It’s no secret that I’ve been wanting to build an SF game powered by GURPS for some time now. Inspired by my experiences with Traveller ’77 back in the day, most especially the lack of an Official Traveller Universe, this would be a framework for my own SF adventures.
Sitting down today, I asked what is the smallest move I can make to get started? The answer was to create a character. I find that building a character for play helps me to feel my way towards the kind of game I want to play in an experimental fashion.
Grabbing a character sheet, I decided to try using one of the templates from GURPS Template Toolkit 3: Starship Crew. This initially felt a little too high-powered at 150 points but the trade-off is ease and speed of play.
What I came up with is an initial build for Captain Lance Jamison based on the 150-point Commander template. The process bounced me into two of the GURPS Power-Ups books, Perks and Talents, which I had previously overlooked. This is how learning unfolds.
I’ve not yet equipped him because that requires some decisions about technology and available gear. That’s my next step. I am leaning towards a near-future TL-9 setting with a Traveller-inspired hyperspace FTL drive as the main super-science addition.
Game on!
Roleplay Rescue’s Blog 
Nice character. The talents aren’t point-optimized right now, but they do help define the character, and as the character advances and if points go into the skills they benefit they’ll become a net benefit.
The January Character Creation Challenge is coming up. It might be an opportunity to staff your space station. 🙂
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It’s funny, but points optimisation is not something I think about much. I took the Explorer talent to add flavour and remind me of his focus in the setting. But sure, those skills from the talent are what I would invest in had I more points.
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[…] me to realise that this might just be the SF world book that I have been looking for. I reworked Captain Lance Jamison and messed around solo through the New […]
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