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. (It's like a good novelist... he know the rules of spelling and grammar, but also when to bend them to suit the story. Too much and the story becomes unreadable.)

All Things to All People

Try to find out the things your players like to do, and then work them into the story. Try not to focus too much on any one player, but give them all a chance to contribute. And make their obscure character-driven traits matter at some point. Like that little bit of knowledge of Architecture, or that Quirk that one adventure finally pops up and causes problems. Don't be mean about, just let them realize that everything about their characters interacts with the game-world somehow, at some point. It encourages them to make more diverse characters rather than specialized, which, if that's your thing, is nice to see.

Be Prepared.

Not that you have to have written a 20 page report to yourself about the adventure, but if you're going to need to write down statistics for 20 thugs they need to fight... write them down before the game. There's no need to slow down the actual game with such little things that can be prepared for ahead of time.

Be Flexible.

There are times when you've come up with the most fiendishly ingeniuos encounter that will be absolutely wonderfully diabolical, and fun for your players as well to come up with a solution to it. But quite often, one of three things happen:

They somehow manage to avoid ending up where you were planning on having them.

They figure out the solution and/or implement it much faster/better than you anticipated.

They just can't figure out what you planned to have them do, but keep trying relatively intelligent things. (Ok, sometimes they're not so intelligent things, but players are reading this too. The point is they're trying to come up with a solution that makes sense to them.)

And suddenly you find yourself in danger of very bored players. What to do? Well, you'll have to decide what works best for your group, but here is some advice:

If they haven't walked into your situation, have where they have gone instead be where the situation is. An abandoned factory ambush can fairly quickly be converted to an emptied banquet hall with large statues and decorations, though if there's a tub of boiling acid you may need to jury rig it... maybe a large wash basin of industrial cleaners? Or maybe this is where the secret hide out was all along and from the outside the building looks different, but inside the situation is just like you planned it. On occasion, I've even switched who the real villain was, just because my players were so darned sure that it was them and absolutely refused to believe it could be someone else. Depending on the mood of your game, doing something like that will keep things rolling. In grittier ones, sometimes heroes make mistakes, and that's that. But be sure that's your mood first, otherwise players will be unhappy.

If they figure out the solution that they need to shoot the monsters guarding the villain in the heart before you planned it, or they happened to have some advantage that you forgot about that changes the dynamic, well, let them have their victory for the moment, but make sure to give them the challenge they were expecting in the next breath. Maybe some of the monsters right next to the villain have an iron plate welded over their hearts that will need to be destroyed first? Reward their figuring it out, but make sure to keep the evening enjoyable.

Sometimes the players just don't live up to your expectations, whether through their obliviousness, your overestimation of what they could figure out, or just them trying every other possible solution first. If they have come up with something clever, either reward them with having it reveal what actually needs to be done, or maybe fudge things so that was the real solution all along. Don't guaranty victory, but make it achievable if they plan carefully, try hard, and get lucky. Or don't give them full victory, as they didn't get the "correct" solution, but let it give them a chance to either escape, drive the villain off (for now...), or give them a victory that isn't quite as full as if they'd gotten it right.

In the end it's about having a good time. Don't let them walk right over everything, or let them feel that no matter what they'll succeed, or automatically fail. Let them feel more involved and they'll be happier, and more understanding when you need their indulgence.