That GURPS Thread (Also Includes The Fantasy Trip)

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Doc Sammy

Doc Sammy

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Well, since nobody else has done it as far as I know, I might as well be the one to start this.

This is a general thread for the Generic Universal Role-Playing System, which was one of the very first generic systems and was very popular back in the day.

Personally, I am a fan of GURPS 3E, never cared for what I read in 4E. Especially since all the books I own and want to own are more compatible with 2E and 3E than with 4E.

I own a few GURPS books, all of them hard copies.

GURPS Basic Set, Fourth Edition
GURPS Basic Set, Third Edition
GURPS Vampire: The Masquerade
GURPS Vampire: The Masquerade Companion
GURPS Werewolf: The Apocalypse
GURPS Special Ops
GURPS Japan

Anyone here a fan of GURPS? I like the concepts of it, but I have never played nor ran a game of it yet.

However, I would love to try it out and run a few GURPS games. Preferably GURPS World of Darkness or maybe an Army Men or other military-themed campaign with GURPS Special Ops.
 
I have a hardcover 3rd edition. I like GURPS fairly well but have seldom used it. I have used the sourcebooks in conjunction with other games quite a bit, particularly these:
cover_lg.jpg cover_lg-1.jpg gurps.swashbucklers.jpg pic508067.jpg 220px-GURPS_Japan_1st_ed._cover.jpg​
 
I've never actually played, but I own Horror, Alternate Earths, and Cthulhupunk in print and Worlds of Horror, Weird War II and Fantasy II in PDF (I also got Illuminati University from the library once). Thus far their reputation as being useful inspirations and genre guides even if you're not using the system has been upheld.
 
I started playing RPGs with GURPS 3E. I own GURPS 3E Revised, GURPS Aztecs, GURPS Arabian Nights, GURPS Old West, GURPS Religion and GURPS Illuminati. Except for GURPS Religion, which sucks, these are all good books. GURPS Illuminati was a gift so I haven't really looked at that.

Our GM used to run anything using GURPS. We had great fun in his homebrew GURPS Fantasy, ShadowGURPS (= GURPS Shadowrun/Cyberpunk amalgam) and GURPS Star Wars games. The first game I ran was a homebrew low fantasy game using stripped-down GURPS rules.

I skipped the D&D era, basically. I am at the moment actually new to the whole OSR thing.
 
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3rik said:
GURPS Old West
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I got a cheap used copy and it's a good overview but "Old West" is a misnomer since it actually covers the American Frontier from the Louisiana Purchase days (1803) through the beginning of the 20th Century, which means only a little of the material is what most people would consider the "Old West." The cover art is misleading on both editions.
cover_lg-2.jpg OldWest.jpg​
The subtitle "Adventure on the American Frontier" is much more accurate. There wasn't much in the Wild West section that I didn't already know*. I think it would have been better as two books, one on the Wild West days and the other on the Lewis and Clark/Wolverine MacAlistaire era.

* I have read a lot about it already and have been to many of the sites, an advantage of being from and living in the American Southwest.
 
I don't use the system, but I have probably 30 or more of the sourcebooks from the golden age of 3rd edition. Fantastic resources

Plus the Hellboy and Discworld stand alone games "powered by GURPs"
 
Dumarest said:
I'm also that outlier who thinks GURPS Supers does superheroes just fine...it just doesn't do them the way its critics want it to. :hmmm:
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Like emulating comic books...yeah, it doesn't do that.
 
I'm actually running a GURPS Marvel Universe campaign right now. I'm a long term critic of GURPS for supers but I have to admit it's working okay, I guess. Anyhow, there is an unofficial Marvel guide but I'm really not fond of the builds. Supers basically means running GURPS at its most complex level. I did ban Magic and Ultratech outright. If you want super tech build it as a power.
 
I think it's a fine system, and I'm still a fan of a quick TFT duel. It's sourcebooks are truly excellent, but I don't like the scaling in the same way I love Hero System. So, I've only played in one GURPS campaign for a short period and never run it myself. I typically run everything in Hero.
 
Not a GURPS fan, at least of the system, the supplements have a lot of great material though. TFT I really like.
 
Recently I acquired PDF's of GURPS Swashbucklers and GURPS Middle Ages I.

Both are awesome!
 
Been a GURPS fan since the early 90s. And I'm a self confessed 3rd ed grognard. 4th is too fussy, to technical and I don't like the layout of the character writeups one bit.

I've got a moderately quirky hardcopy collection, plus a few pdfs. One day I'd like to run a Black Ops/Voodoo the Shadow War /Cthulhupunk hybrid. But that's just my madness talking.
 
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It's the one "big" system I haven't tried yet, but I want to this year.

Is 3rd or 4th Ed better or are the differences minor?
 
Séadna said:
It's the one "big" system I haven't tried yet, but I want to this year.

Is 3rd or 4th Ed better or are the differences minor?
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3E is better, and has more supplementary material. Plus, GURPS 2E supplements are generally backwards compatible with 3E rules.
 
