I know that my handful of regular readers won’t know what GURPS means. It stands for ‘Generic Universal Role Playing System’, and it’s a sort of variant on Dungeons and Dragons. Except for that it scales better, and has rules for pretty much anything you can think of. Rules for Dragons and wizards and knights, sure. Rule also for super heroes, robots, spaceships, aliens, mutants, pirates, ninjas, and in a very real case I saw once, a brain in a levitating jar. You name it. It’s all there.

One of the addon words for GURPS is known as Warehouse 23 (and yes I mean 23, as in two three. We’ll get to the title in a minute.). It’s a generic storyline for a warehouse in nowhere that stores some of the greatest magical, mythological artifacts ever. The players play agents who deal with these artifacts.

So imagine my surprise when I saw that SyFy (the newly rebranded SciFi channel) announced a show called Warehouse 13, with the same damn premise. I checked the website of the creator of GURPS and Warehouse 23. Plenty of fans were up in arms, but said creator said nothing. So I moved on.

Warehouse 13 debuted on Tuesday and I just now got around to watching it. And you know what? The first episode was genuinely good. The creators touted it as X-Files meets Indiana Jones. And they’re exactly correct. Two agents, one is a goofy, instinct guy, and one is a completely by-the-book redhead. They will apparently be going out and tracking down objects to keep in the warehouse, and whatnot. Meanwhile, the keeper of the warehouse itself, Artie, is their touchstone with all the info.

I’ll say it now: Artie makes the show. For Ghostbusters fans he’s the perfect blend of Egon and Venkman. For non-Ghostbusters fans, he’s incredibly intelligent but rarely takes anything seriously. Hmmm, I wonder why I might like him so much….

Anyway. I think I might have a new regular show on my hands. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t perfect. Some of the writing was on the cheesy side, and I know future episodes won’t have the same feel as the first. Plus the extras in that scene at the end SUCKED (never seen an extra who sucked before, it was a learning experience). But I liked it. I think I’ll give it a good long chance.