GURPS

Pardon Me! You know, soda does that to me every time! Anyway. The Generic Universal Role Playing System (GURPS) is an acronym owned by Steve Jackson and his Games.

"Are you taking applications?"

Submitted by Ken no Kishi

So, we're playing a GURPS Black Ops game. Our GM playtested the game on me, so I ended up playing the main NPC. Short story is the Company thinks there's a soul dog in a town in Ohio, because there's been several suspicious deaths lately. They sent in one team, they never reported back. So our second team got sent in. They get into town, meet the backwater sheriff, find out their computers and cell phones are failing on them, and are planning their next move at a Denny's (a recurring theme in our Black Ops games) when I walk in. I sit down, say I was the first team's security operative. The team was investigating the murder scenes when they were attacked in the local forest, I was the only survivor.

So I followed the new team around town, investigating the murders. We buried the bodies of the first team in the forest, and then went on to investigate the murders. They kept picking up senses of psionics use at the murder scenes, but couldn't lock it down. At my subtle hinting, they started investigating the last death, a young girl. The father was a drunken wife-beater, the wife was... strange. She kept giving me weird looks. And the house had the same sense of psionics that they couldn't lock down.

Through research, they found out that the mother's family had a curse on it years ago where the thirteenth girl-child would bring forth a demon, and the mother, Chastity, was the thirteenth girl of her line.

Meanwhile, someone came to the realization that my character had never bothered to show them any ID, I had just said I was an op. So two of them drive back to the nearest big city, contact the Company, and realize that I was not a member. So they drive back and confront me. Which was when it was revealed that I was the demon that the girl brought forth. The girl who died last was my daughter, and she did the killings before that.

At that point, the GM expected that either they would try to kill me, and I'd have to kill them all, or they would agree to lie about it, say there is no longer a soul dog in town (there never was), and never mention me to the company. Except four of the six agents decided they'd rather work for me then the company. Which left two agents who we had to take care of. The tech op took care of himself, fleeing back to Amsterdam and getting dead drunk. The security op tried to shoot my new team. So I tackled him before he got off a shot, and we gave him the cocktail, a drug that erased his memory for the past week. So now I've got a demon PC, and a squad of four former Black Op agents at my disposal. Life is good.

Death by Chicken

Submitted by Shane

This happened almost a year ago, but it still comes up many time in my group. It is a good example of how the most dangerous creatures are not the most obvious.

We were playing a GURPS fantasy campaign and we were all inexperienced adventurers. We all had been trapped in a castle in cages with a stone wall to our backs. A friend of mine was playing a very large individual who happened to be very simple-minded. I was a beginning wizard.

Now, my large friend decided to try to escape. Instead of trying to bend the bars, he decided to break through the stone wall. So, he got a running start and tried to break through the wall, taking damage with each try. Now, despite the fact that he was a seven foot tall mass of bulk, and that the wall was only about 1/2" thick, it was still a difficult task. Eventually, thanks mostly to my healing spells, he broke through.

We then attempted to quietly escape from the castle. We failed. About halfway through the castle, we were approached by several guards carring halberds. Despite the fact that he had taken massive amounts of damage, my friend decided to fight them, barehanded. Well, somehow we all survived combat, thanks to more healing spells and several lucky HT rolls by my friend to stay alive, and we continued out of the castle. When we exited the castle, we discovered that the surrounding city had been taken over by necromancers. Realizing that we didn't want any more combat, our party left the city as quickly as we could.

Again, events didn't go as planned. As we were running through the town square, my child-like friend decided to look at all the undead animals. The two of us were bringing up the rear of the party when I saw him stop running. He stopped to look at a cage that contained several animated chicken skeletons, and proceeded to open the cage. The chicken then attacked him and hit for 1 point of damage, forcing my fellow player to make another HT roll to stay alive. The conversation with the GM went something like this:

GM: "Okay, make your health roll."
Player: "Sure, I've made all my other ones, I've got great HT." (rolls)
Player: "$#@*@%*!!"
GM (smiling): "Your vision begins to fade as you slip into darkness..."

The game then ground to a halt as we realized that our best fighter, the one who made it able for all of us to escape, was dead... By an animated chicken skeleton. We spent the next ten minutes laughing and another five before we could begin playing again.

Feeling Out of Place in Social Situations? What a Shock!

Submitted by Ken no Kishi

A friend of mine was running a GURPS came, cyberpunk-magic hybrid, and she had a strange sense of humor- for instance, we were in a bar fight (started by our TK psionic cheating at darts) it was endless until my assassin, tired of killing people and not getting paid for it, hurtled the bar and yelled "FREE BEER!!"

On one mission, our GM just mentioned random objects around the room, and was amused to watch us examine them- things like a baseball game ticket stub, a gold-plated pocket watch, and things like that. Later on, at one point, we face off with a vampire-demon. One character, who was an endless source of amusement, due to his Weirdness Magnet, recalled that, in this world, vampires disliked gold and could be killed by it. At which point, he turns and says, "Let's kick the cr** out of the supernatural beast with the watch!" This character, by the way, was played by the same guy who fought stormtroopers with a mop.

Our GM also decided to throw our ragtag group of folks, half of whom are either Zeroed or don't exist according to the system, into a diplomatic ball. My assassin was so paranoid, he went to all the trouble of getting weapons that couldn't be detected by metal detectors- ceramic cesti, and Obsidian daggers, a la Snow Crash. My assassin and the terminally cynical psionic both felt 100% out of place, and stood by the buffet table, seeing what was safe to eat, making small talk (not easy for a duo with no social skills between them), and hoping desperatly that something would blow up.....

A New Career for Fabio?

Submitted by P.D. Magnus

I ran a short-lived, dimension-hopping campaign. Only people with a rare genetic factor could project to other dimensions and times, so the PC's were normal folks from 1996 who had been recruited into the time corps. There were four party members, two of which play a role in this story: One was a former stage magician named Mandrake, the other was the male model Fabio. The player running Fabio wrote the character as a knife master and compulsive liar.

The party was taken into custody while exploring an authoritarian parallel world. While being questioned, Fabio began to drop hints that they had information concerning French espionage and the mysterious "Brinkmann incident," so secret that not even I as the GM had heard of it. Mandrake, Fabio explained, was a pivotal agent in the "Left Flank." Which agent? None other than the infamous "Churn." He earned a bonus experience point for making me laugh uncontrollably.

The PC's managed to escape and were hiding in a greasy-spoon diner. Although Mandrake had loaned him a dagger, Fabio decided they needed more weapons- like say, kitchen implements- so before any one could stop him he was back at the grill exclaiming to the cook that he was the famous chef "Pierre Butter-spray" (pronounced in the silliest French accent) and he had come to cook for them. The cook was hearing none of that, when it occurred to the PC running Fabio to ask me if the cook was fat. Yes, I said, forgetting that Fabio also had the disadvantage Intolerance to fat people. Fabio stabbed the chef in the neck, killing him. To escape from security forces, he jumped back to 1996.

The controllers asked him why he had come back. What had happened to the rest of the team? They were in trouble, Fabio answered, but could not concentrate to make the jump back because they were drugged up with heroin. He had only been able to escape because he was immune. Immune? Well, no, but he claimed that due to his long history of heroin use, he had built up a resistance. He is the only player I have ever seen play Compulsive Lying to such lengths, and amazingly enough the team still managed to finish their mission. Also surprising is that no one shot Fabio in the back, although everyone was sorely tempted.

On a later mission, the team was in a medieval parallel world. Again returning to 1996 without the other PC's, Fabio convinced the controllers to give him a load of dynamite. He went back to the parallel and sighted the other PC's at a guard house. Deciding they must be in trouble, Fabio attempted to sneak into the station. When he was stopped by several guards, he whipped out a stick of dynamite and threatened to light it. The guards, being medievals and knowing nothing of explosives, did not back off. Fabio, thinking they were being tough, lit the fuse and tried to stare them down. When they did not flinch, he tossed the dynamite at one of them and attempted to charge past. The guard caught the dynamite and bodychecked Fabio. The explosion set off the rest of the dynamite, bringing Fabio the end he sorely deserved.

The other PC's, eating lunch in the mess hall of the guard house, only heard an explosion in the distance. The other players, however, were laughing like mad.

"Who Says We Can't Elope?"

Submitted by Necromancer13c

I was running a fantasy GURPS game some years ago and the party liked using magic for everything. The mage was in the process of casting a Create Food spell when he bungled the roll. I rolled on the chart and saw that the result was the summoning of a demon. I felt a little bad sicking a demon on the party for a food spell so all of a sudden there was a burst of smoke and the spell resulted in a food demon attacking the party. The 'demon' looked like a large cantalope, about two feet across. It had glowing red eyes and a ragged mouth and it hissed and began sliding on the ground towards the party. The entire party RAN LIKE A BUNCH OF GIRLS! The food demon chased them around the camp while they searched for their holy water and the (now exhausted) mage tried casting small missile spells at it with no success.

The screams of the party brought the hefty barbarian warrior crashing from the trees (where he'd been taking a leak) and back into camp. He looked at the carnage and summed up the situation with a glance. He calmly strode over and smashed the possessed cantalope with a single stroke of his sword. He cast a baleful eye on the party 'of great warriors' and told them that for disturbing him they would cover his watch that night.

The meal was prepared in the usual way (by cooking) and the camp returned to normal. At dinner the barbarian sat and ate two pieces of cantalope...thus ruining everyone else's appetite!

Who Turned Out the Lights?

Submitted by Necromancer13c

This is a submission for the GURPS section, even though it was GURPS Vampire we were playing.

A stalwart group of Vampires somehow managed to let one of their number talk them into visiting the local Garou hangout and "cleaning house." This was mostly in order to impress the prince of the city and curry some favor. The party, having never fought Garou before, decide to go along.

Several rather tragic, though hilarious things happened at the same time. This was after the party had arrived at the garou hangout ( a rather nice palatial home owned by a powerful Garou shaman), observed what was going on and made their plans.

1. The Brujah at the back of the house cranked up his Celerity and Potence and charged the back door. The door folded up around the steel cross-bar...and so did the Brujah!
2. The Malkavian following up right behind him leaped over him only to land on the guy guarding the back door. The Malkavian got the better of the guard but not before he assumed his combat aspect and went to town with claws and teeth.
3. The three-man attack squad bursts through the front door and right into a large entry hall occupied by Garou and their human allies. The gunfight (yes, the vampires brought guns) that insued killed most of the Garou right up until the lights went out.
4. One of the party had arranged to take the lights out on the house from outside. When the front room went dark in the middle of the firefight eveyone said "Gleam of Red Eyes" indicating that they could see in the dark. Everyone, of course, except for the Assamite assassin! His only quote was "Uh...guys?"
5. Before the last of the Garou are bought, they manage to tear off the Assamite's leg at the hip and tear the throat out of the Ventrue. The Assamite had to limp around for a week while his leg healed and the Ventrue almost gave himself away the following night when he sat down to dinner with a mortal and forgot about his injury. The soup almost ran out of his neck! The only thing that saved him was his ascot!