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Quickie GURPS Rules |
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Quickie GURPS Rules |
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Statistics are:
Strength (ST) -- how physically strong
you are
Dexterity (DX) -- how agile you are
Intelligence (IQ) -- smarts and memory
Health (HT) -- how much physical punishment
you can take, and how well you resist
sickness
You may choose to have your character
be strictly average in all Statistics, or you
may choose to spend points to raise the stats of your
choice, or gain extra points by
lowering stats. Just be sure not to drop any statistic
too low or your character may
wind up too weak, clumsy, dumb, or sickly to function.
Advantages and Disadvantages are divided into categories:
Social -- how you get along with others
and how they get along with you
Examples -- Odious Personal Habits,
Charisma
Mental -- your personality traits,
good or bad
Examples -- Strong Will, Megalomania
Physical -- any impairments or enhancements
to your bod
Examples -- Lame, High Pain Threshold
Supernatural -- any magical, psionic,
or otherwise unusual powers
Examples -- Magery, Vulnerability
(In general, personal Disadvantages are limited to about
40-50 points' worth, to
prevent point-mongering abusiveness; that rule will be
bent a little in the case of the
Third Race, who may have supernatural Disadvantages as
well as personal ones).
Quirks are a subset of Disadvantages,
worth 1 point each. Each character may get up
to 5 points' worth of quirks. These are little things
that help define the character's
personality but don't make a major impact. Preferences
for certain foods or colors of
clothing, a favorite saying frequently used, a hobby,
a dislike for cats, etc. are all
examples of quirks (though if a quirk is taken too far,
it may become an Odious
Personal Habit).
Skills:
Skills are anything your character
can do. Is he/she a warrior? Does he/she have an
interest in electronics? First aid training? Know how
to swim? Play baseball?
Gamble? Teach others? Speak foreign languages? Sing?
Sculpt? Ride a horse or a
bike? Cast a spell? These are all skills.
Skills are divided into Mental and
Physical, and how good your character is at any
given skill depends on how many points you put into it.
Some skills are Easy, some
Average, some Hard, and some Very Hard. It costs a lot
more points, for example, to
be a skilled archer (Archery is a P/H or Physical/Hard
skill) than to be a good cook
(Cooking is a M/E or Mental/Easy skill).
Physical skills are based off of DX,
so a character who is more agile will be better at
all things physical.
Mental skills are based off of IQ,
so a character who is smarter will be better at all
things mental.
There are a few exceptions to this
-- Carousing, the skill of partying hearty, is based
off of HT to reflect alcohol tolerance.
All characters will have their native
language at a skill equal to IQ+5 without
spending any points.
There are a few other things that will turn up on
your character sheet:
Go -- how fast you react during
a turn of combat; determined by DX+HT divided by
four. A turn is the 1-second increment that combats are
divided into.
Move -- how far you can move
in a turn; you may have different Move scores for
each type of movement. Move is expressed in "hexes,"
a hex a unit of space three
feet across. So, if your Move is 8 hexes, you may run
24 feet in a single turn. Your
Move is equal to your Go (rounded down) minus your Enc.
(see below).
Encumberance (Enc) -- how much
weight you are carrying in terms of personal
armor, weapons, possessions, flightless friends. Enc
affects your Move; if you are
carrying a lot, you will not be able to go as fast. How
much Enc you can tolerate
depends on your ST. So, for instance, Goliath can carry
much more than Lexington.
Dodge -- if you want to hit
someone, you'll use one of your Skills; if someone tries to
hit you and you don't want to be hit, you'll use your
Dodge.
PD -- if your character wears
armor, he/she will have Passive Defense (PD), which
means that your armor will help deflect weapons.
DR -- likewise, armor has Damage
Resistance (DR), which, if the PD doesn't work,
lets the armor soak up some of the damage that would
otherwise hit the character's
flesh.
Appearance, defined as lookin' good
or lookin' uu-gly, can also be an Advantage or
Disadvantage. If your character is better looking than
average for your species,
that'll cost points (how many depending on how much better
looking, from Attractive
up to Drop-Dead Gorgeous). If he/she is on the other
end of the scale, that will earn
points (from Unattractive to Hideous). How members of
other species react to his/her
looks depends on the viewer.
Equipment:
Your character will automatically
come with clothes, a selection of personal
weapons, and belongings. You'll want to make a list of
everything he/she carries
when traveling.
Now that you've got a big list of Statistics and
Skills, what do you do with them?
Now it's dice time.
GURPS
is played using 3 six-sided dice (the regular old cube ones you see in
Yahtzee or Monopoly), abbreviated as "d6." You'll roll
3d6 (three six-sided dice) to
see whether or not you accomplish what you're trying
to do.
Example: big heavy boulder blocking
the door; you will "roll vs." your character's ST
to see if he/she can move it. Suppose your character
has a ST of 15. You'll roll and
try to get _less_ than 15 on 3d6. The amount you "make
it by" will tell how
successful you are. If you roll a 12, you "make it
by" 3, which is a decent success. If
you roll a 6, you "make it by" 9, and that rock is
going to really move. If, however,
you roll a 16, you "missed by" 1 and the rock isn't
going to budge.
Skills and spells work the same way.
Your character wants to climb a wall, so you
roll vs. his/her Climbing skill. Your character wants
to look up something in the
library, so you roll vs. his/her Research skill. Your
character wants to turn someone
into a newt, so you roll vs. his/her Shapeshift Other
spell skill.
Note on Criticals -- a "critical"
is either an extreme success or an extreme failure.
Any roll that is "made by" or "missed by" 10 is a critical.
This can be very good, or
very bad. A roll of 3 or 4 is always a critical success;
a roll of 17 or 18 is always a
critical failure.
Criticals are especially important
in combat and magic.
A critical success on an
attack can do extra damage to a foe; a critical failure
puts your character at risk of
damaging him/herself instead. A critical success on a
spell means that the spell is cast
with no energy cost on the part of the caster; a critical
failure can have a variety of
bad and/or dangerous effects.
