So You Wanna GM a Twilight: 2000 Campaign using GURPS. Great! Now whattya do?

Introduction and Preamble

So this will be a rambling description of the “Who, What, Where, When, How” of setting up this campaign. People may take some lessons for what they do out of this. Great! People may bounce off of it or want more clarification (there is a comments section at the bottom of this page). Great! But I want to make clear that these are my processes, and my processes for this campaign. So if you get something out of it, cool, but I am not trying to tell anybody how to do what they do; in setup, player recruitment, implementing GURPS, etc. You do you.

With Whom and Where Shall We Play?

So from the start, I knew this would be an online campaign. I have many lessons learned I have accumulated GMing GURPS in a self-created fantasy setting and world over the last three years. So I knew some basic things I would do.

1. I would determine the time and frequency of sessions before I even look for players. No votes unless we all decide to change later, unanimously, after the Campaign reaches “Escape Velocity.” The week before a session begins I send out an email. I ask all players to tell me if they can make it or not. If I get 50% or more, we’ll play. Simple. No “cat-herding” on a biweekly or weekly basis.
2. I then asked my existing 6 players from my other ongoing campaign if they were interested. Two were. Two just bounced off the setting, preferring something more fantastical. Cool. Two had no time for the proposed schedule, or time in their life, period. Cool.
3. I then asked people that I know if they would be interested. One was, very much so, but real life stepped in quickly via changes in work obligations and he bailed. Cool.
4. I then posted this message in various places where players might be found on the interwebs:
   • Cry “Havoc!” – a Twilight 2000 1st Edition Campaign using GURPS
   • Start Date: Character Creation into February.  Hope to start by late February.
   • Frequency:  Sessions every other Sunday from 1:30 to 5:30 EST decided in advance by the GM and Players.
   • Player Composition: Six Maximum.
   • Setting and Campaign Background: For five years, the armies of the world have fought back and forth across Europe. Three years ago the missiles started flying. Most countries were hit hard in the nuclear exchange, but no one had a decisive advantage, and the war went on. The sophisticated artillery weapons have exhausted their ammo, and no one is capable of producing any more. Divisions that started the  war with 20,000 men are lucky to put 200 in the field. But the war goes on. Your division has been overrun and your group is hundreds of kilometers from the nearest friendlies.  What do you do?
   • Genre and Tone:  This campaign is the Twilight 2000 1st/2nd Edition game setting with the point of departure for this alternate past history being the success of the August Coup of 1991 by Soviet hardliners against Mikhail Gorbachev.  This campaign deals with societal collapse brought on by a global war with nuclear exchanges.  While military in focus at times, it also deals with real three-dimensional people in stressful situations, sometime performing extraordinary tasks.  Combat can be extremely dangerous, could occur at unexpected times, and the opposition will be intelligent too. While the Player Characters are military or military-adjacent, a myriad of non-violent or other approaches to problems and dilemmas may be approached.  The idea here is to play three dimensional character who happen to be in a collapsing world in stressful situations.  Tone is informed by The Walking Dead or The Last of Us and a panoply of other post-collapse fiction that has appeared as must as it is strictly post-apocalypse and post-World War 3 themes.  This campaign will be a sandbox but leads and threads that track into plotlines will be there, if the player characters pull at the threads.
   • Mechanics: GURPS 4th Edition. 140 Point Characters with up to 35 more points in potential disadvantages.  Use of GURPS Character Sheet (GCS) software which greatly ameliorates character creation crunch.  Liberal use of Templates and Lenses, the former of which may provide other disadvantages.
   • Method of Play: Online, using Discord and Foundry VTT Powered by the Forge.  Use of “tokens” will be at a minimum level possible and theater of the mind used mainly unless a complicated tactical situation requires otherwise.  Camera, Voice and a good stable internet connection are required.  A dedicated Discord server will be used to support this campaign.
   • If Interested: DM me and we’ll arrange a voice chat and see if it’s for you. 

People Started to DM me. If someone can’t take the time or make an appointment to have a 30 minute chat about the campaign, then they probably aren’t going to make sessions or be invested and engaged. To be clear, I went into this with two precepts borne out for me by experience: People will say they can play and rapidly it develops that they really can’t due to life commitments/how they schedule their time/an inability to schedule their time, etc.; People will look at (or say they looked at) simple one or two page prep materials, or attend Session Zeros, etc. and you’ll walk away saying “How did that person not understand what the other five absolutely understood.” This all adds up to the fact that you’ll likely have attrition even during this process, and early in the campaign. So be prepared. In another post someday I’ll talk about “onboarding” a player to an existing campaign. There are some specific considerations, but I never waver from “The Process” even if its somebody I know intimately and have played with for years.

Also, every player has to agree to “The Rules” below. We can discuss additions in the Session Zero, but these are my baselines as a GM:

Campaign Player Compact – Rules we all agree to abide by

General Rules for All

1. Be respectful of everyone.

2. Remind yourself to have fun.

3. Remind yourself you have a hand in everyone else’s fun.

4. Try to engage with genre and setting expectations.

5. Communicate.  This prevents or solves 99% of conflicts or problems.

Player Rules

1. Play your character (or an NPC if you have a companion in play).  But don’t try to “game” the other players or GM as people.

