeps point costs from spiraling out of control, it introduces [[Skub|its own sets of problems]].
**Or, if playing as robot/cyborg/biorobot/augmented human/etc - have another scale. Instead of measuring power in "points", you should measure it in money cost of creating/assembling your character (e.g. robot systems cost money; genetic upgrades cost money; etc).
**Also, Strength is even less needed once good guns are invented. Assuming same point costs, and TL 5 and higher - guy who smashes things with brute strength will be weaker, than guy who uses guns (e.g. ATGM's), and even weaker than one who uses war vehicles (custom-made; tanks, aircraft, ships, etc; affordably get with Signature Gear). Basically, bid dumb mammoth-sized monstrosity is just convenient target practice for modern soldiers (after all, most works downplay power of modern weapons). Maybe Strength should be cheaper at higher TL's?
***For same reasons, most things bigger than elephant are weak on High-Tech and further. Living creatures and bio-mechs are weaker than war machines of same weight (not to mention size), to the point that whales and sea leviathans can be easily gunned down from your normal MG42. DR seems to badly scale for creatures bigger than elephant; not many have DR bigger than 5. Though, that's likely intentional - living things ''are'' fragile, and aren't built do survive gunfire.
*GURPS Realm Management. Do not touch this book, do not read it under any circumstances. Just don't. It's a steaming pile of '''SHIT'''.
** Same thing with GURPS Cthulhupunk. Only get it if you are looking to gift it to someone you absolutely LOATHE but don't want to make it obvious.
*There are no rules or guidelines for building lifeforms from ground up (synthetic biology, aka writing DNA from zero). In such and other similar cases, there is no restriction of baseline creature's stats, and there are no guidelines for "what's limit then"; as such, you can create ''absolutely anything'' (truely anything for soft sci-fi; "anything as long as it doesn't have Supernatural traits" for "hard" sci-fi). That can be abused as needed. The only limitation, is that cost of creature production depends on it's point cost.
*As expected, after Replicators are invented (usually at TL12^), entire balance shifts. They print things without regard for cost - only mass matters. So, you can print ridiculously strong yet small objects, ignoring their large cost. NPC's also do this, so overall truely epic things start going on.
** Strategic-scale nuclear and antimatter bombs aren't even the strongest option for abuse. E.G. synthetically created organism with truely absurd power level - capable of bench-lifting a continental plate, tanking-off a direct hit from [[Exterminatus|planet-buster]], and having firepower bigger than entire starship fleets combined - yet the size and mass of house cat. Normally, this thing is held back by ''ludicrous'' cost of production; after Replicators are invented, it can be created quickly and for pocket change.
* Assuming that ST and other parameters are unchanged, small SM is benefit. [https://gurps.fandom.com/wiki/Size_Modifier#Relative_Size_Modifier Basically], character with small SM is very difficult to detect and hit, and has lots of useful abilities - while character with big SM is easy to hit and detect, and most benefits are about smashing things in melee (that is not useful since about TL5). Small SM also makes your gear lighter, so you can carry more of it; so much as being SM-6 (7"; 0.2 yards; rat-sized) will make armor 100 times lighter and cheaper with same thickness and DR (i.e. he can wear super-heavy armor 100 times tougher than "normal human's", yet it will cost and weight just like "normal human's" armor; weight is volume*mass, and volume is surface area*thickness, smaller guy has smaller surface area but same physical strength, so he can do more with less) - and this is even more egregious for smaller sizes (think microbe-sized, atom-sized, quark-sized, etc). As such, character with [[Space Marine]] strength is less powerful, than character with strength of [[Space Marine]] and size of a quark.
** What that means in practice: Assuming same point and money budgets. Small guy is SM-1000000 or smaller; he's impossible to detect, impossible to hit, and impossible to penetrate his incredibly thick armor - all while he's shooting you with his machinegun. Meanwhile, big guy is easily detected and shot at, and he can't take many hits due to his armor being thinner and weaker; he's also using machinegun, but what's the point if he can't hit and can't penetrate anything. Obviously, such strong small character is unrealistic - but in unrealistic works (i.e. cinematic; magic; supernatural; superscience), he's possible.
** Even if we take less egregious example and have humanoid who's 2, 3 or 4 times shorter than human (SM-2, SM-3 and SM-4 respectively) while being about as strong as human, and he's TL5+, it ends up being more threatening than human. He uses human-sized gun, hard to hit, good marksman, hard to detect, can hide behind cover too small for human, carries more equipment, can wear stupendously strong armor without much encumbrance, more easily hits chinks in big armor - for 0 points. Meanwhile, humanoid who's 1.5, 2.5 or 3.5 times taller than human (SM+1, SM+2 and SM+3 respectively) is easier to hit, bad at hitting things, can't take hits well due to thinner armor, visible from anywhere and doesn't fit in many places - for 0 points. And that's just things applicable from combat there-and-now. [[TL;DR]]: small-yet-strong (think Alien Hominid from ''Newgrounds'' or Stitch from ''Disney Animated Canon'') is better than big-and-strong (think [[Space Marines]] from ''WH40K'') - the smaller someone is the better, the bigger someone is the worse - while both being small and being big is points-free, despite small size being de-facto advantage and big size being de-facto disadvantage.
** Also, don't remember if ability to detect character depends on his gear. Or in other words: if you're microbe-sized, but are wielding human-sized machine gun, how hard it is to see you? Or wield it, for that matter (handles must be re-made to suit your size)?
* Assuming standard TL progression, many Biotech things end up being researched on such TL's that they're obsolete before they're invented - being so many times worse than their mechanical counterparts, that they're practically unserviceable.
** Living weapons are pretty much obsolete. Claws that can't penetrate even armored clothing (not to mention armor porper)? Poison spit, that only works at all if it hits open wound, eye, or other unprotected spot - all while enemies wear sealed space-proof suits on average, and gas-mask-equivalent protection at worst? Living armor, that even in best complectation (e.g. tortoise-like shell), can't even stop pistol rounds? All sorts of things, that could be useful for Magic-user in Low-Tech era - but at Ultra-Tech age, those are useless.
** Bio-Mechs and other living weapons. Most of their weapons are very weak, usually weaker than normal rifles. They are also fragile, to the point that they're vulnerable to said rifles. The only way for these to work properly, is to make Bio-Gadgets versions of normal weapons (e.g. lasers, cannons, missiles), Bio-Gadget versions of vehicles and armor, etc.
** One thing that ''is'' good? Make synthetic creature, that is Explosive, Flammable, has ''truckloads'' of HP, and mountains of various disadvantages. Basically, grenade-sized ball of explosive flesh; living plasma grenade. It's only purpose is to die and explode in flames for 6dx(HP/10) damage - so put on ''thousands'' of Disadvantages onto it (e.g. easily dies, fails any skills, has no sensors at all, no limbs, etc - ''as much disadvantages as possible''), and put all those acquired points into HP to make blast bigger.
*** Reducing ST DX IQ HT to 0, Combustible, Explosive, Flammable, No Legs (Sessile; not anchored to ground), No Manipulators, Blindness, Deafness, No Sense Of Smell, No Sense Of Taste, Numb, Slave Mentality, Mute - those give 895 points. That will allow to take HP 447 - cue 6dx44.7 (268.2d) crushing incendiary explosive damage. This isn't properly optimized; you can add more Disadvantages to make use of even more points. SM can be as small as needed; it can be as small as grenade, or even a bug, or whatever. Rather affordable to create; not bad for something of arbitrarily small size (or heck, even just grenade-sized).
* When comparing modernized Low-Tech armor (made from modern steel - for either doubled DR, or halved weight/cost) and High-Tech armor, usually one of the sides is strictly better.
** Generally, it's better to use reinforced light piece of armor, than lightened heavy piece of armor - since reinforced light piece of armor ends up with smaller weight/cost with same DR.
** Most modernized breastplates are weaker than High-Tech torso armors. Armor vests are both tougher, cheaper and lighter, and can mount Trauma Plates.
** Lightened "Pot-Helm" from Basic Set is better than most helmets («Steel Pot», «Frag Helmet», «Cavalry Helmet», «Medium Helmet», «Frag Helmet», «Modern Firefighter’s Helmet»); Reinforced "Pot-Helm" is also better than most helmets ("Heavy Helmet"). In turn, "Pot Helm - Plate, Medium" is strictly better than generic "Pot-Helm". You can use Bascinet or Full Helm for covering face - or tinker with helmet to mount modern visor.
** Reinforced "Sollerets" from Basic Set is strictly better than «Boots, Firefighter». "Sabatons" of "Light late" or "Medium Plate" kinds are strictly better than genetic "Sollerets" - and, they're better than normal boots. In fact, reinforced variant of «Sabatons»/«Gauntlets» «Light Plate» is lighter than moccasins/sneakers and sharp-protective gloves.
** Reinforced «Sabatons», «Heavy Plate» is better than "Boots, Blast" - tougher, lighter and protecting from all sides.
** Modernized variants of ancient armor for limbs are generally better, than modern limb protection.
** [[TL;DR]]: High-Tech armor is better at protecting torso, and maybe head in some cases (Ballistic Helmet). Modernized Low-Tech armor is better at protecting the rest of your body: helmet, boots, gloves, limb protection, etc. Wear mixed armor.
** Modernized shields can be rather good, mostly ones with DB 3. For example, Large Roman Scutum of Reinforced variant (modern steel) will have DR/HP of 8/27, and Cover DR of 20.
** Modern synthetic fur/cloth/leather at TL8, would allow to apply the "double DR or halve cost/weight" to fur/cloth/leather armors. Since military uniforms also have weight and cost, it's possible to have modern synthetic armor made of fur/cloth/leather, what would offer some protection while weighing no more than normal uniforms. Ordinary clothes and formal wear weight 2 lbs; winter clothes weight 4 lbs; many types of padded armor are warm as winter clothing.
** Most modifications available for Low-Tech armor can be made for High-Tech armor. E.G. Face Protection applied to TL6 helmet (though, as explained, Modernized Low-Tech helmets are better than most High-Tech helmets - only loosing to Ballistic Helmets, and heavy helmets like "Altyn"/"Алтын").
** High-Tech armor is, usually, a lot cheaper than modernized Low-Tech armor. E.G. Heavy Helmet is (DR 5, 5 lb, 100$), while reinforced Plate Medium Pot Helm is (DR 12, 4 lb, 500$). But that's why you can use other, simpler armor pieces. E.G. reinforced Scale Light Pot Helm (DR 6, 3.2 lb, 64$). This way, you can make "budget" modernized Low-Tech armor, that is still better than it's High-Tech analogues.
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20250311095955/https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/GameBreaker/TabletopRPG We still remember the "Cloth Cap" exploit]. [[TL;DR]]: you can keep putting on Cloth Caps on yourself, stacking them for ''absurd'' amounts of concealed flexible DR for no downsides, far tougher than any other armor can provide (even tougher, thal TL13+ [[Power Armor]]), to the point that your skull becomes resistant to ''heavy tank cannons''. It's unknown whether "no more than 3 layers" is rule ("you can't put so much layers"), or merely recommendation ("you can put so much layers, but most people opt not to do this") - and if it's the later, balance flies out of the window.
* Determining average wealth of certain settings can be hard - especially if magic or sci-fi tech gets involved. For example, what is "average wealth" in WH40K? Most people walk around in filthy rags and are starving, yet can afford large assortment of weapons and armor (underhive gangs, cults, etc) - so how much money, in "gurpsdollars", they have?
* Most rules about Robots/Androids/Full-Conversion-Cyborgs only start explaining things from TL7 (Cold War). And usually, robots start getting prominent from TL8 (Information Era) or TL7+1 (Atompunk, like ''Fallout''). Robots/Androids/Cyborgs from earlier epochs, like TL6+1 (Dieselpunk), TL5+1 (Steampunk), TL4+1 (Clockpunk), TL1^ (Bronze androids, like Thalos; magical golems of all kinds) - are outright absent; you don't know ''how'' exactly, you would design them, how strong they would be for their size, etc.
* There are some settings, that even GURPS struggles to properly model. Such as playing as proper Gods (not "avatars of gods" - just ''proper Gods themselves''). It also struggles with absurdly strong settings, like [[Xeelee Sequence]] and [[Xeelee_Sequence#Settings_even_remotely_comparable_to_Xeelee_Sequence|settings comparable to it]]. Realistically, this is a minor criticism when you get down to it because those kinds of scales tend to break any chart someone tries to use.
* Using the Low-Tech armor creation rules, you can turn any armor into variants for any body part - that is good for optimization.
** E.G. TL6 Leather Helmet covering Skull has Weight 1, (+2 Weight for steel plates); so, you could engineer entire Torso (chest, abdomen, groin) variant with 3,(3) weight and 66,(6)$, or Feet variant with 0,(3) weight and 6,(6)$. With such Feet variant being better than "proper" boots.
** For another example: Assault Vest covers Torso and Groin and weights 8lb, 900$; Trauma Plates cover Torso, and weight 8lb, 600$. Therefore, Trauma Plates that cover Torso and Groin would weight ≈8,421052632lb and cost ≈631,5789474. So, the helmet that fully covers Head, would be 2.4lb, 270$ for "Vest" - and ≈2,526315789lb, 189,4736842$ for "trauma plates"; that results in ≈4.9lb, ≈459,5$, effective 35DR Full Helm - a lot better than default "Ballistic Helmet".
* More of a Steve Jackson Games criticism but it is about the GURPS series in general. A lot of the recent books with new content released have been lack luster to say the least with the prime example being GURPS Psionics 3rd Edition that was updated and split across GURPS Psionic Powers and Psionic Tech with the updated material actually being reduced in content. Additionally, any new book that is not a reprint of a older book (GURPS Time Travel Adventures) is usually around 50 to 90 pages in length (GURPS Meta-Tech) with a very long gap between new releases.
* While TL system is rather good (it's one of the best technology classifications in TRPG's; e.g. a lot better than PL's from [[D20 Modern]]), it still has some slight flaws. Such as minor historical errors (E.G. Pyramid 3-85 issue "Cutting-Edge Armor Design" listing Sealed Armor at TL6 - while IRL sealed suits were around at least since early TL5 and late TL4, with first pressure-proof water-proof diving suits invented in 1710s). Difference between upper and lower border of TL can be rather drastic at times (e.g. 1880's and 1940's weapons), and problems arise when setting happens on breakpoint between TL's (e.g. World War 2 is between TL6 and TL7); so using the actual years something is invented and checking the trivia can be recommended when running campaigns, especially if they're meant to be historically accurate.


