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I'm guessing you've recently heard about GURPS, or maybe you've played it with somebody, and are wondering what it is and what books are worth buying. Perhaps you just want to check it out, but don't know where to begin. Or perhaps you've heard of GURPS but dismissed it for some reason, in which case I'm hoping to dissuade you of that opinion. I'm assuming that you know that GURPS stands for Generic Universal RolePlaying System, that you know what a Roleplaying Game is, but that you just haven't had a formal introduction to GURPS.
Here I hope to give you that introduction and provide you a bit of a roadmap, not just to the GURPS rules, but also to the GURPS publications. One of the daunting things about buying into a new game can be in knowing which expansions to buy and which ones are useful for what kinds of games, so I hope to ease that pain a little. After I go over the basics of the rules I attempt to give you that roadmap to the various publications below.
"One game to run them all, one game to find them, one game to bring them all and at the table bind them."
To put it simply, GURPS is a universal system. It can do pretty much every genre of game fairly well. It has dials to turn up the cinematic game style and dials to turn up the realistic grittiness, allowing you to set the gameplay style where you want it. It has rules to play sci-fi, fantasy, horror, modern day, and absolutely excels at dimension hopping or time travel thanks to its universal rules system. Simply put, you learn the rules once and can play anything, anywhere, anywhen. GURPS succeeds spectacularly in allowing you the freedom to create any kind of character you want, and to run any kind of game you want, all using one rules system.
The rules are actually very simple to play, and I give a synopsis of the GURPS rules below. I also have a One Page GURPS handout I give to new players that covers all the basics. GURPS does have lots of optional rules which can make the game as complicated as you'd like, but the core rules are fundamentally simple.
As a roleplaying game GURPS is far more of a toolkit than many other games. It is designed to let you customize the game to your own expectations, whether you want to play cinematic action heroes, comic book superheroes, gritty street dealing cyberpunks, realistic science fiction astronauts or galaxy hopping wanderers. And, of course, it can do fantasy - from a low-powered more "realistic" medieval adventure to high-powered dungeon delving. Many of the rules are written to be "modular," designed for gritty realism or for cinematic action, and many character traits are meant to be used only in certain kinds of games. While many of these rules are demarcated as being optional or cinematic, admittedly a better job could have been done in doing so, and in separating the realistic rules from cinematic ones. The same thing goes with character traits; as a reference it's more convenient to have a large alphabetical list of traits, but on first reading of the rules including all the exotic, paranormal, and cinematic traits along with all the mundane ones sometimes gives readers the idea that all of these rules and traits are meant to be used together, when in fact they are not.
Worse, some people get overwhelmed by all the options available. Many games back-load the complicated rules where "such and such ability is only available at 5th Level" and the rule itself isn't even listed until you get to 5th Level abilities. Being a point-buy system GURPS front-loads that complexity. If you know what you're doing with the game this can be a good thing, but it can be a bad thing if it gives you the impression that the rules are more complex than they actually are or if all the options distract you from the end goal of having fun.
Personally, I see the toolkit approach as one of GURPS greatest strengths as a game system. However, it is undeniable that all the options provide a steep learning curve for newcomers to GURPS, which some people see as a weakness and does make it a bit of a stumbling point of the game line. The most important thing to remember as you're reading the rules for the first time is that this is your game and that you get to pick and choose which traits and rules to use. Don't let yourself get overwhelmed by the plethora of options.
GURPS does offer a way to cut through the options using Worldbooks and Campaign Frameworks which make many of the choices for you about which traits, rules, technology, equipment, races, and even character types are appropriate for the gameworld.
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NOT A REAL GURPS BOOK |
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One of the popular misconceptions about GURPS is that all the fiddly bits are required to be used, or in assuming that because GURPS has all those fiddly bits that means that the rules are overly complicated. In practice, these are far from the truth, and in fact many of the optional rules serve to reduce the complexity of the game in play. Another one can be summed up with the long running joke in the RPG community that "you need to know calculus in order to play GURPS" (see the picture to the right). This is categorically not true; GURPS uses a fair bit of math but all of it is basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
One of the places this was unfortunately reinforced, and which detractors will often point to, was in the book Vehicles for GURPS 3rd Edition. Vehicles required a lot of math, but almost all of it was just basic math. It used square roots in a few places (even the cheapest calculator can handle those), and cube roots for one calculation, but provided a lookup table so that readers weren't required to actually calculate cube roots. Further, Vehicles itself was never required to play GURPS; it was essentially its own mini-game for people that liked designing Vehicles, the final result of which were compatible with the GURPS rules. Unfortunately, this preconception often times gets passed around and unfairly colors people's opinion of the game before they've even read it.
Almost all of the math that GURPS does use is front-loaded during character creation, the most complex of which usually shows up when designing super powers or other characters with lots of highly customized abilities. The worst of this math can be significantly reduced by using a computer program to help you and your players make characters (see GURPS Character Assistant and GURPS Character Sheet under GM Advice & Tools below).
During play the most complicated thing you will usually need to do is add up a few cumulative skill modifiers (e.g. +3 for aim, -5 for range, -2 for cover, total is -4 to skill). Everything else is generally a table lookup. i.e converting the distance to a target in yards into a range penalty would requiring looking up the range on the Speed/Range table and reading off the corresponding penalty; many people never realize that the table itself is actually logarithmic, nor do they need to know to use the table. In play GURPS is actually far less complicated than it may seem.
By far the easiest way to learn GURPS is to find a group that already plays it and join in. Like any other skill, or the rules to any other game, it is best learned directly from a teacher. Of course, that's not always possible in which case the best method is to start reading over the rules. If you're still unsure you can then go over some of the online resources with combat and play examples. Then, of course, play GURPS. It is a game, after all, and most people don't truly understand how a game works until after they've played it and seen the rules in action.
Start by reading GURPS Lite which is a free 32 page PDF with a condensed version of the rules. After that you can then move on to one of the full editions of the rules, which I discuss below. For online resources there are a multitude of websites discussing GURPS.
Game Geekery by
GURPS author Warren "Mook" Wilson
The New
to GURPS series will walk you through many aspects of the game
Combat Examples
specifically shows off basic and advanced combat
Dr. Kromm's
LiveJournal by GURPS author and line editor Sean "Kromm"
Punch
MyGURPS by GURPS
author and line editor Jason "PK" Levine.
Dungeon
Fantastic by GURPS author Peter V. Dell'Orto
Gaming Ballistic by GURPS
author Douglas Cole
Ravens N' Pennies by
GURPS author Christopher R. Rice
The Steve Jackson Games Forums are an
excellent resource filled with experienced players, GMs, and GURPS
book authors.
The GURPS
Resources sub-forum itself contains several threads with links of useful
websites
GURPS
Game Aids: Computer Programs
GURPS
Community Campaign & Adventure Repository
GURPS
Websites: Blogs, Wikis, Feeds...
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During character creation you use character points to buy character abilities. The GM gives each player is a set number of points, giving them equal access to character traits. Those traits include Attributes, Advantages, Skills, and Spells. You can also get more points if you burden your character with Disadvantages (or lowered Attributes) which have a negative point cost but allow you to spend more points on positive traits. Disadvantages can also give you incentive to roleplay aspects of your character's personality which the GM may reward you for. If you want to build a character who is strong you are free to purchase a high strength; if you want them to be skilled with a crossbow, able to backstab, cast a few spells, and be proficient with an Axe you can do all of that as well. The only limit is the point budget the GM sets and your imagination.
It is important to note that equal access to abilities does not mean equal outcome or equal "power." Some characters may be more "powerful" in specific situations. This can be exagerated if the GM doesn't design his adventures in such a way that it allow each character to use his abilities. If one character has a lot of combat abilities and another has a lot of social abilities the GM needs to give the group both social and combat encounters or else one of the characters is going to seem more "powerful" than the other.