GURPS was a Big Deal back in the day (early 90s) down here; it was the first RPG translated for and marketed specifically to Brazil, beating even D&D to the punch (the Red Box had a 1980s Portuguese translation, from a Portuguese editor, and thus was technically still an import here).

I played a lot of it but silly kiddie prejudices made me never pick it up. Nor the fantastic GURPS Conan, which teased me for months from a bookstore shelf before disppearing, and was the best Hyborian Age gazetteer before Mongoose's Road of Kings for d20 Conan.

I am such a sucker. I only really found my S&S game with Runequest/Mythras, a few years back. Perhaps if I'd caved in years back I'd be a big ol' GURPS-head today. Nevertheless, GURPS today suffers from the same problem that made me skip the above-mentioned Hero System -- I no longer have the free time demanded to master it, and the idea of creating a character without the aid of an app makes me cringe. (It's no accident both GURPS and Hero were some of the first game to develop character generation apps.)

Nowadays, if I want generic I'll go with Savage Worlds for expediency and "cinematic" action, or BRP (by way of Mythras) for grit and grime.
 
Séadna said:
It's the one "big" system I haven't tried yet, but I want to this year.

Is 3rd or 4th Ed better or are the differences minor?
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4th edition is the better reference in terms of presentation. In terms of system the differences are minor if you stick with fantasy or realistic genres. With supers 4th edition is far superior to 3rd. And it is a better toolkit for special abilities overall for the same reason supers are better. As can be seen with this fan made PDF called GURPS Advantages. Keep in mind that was all from what was found in the core books.

Another difference is that the 4e genre books are much more comprehensive. But on the other hand, if you like to play around with number and build stuff like starships and Vehicles. GURPS 4e is not as rich as 3rd edition in that regard. There is no GURPS 4e Vehicles like the infamous GURPS 3rd edition Vehicles. There is something that is in alpha that is used as the foundation for stuff like GURPS Starships which use a modular system for it design sequence.

Much of 4th editions is also a second bite at the same apple. For example the magic system presented in GURPS Cabal and GURPS Voodoo has gotten a much better (mechanics wise) presentation in Ritual Path Magic. Also 4th edition has stuff like Dungeon Fantasy, Monster Hunters, Actions which are far more useful out of the box than what 3rd edition had.

Overall I like GURPS 4th edition over 3e.
 
I own the Basic Sets for both 3E and 4E on hard copy, and both have their merits. I prefer 3E because of the wealth of supplementary material in 2E and 3E, and because a few books (such as GURPS Vampire: The Masquerade) are not fully compatible with 4E rules.

Also, part of me wants to run a GURPS Ice Age campaign in Pleistocene Europe with megafauna, cavemen, anachronisms, and everything.

The kind of campaign that would make a paleontologist weep.

This would be the campaign's theme song....



Or this...

 
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Fourth edition works better and fixes many of the issues third edition had like the five point discounts no-humans got, the confusing and slow Snap Shot and Auto Fire rules. But as I've said again and again, what GURPS needs most is a GURPS Medium. The Dungeon Fantasy RPG was almost the very thing, but sadly went pretty complex with the character builds.
 
David Johansen said:
Fourth edition works better and fixes many of the issues third edition had like the five point discounts no-humans got, the confusing and slow Snap Shot and Auto Fire rules. But as I've said again and again, what GURPS needs most is a GURPS Medium. The Dungeon Fantasy RPG was almost the very thing, but sadly went pretty complex with the character builds.
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Five point discount? I never noticed that in 3rd ed. And while the autofire rules are a bit clunky, the snap shot is very simple in play. And only really matters if you're using the Advanced Combat rules. Basic Combat does away with that particular bit of crunch.

Unfortunately, GURPS 4th edition lists skills in the following format:

Acrobatics 15* DX+0 [2]

To me, the middle bit is from the Department of Redundancy Department and only serves to make things look cluttered on a character sheet. Then there's 25 potential hit locations and 25 options in combat. Without getting into Maneuvers. Now don't get me wrong, 3rd ed has plenty of crunch too. But it's presented as optional, where 4th puts it front and centre in the core rules.
 
Yeah was annoyed by people who list "DX + 2" instead of 12 on their character sheet for years and then 4e made you do both. For some reason the skill cost table is like a brick wall for many people. I often use it as an example of times when I recognize that there is a problem but cannot understand why it is a problem.

The template format is another thing that confuses people. The Dungeon Fantasy format is better. Personally I just do pre-built characters and let people tweak them. It's much clearer and easier for people in my experience.
 
Oh, I also had GURPS Robots but I traded that. Definitely not my thing. I hear GURPS Vehicles was even "worse".
 
3rik said:
Oh, I also had GURPS Robots but I traded that. Definitely not my thing. I hear GURPS Vehicles was even "worse".
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I mean, it's fun as a mathematics exercise I guess...
 
I've got GURPS Cops, Horror, Cabal, Goblins and Atomic Horror. All are good to excellent. Anything with Ken Hite or Lisa Steele's name is worth checking out I'd say.