2. Play like a team. But feel free to disagree in character.

3. Be punctual and communicate regarding attendance.

4. Prepare for the game.  Know your character.  Read prep materials.  Arrive invested. 

5. Play engaged with the world and the other Player Characters.

Gamemaster Rules

1. Be fair.

2. Know the rules.

3. Know the setting.

4. Know the Player Characters

5. Prepare for the game.

6. Do everything you can to foster Player Character Agency and Choice.

7. Coordinate session times and foster group communication in and out of session.

8. Collate feedback to improve the Campaign for the Players and identify blind spots.

9. Implement feedback that can be used.

10. Provide Players with one on one time to touch base on character goals.

Campaign “Red Lines” – Specific things that get one warning and then we say goodbye.

1, “Ghosting” regarding attendance.

2. Taking in-character disagreements out of character and holding grudges.

3. Abusive table behavior (Immediate ejection).

Tech and Session Zero

So I know GURPS pretty well, and I have a process that works for me. Above we talked about player recruitment, primarily and essentially having the logistics worked out before you begin a Session Zero, making characters, etc. Session Zero is a pretty contentious topic on the interweb cycle of endless TTRPG maximalist position debate, but I won’t get into that. I’ll just talk about what we did and the agenda items I thought were important. Also, I will provide some videos at the end of this post on various Tech items I talk about. I’ll also provide the PowerPoint I used for the Session Zero.

So regarding Tech, I use GURPS Character Sheet (GCS). it is a fabulous, and in my opinion, invaluable too for playing GURPS online or at a table (bring a Laptop!). So much crunch gets removed from endlessly doing pencil and paper math that I can safely say that if it didn’t exist I wouldn’t be playing the system. If I have a player new to GURPS, I use the character creation process utilizing GCS online streaming with that player. And the character creation session becomes an introduction to how GURPS works, how GCS works, and how a GURPS character is made. I use Foundry VTT (powered by The Forge) for online play along with a live video chat in Discord. Foundry is amazing and is constantly updated and far less of a fiddly exercise than the rarely updated and always laggy Roll20. The issue is you buy a license, but you have to self-host. That’s where The Forge comes in; everything is clouded, updates are simple and the GURPS module (GGA) is marvelous. And All that Foundry stuff synchs perfectly with GCS. I would not be playing GURPS if Foundry/The Forge/GGA did not exist. Dos this all cost money? Yes. You get what you pay for.

Session Zero was appropriate for this Campaign for several reasons. Firstly it introduces all the players to each other. Not everyone knows each other. Secondly, it allows for a discussion of party construction. Sure we have a setting, but what shall the Players make? What is what one friend of mine calls “the glue” that holds the group together; at least initially? My friend Paul Mitchener calls this the “big thing.”

In a more narrative campaign, it may be one big overarching plot arc all the player characters are tied to. In a sandbox It needs to be bigger than that and more vague. More of a status. Above an immediate plot arc and below the setting itself. I wanted to propose an idea I had for “the glue” at the Session Zero. In order to really try to implement the feel I wanted in terms of tone and had sensitized the players to in the initial conversations (see “Getting Started“) I thought that having the Players make characters who were activated National Guardsmen from a Military Intelligence Battalion would really fit the bill. This would accentuate the making three-dimensional “soldiers are people too” character aspect. It would also allow room for growth. If everyone makes a hardened infantryman, we’re back at “my class is Fighter. I mean Infantryman.” It also would be easier for players who had no military experience (a majority of them) to play characters who were a bit “out of their depth.” The characters would learn as the players learn.

Thirdly, I thought the tone needed hashing out with some granularity. The world can be an ugly place. A Poland at war can be an ugly place. A world that is experiencing a societal collapse in the wake of a nuclear war can be an ugly place. Prejudices, intolerances, cruelties and brutality abound in this setting, without goofy science fiction elements (not judging I LOVE Fallout. Well not Fallout 4. Or 76. Anyway…) to soften the blow. So what are the “volume settings” on these? What are the players (and myself) comfortable with and not comfortable with?

Lastly I wanted to be clear on what I call “the process.” How players make characters in a GURPS campaign I am running. Regardless of the Player’s experience with the system or even playing at a table I run, I use “the process.” First, we discuss a character concept, using voice. A Conversation. Then I send a Bio Sheet template. The Player can leave some stuff blank if they want to ponder it, but the goal is to kind of circle around who the character is. GURPS is a broad and deep toolset. It prevents analysis paralysis to have a solid concept first and also keeps the player from “going to the grocery store to buy eggs but coming back with three tubs of ice cream”, metaphorically speaking. Then we make an appointment to make the character together. We do it virtually via voice on Discord and I stream my screen if necessary. GURPS has a lot of choices in character creation that can impact the game world (buying an ally, buying an enemy, the options are endless). So as a GM I need to make note of and comment on what is possible and what isn’t, try to make ideas work, know it all so I can implement it etc. With someone who is GURPS-familiar it can take 2 days (one day to fill out the sheet after the convo and another hour or two to make the character). With the GURPS (and GCS) unfamiliar it can take longer. But this is “the process” it works and it has never let me down. And also…

It serves as a vetting process for both the players and I as we move forward. If someone can’t make an appointment in a week and keep it they won’t show up for sessions later. If someone can’t be bothered to come up with a character concept and fill out a page of bio data then they really aren’t invested enough to play. If somebody can’t implement a concept that fits with an agreed upon theme then they need to play a game where that isn’t happening. And all that vice versa, a player may discover in “the process” that the campaign or system isn’t their cup of tea, despite prior discussion, Session Zeroes and whatnot. And that’s OK. We’re all just figuring it out. That’s it for this topic. More later. And I welcome any questions in the comment section below!

Videos About GURPS, GCS, and GGA:

Session Zero PowerPoint:

Character Bio Sheet Template (for this Campaign)