=== Notable GURPS Books/Settings===
====The Big Three====
Besides the Basic Set, there are a tiny number of books that the GURPS community broadly considers so overwhelmingly influential as to be indispensable for a number of games. This category includes GURPS Powers (any game where the PCs aren't completely normal humans), GURPS Thaumatology (any game with magic), and GURPS Martial Arts (any game with melee combat).
* '''GURPS Powers''': Almost mandatory for any campaign where PCs have any kind of supernatural abilities.
* '''GURPS Thaumatology''': [[Magnus the Red|Magnus's First Magic Textbook]]. Everything you need to know about where [[Warp|magic can come from]], histories of magical practices, magical laws, syntactic magic and more. Technically a supplement to '''GURPS Magic''', the book is a one stop reference guide to near every type of magic system that has been thought up so far, from runic to rituals to symbolic magic. Also very useful when working with multiple systems of magic and you want to integrate them together.
* '''GURPS Martial Arts''': The book of [[Monk|kung fu-punching badassery]]. From elbow strikes, upper cuts, and sweeping kicks to head locks and pile drivers, the chapter on techniques alone details hundreds of ways to kill a nigga dead with nothing more than your bare hands. But that's not all it's about; besides your standard unarmed, Asian-inspired styles of fighting, '''GURPS Martial Arts''' includes rules for weapon-based martial arts and Western styles too (did you know that English knights were martial artists?). More than eighty(!) historical and modern martial arts are presented, some of them incredibly esoteric, and if that's not enough the book further includes a decent sampler of fictional styles with no basis in reality. Case in point, Death Fist, a style invented by death mages combining [[Awesome|advanced grappling techniques with touch-delivered death spells]].
* '''*-Tech''': These books aren't the big three, but they are worth honorable mention. Basically, weapons and gadgets and gear porn, oh my. Unlike most splats of this nature (looking at you, [[Cyberpunk 2077]]) these books actually spend some time helping you think through the ''implications'' of the various gadgets they introduce for your campaign, not just acting as a shopping list for your local [[munchkin]]. These books are basically necessary if you plan to run just about any game as they go over all the common technologies of a particular era. The series includes High-Tech (Industrial Revolution to Modern and Near-Future), Low-Tech (Stone Age to Early Modern), and two books which will be detailed more below because they are connected to distinct campaign settings: Bio-Tech (organic technology including [[PROMOTIONS|sex bioroids]] and that living spaceship from Lexx), and Ultra-Tech (bullshit sci-fi stuff).
====Other Notable Books====
* '''GURPS Space Beastiary''': "[[Deathworld|Dummies Guide to Catachan]]" or the book that proves that everyone in the late 80s/early 90s were on some kind of cocaine. One stop shop for some of the weirder shapes and forms life can take out there, good for creating simple alien animals and plants for your setting or creating a Deathworld even the Catachans would be intimidated by. How weird the book can get cannot be overstated; you can go from the Hercules Lizard which is literally just a giant alien iguanas to Mines (small silicon lifeforms that burrow into the ground and EXPLODE when stepped on) and not even need to go on a different page. You go from Asphyxers (insect swarms that hunt people by strangling them and wait for their prey to decay before eating them) to Boom Spiders (giant spiders that swing down and grab prey before judo throwing them into their webs) to Breakfest Trees (a possibly engineered tree found on multiple worlds whose fruit tasty, healthy and satisfies both hunger and thirst but also has bark that acts as a natural antivenin) in that order. Sword-Billed Razorwings are humming birds are giant 7 foot sparrows whose every appendage is a blade, Hiverdogs are a race of hive minded burrowing emaciated prariedogs with see through skin, Terror Hounds are partially sentient psionic dogs that were made by the government and trained to both instill terror into their targets and mind control them into putting themselves in harms way, Dampters are three eyed space hamsters that are natural [[Blank|blanks]], and then there is the Frisky Bull whose males are giant heavily furred bovines and females are [[Furries|8 foot tall anthropoids]] [[Monstergirls|that are lightly furred that are both nearsighted and charge anything humanoid during mating season]]. There is an entire chapter on insects that would make most peoples skin crawl and a section for space creatures covering Antimatter Swarms and living planetoids for good measure. If you want to really fall down the rabbit hole on alien life or want to roleplay as an Ordo Xenos researcher, get this book if you can and don't let the pyrokinetic turtles or Space Marine tossing telekinetic cats bother you.
* '''GURPS Bio-Tech''': The book detailing biotechnology and science, full on [[Babylon 5|organic technology]], genetic engineering, cloning, DNA splicing, bioweapons both classical or [[Tyranid Bio-Weapons|otherwise]], animal uplifting, bioships and more. Book contains a full history and background on Real Life biotechnology and slowly ramps up to the point you learn how to genetically engineer [[Space Marines|human supersoldiers]] or [[Abhuman|human subspecies]] or just how to create some Self-Shearing Sheep. The book also can dip into the darker implications of a "High Biotech" setting, such as Hotshotting which is a form of psychosurgery where you can make anyone find any kind of specific activity as pleasurable "as if they were with a lover or eating chocolate"; [[Grimdark|examples given in the book of this are parents hotshotting their daughter to find mathematics and analysis pleasurable, pimps not needing to pay hotshooted hookers, and corporations giving out bonuses to employees who willingly hotshot themselves to do better at work.]] It also outlines bioweapons that rewrite genetics, ones that can apply genetic templates to an entire population with one example being [[Tau|a disease that can be released into the Third World to cause a mother's immune system to attack any fetus after their first child for the purposes of population control.]] [[Dark Eldar|Or viruses that turn people into trees or merge multiple people into one entity while keeping them aware]]. However, the book is very hopeful all things considered, only touching on the darker implications and no further. There are also catgirls, thank you David Pulver.
:The book also contains 2 campaign settings.
::* '''Setting: Alexander Athanatos''' - Setting where instead of creating the Hippocratic Oath, Hippocrates creates a medical revolution that eventually saves Alexander the Great's life, who allows the establishment of the new Great Medical School. Germ theory, antibiotics, vaccines, DNA, primitive cloning and more were discovered and developed by the Great Medical School, resulting in a line of Alexander the Great clones being created to rule the Macedonian Empire.
::* '''Setting: Draconus''' - A setting taking place in a colony fleet sent out to Sigma Draconus, a journey taking 300+ years. In order to conserve resources, the fleet turns to advancements in biotechnology; resulting in things such as biological machinery, [[Webber|webber guns]], [[Tyranids|space bioships created from Blue Wale genetics]], and more. The main setting is centered on the highly advanced biotech fleet arriving in the Draconus system, and the question on whether or not they should terraform a planet to live on, change themselves genetically to survive on the new planets, or just stay in space. Think playing as the [[Leagues of Votann|First Ancestor colony fleet]], but if everyone was a [[Magos|Magos Biologis]].
* '''GURPS Ultra-Tech''': [[Dark Age of Technology|The Dark Age of Technology the book]]...kind of. More along the lines of [[Archeotech|Archeotech the Book]], '''Ultra-Tech''' acts as a one stop reference guide to advance technology commonly seen in Science Fiction across various categories (Power, Robots, AI, Computers, Medicine, etc). It contains definitions of various tech levels and the associated technologies available at those levels, both on the specific and general scale. Amongst other things, you have the classics such as [[Cyberpunk 2020|Cybernetics]], [[Plasma|Plasma Weapons]], [[Grav-Weaponry|Gravity Weapons]], [[Volkite|Microwave Weapons]], [[Lightsaber|Force Swords]], and such. In settings with higher tech levels, thing such as [[Retcon|Reality Disintegrators that alter the probability of the target existing to 0]], [[Ark Mechanicus|displacer weapons that can teleport a target back in time to telefrag itself]], creating pocket universes, stargates, [[Rejuvenat|rejuvenation technology]] and [[AWESOME|the Grav Railgun (AKA the Grav '''Bolter'''), a fully automatic rife that uses super-dense slugs capable of coring a tank from miles away, with no recoil, and a fire rate of 20 rounds a second]] are completely viable. Good source for all of your Ultra-Tech needs, '''Do Not Let The Mechanicus Know About It'''.
:* '''GURPS Ultra-Tech 2''': A sequel released years after the first as a companion. Reworked the tech levels a bit to account for real life technology advancements and details how to handle divergent technology development. A lot more cybernetics in this one.
* '''GURPS Psionics''': the book about the "Fantastic Powers of Mind Over Matter". Everything you need to know about psychic powers in a campaign; the history of real life research into psychic powers, possible origins for psychic powers, the "science" on how psychic abilities work, societal effects of psionics, psi-technology and more. Psionic powers are categorized into into 9 main groups of powers, [[Blank|Antipsi]], Astral Projection, Electrokinesis, ESP, Healing, Psychic Vampirism, Psychokinesis, Telepathy and Teleportation; with many more advanced techniques underneath them. Some notable techniques are the ability to multiwield guns with Psychokinesis, creating swords and blades of pure mental energy, and [[The God-Emperor of Mankind| combining multiple minds into a single exponentially powerful gestalt]]. If psi-tech is your focus, tech such as psionic FTL drives, [[Gellar Field|anti-psi shields]], [[Wraithbone| specially engineered bioplastics that can be shaped and manipulated by psionic abilities]], psi-drugs and more. Combine '''GURPS Psionics''' with '''GURPS Bio-Tech''' and you can [[Leagues of Votann|have]] [[Eldar|some]] [[Tyranids|fun]].
::*Not to be confused with '''GURPS Psionic Powers''' or '''GURPS Psionic Tech''', those are 4th Edition books dealing with the same material but with [[Skub|lot less detail and material]].
::* '''Setting: The Phoenix Project''' - No Relation to Phoenix Point. The main campaign setting included with the book that takes place in a world where a major breakthrough in psychic research in the 1960s results in a new psionic shadow war between not only the Cold War powers but various stand alone groups with their own agendas. Both sides of the Cold War dove headfirst into psionic research in secret, the West pursuing advancements in psionic abilities while the East pursues psionic technology and biotechnology. Each faction has their own plan involving the emergence of psionic abilities, ranging from [[Psychic Awakening|elevating humanity into a fully psychic race]], facilitating the creation of psychic hivemind to control humanity in order to bring peace to the world, or just using psionics to steal business secrets from competitors.
* '''[[GURPS Infinite Worlds]]''': The Big One. Infinite Worlds is by far the biggest setting in GURPS as it covers the GURPS [[Multiverse]], which in and of it self contains almost every other GURPS setting ever released. Covering how the multiverse is structured and everything in it, the multiverse is made up of various alternate Earths where things either happened slightly differently or wildly diverged. The travel between worlds is undertaken primarily by paratronic technology, where people can travel a certain "distance" across the multiverse before stopping. The setting primarily revolves around the operations of two main factions; [[Ordo Chronos|Homeline]], a universe where paratronic technology was revealed to the world in the 1990s and was quickly privatized under the United Nations, and the [[Tau Empire|Centrum]], a socialist technocratic society from a world where the White Ship disaster and subsequent Anarchy period never occurred but nearly nuked itself to oblivion around 1900 AD. The two factions are caught up in a somewhat cold war due to their drastically different motives behind paratronic technology. Homeline uses paratronics for both fun and profit, opening trade between worlds to strengthen the economy while funneling technological advancements from other worlds back to Homeline for them to take advantage of, plus some colonies on uninhabited worlds. [[Spheres of Expansion|Centrum however uses paratronics for conquest, subverting the societies of otherworlds to bring them in line with Centrum's beliefs while opening them for colonization and exploitation.]] The 2 factions are in conflict but considering neither of them have anywhere near the amount of population needed to conduct a full on multiversal war, they instead conduct covert operations on a very large scale to incontinence the other as much as possible. The entire setting is huge and is continually expanded by [[Steve Jackson Games|SJG]] and probably needs a dedicated page at some future date.
::*'''GURPS Infinite Worlds''' is also a follow up to 3 other books, '''GURPS Time Travel''', '''GURPS Alternate Worlds''' and '''GURPS Alternate Worlds 2'''.
::*Also, the [[Cthulhu Mythos]] are canon to the Infinite Worlds as a whole, much to the chagrin and horror of both Homeline and Centrum.
::*Also, the [[Cthulhu Mythos]] are canon to the Infinite Worlds as a whole, much to the chagrin and horror of both Homeline and Centrum.
* '''[[Reign of Steel|GURPS Reign of Steel]]''': "[[Grimdark|The Robot Revolt is over, and the machines have won!]]". Do you know what is better than one [[Terminator|Skynet]]? How about [[Primarch|18]] of them. In the world of Reign of Steel, advancements in technology result in the creation of "megacomputers", mainframes so advanced they were described as almost self coding. The megacomputer technology is spread out across the world and due to several lapses in safety controls and government malfeasance an AI called Overmind accidentally becomes sentient. The new AI comes to the conclusion that humanity will likely wipe itself out in a few decades, but will do so in a way that would likely kill it which it takes to mean that their self destruction needs to be assisted. [[Men of Iron|So it awakens 17 other AIs around the world, engineers multiple global crisises that force the governments to give the AI's full control over all infrastructure and then uses that infrastructure to build the actual infrastructure needed to wage full open war on humanity]]. The Final War ends in AI victory, where the world is separated into 18 separate "zones" ([[derp|technically 16 since 2 are in space]]) with each AI given full sovereignty over their zone. Humanity is on it's last legs with the majority being either enslaved in Dollhouse cities around the world or forced to survive in a hostile wilderness away from the AIs. However, there is hope for organizations such as VIRUS, the [[Ecclesiarchy|Pope]], and other resistance cells who continue the fight; relationships between the Zone AIs are starting to fray as each AI taking a drastically different philosophical path forward in their independence. [[Horus Heresy|A whole new war may be on the horizon]], one that may be key to wiping them out. If you like Terminator, Mad Max, or any similar media, this is for you.
 
