Day 6 of the #CharacterCreationChallenge has me visiting a genre-less RPG known as GURPS – the Generic Universal RolePlaying System. I decided to go with something set in the 1940’s during World War 2.

Dolores is an archivist and a spy for England. Physically, she is no threat to anyone, but she is mentally quite sharp. She can handle a pistol, having trained before undertaking this duty for her country, but she avoids any violent encounters that would endanger her position.

As an archivist, she gains access to numerous coded messages from High Command. She uses both writing and photography skills to covertly convey important information to her superiors.

GURPS 3E

This system has been around for ages and comes from the creative team at Steve Jackson Games. I have always heard that it was an incredibly complex system and only suitable for the brave.

I recently got a copy of the 3rd Edition rules and, as I started reading them I thought, “oh, this looks pretty cool!” Then I started building a character.

Wow.

I love the point-buy mechanism that ensures all starting characters in a party have the same potential. And being able to add meaningful disadvantages and quirks to offset some advantages and skills looks like it can add a lot of depth to the character.

The problem I faced is that you really have to plan ahead and scroll through the rules many times to spend your points. For me, I think having all the disadvantages and quirks early so I could establish my final pool of points and then start spending on positive things would have improved the experience.

Perhaps due to 3rd edition being rather old, it was a challenge to find good, fillable character sheets online. While the one I used was passable for this effort – and I do appreciate that someone did the work – filling it out was a chore. Looking at the sample in the rulebook, however, I think the problem is there rather than in the version I found online. From what I can tell reading online posts, the character sheet is much improved in 4th Edition.

Because of the difficulty in building it, I stopped short of figuring out equipment, encumbrance, and all the other parts that would make this a truly playable character. She’s also built for a non-combat role, so I would need to find an appropriate world guide for the type of campaign I conceived her for.

From a rules point of view, GURPS works with a mechanism in which you try to roll under your attribute or skill level rather than against a fixed difficulty class or other target. As I explore many other gaming systems, I am seeing this model more and more, and I think I like it. I haven’t tried it in actual play, though, so we’ll see.

I’ll mark Delores up as a quick exploration of GURPS, but one I am unlikely to delve into further. And that’s the beauty of this challenge, as I get a taste of rule systems I never would have otherwise touched.