Jeffro’s Car Wars Blog

I ran across a find at the used book store recently: GURPS Autoduel first edition in pretty good condition for five bucks. It even had the counter sheet intact on the back cover flap! It’s got a few standard Car Wars counters, some cardboard heroes, and a bizarre couple of six inch GURPS scale car counters. Alas, it did not contain the insert that has a map of Autoduel America and the unusual scenario premise that explains the origins of the grain blight.

My 4 year old son spen5 a while looking at the beautiful Denis Loubet cover. The next day, the family was discussing what kind of car we should buy. “I want a pink car!” he exclaimed. This color choice surprised me… until he clarified. “I want a pink car with a flamethrower on the back!”

Devin Parker has posted about getting fed up with GURPS Vehicles in his recent attempt to design a space ship for his GURPS Firefly campaign.  He struggles on with it because he’s “sure that all of this data will be useful down the line,” but I just can’t see it.  Ship combat in science fiction falls into just a handful of archetypes– and most of the ship combat systems don’t come close to addressing them.  As far as your actual campaign is concerned, once you’ve got your deck plan, you’re done.  Everything else is driven by the demands of the narrative.

Think about it.  The dramatic action is always focused on a few key heroes.  If the characters are hopelessly outgunned, straight up tactical ship combat will not be the solution: everything will hinge on a clever trick or deus ex machina.  Characters will feverishly work to buy time as crewmen die and systems explode.  The really tough opponents will require the heroic sacrifice of the “fan favorite”– or at least a new non player-character that was introduced for the purpose.

Ship Combat, like any other in-game crisis, will be tailored to the assets and abilities of the heroes.  Rarely will they face a threat that does not require them to all work together.  Individual failure should be possible, but it should also be possible for the team to compensate in some cases.  In the case of a major failure, there might be still one last opportunity to save the innocent, but the players will pay a heavy price and the campaign will necessitate a new tone and direction.  Survivors should be shown the consequences of their decisions in later adventures and should be given an opportunity to set things right only if they weren’t flagrantly reckless or foolhardy.  Players that achieve a reputation for being complete morons should be forced to choose between a life outside of the primary society or perhaps a spot on a suicide squad instead.

But referees will never simply eliminate a group of players just because of a single lucky roll in a tactical ship combat system.  That’s crazy.  Narratives simply do not work that way.  Oh and the repairs and revenues are the same: The players are always going to be struggling from one job to the next– and even if they make it big, they’ll soon have to use their gains to overcome the next obstacle.  If the players are all big-time agents, then they won’t have to track expenses at all.  Do you think money was ever an issue for James Bond??

Players’ abilities will be the focus in any action.  The ship is generally hardwired into the setting and just determines the tone and style of the events.  The players’ choices and sacrifices will have to matter… and at the same time, the plot will have to be adaptable to a great many outcomes.  This is an art, not a science, and hence these techniques are not amenable to hard and fast tactical rule systems.  This makes the stats and figures in your ship designs largely irrelevant to a real game.

I love maps.  Star maps are especially neat, but the restrained retro-cool look of a Traveller map is even better.  Combined with the austere UWP code that defines each world’s primary characteristics you have unlimited adventure potential.  But you also have a huge referee headache: how do you plan an adventure when your players can go just about anywhere?  You could spend days detailing a single world only to see the PC’s traipse off into a completely different subsector. 

This problem has led GURPS Traveller author Hans Rancke-Madsen to argue that Traveller campaigns– especially beginner campaigns– should start on a single world.  He’s criticized old-school Traveller adventures as being run from one cardboard cut-out starport to another.  I’m sure his recent JTAS articles detailing Regina’s starport at an unprecedented level of detail are up to his usual standards, but I feel he’s missing the whole point of the game.  I mean… it’s called Traveller, after all.  Travelling the stars is, uh, sort of the core premise of the game.

