The Last Gasp was a Pyramid article I wrote which was published in Pyramid #3/44. It added two things to GURPS – rules for making losing fatigue points a bit more horrible (long-term fatigue), and Action Points.

Action points actually got a mention on the Steven Marsh interview about GURPS, when he noted it as something that completely surprised him. How a major addition to a relatively old ruleset could come out of nowhere.

The Action Point system makes it so that every time you do something, from attack to defend, it costs you a few points. When you get to zero, you either have to spend a fatigue point to get half your HT back in Action Points, or pause to recover. The point was to encourage lulls and flurries in GURPS combat, organically, and on a one-second scale.

The article recommends using tokens for both AP and FP.

But you don’t have to anymore! The GURPS Forum member Legendsmith has created an App for that. It gives you a FP bar, tells you whether you’re in mild, severe, or deep fatigue, and gives you buttons to push to gain and lose FP and AP.

It’s pretty cool – check it out!

GURPS Last Gasp Assistant