GURPS does not use "classes" to limit what abilities are available for your character. This means it is up to the GM to set limits on what abilities he wishes to allow in his game, or else he may wind up with a chromed-up cyber-punker in his fantasy campaign. Most GURPS books include Character Templates which are similar to "classes" in other systems. There may be Doctor, Healer, Knight, or Astronaut templates available depending on the book and world background. The GM may write his own templates for use in the game as well. However, unless the GM decides to do so, it is not mandatory to use a character template when making a character, nor is it necessary to stick to the template verbatim, even if you are using it as a guide to creating a character. If you have the points you can take any ability the GM allows. Some templates, and indeed some worldbooks, offer Character Lenses to further customize character templates. These lenses are a sort of mini-character template which you add to the character that focuses in on a few aspects of the character for greater customization.
GURPS does use "races," or Racial Templates, in some worldbooks allowing players to play non-humans. Normally all of the traits on a racial template, positive and negative, must be taken if you want to be a member of that race. Some of the disadvantageous traits may be "bought off" at the GM's discretion; this can be useful if you don't want to play a greedy Dwarf or a nature loving Elf. Some advantageous traits can be removed, giving points back. For instance a member of a race with two extra arms may have lost one of them in combat, meaning that this particular member of the race actually only has one extra arm; this counts as a disadvantage for that character, just as having only one arm counts as a disadvantage for a human character.
Some books, particularly the Campaign Framework books, make character templates mandatory and even limit what out-of-template abilities may be purchased for a character. This is particularly true of the Dungeon Fantasy line, where the character templates are designed along the lines of "character classes." This is used as a shortcut to game simplification and balance allowing each player a limited selection of abilities and granting niche protection, giving everyone a chance to shine. Even in these games there's no reason why a group is forced to used these templates, and indeed a group of experienced players can freeform design their characters if everyone wants to. Or a GM might allow players to "multi-class" their characters or give them access to abilities outside of their template; in fact half of the supplement Dungeon Fantasy 3: The Next Level is devoted to Mixed-Professions Lenses (the Dungeon Fantasy equivalent of "multi-classing").
The basics of gameplay in GURPS is relatively simple as well. All dice rolls use six-sided dice, with 3d6 being used for most rolls except damage. Most of the time you will have an attribute ranging from 8-15 or a skill or other ability ranging from 5-20 (with values centering around 11-13, a bit higher for experienced characters or core abilities). You will take 3d6 and try to roll equal to or under the target number (rolling low is good). Particularly tricky uses of the skill or ability will give you a penalty to the roll, while the occasional easy use will give you a bonus. For example, if your skill is 19 but you are doing it in extremely difficult circumstances the GM may give you a -7 penalty, meaning the target number is 19-7=12. So you need to roll 12 or less on 3d6 to succeed. Damage rolls range from 1d6 to 3d6 for most archaic weapons, but can range upwards of 6d6×2 or more for some guns and beam weapons, and may have a small bonus or penalty damage applied after the roll; e.g. a damage of 2d-2 means roll 2d6 then subtract 2 from the result while 6d×2 means roll 6d6 and then double the result. Fortunately, armor has a Damage Resistance (DR) which you subtract from any damage before applying it against your Hit Points (HP), and high-tech armor tends to have enough DR to protect you against similarly high-tech weapons. The last type of roll you might perform is a Reaction roll; these are made when meeting an NPC who doesn't know you and the GM doesn't have a pre-determined reaction towards your character, to see if the NPC is going to reactive positively or negatively towards you. Many advantages give a bonus to this roll and many disadvantages give a penalty - Reputation, Social Status, Rank, Odious Personal Habits, etc. You roll 3d6, add any bonuses and subtract penalties that apply, and the higher the final roll the better the reaction.
A further discussion of gameplay can be found in my One Page GURPS handout as well as "Mook" Wilson's New to GURPS series of articles. GURPS Lite contains a free presentation of many of these rules.
GURPS is currently in its 4th Edition, but has actually changed relatively little between editions over the years. From 1st to 2nd to 3rd Edition the only major change was in how ranged combat works. There were production changes, as well, moving from a boxed set with booklets in the first two editions to a softbound book in 3rd Edition (and later a hardbound). 3rd Edition also accumulated two Compendiums of extra rules, which became core requirements for many expansion books.
The changes for 4th Edition were somewhat more substantial, but the core of the rules stayed remarkably similar. By far the biggest change moving to this editions was organizational, moving most of the rules from the Compendiums into the core rulebooks, rewriting some of those rules for clarity.
One important change in 4th Edition is that the Attribute and Skill costs were tweaked to better reflect their utility. IQ and DX increased in cost slightly, ST and HT were reduced. Physical skills were reduced in cost while Mental skills were increased so that all skills now use the same cost progression. Lifting ST was also changed to a quadratic formula (so how much you can lift went from "ST x Something" to "ST x ST x Something"). This significantly reduced the ST required to make extremely large creatures – I provide a ST conversion sheet on my website to help in quickly converting animals, monsters, and NPCs over to 4e.
Perhaps the most significant change to the rules was the removal of Passive Defense (PD) from armor, which was supposed to represent the chance of an attack glancing off of the armor. Instead, in 4th Edition Active Defenses (Dodge, Block, and Parry) get a flat +3 bonus instead of adding PD (if doing a quick conversion a 3rd Edition NPC give them a +3 to the defenses that are listed in the book).
Beam weapon damage was also reduced (and armor divisors added), and the rules governing the way lasers and shotguns work were changed significantly. Some armor also had Damage Resistance (DR) tweaked. Due to these changes using stats for weapons and armor from 3rd Edition sourcebooks is not recommended; if possible find the corresponding entries from a 4th Edition sourcebook.
Another substantial change is that Hit Points (HP) is based on Strength (ST) and Fatigue Points (FP) is based on Health (HT), instead of vice-versa. Earlier editions sometimes referred to rules where you'd lose a point of HT when what they meant was that you'd lose a point of HP, or in other words take a point damage. Similarly, the rules would sometimes say to lose a point of ST, when what they meant is to lose a FP. In GURPS you will rarely, if ever, lose an actual point from an attribute.
Because many of the changes were fairly minor it is remarkably easy to use many 3rd Edition books in 4th Edition. The ones that are less usable tend to be the Catalog books, with lists of equipment, animals and monsters, or Character Templates. If you are interested in using any 3rd Edition material in a 4th Edition game there is a free GURPS Update PDF which can help you convert characters and NPCs. There were also some substantial changes to the way various kinds of "powers" are handled in 4th Edition, which affects books which include a substantial amount of Psionics, Supers, and Cybernetics and would require more translation work.
Hands down I suggest that you start with the current GURPS 4th Edition. It's been out for almost 15 years and is well supported. There are NO plans to replace it with a 5th Edition. However, there is a huge collection of books for GURPS 3rd Edition which are worth buying and using. The differences between editions are often times subtle, but are not fundamental. Some 3rd Edition supplements require conversion work or are fairly incompatible, but most can be used with 4th Edition with little or no effort. Of particular note for their usefulness and well regard across the industry is the collection of Historical supplements. They are generally well written and well researched, with most of the material presented in a manner that could be used in 4th Edition, or indeed in any roleplaying game.
Probably the best place to start would be with GURPS Lite, which is a free 32 page PDF containing a highly condensed subset of the GURPS rules. This will give you a taste of the full game and give you a good idea of how it works. If you are ready to try your hand at running an adventure your next stop should be the free adventure Caravan to Ein Arris which is designed to be an introduction to GURPS. It follows the creation and travel of a large caravan across a desert which the PCs will get a job working on. I converted some Sample Characters from the old Basic Set to GURPS 4th Edition, which will make good starting characters for Caravan to Ein Arris.
