From: bkoike@sdcc13.ucsd.edu (Bryce Koike)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc,rec.games.frp.advocacy
Subject: GURPS: Multi-Genre Otherworld
Date: 15 Sep 92 05:26:32 GMT
Followup-To: rec.games.frp.misc
Organization: University of California, San Diego


	After hearing in several places that GURPS simply cannot do
a multi-genre game without a hellish amount of tinkering, I decided
sometime last school year thinking up a background for one just to
find out For Absolutely Sure.
	The background is one some USENET people are familiar with:
the Otherworld series I've been writing (for those curious, YES I
did finish it!  I'll be putting it up on ARCHIVES as soon as I get
my life and my condo together).
	Sadly, being at college, without a gaming group, I was
unable to test all the material I'd cooked up.  I had to wait until
I was back home to start playing.  Then I faced yet another setback:
there was already SEVERAL (10 at least count!) campaigns being run
by various people I knew.  I was basically going to have to wait
until those campaigns were finished, died off, or were interrupted
before I could get enough people together.
	Finally, in August, I was able to finagle 7 players and a
house to start GURPS Otherworld proper.  The group consisted of:
(note:  all were 200 point characters!)

Kit D. Ramparte, a 20th Century weretiger
	(plus spell-casting abilities)
Mr. Sinister, a 20th Century businessman
	(with psionics)
Chris Collins, 8 year-old "psionicist"
	(actually, GURPS Supers 1st edition character w/ fire
	 abilities)
S. Hing Wolf, alternate-Earth shaman
	(various magic spells that we thought fit)
"Fixer" Williams, 20th Century technician, ex-military
	(with a GURPS gadgeteer advantage that I had changed
	 to fit the player's idea...think of him as a MacGyver
	 -like character)
Ty Blackthorn, 22nd Century Space Rastafarian
	(I'm NOT joking)
Betsy Walker, 22nd Century space chick from hell

	There were no fantasy barbarians, no cyberpunk characters,
etc, but overall a fairly good mix of characters, I felt (what was I
going to do?  "No, we've got too many damn spellcasters...play
someone else!")
	Problems:

#1	The party preferred to fight amongst themselves more than
actually DO anything.  This was MY fault at picking a bad group, but
after some GM intervention, "Goddamit, NO YOU AREN'T GOING TO KILL
HIM!" the game got going at a very fine pace.

#2	Psionics are far too powerful if the only person on the
planet with psionics is a player character.  Magic has a physical
manifestation and people can KNOW when someone is casting, often,
and the source is usually noticable, especially if the spell is
Fireball.
	The solution was very simple.  Introduce more psionicists
into the game plus some paranoid NPC's.  Mr. Sinister figured out
very quickly that if he didn't want to die, he had better be VERY
careful when using his powers.  Still, he did some questionable
things with his abilities, but the player did not pose a problem to
the game (this is a player, mind you, who loves to be in total
control of a party.  His character had all of his mind control
skills at level 25!)
	Main problem with psionics:  it's far too easy to take over
someone's mind.  Even if the subject is aware, if he doesn't have
psionics of his own, he's totally doomed.  In most cases, it's so
pitifully easy to mind control someone that several bad guys proved
to be fairly useless thanks to the psionicist.  No real problem to
me as a GM, they were just sideshows to the Real Problem.

#3	Figuring out how the hell to get the characters together was
a major pain (but fun).  Once the party figured out that they were
the ONLY people on the planet and that there were Big Nasty Bad Guys
out the get them, they immediately got together and started working
together.
	A load of NPC's from an airline flight helped to balance
many things out, including Mr. Sinister's psionics from hell.  At
first I thought the Chris Collins character might be way too
powerful with his 5d+5 firejets, etc (think of him as a boy
Firestarter) but what can an 8 year-old genius kid REALLY do?  His
age basically controlled him and the player was fairly level-headed
anyway.
	The shaman proved to be a hell of a lot of fun...he was from
a TL 5 world or so and simply couldn't handle skyscrapers, jets,
automobiles, etc (and he really flipped when he saw the rastafarian
in his full battlesuit!).  Eventually people calmed him down and
talked to him about what was going on and after that he became an
incredibly useful member of the party (he had many plant spells that
allowed them to become master agriculturists in a day...which they
sorely needed in Kansas City...)

