The Problem Nobody Else Solved

By the mid-1980s, the universal RPG had become the holy grail of simulationist design. Steve Jackson’s GURPS (1986) established the template: a single system capable of handling any genre, any setting, any conflict. Point-buy characters. Bell-curve probability. Detailed sourcebooks treating each subject with research-paper rigor.

GURPS worked beautifully at human scale. A skilled swordsman facing a novice played out with satisfying predictability. The 3d6 bell curve ensured competence mattered.

Then you tried to model a tank.

Or a superhero. Or a starship. Or a nuclear warhead. The math broke. A tank might need 500 Damage Resistance. A superhero might have Strength 100. Resolving combat between entities of vastly different scales meant rolling handfuls of dice and performing arithmetic that ground play to a halt. GURPS patched the problem with bolt-on solutions—Mega-Damage conversions, separate vehicle rules, distinct scaling systems for different contexts.

Greg Porter looked at this and saw a transmission grinding under load. He didn’t want patches. He wanted to redesign the engine.

The Logarithmic Revolution

Porter’s solution was elegant and mathematical: logarithmic scaling.

In EABA (End All Be All), every +3 on the Universal Chart represents a doubling of real-world effectiveness—mass, energy, speed, cost. A pistol sits at Level 3 damage. A nuclear warhead sits at Level 50. The mechanics don’t change. The same chart, the same math, from fistfights to orbital bombardment.

This isn’t a patch. It’s a unified field theory for game physics.

Where GURPS enumerates—listing specific values for every weapon, every vehicle, every creature—EABA derives. Give Porter the real-world specifications, and the chart produces the game statistics. The designer doesn’t need to assign arbitrary numbers; the math generates them from physical reality.

The implications cascade through every subsystem. Time scales logarithmically too. Combat turns can expand as a fight drags on—split-second reactions in the opening exchange, then seamless transition to a suppressed standoff, then a long-term siege. The rules don’t change. The scale shifts.

This is what Jackson was reaching for. Porter actually built it.

The Death Spiral

Porter’s other signature innovation attacked the sacred cow of hit points.

In D&D, a fighter at 1 HP fights exactly as well as a fighter at 100 HP. Damage is an abstraction; effectiveness is binary. You’re either up or you’re down. In GURPS, the system is more granular—shock penalties, health checks, accumulated wounds—but the core model remains ablative. You have a pool. Damage reduces the pool. When the pool empties, you fall.

Porter rejected this entirely. In CORPS, he introduced Impairment. Damage directly reduces your attributes. Shot in the arm? Your Dexterity drops immediately. Gut wound? Your Strength degrades. The more hurt you are, the worse you perform.

This creates what designers call a “death spiral”—wounded characters become progressively less effective, making them easier to wound further. Critics argue this feels punishing. Porter argues it feels real. A gunfight between injured combatants should be sloppy, desperate, degraded. The death spiral models that truth.

The influence is subtle but traceable. The modern move toward wound penalties, the rejection of abstract HP in “gritty” games, the emphasis on consequence—Porter was there first, with the math to back it up.

The Designer’s Toolkit

If EABA proves Porter’s theoretical mastery, Guns! Guns! Guns! proves his practical influence.

3G3 isn’t a game. It’s a meta-design toolkit. Porter published the mathematical formulas for constructing firearms in any system—GURPS, Hero, Basic Roleplaying, whatever you’re running. Input the real-world specifications (propellant load, barrel length, projectile mass), output the game statistics.

Other designers use Porter’s math to balance their own games. That’s a different kind of contribution than publishing a popular system. When you’re building tools for your competitors, you’ve transcended commercial competition entirely. You’re providing infrastructure for the hobby.

Guns! Guns! Guns! is the quiet proof of Porter’s peer influence. The designers who know, know. They just don’t talk about it in public because they’re using his work without attribution.

The Journeyman Engineer

Porter’s influence extends beyond his own systems. He contributed equipment lists to Marc Miller’s Traveller (T4, 1996)—the fourth edition of one of the foundational sci-fi RPGs. This is invisible work. No one remembers who wrote the equipment chapter. But every character sheet references it. Every session uses it. If the gear math is broken, the game feels broken.

Porter brought his engineering sensibility to someone else’s transmission and made sure it ran clean.

His favorite detail from that work: even in the far future, once you take a tent out of the bag, you can’t figure out how to put it back in.

That’s the difference between simulation and truth. A lesser designer would have calculated packed volume and dimensional constraints. Porter knew some things don’t need math. They need humanity.

He also contributed to Sovereign Stone, Blue Planet, and Albedo—further evidence that when designers needed rigorous system work, Porter was the engineer they called.

The Digital Pioneer

Porter saw the future before the industry did.

BTRC transitioned to PDF-only distribution in 2003—years before digital became standard. But Porter didn’t just sell documents. He programmed them.

EABA v2 files contain embedded scripting. Automated dice rolling. Dynamic character sheets that calculate encumbrance and impairment in real-time. Mapping tools built into the rulebook itself. The PDF isn’t a static document; it’s an application.

While Jackson maintained print distribution and Wujcik remained focused on traditional formats, Porter recognized that simulation’s future was digital. The rules could be the interface. The book could run itself.

This placed him on the bleeding edge—and the bleeding edge is a lonely place commercially. The mass market wasn’t ready for interactive PDFs in 2003. By the time the market caught up, Porter was already old news, a cult figure rather than a mainstream success.

The Satirist’s Funding Model

Porter’s career contains a telling irony.

His most commercially successful early product was Macho Women with Guns (1988)—a satirical game mocking gaming tropes, featuring exactly what the title promises. It was crude, funny, and sold well enough to fund BTRC’s continued operation.

The satire paid for the simulation. Macho Women generated the revenue that let Porter pursue CORPS and EABA and Guns! Guns! Guns!—the serious work that established his design legacy.

There’s a lesson here about the hobby market. The rigorous work earns respect. The joke products pay the bills. Porter understood this early and structured his business accordingly.

The Linux of RPGs

Steve Jackson is Windows—ubiquitous, supported by massive libraries, the default entry point for simulation gaming. Everyone knows GURPS. Everyone has an opinion about GURPS. The sourcebooks fill shelves.

Greg Porter is Linux—powerful, efficient, mathematically elegant, beloved by engineers and power users, invisible to the mainstream. EABA doesn’t have brand recognition. It has architectural superiority.

This is Porter’s tragedy and his legacy. He built the better engine. He solved the scaling problem. He created tools other designers depend on. And almost nobody outside the hardcore simulationist community knows his name.

What Remains

The Universal Chart. The Impairment system. Guns! Guns! Guns! as the designer’s secret toolkit. Interactive PDFs before the industry was ready. Donner Party proving the math works for survival. Armageddon War proving it works for wargames.

Porter solved problems other designers worked around. He built infrastructure other designers quietly use. He proved that simulation could be mathematically unified rather than endlessly patched—and that the unification works across formats.

If Steve Jackson defined the universal system as a commercial category, Greg Porter defined it as an engineering discipline.

The market chose Jackson. The math chose Porter.

History will remember both. It’s just taking longer to notice the engineer.

Total: 26 points. Year: 1987.

26 points. 1987. Both things are true.