Yes, this book still uses the term “Races”, having been written a few years before other games finally started getting rid of it. That brings a symptom of the main problem I have with this chapter: the options presented here mostly follow the cliches presented in older editions of D&D. I imagine they chose this because it provided a good and familiar baseline in 2016-2017, but it does mean we have to deal with some of the annoying fantasy racism that later games made an effort to remove. The text actually does acknowledge some of that racism, though that acknoledgment is a bit impaired by the general tongue-in-cheek tone in which the super generic implied setting is presented.

You see, many social traits in GURPS like Appearance and Social Stigma are relative. Who thinks the bard is hot, and who looks down on the barbarian’s foreign ways? When a GURPS GM builds a campaign setting from scratch, they’re asked to answer that question by providing a reference culture. That’s the dominant culture in the areas where the vast majority of the campaign takes place.

This chapter does not describe this concept, but it does introduce us to a reference culture by repeatedly mentioning it in the text and template descriptions: that of Ordinary Townsfolk(TM).

Ordinary Townsfolk are those people who live in Town under the rule of the King. They’re human, they very rarely leave Town, and they don’t have good opinions about things outside of their daily experience. In other words, they’re the opposite of “open-minded” and “cosmopolitan”. Ordinary Townsfolk recognize adventuring as a profession, but not a very respectable one. I guess that’s in part because delvers will accept “just about anyone”, since Social Stigmas don’t apply between PCs. Still, they’re happy to sell stuff to adventurers, who always have plenty of money to spend.

The very first sentence in the actual text of the chapter does state that “race” means “species”, so let’s use that term from now on in this post. It goes on to say that many nonhuman intelligent species can be found in the world. A lot of them show up as the opposition, inhabiting dungeons and other dangerous places: orcs, ogres, trolls, and so on. Ordinary Townsfolk consider those monsters. There are other species they consider “people”, and whom monsters consider enemies. These you can find living in Town, and available as options for delver PCs.

Next, the chapter introduces the concept of racial templates (henceforth species templates), which work a bit differently than the professional ones.

Each template has a fixed cost, which must be paid using the discretionary points from your delver’s professional template. Every professional template, as we already saw, has a listed point amount for buying advantages and powers. They also have 7 points for optional secondary skills, and can gain an extra 5 from quirks. You can use these to pay for a species template, which does mean you’ll be spending less points on stuff related to your profession. Someone without a species template is assumed to be (mostly) human.

The cost of a template is the total cost of all of its components.

Template Components

Every species template has stat modifiers, advantages, disadvantages, and might have features. The stat modifiers apply after you’ve adjusted your PC’s stats from their professional template, and modify both the current score and the usual maximums. For example, if you have ST+2, you can also buy your ST up to 22 and not just 20.

Advantages and disadvantages are shared by all members of that species, whether because they’re part of its biology, because they’re part of its dominant culture or because they model the prejudices of Ordinary Townsfolk. Features are cosmetic details that don’t cost any points.

This is my second problem with this chapter, flowing right from the first: I’m not really a fan of having “cultural” or personality traits be a mandatory part of a species template. As I mentioned in this old post of mine, I don’t want a bigoted asshole who says “all dwarves are greedy, stubborn bastards” to be right. Plus players just love playing exceptional or rebellious members of a species that don’t conform to the cliche, and I’d like that to be easy. The templates I tend to write for my own campaigns tend to be far more minimalist than these, without most attribute adjustments and with no mandatory mental traits.

You write the components of your species template down in the appropriate sections, together with the ones from your profession, which I think it’s a big improvement over the way core GURPS does it (“just write the template and its total cost with your Advantages and remember its components with your brain”).

PC Species

These are our species templates. All of them cost 20 points except for Cat-Folk, which cost 40. As mentioned above, most of their descriptions are well-trod and sometimes unfortunate cliches, so please note that I’m paraphrasing the book here and not stating my own opinion (which you can find way up there in the introductory paragraphs).

