Jeffro’s Car Wars Blog

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Here’s comments from two GM’s (on the GURPS list) explaining how to get a game going without getting bogged down in the technical details of character generation.  GM’s have to do this sort of glossing all the time when they make up NPC’s on the fly.  When I think of characters in other games, I generally think of the stats as actually being the character– this is especially so in computer games like Diablo or Ultima.  But GURPS is different in that you think of the character and his background first and then cobble together whatever stats are reasonable based on that. No 3d6 rolls necessary at all!

Of course, if GM’s can run games pretty well without any character stats, why formalize it at all?  Why bother to nail it down?  Why buy all of the extra rule books and stuff?  This is one of those things about role playing that boggles my mind…. On the other hand, I remember many gaming sessions back in the day that did not go very far because we spent so much time fiddling with our character sheets. If I had known about this, we could have played more– and more adventures would have been completed and played out over several sessions.
Susan Koziel:

“I usually have my players run the first couple
sessions with out character sheets (if they feel
comfortable doing that) just to get a feel for a
chracter. They we go back & adapt a character sheet to
what they’ve done. Usually they work out to ~150
boints with 50 in disadvantages.”

Andrew Dawson:

“My method for doing this is:
1. GM announces the setting and suggested types of characters.
2. Players discuss the types of characters with the GM and each other,
eventually developing a character concept.
3. Players and GM cooperatively create the character (this includes
determining the GURPS stats).
4. Players and GM, as a group, comment on each other’s characters and how
they fit together (some changes may be made here).
5. Start playing (always allowing character changes if something was
inadvertently forgotten or if changes make sense).”