Countless gamers have made use of the Historical Folks supplement that Brian C. Smithson created from the ashes of what was originally slated to be an official GURPS supplement. Historical Folks presents 116 different low point-cost professional templates for "normal historical folk" in GURPS Third Edition. It is an excellent resource for players in low-powered games, GMs who need to craft NPCs for low-tech games, or as flavor and inspiration for high-powered PCs who came from simpler roots.
In early 2006, Infornific began converting all of the templates over to Fourth Edition rules. Shortly after, Jeff Klein joined in the conversion effort. I then volunteered to compile and edit the entries into a single e-book, which is presented here, free of charge. We hope you find it useful.
Please note that you will want a copy of Historical Folks to get the most use out of this document (which is intended more as an appendix than as a standalone book) -- it features full descriptions, sample characters, and customization suggestions in addition to the templates themselves. You can download it from its official web page here. If for any reason that site is down, I have mirrored the file here as well.
Errata and Updates: Note that as of 2010, I have lost the source files for this PDF due to a hard-drive crash. Therefore, I'm afraid I will no longer be updating errata for this book. Fortunately, I believe we've caught all of the major issues thanks to John G. Wood, Nikolai, Matt Craig, and Sean Manning.
- 3/18/07, v1.03: Corrected URLs on title page to point to new domain name, mygurps.com.
- 8/17/06, v1.02: Corrected costs for Barber, Beekeeper, Herder and Soldier. Replaced all instances of "Poverty" with "Wealth". Fixed missing specialties for Animal Handling. Added cost to Rapid Healing in Soldier. Added optional Missile Weapon to Herder. Added note about Cooking skill to introduction.
- 3/25/06, v1.01: Corrected errors with Biology (Botany) skill in Gardener, Physician, Scholar.
- 3/21/06, v1.00: Document officially released and posted here on the web.