Where you go from there depends on what kinds of games you want to run and how much money you're willing to spend. The most obvious place to start with is the two-volume GURPS Basic Set, which is split into Vol. I: Characters and Vol. II: Campaigns. These volumes are largely divided as you might expect, with all of the rules for creating a character in the first volume while all of the rules for running a campaign, including the combat rules, are in the second volume. Between them they contain pretty much all of the necessary rules for running a GURPS game in almost any world at almost any technology level. That's not to say that more detailed rules expansions covering various subjects aren't available; this is a roleplaying game so of course there are expansion books, but a GM that's willing to make it up a little bit as he goes along can make do it with just the Basic Set. These two books are available in both PDF and color hardcover.
However, the Basic Set is not your only possible entry point into the GURPS rules set. There are several standalone products which contain a subset of the main rules. The Discworld Roleplaying Game and the Vorkosigan Saga Sourcebook and Roleplaying Game each contain a modified and somewhat extended version of the GURPS Lite rules for playing in the novelized universes of the Discworld or the Vorkosigan Saga.
Prime Directive takes largely the same approach for the Star Fleet Battles universe, which is loosely based on original series Star Trek. While Prime Directive is the cheapest entry point to the GURPS rules, I'm hesitant to recommend it as your first purchase for a number of reasons. For starters, it is a license of the GURPS rules, being produced by Amarillo Design Bureau, so it has a look and feel that is somewhat different from other GURPS products. Due to the odd licensing from Paramount it is also almost, but not quite, Star Trek. This can be offputting to some fans of classic Trek. Still, if you are a fan of Star Trek style space opera it is as good a place to start as any.
The Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game took a significantly different approach from the other three, instead recompiling the rules from the GURPS Basic Set and the previously published GURPS Dungeon Fantasy game line to create a slimmed down but complete roleplaying game in a box. It leaves out rules for things like vehicular combat or laser guns so that the box set can focus on all the rules you need to play a dungeon delving game – including creating characters, casting spells, and fighting monsters. It contains five rule books including a first adventure, two double-sided game maps, a slew of cardboard hero figures, and a set of dice. At the $79.95 retail price point the box set is an excellent bargain for starting your GURPS adventures, and I highly recommend it for new players.
Almost everything listed on this page can be purchased in PDF form directly from Steve Jackson Games through their online store Warehouse 23. Some of the print books are also available there, while many of the rest can be found through Amazon's print on demand service. Many of the PDFs are also listed for sale at DriveThru RPG. Prime Directive PDFs can be found on Warehouse 23, while the print books can be ordered directly from Starfleet Games. GURPS For Dummies can be found in eBook or print form either on Amazon or directly from the publisher.
Of course, many of the print books can be acquired through your Friendly Local Gaming Store, and whenever possible you should consider ordering through them. While they may not be the cheapest option and may not be fastest option they are your Friendly Local Gaming Store, so it's up to you to support them.
Again, where to go from here is going to depend on what kind of games you want to run; whether you want to make your own game world or use a gameworld from an existing worldbook; whether you want the campaign to center on fighting demons in WWII or be a galaxy hopping space opera. One of the biggest mistakes that new GMs sometimes make is believing that they must use ALL of the rules, from every book. This is never necessary in any RPG, but particularly not so in GURPS where the rules are designed to be somewhat modular and, in some cases, are not really designed to all be used in the same game with other rules. Don't be afraid to pick and choose which books you'd like to purchase, or even which rules from books you already own that you'd like to use or exclude from a particular game you're going to run. Finally don't be afraid to run a (slightly) simpler game using just the Basic Set rules.
When you first get started I recommend against succumbing the temptation to buy a lot of books, as it can create a somewhat uneven gaming experience for both the GM and his players. Instead I suggest that you pick up only those books that you feel are absolutely necessary in your first game. For some people this may be just the Basic Set or one of the worldbooks that includes GURPS Lite. For others, this may be just GURPS Lite and one of the other worldbooks (though many books may reference abilities or rules not found in GURPS Lite).
Following is a listing of many of the books available for GURPS broken down into a few broad categories. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list of every GURPS book that is available right now, let alone what may be written in the future. Rather, it is a listing of what I feel are the more important GURPS books. If I have left something out don't take it as me saying that the book isn't worth getting; it may be because I haven't updated this article to cover newer releases, because I feel the book is too niche, or because I simply didn't think to add it.
Nor are the categories rigidly defined. Many books could fit in more than one category. In fact I have a few listed in more than one, but to keep the lists a little shorter I try to do this only with the more "core" books that fit in multiple categories.
This list also focuses heavily on GURPS 4th Edition. While many 3rd Edition books can be used in 4th Edition with little conversion necessary, and still cover areas which 4th Edition does not, I felt it important to focus on the current edition of the game.
First, some general advice on which books to purchase:
Pick up all of the free PDFs you can – I mean, why not?
Consider buying some or all of the books and PDFs listed under GM
Advice & Tools.
They offer strong advice for running a GURPS game, and indeed for
playing Roleplaying games in general. These books and tools can be used to help you streamline
and simplify your game.
At first, pick up at most 1-2 Rulebooks and/or Catalogs
that support the types of games you would like to run. For a fantasy game
maybe get GURPS Magic and GURPS Martial Arts, for a Sci-Fi
game get GURPS Spaceships and GURPS Ultra-Tech, etc. As I said
earlier, the Basic Set already contains most of what you need to run
a game in most genres, and many worldbooks include short catalogs which can
be used to supplement the Basic Set.
While not absolutely necessary, consider picking up one of the following:
A Genre book, for helping construct your own game world
for that genre.
A Worldbook for running a game in that world. Perhaps
two books from the same setting if it's particularly appealing to you or a
4th Edition conversion is available to go along with a
3rd Edition worldbook.
A Historical book for gaming in that era, keeping in mind that most are 3rd Edition
and you will need to watch out for conversion issues.
2-3 PDFs for a Campaign Framework for running a game
within that campaign frame. Start with the character
creation book, then get the GM advice book if that framework appeals to
you, picking up more if you wish. These game lines are made up of
somewhat smaller and cheaper PDFs, making it
easier to pick up 2-3 to start your game.
GURPS Adaptations, to help convert your favorite fictional
world to GURPS.
These books offer advice to the GM on how to run a GURPS game, while the utilities can help him organize and run it. They are generally setting agnostic and don't introduce too many new rules, instead concentrating on advice on using the GURPS rules more effectively.
How to be a GURPS GM is chock-full of useful advice on customizing GURPS to be run in the style you desire, including chapters on character creation, combat, and game balance. This book is an excellent reference to any GURPS GM, regardless of experience with the game.
While not a GURPS book, Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering was published by Steve Jackson Games and it is an excellent guidebook for running games, somehow providing two pounds of advice in a one pound package. This book will help you improve your GMing (or Dungeon Mastering, or Storytelling, or Refereeing) no matter which roleplaying system is your favorite.
Like other ...For Dummies books this book is written with people unfamiliar with the system in mind. It provides an interesting outsiders look on the rules system in the GURPS Basic Set 4th Edition. Of all of the GM Advice this is one I probably found the least useful, and has probably not aged as well as more recent books. However, for a new player it can still be quite useful in helping to dissect the system.
GURPS Adaptations is designed to help you convert the world from your favorite fictional universe into a usable campaign world. It offers advice on setting the premise, genre, mood, and theme for a gameworld, fitting people, places, and things into that world, and of course most importantly on fitting players characters into that gameworld and on getting them involved in the action.
GURPS Character Assistant 4 (GCA4) is the official character creation program for GURPS 4th Edition. It supports all of the core books and most of the major supplements to the game. Liberal use of a character creation program can help you streamline what many people consider the most daunting part of GURPS. Runs on Windows only, but is compatible with everything from Windows 95 all the way through Windows 10.
GURPS Character Sheet (GCS) is a free character creation program for GURPS 4th Edition. While it not the official program, it does have two advantages over GCA4. First, it is free. Second, it was written in Java, which means you can use it on a Mac or Linux with far fewer issues.
