One of the cool things about playing with GURPS powering your World is that you can build things just the way you imagine them and have them behave that way mechanically. One of the best bits of advice I’ve been given relating to this is to describe clearly what you want and then use the rules to tell you how many Character Points it costs.

Sitting down with the School Club players and working towards our new game loosely described as being, “monster hunting in modern day London” with characters who “have one cool power”, the joy was in asking the students to describe the abilities they want their character to have.

When you step away from the rules and describe, you get far more interesting ideas. Doing it as a group, you draw on the ideas of everyone at the table. Asking interesting questions deepens the discussion and leads to cool breakthroughs in clarity. The rules stuff – building those abilities in GURPS – can flow naturally after this effort is made.

One example: “I want to have telekinesis.” This led to questions on the origin of the power, to which the players said, “it’s the power all around us, like the Force but not the same”. We clarified that as a sort of ambient magical source of energy. “I want to be able to move small objects” was developed by asking asking how much fine-motor control they want to have.

The conversations are longer and take time but they are rich with the excitement of players who begin to realise that we mean it when we say, “You can play anything you want to imagine.” No phony shoe-horning into an arbitrary character class, no having to fit the power into the one-size fits all generic version. Instead, customised individual abilities.

The players level of interest was through the roof. The excitement, laughter, amazing suggestions, questions, and general level of engagement was stellar. For a session spent creating characters, I can’t remember that level of energy and creativity at any of my tables. It was inspiring and humbling. It draws me towards wanting to do this more often.

When you let the imagination go first, it seems to me that you can inspire far more interesting games. All I need to do now is go and work out how much each new character will cost in Character Points. It’s so much easier when it’s clearly described.

Game on!