They Rhyme

 Something else I noticed, even though I experienced in real time the "this new game is so much better than the other game we've been playing!" feeling.

They all handle things pretty much the same way.

Most of them have a point where you're wounded so badly you pass out.  Most of them have a chance for medical intervention to keep you from dying even if you took a LOT of damage.

None of them are particularly difficult to use, once you've gotten past the author.

LBB Traveller and Top Secret are particularly bad in how they're laid out.  T2K suffers from things being widely separated in the rules as well.

GURPS 2e and 3e both suffer from an odd way of grouping the skills, but the index and Instant Characters sheet works around that.

GURPS 4e's index is very poor compared to the previous versions, but the layout is easier to navigate. 

M16ish At 50 Yards and/or Meters

Little Black Book TRAVELLER 

Traveller is my first game that had guns at all.

In Traveller the "M16" would be an assault rifle from Book 4: Mercenary.

Defenders range modifiers are (semi/auto): Close -4/-4, Short +1/+1, Medium -1/+2, Long -2/0, Very Long -4/-3; Wound Inflicted 3D; Defender's Armor: Nothing +2/+4, Jack +2/+4, Mesh -1/+2, Cloth -3/-1, Reflec +2/+4, Ablat 0/+2, Battle -5/-4.

The skill you use it with is Gun Combat, with a specialization in assault rifle.  We're going to go with Gun Combat: Assault Rifle - 2 to be consistent with the skill level 12 in GURPS later on.

The basic roll to hit is an 8 or higher on 2d6.  The average roll of 2d6 is 7, so you need some modifiers, like your skill, to actually hit on average.

You get +1 for every level of skill you have. 

If your Dext is below 5, you get a -1 to hit.  If it's 8 or higher you get a +2. 

50 yards meters is "Medium" range.  -1 to hit with semi-auto fire (one shot per round), +2 to hit with auto (4 shots per round).  The magazine holds 30 shots.

If the target is unarmored, +2 to hit with semi, +4 with auto. 

If our Gun Combat: Assault Rifle - 2 character with Dext 8 fires on someone at 50m they need a 3 or more (97.22% chance) with semi-auto fire and 2 or more (100% chance) with automatic fire on 2d6.  The average damage applied to any stat will render our target unconscious.

But if we're dead average across the board, our Dext is 7.  That means we need a 5 or more (83.33% chance) with semi-auto and 2 or more with autofire.

It'll do 3d6 damage when it hits.  Each die is applied, randomly to Strength, Dexterity or Endurance.  When one stat is reduced to zero, the victim is rendered unconscious; two is seriously wounded and all three is dead.  Two dice hitting the same stat can end the fight in a single round.

Notice that firing more rounds increases your chance to hit, not the amount of damage done. 

All in all, it's pretty straight-forward and simple.  There's an unneeded complication with range bands we never bothered learning or using.  I remember we changed armor to absorbing damage rather than making it harder to hit, but I don't remember the specifics.

Top Secret

Top Secret is the first game I owned that had an assault rifle called M16 by name.

The M16 is PWV 79, Range modifiers of: PB +5, S -8, M -50, L -160, WS S, Rate 3, Ammo 20, Cost 325, DECP NC, HWV 14.

I remember TS being convoluted in figuring out combat and I did not misremember. 

First you need your "Offense Value" this is the average of your Coordination and Courage.  You rolled percentiles to get those and the average percentile roll of 55 gets you a score of 65.  (65+65)/2=65, so the average Offense is 65.

How much damage you can take is determined by your "Life Level" which is the average of Physical Strength and Willpower.  Same average of 65.

Once again, 50 yards is medium range.

To hit you take your Offense Value, add the weapon's PWV (Projectile Weapon Value) subtract the Range Modifier and subtract the penalty for extra shots.

Semi-auto fire is 1 shot per turn, the M16 can fire up to 3 per turn.  The second and third shot get -11 and -22.  The Top Secret M16 has a 20 round magazine.

That extra shot penalty adds up until you take a round to recover, it can grow to be very severe.  It's actually quite GURPS like!

There are other penalties for movement and position we're skipping for now. 

So, at 50 yards with our M16 we have 65 + 79 - 50 = 94 or less on percentiles against a standing opponent for our first shot, 83 or less for the second and 72 or less for the third if we fired automatically.  On average, all rounds will hit.

That's more like sniping, ain't it.

If we're firing from rice-paddy prone (-5) at a target who's running and dodging (-20)...  That drops our chances to 69, 58 and 47 respectively.  On average only the first two hit.

On to damage! 

We roll on the General Injury Determination Chart to see where we hit with those two rounds.  The average roll of 55 will generally hit the abdomen or lower back.

Then we roll two d10.  The first tells us what type of damage from abrasion to internal damage.  The second tells us if the wound is serious or light.  The average roll of 5 gets a light laceration which applies 5 points against the target's Life Level, down to 60 from 65.  At the other end, a 6 and a 10 gets a serious internal injury and does 12 points of damage, down to 48.

It's going to take more shots than I remembered to shoot someone to death.  Top Secret trends to the cinematic end of the scale!

There are optional rules in the Top Secret Companion that give the location, type and severity in a single d1000 roll.

Twilight: 2000

Stats are determined by rolling 4d6-4, making the average 10.  A favored stat averages 15 and a slighted stat 5.

Hit Capacity varies by hit location.  Head is equal to CON, body is STR+CON+STA, other locations are equal to CON+STA.  Average person has 10, 30 and 20 respectively.

Everyone starts with the Combat Rifleman (CRM) skill at 20.  You can buy that up using skill points.  We'll buy it up to 74 to match the Skill 12 in the GURPS 2e example.  The skill is modified by range to get a "Base Hit" number which you need to roll, or less, on a d100.

An M16A1 has: ROF 4, Mag 10, Rng 50, Dam 2, and Arm -.

ROF is rate of fire in "shots," Mag is magazine capacity in "shots" which are 3 bullets each.  Rng is a range increment in meters.  In our example 50m is close range (the "Base Hit" is 60% skill or 44), 100m is medium range (30% skill or 22) and 200m is long range (10% skill or 7) and 400m is extreme range (special to hit rules), Arm is the armor multiplier which makes armor more or less effective against some weapons (no effect here).

Did you hit?

On average, a 74 skill is going to be missing at 50m.  If you spend a turn aiming, your first shot of the next round is at double the "base hit", or 88 in our example.  The aimed shot will, on average, hit.

Where did you hit?

An aimed shot can hit a specific hit location by halving the base hit number, which was normally doubled by aiming, returning it to it's original value, or 44 in our example.  Sniper weapons don't suffer this penalty!

If you didn't aim at a specific hit location, you roll 1d10 on the appropriate hit location chart.  Most likely hit the abdomen.

How much damage did you do?

At close range the M16A1 does the 4x the base damage plus 4d6 or 4d6+16; average of 30.  That's enough to drop someone's body damage capacity to zero.  This is a serious injury and they need to make a CON roll (d100 of CONx5 or less or 50 in our case) or fall unconscious.  This is beyond negative head damage capacity (a critical injury), so they'd be automatically unconscious and die in 1d10x10 turns if no medical assistance is rendered.

NPCs are supposed to use a simpler set of rules that gives them less damage capacity, 2d10x2 or 22 on average.  We never did use this rule, it doesn't add that much bookkeeping to the game and it made the fights better. 

I don't think we adhered to the rules very closely at all. 

GURPS 2e

All GURPS skill rolls are 3d6.  We're ignoring passive defense.

We don't have an M16, so we'll let the M-26A2 from GURPS: Autoduel 1e stand in.

With a, commonly taken, 12 skill in Guns/TL7 and straight 10 stats.

Our 10 ST is above the minimum of 8, so no penalties from that. 

It's Inc. is 20, so there's a -3 for range.

You can fire 2 shots semi-automatically or 3 shots in a burst.  We get 30 shots.

If you take turn to aim before firing, you take no penalty to the first semi-auto shot or any of the rounds in the burst.

If you don't take a turn to aim, they are all "snap shots" and have a -4 penalty.

So, chance to hit with an aimed shot is 9 or less (37.50% chance).  Snap shots are 5 or less (4.62% chance).

Two aimed, semi, shots are at 9 and 5.
Two snap, semi, shots are at 5 each.
Three aimed, burst, shots are at 9 each.
Three snap, burst, short are at 5 each.

On average you're gonna miss.

But if you aimed, you can pick a body location, and take a penalty to hit.  The body is a -0 though.  Some locations do more damage and have special effects, like crippling a limb or knocking them unconscious before their HP drops to zero.  The head, for example is -5 to hit, has DR 1 for the skull, but gives double damage and damage of HT/3 or more causes them to be stunned and HT/2 or more knocks them unconscious.

The hit location of a snap shot is determined by a 2d6 roll and looking at the table.  Coincidentally, the average roll of 7 on 2d for a random location also hits the body!

The M-26A2 does 2+2 dice of crushing damage. 

The average damage is 9, and will do 9 points to an unarmored torso; they keep fighting.  This same damage roll would do 16 points to the head, this both stuns and knocks the target out; but you'd need a 4 or less to hit with an aimed shot. 

We didn't play much Autoduel, so we never really got the warts located. 

GURPS 3e.

Update: I forgot the blow-through rules. 

The average person has straight 10 stats and we're sticking to a skill of 12 in Guns/TL7 - Lt Auto.

An M16 does 5d crushing damage, SS of 12, Acc 11, 1/2D 500, Max 3,843, Wt 8, RoF 12*, Shots 20, ST 9, Rcl -1, Cost $540, TL 7.

First, the unaimed semi-auto shot:  The range of 50 yards is a -9 penalty giving us a net skill of 3.  That's below the SS number of 12 so we get an additional -4 to hit for a -1 chance on 3d6.  Any roll of 9 or higher is a critical failure, so...  maybe don't make this shot.

Aimed, semi-auto shot:  -9 for range, +11 for Acc, for a net +2 or 14 or less (90.74% chance) to hit the body, 13 or less (83.79% chance) for a second shot and 12 or less (74.07% chance) for a third.  On average, all three hit!

5d crushing does an average of 17 points of damage to the body, but is reduced to 10 because of the blow-through rule on p.B109, which is enough to warrant a "consciousness roll" against HT on 3d6 to stay awake.  On average, they make it, but are very penalized by the damage with regards to movement and DX based skills.  The second shot drops them to -10 and this adds a "death roll" against HT to keep from dying.  The third shot drops them to -20, another consciousness roll and two more death rolls.  This is bad.  Three death rolls in rapid succession rarely yields happy results.

Aimed, semi-auto shot at the vitals:  -9 for range, +11 for Acc, -3 to hit vitals, for a net -1 or 11 or less (62.50% chance) to hit the body, 10 or less (50% chance) for a second shot and 9 or less (37.5% chance) for a third.

On average two rounds hit. 

Vitals do triple damage after subtracting the DR of the target, which is 0 here.  So our average roll of 17 damage does 30 points dropping the target to -20 and requiring 4 death rolls.  The second shot takes them to -50 and 6 more death rolls.

How about an unaimed blast of full-auto fire?  Same chances as before, but with an additional -1 for recoil on the first burst, -2 on the second, -3 on the third, and -4 for the fourth.  Spraying and praying doesn't really work.

An aimed blast is 13 or less for the first burst, 12 for the second, 11 for the third and 10 for the fourth.  Using our average rolls of 10 we look at the table on p B120 and find: we hit with 3 rounds from the first burst, 3 from the second, and 2 from the third.

8 rounds to the body doing 10 each on average because of blow-through totaling to 80 points of damage which is well past the 60 needed to get auto-death.

The players really liked rolling for each separate round/burst. 

GURPS 3eR with High Tech 3e.

The average person has straight 10 stats and we're sticking to a skill of 12 in Guns/TL7 - Lt Auto.

An M16 does 5d crushing damage, SS of 12, Acc 11, 1/2D 500, Max 3,843, Wt 8, RoF 12*, Shots 20, ST 9, Rcl -1, Cost $540, TL 7.

First, the unaimed semi-auto shot:  The range of 50 yards is a -9 penalty, -5 for bullet-shyness, giving us a net skill of -2.  That's below the SS number of 12 so we get an additional -4 to hit for a -6 chance on 3d6.  Any roll of 4 or higher is a critical failure, so...  maybe don't make this shot.

Aimed, semi-auto shot:  -9 for range, +11 for Acc, -5 for bullet shyness for a net -3 or 9 or less (37.50% chance) to hit the body, 8 or less (25.92% chance) for a second shot and 7 or less (16.20% chance) for a third.

On average, all three miss!  But let's assume one does. 

5d crushing does an average of 17 points of damage to the body, which is reduced to 10 because of blow-through, which is enough to warrant a "consciousness roll" against HT on 3d6 to stay awake.  On average, they make it, but are very penalized by the damage with regards to movement and DX based skills. 

Aimed, semi-auto shot at the vitals:  -9 for range, +11 for Acc, -3 to hit vitals, -5 for bullet shyness for a net 6 or 6 or less (9.25% chance) to hit the body, 5 or less (4.62% chance) for a second shot and 4 or less (1.85% chance) for a third.

Even though we probably missed, vitals do triple damage after subtracting the DR of the target, which is 0 here.  So our average roll of 17 damage does 30 points of damage because of blow-through dropping the target to -20 and requiring 4 death rolls.

How about an unaimed blast of full-auto fire?  Same chances as before, but with an additional -1 for recoil on the first burst, -2 on the second, -3 on the third, and -4 for the fourth.  Spraying and praying doesn't really work.

An aimed blast is 8 or less for the first burst, 7 for the second, 6 for the third and 5 for the fourth.  Using our average rolls of 10 we look at the table on p B120 and find: we missed with all 12.

Adding in that bullet shyness penalty, because combat, really pissed the players off. 

GURPS 4e

The average person has straight 10 stats and we're sticking to a skill of 12 in Guns/TL7 - Rifle.

The M16A1 is TL7, does 5d pi damage, Acc 5, Range 500/3,200, Weighs 7.2/0.7, RoF 13, Shots 20+1(3), ST 8†, Bulk -5, Rcl 2, Cost $550/$34, LC 2.

Snap shots have been eliminated!  So has blow-through for the body.

Skill 12, -8 for range, 4 or less to hit with three rounds of semi-auto fire.  Yeah... No.

Aim for a second.  Skill 12, -8 for range, +5 for Acc.  9 or less.  On average, still a miss.

Aim for two seconds.  Skill 12, -8 for range, +5 for Acc, +1 aiming bonus.  10 or less!  On average, one hit.

5d pi to an unarmored ST 10 torso is about the same as before, doing 17 points of damage on average, but without blow-through, all of those points do damage.  It takes the victim to -7 points of damage, requiring a HT roll to remain conscious.

13 round blast without aiming?

Skill 12, -8 for range, +3 for volume of fire.  7 or less.  Prolly missing with all of those too.

After aiming?

Skill 12, -8 for range, +5 for Acc, +3 for volume of fire.  12 or less.  Average roll of 10 with a Rcl of 2 means two rounds hit.

17 damage from the first round gets to -7 and a consciousness roll.  17 from the second round gets to -24, another consciousness roll and a death roll.

4e angered several players because their characters became ineffective with the golden standard of a 12 skill.  I'd been looking for a means to simulate the vast expenditure of ammo to a single hit since I started playing GURPS and 4e solves for it nicely. 

I Wish We Had Some Grenades

So many role playing games made explosions so complicated we never bothered learning the rules.

Or, it was such a chore we never used them enough to remember them well enough to want to use them.

So in Top Secret or Twilight: 2000 we just didn't buy grenades.

At least, that's how I remember it.

I just checked T2K and the rules aren't so bad, but we had scars from some poor piece of game design.

Top Secret doesn't seem that hard either...

Wait...  Some game had a rule about when an explosion was confined it was greatly multiplied and we always remembered that rule and it got applied to every game!  This is just another reason we all agreed to change to GURPS.

No matter where our aversion came from, we didn't often use grenades.

The GURPS rules for explosions are generally clear.

So I am more willing to add grenades to the equipment list of my characters.

But something I failed to internalize until watching a movie tonight was fragmentation grenades have 4-5 second fuses.

A turn is a second long in GURPS.

That means throw grenade and it doesn't go boom for another 3-4 turns.

I can't wait to see how that turns out in play.

I Like Big GURPS And I Cannot Lie

I keep sticking my nose into RPG debates abotu which rule set is best.

Being a passionate advocate for GURPS, it's the rule set that I think is best.

I'm the first to admit that I haven't played a different system since...  1995?

And that was AD&D 2e.  I didn't have much fun because I was forced into the Cleric job.  I'd never made a cleric before.  Then I wasn't familiar with Forgotten Realms.  I wasn't familiar with the campaign.  AND I was only there to demonstrate to another player that they could be replaced.

Not a recipe for fun.

But picking a system and sticking to it doesn't mean that I didn't learn and play others.

I played every edition of D&D from the OG boxed set to AD&D 2e.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1e.

Chaosium's Basic Role-Playing in at least three settings.  Stormbringer being the one we used these rules for the most.

What became the Megaversal system with Palladium fantasy and Robotech.

Top Secret in two editions.

Champions in more than one edition.

Boot Hill.

Gamma World.

Star Frontiers.

Traveller LBB.

Twilight: 2000 1e.

Ghostbusters.

Teenagers from Outerspace (TFOS).

Toon.

FASA's Star Trek RPG.

2300 AD.

Mega Traveller.

You know what I found?

You can play, with one exception, any of those settings with GURPS.  The only sets of those rules that were better than GURPS was Champions and TFOS.  At least with GURP 3e.  4e is at least as good as Champions now.  Only Toon completely failed with GURPS.

The great thing about it was that once we learned the rules we didn't need to learn new rules for a new setting.

The bad thing was keeping the players out of the parts we weren't going to use.  That's a headache.

But nothing about my passion should make you feel bad about using a different system and having fun.

I've had fun with almost every one of the above listed systems.  The GM makes or breaks the game.  Your fellow players make or break the game.

But I am sick of people shitting on GURPS because they had a bad experience.  *A* bad experience doesn't mean the system sucks.

My bad experience with AD&D 2e had nothing to with the rules.  My conversion of my Wemic cleric from those rules to GURPS came with reading the 2e rules and Forgotten Realms setting.  I think it was a very streamlined experience from OG AD&D.  I think I would use those rules to play D&D if I were to use a D&D ruleset.

I've no experience with later editions, though I've heard positive reports.

It is clear, though, that later editions are emphatically, not the D&D I played once upon a time.

New races.  New classes.

"A Sword?" R. Nash c. 1986

It should be noted, before I start wandering here, that all the various kinds of swords we have put names to were just called "sword" in their day.  Most of the names are from archaeologists attempting to sort out the timeframes of grave goods.

Oakeshott typology is probably the most famous way to sort what GURPS will call a "broadsword" and D&D will call a "longsword."

GURPS has a list of swords that are all "broadswords" under the rules.

Khopesh

Broadsword

Large Falchion

Pata

Shotel

Bastard Sword (used one handed)

Dao

Estoc

Hook-Sword

Jian

Katana

Longsword

Backsword

Cavalry Saber

Edged Rapier

The D&D 5e equivalent to "broadsword" is "longsword" and it covers a wide variety of side-arms.  Perhaps more because the "versatile" tag means it can be used 2-handed; which would imply bastard sword is included.

This is a continuation from 4e where the weapons list is a bit longer, but still much shorter than 2e.  I don't have any 3e books (or 3.5e books for that matter).

2e was longer than AD&D. 

D&D, starting with 4e makes a distinction between "simple" and "military" weapons.  5e calls the distinctions "simple" and "martial."

With how over-the-top inclusive Wizards of the Coast went, I cannot but wonder if these categories are from the thinking about "assault weapons" among liberals.

The historical divide over some weapons is related to sumptuary laws in that you needed to be of a certain social rank to have them.

Cost wasn't the only reason a peasant didn't have a sword in many places.

But ahistorically egalitarian D&D can't make the common/noble distinction and still have adventurers, so...

I'm amused to note that 2e has a firearm, an arquebus.  It also adds the rapier.  4e and 5e don't have guns, but keep a sword that was developed from guns driving armor off the battlefield.

Warhammer FRP is even more consolidated, most everything is a "hand weapon"

Hand Weapon: This broad class includes one-handed axes, swords, clubs, maces and hammers. These weapons are all com­parable in use and effect, and no distinction is made between them in the rules.

Yet it still has a rapier...

Pathfinder 2e follows the same pattern as D&D (shocking! I know) but breaks the falchion out from longsword and still has a separate bastard sword.

Rapier without firearms again... 

LBB Traveller has guns, so many guns...

Sword is the one handed, all inclusive sword.  Broadsword is a two-hander.  Cutlass is loosely defined enough to include a rapier.

Top Secret might have rules for swords, it definitely has rules for throwing them...

Top Secret SI has a "sword".

Gaming Rifles

What rifle for your character is a bit stickier than the handguns.

Most games do give noticeably more damage to full power rounds than intermediate ones.

Though Top Secret has rifles and rules for them, it didn't come up all that often.

Getting into any kind of gun fight was a mission fail and normally led to character generation in short order.

Twilight: 2000 is where we started paying attention to rifles.

5.56x45mm and 5.45x39mm do Dam: 2.  7.62x39mm and 7.62x51mm both do Dam 4.

But that doesn't mean that the thirty caliber guns do twice as much damage.

The Dam number is a multiplier based on range.

Close range is 4d6 + (4 x dam).  So an M16A2 does an average of 22 at close range while an FAL or AKM does 30.  36% more...  x51's close range is longer than x39's too.

A "shot" in T2K is actually about 3 rounds.

So the M16 AK-74 and AK get 10 shots and the FAL just 7.  That brings damage for a whole magazine to 220 for an M16 and AK-74 and just 210 for an FAL (4.5% less).  300 for an AKM!

Mass gets into the act here.  That M16 is a mere 3.5 kg loaded, AK-74 is 4.5 kg,  AKM is 5 kg and the FAL is 5.75 kg.

Plus the basic loads... 6 spare mags for the M16, 4 each for the AK-74, AKM and FAL...

6.5 kg (70 'shots') for the M16, 6.5 kg (50 'shots') for the AK-74, 9 kg (50 'shots') for the AKM and 8.75 kg (35 'shots') for the FAL.

That drags our average damage (at close range) for a basic load to 1,540 for the M16, 1,100 for the AK-74, 1,500 for the AKM and 1,050 for the FAL.  The AKM appears to be winning until the math conscious players added five more magazines to their M16's load to tare with the AKM.  120 'shots' from the M16 gives an average of 2,640!

Bringing the AK-74 up to 9 kg only gets to 100 shots and 2,200 average damage.

And that's how we all ended up packing a 5.56 rifle in T2K.

Still with me?

GURPS does things differently.  First off, every cartridge is counted separately.

5.56x45 from an M16A2 will do 5d pi, 5.45x39mm from an AK-74 does 4d+2 pi, 7.62x39 from an AKM does 5d+1 pi and 7.62x51mm from an FAL does 7d pi.

This gives an average shot 17.5, 16, 18.5 and 24.5 points respectively.

Weights are M16A2: 8.9/1, AK-74: 9.1/1.2, AKM: 8.7/1.8, FAL:11/1.7

Totals for basic load come to 14.9 lb. (210 shots), 13.9 lb. (150 shots), 15.9 lb. (150 shots), and 17.8 lb. (100 shots).

Average damage for a basic load comes to: 3,675 for the M16A2, 2,400 for the AK-74, 2,775 for the AKM and 2,450 for the FAL.

50% more damage and 16% less weight?  That's how we all ended up packing a 20" M16A2...

For the record an M4 does the same 4d+2 pi as the AK-74 but does it lighter at 7.3/1 lb.  That brings the basic load to 13.3 lb. for 3,360 points of damage on average.  The +1 to Guns/TL8 - Rifle red-dot scope is a pound so 14.3 lb basic load; still better than the same weight AK-74 because you're more likely to hit!

And that's how we all ended up packing an M4A1 with a red-dot...

Man To Man

Thirty-five years ago, more or less, FuzzyGeff tried to talk me into playing a new game he'd bought.

Steve Jackson Games' Man to Man.

It's the combat system for GURPS 1e.

I was decidedly not interested, despite his mention that it was a precursor to a new role playing game.

When GURPS came out I was also, decidedly, not interested.

It took him a good long time to convince me to give it a try.

But I did and that's all I play anymore.

Not having to learn a new game when making a new world is liberating.

Try playing post-apocalypse with D&D 5e, for example.

I've used GURPS to convert Twilight: 2000 and Traveller.  Successfully.  Top Secret wasn't even a challenge, no actual conversion was needed.

Prior to 4e, the only specialized game which failed GURPSification was Champions.  That's kind of ironic, considering that the point based Champions was one of the inspirations for GURPS.

Top Secret

How odd is it that I never converted Top Secret to GURPS.

That would have been easier than Twilight: 2000.

Perhaps that's the real reason.  You merely need to consult GURPS: Espionage and High Tech for character creation and use the TSR books for the scenarios.