Each of these books is the GM advice books for a Genre Framework series. While each focuses on the types of adventures that are common within their own genre, most of the advice can be used in other genres.
GURPS Actions 2: Exploits provides useful guidelines for skill resolution, keeping the action moving, and chase rules.
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 2: Dungeons contains a plethora of advice on setting up challenging traps, guidelines on which skills cover which activities, and divvying up and selling the loot. It also includes a short bestiary of monsters which could be dropped into a Horror or Space game effortlessly.
Monster Hunters 2: The Mission includes guidelines for handling investigations, pursuing monsters (or bad guys), and how to handle the eventual confrontation with them. There's a chapter on handling cinematic combat and another on challenging extremely competent PCs.
These free PDFs offer support the GURPS rules form the Basic Set.
GURPS Combat Cards allows you to print out a set of cards - about the size of a playing card - each with one of the options you can choose to perform in combat. For instance, Aim your weapon, Attack with your weapon, or Move at your top speed towards (or away from) your opponents.
GURPS Skill Categories takes the alphabetical skill list from Basic Set: Characters and categorizes them in a way more useful to reference during character creation, separating Ranged combat skills from Melee combat skills from Vehicles skills, and so on.
GURPS Update is a set of conversion guidelines to help you convert characters from GURPS 3rd Edition into 4th Edition. It can be handy if you want to use any 3rd Edition supplements, helping you convert NPCs as well.
Range Ruler is a ruler using hexagon markers and range penalties from the Speed/Range table to help you calculate range penalties quickly if you are using the mapped combat rules.
GURPS Power-Ups 5: Impulse Buys introduces a new system for spending earned character points to gain in-game benefits – for instance trading character points for a guaranteed success on a skill roll. While it may not be of use for every campaign, for a certain style of gameplay – particularly fast paced action – this volume can be invaluable.
Character Templates can be used by GMs to speed up character creation, enforce niche protection, and balance out a party of PCs. This guidebook for Game Masters helps in creating Character Templates appropriate for their campaign, going over how to create and balance them in some detail.
Racial templates can be important in sci-fi and fantasy games alike, providing a a method to spice up a game world. Template Toolkit 2 helps you build unique and interesting races to inhabit your gameworld.
Rulebooks offer new or expanded rules that cover a variety of topics, such as entire new magic systems, rules for grappling in combat, or building and fighting with spaceships. These should always be treated as optional expansions, seasoning you can add to a campaign to achieve a particular flavor.
GURPS Magic provides an extension of the "default" spell-based magic system found in Chapter 5 of Basic Set, providing an additional 800+ spells, a half-dozen more colleges of magic, and adding rules for creating and using magic items.
Magic Spell Charts is a free PDF and extension of the main book, providing spell prerequisite charts for all of the spells in GURPS Magic like the one found on p. 238 of that book.
Other PDFs in the series further develop the spell-based magic system offering more spells within their themes.
GURPS Magic for GURPS 3rd Edition is generally compatible with the rules in GURPS 4th Edition, but contains about of half the spells from the newer Magic provides. I do recommend getting the 4th Edition book, but for people wanting to save a few dollars or who want to offer a cut-down spell list for their players it can act as a good resource for the game.
GURPS Martial Arts is perhaps one of the more overlooked of the "primary" rule books, doing for warriors what GURPS Magic does for wizards - offering more combat options, expanding on cinematic rules, and offering stats for a considerable number of archaic melee and ranged weapons for your warriors to arm themselves with. Of particular note, it expands on the rules for the quintessential cinematic advantages Trained By A Master, Weapon Master, and Heroic Archer, making this book almost essential for running cinematic games which will feature armed and unarmed melee combat.
Martial Arts: Technique Cheat-Sheet is a free PDF which provides a reference list of all the combat techniques found in the book (a "technique" is a special use of a skill; for instance "disarming" is a common technique of most melee combat skills, allowing you to disarm your opponent).
Other books in the series focus in on describing a specific group of fighting styles or on expanding rules for a particular type of combat.
Mass Combat provides rules and guidelines for managing the outcome of truly large scale combats, from skirmishing bands of low-tech warriors up to and beyond motorized high-tech armies while also keeping an eye on how hero characters can affect the outcome of those battles.
Mass Combat in Space from Pyramid #3/30 provides rules for using Spaceships designs in the Mass Combat system.
Often called the "third volume of the Basic Set" GURPS Powers presents a system for creating powers using the GURPS advantages. It expounds on how to modify existing advantages to function in entirely new or different ways using the GURPS enhancement and limitation system, and offers many new enhancements and limitations in order to do so. This book is a must-have if you plan on including any type of super-powers in a game - from running a Supers to Psionics to including powers of Elemental or Divine origin.
Other books in the series focus in on creating a Powers framework for one specific power source.
Each volume of the Power-Ups series provides methods of customizing characters. Most of the books in the series concentrate on a particular kind of character trait, collecting previously published character traits of that type, adding new traits, and expanding the rules for that trait type.
Power-Ups 1: Imbuements describes an entirely new method of empowerment - imbuing mundane items with mythical power. It does this through the use of Imbuement skills, each of which allows you to add extra effects onto weapons and other equipment.
Power-Ups 5: Impulse Buys introduces a new system for spending earned character points to gain in-game benefits – for instance trading character points for a guaranteed success on a skill roll. While it may not be of use for every campaign, for a certain style of gameplay – particularly fast paced action – this volume can be invaluable.
Worth noting is that Power-Ups 7: Wildcard Skills provides an optional rule that stacks nicely with Impulse Buys, detailing how characters can earn Wildcard Points which can be spent on Impulse Buys.
GURPS Psionic Powers provides a Powers-based framework for running characters with psionics in a game. It is essentially an extension of the psi abilities found in Chapter 6 of the Basic Set.
Psionic Campaigns provides advice for GMs on running Psi-based campaigns as well as working Psi into other campaign styles.
GURPS Psis is a character creation aid which includes character templates as well as psionic packages – preselected packages of psi abilities from Psionic Powers ready to grab-and-go.
Psi-Tech is a catalog book of psi-based equipment and technology.
GURPS Psionics is an interesting book for GURPS 3rd Edition. It provides a Power Level + Skill approach to psionic powers that is different from the one found in the Basic Set 4th Edition and Psionic Powers. Where the psionic abilities in 4th Edition are based on advantages, the leveled powers from GURPS Psionics use leveled advantages for each power, with the power level of the ability set by the level of the advantage you purchase and your capabilities within each power determined by which skills you have learned and your skill levels with them. It is, in fact, an extension of the psionic system found in the Basic Set 3rd Edition, and because it provides a complete system for handling psionic powers it can easily be used as an alternate psionic system in 4th Edition without needing any real conversion work.
This series offers expanded rules for an often overlooked aspect of RPGs: social interactions. GURPS Social Engineering provides the basic framework for the rules, while other books in the series focus in on social interactions within particular sub-cultures.
GURPS Spaceships provides rules for building, operating, and fighting with spaceships using technology from the mundane through the wildest space opera futures (or long, long ago past).
Other PDFs in the line expand upon those rules for particular types of spaceships as well as offering dozens of example spaceships from all different technological backgrounds (over 250 in total).
Spaceships 7: Divergent and Paranormal Tech probably expands the available ship systems and options more than any other supplement (or, indeed, all of the others combined).
Mass Combat in Space from Pyramid #3/30 provides rules for using Spaceships designs in the GURPS Mass Combat system.
Alternate Spaceships from Pyramid #3/34 offers expanded rules for ground and water vehicles (wheeled vehicles, tank treads, submarines, etc.) as well as various gas guzzling power plants.
Mecha Operations from Pyramid #3/40 expands on rules for designing and using Mecha in your game.
