GURPS BrOSR: The Roadmap

GURPS BrOSR: The Roadmap

Ever since I got introduced to the concept of BrOSR, I got hooked by the idea. It's been more than three months since I wrote my initial thoughts (link), and there hasn't been a day when I didn't have a nagging thought in the back of my head telling me to "go ahead, do it." I've already played around with some of the concepts in the past, such as emergent play and low/zero-prep, and found that they work wonderfully. Now, the biggest problem is that I'm running GURPS and not planning to drop it.

Why is that a problem? The problem lies in the fact that GURPS is not a system but a toolbox to create your own system. In my opinion, this is both a boon and a bane. It's a boon because you can craft the exact experience you want, but the bane is twofold. First, the system is so mutable that every GM that is running GURPS is basically running a different system. You can't just say "Let's play GURPS" and have players understand what that entails. Second, due to the licensing policy of SJGames, even if you do create a perfect system for yourself and your group, don't you dare share or publish it! If not for that, you'd see numerous ready-to-play "powered by GURPS" products online, and the company just can't tolerate that. The main reason, AFAIK, is to preserve brand reputation of well edited, well playtested, and well written books and to avoid the deluge of poor third-party supplements like what OGL allowed for D&D 3.0. (I have to note that while many of them are indeed poor 3.0 books, many of them are excellent GURPS books, ironically). However, the quality of GURPS books seems to be on a decline, and if you read even some of the older ones carefully, you will see that even they are not without faults. I believe that "unshackling" GURPS would be a great help to the system, but I'm just a random guy on the internet.

So, with all doom and gloom out of the way, let's talk about something positive. I actually want to make my games better, and nowadays the BrOs seem to be the only ones actually discussing the game and not trying to sell you endless identical B/X clones, and their ideas seem great. It is thanks to them that I decided to properly read through AD&D 1e PHB and DMG. I have never played AD&D, so my mind is unclouded by nostalgia. I found many interesting ideas that actually are GURPS-compatible. I also found that I'm very spoiled. People complain (myself including) that GURPS Basic Set is poorly organized, but after reading through 1e DMG, I see that the Basic Set is a masterpiece in that regard if compared to it. The 1e DMG is yet again full of excellent stuff, and I can definitely see the appeal. However, isn't there an alternative that expands on the same ideas, but at the same time is more streamlined?

That's right, ACKS II got a proper release not long ago, and I've been reading that too. The books (aside from the GURPS Basic Set) are the only ones that brought me back to my teenage years when I was reading the D&D 3.0 PHB, full of excitement and wonder. I strongly recommend everyone to get the books even if you do not plan to play ACKS - you're bound to find lots of useful information there. Clear procedures for wilderness and dungeon exploration, magic research rules, mercantile ventures mechanics, domain management ruless that seem to be actually playable unlike GURPS Realm Management, cool mass combat rules, random weather generation, etc.

Where am I going with all this? I know that running a BrOSR-style campaign in GURPS is possible, but it will take a lot of effort. Most of the necessary pieces are already there, you just have to compile them. The problem lies in GURPS - all the rules bits are spread over countless books, and the rules sometimes are inconsistent. In my games, I use so many optional rules and houserules that I don't really blame my players for getting lost in them sometimes. I am unironically considering just copying and pasting the stuff that I need into a single document to create a book that only has the parts I need and doesn't have anything else. That would include not only the official rules but also my own alterations and additions. This is an immense task, but I think there's no better way to do it. Of course, such document would be illegal to share outside my group, but this is more-or-less essential to be able to play GURPS by RAW and avoid rule zero.

In addition, I would have to adapt certain procedures and rules from ACKS. For example, the weather generation rules from ACKS II are excellent, and while you can generate weather for your GURPS game using them, you will have to adjudicate the mechanical effects yourself (I'll give you a hint - most of the weather rules in GURPS are in... you guessed it right - in GURPS Tactical Shooting: Extreme Conditions. Intuitive, right?) Yes, you may know that weather is windy using ACKS rules, but how windy? The exact speed and direction may be important in GURPS, as there are many spells that produce clouds that drift with the wind. If you're not using wind rules, then why are the drifting effects there? Overall, this shouldn't be too difficult.

Character generation in GURPS sometimes intimidates newcomers and makes them seethe online about the high barrier of entry. The old-school paradigm is that chargen should be easy and quick. I can see the appeal in both approaches. While before I really disliked templates, now I think that they aren't as bad of an idea as I thought at first. More than that, I think that you can and should go further and turn character generation into something modular (and possibly random) like what Delvers to Grow already does. However, in this case, I would also ignore character points at chargen. I don't care about balance much, and the fact that different modules aren't even in point values wouldn't bother me much. I already have some ideas in the works for this.

Wealth rules would have to be adjusted. I already ignore the Wealth advantage/disadvantage in favor of PK's Wealth for Points houserule that only affects starting wealth. After all, in the BrOSR paradigm, wealth is tied to character advancement. I recall seeing an adaptation of ACKS II GP-to-XP rules for GURPS on /tg/, and I may have to use those.

Finally, there's a personal problem of mine - due to inconsistency of my work schedule and my geographical location, I had to resort to playing play-by-post games for a long while. Now that my life is getting more stable after certain tumultous events, I think I will be able to run a proper game via FoundryVTT. This is very good, even though it'll take some time to get back into the groove.

So, the post's title says "roadmap", so where do I start? In truth, I started my efforts a long time ago. I trawled through the books to find what's where and what's missing. My entire Wizardry project and Monstrous Compendium were also part of an effort to not simply create GURPS content, but to create GURPS content for my games. Some may balk at it and say that you should create this stuff on the fly, but I believe otherwise (for the most part). Without proper monster statblocks, you cannot have proper random encounter tables. Without clearly defined magic rules that are not "uh, let's use Sorcery, but also add this and that, remove this and that, change this and that, etc." and clearly defined spells you cannot have loot tables and spellcaster character generation tables. And random tables are essential for low/zero-prep games and quick character generation.

If I had to outline my roadmap, it would be as follows:

1. Create content for your game - spells, monsters, abilities, items, etc. This is an ongoing process and you don't have to create everything before starting the next steps.

2. Decide what optional rules are necessary.

3. Compile the rules document. Like step #1, this also may be an ongoing process.

4. Create character generation tables.

5. Devise clear procedures for certain game elements - dungeon exploration, wilderness expeditions, etc.

6. Adapt missing rules from AD&D and ACKS.

7. Create/adapt random tables for encounters, loot, characters, terrain, etc.

8. Test the procedures in a solo-game environment.

9. Run a game.

Sounds quite simple, but it all takes a lot of work. I'm not going to delude myself believing that this sort of play with become popular, and even if I find no players that are up for this sort of stuff, I still will be content to have done something good, even if just for myself to enjoy. Perhaps, certain elements will be useful for others as well, who knows?