From: [a--o--d] at [newstand.syr.edu] (ajgould) Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.announce Subject: [FAQ] rec.games.frp.gurps Date: Tue, 17 Sep 96 04:01:28 GMT Archive-name: games/roleplay/gurps/newsgroup-faq Posting-Frequency: monthly Last-modified: September 16, 1996 rec.games.frp.gurps Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) @ designates topics which have been updated + designates topics which have been added I) Introduction This posting contains Frequently Asked Questions (and their answers) about rec.games.frp.gurps. It should be read by anyone who wishes to post to the rec.games.frp.gurps newsgroup. This FAQ answers some questions about playing GURPS, and where to find more GURPS information online (section II) and how to use the newsgroup (section III). * What is the rec.games.frp.gurps newsgroup for? rec.games.frp.gurps is for the discussion of the GURPS (Generic Universal Role Playing System) role playing game published by Steve Jackson Games. Although unmoderated, participants in the newsgroup should read and follow the netiquette guidelines in the articles regularly posted to the newsgroup news.announce.newusers, or available by ftp at rtfm.mit.edu in /pub/usenet/news.announce.newusers. Although topic drift is inevitable in an unmoderated newsgroup, topic threads that reasonably could be posted to other existing newsgroups, such as rec.games.frp.misc, are discouraged. Users are encouraged to use keywords in their subject headings to assist people who have newsreader kill-files. *What is GURPS? What is GURPS:Basic Set? GURPS uses 3 six-sided dice to resolve role-playing events. Players create characters by allocating points to four attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Health) and buying Advantages, Disadvantages, personality Quirks, and Skills. The GURPS:Basic Set is the basic rule book, and has rules for creating characters, basic and advanced combat, magic spells, and a psionics system. The basic rules system is adaptable to many adventure genres. You only need the Basic Set and your own dice to play. II) GURPS * Over 80 GURPS books have been published besides the Basic Set. Is there a list of what GURPS books have been published? Try this list: http://www.io.com/sjgames/gurps/books/ * Can I email to Steve Jackson Games? The generic email address is [s j games] at [io.com] A more complete list of email addresses is at: http://www.io.com/sjgames/general/staff.html * Does Steve Jackson Games have a web page? Yes, the address is: http://www.io.com/sjgames The GURPS section is at: http://www.io.com/sjgames/gurps/ You'll find plenty of information about Steve Jackson Games, io.com, Pyramid magazine, GURPS, the unofficial GURPSnet emailing list, and useful files including MakeChar and the GURPS Star System Generator. If you don't have access to a web browser, many of the files at www.io.com/sjgames and www.io.com mentioned in this FAQ are also available by using gopher to gopher.io.com, or by ftp to ftp.io.com. Ironically, the SJG web page uses cookies, if you have privacy concerns. * What other web sites have GURPS stuff? Here are some: http://www.nd.edu/~dfrohlic/GURPS/ http://www.io.com/~bowman/ADS/ http://www.io.com/~arcangel/index.html http://www.io.com/~arcangel/Roleplayers-Web-Pages/Roleplayers-index http://www.io.com/~arcangel/net.character.book/FirstPage.html http://www.indirect.com/www/shade/gurps.html http://www.cqs.washington.edu/~surge/gaming/gurps http://nspace.cts.com/pub/Role%2DPlaying/Generic/GURPS/ http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Phil_Masters http://www.io.com/~thalcos/gurps.html http://www.databahn.net/~dave/ http://ace.cs.ohiou.edu/personal/tratclif.html http://qlink.queensu.ca/~3ob2 http://phoenix.kent.edu/~jkuleck/cgs.htm http://www.io.com/~lcowper/ http://home.earthlink.net/~salvius/mcdta.htm * Where can I get GURPS files using FTP? ftp.io.com /pub/GURPSnet/ /pub/sjgames/ /pub/tekumel/rules/GURPS/ /pub/mailing-lists/gurpsnet-digest/ [web browsers can use the io.com directories with http://www.io.com/~ftp/] ftp.cs.pdx.edu/pub/frp/gurps For an explanation on using ftp, read Perry Rovers' Anonymous FTP FAQ List regularly posted on the news.announce.newusers newsgroup. * What is the current version of the GURPS Basic Set? Third Edition Revised, reprinted with new art in May 1996. If you have the older Third Edition, the additional material is at: http://www.io.com/sjgames/gurps/books/Basic/basic_appendix.html * What happened to the GURPS Compendium mentioned in the Basic Set? GURPS Compendium I was published in June 1996. It contains every new advantage, disadvantage and skill published since 1988, plus other material for creating GURPS characters. Formerly, GURPS books reprinted popular rule additions not in the Basic Set. But the material collected in Compendium I will now not appear in new GURPS books. A second book, Compendium II: Combat and Campaigns is tentatively scheduled for a Fall 1996 release. * Where are GURPS:Wraith and GURPS:Changeling mentioned in GURPS:Vampire Companion? Where are the Companion books for Werewolf and Mage? Only four GURPS adaptations of White Wolf games have been published: Vampire, Vampire Companion, Werewolf, and Mage. "Creative differences" caused no more GURPS adaptations of White Wolf's series. Changeling players might like the GURPS:Celtic Myth version of the Sidhe, and GURPS:Fantasy Folk 2nd Ed. An unofficial GURPS:Wraith is at http://www.io.com/~thalcos/gurps.html * Where can I get errata for the GURPS books online? The Steve Jackson Games web page has errata for the GURPS game available at: http://www.io.com/sjgames/errata/gurps/ Updates appear in the rec.games.frp.announce newsgroup, and are posted on: http://www.io.com/sjgames/errata/gurps/new.html You can submit possible errata by email to [s j g errata] at [io.com] * The point values are different in two of my GURPS supplements. Which book is right? As new GURPS books are published or reprinted, minor rules revisions are included. When you find a discrepancy between books assume the most recently published book has the new official rules. @ * What is MakeChar? MakeChar is a free program written by Bill Seurer that assists in creating characters for GURPS. It works only on MS-DOS computers. It uses data files that end in .gen and .dta. Bill Seurer has a MakeChar website: http://members.aol.com/BillSeurer/MakeChar.html * Are there Mass Combat rules for GURPS? The most complete set of mass combat rules appeared some time ago in the magazine Roleplayer #30. Versions of these rules are available in the books GURPS:Conan and GURPS:Vikings. The mass combat rules will appear in the Compendium II. The Roleplayer version is at: http://www.io.com/~arcangel/Roleplayers-Web-Pages/Roleplayer30/ MassCombat-Land.html * Are there any simpler combat rules? Many people like to use the Advanced Combat system, and even add additional rules from books like GURPS:High-Tech on using guns, or GURPS:Martial Arts on close combat, but the Basic Combat rules are quite adequate for many. But if you want even quicker combat Steffan O'Sullivan's Very Basic Combat system is available at: http://www.io.com/~arcangel/Roleplayers-Web-Pages/Roleplayer23/ VeryBasicMelee.html * How are character point values rated and used? According to GURPS' line editor Sean Punch: Attribute levels and advantages (including Unusual Backgrounds, positive or "negative") are priced according to their RARITY, skills are priced solely on their DIFFICULTY and disads are priced for the INCONVENIENCE they cause. The "points" that are used to rate rarity, difficulty or inconvenience are the "natural" units for each of these elements. ... it should be noted that rarity and power (commonly called "usefulness") tend to overlap: it is useful to be a fencing master, but it is also quite rare. Character creation is not an exercise in accounting. >From Steffan O'Sullivan: Don't make characters for point efficiency. Make them for a character concept. * Is there a GURPS FAQ? Yes, there is a GURPS FAQ maintained by James Duncan. It has information on many GURPS topics and is posted quarterly to this newsgroup and rec.games.frp.archives. The GURPS FAQ is also available at: http://www.io.com/sjgames/gurps/faq.html III) Using the rec.games.frp.gurps newsgroup * Should I post ...? Is anybody interested in ...? People post messages such as questions and comments on using the rules (e.g. Supers, Magic, etc), how to do something in GURPS, sample characters, home made rules, ways to convert material from another game system to GURPS, MakeChar .dta and .gen files. Use rec.games.frp.marketplace to buy/sell games. "Fluff" should be sent only to the rec.games.frp.archives newsgroup. * What do GURPS players think of Game X? I think I'll crosspost to the Game X newsgroup! If you want to know what GURPS players think of another game, or how to do something with GURPS that is