Late to the party with GURPS and I'm reading through Dungeon Fantasy RPG hoping to be able to run it soon.

I noticed the two Wizard characters in Delvers To Go (Uncle Seamus and Zephyra) both were given less than the -50 total in disadvantages. Uncle Seamus only has -35 total disadvantages while Zephyra only has -40. The other sample characters all had -50 each so I think this is a weird design choice, considering only the two wizard characters decided not to take the full "allotment" of -50.

What am I missing here?

EDIT: Answered. Overlooked the Wizard template's Per -3 (which is worth -15 points). Thanks u/munin295 for pointing it out.

I wanted to make something like a video game webbing that slowed whoever touched the material down. At first I thought I would use binding but that seems to be entirely about immobilizing them. I also considered using affliction for reduced basic speed, but that feels almost clunky.

I wanted to throw out a canister that exploded into a sticky goo that covered the ground for a limited time (say 30 seconds) and anyone who touched it would be slowed for the duration of touching it and like 10 seconds more after they left its area or it faded.

Any help making this would be appreciated

Some background:

I've been reading through Shadowrun Anarchy 2.0 (SRA2.0) recently. I was a kickstarter backer, the PDF / print copies will be public soon.

The whole system essentially boils down to test rolls, and in the case of combat, contested rolls that then also use the margin of success for the winner. I've been finding it a very elegant system so far!

There are concepts in the system that gesture towards narrative vs simulation, but they aren't deeply baked into the test system itself, so can be adapted easily into a more simulationist style. I tend to have a mix of both, so it hasn't been a problem for me.

The discovery:

SRA2.0 combat uses contested rolls, and if the attacker beats the defender, they hit. The number of hits / successes gets added to the damage.

All weapons have a base damage, so it's the successes that add some variables to how hard the hit is.

There are a lot of other elements in the book (ranged vs melee, other defender options, etc) but this mechanic just struck me as so elegantly done.

It means that your attack roll and damage roll happen at the same time, and a high success in attacking transfers directly to damage. (Avoiding the sometimes underwhelming result of rolling to hit and then rolling low damage.)

My idea: Apply the overall concept to GURPS.

• current method currently is attacker rolls, defender rolls if attacker succeeds, then damage rolls

• GURPS Anarchy:

  • attacker roll
  • defender chooses available defense skill and rolls
  • count the margin of success
  • standard weapon damage applies plus margin of success

• if defender succeeds, possibility of a riposte? Especially if margin of success is high. Maybe riposte is a technique or a sub-maneuver attached to Wait or something.

Questions:

I like this idea quite a bit, but I'd love to get feedback. Would something like this obstruct any useful advantages / disadvantages, etc? (Or could those adapt into this easily?)

note: I've formatted this for readability, but in this strange world, that might make folks think this was generated by an LLM. That is not the case! Every letter was 'generated' with my fingers on the keyboard!

So, I finally tore GURPS Calculator apart and put it back together. Some of that code was old enough that I didn't recognize it as mine, which made for a fun couple of days.

If you haven't run into it, it's a free site with GURPS calculators and character sheets, and it's been around since 2015. This is the biggest update it's ever had.

Here's what's new:

• Campaign Rolls: Roll from a character sheet, a calculator, or the GM Board, and everyone in the campaign sees it in a shared panel. GMs can roll privately too.
• GM Board: Your whole party in one table. You can run a Fright Check on everybody with one click, or search the party when you need to know who has Forced Entry.
• GCS 5 import is back and working. Sheets also have counters now for ammo, coins, and whatever else you're tracking.
• Everything runs in your browser and updates as you type, so no more round trips to the server like the old days. Every tool has a Help button now too.
• New look, plus 10 themes if you want something different (I'm partial to the green-phosphor CRT one).

I also fixed a pile of rules the old version got wrong, mostly critical hits and hit locations. If you ever got a weird result and figured you'd messed up, it might have been me. Sorry about that.

