Tool-Kit TTRPGs

GURPS

My continuing thoughts on the nature of tabletop role-playing games and my personal quest for a game to devote my hobby energies to for the near future bring me to ponder the class of "generic" role-playing game systems I like to call "tool-kit games". Perhaps the first entry in this group should be to mention our Original Fantasy Role-Playing Game, the White Box edition of Mr. Gygax and Mr. Arneson. Being both modular and seemingly designed to be very open to modification, the original edition of The World's Most Popular Role-Playing Game has spawned numerous homebrew rules. Some even saw publication as games in their own right. 

Today, my thoughts turn to GURPS, the Generic Universal Role Playing System designed by Steve Jackson and published by Steve Jackson Games (1986, 1988, 2004). It's one of the first games to openly state the attempt to provide a universal system that can be adapted to any genre.  Rather than switching systems every time one changes genre, GURPS attempts to provide players with a "one game to rule them all" type of solution. 

Built on the bones of an earlier game designed by Steve Jackson (The Fantasy Trip, Metagaming, 1977), GURPS in all its editions includes a number of mechanical features that place emphasis on a tactical feel and which reference real world measurement units and real world data. Known scientific phenomena about our world and universe is a starting point with GURPS, both as a way to ease transition between game system and reality and as an aid to verisimilitude. Use of supplemental material that is written for other game systems is encouraged and the use of real world terminology is meant to ease the process of doing so.

Despite Mr. Gygax famously deriding "realism in gaming" as a "bugaboo" the concept holds water in my estimation. As a fan of horror in gaming, a central feature of that "sense" is connection to the "real". (There is a good reason writers of horror fiction go to great lengths to describe the mundane such as describing "a sweating coke can on a wooden desk...because it is something we can all see in our mind's eye and it sets the stage for contrast.) 

The feeling of "realism" in a game can be helpful in certain aspects other than horror, particularly when dealing with baseline assumptions about how things should work. Generally I am a fan of game mechanics that seem to simulate real world conditions. Magic seems so much more fantastic when the backdrop is mundane reality and is a lot more imaginable when everything else seems real. 

The real appeal of GURPS, however, is its adaptability. It can be just the game you want it to be. By including some mechanical systems, and excluding others, the gamemaster can pick and choose among the tools GURPS offers. Rather than being a game where all the rules apply to every game, GURPS is a collection of "optional" rules to include, or not to include in any particular game. The person running the game obviously has a lot of decisions to make prior to the first game session - and that can be a joy or a chore depending upon how one approaches preparation. 

Fortunately the basic system in GURPS is quite easy to grasp and being a system based on real world data, I find its methods intuitive and logical to use. To put it simply, at its core, GURPS is an easy game to play. It boils down to "options". Include as many as you like, or just run with the barest of mechanics, the 3d6 dice roll under a stat to succeed mechanic. 

All this isn't really the point of discussing GURPS in the present, rather what recommends GURPS to me at the moment is its adaptability. I can customize GURPS to give me what I wish for in a game - and by extension leave aside all the stuff I find distracting and frustrating about other systems that assume one will use "all the rules as the authors present them". GURPS is in fact built with a "design it yourself" mindset. 

I have found that a significant amount of the enjoyment I gain from this hobby is through my "tinkering" with the game's rules and doing some "beyond the box" amateur designing of almost any published game system I play. Hence the appeal of the Old School approach and games such as White Box and GURPS. Rulings are a challenging part of the fun I experience as referee in setting up and planning a campaign, in running sessions at the table and even when thinking about and writing down my thoughts on the hobby. Looking things up in a big tome of rules is okay, but...

A significant part of the appeal I find in The Original Fantasy Role-Playing Game is the invitation to add to the rules, to make them "my game" through world building, various and myriad in-session rulings and mechanical customizations. The modular nature of the original White Box' rule system makes it easy to add to or alter game mechanic elements without damaging the game's integrity. The blatant absence of particular aspects in the rules as written makes some degree of "design it yourself" almost mandatory. Various "tool kit" games have been published in the decades following the release of the White Box edition and I find the possibilities of a generic system such as GURPS quite alluring. (I am guessing there may be more thoughts to follow.)

A place called Dreadmoor

What the sage says:

Once the Evil was defeated, the men turned on the elves. Having in the before times joined forces with elves, and with dwarves too, in a cooperative effort to defeat evil and thereby bring peace to the land, the nation of free men afterward came to resent elves. The men became jealous of the gods, whom they saw as distant and uncaring to men, and to hate elves whom they saw as unfairly favored by the gods, for did not the gods call elves their "first-born" and grant to them certain natural magical abilities and long lives. The men then practiced their talent for war upon the elves. A lifetime has come and gone - well a human life-span has come and gone and all the while the men have waged war upon elves. 

What the priest says:

Few can now recall the first days of the conflict or how the fighting first began. For most living today and calling themselves "free men of the west" there has only been war against the hated elves. Some say there were a few of the elvish people who dwelt among men prior to the start of open conflict, but most men alive today have never seen an elf, alive or dead, other than on the field of battle. It is said that the war has gone hard on the elves and that few of their people now survive. Some say the remaining elves made allies with evil forces, those who had previously served the dread lords in the before times, and that it is only through such an unholy pack with evil that the nation of elves now hope to continue their war against men. If this is true, and the presence of such evil folk raiding the settlements of men is surely evidence that it is true, this is taken as proof that the elves are an evil people who deserve death.

Building a game world:

The above description is the set-up for my homebrew setting I call Dreadmoor. As a game concept, Dreadmoor has been evolving through four decades of play. Starting in the years before there were any published settings - Greyhawk and Blackmoor were mostly known of at the time through their use as the titles of Supplement 1 and Supplement 2 respectively, I was like most early referees who also handwaved the details of setting and went straight to the dungeon. In those days I had some vague concept of a setting I kept in the back of my mind that was loosely based on whatever reading I could draw upon for inspiration. In this, I was and remain heavily influenced by various and sundry weird tales, favorite sword and sorcery yarns, and more generally so, by my understanding of history and the natural laws of the universe. I enjoy a spooky tale and I strive to include such supernatural elements in most of the games that I run.

It is a dark world of constant warfare and mistrust. The lawful forces of the city state of Dreadmoor are locked in a desperate struggle with the chaotic forces which seek their downfall. There is peril aplenty and death awaits 'round every corner. But if an adventurer is both quick and lucky fame and gold may be their reward. As I explain to players, Dreadmoor is the name of the city and the state, Dreadmoor is the name of my campaign world, and Dreadmoor is a philosophy and the central theme in my personal play-style. Welcome to Dreadmoor and bring your own dice!

(Readers who have a good memory for geography may see a strong similarity in the Dreadmoor map to a certain area on Earth. I find things in real life are often very inspiring.)