GURPS

A very modular and customizable pencil and paper role-playing game system. GURPS stands for Generic Universal Role Playing System. It can be used to play games in fantasy, modern, futuristic, or historical settings.

GURPS is a product of Steve Jackson Games. Before GURPS, Steve Jackson wrote a set of games called The Fantasy Trip, which are strongly related to GURPS.

Together with the [Hero system]?, GURPS was one of the first role-playing games in which characters are created by spending points to get characteristics, skills, advantages, getting more point by accepting low characteristics, disadvantages etc. Most other role-playing systems generate character characteristics using dice.

The main game mechanics consists in rolling 3 six-sided dice, and having to roll as low as possible, and in any case lower than the skill or characteristic concerned.

One of the strengths of GURPS, appreciated also by people preferring other game systems, lies in its large number of worldbooks, describing settings from several science fiction, fantasy, and historical settings, adding specific rules but mainly giving general information for any game.

You can get a printable PDF version of the "lite" rulebook for free at http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/lite/.