Anyway, here are the species:

Cat-Folk refer to themselves as cat-boys or cat-girls depending on gender. They have human-shaped bodies covered in short fur, feline facial features, and prominent cat ears and tail. That gives us a look closer to that of the Khajit from Elder Scrolls than to the Mi’quote from Final Fantasy 14.

Their claws and teeth are natural weapons, they can see really well in the dark, they have Catfall, and a bit of Temperature Tolerance from fur. Their disadvantages are also cliche cat traits: impulsive, lazy, and with a mild phobia of entering water.

They’re compatible with human armor (the tail can be safely tucked in), and they can buy gauntlets and boots that expose their claws but still protect their hands and feet at no extra cost.

Dwarves are pretty much what you’d expect. Short, sturdy, excellent night vision, really good at mining and at killing people with axes. Also greedy and stubborn.

Elves represent “green” or “wood” elves with a hands-on approach to defending nature. They’re far more approachable than Those Other Elves, which are haughty, isolationist, and not statted up for PC use. Elves are a bit taller than humans, have the classical pointy ears, and these wood elves have bright green hair. Nothing unexpected in their traits here: they’re graceful, pretty, have innate Magery, are good at sneaking and shooting bows, and have a sense of duty to Nature.

Half-Elves inherit elven grace, magical aptitude, and bright hair colors, but are a bit more robust thanks to their human parents. They have no duty to Nature, but suffer under the cliche where neither humans nor elves like them very much.

Gnomes tend to follow the “tinker gnome” archetype in that they’re very good at mechanical skills in addition to being almost as sturdy and cave-adapted as dwarves. They’re also extremely curious, and are our first “small” species at SM -1.

A bit of lore: there are rumors of “Hell Gnomes”, a tribe that went bad. Other Gnomes claim this term refers to actual demons, but don’t seem comfortable with the topic. I had something similar back when I GMed, a gnome cult who went around doing evil stuff and saying “Rawr, I’m a monster!”.

Half-Ogre: The progeny of an ogre and an orc or human, half-ogres are smaller than their ogre parents and are just on this side of what Ordinary Townsfolk consider “people”. They’re very strong, tough, and fearless, but have an IQ penalty, are considered ugly, and bear a social stigma as “savages” due to their parentage.

Half-Orcs: You can’t talk about half-orcs without talking about orcs, and the orcs in this game are subject to all of the old cliches. There’s a group of related species known as “Goblin-kin” whom Ordinary Townsfolk view as “borderline-civilized” brutes, and who discriminate among themselves on the basis of size and blood purity. Orcs are a part of this group: the medium-sized, “not-too-stupid” ones who bully the others.

Half-orcs are “the product of generations of inbreeding among the offspring of orc rapine”. Yikes! This is about as bad as it was back in AD&D or D&D 3e, and it’s why it’s a good idea to modify or discard the implied setting.

Anyway, half-orcs are as smart as humans but tougher, with better hearing and night vision. Some half-orcs are accepted by orcs and can be found among them. The ones who are rejected drift towards human settlements, where they suffer the same prejudices as half-ogres and often can only make a living as delvers.

Halflings are so called because they have half the height of a human. This makes them tiny (SM -2) and weak compared to a human, but they’re very agile and very sneaky, in addition to being crack shots with a bow or sling. They’re also gluttonous and kleptomaniac. Unlike kender from Dragonlance, though, these halflings know what they’re naturally adept at thievery. The cliche halfling community here is not an idyllic pastoral village, but an organized crime family.

Personal Impressions

I don’t use most of this chapter in my games at all. I tend to go with versions of the species presented here that are free of mandatory psychological advantages and IQ penalties. My reference culture is also usually more cosmopolitan than the one here, which also removes Social Stigmas and the like.

This does tend to increase template cost. I counteract that by also eliminating “small” attribute adjustments like a +1 to ST or DX. You can still say that the average member of this species is stronger or more agile than a human, of course, but PC delvers are the furthest thing from average. A starting barbarian is going to have ST 17 or a wizard IQ 15 no matter what species they are. If some of that is from a nonhuman physiology, the final effect and point cost is still the same.