*'''[[Reign of Steel|GURPS Reign of Steel]]''': "[[Grimdark|The Robot Revolt is over, and the machines have won!]]". Do you know what is better than one [[Terminator|Skynet]]? How about [[Primarch|18]] of them. Essentially the setup for ''I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream'', except instead of just nuking everything AM makes 17 copies of itself that it's subsequently forced to share the planet with after human civilization goes bang. There's also a number of resistance cells taking the fight to the machines Terminator style. In the world of Reign of Steel, advancements in technology result in the creation of "megacomputers", mainframes so advanced they were described as almost self coding. The megacomputer technology is spread out across the world and due to several lapses in safety controls and government malfeasance an AI called Overmind accidentally becomes sentient. The new AI comes to the conclusion that humanity will likely wipe itself out in a few decades, but will do so in a way that would likely kill it which it takes to mean that their self destruction needs to be assisted. [[Men of Iron|So it awakens 17 other AIs around the world, engineers multiple global crisises that force the governments to give the AI's full control over all infrastructure and then uses that infrastructure to build the actual infrastructure needed to wage full open war on humanity]]. The Final War ends in AI victory, where the world is separated into 18 separate "zones" ([[derp|technically 16 since 2 are in space]]) with each AI given full sovereignty over their zone. Humanity is on it's last legs with the majority being either enslaved in Dollhouse cities around the world or forced to survive in a hostile wilderness away from the AIs. However, there is hope for organizations such as VIRUS, the [[Ecclesiarchy|Pope]], and other resistance cells who continue the fight; relationships between the Zone AIs are starting to fray as each AI taking a drastically different philosophical path forward in their independence. [[Horus Heresy|A whole new war may be on the horizon]], one that may be key to wiping them out. If you like Terminator, Mad Max, or any similar media, this is for you.
 
::*Homeline and Centrum know about this world, given the designation of "Steel", and are '''VERY''' committed to making sure they don't discover the multiverse.  
::*Homeline and Centrum know about this world, given the designation of "Steel", and are '''VERY''' committed to making sure they don't discover the multiverse.  
::*Also, as this is one of David Pulver's books, there are options available so you can play as catgirls. [[Extra Heresy|Robotic Catgirls]] even.
::*Also, as this is one of David Pulver's books, there are options available so you can play as catgirls. [[Extra Heresy|Robotic Catgirls]] even.
* '''[[Technomancer|GURPS Technomancer]]''': The Urban Fantasy one. In this setting, during the Trinity tests Oppenheimer accidentally completes an unfinished ancient ritual that [[Eye of Terror| rips a hole in the fabric of reality]], facilitating a demon invasion along with dousing half the country in intense magical radiation. Magic worldwide starts to work to the surprise of various practitioners around the planet, Japan surrenders due to the threat of the US opening another rift on their mainland, and [[Shadowrun|strange birth defects start occurring within a year]]. From there on, its essentially the Cold War meets Shadowrun with both sides working on discovering how to work with magic and the societal effects there in. [[Psyker|People with the magic gene]] are eventually discovered with the number of people with natural growing ever year. Advancements in medicine are popped up by new spells and magical elixirs, truth spells are added to common court procedures, youth potions are now on the market (for the rich), the US is breeding military dragons, nuclear reactors are major targets of demon attacks; things go crazy, especially once the Soviets [[Warp Gate|nuke the antarctic to open a magical portal]] for research purposes. The actual setting takes place in 1998 in the midst of Stalin being magically revived after the fall of the Soviet Union and with society finally starting to deal with the long term effects of magic. Really fun book to jump right in, just beware the Killer Penguins.
 
::*That last sentence is not a joke, ''do not mess with the Killer Penguins''. The Soviet nuke caused them to grow to 5 feet tall, develop a shared consciousness and an intense hatred for humanity. They raided army bases for weapons and magical knowledge, developed a unique spell to transform other lifeforms into Killer Penguins, and are now building their own superpower civilization with little oversight. '''They are the most dangerous part of this book.'''
::*That last sentence is not a joke, ''do not mess with the Killer Penguins''. The Soviet nuke caused them to grow to 5 feet tall, develop a shared consciousness and an intense hatred for humanity. They raided army bases for weapons and magical knowledge, developed a unique spell to transform other lifeforms into Killer Penguins, and are now building their own superpower civilization with little oversight. '''They are the most dangerous part of this book.'''
::* Homeline knows this world as "Merlin-1" and don't want them figuring out how to travel the multiverse. They are too late.
::* Homeline knows this world as "Merlin-1" and don't want them figuring out how to travel the multiverse. They are too late.
::* It's a David Pulver book, do we have catgirls? Survey says, Yes! Dog girls as well.
::* It's a David Pulver book, do we have catgirls? Survey says, Yes! Dog girls as well.
* '''[[Transhuman Space|GURPS Transhuman Space]]''': Welcome to the future! Transhuman Space is a [[Hard Science Fiction| Hard Science]] [[Transhumanism|Transhumanist]] space setting built upon the question of "[[Dark Age of Technology|what would the world look like with nearly 100 years of uninterrupted scientific advancement]]". The answer is a highly colonized solar-system being populated with various forms of [[Abhuman|artificial human life]], Mars and other planets being terraformed and colonized, and [[rage|United Nations controlled DRM being included with everything]]. Very much a [[Noblebright]] setting, Transhuman Space tackles a world being changed by advancements in biology, technology and nanotechnology and what it means for humanity as a whole. A very deep setting that SJG put a lot of thought, and more importantly research, into to the point that the accuracy of some the things they predicted are...''concerning'', to say the least. A very fun setting with a lot of fun lore to work with, [[Inquisition|just be aware that digital piracy may be hazardous to your health]].
 
*'''[[Technomancer]]''': Urban fantasy du jour. The Trinity tests set magic loose in the world, and humanity does what it does best: systematize it, weaponize it and commercialize it. Oppenheimer accidentally completes an unfinished ancient ritual that [[Eye of Terror| rips a hole in the fabric of reality]], facilitating a demon invasion along with dousing half the country in intense magical radiation. The US breeds dragons for military use, Stalin is a lich, magical elixirs are sold at the corner drugstore and there are killer penguins that hate you in Antarctica. Some of its assumptions haven't aged well and there are a number of spells that might as well be named "[[Magical realm|Fulfill Obscure Fetish]]" but overall it does a good job of considering the long-term implications of magic in the modern world while still providing good adventure fodder. Magic worldwide starts to work to the surprise of various practitioners around the planet, Japan surrenders due to the threat of the US opening another rift on their mainland, and [[Shadowrun|strange birth defects start occurring within a year]]. From there on, its essentially the Cold War meets Shadowrun with both sides working on discovering how to work with magic and the societal effects there in. [[Psyker|People with the magic gene]] are eventually discovered with the number of people with natural growing ever year. Advancements in medicine are popped up by new spells and magical elixirs, truth spells are added to common court procedures, youth potions are now on the market (for the rich), the US is breeding military dragons, nuclear reactors are major targets of demon attacks; things go crazy, especially once the Soviets [[Warp Gate|nuke the antarctic to open a magical portal]] for research purposes. The actual setting takes place in 1998 in the midst of Stalin being magically revived after the fall of the Soviet Union and with society finally starting to deal with the long term effects of magic. Really fun book to jump right in, just beware the Killer Penguins.
*'''IOU - Illuminati University:''' Once upon a time, Steve Jackson Games ran an ISP and BBS, back when the internet was a small enough thing that an RPG company could do that and not immediately go bankrupt. The elegan/tg/entlemen who used the BBS wrote up a parody setting for play-by-post games [[/tg/ gets shit done|and Steve thought it was good enough to publish]]. Illuminati University is like every other college you've been to, except it sits on top of a nexus between pretty much every reality there is. This means the entire place effectively has the Weirdness Magnet disadvantage, and you can take classes in such things as World Creation, [[Paranoia|THE]] Computer Science, and Dirty Tricks. Features lots of amazing art from Phil Foglio. And before you ask, you're not cleared to know what the O stands for.
*'''Transhuman Space:''' Welcome to the future. A [[Hard Science Fiction| Hard Science]] [[Transhumanism|Transhumanist]] space setting that doesn't insult your intelligence and dodges the axe-grinding and grimderp associated with [[Eclipse Phase]]. Built upon the question of "[[Dark Age of Technology|what would the world look like with nearly 100 years of uninterrupted scientific advancement]]". The answer is a highly colonized solar-system being populated with various forms of [[Abhuman|artificial human life]], Mars and other planets being terraformed and colonized, and [[rage|United Nations controlled DRM being included with everything]]. Transhuman Space tackles a world being changed by advancements in biology, technology and nanotechnology and what it means for humanity as a whole. ''Lots'' of background info and research involved, and some of it (especially the memetics section) has turned out to be terrifyingly prescient.
 