The classic approach to dealing with this problem was to introduce a patron.  Even as far back as the original Book 3 Worlds and Adventures, the patron was the “most important NPC” and “the key to adventure in Traveller.”  Avenger’s Special Supplement 3: Patron Encounters provides 34 such opportunities.  Each includes up to 6 variations to allow you to determine the complications of the situation randomly or to give you ideas on how to play it out.  They tend to be much meatier than the typical GURPS style half-paragraph adventure seed.  You get a detailed encounter or situation, usually a job or objective, and often a few supporting props and proper names.  Many of them are sufficiently well crafted to give you a premise sufficient to launch the rpg equivalent of a one-hour tv episode.  Sometimes its pretty easy to imagine the “big reveals,” the setbacks, and the turn-arounds.

Being Traveller, some of these might be a bit dry.  There’s no bizarre alien encounters or mind-numbing artifacts.  Just a lot of Firefly style material appropiate for a small band of spacers that are just trying to make ends meet.  If you want to get crazy, you’ve got to go check out the latest from long time GURPS Space author, Stefan Jones.  His MacGuffin Alphabet takes a completely different tact.

MacGuffins are artifacts whose qualities have a way of drawing their possessors into deep mysteries, unceasing action, and unstoppable chases.  If you’re not sure how to use such a thing in a game, then check out S. John Ross’s notes on using a “Dingus” in an rpg plot.  The implied setting of the MacGuffin collection is sort of a Alan Dean Foster meets Douglas Adams affair with nanotech and veiled Monty Python references thrown in.  His writing is clean and entertaining.  This is a very classy collection of ideas that would have to be reworked a bit in places in order fit into a Traveller campaign, but make no mistake: this PDF will inspire your awe with its unabashed weirdness.  While these are much more fleshed out, again, than the typical Adventure Seed, they still require some work on the part of the referee to work them into his game.  Quite a bit is left to the imagination… but there’s still quite a bit to fire the imagination as well.

Hopefully these two supplements will go a long way towards helping you stock your universe with adventure goodness… regardless of where the players decide to go.

I’ve always thought it strange that Interstellar Wars was released without any weapons stats.  The suggestion of just using the standard stuff in the 4^th edition core books always seemed pretty lame to me.  While the lack of any equipment in the new GURPS Space has now been fixed with the release of GURPS Ultra-Tech, GURPS Traveller still remains without any sort of conversion document to 4^th Edition.  This leaves some GT fans feeling somewhat abandoned by SJG.

While GT Demigod Loren Wiseman has recently scoffed at a COTI Poll indicating that a significant portion of fans desired a return to a Classic Traveller or MegaTraveller style rulesets, it ought to be noted that his own line of PDFs are indeed dual statted for those legacy systems.  Nevertheless Loren states he is indeed negotiating several new GT products slated to come out on e23 even as we speak, so hopefully the line is firmly in the “not dead yet” department.

A gaming guru known only as “GamerGirl” on the Steve Jackson boards has done the necessary crunching to translate the weapons on armor of GURPS Traveller into the 4th edition rules.  Her tips can help frustrated GM’s make the best of this irritating situation.  She has kindly given me permission to repost her findings here: 

__________________________________________________________

Well, actually, if you already have 4e, you can still implement the Traveller equipment list as presented on GT2e114-115 and the armor on the preceding page with just a few minor changes. If someone had told me what I’m about to tell you, I never would have had to switch over to G3e, but now that I understand both systems, I know what the main differences are:

1. Calculate Dodge as simply HT+DX/4, like Basic Speed, and drop the frak; that is to say, Dodge is pretty much equal to Move. The Passive Defense of any worn armor (abbreviated PD) is added to dodge or sometimes other defense rolls.

2. You can use the Accuracy as given. Holdout (Hld) is mostly applied to ‘to hit’ rolls with that gun in close combat. You might also occasionally use it to modify a concealment roll when trying to sneak past Starport customs agents, etc.

3. If the attacker’s adjusted (usually, the main modifier is for range, but there are other conditional modifiers on the Ref’s screen and in the Basic Set, but these are pretty much the same as they are in G4e) “to hit” roll is less than the SS number of the weapon, apply an additional -4 to the roll for unaimed shots- if your players crank their Gun skills up the way mine do, you usually don’t have to worry about this rule.

In response to a fan request to put scans of the classic Road Atlas and Survival Guide’s up on e23, Thomas Weigel responded:

“Car Wars is on my list of things I’d like. How soon that can happen, however, is fuzzy. I still pine for Uncle Al.”

