GURPS: Disadvantages system

Let’s talk a little about GURPS - Generic Universal RolePlaying System, made by Steve Jackson. If you’ve been reading another posts in this blog, you know that this is my favorite system. I love it for its high realism and flexibility, but there’s the most important reason – and its called Disadvantages. If you think they are made for getting extra points – you are wrong, and maybe you should try other ways of entertaining yourself but roleplaying games. I believe that Disadvantages are the main tool for creating character, cause any other characteristics – like a stats and skills – are weak parts,  cause players will always try to have benefits whenever it’s possible,  shortly - there’s only one rule for stats: the more = the better. And the same about Advantages, I’ll show you that: imagine that we’ve just generated a character, it doesn’t matter who – empire swordsman or chaplain of Blood Angels chapter. What do we have without Disadvantages? We have a simple meat grinder, strong and agile, with a list of his battle skills level 16+, and with few Advantages like a Combat Reflexes and Ambidexterity… Perfect war machine without a face. Munchkins will love it, for sure.

I can hear you screaming: “Wait, wait, so where the hell the roleplay is?!”

That’s what I am talking about: Disadvantages. They will upgrade your kill unit to Character. Make your swordsman Blind, drug Addicted and Bully – and you will see the true face and the soul of paper doll holding epic sword +5. Make him Overconfident, Lecherous and, for instance, Greedy – and you’ll get a completely different person. Later I probably will write about my own characters, follow this blog if you’re interested :-) 

So, in my opinion, the stats, skills and advantages are just a background and a base for a really important part of your character. And by the way I also often use the list of Disadvantages from GURPS rulebook in roleplays (games without any system), and I still can’t get how did I play ADnD in the past, without the concept of Disadvantages itself.

Even If you have never played GURPS, you should at least check out the list of Disadvantages – I’m sure you’ll enjoy it, some of them are genius.

And may the Force be with you :-) 

Falloutwiki

Great resource about Fallout setting, you can really find anything you want to know about Fallout there. Enjoy.

Fantasy girls

Don't you like them? ;-) I do.

RPG = Middle Ages? Hell no!

Of course, often it is. Professor JRR Tolkien might be connected with this fact as well as Robert Howard. Hundreds of fantasy novels, movies and games make us associate any roleplaying game with the Middle Ages, swords, crossbows, chainmails and wizards' staffs. ADnD system best fits m.a. adventures in Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance or something else. Personally I don't like ADnD due to it's primitivity, GURPS is much better in my opinion, but actually it's not the topic of this post :-)
I just can't understand people who say "it’s not interesting to play any other tech level setting, cause of blah-blah-blah". Oh, come on. I love tech level 3 /medieval in GURPS/ and i'm playing crpg, mmorpg and even sometimes pnp games with TL3 and its boring heavy-armour-and-two-handed-sword-good-paladins, cloack-and-pointy-hat-and-staff-wise-wizards, leather-armour-and-dual-wield-daggers-artful-rogues, but if you’ve never tried something else - you wouldn’t even be able to imagine what you have lost.

You've lost gentlemen in tailcoats with revolvers in their hands, ladies in evening dresses, waltz, steam locomotives, zeppelins and spirit of Victorian era of Steampunk genre.
You've lost benefits of motor vehicles, automatic weapons, cell phones, TV, Internet and other electronics and gadgets of our time.
You've lost the wild sceneries, savage tribes of survivors, combination of ancient melee weapons with guns of our days and future, the permanent lack of ammo, fuel and food (exactly in this order!), struggle for ancestors' knowledge, their secrets and technologies (from aircraft building to temporary closing-down). These are the features of postnuclear world. Recall the Fallout or Mad Max, isn't it exciting?
And recall the spaceships, all kinds of aliens, laser and beam weapons, force swords and the Psionic or even the Force itself, do you really think all these things are worse than tiresome medieval elves&dwarfs? Give a chance to other worlds, maybe you'll like it more, maybe your destiny is not an axe slashing or fireball throwing :-) And remember that you can always get back to your dungeon :-)

Have fun!

Where did you have?..

At home, at friend’s place, in a cottage at the seashore, in cafe, on the roof – these are the places where I had played various pen&paper role-playing games :)

No rulebooks have any instructions on where to play, really. So I’ll just talk a little about it in general and about my own experience. The most common way is to sit around a table with character sheets, maps, rulebooks and, of course, dices on it. I have to say that it’s not a bad idea, especially at winter or simply when it's snowing or raining. And it's sometimes useful to have a PC or a laptop to check something if needed, or to show players the map in Google Earth, for example (if their character’s adventures are on the Earth, of course:)

Players usually like to eat while playing, so ordering a pizza, buying some burgers or chips, or making a large plate of salad is always a great idea. Personally, I can’t remember any game session without having a break for meal. By the way, this is a nice reason to play in a café, but it must be quiet and not crowded there, cause off-topic noises are really annoying and can interrupt the game easily. And it's quite useful to have a place for smokers not far from the play-location if some players smoke. When it’s warm and sunny it’s really nice to play outside – maybe in a park or even in a forest, fresh air ftw :) Burning the campfire and laying on some cover or sitting on logs around it can be much better than playing in a room. And believe me, the table is not the most important thing, when we played on the roof we didn’t need any, actually the only problem we had there was wind which could blow away all your papers, so you gotta keep your eye on them and be ready to catch ;) I’m sure you can also play on a train while traveling somewhere together – I think it’s funny too, if anyone's tried you are welcome to leave your comment :) So, as you see, rpg are like sex – new places give new impressions, but doing it in bedroom is always good too.