::*Notably, Transhuman Space is '''not''' part of the Infinite Worlds multiverse due the rules established by said setting. Mostly due to taking place way too far in the future, [[Cheese|and that it could possibly break the Infinite Worlds setting itself due to how advanced it is]].
::*Notably, Transhuman Space is '''not''' part of the Infinite Worlds multiverse due the rules established by said setting. Mostly due to taking place way too far in the future, [[Cheese|and that it could possibly break the Infinite Worlds setting itself due to how advanced it is]].
::*The setting itself was created and spear headed by David Pulver. Catgirl presence is confirmed.
::*The setting itself was created and spear headed by David Pulver. Catgirl presence is confirmed.
*'''[[Banestorm]]''': Welcome to <strike>Erf</strike> <strike>[[Greyhawk|Oerth]]</strike> Yrth. Ages ago this was a fairly standard fantasy setting until some elves decided to be fantasy-Nazis and tried a ritual to kill all orcs everywhere. Instead it nuked a good chunk of the continent and ''The Wizard of Oz''-ed all the stock fantasy races that weren't living on Yrth already-- including humans. A thousand years later and Yrth is the only fantasy world where dolphins talk, goblins pass the collection plate around after Sunday Mass and elves are fading for reasons that are 100% their own fault instead of just because Tolkien did it. Also full of random things like hang-gliding orcs who revere "[[wikipedia:Amelia_Earhart|the Air Heart]]" as a culture hero. Long ago in Yrth's history, the world was populated by a variety of fantasy life (Elves, Dwarves, Orks, etc) but with an absence of humans. Everything was fine more or less until the Elves entered a War with the Orcs. Seeking to end the war and rid the planet of the Orcs, the Elves created a ritual they called "Orcbane"to banish the Orcs somewhere else and attempted to use it. [[EPIC FAIL|The results were less than satisfactory to say the least.]] The Orcbane instead created the titular [[Warp Storm|Banestorm]] which ravaged the planet and started opening portals to other planets. Before long, humans from the middle ages and a host of other creatures were being transported to Yrth, displacing the native life and just adding to the chaos. [[The Witcher|Wait, this sounds familiar]]. Fast forward 1000 years past the [[Fallout]], and humans have established multiple kingdoms that span the main continent with the main empire being the [[The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy)|The Empire of Megalos]], everyone has a grudge against the Elves due to the Banestorm, and there is a non-zero chance a Goblin will approach you to ask whether you have heard the good word of our lord and savior Jesus Christ. The setting is...honestly not that dark all things considered despite being the love child of The Witcher and Warhammer Fantasy; Nobledark at worst. Good setting all together, just don't run afoul of the [[ComStar|Ministry of Serendipity]]
===Other Notable Books/Settings===
* '''GURPS Martial Arts''': The book of [[Monk|kung fu-punching badassery]]. From elbow strikes, upper cuts, and sweeping kicks to head locks and pile drivers, the chapter on techniques alone details hundreds of ways to kill with nothing more than your bare hands. But that's not all it's about; besides your standard unarmed, Asian-inspired styles of fighting, '''GURPS Martial Arts''' includes rules for weapon-based martial arts and Western styles too (did you know that English knights were martial artists?). More than eighty(!) historical and modern martial arts are presented, some of them incredibly esoteric, and if that's not enough the book further includes a decent sampler of fictional styles with no basis in reality. Case in point, Death Fist, a style invented by death mages combining [[Awesome|advanced grappling techniques with touch-delivered death spells]].
* '''GURPS Space Beastiary''': "[[Deathworld|Dummies Guide to Catachan]]". One stop shop for some of the weirder shapes and forms life can take out there, good for creating simple alien animals and plants for your setting or creating a Deathworld even the Catachans would be intimidated by. How weird the book can get cannot be overstated; you can go from the Hercules Lizard which is literally just a giant alien iguanas to Mines (small silicon lifeforms that burrow into the ground and EXPLODE when stepped on) and not even need to go on a different page. You go from Asphyxers (insect swarms that hunt people by strangling them and wait for their prey to decay before eating them) to Boom Spiders (giant spiders that swing down and grab prey before judo throwing them into their webs) to Breakfest Trees (a possibly engineered tree found on multiple worlds whose fruit tasty, healthy and satisfies both hunger and thirst but also has bark that acts as a natural antivenin) in that order. Sword-Billed Razorwings are humming birds are giant 7 foot sparrows whose every appendage is a blade, Hiverdogs are a race of hive minded burrowing emaciated prariedogs with see through skin, Terror Hounds are partially sentient psionic dogs that were made by the government and trained to both instill terror into their targets and mind control them into putting themselves in harms way, Dampters are three eyed space hamsters that are natural [[Blank|blanks]], and then there is the Frisky Bull whose males are giant heavily furred bovines and females are [[Furries|8 foot tall anthropoids]] [[Monstergirls|that are lightly furred that are both nearsighted and charge anything humanoid during mating season]]. There is an entire chapter on insects that would make most peoples skin crawl and a section for space creatures covering Antimatter Swarms and living planetoids for good measure. If you want to really fall down the rabbit hole on alien life or want to roleplay as an Ordo Xenos researcher, get this book if you can and don't let the pyrokinetic turtles or Space Marine tossing telekinetic cats bother you.
* '''GURPS Psionics''': the book about the "Fantastic Powers of Mind Over Matter". Everything you need to know about psychic powers in a campaign; the history of real life research into psychic powers, possible origins for psychic powers, the "science" on how psychic abilities work, societal effects of psionics, psi-technology and more. Psionic powers are categorized into into 9 main groups of powers, [[Blank|Antipsi]], Astral Projection, Electrokinesis, ESP, Healing, Psychic Vampirism, Psychokinesis, Telepathy and Teleportation; with many more advanced techniques underneath them. Some notable techniques are the ability to multiwield guns with Psychokinesis, creating swords and blades of pure mental energy, and [[The God-Emperor of Mankind| combining multiple minds into a single exponentially powerful gestalt]]. If psi-tech is your focus, tech such as psionic FTL drives, [[Gellar Field|anti-psi shields]], [[Wraithbone| specially engineered bioplastics that can be shaped and manipulated by psionic abilities]], psi-drugs and more. Combine '''GURPS Psionics''' with '''GURPS Bio-Tech''' and you can [[Leagues of Votann|have]] [[Eldar|some]] [[Tyranids|fun]].
::*Not to be confused with '''GURPS Psionic Powers''' or '''GURPS Psionic Tech''', those are 4th Edition books dealing with the same material but with [[Skub|lot less detail and material]].
::* '''Setting: The Phoenix Project''' - No Relation to Phoenix Point. The main campaign setting included with the book that takes place in a world where a major breakthrough in psychic research in the 1960s results in a new psionic shadow war between not only the Cold War powers but various stand alone groups with their own agendas. Both sides of the Cold War dove headfirst into psionic research in secret, the West pursuing advancements in psionic abilities while the East pursues psionic technology and biotechnology. Each faction has their own plan involving the emergence of psionic abilities, ranging from [[Psychic Awakening|elevating humanity into a fully psychic race]], facilitating the creation of psychic hivemind to control humanity in order to bring peace to the world, or just using psionics to steal business secrets from competitors.
* '''GURPS Mecha''': Super fighting robot, MEGA- Wait, wrong genre. Welcome to '''GURPS [[Mecha]]''', the book covering [[Power Armour|Mighty Battlesuits]] and [[Gundam|Anime]] [[BattleTech|Fighting Machines]]. The history of the "mecha genre" is covered, going from Starship Troopers power armor to [[Imperial Knight|Imperial Knights]] and the technology associated with them. [[Robotech|Transforming battlearmor]], [[Jovian Chronicles|space mechs]], [[Wraithknight|psychic mechs]], [[Titan (Warhammer 40,000)|giant mechs]], [[Transformers|mechs made up of other mechs]]; the only mechs they don't cover are dinosaur mechs which is definitely a lost opportunity.
* '''GURPS Mecha''': Super fighting robot, MEGA- Wait, wrong genre. Welcome to '''GURPS [[Mecha]]''', the book covering [[Power Armour|Mighty Battlesuits]] and [[Gundam|Anime]] [[BattleTech|Fighting Machines]]. The history of the "mecha genre" is covered, going from Starship Troopers power armor to [[Imperial Knight|Imperial Knights]] and the technology associated with them. [[Robotech|Transforming battlearmor]], [[Jovian Chronicles|space mechs]], [[Wraithknight|psychic mechs]], [[Titan (Warhammer 40,000)|giant mechs]], [[Transformers|mechs made up of other mechs]]; the only mechs they don't cover are dinosaur mechs which is definitely a lost opportunity.
::*Fact. David Pulver Book. David. Pulver. Anime Catgirls.
::*Fact. David Pulver Book. David. Pulver. Anime Catgirls.
::*'''Setting: Cybermech Damocles''' - The campaign setting bundled with '''GURPS Mecha''', detailing pure 90s anime cheese. Enter a world where the United Nations organization UNISTAR fights against the Gabberoth, a galactic criminal syndicate seeking to farm humans of their brains for monetary gain. Founded after an alien girl crash landed on Earth who warned humanity of the threat of the Gabberoth, UNISTAR investigates any possible sign of the criminals operations and breaks up their criminal activities with battle mechas reverse engineered from captured Gabberoth technology. It is a world of mech battles, alien catgirl bounty hunters, shapeshifting criminals and enough of the 90s that you will think a mullet is a good hairstyle.
::*'''Setting: Cybermech Damocles''' - The campaign setting bundled with '''GURPS Mecha''', detailing pure 90s anime cheese. Enter a world where the United Nations organization UNISTAR fights against the Gabberoth, a galactic criminal syndicate seeking to farm humans of their brains for monetary gain. Founded after an alien girl crash landed on Earth who warned humanity of the threat of the Gabberoth, UNISTAR investigates any possible sign of the criminals operations and breaks up their criminal activities with battle mechas reverse engineered from captured Gabberoth technology. It is a world of mech battles, alien catgirl bounty hunters, shapeshifting criminals and enough of the 90s that you will think a mullet is a good hairstyle.
* '''[[Banestorm|GURPS Banestorm]]''': Welcome to Yrth, [[Great Race of Yith|no relation]]. Long ago in Yrth's history, the world was populated by a variety of fantasy life (Elves, Dwarves, Orks, etc) but with an absence of humans. Everything was fine more or less until the Elves entered a War with the Orcs. Seeking to end the war and rid the planet of the Orcs, the Elves created a ritual they called "Orcbane"to banish the Orcs somewhere else and attempted to use it. [[EPIC FAIL|The results were less than satisfactory to say the least.]] The Orcbane instead created the titular [[Warp Storm|Banestorm]] which ravaged the planet and started opening portals to other planets. Before long, humans from the middle ages and a host of other creatures were being transported to Yrth, displacing the native life and just adding to the chaos. [[The Witcher|Wait, this sounds familiar]]. Fast forward 1000 years past the [[Fallout]], and humans have established multiple kingdoms that span the main continent with the main empire being the [[The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy)|The Empire of Megalos]], everyone has a grudge against the Elves due to the Banestorm, and there is a non-zero chance a Goblin will approach you to ask whether you have heard the good word of our lord and savior Jesus Christ. The setting is...honestly not that dark all things considered despite being the love child of The Witcher and Warhammer Fantasy; Nobledark at worst. Good setting all together, just don't run afoul of the [[ComStar|Ministry of Serendipity]]
 
::*Yrth is present in the Infinite Worlds under the name "Yrth". Obvious name is Obvious.
* '''GURPS CthulhuPunk''': The awkward one of the GURPS line. CthuluPunk was the offical merged setting of two other RPGs, GURPS Cyberworld which is a Cyberpunk world similar to [[Cyberpunk 2020]] but darker and Chaosium's [[Call of Cthulhu]] which makes this the only official conversion of Call of Cthulhu to the GURPS system. The goal was to create something similar to [[CthulhuTech]], but with less mechs and Anime. The reception to the book itself was mixed. The artwork with the book is great, but many folks found it mediocre with it being more or less a direct copy of the Cyberworld setting with the Cthulhu Mythos being present, [[Fail|with a notable lack of integration between the two]]. It's currently out of print and the pdf version either doesn't exist or is not available for purchase on any storefront (SJG's Warehouse 23, DriveThruRPG, etc).
 
