GURPS:Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love RPGs.

Back when I was 12, Dungeons and Dragons was all I knew. I know, that's rather early to begin one's gaming career, especially since this was back in the days of Gygax, when they still had nude depictions in the Monster Manuals, and actual references to how certain herbs could be beneficial against venerial disease in the DM's guide. AD+D was still very much an 'adult oriented' game, but done of that mattered. I lived, ate, and breathed D+D, being one of the few things I took pleasure in. However, after three or four years of playing it, I felt there was something missing. Part of it, I think was the fact that after I got into high school, I had very few friends that were still interested in it, and all them were going to a different high school.. One of my final memories of junior high was a kid named Cameron, who typically was the one who GMed for me and friends, giving me all his AD+D 2nd edition stuff, because he'd lost interest in it.

The novelty of having all the books and supplements Cameron had collected wore off quickly, since I had no one to play with, and creating new characters and dungons was not much fun when you couldn't implement them. Midway through my freshman year, I finally found some friends that I could relate with, in no small part because they were also gamers. It was also my first introduction to Steven Jackson Games, as my buddy Kevin would take me up to his attic loft to play Car Wars with me. Then, Kevin and I met another fellow named Lang through playing Net Trek (a muliplayer Mac game based off of Star Trek), and he introduced us to Sharon.

Sharon was an older woman who lived in Newton, and who had been GMing games like GURPS and Ars Magicka for folks for a good many years. Putting together a small group of players including me, Lang, Kevin, Lang's sister Stephanie (who was in her early 20's) and a fifth person whom I only remember by his character's name 'Thorn'. In the process, however, I had to learn how to play GURPS, so I shelled out the cash for the basic book. Much of my learning was trial by fire, of course, but merely creating the character was an experience in and of itself.

"No levels? No gigunda amounts of hit points? My god, how do these characters survive?", were my first thoughts. Because of course, since my introduction to RPGs was through D+D, I was still in 'hack and slash' mental mode. Once I got over that initial shock, and started reading about the myriad concepts of advantages, disadvantages, and quirks, I was hooked. Amazing! This wasn't just killing the monster, getting the gold and saving the day, this was in depth character interactions that would be partly based on the character traits we picked in the initial designing phase.

Of course, my initial character concept wasn't all that impressive. My character was average in far too many ways, as I didn't have the hang of point placement in my skills and such, plus I picked no skills that would help flesh out the character as a person: they were all functional skills, just like I would have taken in D+D. His name was Theron (stolen from the hero's name in the ground breaking Dungeon Master game by FTL), and he was accursed as per a character background I stole from a Forgotten Realms book. Oh well, at least it was slightly better than Kevin's character, a knight-in-training named Sir 'Kevon'.

However, once I had played in a handful of sessions, I was slowly getting a feel for character interaction and role-playing. I have to thank Sharon a great deal for being my first experience with a hands-on GM, as she involved my 'accursed' state as part of a prophecy revealed in riddle format that spurred me on and got me engaged even further in the game. Oh and we had a blast, really. Some fond memories include the time that our party was captured, and the frustrated Sir Kevon took his frustrations out on a table, critically succeeding five times in succession striking it. Needless to say, the table was reduced to splinters. ;) Another was the time I critically succeeded on a Savior Faire roll after helping to save a knight beset by brigands. Sharon gaped for a second, unsure what to do in a case of a crit success on a non-combat roll, and then surprised us by having the knight so impressed with me that he gave me a magic sword!

Sadly, the group broke up around the time that I finally rid myself of my 'curse', which was a shame because I'd really gotten to enjoy not only GURPS, but I'd managed to make poor Theron a character worth playing. Me, Kevin, and Lang played it by ourselves for a while, but sadly it was not quite the same without an accomplished GM of Sharon's caliber. But playing GURPS had taught me a great many things:

1) Playing a 3-dimentional character is ten times more fun than playing a character designed simply to kill things.

2) There's more than one way to get what you want. When the odds are against you if you try to go the battle route, diplomacy, fast-talk, and even a little bit of deception go a long way.

3) Playing a flawed character may mean it's sometimes harder to complete the party's objective, but its often quite fun.

4) Having a crush on a fellow player is a rocky road (especially when it's your best friends's sister).

5) Losing a 3-dimensional character is far more painful than losing a 20-something level fighter, but a good death eases the loss.

And finally,

6) Put your points in too few skills, and your character can be at best bland and at worst a one-trick pony. Put your points into too many skills, and you end up being not very good at a lot of things (and better have a set of 6-siders that roll low).

I think it's fair to say that GURPS introduced me to a whole new way of gaming, which I continued through Vampire:The Masquerade, AD+D (yes, even though it's not geared towards roleplaying, you can still do it), and most recently, Ironclaw and Cosmic Synchronicity. I'd like to think I've come a long ways since those early days. True, I'm playing a character that is basically a cross between Christopher Walken in 'The Dead Zone', and the kid from 'Sixth Sense', dressing like Keanu Reeves in 'The Matrix', but at least I'd intended it as an original idea, instead of blatantly doing something derivative. ;)