possible with another game, ask only on the rec.games.frp.gurps newsgroup. If you want to know what players of Game X think of GURPS ask on the appropiate Game X newsgroup. Don't crosspost the same message on rec.games.frp.gurps to other newsgroups, because that will probably result in messages that belong on rec.games.frp.advocacy instead. * Is there an archive of this newsgroup? If you're looking for this FAQ or past messages, you can search an archive of this and other Usenet newsgroups at: http://www.dejanews.com People who want to use newsgroups to be publicly insulting and foolish should keep this in mind. * What do these abbreviations mean? BTW = By the way FWIW = For what it's worth IMHO = In my humble opinion YMMV = Your mileage may vary ISO = In search of LOL = Laugh out loud TTYL = Talk to you later ROTFL = Roll on the floor laughing SJG = Steve Jackson Games AFAIK = As far as I know PBEM = Play By Email game OOP = Out Of Print RTFM = Read The F***ing Manual or Rules FRP = Fantasy Role Playing IOU = Illuminati University (a 1995 GURPS book) * What is munchkinism, Monty Haul campaigns, fluff? Briefly, 'munchkinism' refers to hyper-powered characters, possibly also taking advantage of rules flaws, used to quickly gain by combat lots of power, wealth, prestige, godhood, etc. 'munchkins' refers to the players who enjoy munchkinism, often young. A Monty Haul campaign has poorly/randomly laid out monsters and nice treasures for munchkins to enjoy. Some people like munchkinism; some don't. 'fluff' are stories based on game campaigns. These topics were discussed in the aged rec.games.frp.* general FAQ available at: http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/games/roleplay/ part2/faq.html Also discussed in the rec.games.frp.dnd FAQ. *What is a fnord? What does the O in GURPS:IOU mean? The standard answer for such questions is: You aren't cleared for that. It's a running joke since SJG has a tradition of publishing games like "Illuminati" that deal with conspiracies. * Where can I send a test message before joining in the newsgroup's discussion? Don't send a test message to the GURPS newsgroup. Use the misc.test newsgroup. For your test message's subject line use: Test Ignore * What should I do about: an annoying user, those illegal MAKE.MONEY.FAST posts, stupid sex lines, spam (Excessive Multi-posting - EMP),velveeta (Excessive cross-posting - ECP), somebody posting a binary file, etc? First rule: Don't mailbomb the abuser. Ignore the abusive message/thread and it will hopefully die out. Second: Read the real news.admin.net-abuse FAQ and check the news.admin.net-abuse.announce and news.admin.net-abuse.misc newsgroups. The real news.admin.net-abuse FAQ is *not* written by Ricardo Hector Gonzales! Look for the Net Abuse FAQ currently by J.D. Falk instead: http://www.cybernothing.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq.html If you spot an abusive message from someone e.g. [s--up--d] at [spammer.site.net] then email a polite message including the message's full header and text to the abuser's address and to his site's postmaster e.g. [p--ma--r] at [spammer.site.net] Check the message's header because the email address given for replies may be forged. If you really really think you have to post a followup to the abusive message on a newsgroup set your reply's Followup-To: alt.dev.null If you post a reply without trimming the number of newsgroups, you are part of the problem. If you don't know how to see what newsgroups a message was posted to, how to change which newsgroups your reply goes to, or read a message's header learn how today. * Where can I find more information on: internet, Usenet newsgroups, email, FTP, gopher, World Wide Web pages, newsreaders, kill-files, finger, FAQs, etc? Please look at these newsgroups!: news.announce.newusers FAQs explaining how internet and Usenet work and what is proper netiquette news.newusers.questions Q & A for people new to using internet If you have a web browser, you can learn a lot about Usenet and get many popular FAQs through the Usenet Info Center Launch Pad: http://sunsite.unc.edu/usenet-b/home.html --------------------------------------------------------------------- If you've read this FAQ, Congratulations and Thanks ===================================================================== DISCLAIMER: This article is provided as is without any express or implied warranties. 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