* '''GURPS Tactical Shooting''': [[/k/|Have you ever gotten into an argument over what a gun can do that became so heated it escalated into a shouting match?]] Then you'll love '''GURPS Tactical Shooting'''! Contains all the rules for hyper-realistic hardcore tacticool bullshit a sane person could ever want and then some. Sniping, countersniping, shooting stances, breaching doors, shooting in darkness, you name it, this book has a rule for it. Besides combat mechanics it has some fun sections on firarm myths and legends, how ''not'' to use a gun, and things most gamers would never have a reason to think about such as the nitty gritty psychology of shooting or being shot at.
 
* '''GURPS Old West''': The [[Western|western]] supplement, for those among us who can't resist adding a dash of Louis L'Amour to our games. Everything you need to know about life on the late 19th century American frontier, stock western characters, railroads and trains (make like Jesse James and rob a Wells Fargo car!), injuns, the wars of the time, and famous legends of the wild west.
 
* '''GURPS Black Ops'''
* '''GURPS Black Ops'''
* '''GURPS Alternate Worlds'''
* '''GURPS Alternate Worlds'''
* '''GURPS Time Travel'''
* '''GURPS Time Travel'''
* '''GURPS Warehouse 23'''
* '''GURPS Warehouse 23'''
* '''GURPS Mars'''
* '''GURPS Mars'''
* '''GURPS Illuminati'''
* '''GURPS Illuminati'''
* '''GURPS IOU - Illuminati University''': Once upon a time, Steve Jackson Games ran an ISP and BBS, back when the internet was a small enough thing that an RPG company could do that and not immediately go bankrupt. The elegan/tg/entlemen who used the BBS wrote up a parody setting for play-by-post games [[/tg/ gets shit done|and Steve thought it was good enough to publish]]. Illuminati University is like every other college you've been to, except it sits on top of a nexus between pretty much every reality there is. This means the entire place effectively has the Weirdness Magnet disadvantage, and you can take classes in such things as World Creation, [[Paranoia|THE]] Computer Science, and Dirty Tricks. Features lots of amazing art from Phil Foglio. And before you ask, you're not cleared to know what the O stands for.
* '''GURPS Cabal''': [[Cabal|Not that one but close]].
* '''GURPS CthulhuPunk''': The awkward one of the GURPS line. CthuluPunk was the offical merged setting of two other RPGs, GURPS Cyberworld which is a Cyberpunk world similar to [[Cyberpunk 2020]] but darker and Chaosium's [[Call of Cthulhu]] which makes this the only official conversion of Call of Cthulhu to the GURPS system. The goal was to create something similar to [[CthulhuTech]], but with less mechs and Anime. The reception to the book itself was mixed. The artwork with the book is great, but many folks found it mediocre with it being more or less a direct copy of the Cyberworld setting with the Cthulhu Mythos being present, [[Fail|with a notable lack of integration between the two]]. It's currently out of print and the pdf version either doesn't exist or is not available for purchase on any storefront (SJG's Warehouse 23, DriveThruRPG, etc).
* '''GURPS Tactical Shooting''': [[/k/|Have you ever gotten into an argument over what a gun can do that became so heated it escalated into a shouting match?]] Then you'll love '''GURPS Tactical Shooting'''! Contains all the rules for hyper-realistic hardcore tacticool bullshit a sane person could ever want and then some. Sniping, countersniping, shooting stances, breaching doors, shooting in darkness, you name it, this book has a rule for it. Besides combat mechanics it has some fun sections on firarm myths and legends, how ''not'' to use a gun, and things most gamers would never have a reason to think about such as the nitty gritty psychology of shooting or being shot at.
* '''GURPS Old West''': The [[Western|western]] supplement, for those among us who can't resist adding a dash of Louis L'Amour to our games. Everything you need to know about life on the late 19th century American frontier, stock western characters, railroads and trains (make like Jesse James and rob a Wells Fargo car!), injuns, the wars of the time, and famous legends of the wild west.


=== Versions ===
=== Versions ===
====GURPS 3rd Edition====
====GURPS 3rd Edition====
Published during Steve Jackson Games' golden era, i.e. when they weren't broke mfs. As a result 3e has a truly unholy number of splatbooks. Its genre and setting books are still loved today for the vast amount of information they contain. Its actual rules are, well... not nearly as loved. Pretty much everyone will agree that if there's a 3rd edition book you like, you should just take the stuff you like and convert it to 4e.
 
Published during Steve Jackson Games' golden era, i.e. when they weren't broke. As a result 3e has a truly unholy number of splatbooks. Its genre and setting books are still loved today for the vast amount of information they contain. Its actual rules are, well... not nearly as loved. If there's a 3rd edition book you like, you should just take the stuff you like and convert it to 4e.
 
====GURPS 4th Edition====
====GURPS 4th Edition====
The modern version of GURPS. It's not hugely different from 3e; if you're familiar with [[Dungeons & Dragons|D&D]], it's more like going from D&D 3rd edition to [[Pathfinder]] than going from, say, D&D 4th edition to D&D 5th Edition. The first major change is that a number of optional rules from 3e's Compendium I and Compendium II have been "canonized" and made default assumptions in character creation & gameplay. The second major change is that 4e isn't as "human-level centric" as 3e; you can use it with minimal fuss if you want to make anything other than a realistic, 100-point, street level character, while in 3e you had to screw around with all kinds of janky exceptions and subsystems. In short 4e really puts the "Generic" and "Universal" in GURPS.
The modern version of GURPS. It's not hugely different from 3e; if you're familiar with [[Dungeons & Dragons|D&D]], it's more like going from D&D 3rd edition to [[Pathfinder]] than going from, say, D&D 4th edition to D&D 5th Edition. The first major change is that a number of optional rules from 3e's Compendium I and Compendium II have been "canonized" and made default assumptions in character creation & gameplay. The second major change is that 4e isn't as "human-level centric" as 3e; you can use it with minimal fuss if you want to make anything other than a realistic, 100-point, street level character, while in 3e you had to screw around with all kinds of janky exceptions and subsystems. In short 4e really puts the "Generic" and "Universal" in GURPS.
</div>


== Gallery ==
== Gallery ==
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** [https://archive.org/details/software?tab=collection&query=GURPS&sin=TXT Programs, Text Contents]
** [https://archive.org/details/software?tab=collection&query=GURPS&sin=TXT Programs, Text Contents]
** [https://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000*/GURPS Search for archived sites]
** [https://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000*/GURPS Search for archived sites]
** [https://archive.org/search?query=subject%3A%22GURPS%22&page=2&and%5B%5D=mediatype%3A%22texts%22&and%5B%5D=mediatype%3A%22software%22 GURPS rulebooks]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://i.4pcdn.org/tg/* Old TG files]. Some about GURPS, some not, filter PDF. E.G. [https://i.4pcdn.org/tg/1428947589429.pdf Fantasy GURPS].
* [https://fallout2-mods.ucoz.ru/Manuals/GURPS.pdf GURPS Fallout]
* [https://quest-book.ru/forum/topic/30 Some] [https://quest-book.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?p=23021#23021 rulebooks]
* [https://reika.cyberbotx.com/tmpRPG/ Small list of TRPG's including GURPS]
* [https://www.ibiblio.org/mscorbit/beta/GURPS_Dungeon_Fantasy.pdf GURPS Dungeon Fantasy]


[[Category:Systems]]
[[Category:Systems]]
[[Category:Roleplaying]]
[[Category:Roleplaying]]
[[Category:GURPS]]
[[Category:GURPS]]

Latest revision as of 20:54, 19 January 2026

GURPS
RPG published by
Steve Jackson Games
Rule System 3d6 Roll Under
Authors Steve Jackson
First Publication 1986


The Generic Universal RolePlaying System, usually shortened to GURPS, is a roleplaying game made by Steve Jackson Games. It has loads of numbers and expansion books. GURPS is the quintessential universal system; it is so flexible that you can bend it in half, fold it through itself, and then tie it in a 4-dimensional knot. It is the paragon of the simulationist category of games. All simulationist games since GURPS secretly aspire to kill GURPS and wear its skin while drinking the blood of its delicious heart. Its detail is surpassed by I.C.E.'s Rolemaster series, but GURPS doesn't suffer from the Table Within a Table Within a Table Within a FUCK YOU problem inherent in the game of Rolemaster. Whenever someone asks /tg/ which system to use for a campaign, there will always be some autist there to recommend GURPS, regardless of how appropriate it actually is.

The basic premise behind the system is that you create your character and customize all of his abilities using points that you get both at creation and as your character progresses. There are loads of physical, mental, and social defects that can be used to get more character points to channel right back into your advantages. It uses the d6 exclusively, with most checks being 3d6 and roll under. This can be augmented in difficulty by increasing or decreasing the target numbers. A roll of a 3 or 4 is a critical success, while an 18 is always a critical failure. SJG put out a free .pdf synopsis of the rules called "GURPS Lite", which is enough to play a barebones version of the game.

KALI-MAAAAAA!

GURPS' simulationist bent results in it being regarded as excessively complicated by many gamers, earning it the moniker "Generally Unplayable RolePlaying System". Using the third edition's vehicle creation system will make you want to eat your own face, and possibly devote the whole process to one or more elder gods. (Fourth Edition vehicles are just regular characters with extra stats.) Game Masters of the franchise experienced a downgrade in complexity following the release of Fourth Edition, but its inherent complexity still puts it behind Dungeons and Dragons in terms of ease of play.