GURPS Spaceships Design Spreadsheet is an extremely sophisticated spreadsheet I wrote and maintain which helps you design ships using all of the optional rules, including options of my own. The most up to date version is in Excel, but there is an OpenOffice version available as well.
Tactical Shooting provides expanded rules for realistic gun fighting, covering facts and myths of guns. Using real military and police tactics for handling guns, the book gives advice for clearing rooms and buildings, formation fighting with tactical advances and retreats, and urban warfare. It offers a chapter on new and expanded character traits and techniques involving firearms and combat styles and another chapter cataloging weapons designed and improvised for use in tactical combat.
Gun Fu expands on rules for cinematic gunplay, offering tips on handling trick shooting, dual weilding pistols, handling classing showdowns. It, too, has a chapter on new and expanded character traits and techniques involving firearms, this time with an eye towards allowing cinematic combat and style; and it also has a chapter cataloging more weapons and equipment for supporting cinematic shooting.
GURPS Thaumatology is a mixed bag of magical marvels. On the one hand it includes rules for expanding upon as well as tweaking the default spell-based magic system, including a variation on S. John Ross' wildly popular Unlimited Mana rules and deeper discussions of variants of Clerical and Ritual magic systems. These make this book a good companion for those using the default magic system from GURPS Magic.
On the other hand, it also includes rules for several wildly different alternate magic systems, ready for inclusion in your next game. These can offer a vastly different feel to magic users in your game.
Other books in the series cover a variety of subjects. Age of Gold and Alchemical Baroque each provide magic-centric campaign worlds.
Chinese Elemental Power and Sorcery each provide a Powers-based magic system. Chinese Elemental Powers builds a system with a distinct Chinese and elemental flavor, while Sorcery tries to keep the spell-casting flavor of GURPS Magic in the form of a Powers-based framework. Sorcery: Protection and Warning Spells expands upon the Sorcery system, adding more spells from the Protection and Warning college.
Magical Styles provides a method of organizing spells, skills, and abilities into arcane arts similar to martial arts styles.
Ritual Path Magic provides a unique standalone magic system, originally conceived for the Monster Hunters series but made more generic and expanded upon here. Essentially you have a few core skills which you can combine in different ways to achieve magical effects, making casting spells "an agreement between the player and GM." This is a more improvisational style of magic than the others which I would call akin to the Sphere magic from Mage: The Ascension.
Urban Magics explores how magic affects cities and vice-versa.
Catalog books offer lists of stuff, a catalog of equipment for your characters to purchase or creatures for them to fight. Many books from other series also count as Catalog books, though for brevity I am not listing them here.
This book catalogs Biotechnology of the future, covering subjects such as genetic engineering, modified animals and humans, medical technology, and drugs. Probably most notable for players, it includes Bioroids, and Bio-mod enhancements, allowing characters to improve their weak meatbags.
These creature catalogs will make you worry about what goes bump in the night. The original GURPS Creatures of the Night is a GURPS 3rd Edition book, but is still fairly usable in 4th Edition. Subsequent volumes in the series are shorter but are original 4th Edition releases.
Dragons provides an examination of dragon mythology throughout history and cultures from ancient Sumer, Egypt, China, and medieval Europe. It holds the distinction of being both the last GURPS 3rd Edition book published as well as the first 4th Edition book published, with the main text being written for 3rd Edition but an appendix converting all of the statistics to 4th Edition. The book is written with full character write-ups for many types of dragons, making them accessible as PCs, usable as important NPCs, or monsters to slay. It also covers a variety of human character archetypes, from Dragonslayers to Dragon Blooded.
GURPS High-Tech covers weapons, armor, equipment, and general technology from TL 5 (the industrial revolution, muskets) through to TL 8 (modern day). If the equipment lists in the Basic Set aren't enough for you then this volume is a must.
High-Tech Weapon Tables is a companion which collects all the weapon tables from the book in one place.
Other books in the series provide even more guns, usually describing them in terms of real-world weapons instead of the sometimes generic names given in High-Tech.
GURPS Low-Tech covers weapons, armor, equipment, and technology from TL 0 (stone age) through TL 3 (late medieval). It encompasses almost all of the weapons previously included in GURPS Martial Arts while providing many more. It also offers an entirely new and extremely detailed armor creation system, which was later developed in subsequent books.
Companion 1: Philosophers and Kings examines how technology affects politics and the building of monuments in the low-tech world.
Companion 2: Weapons and Warriors offers some expanded rules for combat gear, weapons, armor, and fortifications. It is possibly the most useful of the companions for your typical RPG group.
Companion 3: Daily Life and Economics delves into how technology affected life of the average man (and woman) in a low-tech world.
Instant Armor takes the armor creation system from the main book and offers dozens (if not hundreds) of ready-made armor pieces.
Loadouts: Low-Tech Armor takes a different approach, instead offering worked historical examples of entire Armor Suits throughout the ages. Where Instant Armor might offer stats for a pot-helm and breast plate Loadouts provides the stats for an entire suit that might be worn by an Armored Knight of a European Crusader, or a Roman Legionary, or an ancient Mycenaean.
Fantasy-Tech 1 & 2 cover a variety of archaic weapons with a fantasy element to them, either due to their fancifulness or because weapons of that style just weren't used historically (even if they sometimes show up in movies and TV). Examples would include Archimedes Burning Mirrors, full-metal versions of traditionally wooden weapons (such as metal staves or axe handles) or double-ended spears.
The three books in the Magic Items series contain an assortment of unique mid- to high-level magic items, intended to be great treasures or rewards for intrepid adventurers.
While these books were written for GURPS 3rd Edition most of the items will work fine in 4th Edition, with the major exceptions being armor and weapons. For armor the PD (Passive Defense) stat has been removed from the game and can simply be ignored except in the case of shields, which provide a Defense Bonus (DB) similar to PD, but generally is lower than PD, and may have enchantments which increase that DB; the GMs will need to use their discretion in converting shield PD into DB. Some weapon statistics have changed between editions, so the underlying weapon may need to be updated and the magic item's stats reconsidered.
GURPS Spaceships provides rules for building, operating, and fighting with spaceships using technology from the mundane through the wildest space opera futures (or long, long ago past).
Other PDFs in the line expand upon those rules for particular types of spaceships as well as offering dozens of example spaceships from all different technological backgrounds (over 250 in total).
Spaceships 7: Divergent and Paranormal Tech probably expands the available ship systems and options more than any other supplement (or, indeed, all of the others combined).
Mass Combat in Space from Pyramid #3/30 provides rules for using Spaceships designs in the GURPS Mass Combat system.
Alternate Spaceships from Pyramid #3/34 offers expanded rules for ground and water vehicles (wheeled, tank treads, submarines, etc.) as well as gas guzzling power plants.
Mecha Operations from Pyramid #3/40 expands on rules for designing and using Mecha in your game.
GURPS Spaceships Design Spreadsheet is an extremely sophisticated spreadsheet I wrote and maintain which helps you design ships using all of the optional rules, including options of my own. The most up to date version is in Excel, but there is an OpenOffice version available as well.
This catalog of future technology will help you outfit your adventurers with equipment that may be available from the very near future such as personal robots and smart houses to superscience devices that may never be available like nuclear dampers and force field belts. Most importantly for adventurers it includes all manner of weaponry and armor as well as cybernetics implants. If you plan on running a sci-fi game this book is a near necessity.
Weapon Tables is a companion which collects all of the weapon tables throughout the book into one place.
Genre books offer advice on creating and running campaigns in a specific genre. They may include rules expansion which are useful for the genre, racial templates, suggestions on organizations and types of characters, discussions on the types of campaigns that are common in that genre as well as advice for running games in various styles. Many also include at least one example campaign world, ready to begin gaming in.