	Overall, once I knew how my players were going to behave and
the limits of their characters, it was relatively simple to devise
appropriate bad guys and the like.  They had a ton of fun dealing
with a vampire in Kansas City as well as a very ... strange ...
woman that they met in Los Angeles who knew far more about what was
going on than they did.  They had a ton of fun uncovering some of
the mysteries of Otherworld and I really enjoyed getting my creative
mind in gear to pump out tons of new ideas, red herrings and the
like.
	Sadly, I was only able to run 2 sessions before I had to
call things to end (all my players were gone!).  Because of this I
don't have a lot of in-depth information on a multi-genre campaign.
In general, though, I never came across the horrible problems that
people say are _everywhere_ in GURPS.  Quite frankly, I think
they're wrong.  I was using GURPS Supers, 1st edition, which
everyone claims to be awful, but due to my limited use it did not
create problems.  Psionics ceased to be a problem when the player
realized that he could not mentally rampage my game without facing
major consequences.  Magic, high tech, and space tech all worked
together very well.  I shudder at the thought of the rastafarian's
battlesuit (100 DR!), but it would have been easy enough to stop him
(a variety of GURPS Magic spells come to mind).
	Not only can it be done, but it can work.  I didn't use MANY
GURPS publications in my game, which is perhaps why I didn't face
the "problems" that are out there, but I used the ones which I felt
were most important to my game (and the ones which I owned!).  The
following were the books that I lugged to each game.  Those marked
with an asterisk are those that I used regularly or played a major
part in character creation:

	GURPS Cyberpunk
	GURPS Ultratech *
	GURPS Supers, 1st Edition
	GURPS Space, 1st Edition
	GURPS Magic *
	GURPS Horror *
	GURPS Fantasy Bestiary
	GURPS Bestiary
	GURPS Basic Set, 3rd Edition *

	Overall a pretty good spread and I'd like to note that once
characters were made, I rarely, if ever, looked at any of the books
save for the Basic Set itself.  Most of the books were used before
the game started so that I could conceptualize enemies and NPC's,
etc.  The Basic Set with Ultratech had more than enough weapons and
the like for the game.  I could easily have done without Ultratech,
but since I had it, I wanted to use it.  (on a 5 star scale,
Ultratech rates a 3.5)
	Yes, I'm lacking several GURPS books, notable Supers 2nd
Edition and Fantasy Folk to name a few, but they're not available at
my local game store and I really didn't want to buy them just so I
could run GURPS Otherworld (which, I suppose, is going to have to
get its name changed...over the summer I've come across numerous
"Otherworld"s...there's the Otherworld game being run on the
Illuminati BBS, there's the Otherworld *BOOK*, and a few books with
Otherworlds...)
	Those who've read the Otherworld stories should know that I
don't always adhere strictly to GURPS rules.  Many things could
easily be turned into my own house rules, so such lapses are really
immaterial...heck, it's the story that matters, right?
	In the end, my friends who told me that a GURPS Multi-Genre
game can't work were proven wrong.  What was most important in the
end, though, was that we had FUN.  We were mature enough to overlook
the problems with GURPS and just get into the characters and the
world.  To be truthful, I have NEVER seen the players role-play that
much before in my life!  As the GM, I was incredibly happy that
things worked out in the end.
	And my players will probably never know all the things that
I had in store for them.  They'll never get to fight the Eternals,
get slaughtered by the Dark Riders, encounter the Hidden City,
destroy the Vampires, overcome a rebellion in the Kansas Free
State, escape from the Hotel California....

	But who knows...maybe you'll see that stuff in some of the
future stories of Otherworld.  One of the greatest things which came
out of the Otherworld stories and the Otherworld gaming sessions
were the IDEAS.  I'd come home at night trembling from a caffeine
rush and just start typing.  I've got enough information on Space
Marines and the world they're in to run a GURPS Space game in the
world.  I'm drowning in material about the Eternals and I've just
cooked up the background for the Dark Riders (who come from our
future in the year 10,204.  There, they are humanity's greatest
enemy...if anyone wants more information, just e-mail me!).
	And there's more.  I've got information churning up about an
alternate 20th Century were America NEVER WAS.  The entire North
American continent is known as the Indian Free State and is ruled
and run by various Indians who have chosen not to advance into the
20th Century but instead stay true to their ancient roots.
	I've never touched anything about the Storm Riders, another
future Earth with a few touches from Battletech thrown in...

	In short, if I ever need a strange and different gaming
world, I've got it now.  I can thrust players into a variety of new
worlds and develop the worlds as we play.  Not bad for two sessions
of gaming, really!

Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc