There are a couple of publications that can help game masters to handle their incredibly hard and demanding task. Besides these publications, there are a lot of tips that game masters have collected out of their experience, and a number of websites that contain collections to such tips. This section of the Gurps Wiki is a collection of links to these tips, as well as to topics in this Wiki itself.

Never Cool is furthermore working to bring his research on gamemastering into the Gurps Wiki through the Next Level project.

External Resources

Before anything else, here are a few links to interesing game mastering resources. If you know a link that might belong here, don't be shy, and edit this page!

• http://www.gamegrene.com/node/313 has a nice article about how to keep a fantasy campaign interesting - speaking against high magic.
• Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering is a nice little handbook filled with good advices and funny tips. Next Level builds on many of its contents!
• Uncle Figgy's Guides are written by someone who has spent considerable time with role-playing. (Having talked with Uncle Figgy himself, and read the guides, I can attest to their worth. - complete_nimrod@yahoo.com). (added attribution to "I" - seasong).
• http://www.roleplayingtips.com/index.php has good selection of tips for players and Game Masters.

Sample Characters

Various sample characters can be found in the Sample Char section.

Sample Combats

Various example combats are described in the Sample Combat section.

How to make my friends use GURPS

A reoccuring topic on the Steve Jackson Games Forums is about GMs (or players) asking around how other people convinced their gaming group to use GURPS. Whether it's because they're used to another system like D20, or because they have an a priori negative opinion about GURPS, some gamers are reluctant to switch to that system. Here are a few suggestions.

The teasing approach

Some players are a bit frustrated about the lack of flexibility in their current system's character creation. This is especially common among D20 players, although most of them don't mind this much. However, if this can be used as a leverage on your players, you can tease them with GURPS's character creation system.

The idea is to create a character they wanted to play, but couldn't because of their current system's limitations. Get them to create this character using GURPS. Stand with them as they do so in order to answer their questions, help them out, and speed up the process (GURPS's character creation can be quite a pain for a newbie with an original idea!). After this, you can just tell them they could play this wonderful character if they agreed switching to GURPS!

The sneaky approach

This is a solution that works quite well. Others used similar techniques too, and reported it to work nicely!

When GURPS 4th edition came out, I used to come to ADD/D20 games with the core books. Whenever there was a problem with the rules (or just a situation in which the GM had too look for something in the books), I'd take my Basic Set, flip through it, and say "uh uh, ah, okay, yes, that's interesting". When they asked me what I was doing, I said I was looking up how to resolve those situations in GURPS 4e, so that I was prepared for them whenever I'd start using those rules (which was true - I find that it's easier to learn specific rules when looking them up in play than when reading them on the sofa at home). When a specific situation caused problem, they started asking how it was handled in GURPS - and I started telling them. After that, they asked more and more questions, and were sometimes surprised to hear that it was handled in GURPS. In the end, the GM purchased the Basic Set, and after the problematic experience of his books falling apart (but kindly replaced by SJG staff), he decided to switch our campaign to GURPS!

GURPS-Lite

Print off a bunch of copies of GURPS-Lite (http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=SJG02-0004) and bring them with you to your gaming sessions. If you're the GM and collect character sheets at the end of the night, hand out converted character sheets at the beginning of your next session along with their original sheets and GURPS-Lite. Let them compare and contrast. Run that session with the GURPS rules under the agreement that they can switch back to the original system at any time, should GURPS prove to be too unfamiliar or uncomfortable for them.

One Page GURPS

The One Page GURPS Rules make a good handout for new players. Put a copy on the back of a pre-generated character and your newbie is ready to go.

For Games Masters Old and New: Never be afraid to simply wing it, improvisation is your friend

But don't do this too much. The books are there to be used.