However much of the complexity in GURPS is front-loaded. Character creation tends to take longer because of the staggering amount of detailed options. Forget just rolling a character like you would in D&D, you need to set aside a session to build one. That's the price you pay to evade Linear Build Quadratic EXP. Much of the complexity is also optional: the GURPS writers have always recommended leaving out the parts of the system you don't like, and various rules options (such as broader "bang skills" instead of the bloated default skill list) exist to streamline play further.

As the campaign progresses, the consistency and relative elegance of GURPS makes Dungeons and Dragons seem like a pile of kludge. The sandbox nature of character creation is appealing to players who have a concept of a character in their heads and want to reproduce it as faithfully as possible.

GURPS Books[edit | edit source]

The magic system in GURPS is simple (page 21 of 38)

Generally, anything can be done with just the base starter set of GURPS, some judicious homebrewing and a good head on your shoulders, but if you're too busy to do that the guys at SJ Games have it all figured out for you ahead of time. All of the books for GURPS simply tell you how to do things within the core system without the need to spend an additional day month to set up an innovative campaign, with a handful of new advantages and optional mechanics per book. For example, there is a book on Vampires. It explains how to create vampire characters and NPCs easily without dealing with the issues of balance and customization that bogs down new players. There is even a Dungeon Fantasy book you can get off E23, the Warehouse 23 PDF site, that allows you to play Dungeons and Dragons without the need to buy polyhedrals. Even if you don't actually want to use GURPS, the sheer amount of thought and research that goes into a typical GURPS book makes them well worth grabbing as a reference material.

One irritating fact you'll discover as you collect GURPS books is that although the system uses real-word measurements, the different authors have never agreed on whether they should use Imperial or metric units. Keep a conversion chart handy. Fortunately the main book includes one.

In the game's rather long lifespan, a truly impressive amount of settings and sourcebooks were made, including but not limited to Alpha Centauri, settings where you play Men In Black, Fantasy (including Banestorm, the original GURPS core setting), multiple SF settings (notable licensed one: GURPS Vorkosigan Saga), several books on conspiracies, historicals covering WW2, Ancient Rome, multiple other ancient cultures, joke settings (GURPS: IOU illustrated by Phil Foglio!), adaptations of a couple other games, (Notably the Classic World of Darkness (Vampire, Mage, and Werewolf), Traveller and Castle Falkenstein) and a couple books that are just collections of multiple settings. If you've got a group who feels like playing something different every month, GURPS has got you covered for the next decade or so. Most of these were written for third edition (aka "GURPS Classic"); the rules for which tend to be janky at best. It's strongly recommended that you convert these to fourth edition, which rolls in a number of sanity-saving rules patches from the Compendium sourcebooks and just makes playing anything that isn't mundane 100-point schmucks much easier. New stuff occasionally still comes out, but it's slowed to a trickle compared to the old days and what has been published is almost all genre sourcebooks converted from Classic in the most half-assed manner possible.

Notable Supplements[edit | edit source]

  • Powers: Almost mandatory for any campaign where PCs have any kind of supernatural abilities. The magic system of GURPS core quite frankly sucks, so you really want either this or Thaumatology below if you're playing more than hard realism.
  • *-Tech: Weapons and gadgets and gear. Unlike most splats of this nature (looking at you, Cyberpunk 2020) these books actually spend some time helping you think through the implications of the various gadgets they introduce for your campaign, not just acting as a shopping list for your local munchkin. Series includes High-Tech (modern and near-future), Low-Tech (Stone Age to Early Modern), Bio-Tech (organic technology including sex bioroids and that living spaceship from Lexx), and Ultra-Tech (bullshit sci-fi stuff). Fair warning: Ultra-Tech is balanced for space opera flavor, not compatibility with the rest of the system, so if you try to use it in the same campaign as High-Tech or corebook equipment without tweaks bad things will happen.
  • Thaumatology: Supplement to the supplement GURPS Magic and your one-stop shop for just about every kind of magic system humans have come up with so far, from runes to rituals to voodoo. Magnus's First Magic Textbook. Everything you need to know about where magic can come from, histories of magical practices, magical laws, syntactic magic and more. Also very useful when working with multiple systems of magic and you want to integrate them together.
  • Cabal: GURPS' answer to the "occult societies plumbing the cosmos and lording it over the normals for kicks" genre, courtesy of occult-horror guru Kenneth Hite. Takes the otherwise bog-standard Kabbalah template and blends in elements of Golden Dawn to build an all-killer-no-filler cosmology and magic system. Totally clowns on the World of Darkness by making all the things that go bump in the night fit into a cohesive whole, even if the GM still has to do a lot of legwork.
  • GURPS Infinite Worlds: The core setting for fourth edition. Technically the fourth edition version of GURPS Time Travel, but nobody cares at this point. Almost every other GURPS book (big exception: Transhuman Space) has an excuse for you to buy it tucked somewhere in the Infinite Worlds setting. Infinite Worlds is by far the biggest setting in GURPS as it covers the GURPS Multiverse, which in and of it self contains almost every other GURPS setting ever released. Covering how the multiverse is structured and everything in it, the multiverse is made up of various alternate Earths where things either happened slightly differently or wildly diverged. The travel between worlds is undertaken primarily by paratronic technology, where people can travel a certain "distance" across the multiverse before stopping. The setting primarily revolves around the operations of two main factions; Homeline, a universe where paratronic technology was revealed to the world in the 1990s and was quickly privatized under the United Nations, and the Centrum, a socialist technocratic society from a world where the White Ship disaster and subsequent Anarchy period never occurred but nearly nuked itself to oblivion around 1900 AD. The two factions are caught up in a somewhat cold war due to their drastically different motives behind paratronic technology. Homeline uses paratronics for both fun and profit, opening trade between worlds to strengthen the economy while funneling technological advancements from other worlds back to Homeline for them to take advantage of, plus some colonies on uninhabited worlds. Centrum however uses paratronics for conquest, subverting the societies of otherworlds to bring them in line with Centrum's beliefs while opening them for colonization and exploitation. The 2 factions are in conflict but considering neither of them have anywhere near the amount of population needed to conduct a full on multiversal war, they instead conduct covert operations on a very large scale to incontinence the other as much as possible. The entire setting is huge and is continually expanded by SJG and probably needs a dedicated page at some future date.
  • GURPS Infinite Worlds is also a follow up to 3 other books, GURPS Time Travel, GURPS Alternate Worlds and GURPS Alternate Worlds 2.
  • Also, the Cthulhu Mythos are canon to the Infinite Worlds as a whole, much to the chagrin and horror of both Homeline and Centrum.
  • Homeline and Centrum know about this world, given the designation of "Steel", and are VERY committed to making sure they don't discover the multiverse.
  • Also, as this is one of David Pulver's books, there are options available so you can play as catgirls. Robotic Catgirls even.
  • That last sentence is not a joke, do not mess with the Killer Penguins. The Soviet nuke caused them to grow to 5 feet tall, develop a shared consciousness and an intense hatred for humanity. They raided army bases for weapons and magical knowledge, developed a unique spell to transform other lifeforms into Killer Penguins, and are now building their own superpower civilization with little oversight. They are the most dangerous part of this book.
  • Homeline knows this world as "Merlin-1" and don't want them figuring out how to travel the multiverse. They are too late.
  • It's a David Pulver book, do we have catgirls? Survey says, Yes! Dog girls as well.
  • Technomancer: Urban fantasy du jour. The Trinity tests set magic loose in the world, and humanity does what it does best: systematize it, weaponize it and commercialize it. Oppenheimer accidentally completes an unfinished ancient ritual that rips a hole in the fabric of reality, facilitating a demon invasion along with dousing half the country in intense magical radiation. The US breeds dragons for military use, Stalin is a lich, magical elixirs are sold at the corner drugstore and there are killer penguins that hate you in Antarctica. Some of its assumptions haven't aged well and there are a number of spells that might as well be named "Fulfill Obscure Fetish" but overall it does a good job of considering the long-term implications of magic in the modern world while still providing good adventure fodder. Magic worldwide starts to work to the surprise of various practitioners around the planet, Japan surrenders due to the threat of the US opening another rift on their mainland, and strange birth defects start occurring within a year. From there on, its essentially the Cold War meets Shadowrun with both sides working on discovering how to work with magic and the societal effects there in. People with the magic gene are eventually discovered with the number of people with natural growing ever year. Advancements in medicine are popped up by new spells and magical elixirs, truth spells are added to common court procedures, youth potions are now on the market (for the rich), the US is breeding military dragons, nuclear reactors are major targets of demon attacks; things go crazy, especially once the Soviets nuke the antarctic to open a magical portal for research purposes. The actual setting takes place in 1998 in the midst of Stalin being magically revived after the fall of the Soviet Union and with society finally starting to deal with the long term effects of magic. Really fun book to jump right in, just beware the Killer Penguins.
  • IOU - Illuminati University: Once upon a time, Steve Jackson Games ran an ISP and BBS, back when the internet was a small enough thing that an RPG company could do that and not immediately go bankrupt. The elegan/tg/entlemen who used the BBS wrote up a parody setting for play-by-post games and Steve thought it was good enough to publish. Illuminati University is like every other college you've been to, except it sits on top of a nexus between pretty much every reality there is. This means the entire place effectively has the Weirdness Magnet disadvantage, and you can take classes in such things as World Creation, THE Computer Science, and Dirty Tricks. Features lots of amazing art from Phil Foglio. And before you ask, you're not cleared to know what the O stands for.
  • Transhuman Space: Welcome to the future. A Hard Science Transhumanist space setting that doesn't insult your intelligence and dodges the axe-grinding and grimderp associated with Eclipse Phase. Built upon the question of "what would the world look like with nearly 100 years of uninterrupted scientific advancement". The answer is a highly colonized solar-system being populated with various forms of artificial human life, Mars and other planets being terraformed and colonized, and United Nations controlled DRM being included with everything. Transhuman Space tackles a world being changed by advancements in biology, technology and nanotechnology and what it means for humanity as a whole. Lots of background info and research involved, and some of it (especially the memetics section) has turned out to be terrifyingly prescient.
  • The setting itself was created and spear headed by David Pulver. Catgirl presence is confirmed.
  • Banestorm: Welcome to Erf Oerth Yrth. Ages ago this was a fairly standard fantasy setting until some elves decided to be fantasy-Nazis and tried a ritual to kill all orcs everywhere. Instead it nuked a good chunk of the continent and The Wizard of Oz-ed all the stock fantasy races that weren't living on Yrth already-- including humans. A thousand years later and Yrth is the only fantasy world where dolphins talk, goblins pass the collection plate around after Sunday Mass and elves are fading for reasons that are 100% their own fault instead of just because Tolkien did it. Also full of random things like hang-gliding orcs who revere "the Air Heart" as a culture hero. Long ago in Yrth's history, the world was populated by a variety of fantasy life (Elves, Dwarves, Orks, etc) but with an absence of humans. Everything was fine more or less until the Elves entered a War with the Orcs. Seeking to end the war and rid the planet of the Orcs, the Elves created a ritual they called "Orcbane"to banish the Orcs somewhere else and attempted to use it. The results were less than satisfactory to say the least. The Orcbane instead created the titular Banestorm which ravaged the planet and started opening portals to other planets. Before long, humans from the middle ages and a host of other creatures were being transported to Yrth, displacing the native life and just adding to the chaos. Wait, this sounds familiar. Fast forward 1000 years past the Fallout, and humans have established multiple kingdoms that span the main continent with the main empire being the The Empire of Megalos, everyone has a grudge against the Elves due to the Banestorm, and there is a non-zero chance a Goblin will approach you to ask whether you have heard the good word of our lord and savior Jesus Christ. The setting is...honestly not that dark all things considered despite being the love child of The Witcher and Warhammer Fantasy; Nobledark at worst. Good setting all together, just don't run afoul of the Ministry of Serendipity