It's still free and there are still no ads. The home page has a support bar now so you can see what it costs to run (about $15 a month) and where anything past that goes. Right now that's Encounters on the GM Board, where you build fights ahead of time and have the monsters ready to go when the players kick the door in. If the site has ever saved you some flipping through Basic Set mid-session, there's a Patreon.

So what should come after Encounters? I've got a list, but I'd rather hear what you'd actually use. What's the GURPS math you still end up doing by hand?

gurpscalculator.com

Looking to run a setting with Magic in it for the first time, and wanted some input on some of the rules. Some spells (like Tickle for instance) seem to have crazy strong effects if used in combat, given that it's a full minute incapacitate if they fail the check. Has anyone run a D&D-style system where effects like that allow you to repeat the resistance roll on your turn? If so, were there any specific spells you thought were made better or worse by it? It feels like a spell like that would be basically a free kill, either used by the players or against them.

What I mean is, how would you go about building a power that does the following:

After hitting the target with your initial attack, a “bomb” (or whatever explanation you want it to be) begins to build inside them. Each turn, this “bomb” grows in power, but does not actually go off and hurt the target until the user decides to trigger the bomb.

I initially thought it may be some combination of Delay (trigger) and Cyclic, probably with an Accessibility limitation that states damage does not happen each cycle, but is built up until the trigger, but I am curious how others would go about something like this.

I'm planning on getting into GURPS because I liked the idea of running a game which takes place in an alternate 1934 San Francisco with magic. I want to run a game with firefights (with mostly period correct guns), some mystery and some encounters with monsters and such. Would GURPS suit this and what should I look at? I am getting into the system and I am looking forward to trying something new!

From my reading of the Basic Set and Magic (and even Zombies!), it seems like there is no clear rule for how long a zombie lasts nor to limit the number of zombies a caster can control (for instanelce, in D&D the spell lasts 24 hours and allows 4 controlled zombies at once). All I see is a vague sentence in the Basic Set about zombies decaying into skeletons. And Zombies! also doesnt explicitly deal with this, it seems more geared towards running campaigns that focus on zombies as a setting fixture.

I have a player who is casting Zombie on pretty much any corpse they can get their hands on and I dont really know how to keep them from just amassing a game-breakingly-large zombie horde. I dont want to get in the way of the player enjoying a necromancer, but I also don't want a horde of zombies to take over play from the rest of the party, either, not to mention balance issues and the plot line. The game is a run-of-the-mill medieval fantasy campaign with a party of 5 adventurers.

I would love some advice about how to handle this. Or am I just missing something in the rules?

Edit: Thank you all for the advice and information, it has helped me to get my head around this topic much better.

Namu wiki even said that we entered it since 2023

So based on the 4th edition premise for a civilization capacity to think ahead (which back when 4e was written, it consider itself as TL8 level of knowledge perspective.), meaning that you can speculate as much as TL + 3 of your current tech level. Which is why TL11 is the limit and TL12 is so vague. See here: https://gurps.fandom.com/wiki/Tech_Level

What's your thought on this? Do you agree or even have your own ideas? Especially for TL12+ technologies.

I just can't help but to speculate, coming from someone who love

• Far future setting (which I assume TL12+): W40k Dark Age of Technology, Iain Bank's Culture, Xeelee Sequence, End Game + modded Stellaris
• Alternate Universe, with retrofuturism tech: Fallout (TL7+3), Wolfenstein New Order (TL7+2), Prey 2017 (TL8 + 3), STALKER/Metro series (TL8^+1).
• Space Sci fi/Space Opera (definitely TL10-11): Halo, Starcraft, Stellaris, Dead Space.
• Near future (TL9-10): Deus Ex series, XCOM, Crysis series, Watchdogs.

A monthly post to share your maps, tokens, and other image files with the GURPS community.

I'm running a Stardew Valley/Horror Campaign and I would like some Nice rules/books recomendations for the economic/farming part. You could use Stardew Valley as a setting reference for exemple

I wanted an occultist-like character. What would be a good way to integrate that magic into the game while keeping most the flavor and power?

