And on the fifth day of GURPSmas the blogger gave to me...

     ...my thoughts on character progression! This one will be boring to most, but I find it interesting. Generally, character progression is a simple "Level, Experience" system, going up the tiers gaining more experience from slaughtering monsters (and people), gaining gold, and completing quests, much like cRPGs and MMOs of the 2000s. Now, this system has flaws, and I think GURPS handles them rather well, but not to say that progression in base GURPS isn't flawed slightly itself.

    Now, in GURPS, many GMs view progression like this: You get a quest, slay some monsters, save a princess/prince, and get your character points. Now, that is an overgeneralization of adventures and the hero's journey model, but you most likely understand where I am coming from. So, you're asking now (most likely), "If that's so flawed, what is soooo much better?"

    Well, first off, it is not all about character points. Progression can be in the form of progressing the story, gaining equipment that has ties to feats the players accomplished, social interaction, good teamwork in the game or at the table, or even things like what is described above! Now, the trick to it is to make it not just be one of these. You want your story to progress like someone's life would! Never has someone's life involved anything but killing fantasy monsters and ignoring everything else. People need to talk to each other eventually.

    Now, with this in mind, go out and reward your players with life lessons! I am joking, obviously, but the notion of that sounded funny to me. With life stuff, things are still busy for me, but soon-ish I will be able to have some more time for a while, which I will most likely spend writing on here and on some other projects I have been working on. Like all other GURPSmas posts, kudos to those who actually use what I provided here. If you do use it, I'd love for you to share your experience (or even write me an article!)