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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jürgen Hubert" data-source="post: 2738659" data-attributes="member: 7177">GURPS:Character creation in GURPS is fairly involved, but it allows for flexibility that only few other RPGs are able to match (possibly Hero, but I can't think of any other...).Basically, you have a starting pool of "character points" with which you can buy various things that make your character better. There are no fixed "experience levels" in GURPS - all experience you gain is represented in additional character points. You can simply create more experienced characters (or even superheroic characters) simply by starting with a higher character point total. So you can start a campaign with truly "average folks", actual demigods, or anything in between, depending on what the GM permits.You can buy the following things:Attributes: GURPS has four attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Health. All start at the human norm, a vlaue of 10 (unless you buy some sort of racial template). Dexterity and Intelligence are more expansive than Strength and Health since most skills are based on them.Advantages: Usually some sort of innate abilities that your character either has, or doesn't have. This can be pretty much anything you can imagine, from good eyesight to psionic abilities, to high social status, to the flame breath of a dragon. The amount of advantages in the book is truly staggering, and all can be modified with so-called "enhancements" and "limitations" until get you precisely the advantage you want.One subset of advantages are racial templates - packages of attribute boni and penalties, advantages and disadvantages that describe certain races (like "elves", "dragons", or "greys"). With GURPS, the races don't need to be "balanced" against each other - more powerful races will simply cost more character points to play, leaving the character with less points to spend on other things if he is in a group with other player characters with the same total point value.Disadvantages: Advantages give you extra abilities. Disadvantages hinder your character in some way, and thus give you bonus points which you can spend on other things. This, too, can be pretty much anything, as long it is a true limitation that hinders the character in some way - a missing arm or eye, ugly looks, member of a minority group distrusted by the general population up to supernatural curses that plague your character. The GM will usually set a limit on how many points you can get from disadvantages.Skills: Anything that can be learned and improved over time, from swinging a sword and shooting guns to medicine, scientific skills, athletics, and so on. Skills are usually coupled to one of the attributes, so a high attribute will give you a higher skill value - but attributes are much more expensive to increase than skills, so if you only need one or two skills at a high level, it's generally cheaper to put your character points into the skill instead.With these rules, you can create pretty much any character you can imagine - from a standard medieval fighter to a mighty wizard, to a fire-breathing dragon or even a sapient computer program that can switch between different robotic bodies! Indeed, I dare anyone on this board to come up with a character concept that can't be done with GURPS...Running the game:Basically, if your character wants to succeed at something, your GM will ask you to roll versus a certain attribute or skill. You then need to roll a result with 3d6 equal to or lower than your attribute or skill value to succeed. Obviously, there will be some modifiers to your effective skill value, but that's basically it.GURPS combat has often been described as "realistic" and "lethal", and that's not too far wrong, but it's not quite as lethal as some people make it out to be. It is relatively easy for a character to become unconscious from his wounds, but it is a lot more difficult to actually die, especially if the character has a high Health value. But the game system does encourage good tactics and good equipment. Good armor means that you are near-invulnerable to physically weak foes, but even a knight in plate mail is in trouble if he lets himself get surrounded by weaker foes, since he cannot defend himself effectively against everyone...Oh well - I noticed that I am rambling. A final piece of advice: Download <a href="http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/lite/" target="_blank">GURPS Lite</a> and see for yourself if the system is to your liking...</blockquote>

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