GURPS Fantasy offers advice on planning a fantasy campaign, creating a fantasy world, fitting magic within that world, what kind of races will populate the world, what timeframes the world should be set in, and what types of settlements will exist. It provides example racial templates for most of the "trope" fantasy races as well as character templates for most of the standard adventurer types. It also discusses what types of storylines and plots can fit within the campaign. Lastly, it offers the sample setting called Roma Arcana, a Roman Empire inspired fantasy setting.
Fantasy: Portal Realms explores another common fantasy trope: modern day adventurer lost in a fantasy world.
GURPS Horror is "systemic dissection" of the horror genre, including the types of characters you're likely to find in a typical horror game. It includes discussions of what goes bump in the night, including stats for many trope monsters to throw at your players, and goes on to discuss narrative structure for different types of game, antagonists, and dropping horror elements into other types of games (space, fantasy, etc). It finishes up with a couple worked example campaign frames to drop unsuspecting players into.
The Madness Dossier is a worked horror worldbook in which history is a lie and the players are fighting against a long forgotten evil that is starting to step back into our world.
GURPS Infinite Worlds is a combination Genre Book and Worldbook. As a Genre Book it offers advice on running games covering all sorts of time-and-dimension traveling frames, with discussions on alternate worlds, different implications of time travel and different ways that time travel can be handled. It even includes a few example campaign frames for time or dimension hopping games. Much of this discussion came from the previous publication GURPS Time Travel for GURPS 3rd Edition.
However, the centerpiece of the book is the Infinity Unlimited campaign setting. This campaign frame is both a setting and a meta-setting, incorporating all other settings. Taking place on an Earth that discovered dimensional travel into alternate timelines, essentially each destination world could be an entire campaign world of it's own. In fact, you could use any other campaign world as one of the infinite worlds for an adventure destination. In this way it incorporates all other campaign worlds under a single umbrella and shows off one of GURPS greatest strengths – the ability to run almost any type of campaign from any technological and world background, all with one set of rules.
Other books in the series explore one or more alternate Earths which can be used as an adventure destination or as the basis for an entire campaign.
Fantasy: Portal Realms explores another common fantasy trope: modern day adventurer lost in a fantasy world.
Alternate Earths 1 & 2 are GURPS 3rd Edition supplements each containing a variety of Earths with alternate timelines for the Infinity Unlimited setting. They contain relatively little that needs converting to 4th Edition, focusing on the worldbuilding more than game rules or NPCs.
Timeline presents a historical timeline of interesting events and possible turning points, the exact places where the PCs might get involved or an alternate timeline might split, making it an amazing resource for any time or dimension traveling game.
Who's Who 1 & 2 detail important figures throughout history. While the figures receive full character write-ups using GURPS 3rd Edition they can easily be used in 4th Edition with little conversion work necessary since they are intended to be used as NPCs and their exact point costs shouldn't matter.
Mysteries is an in-depth investigation into running crime dramas, police investigations, and good old fashioned private investigation stories. It has a thorough exposition on the taxonomy of murders and other crimes, where criminals tend to get it wrong and are discovered, and how to investigate crimes and round up witnesses and evidence. It goes on to cover detective stories in different genres, from modern to sci-fi to fantasy and horror. It wraps up with character templates covering common genre occupations.
The award winning GURPS Space contains an excellent discussion for setting up a science fiction universe – what campaign types are common, the implications of different types of Faster Than Light drives and what kind of technology is common. It spends nearly 1/3 of it's pages going over worldbuilding - from stars to worlds to the types of civilizations and populations likely to be present on them. Following that is a chapter on Alien Life, which can be used to randomly generate the dominate life forms on the planet. It goes on to discuss fitting a story into the worlds that you create, what kinds of societies you may want to use either for the setting for antagonistic governments that your players can explore. It finishes up with the Characters chapter which contains a number of character templates for common archetypes.
The Planetary Record Worksheet is a free PDF worksheet for recording all of the details or a new star system and worlds you generate using the world creation chapters from the Space.
So far only a couple of books in Steampunk series have been released. Settings and Style details how to set the mood, setting, and style of the genre where the Vehicles details a number of appropriate conveyances for the genre. More books are due to come.
GURPS Supers covers the genre of four-color comic heroes, with rules for new powers, new superhuman feats, and suggestions for running comic book style cinematic campaigns and combat. It includes character templates for the common archetypes of the genre, as well as advice on designing many of the trope powers all your favorite comic book heroes have.
Zombies is your guide to running the zombie apocalypse, from the mindless walking dead to the diseased living corpses, from folklore to cinema. It includes different kinds of zombies, example zombie templates, discussions on how to run zombies as antagonists in your games, and different kinds of zombie campaign frameworks.
Zombies: Day One sketches out eight different zombie campaign frameworks, from the return of the Necromancer- King to Zombies in Space.
Worldbooks describe in detail one specific campaign setting. They may include special or customized rules tweaks for that setting, racial templates, and listings of equipments and technology that may be unusual or unique to that setting. They usually detail organizations and political structures, major NPCs, world histories, areas of conflict and areas for adventure. Worldbooks differ from Genre Books in that they focus on one specific game world, with any advice on running games being specific to that setting. Generally speaking, if you pick up the Basic Set and a Worldbook you will have everything you need to run a GURPS game (though, of course, you can always add more Rulebooks, use items from Catalogs, and take advice from Genre Books.).
Banestorm was the first settimg ever published for GURPS. In fact, Orcslayer was the first supplement for both the game world and for GURPS, and was actually published before the GURPS Box Set 1st Edition was published (using the rules for Man-To-Man, which was a precursor game to GURPS). After that came the original edition and then GURPS Fantasy 2nd Edition, which was a bit of genre book for fantasy and a worldbook for Banestorm, combined in one. When GURPS 4th Edition was published they finally decided to separate the genre book into the title GURPS Fantasy and gave the world of Banestorm it's own book.
Banestorm is set on the world of Yrth, a magical world which was dominated by the Orcs, who where slowly wiping out the Elves and Dwarves. To fight back the cult of Dark Elves summoned up a powerful Bane to wipe out the Orcs, and wipe them out it did. Unfortunately, the critical failure on the spell casting resulted in ripping open a hole between dimensions, bringing in humans from medieval Earth, Goblins, Halflings, Reptile Men, and a variety of other races from a half-dozen other worlds. The Banestorm hit Earth in 1050, smack dab in the middle of the crusades. It brought forth a great deal of Christian crusaders and Islamic defenders from the holy land and deposited them across the continent. To the North barbarians and East-Asians were deposited, but in much smaller numbers. The primary conflict is between the three Christian nations (one formerly Islamic) and two Islamic nations, with outside skirmishes from the barbarians to the North and remaining Orcs from the West.
Abydos details the city of Abydos, located on the lake Styx. It is a city where a bastardized version of Christianity has taken root and death magic is common; in particular, zombie "slaves" are used throughout the city to do most of the grunt work.
Harkwood, Tredroy, and Orcslayer are all adventure books with city backgrounds mixed in, describing various locals and events that the players can get wrapped up in. The first two are for GURPS 3rd Edition and, as I said, Orcslayer is basically 1st Edition. All of the adventures in Fantasy Adventures are written so that they happen on Yrth.
The Discworld Roleplaying Game contains all the rules necessary to explore the world of Terry Pratchett's Disc. In addition to describing a full campaign background for the Disc, this book includes a significantly extended version of the GURPS Lite rules (more of a GURPS "medium"), including it's own magic system. Don't let Death get you down; in fact, don't let Death get you at all.
GURPS Infinite Worlds is a combination Genre Book and Worldbook. As a Genre Book it offers advice on running games covering all sorts of time-and-dimension traveling frames, with discussions on alternate worlds, different implications of time travel and different ways that time travel can be handled. It even includes a few example campaign frames for time or dimension hopping games. Much of this discussion came from the previous publication GURPS Time Travel for GURPS 3rd Edition.