 That makes two positive remarks about Autodueling just this week; maybe we really will see some additional PDF’s for sale this year….

It’s big.  It’s bad.  It’s the amazing 4th edition of Steve Jackson’s “end all be all” Generic Universal Role Playing System.  It’s ready to rock on in the new millennium: this baby takes an already flexible design to a higher level of abstraction.  Let’s take a quick sample of what the fans are saying:

“Going through the changes between 3.0 and 4.0, it’s like they read our house rules hand-out.” — Ian Turner

“3e was more like an erector set where you could build a framework and then you spent a lot of time having to fill in the blanks with GM fiat. 4e is much more ‘complete’ where anything that can be done, I can reproduce.” — Mark Skarr

“Ultimately after spending hours and hours on a character I will realize that NOW I have a CHARACTER concept I can use in any game system.”  — LemmingLord

“[It's] the perfect RPG recipe: Here’s a ton of rules and options to cover just about anything. Pick what you want, ignore the rest. Season with whatever house rule additions and mods you like. And feel free to wing things whenever you please.” — tbone

“The 4e rules spell out that each GURPS game is most about genre. Not reality. Not combat, or worlds even, or rules when you get down to it. You think of the style of book, TV show, movie, comic or whatever you want to emulate, and choose the rest based on that. To me that was the key to running GURPS after years of D&D.” — jimminy

While many game masters are thrilled with with new internal consistency and streamlining, there’s always, especially in this age of the internet, a crowd of vocal naysayers ready to pick at it.  Let’s take a quick look at what they’re saying:

“The intellectual buy-in too high, the requirement to build everything yourself too demanding, the learning curve for new players too great.” — Taliesin

“The problem is everything but the kitchen sink is dumped on the new user - it’s like handing a cook a cow and asking him to grill a steak.” — Infornific

“A combination of ‘icky-feeling’ paper, a nasty smell, sub-standard art and a layout that just throws every single advantage / skill / whatever into a messy cross-genre jumble ended up hugely turning me off to the whole 4.0 launch.” — Ian Turner

GURPS Character Assistant software and the free Skills Category PDF can help navigate this gigantic system, but even with that you can’t expect to please everybody.  While some people are erroneously attempting to detail all of their NPC’s to the same standards they require for PC’s, others are getting bogged down at the thought of having develop an entire pantheon of abilities using the moderately technical GURPS Powers toolkit.  However, the real issue is that some people just haven’t had their minds illuminated  to the power of a few simple Enhancements and Limitations.  But once they do… let me tell you, it’s like scales falling from their eyes:

“Not having really used powers in 3e, or the enhancements and limitations, this part was the one that took more time to sink in, but it was also the key to what made GURPS better for me. Something as simple as Attractive (Takes Preparation, 1h) is just an example.” — Gudiomen

That said, there are yet some valid criticisms among the unconverted.  Lo, I say unto you… a crappy index and a mediocre GURPS Lite present not a small barrier to those that seek the true path of gaming goodness.  Fortunately, the imminent Dr. Kromm takes responsibility for this and doesn’t try to pass blame onto the sycophantic proles that Steve Jackson Games has conned into doing the grunt work:

“In an effort to get the GURPS Basic Set, Fourth Edition out on time and have GURPS Lite, Fourth Edition ready to go with it, we had to divvy up tasks. I was busy proofing the final PDFs for rules consistency, so we had no choice but to assign the index and Lite to others . . . and I wasn’t available for those guys, because as I said, I was busy.”  — Kromm

Oh great and powerful Kromm… please tell us more about the genesis of our most esteemed and finely crafted rpg…  Tell us dark secrets….  Tell us, for example… why cinematic super powers get so much emphasis in the Basic Set.

“Books like Psionics and even the much-maligned Supers far and away outsold books like Old West and Espionage. Had GURPS Traveller and GURPS WWII fans been more numerous and bigger spenders, I can assure you that 4e would have looked quite different.” — Kromm

What…?  Huh?  A different game?  Can you be more specific?

