May 22, 2026: What Do You Do Besides GURPS? Part I

Steve Jackson Games produces geeky games, meaning we're a bunch of geeks. I've steered the GURPS ship for 31 years – and been a gamer for 47 years – making me a geek among geeks. A couple of physics degrees qualify me as a nerd, too. I paint my portrait with kindness from behind a computer, at a desk adorned with miniature zombies, next to a literal wall of games.

What do I do in the rest of my life? A couple of things, one of which I'll talk about here, the other of which I'll save for Part II.

Since 2013, I've been a serious student of Argentine tango. Not the choppy ballroom kind, with the stiff frame and neck-breaking head snaps, which is mostly danced competitively, but its distant, more relaxed ancestor, which is mainly danced socially. By "serious," I mean that when I last did the math, I'd put in around 10,000 hours – approximately 1,000 hours training, 2,500 hours practicing on my own, and 6,500 hours dancing – with the associated costs (admissions, shoes, teaching fees, etc.) approaching a down payment on a house. For three years in there, I even worked part-time at a dance studio to defray the cost of lessons.

You want to talk about geeking out? That's geeking out. It isn't limited to traditional geek culture. As our forums say, "Geekdom is a many-splendored thing."

Gatekeepers might overlook such activities as LARPing, HEMA, zombie runs, and motion-control gaming to assert that physical hobbies can't be geeky. Well, tango involves cosplaying as early 20th-century Argentines, following strange social codes, learning an obscure vocabulary (linguistic and somatic) to describe steps and traditions, and arguing on the Internet about all of that, the music, and everything else.

But is it nerdy? Oh, yes! The steps are categorized, counted, and distinguished by dynamic and geometric differences too minute for non-dancers to see. The music is cataloged to a degree that puts the most obsessed comic-book collector to shame. And the social codes have nothing to do with day-to-day life – they're studied, rendering classic nerd intelligence more useful than the social kind.

Best of all, although tango has steps, they aren't rigid patterns that you dance at specific points in the music. They're building blocks, a bit like Lego, used for real-time improvisation, a bit like playing through an adventure in an RPG. This rewards thinking quickly and creatively. Many great masters are known not for their "dancers' bodies," but for their sharp minds.

All of which explains why I took to tango like a fish to water after decades of playing and creating games. As a gamer, if you've ever thought, "I need a physical activity and a social one, but I'm too big a nerd," check out an Argentine tango school near you. You can minmax by getting "physical" and "social" at the same time, and your instincts will serve you well in learning the dance and its culture.

-- Sean Punch