Also looks like Laws' Fantasy II: The Mad Lands has snuck onto OBS without my noticing yet. Will have to pick that up soon.
 
I liked GURPS Vehicles but it was a bit too nitpicky. $5 per seat for seat belts? Really? Anyhow, when they did GURPS WWII they discovered it was too unforgiving and may real vehicles were impossible to build without introducing changes. Partially this is because you've got a lot of progress in a few years and the tech level scheme is a bit too rigid. Even so, I love a good, crunchy vehicle system. Not everyone's thing, but I've got a dull, mindless job and I enjoy stretching my brain a bit. I'm in the camp that's been demanding they finish and publish the darn thing for years.
 
My first RPG was The Fantasy Trip. Still a favorite, though it cultivated our interests and tastes for detailed tactical combat that felt right, to the point that we out-grew TFT after several years of heavy play, just in time for GURPS to come out. I'm still fairly happy with GURPS, although I have my quibbles and house rules.

GURPS 4e is great as an integration of everything into one toolkit for building a campaign, and for making a heroic effort to integrate everything and work even more consistently than 3e with all sorts of genres, play styles and settings. I also like that it incorporates a few of my house rules from 3e more or less as I developed them before 4e, which I think are good and important (mainly some of the changes to how defenses work). But the 4e Basic Set is a monster too enormous and wide-ranging to be suitable as an intro for many new players. Even I, who memorized most of 3e and who can GM GURPS without books, find the 4e Basic Set mostly overwhelming, too long and too full of character options that I will mostly never, ever, ever, use, and so are in the way of digesting or learning the system.

GURPS 1e and 2e Basic Sets are a dream of simplicity by comparison, and I think the 3e Basic Set is vastly more digestible, and I prefer the style. I think there are some improvements in 4e, but in practice I end up applying those improvements to 3e and combining the parts I like best with the optional rules and house rules I like.

(I also think 4e made a number of side-steps and/or mistakes and/or changes in various details that I don't like much, particularly some of the things that seem to try to simplify or make things more "fair" or "value-based" in terms of point costs. It seems much more focused on character points, and the more I have played GURPS, the less I have particularly cared about character points.)

Anyway, if you haven't tried GURPS, and don't have a good experienced GURPS GM to play with, but would like to try it, I would try The Fantasy Trip first, even though it's a different game, because it's similar and easy as heck to learn and gives you nice mapped tactical combat (which is the core of what I love about TFT & GURPS), but is dead easy to get started with. And/or try learning with the 3e Basic Set...

To me though, the best part of GURPS is the hex-mapped tactical combat, especially with low-tech weapons. Well, and the part about making sense and having literal cause & effect and all that, and being literal simulationist about how things play out.
 
I was totally stoked when GURPS came out. We were already fans of the HERO system, and GURPS sounded like it was going to be the HERO system on steroids.

Several of us bought Man to Man and we ran a ton of gladiatorial combat the summer of 1985. The GURPS basic set was one of the few times I pre-ordered a game. It seemed like forever waiting for it to come out.

When it finally came out we ran some fantasy with it, a couple of us thought it was really cool, but most of the people I played with decided they would prefer to stick with Fantasy HERO. I certainly didn't mind FH and that was about that for GURPS. I kicked it around from time to time, arm twisting to get people to give whatever new book I got a try, but in the end it wasn't worth fighting to play GURPS when the other option on the table was a game I also did really like (HERO). When 4th ed HERO came out a couple years later that was the final nail in the GURPS coffin.
It did not however keep me from buying a boat load of GURPS stuff, I bought almost everything done until 1990 (no GURPS The Prisoner :crossed: ). I've easily got 60 books, including most of the historical, fantasy and military stuff. Fantastic resources for any game.

I bought the core books for 4th ed, but it just didn't grab me. I have bought a few 4th ed books that don't overlap with 3rd ed.


I knew of TFT when it came out but it didn't travel in my circles so I missed out on that. I did back the kickstarter and looking forward to seeing a revival. Maybe I can get in on some of that this time around.
 
Dumarest said:
I'm also that outlier who thinks GURPS Supers does superheroes just fine...it just doesn't do them the way its critics want it to. :hmmm:
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I had a similar reaction. I thought it was actually a good supplement for low to mid level supers, really talented / tech enhanced humans rather than gamma ray fueled super beings. It would work great for early pulp era supers.

It had a lot of competition from already established Supers games and I just assumed SJG wisely decided that wasn't the place to show off the game. I don't remember much coming out beyond the main supers book, but it isn't a genre I had a lot of interest in. Kind of funny, the kind of supers GURPS works best for is the kind I'd be most interested in playing.
 
I tried GURPS when it first came out and found that it just wasn't my thing, but I love the sourcebooks. The Conan stuff is good and I'm pretty sure that GURPS is the only official Horseclans role playing book ever. I picked up some of the Mage/Vampire books because I thought I'd rather use GURPS for the World of Darkness than the actual WoD system, but I never got around to using them. At one point I owned maybe 30 of the sourcebooks, but eventually sold most of them to Noble Knight because I just didn't use them like I thought I would. :sad:
 
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