“Things That Would Not Be: Less attention to Affliction, Binding, Innate Attack, and exotic and supernatural advantages in general. Fewer cinematic and supernatural skills in the core rules. Possibly no chapter on magic, either. Tech and artifacts chapter would omit enchantment, gadgeteering, and weird science. Iconic characters would have lacked odd abilities and been strictly baseline humans. Lots of little things like Transcendent appearance, wildcard skills, the vampire template, and essays on high-powered and cinematic gaming wouldn’t be there.

“Things That Would Be: Character weight and size would cost points and be tied into ST, HP, Move, jumping distance, etc. A longer list of mundane Talents would compensate for fewer exotic abilities. More templates for generic historical jobs. More and more detailed weapons, especially WWII-era firearms. Mapped-out tactical combat would be the assumed default. Rules for injury and dangerous enviroments would be more exacting and extensive. Tech and artifacts chapter would dwell primarily on vehicles, vehicles, vehicles.

“One could safely say that instead of getting Basic Set, Third Edition plus all of Compendium I but only bits of Compendium II, all heavily influenced by Psionics and Supers with a view to Powers being an early supplement, you would have seen Basic Set, Third Edition plus all of Compendium II but only bits of Compendium I, all heavily influenced by High-Tech and Vehicles with a view to WWII for 4e being an early supplement.”  — Kromm

Thank you great Kromm for revealing these truths to your vile and insignificant fan base….  [Much groveling and bootlicking ensues.]

But mighty Kromm… I’m still overwhelmed….  There’s just so many options in GURPS 4e.  I don’t know what to do with it.  Why did you put all those rules in there?  I have to roll on the Shock and Awe table every time I crack a GURPS tome!

“I put all of those rules in there so that 1,000 different gaming groups could run 1,000 different, custom-fitted rules-light versions of GURPS. I didn’t really imagine that there would be people who would want to turn on all of the switches.” — Kromm

Thanks be to Kromm, for his benevolence truly knows no bounds.  We truly crave such reassurances about the design of our beloved system.  For there can be only one true system, and all others are as unto pale imitations and are as yet feebleminded drivel.  We thank Kromm for his ceaseless efforts to bring true excellence unto gaming.

GURPS Ultra-Tech has just been reported to arrive at Warehouse 23. 

On the surface it looks like a good offering.  I mean, it incorporates stuff from Robots and Cyberpunk, so its going to be a lot more comprehensive than previous iterations.  But this is a very difficult thing to pull off… does it really matter what equipment you have when there’s no limit to the possibilities?  I mean, the value and character of a Car Wars spider mine or recoiless rifle completely depended on the context of the setting and the power and utility of the other weaponry available.  How can anything in a GURPS book match the depravity of x-ray lasers or the evilness bumper-triggers?  Everything’s relative, in this case… and a generic supplement can provide only an array of options for the referree that wants to design his own universe.  No item in the tome has any intrinsic value on its own.

But at the same time… there actually was an implied universe and even future history in the original Ultra-Tech books.  Does the new book up the ante in genericism the same way that Powers trumped Supers and Psionics?  Is that even possible?  I wonder…  did I hate the original Ultra-Techs because they were simultaneously too generic and not generic enough??

I’m kind of burnt out on technical details– especially in a game like GURPS where the responsibility for designing and balancing everything rests on my shoulders.  It would seem that in a character oriented role playing game that most equipment would be dependent on setting and plot details and that it therefore ought to be simply glossed over in the interests of keeping the game moving.

But I am a hypocrit: I held off on buying the new GURPS Space because it lacked equipment and spaceships.  Now Ultra-Tech’s out… and I’m not going to buy it because the two books are too much to absorp at once!  Nah… I’m curious and I’d like to see it, but it’s really the sort of thing I’d buy on an impulse when I’m at a store that doesn’t really carry much else that I’m interested in.  (I love buying stuff at real gaming stores….)

But good for Steve Jackson for getting it out the door: there’s one less reason for rejecting 4e for space gaming.  Now if only they’d get that Vehicles PDF out….