However, the centerpiece of the book is the Infinity Unlimited campaign setting. This campaign frame is both a setting and a meta-setting, incorporating all other settings. Taking place on an Earth that discovered dimensional travel into alternate timelines, essentially each destination world could be an entire campaign world of it's own. In fact, you could use any other campaign world as one of the infinite worlds for an adventure destination. In this way it incorporates all other campaign worlds under a single umbrella and shows off one of GURPS greatest strengths – the ability to run almost any type of campaign from any technological and world background, all with one set of rules.
Other books in the series explore one or more alternate Earths which can be used as an adventure destination or as the basis for an entire campaign.
Fantasy: Portal Realms explores another common fantasy trope: modern day adventurer lost in a fantasy world.
Alternate Earths 1 & 2 are GURPS 3rd Edition supplements each containing a variety of Earths with alternate timelines for the Infinity Unlimited setting. They contain relatively little that needs converting to 4th Edition, focusing on the worldbuilding more than game rules or NPCs.
Timeline presents a historical timeline of interesting events and possible turning points, the exact places where the PCs might get involved or an alternate timeline might split, making it an amazing resource for any time or dimension traveling game.
Who's Who 1 & 2 detail important figures throughout history. While the figures receive full character write-ups using GURPS 3rd Edition they can easily be used in 4th Edition with little conversion work necessary since they are intended to be used as NPCs and their exact point costs shouldn't matter.
GURPS Mars Attacks is based on the ever popular Mars Attacks Trading Cards which have been around for almost 60 years (indecently, the movie was also based on the cards, while this game is NOT based on the movie at all). The book takes a look at the campier side of a Martian invasion of Earth.
Prime Directive is a standalone game, including a slimmed down version of the GURPS rules in the core book. It details the world of the war game Star Fleet Battles, which through a few odd licensing deals is itself based on the original Star Trek TV series, being allowed to use the races, worlds, and technology of the TV series without being able to use the term "Star Trek" or any of the characters from the TV series, nor anything from the subsequent movies or TV series. It was written and published by the folks at Amarillo Design Bureau, so it has a slightly different layout and feel from any other GURPS books as well as a slightly "war gamey" feel to the classic Trek setting. Still, it's the closest we'll ever have to a GURPS Star Trek and is quite useful for creating a game with the feel of classic Star Trek.
The images below link to the PDFs available from Warehouse 23. Printed books can still be purchased directly from Starfleet Games.
Set in a world where the war is over and the Robots won, Reign of Steel details a world where humanity is in the minority. However, there's still some hope, as the world has been divided up by the AI computers into 18 zones, each their own domain controlled by one of the AI's and its robot minions – and they can't agree on what to do with humanity. Or the rest of Earth, or how to deal with each other, for that matter. In several of the zones humanity clings to life, and a few people even thrive. In another zone every microbe has been hunted to extinction, while in yet another zone the landscape has been returned to nature without human presence. While the main book is written for GURPS 3rd Edition, Reign of Steel: Will to Live is a 4th Edition update guide, allowing you to continue the fight for the future of humanity... or help to wipe it out.
Tales of the Solar Patrol brings out the look and feel of old 1920's & 30's pulp serials and 1950's space adventure movies and early television. The Solar Patrol travels the solar system, preventing the Martians from invading or the Venusians from stealing our women. The theme and artwork of this PDF hits on all cylinders, really bringing the feel of classic Flash Gordon or Tom Corbett, Space Cadet to your gaming table.
On July 16, 1945 the detonation of the first atom bomb ripped open a hole in space, creating a Hellstorm seething with magical energy which washed over the world. Magic has come to the 20th century, and nothing has been the same since. Technomancer is a setting for GURPS 3rd Edition, with Pyramid #3/115: Technomancer serving as a conversion guide for 4th Edition.
Set on Earth in 2100 AD, Transhuman Space explores a future of Transhumanism - a future where advanced Bio-Technology allows you to sculpt the body you want to be, where advanced AI can be people, and where people can be AI by getting uploaded into a computer. It is a future where the solar system has been colonized, but we haven't quite reached to the stars yet.
GURPS Transhuman Space was originally released for GURPS 3rd Edition, and the main book (simply titled Transhuman Space) contains a copy of GURPS Lite 3rd Edition so that it can be played as a standalone 3rd Edition game. However, to get full use out of the game you really need expanded rules options (especially for character creation), which means buying into either GURPS 3rd or 4th Edition. The line has seen a large number of supplements for both 3rd and 4th Editions.
Transhuman Space: Changing Times is the 4th Edition conversion guide. While it contains a synopsis of the setting, the full background of the setting is presented in the core book which you will probably want to acquire even if you are planning on running the game in 4th Edition.
The four TeraLogos News supplements are free PDFs which contain news reports which can be dropped into your game setting or used as a guideline for updating events that happened after the main book was released. After those two books and four freebies there are a number of supplements available, so what you get is entirely dependent on what types of games you'd like to play in the setting.
Traveller has a long history with GURPS, and indeed a long long history within the Roleplaying Games industry. The original version of Traveller was perhaps the very first science fiction roleplaying game, and many a grognard gamer laments on the days when you got your RPGs in little black books. GURPS Traveller was released in the heyday of GURPS 3rd Edition, and had a large number of supplements released. By the time that GURPS 4th Edition was coming out the license was winding down, and the slowed production schedule meant that only one book and one PDF was released for the new edition.
The Traveller universe is set in the distant future within a large interstellar Imperium, controlled by an aristocratic ruling class. The Imperium is so spread out that the Emperor cannot maintain control over most of it's parts, so a series of Nobles control regions and then sectors within the Imperium. Between the infighting of the Nobles and the Capitalist elites, there is a lot of possibilities for adventure and even exploration within the Imperium.
GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars is set during an earlier era of the Imperium than the main 3rd Edition timeline, during the Interstellar Wars era. Interstellar Wars: Combat Counters gives you a collection of printable combat counters for use in the spaceship combat rules contained in the Traveller: Interstellar Wars main book.
Psionic Institutes details various institutions which deal with Psionic abilities in the Traveller universe.
GURPS Traveller: Flare Star is a free PDF adventure that was written for 3rd Edition. Most other books in the line are for GURPS 3rd Edition.
The Vorkosigan Saga Roleplaying Game contains everything necessary to venture into Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga universe. In addition to all the information describing the universe (places of interest, important people to meet, things to do, organizations of interest) this volume includes an extended version of GURPS Lite tailored for the Vorkosigan Saga and a slimmed down version of the GURPS Spaceships rules, containing everything necessary to build and use spaceships from the Saga.
Not to be overlooked is the catalog of GURPS historical books. These are some of the best researched gaming books in the industry and cover a large range of historical eras and cultures. Most of these are for GURPS 3rd Edition, but are still quite useful as reference material for a GURPS 4th Edition game. Some, like GURPS Dinosaurs, require a lot of conversion work while with most others you just need to watch out for character and equipment write-ups, making them considerably easier to convert.
These books delve not only into the people, places, and history of their time period but also take a look at the folklore, mysticism, magic, and fantastical creatures. For example Russia takes a look at the Baba Yaga figure while Arabian Nights takes a look at animals and monsters, from real breeds of horses to mythical Djinn. Others, like Robin Hood and Camelot, deal even more with the folklore and tales and examine the setting through the different historical lenses through which the stories have been passed down. Meanwhile, Dinosaurs and Who's Who 1 & 2 are more Catalogs of ancient animals and historical figures.
GURPS has a long list of worldbooks published over the years. Many were conversions of novel series, video games, or even of roleplaying game settings. Some worldbooks can be used in 4th Edition with relatively little conversion work necessary while others would require quite a bit of work. All, however, offer great inspiration and contain a considerable amount of world history and background as well as style and setting advice which can be used with little effort.
Autoduel is set after the apocalypse, in a future where survivors duel one another in armed and armored cars. Based on the classic Car Wars board game.
