GURPS Everything

Background: Tim Cain and GURPS

Tim got introduced to GURPS in graduate school in the late 1980s and ran many campaigns with friends. He ran a long-running high-tech space sci-fi campaign, a magic campaign, a superhero campaign, and later at Interplay, a GURPS Conan campaign. He specifically praises the GURPS Conan world book as amazing for its geography, items, and NPC detail.

The GURPS Conan campaign is notably the one connected to Fallout's origins — Tim had made a six-room dungeon and ran people through it in different ways as part of early Fallout development.

The Concept: Use Every Sourcebook

One day Tim couldn't decide what GURPS campaign to run next. Looking at all his sourcebooks, he decided to use every single one — not the world books (like GURPS Conan or GURPS War Against the Chthorr), but all the source/extension books: Magic, Psionics, High-Tech, Space, Horror, Pulp, Time Travel, and even Supers.

The Rules

Tim set some ground rules for the campaign:

• Earth was a low magic zone — if you took magic, you had to live with the low magic rules
• Tech level was between 7 and 8 (roughly "seven and a half") — items at tech level 8 or higher required using High-Tech or Ultra-Tech rules
• Unusual abilities required a Background and/or a Secret — both cost character points. A Background explained why you had the ability; a Secret reflected the danger of others discovering it
• Characters were kept secret from other players — everyone talked to Tim individually about their builds but were told not to share with each other

The Setting

A rich old man has died. The player characters are named in his will as possible inheritors — perhaps family members, friends, or former colleagues. To receive their bequest, they must attend the funeral service and will reading at his mansion.

The Characters

Tim remembers three of the four or five players:

Rusty Buchert — FBI Agent

Rusty played an FBI agent sent to investigate the rich man's death under mysterious circumstances. Unknown to other players, his character had PTSD from military service, complete with war flashbacks. In stressful situations, he had to make a Will check or potentially pull his gun and start shooting at imaginary enemies.

Chris Taylor — Young Man with Telekinesis

Chris played a young man whose connection to the deceased was unclear. His secret: as a child, a piece of Skylab had broken off and embedded in his skull. Doctors removed what they could but left a fragment in. He developed telekinetic powers — low power but high skill, meaning he couldn't lift heavy objects but had fine control.

Scotty's Character — The "Time Traveler"

Scotty missed the first session and picked up an NPC — a quiet, furtive young woman who was a relative of the dead man. She carried high-tech gadgets and was seen scanning the body and talking into a metallic cylinder. She claimed to be a time traveler from the future investigating a critical time nexus point.

In reality, she was completely insane — a delusional maniac who had broken out of an asylum, saw the obituary in the newspaper, and simply showed up. Her "scanner" was a Walkman. Her "communicator" was a pen.

How It Played Out

Session One

The service gathered the PCs plus eight to ten NPCs at the mansion. Everyone eyed each other suspiciously, wondering who would inherit. Some noticed Scotty's NPC character waving a metallic device over the body and talking into a cylinder. Rusty immediately ordered a background check on her from the local FBI office.

Session Two

Scotty joined and took over her character. During dinner, a violent thunderstorm knocked out the power. In the darkness: screaming, furniture knocked over, dishes smashing — then gunfire. When the lights came back on, one of the NPCs was dead.

Rusty called for paramedics. An ambulance arrived, paramedics checked the body (finding no apparent cause of death — no gunshot wounds, no blood), took it, and left.

Meanwhile, Rusty and Chris searched Scotty's character's room and discovered her "scanner" was a Walkman and her "communicator" was a pen. The FBI background check came back: she was an escaped asylum patient. When confronted, she insisted it was all a cover story and that her devices were future technology disguised as contemporary objects.

Chris and Rusty believed her — because, as Tim and Scotty laughed about later, who would make an insane maniac character? (She really was an insane maniac.)

Rusty called the hospital for an update on the body. The hospital had no idea what he was talking about — they never received his call, never sent paramedics, and never received a body. They checked the dead NPC's room in the mansion: completely empty, no clothes, no belongings, no sign anyone had ever stayed there.

While searching the house, they found a secret staircase behind a bookshelf leading to a sub-basement laboratory. Inside: a supercomputer running a program with a countdown timer, processing acoustic input from a CD. When they played the CD through speakers — whale song. Humpback, blue whale, various species.

The group drove into town, finding the ambulance overturned and empty on the road. The hospital confirmed it wasn't their ambulance. Returning to the mansion, they were ambushed by armed men searching for the secret lab. Rusty made his stress check (no PTSD episode this time) and shot at the attackers. Chris threw objects at them with telekinesis — vases, newspapers wrapped around heads. Scotty's character tased people. They drove the attackers off.

Back in the lab, the timer hit zero. The decoded whale songs produced a schematic — a device of unknown purpose, requiring advanced but contemporary-manufacturable alloys and materials.

The Unresolved Ending

The campaign ended there. Not intentionally — they simply couldn't get the group back together. Tim thinks everyone bought Atari Lynxes and got distracted. He had plans to continue but never did.

Tim's Observations

Tim found it interesting that despite having every sourcebook available, most players self-restricted to the basic set. Only Chris used something exotic (psionics). There was no magic, no superpowers, no supernatural abilities among the PCs. Tim notes he wasn't restricting them — the players naturally gravitated toward grounded characters, making the rare exotic choice (telekinesis) feel all the more special in context.

References

• Tim Cain. YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8goxpsqusxc