It’s been a while since I tried tinkering with GURPS Powers.  Let’s see what we can cook up with just the Basic Set by itself.  Maybe if I can get a good dozen abilities worked up with that, then Powers will become more relevant and less daunting.  I’m also going to just “go shopping” here.  I’m not going to think of some weird idea and then try to build it; I’m just going to tinker with what’s already there by using a few simple enhancements and limitiations.  Let’s see what GURPS can do “out of the box.”

***

Psonar: Para-Radar (Penetrating, +50%; Temporary Disadvantage: Total Klutz, -15%; Nuisance Effect, -5%, Costs Fatigue, 1 FP per minute, -5%) [48 points]

Creature has the ability to sense objects in 360 degrees through walls and other obstructions.  Using the ability causes its eyes to light up with a green flame and it also makes a strange “sonar sweep” sound.  The ability is tiring and disorienting, so it costs fatigue and causes the user to temporaily become a total klutz.

[Note: Para Radar sounds too much like Daredevil's sense powers and Superman's x-ray vision, so I tried to use limitations to make it as different from those as possible.]

***

Hyper Absorption: Damage Resistance (Limited: Energy Attacks, -20%; Absorption, points enhance Basic Move only, +80%; Semi-Ablative -20%) [7 points/level]

The creature has an unusual psychic mechanism that allows it to transform beam weapons, electricity, fire, heat, cold, and sound energy, store it, and then use it to temporarily increase its speed.  DR ‘heals’ at the same rate as hit points.  The creature has a ‘battery’ of character points that is filled by damage absorbed by the DR.  The points can be spent to increase Basic Move, but they drain away at a rate of one point per second.  (Note that any increase to Basic Speed also increases Dodge.  For each 10 points of damage, drop DR by 1.)  This ability is more effective when combined with Enhanced Move.

***

Telepathic Snare: Binding (Unbreakable, +40%; Based on Will, +20%, Increased Range x2, +10%; Limited Use, 4/day, -20%) [3 points/level]

The creature can create an mental snare, freezing its victim in place.  The snare looks like a dimly glowing net that writhes like snakes.  The range of the attack is 200 yards.  The base to hit of the attack is equal to the creature’s dexterity attribute plus its Telepathy talent.  If hit, the victim cannot select the Move or Change posture maneuvers or change facing.  To break free, the victim make must a quick contest of his will vs. the level of the binding attack.  Each time he fails to break free, he looses 1 FP.

[Does it make sense that a mental attack would be based on dexterity and have a chance to miss?  I'm not sure, but I'll keep it for now.  Maybe the mental powers create a physical manifestation that allows the creature to harness it's will to keep the victim in place....]

 ***

Mind Fog: Affliction (Malediction, -1 per yard of distance, +100%; Attribute penalty, -4 to IQ, -3 to DX, +70%; Limite Use, 4/day -20%) [25 points/level]

The creature may use a Concentrate maneuver to make this mental attack.  If the target resists, roll a Quick Contest between the victim’s Will and the creature’s Will plus the creature’s Telepathy Talent plus the creatures Mind Fog level minus each yard of range between the two.  The victim’s DR does nothing to protect against the attack.  If the victim fails to win the contest, he suffers an attribute penalty of -4 to IQ and -3 to DX for one minute per point by which the victim loses the Quick Contest.

***

Well, that wasn’t too painful….  I’m not 100% sure about my interpretations of the rules in terms of how these things actually work, so I expect to review those and make corrections before I use these in play.  I definitely see that construction of a “campaign bible” containing distilations of key rules as being essential to any game: the rules for each of the above abilities are scattered across a half dozen pages in GURPS Characters and they aren’t the sort of thing you can just scan over quickly to refresh your memory.

On the plus side, I’ve got the start of a fairly unique list of abilities that can fit my campaign exactly the way I want.  One other nice thing is that characters with similar abilities can very easily have radically different specifics in regard to their overall style and mechanics.  GURPS in the 80’s was a breath of fresh air in that you could choose exactly how much you wanted to invest in fighting, thieving, and magic skills to get the perfect balance for your character.  With 4E GURPS, you can now have that same flexibility with all powers and abilities.

I love the “just open the box and start playing” nature of games like Star Frontiers and Gamma World.  Those games were great in their day, but… times have changed.  On the other hand, I hate the “Gamemaster, get ready to spend 100’s of hours before you even play your first game” mentality implied by the new monster games of today.  Even so, for science fiction gaming, I still suggest a blend of Classic Traveller and GURPS 4th Edition.  Here’s my reasons:

Classic Traveller is dated and unrefined, but it’s also got two of the coolest gaming concepts ever invented:

The World Generation System:  The “retro” look of the world maps and subsector maps is completely rad.  I don’t see how people can’t get into that.  There are trade-offs with the “flat space” approach, but there are huge gains in usability and playability.  The coding format creates what amounts to a compact paper “mushware” database.  (An expanded/updated/debugged version of this appears in GURPS Interstellar Wars– the lack of something like this was a major shortcoming in 3e GURPS Traveller, in my opinion.)

The Character Generation Mini Game: You can do character design in half an hour or so and then immediately start playing.  (I hate the preliminary rpg planning session thing– I’m too old to waste a game session on that!)  It’s amazing how such a simple system can produce such characters.  The combination of folks that a whole gaming group rolls up together will imply all sorts of adventure ideas.  (The genre here is basically that of Firefly.  How cool is that?)  All you need here is Book One and Supplement Four.

GURPS is a much more consistent, streamlined, and refined gaming system– but it’s a toolkit for constructing campaigns and not really a full game in and of itself.  Classic Traveller is a full game… but you will likely end up in house-rule hell if you try to use it by itself.  (Hardcore Traveller fans actually get really into that, actually.)  Using GURPS by itself can leave you feeling like you’re in a vacuum.  There’s just no focus to a design that’s built from the ground up to be universal.  A few key Traveller tools like those mentioned above can give you the necessary grounding you need to successfuly pass your sanity checks.

GURPS 4e Characters is very useful for fleshing out character concepts.  GURPS Traveller 3e contains guidelines for converting from previous versions of Traveller.  If you’re overwhelmed by all the options in GURPS, “upsizing” the old barebones Traveller characters will help make sense of things.  And even with just Basic Set you can work up a whole cantina of aliens quickly if you keep in mind that the full details are only necessary for people playing PC’s.

Regardless of what sci-fi rules you’re using, keep it simple.  Ignore advanced combat rules.  Ignore epic space combat.  Ignore physics, climatology and biology.  If you want that other stuff, go play Advanced Squad Leader, Star Fleet Battles, and Battletech between study sessions for the college science classes you’re signing up for.  Focus instead on character concepts and story.  Use the science fiction setting as a springboard into thrilling locations that boggle the mind.  Don’t get wrapped up in details and accounting.  The setting is merely a backdrop for action and adventure.  Don’t obsess over it– you need to let the players become the “stars of the show.”  Game mechanics and setting data are the rpg equivalent to matte paintings and special effects: they’re just tools for communicating a story; don’t get bogged down into them.

Also, don’t feel like you need to work out the nature of the entire universe at one time.  George Lucas didn’t and neither should you.  Make things up as you go.  Work things out in detail only after a game session reveals the need for it.  You’ll work in much more useful directions this way whereas if you try to make everything you need before playing you’ll never get started.  This is another place where GURPS system pays off.  You won’t use but a fraction of its rules when you start, but whatever direction your campaign ultimately goes, there’ll be solid rules there to help you out if you want them later.  In other games you’d be left with working out your own house-rules.

(One last note: GURPS has long had a reputation for being a decent system for “realistic” genres.  With Fourth edition, they retain a lot of that strength, but have put forth a lot of effort to address the fantastic side of things.  Superhero and fantasy monster type stuff has been retooled and integrated into the core books.  This may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but the system is much more flexible than before.)

[Adaen of Bridgewater asked me a quick question... and my answer quickly raged out of control, so it ended up here as a blog entry.  Be sure to check out their site.]

I never did pick up a copy of GURPS Autoduel: Car Warriors in all these years.  I imagine the cardboard heroes were pretty cool….  (The single color cover was pretty lame looking next to the other GURPS books, though.)  At any rate, I don’t have a usable set of GURPS characters to use for my Autoduel role playing.  Even if I’m using Roll Two Dice and Pray, it would be nice to have such a resource in order to provide a good range of encounter ideas.

The character below uses several new 4e features that Car Warriors would have lacked.  After getting most of the way done, I realized I had pretty much followed the Investigator template (Characters, p 259) without even looking at it– so I can’t be too far off here.  Note that the Talent allows the character have fairly high gunnery skills without forcing him to raise his core attributes unnecessarily.  (I hated that with 2e GURPS.)  And with the new secondary attributes in 4e, we can craft exactly the kind of image we want for our character: in this case, a fairly tough, out-of-shape guy.   Finally, the character’s patron can provide him with weapons, armor, and even a squad car if necessary.  As I’ve noted previously, this character won’t have to deal with the bookkeeping headache of tracking every single repair and maintenance issue his vehicle entails.

The GURPS stats provide an interesting combination of reaction bonuses that affect his interactions with NPC’s… and his Patron, Duty, and Enemies can (with a few die rolls at the beginning of a game) provide fuel for the imagination.  While GURPS generally blows my mind with its more esoteric material, sticking close to the core “realistic” character driven functionality of its rules provides a lot of power and elegance.  And the character concept it helps you come up with can be ported to any game system.  That’s a nice feature.

Name:   Miles Darrow
Race:   Human

Points: 100

Attributes [85]
ST   11  [10]
IQ   12  [40]
DX   12  [40]
HT   10      

HP   14   [6]
Will 10 [-10]
Per  14  [10]
FP    8  [-6]

Basic Lift  24 lbs.
Damage      1d-1/1d+1

Basic Speed 5.5
Basic Move  4 [-5]

Ground Move 4
Water Move  0

Social Background
TL: 8 [0]
Cultural Familiarities: Autoduel America
Languages: English (Native) [0]

Advantages [50]
Danger Sense [15]
Legal Enforcement Powers [5]
Patron (Police Force, 9 or less) [10]
Police Rank 2 [10]
Reputation: +3 from honest citizens, -4 from criminals [0]
Talent: Vehicular Weapons +2 [10]

Disadvantages [-67]
Alcoholic [-15]
Bad Temper [-10]
Duty (Police Force, 12 or less) [-10]
Enemy (”The Baker Boys”, 9 or less) [-10]
Fat [-3]
Honesty [-10]
Odious Personal Habits (Stinky Cigars) [-5]
Unattractive [-4]

Quirks [-5]
Male Chauvinist [-1]
Hits computer violently when it slows down [-1]
Refuses to discuss x-wife [-1]
Leaves junk-food wrappings on passenger side [-1]
Vehemently opposed to EDSEL [-1]

Skills [37]
Area Knowledge             IQ/E  - IQ+0  12  [1]
Boxing                     DX/A  - DX+0  12  [2]
Computer Operation         IQ/E  - IQ+0  12  [1]
Criminology                IQ/A  - IQ+0  12  [2]
Detect Lies                Per/H - Per-1 13  [2]
Driving                    DX/A  - DX+0  12  [2]
Fast Talk                  IQ/A  - IQ+2  14  [8]
Gunnery (Flamethrowers)    DX/E  - DX+2  14* [1]
Gunnery (Lasers)           DX/E  - DX+2  14* [1]
Gunnery (Machine Guns)     DX/E  - DX+3  15* [2]
Gunnery (Recoiless Rifles) DX/E  - DX+4  16* [4]
Gunnery (Rockets)          DX/E  - DX+3  15* [2]
Guns (Pistol)              DX/E  - DX+0  12  [1]
Guns (Submachinegun)       DX/E  - DX+0  12  [1]
Observation                Per/A - Per+0 14  [2]
Streetwise                 IQ/A  - IQ-1  11  [1]
Shadowing                  IQ/A  - IQ-1  11  [1]
Search                     Per/A - Per+0 14  [2]
Research                   IQ/A  - IQ-1  11  [1]

* Includes +2 bonus from talent

Stats [85] Ads [50] Disads [-67] Quirks [-5] Skills [37]

[This character was designed painstakingly by hand with a beat up second hand copy of GURPS 4e: Characters that has the pages falling out.  Jeffro has got to buy a new copy (along with the character creation software) if he's going to post too many more of these!]