It turns out that my sweet-spot roleplaying system is bundled up in the original classic GURPS system. While I never got into GURPS back in the 1980s or 1990s, I’ve made a journey back to the roots of the system and found gold. Digging out my copies of the classic “generic universal role-playing system” has been a wonder.

Over the past few years, I’ve been fortunate enough to have been able to collect together the earliest incarnations of GURPS: the Man-to-Man rules came first, then Basic Set First Edition, a friend sent me the Second Edition, and I located the Third Edition too. I was grateful to SJ Games for making the Roleplayer magazine available in PDF.

This week I decided to try and build my newest dark fantasy campaign using that Old-School GURPS system. Initially, I decided to build some characters using the Second Edition rules and had an absolute blast! My intention has been to run a game using just the Basic Combat system and utilise the earlier rules as-written.

As I reviewed the remainder of the system, I began to see how the evolution from First to Third Edition was iterative and based on two principles I value: detailed rules designed for ease of playability alongside a commitment to the “reality check” which grounds the game in believability. This encourages roleplay and the creation of interesting characters.

As it turns out, GURPS seems to hit the sweet spot that I’ve been looking for over the past 45 years or more of roleplaying. There’s something about the style of writing, the layout, the simple black-and-white art, the way in which it’s organised, the intention to be a generic and universal system for roleplay which sings to me.

Sitting with a pencil, 3D6, and a character sheet, I found a deep sense of joy and profound engagement as I began to conceptualise some pre-generated heroes for the scenario I am writing. As I worked on the situations I am aiming to start play with, I found it remarkably simple to design challenges and NPCs using these venerable old rules.

Why not use just Fourth Edition? It’s hard to quantify but I have repeatedly found myself mired in indecision and stress when I try to create using the latest iteration of GURPS. It’s not a bad system at all but it is a system that asks the GM to step into rules design mode prior to running any game. It is possible to offer too many choices and options.

Perhaps it’s just because I am a child of the 1970s and 1980s that I feel more at home with the approaches to play which were popular back in those days. The group I learned to play with never used GURPS but neither did we choose AD&D; we played Rolemaster most of all. But our style was rooted in the kind of grounded gameplay which this old game provides.

Game on!