Hobbies And Interests
Things You'll Need
Instructions
Getting Started with Attributes
Ask your GM what kind of game you'll be playing (sci-fi, fantasy, etc.) and how many character points you may use to create your character. GURPS characters are built using character points --- anywhere from 100 points for average characters to 500 points for superhuman characters --- and all attributes, skills and abilities are purchased with these points.
Decide the type of character you want: a physical fighter or a mystic (a mage or psychic). This will focus all of your other decisions during character creation.
Purchase your character attributes. GURPS characters use four basic attributes: strength (which determines your inventory size and combat damage), dexterity (which determines your physical skills), intelligence (which determines your mental skills), and health (which determines your ability to survive damage and maintain special abilities like spells). Characters in GURPS start with 10s in all categories, meaning a normal human being. Higher is better, and raising your attributes costs 10 points or more for each additional level.
Buy up your dexterity if you are building a fighter, intelligence if you are building a mystic. Increase the appropriate attribute to a 15. If you can afford to do so, go even higher. Do not buy up the attribute that does not fit your character type.
Decide whether or not to buy up your strength and health. So much of the game system is based on intelligence and dexterity that health and strength are secondary. But if you feel you must, raise your strength and health to no higher than 12.
Adding on with Advantages
Choose your character's advantages, special abilities that give your character an edge. Fighters should purchase combat reflexes and high pain threshold, which will allow you to defend yourself easily and to avoid serious penalties during combat if you ever get hurt. Mystics should purchase advantages like magical aptitude and psychic power, which allow you to use supernatural abilities.
Consider other advantages like weapons master (which boosts all your weapons-based fighting abilities), sharpshooter (which makes you deadly accurate with firearms), and hard to kill (which makes you...well, hard to kill).
Avoid purchasing non-combative advantages like attractive appearance, musical talent and wealth. Advantages like these add flavor to the game but do nothing for combat, which is what a cracked character should remain focused on.
Getting Slick with Skills
Buy your character's skills. Fighters should buy combat and survival skills. Mystics should buy spells or psychic skills. The cost of buying skills varies based on how difficult they are to learn: easy (such as brawling), average (such as boxing) or hard (such as Shaolin kung fu). Regardless of difficulty, your dexterity determines the starting level for physical skills, while your intelligence determines the starting level for mental skills. If you've built up the appropriate stat, you can cheaply buy high-level skills.
Buy your most important skills at 16s or better. When you use your skills in a GURPS game, you perform a skill check by rolling three six-sided dice. If you roll at or under your skill, you succeed; if not, you fail. Most of the time a skill of 16 or above means guaranteed success.
Buy only practical spells or psychic skills when creating a mystic. Combat mages should invest in the Fire College of Magic, which is the cheapest, most effective path to destructive spellcraft. Psychics should invest in telekinesis, easily the most overpowered ability in all of GURPS, which will allow you to fly, snap necks with a glance and throw pebbles at bullet speeds.
Use your high combat skills during gameplay to make up for any other skills you didn't buy. For example, you didn't buy the lockpick skill? Use your high guns skill and shoot that lock off. Need to use the public speaking skill? Pull out your gun and let it do the talking instead.
Putting the "Advantage" in "Disadvantages"
Choose your character's disadvantages. GURPS, unlike many RPGs, actually rewards you with extra character points for creating flawed characters with problems like bad temper, unattractiveness and overconfidence. The idea behind this is that it will make for interesting characters and better role-playing, but disadvantages allow a powergamer an enormous opportunity to abuse the system.
Choose disadvantages that will not impede your character in tangible ways---for example, the infertile disadvantage has little bearing on gameplay (one would hope!). Alternately, choose disadvantages that can actually come in handy, such as light sleeper. Finally, take disadvantages that you yourself possess---if you yourself are overly curious, take the curious disadvantage.
Use the points earned by taking disadvantages to buy even more levels of the skills and abilities you want. Then take your overpowered character out for a spin. Crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentations of their orphans.