Detailing the greatest era of conflict the world has ever seen each volume of the World War II details one front or aspect of the war. The WWII main book has an overview of the war as well as character templates, a copy of GURPS 3rd Edition Lite (available as a free download), and a slimmed down vehicle design system based on GURPS Vehicles 2nd Edition for GURPS 3rd Edition.
Templates for GURPS 4th Edition is an unofficial conversion of all of the Character Templates by Curtis Handsaker, edited by me and hosted on my website for free.
Hand of Steel covers commando and special forces of the war.
Motor Pool offers an expansion for the Vehicles creation rules.
Weird War II is perhaps my favorite book in the game line, covering all the occult and just plain weird aspects of the war, some based on mythology the Nazi's co-opted and believed while other were based on real but strange inventions and happenings in the war. It could easily be used to add occult powers, mystic magic, or weird technology into a game. As an aside, an excellent companion piece to this book is The Nazi Occult written by several-times GURPS author Kenneth Hite.
The Secret of the Gneisenau is a Weird War II adventure set on a crippled German warship with some weird technology.
Campaign Frameworks differ from Genre Books in that they are not about giving advice on building a campaign setting. And they differ from Worldbooks in that they do not detail the history or politics of a setting. Rather they give a framework for running a game in a particular genre style. Normally these frameworks keep world details very light, if they mention it at all, allowing the GM to build his own setting into the genre framework.
Each of these game lines has been a series of PDFs, with one PDF offering a dozen or so Character Templates for designing characters and one PDF offering additional rules and rules advice on running a game in that genre style. Additional PDFs in each line tend to offer more character templates, enemies or monsters to fight, equipment or equipment loadouts, and various other rules advice and expansions. The Dungeon Fantasy line has been particularly prolific, spawning around 30 PDFs (and more still coming) as well as the standalone Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game box set.
The Action line places you in the genre of 80's action movies. Tapping into the spirit of movie franchises starring heroes like John McClane (Die Hard), James Bond, Rambo, and Ocean's Eleven to set the mood and cinematic feel. Campaigns can revolve around teams of super-spies, a gang of criminals looking for the big score, or a classic action hero just trying to survive the bad-guy of the film.
Don't get trapped in the 80's, though. With a little bit of reworking Action can easily help you run a cyberpunk game by just adding in cybernetics from GURPS Ultra-Tech. And you can travel the galaxy larger than life by throwing force swords and blasters from Ultra-Tech and then throwing in a few starships from GURPS Spaceships.
Society has fallen, the apocalypse has come and gone, the world is in decay, and the survivors – our heroes – are left to pick up the pieces After the End. This game line gets its inspiration from movies like Mad Max and Escape from New York, the Fallout video game series, and other post-apocalypse fiction.
The Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game (DFRPG) started out life as a Campaign Framework series for the full GURPS game. After the popularity of 20+ supplements it was decided to turn it into a standalone box set game, complete with everything you'll need to play GURPS in a classic hack-and-slash dungeon delving style. In addition to the five books in the box the game includes two double-sided color maps, cardboard heroes, and dice – so literally everything you'll need to start playing. The five books include Adventurers with character templates for your standard character "classes", Exploits with rules for running the game, Monsters, Spells, and Dungeons with the adventure I Smell A Rat. There is an additional Companion book which you can purchase, and is itself a collection of the three PDFs Magic Items, Traps, and the adventure follow-up Against the Rat-Men. Last, but not least, is the ultra-sturdy GM's Screen which includes a Character Creation Cheat Sheet booklet and Delvers to Go booklet of pre-made characters.
Hall of Judgment is an announced adventure set to be released in August 2018.
A wildly popular line of hack-and-slash adventuring for GURPS, the Dungeon Fantasy line of PDFs has turned into a prolific one, with over 30 supplements to date (and more coming). The players each take the role of a classic dungeon delving "class" - a warrior (knight), rogue (archer), thief, wizard, or one of 7 other professions. You then suit up and loot up the dungeon, killing monsters and stealing their stuff. The first four books saw limited print runs, while the entire series is available in PDF with expansions detailing monsters, magic items, new professions, and even an adventure or two.
Unlike the Dungeon Fantasy RPG (DFRPG) (above), these books were designed to be expansions to the Basic Set 4th Edition. Many of them can be used with the DFRPG, but there is the odd chance of mentioning a rule or character trait that exists only in the Basic Set, and any page references are going to refer back to the main GURPS line and not to the DFRPG.
Monster Hunters takes its inspiration from movies, tv shows, and graphic novels like Van Helsing, Hellboy, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Blade where the protagonists hunt down the monsters that the rest of us don't want to admit are out there. Characters can take the part of soldiers, holy men, witches, or even monsters turned good in their attempt to protect humanity from the evils lurking in the shadows.
GURPS doesn't concentrate on pre-made adventures. Being a toolkit type of
game it's hard to develop adventures that are both specific enough to be useful
and generic enough to fit within the GURPS tent. Still, there have been a few
adventures published for GURPS 4th Edition and there were several published for
GURPS 3rd Edition - many of which are still fairly usable in
4th Edition. A
while ago I put together a list of GURPS adventures with the help of Gollum (a
fellow member of the SJGames forums, not the guy from Lord of the Rings). You
can find
that list here.
These adventures are ready to play and written for GURPS 4th Edition. Caravan to Ein Arris is free to download. I Smell A Rat is part of the Dungeon Fantasy RPG box set.
While GURPS doesn't do a lot of ready to play adventures, what they try to provide is books chock full of adventure seeds – encounters, locations, hot spots, and NPCs. These books provide a good jumping off point for a GM to make his own adventures.
Many of these adventures can be used in GURPS 4th Edition with relatively little work. The exceptions are probably the Supers and Cyberpunk adventures, since there was a significant change in how "powers" are handled between editions.
GURPS Update is a free set of conversion guidelines to help you convert characters from GURPS 3rd Edition into 4th Edition. It can be handy if you want to use any 3rd Edition supplements, helping you convert NPCs as well.
These adventures were written as solo adventures - like the choose-your-own adventure books you may have read, but using the GURPS 3rd Edition rules. Between the edition conversion and difficulty levels they would take some work but could be used as the basis for an adventure with GURPS 4th Edition.
All in a Night's Work is fondly remembered as the solo adventure included in the GURPS Basic Set 3rd Edition.
The four Conan adventures were based on an adaptation of Robert E. Howard's Conan series. A deal was worked out to allow the PDFs of these books to be made available at this time.
For Love of Mother-Not was based on an adaptation of the Alan Dean Foster's Humanx series. The license has long expired so it is currently unavailable.
Pyramid Magazine has a long history as a gaming magazine. It started out in 1993 as a bi-monthly conventionally printed general interest gaming magazine. It lasted in that form until 1998, when the pressures of printing magazines pushed it into being reincarnated a web-based 'zine, where it published 4-5 articles a week every week. In this form it focused more on GURPS, but still ran a substantial number of general interest gaming articles, and it lasted into 2008 when it was reincarnated yet again.
The third incarnation of Pyramid Magazine, or Pyramid Vol. 3, is a monthly PDF magazine focuses on a range of GURPS topics. Each month the topic of the magazine concentrates broadly on one of Modern, Fantasy, or Sci-Fi, with the articles concentrating on a specific topic within those three domains. Each issue is about 40 pages long with 5-6 articles.
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Here I have collected links to all of the freebies available for GURPS. In addition to what is listed here there is a list of Resources & Play Aids on the website which includes links to a number of other useful aids, including PDFs of the standard Character Sheet, NPC Form & Time Use Sheet, GM Control Sheet, and Campaign Planning Form.
Copyright © 2018 Eric B. Smith
GURPS is a registered trademark of Steve Jackson Games, and the art here is copyrighted by Steve Jackson Games. All rights are reserved by SJ Games. This material is used here in accordance with the SJ Games online policy.
