Remember when I used GURPS Space to knock up a sector of science-fiction worlds and got myself excited about playing around there? This was about a month before I began the recent journey back to 1989, setting up games using Old-School GURPS. It was opening GURPS Space (First Edition) that triggered the recognition that I preferred the older book.

After a successful first session launching a fantasy campaign powered by GURPS Third Edition, I’ve been turning my mind towards the challenge of the soon-to-launch science-fiction campaign that I’ve promised to run online. There are a whole load of new pieces that I need to learn, so I’ve been hankering to take my usual “learn by doing” approach via solo.

There’s a lot of work to do on the new setting for that SF game but I’m struggling a little to understand the impact of firearms and ultra-tech armour on combats, plus the effect of high-technology on the game generally. I’ve pitched things as broadly “inspired by Traveller” but there are a lot of grey areas.

I’ve decided to dust of the sector map and play around a little solo with the GURPS rules underneath and Mythic helping me run some interesting situations. There’s a nice little article in this month’s Mythic Magazine #53 about ‘discovery prompts’, including a nice set of random tables to try out the approach of adding context to ‘meaning questions’.

Enter the suggestion to create a solo character and run at least one learning scenario to pick up the GURPS rules I have yet to really use in practice. One of the reasons I keep defaulting to fantasy is, I suspect, because I really don’t know how modern firearms and futuristic kit affect the play experience.

Thus this Bank Holiday, I am heading out to the new frontier to don a vacc suit and charge my laser rifle for action. I wonder what lies in the space between worlds?

Game on!