GURPS: Meta-Tech

Power Up Your Gear!

GURPS lets you build any ability you can imagine – especially if you break out GURPS Powers. The abilities you create can originate from gear with the addition of a few modifiers and possibly some tricks found in GURPS Supers . . . assuming that you're ready to pay points. If you want to pay cash, then until now, your options were either to fudge things with an Unusual Background or to pore over the official equipment catalogs and hope to spot something "close enough."

GURPS Meta-Tech changes the game with a systematic toolkit for turning abilities with point costs into gear with cash costs. Create abilities as usual, pick a tech level and Size Modifier for the "meta-tech device" that contains them, choose its underlying origin (weird science, steampunk ingenuity, magical enchantment, technology indistinguishable from magic, any of 18 other ready-to-use possibilities, or a new one of your own), and add modifiers that tweak the tech separately from its abilities. You'll end up with a cost, a weight, and any additional stats the resulting equipment requires.

This system comes with all the accessories: traits especially useful for meta-tech devices but that might also have a place on character sheets, skills for designing and using meta-tech, and an appendix of worked examples. Not to mention lots of optional rules for gamers who like extra crunch with their crunch. And, of course, it's all customizable to your campaign's look, feel, assumptions about tech level, and views on item rarity.