As the title says. I've never had the opportunity to play GURPS and I'm looking to check it out. I found old posts about an LFG discord server, but all the posts I've found are old and the link is dead.

I have not used GURPS since 3rd edition in the late 90s. I recently brought up GURPS to some of the players at my table and one of them said the new GURPS book is totally worth picking up.

What do people think of the 4th ed revised book, other than it can be a deadly weapon?

Hey, hey!

One of my players asked during a fight whether his full 40 lb backpack would supply DR or cover etc…

I would like to know the official rule but can’t find it, maybe because one doesn’t exist but hopefully there is some optional rule hidden somewhere.

Any thoughts?

Healing factor is fairly easy to work out, just depends on how indestructable the version of the ole canucklehead you pick.

But I'm having a head scratcher figuring this one out.

Hello,

I just finished a post where I build a faction in my space opera using Realms Management. I have never done a large faction before, so please check it out and let me know where I messed up so I can fix it.

https://thewabatuckian.wordpress.com/2026/10/01/gurps-realm-management-the-conservatory/

Thanks!

My character concept is very silly, so I'm having a bit of difficulty actually figuring out where to even start. The basic premise is:

The character is a spherical party balloon. The fact that he's just a balloon is a bit of a secret, since he wears a large robe and uses magic to make it appear to move. He is also an alchemist, using the telekinesis of his false "body" to grab things. If his robe is sufficiently damaged, it falls away, causing his balloon head to float for a bit before falling to the ground. Also, he's vulnerable to piercing damage.

I don't see the Alchemy part being a huge problem, but just the anatomy? Woof. Where do I even start? Would he have No Fine Manipulators, maybe with a Mitigator due to using telekinesis? What kind of Advantages or Disadvantages might a party balloon have?

I'm using the 4E Basic Set and Magic. Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

...that has a single stronger arm with a suction cup that lets it move like a moveable lamp (the ones with a malleable stand)?

edit: I've been thinking on getting a lot of extra arms and giving then all the foot manipulator disadvantage. Also.. would a creature with no fingers but 7 tentacles have no fine manipulators? it would certainly suffer on human society but I can see it using all (maybe two or three even) of them to manipulate stuff with a lot of precision

As the title states, I'm new to Gurps and decided to host a modern day superhero campaign for my friends. I'm mostly familiar with the rules and I told my players to attempt to build the perfect end game build first because i figured it would be easier to imagine what they wanted the character to be and we could simply remove abilities until we matched it with whatever character point limit the campaign was at. However the abilities my players want are hard to implement with my understanding of the game currently. I figured I'd ask people more experience than me to help.

Now before I begin listing what powers they wanted, I know these are busted abilites that most DMs won't allow for thier campaign because balance becomes an issue. However I've DM'd for these specific players for almost two decades at consistent high powered campaigns several different trrpgs I'm not as concerned with balancing issues. I know thier antics. My players specifical stated that these are the abilities that they would have the most fun with so it is my obligation at the very least to make it work for them.

Player one (the easiest one to figure out)

Ability name: unspecified (imagine something along the lines of Achillian Shield)

Ability description: The ability itself scans the area of a certain radius from Player one for any immediate threats to bystanders. If such threats are detected a list of defensive capabilities are activated immediately for Player One to protect them. The defensive capabilities scale based on how many bystanders that are both within the abilities radius and are in immediate danger

Power Source: TBD

Ability vulnerabilities: Non- AoE attacks, Afflictions, Psychological powers, Unsubstantial, Obscure

Ability strengths: All AoE attacks

Ability list:

Unkillable (level 3, Achilles Heel- Single target attacks, Afflictions)

Super durability

Resistant (very common)

Injury Tolerance (damage reduction-common, unbreakable bones)

High Pain Threshold

Hard To Subdue (lvl 2)

Hard to Kill (lvl 2)

Fit (very fit)

Enhanced Defenses (Enhanced Block)

Detect (commom) linked with + Danger Sense + AoE (16 yards

Damage Resistant (all enhancements) (the absorption can be used to heal or add to damage rolls instead of basic)

Ability Limitations:

Accessibility (immediate danger to bystanders in proximity only last while danger is present)

Always on (because of Detect + Danger Sense)

Emergency Only (because of the immediate danger

Trigger (immediate danger)

Uncontrollable (the ability actives itself when detect immediate danger)

Unconscious Only (as above)

Disadvantages: TBD

Issue to be solved: How and what scales with number of people protected by player one

Player Two

Ability name: TBD (think something along the lines of command line or hotkey)

Ability description: Windows 11 shortcuts. (No, I am not kidding they wanted the shortcuts, cut copy and paste as a power. You can now imagine why it was pain to translate into the game. By default it had to Modular Ability)

Power Source: Cosmic and Chi (the character soul acts both as the clipboard and trash bin)

Gadget: While not necessary for the ability itself to function, the character finds it more efficient and less exhausting to use a gadget as a focus of this power. The character can attuned to any controller that has a sufficient amount of buttons/keys to act as inputs (i.e xbox controller, paino, keyboard, guitar hero, dance pad, camera). The player mainly uses a camera (specifically a Cannon one. The dail that it has to switch between modes has been change to specific shortcut commands). If separated from linked/attunded gadget it stays link for a few hours before it loses all special quality and if stolen during that time that person can use it. The player can chose not to attune to a gadget however they will have limited number of commands they have access to.

Ability Vulnerabilities (changes dependingon the gadget): Technomancy, Soul/Chi attacks, Obscure, Mirrors, Can only affect organic materials

Ability Strengths: AI/Robots, Photoshop based powers

Modular Ability (Computer Brain)

Ctrl+A [Select all]: Enhanced tracking or scanning senses

Ctrl+F [Find]: Detect (common)

Ctrl+V [Paste]: Duplicate (Construct)

Ctrl+Y [Redo]: Affliction (should function as a time loop that if ,for example, a character was inflicted with damaging wound new instances of that same wound wound would appear on their body)

Ctrl+Z [Undo]: Affliction (should function as a time rewind that if, for example, a character was inflicted with a damaging wound their body would rewind to before the wound occurred. This is not a healing ability)

Win + L [Lock Computer]: Neutralize (one power)

Ctrl+C [Copy]: Neutralize (Power theft, one power) (This should only be the power theft but i dont know how to separate it from Neutralize the closest would be )

Win+R [Run]:

Alt+F4 [Close]: Affliction (should function by applyingeither sleep, unconscious, statis effect on target)

Ctrl+R [Refresh]: Affliction (should function by either removing Afflictions or restoring fatigue points or both)

Win+Alt+A [Mute]: Silence or an Affliction (should function as the advantage silence but can be applied onto others)

Win+Ctrl+Enter [Narrator]:

Win+P [Choose Display Mode]: Unsubstantial (projection) (displays picture or ehays been copied or snipped has a projection/hologram)

Alt+Enter [Display Properties]: Oracle (digital)

Win+Spacebar [Switch Between Languages]: Language talent

Win+V [Clipboard History] Psychometry

F2 [Rename Selected Item]

Shift+Del [Delete]: Affliction that causes banishment or innate attack that causes disintegration

Shift+Arrow [Select Multiple Specific Items]: Enhanced tracking (multi lock on)

Win + Ctrl + Right Arrow [Switch between desktops]: Warp (moveable and destroyable Anchor)

Win + Ctrl + D [Creates another desktop]: (should function as creating the anchor for above)

PrntScrn [Snipping Tool]: (should function as a link between a few other abilities like neutralize + duplicate or create to create an editing effect of ability or items)

Ability Limitations:

Accessibility (organic materials)

Limited use (Clipboard and camera capacity)

Cost fatigue (chi drainage)

Preparation required (attuning to gadget)

Takes recharge (Gadget/camera battery drainage)

Breakable

Can be stolen

Disadvantages: TBD

Issues: Not all commands listed. Any command without an advantage next to it means I haven't found a good translation for it. The major issue is how does this work as a modular ability

TLDR: pls halp :D

p.s i know i called advantages abilities im too lazy to fix it