GURPS with Fantasy Grounds

Happy GURPSDay, GURPS fans and the merely curious! Plunge into this week’s ocean of blog posts and enjoy the wealth.

Some very exciting news this week for those who use Fantasy Grounds to play GURPS (or would like to in the future). As posted by Ronnke, the author of the unofficial GURPS ruleset for Fantasy Grounds:

“I’ve had to keep this quiet for long time, but can now finally announce it. For the past few months SJG has been looking at what we’ve been doing with the GURPS ruleset and they really like it. They have granted me permission to continue development which also includes features like automation. Probably even more exciting is, SJG will over the next couple of months monitor the interest in GURPS on Fantasy Grounds. If sufficient, they will look at officially licencing which means we may start seeing official GURPS content made available.

Look out for a Daily Illuminator article about it. “

To my mind, the potential of Steve Jackson Games and Fantasy Grounds partnering to make playing GURPS even easier is pure joy. Ronnke has done an amazing job making his unofficial ruleset as useful as possible while still respecting the SJG online policies. A future official licensing deal with FG could open up whole new possibilities, and save GMs massive amounts of time during game prep.

So, what can we do to help make this happen? It sounds like SJG will be gauging how much interest actually exists for using Fantasy Grounds with GURPS before thinking about an official license, so I would say:

• If you’re not already, consider running some GURPS games using Fantasy Grounds.
• If you are already, make sure the wider GURPS community knows about it!
• In either case, I think the key here is simply more exposure. I know there are GURPS/FG gamers out there, some who have been playing regularly for years, but SJG needs to know they exist. Talk about your FG games on blogs and social media, invite new players if you have room, and encourage other GMs to give it a try. If you’re comfortable with it, maybe post actual plays for others to see.

Fingers crossed!

As posted last week, my own first foray into GURPS/FG is still set for this weekend, and I’ll hopefully have a video to share soon after. I’m actually a bit nervous, but I think the adventure is pretty decent and the pre-gen PCs are solid, so it should be a good time (any rookie mistakes with using the FG interface notwithstanding).

One thing that has become crystal clear is how different prepping an online game is from my usual convention prep. For a face to face game, my primary goal is to have fun pre-gen PCs that are presented clearly and colorfully, and at least a broad strokes overview of the adventure in my brain. Anything beyond that is gravy — I could literally show up up at a table, hand out pre-gens, and wing the adventure with few if any prepared notes.

To fully leverage the power of using Fantasy Grounds, though — rolling for skill/attribute checks, having a shared map space, having random tables and modifiers at your fingertips — all that material needs to be done and in the system before the game starts. PCs and NPCs alike need at least a basic character sheet and tokens, and maps and pictures for atmosphere need to be imported. All of these things can, of course, be done on the fly, but the more that is already set up, the easier the GMing is. This, coupled with the fact that I didn’t leave myself enough prep time (I wanted to play before Halloween was over) means I’m making a mad dash to be fully ready — but that’s on me, not FG. (And if you’re a GM who preps adventures very little or not at all? FG is still a handy way to roll dice together and keep track of characters.)

Next week, I’ll let y’all know how it went. In the meantime… let your GURPS and Fantasy Grounds flag fly!

 

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