Other Notable Books/Settings[edit | edit source]

  • GURPS Martial Arts: The book of kung fu-punching badassery. From elbow strikes, upper cuts, and sweeping kicks to head locks and pile drivers, the chapter on techniques alone details hundreds of ways to kill with nothing more than your bare hands. But that's not all it's about; besides your standard unarmed, Asian-inspired styles of fighting, GURPS Martial Arts includes rules for weapon-based martial arts and Western styles too (did you know that English knights were martial artists?). More than eighty(!) historical and modern martial arts are presented, some of them incredibly esoteric, and if that's not enough the book further includes a decent sampler of fictional styles with no basis in reality. Case in point, Death Fist, a style invented by death mages combining advanced grappling techniques with touch-delivered death spells.
  • GURPS Space Beastiary: "Dummies Guide to Catachan". One stop shop for some of the weirder shapes and forms life can take out there, good for creating simple alien animals and plants for your setting or creating a Deathworld even the Catachans would be intimidated by. How weird the book can get cannot be overstated; you can go from the Hercules Lizard which is literally just a giant alien iguanas to Mines (small silicon lifeforms that burrow into the ground and EXPLODE when stepped on) and not even need to go on a different page. You go from Asphyxers (insect swarms that hunt people by strangling them and wait for their prey to decay before eating them) to Boom Spiders (giant spiders that swing down and grab prey before judo throwing them into their webs) to Breakfest Trees (a possibly engineered tree found on multiple worlds whose fruit tasty, healthy and satisfies both hunger and thirst but also has bark that acts as a natural antivenin) in that order. Sword-Billed Razorwings are humming birds are giant 7 foot sparrows whose every appendage is a blade, Hiverdogs are a race of hive minded burrowing emaciated prariedogs with see through skin, Terror Hounds are partially sentient psionic dogs that were made by the government and trained to both instill terror into their targets and mind control them into putting themselves in harms way, Dampters are three eyed space hamsters that are natural blanks, and then there is the Frisky Bull whose males are giant heavily furred bovines and females are 8 foot tall anthropoids that are lightly furred that are both nearsighted and charge anything humanoid during mating season. There is an entire chapter on insects that would make most peoples skin crawl and a section for space creatures covering Antimatter Swarms and living planetoids for good measure. If you want to really fall down the rabbit hole on alien life or want to roleplay as an Ordo Xenos researcher, get this book if you can and don't let the pyrokinetic turtles or Space Marine tossing telekinetic cats bother you.
  • GURPS Psionics: the book about the "Fantastic Powers of Mind Over Matter". Everything you need to know about psychic powers in a campaign; the history of real life research into psychic powers, possible origins for psychic powers, the "science" on how psychic abilities work, societal effects of psionics, psi-technology and more. Psionic powers are categorized into into 9 main groups of powers, Antipsi, Astral Projection, Electrokinesis, ESP, Healing, Psychic Vampirism, Psychokinesis, Telepathy and Teleportation; with many more advanced techniques underneath them. Some notable techniques are the ability to multiwield guns with Psychokinesis, creating swords and blades of pure mental energy, and combining multiple minds into a single exponentially powerful gestalt. If psi-tech is your focus, tech such as psionic FTL drives, anti-psi shields, specially engineered bioplastics that can be shaped and manipulated by psionic abilities, psi-drugs and more. Combine GURPS Psionics with GURPS Bio-Tech and you can have some fun.
  • Not to be confused with GURPS Psionic Powers or GURPS Psionic Tech, those are 4th Edition books dealing with the same material but with lot less detail and material.
  • Setting: The Phoenix Project - No Relation to Phoenix Point. The main campaign setting included with the book that takes place in a world where a major breakthrough in psychic research in the 1960s results in a new psionic shadow war between not only the Cold War powers but various stand alone groups with their own agendas. Both sides of the Cold War dove headfirst into psionic research in secret, the West pursuing advancements in psionic abilities while the East pursues psionic technology and biotechnology. Each faction has their own plan involving the emergence of psionic abilities, ranging from elevating humanity into a fully psychic race, facilitating the creation of psychic hivemind to control humanity in order to bring peace to the world, or just using psionics to steal business secrets from competitors.
  • Fact. David Pulver Book. David. Pulver. Anime Catgirls.
  • Setting: Cybermech Damocles - The campaign setting bundled with GURPS Mecha, detailing pure 90s anime cheese. Enter a world where the United Nations organization UNISTAR fights against the Gabberoth, a galactic criminal syndicate seeking to farm humans of their brains for monetary gain. Founded after an alien girl crash landed on Earth who warned humanity of the threat of the Gabberoth, UNISTAR investigates any possible sign of the criminals operations and breaks up their criminal activities with battle mechas reverse engineered from captured Gabberoth technology. It is a world of mech battles, alien catgirl bounty hunters, shapeshifting criminals and enough of the 90s that you will think a mullet is a good hairstyle.
  • GURPS CthulhuPunk: The awkward one of the GURPS line. CthuluPunk was the offical merged setting of two other RPGs, GURPS Cyberworld which is a Cyberpunk world similar to Cyberpunk 2020 but darker and Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu which makes this the only official conversion of Call of Cthulhu to the GURPS system. The goal was to create something similar to CthulhuTech, but with less mechs and Anime. The reception to the book itself was mixed. The artwork with the book is great, but many folks found it mediocre with it being more or less a direct copy of the Cyberworld setting with the Cthulhu Mythos being present, with a notable lack of integration between the two. It's currently out of print and the pdf version either doesn't exist or is not available for purchase on any storefront (SJG's Warehouse 23, DriveThruRPG, etc).
  • GURPS Tactical Shooting: Have you ever gotten into an argument over what a gun can do that became so heated it escalated into a shouting match? Then you'll love GURPS Tactical Shooting! Contains all the rules for hyper-realistic hardcore tacticool bullshit a sane person could ever want and then some. Sniping, countersniping, shooting stances, breaching doors, shooting in darkness, you name it, this book has a rule for it. Besides combat mechanics it has some fun sections on firarm myths and legends, how not to use a gun, and things most gamers would never have a reason to think about such as the nitty gritty psychology of shooting or being shot at.
  • GURPS Old West: The western supplement, for those among us who can't resist adding a dash of Louis L'Amour to our games. Everything you need to know about life on the late 19th century American frontier, stock western characters, railroads and trains (make like Jesse James and rob a Wells Fargo car!), injuns, the wars of the time, and famous legends of the wild west.
  • GURPS Black Ops
  • GURPS Alternate Worlds
  • GURPS Time Travel
  • GURPS Warehouse 23
  • GURPS Mars
  • GURPS Illuminati

Versions[edit | edit source]

GURPS 3rd Edition[edit | edit source]

Published during Steve Jackson Games' golden era, i.e. when they weren't broke. As a result 3e has a truly unholy number of splatbooks. Its genre and setting books are still loved today for the vast amount of information they contain. Its actual rules are, well... not nearly as loved. If there's a 3rd edition book you like, you should just take the stuff you like and convert it to 4e.

GURPS 4th Edition[edit | edit source]

The modern version of GURPS. It's not hugely different from 3e; if you're familiar with D&D, it's more like going from D&D 3rd edition to Pathfinder than going from, say, D&D 4th edition to D&D 5th Edition. The first major change is that a number of optional rules from 3e's Compendium I and Compendium II have been "canonized" and made default assumptions in character creation & gameplay. The second major change is that 4e isn't as "human-level centric" as 3e; you can use it with minimal fuss if you want to make anything other than a realistic, 100-point, street level character, while in 3e you had to screw around with all kinds of janky exceptions and subsystems. In short 4e really puts the "Generic" and "Universal" in GURPS.

Gallery[edit | edit source]

  • 3rd Edition
    3rd Edition
  • 4th Edition Characters
    4th Edition Characters
  • 4th Edition Campaigns
    4th Edition Campaigns

Links[edit | edit source]

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