Are there any guidelines on player point rewards for games with a single player?

Question

Under normal circumstances in GURPS. I believe players are supposed to receive between three to five points per session. However, I may be gamemastering a solo GURPS game for someone who wishes to learn GURPS and I feel that, considering the effort their character is going to have to make. the point count feels a bit low.

What methods are there for rewarding a solo player in GURPS? Official rules, or rules that are agreed upon by the fan base, that dictate how many points should be given would be preferred.

Answer 1

The GM can give as many or as few as they like, minimum zero.

The guidelines are in the Basic Set (Campaigns book) on pages 498-499. Above all, the GM is encouraged to figure out for him/herself how many points to award and what criteria to use, and to take into account various things in deciding what the range should be, such as the campaign type (e.g. where on the scale from realistic limited abilities to superheroes?) and how long the campaign is expected to run and so on.

The generic guideline is to award 0 to 5 points to each character per session or adventure, usually 2 or 3. There are no guidelines suggesting giving more points for a single player, but presumably they'll be pretty well engaged, so it may tend to average more.

With the benefit of decades of GURPS play and GMing behind me, I would suggest:

If you're just introducing a new player to the game and aren't planning an extended campaign, and you feel like giving them more points than suggested, go ahead.

If you do hope this will be a long campaign using this character, you might want to consider how many sessions you might play and how powerful you think a character should get after how long, and plan a curve of average awards that matches that. Otherwise you can end up with super-heroes which you didn't mean to play. But you can also start off with fairly fast development and then slow it down to diminishing returns as they become more experienced.

Answer 2

Another option, especially useful in "single player" is using the Improvement Through Study Rules from B292 and just have them learn stuff by spending time.

Feel free as a GM to adapt the 200h <> 1pt as needed for your required learning speed.