I’m guessing they came out with Cthulhupunk the same time they came out with Y2K. I wonder if the game had anything to do with the Louis Gossett Jr. movie of the same name. That said, GURPS really does seem to have an eclectic group of games, like this one based on E. E. Doc Smith’s Lensmen series.
It’s at least as old as 1999, because that’s when the 1st edition errata is from.
But I know that as of maybe 1990-1992, when I was a councilor at Boyscout camp one of the guys was trying to run a game that combined Cthulhu with cyberpunk. I think that basically just used his own house rules, and I’m not sure how far off the ground it ever got.
But I suspect the seeds of the Cthulhupunk genre have been around for quite awhile. This sort of thing was bound to happen. The kids where I lived who liked Neuromancer and Burning Chrome tended to also be into Lovecraft.
Re: GURPS
From my experience their games are pretty eclectic. It seemed, at least at one time, just about anyone with the patience to sit down and write out a genre-book or world-book with moderately good detail stood a pretty good chance of getting it published. Heck, some of their books (ie. GURPS China) could almost be used as an abbreviated history or cultural primer in their own right.
Personally I’ve owned at least half a dozen GURPS books. While the detail is generally pretty good, I’m not a big fan of the system for relatively picayune reasons. Mostly I just mine the books for neat character and setting ideas.
My only main complaint about the books in general is that unless you can actually look at a setting-book it’s really tough sometimes to get an idea of what it actually covers. The two examples that spring to mind are GURPS Hightech and Fantasy.
GURPS Hightech sounded like it’d be stats for a melange of different modern pieces of equipment, but by and large was basically just a very detailed book on modern firearms and weaponry. Not much else there.
With GURPS Fantasy I expected something like the D&D players handbook, with alot of general information on magic spells, PC races, and items. And there was some of that, but it was mostly a detailed description of their Yrth setting. Apparently though they eventually renamed the Yrth setting “Banestorm” and made GURPS Fantasy actually about general fantasy settings.
A new edition of GURPS has come out within the last year so alot of stuff is slated to change I guess. From what I hear they overhauled a bunch of mechanical details.
Sup, what ever happened to you guys’ idea for BURPS?
Are you talking about the original game system Call of Cthulhu was published under: Basic Roleplaying System (BRPS)?
Or is this a reference to some beer-n-pretzels game where player belch duration is used as a randomizing factor instead of dice rolling?
Naw, I’m talking about the Biblical Universal Role Playing System loki and bear came up with a while back.
>
What’s up with that?
Do you figure out how well your character did by rolling Urim and Thummim or something?
Loki: Could you post up any notes you have on it?
Sounds like it could be more interesting than Testament d20 (biblical era roleplaying compatible with the current D&D system).
Hmm. I don’t think we actually wrote any thing about BURPS. I think we were just riffing and it kind of came out as a joke. However, Mike might have written some notes.
I’m guessing they came out with Cthulhupunk the same time they came out with Y2K. I wonder if the game had anything to do with the Louis Gossett Jr. movie of the same name. That said, GURPS really does seem to have an eclectic group of games, like this one based on E. E. Doc Smith’s Lensmen series.
It’s at least as old as 1999, because that’s when the 1st edition errata is from.
But I know that as of maybe 1990-1992, when I was a councilor at Boyscout camp one of the guys was trying to run a game that combined Cthulhu with cyberpunk. I think that basically just used his own house rules, and I’m not sure how far off the ground it ever got.
But I suspect the seeds of the Cthulhupunk genre have been around for quite awhile. This sort of thing was bound to happen. The kids where I lived who liked Neuromancer and Burning Chrome tended to also be into Lovecraft.
Re: GURPS
From my experience their games are pretty eclectic. It seemed, at least at one time, just about anyone with the patience to sit down and write out a genre-book or world-book with moderately good detail stood a pretty good chance of getting it published. Heck, some of their books (ie. GURPS China) could almost be used as an abbreviated history or cultural primer in their own right.
Personally I’ve owned at least half a dozen GURPS books. While the detail is generally pretty good, I’m not a big fan of the system for relatively picayune reasons. Mostly I just mine the books for neat character and setting ideas.
My only main complaint about the books in general is that unless you can actually look at a setting-book it’s really tough sometimes to get an idea of what it actually covers. The two examples that spring to mind are GURPS Hightech and Fantasy.
GURPS Hightech sounded like it’d be stats for a melange of different modern pieces of equipment, but by and large was basically just a very detailed book on modern firearms and weaponry. Not much else there.
With GURPS Fantasy I expected something like the D&D players handbook, with alot of general information on magic spells, PC races, and items. And there was some of that, but it was mostly a detailed description of their Yrth setting. Apparently though they eventually renamed the Yrth setting “Banestorm” and made GURPS Fantasy actually about general fantasy settings.
A new edition of GURPS has come out within the last year so alot of stuff is slated to change I guess. From what I hear they overhauled a bunch of mechanical details.
Sup, what ever happened to you guys’ idea for BURPS?
Are you talking about the original game system Call of Cthulhu was published under: Basic Roleplaying System (BRPS)?
Or is this a reference to some beer-n-pretzels game where player belch duration is used as a randomizing factor instead of dice rolling?
Naw, I’m talking about the Biblical Universal Role Playing System loki and bear came up with a while back.
>
What’s up with that?
Do you figure out how well your character did by rolling Urim and Thummim or something?
Loki: Could you post up any notes you have on it?
Sounds like it could be more interesting than Testament d20 (biblical era roleplaying compatible with the current D&D system).
Hmm. I don’t think we actually wrote any thing about BURPS. I think we were just riffing and it kind of came out as a joke. However, Mike might have written some notes.