Of Testosterone, GURPS, and Liverpool

Two posts in one day! Blame the hot weather and being at a university campus where lots of attractive 18-21 year old women are out and about not wearing very much. Testosterone is a brain stimulant too, you know.

I just wanted to talk a little bit about GURPS. Last night I finally cracked open the 99p 3rd edition Basic Set I got last week, and a friend and I brainstormed for a campaign idea and came up with a character for him. We ended up with a pseudo-1920s Liverpool where WWI never happened, lots of people claim aristocratic heritage, technology is still kind of steam-age, and it's fairly usual to carry round a sabre. Cheesy, but good at the same time. We briefly flirted with the idea of zombies and Cthuloid entities, but settled on a "getting into scrapes and either solving or committing crimes" sort of game. We then did a little test of the combat system, in which an opium-addled hoodlum, bearing a strong resemblance to Jimmy McGovern, was thoroughly trounced.

I've already talked about setting a campaign in Liverpool, so it looks like it might finally happen. There are so many hooks for a Liverpool campaign, especially once you get into its history, it's ridiculous. It's like an embarrassment of riches of adventure ideas. Unfortunately I can't talk about any of them here because the friend in question will likely be reading this.

This is our first experience of GURPS and I have to say, I like it. There's something intoxicating about the fact that you can use it for literally anything, and it has a pretty intuitive and easy-to-grasp core mechanic. There are clear organisational issues, but listen - I cut my teeth on D&D and Cyberpunk 2020. I take your organisational issues and raise you organisational horrors.