Episode Details

How to play LURPS

Hi everyone, this is a special how to play episode of Firebreathing Kittens. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for LURPS, Lewis’ Unified Roleplaying System. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play your own LURPS game.

I’ll organize this how to play guide into sections.

1. Classless point-buy d6 game

2. Target numbers

3. Critical successes and failures

4. How to use a skill

5. How to attack

6. Armor

7. Distances

8. How to cast magic

9. Flaws

10. How to build a character

LURPS is a classless point buy system that uses only normal six sided dice. Classless means any character can learn any skill. Contrast that with a game where only rogues can learn how to pickpocket, or only clerics can learn how to heal, or only fighters can wield swords. Any LURPS character can wield any weapon and learn any skill. Point buy means you spend character points to buy and learn new weapons and skills. The more points you spend, the better you are at that activity. And lastly, LURPS uses only six sided dice, which I will also call d6 going forward.

You will determine your success or failure in LURPS by rolling six sided dice and counting how many of them meet or beat the difficulty. The standard difficulty check, also called a DC, is four. For a DC of 4, each dice you roll that lands on a one, a two, or a three, is a failure. Each dice that lands on a four, a five, or a six, is a success. Every weapon, spell, and skill that you use will have a target number. The target is how many individually passing dice you need to overall succeed at the thing you’re trying to do. For example if your target number is two, then you need at least two of the dice you roll to be a four or higher. The more dice you roll, the more likely you are to hit your target number. If you only rolled one dice, it would be impossible to achieve a target of two. If you were rolling two dice, then it’s possible for both of them to be a four or higher, and for you to be successful, but the odds aren’t great. The higher the target number is, the more dice you need to roll. The probability math is pretty st