Any Fans of GURPS?

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Yes, it frees the players from premature optimization. Heck, you don't even have to put in too much thoughts about specific maneuvers for your "build", as they tend to be rather cost ineffective, rather raise your skill a bit more. Combined with some decent templates (which are very much the character creation default in 4E products), making a new character in GURPS isn't as complex as just looking at the big basic tomes might seem. On the other hand, the generic nature of GURPS often tempts GMs to create something totally from scratch, which means both that they have to design their own subsystems and then tell players just to use the basic set at liberty. Generally not a good idea.

The most important skill of GURPS gamemastery is picking what to not use.
 
Sosthenes said:
Basically, a lot of combat systems allow special maneuvers, from a simple grab to cosmic backflip kicks.
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Oh, you're basically describing exception-based design ("The rules of combat are as follows. Taking feat X modifies them in this way. Taking feat Y..."). And I kinda agree; that sort of design works great in a class-based system, because it sets up niches for characters to occupy. It doesn't work in a generic system, where there's no reason to wall off options behind a special permission (Like, I could try and suplex someone, but it wouldn't go well for either of us); the system doesn't need to build niches for characters, players can do that themselves.

Baulderstone said:
My guess would be that it is a reference to the fact that there are no classes in GURPs.
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I was once watching a documentary on the British class system, with my partner. And she turns to me and says "what class are we?"
"Well," I say, "don't know about you, but I'm a Rogue."
 
Ladybird said:
Oh, you're basically describing exception-based design ("The rules of combat are as follows. Taking feat X modifies them in this way. Taking feat Y..."). And I kinda agree; that sort of design works great in a class-based system, because it sets up niches for characters to occupy. It doesn't work in a generic system, where there's no reason to wall off options behind a special permission (Like, I could try and suplex someone, but it wouldn't go well for either of us); the system doesn't need to build niches for characters, players can do that themselves.
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It certainly works better in a system with classes. The issue is when you have a game where the feats expand endlessly like they did with 3.x. When it was just the players handbook, you only had a small number of actions locked away by feats, but as supplement after supplement came out, more and more actions were locked away until it was implied you couldn't do anything expressly permitted by your character sheet.
 
Baulderstone said:
It certainly works better in a system with classes. The issue is when you have a game where the feats expand endlessly like they did with 3.x. When it was just the players handbook, you only had a small number of actions locked away by feats, but as supplement after supplement came out, more and more actions were locked away until it was implied you couldn't do anything expressly permitted by your character sheet.
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That was part of the thinking behind a house rule I once saw for 3.5 Fighters. Where they got all the Improved X feats. Possibly spaced out like a Monk gets stuff. I forget how it was done.

I think part of the problem was roleplaying game designers were, for a while, working from the same mindset as card game designers. And players were picking up on that and coming in with the same mindset. So what was on your sheet was what you could do. And you couldn't do what wasn't on your sheet. Because your character was, in many ways, your deck.
 
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Baulderstone said:
When it was just the players handbook, you only had a small number of actions locked away by feats, but as supplement after supplement came out, more and more actions were locked away until it was implied you couldn't do anything expressly permitted by your character sheet.
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Yeah - you have to be very wary, with an exception-based design, that your new option doesn't retroactively make older options worse.

After reading Greyhawk, I became one of those people with very strong opinions about the Thief due to how he retroactively limits other classes - I don't mind it so much in games built to accommodate the class, though.

Stevethulhu said:
I think part of the problem was roleplaying game designers were, for a while, working from the same mindset as card game designers. And players were picking up on that and coming in with the same mindset. So what was on your sheet was what you could do. And you couldn't do what wasn't on your sheet. Because your character was, in many ways, your deck.
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Yeah, it was a dismal game design phase, but I guess it had to be done so we could all learn from it. And hey, it's made overt class-based systems popular again - one of the most popular indie designs being a class-based system that actively works against allowing non-classed characters - and we've had some good games out of it. Failure is just an invitation to try again, etc.
 
Ladybird said:
Yeah, it was a dismal game design phase, but I guess it had to be done so we could all learn from it. And hey, it's made overt class-based systems popular again - one of the most popular indie designs being a class-based system that actively works against allowing non-classed characters - and we've had some good games out of it. Failure is just an invitation to try again, etc.
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Good points. We'd just come out of the era where White Wolf had been releasing games with rules that didn't even seem to have been played before publication, let alone playtested. I guess we needed to go through a phase where people thought about the rules too much before we could find our way back to the middle.

And if did bring me back to D&D. Rather than causing me to abandon D&D again, my dissatisfaction with 3E helped me figure out what I wanted from a D&D game.

Wait. What thread am I in. GURPS? Let me try steering back.
Vile said:
This thread is making me want to play a game of GURPS again.
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At the very least, it had me breaking out my old GURPS books again.
 
Yeah, in GURPS the rules let you do things you should be able to try even if you're likely to fail. I think the worst offender I've ever seen is the "Expertise" feat in D&D 3.0. You need a feat to fight defensively!
 
Yeah, I like systems where all the options are open to you by default, too. I haven't played much D&D one way or the other, but I have played a lot of True20, and one thing I liked was that it was possible to get a lot of strategy into a fight just by using the regular fighting rules, entirely before any feats or powers came into play. Like, anyone can do Offensive Stance for +2 to their attack in return to -4 to their defense, but if you have the All-Out Attack feat you can take +5 to the attack in return for -5 to your defense; same principle, but more bang for your buck.
 
Baulderstone said:
Wait. What thread am I in. GURPS? Let me try steering back.

At the very least, it had me breaking out my old GURPS books again.
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I've been getting that old GURPS urge again. Preferably for my old friend 3rd edition. But I'd play 4th. Even GM it if people would stop arguing about rules minutiae and trying to reinvent the wheel for a few minutes :grin:
 
Doc Sammy said:
So, I have recently been reading the GURPS Basic Set (Third Edition) for the first time in a long while, and I have to admit that I do like it a lot. I do own both the 3e and 4e Basic Sets, but I generally prefer 3e as it is compatible with GURPS Vampire: The Masquerade (the only other GURPS book I own) and apparently there is more material for GURPS 3e on Amazon for a more reasonable price than there is for 4e. A lot of the genre books for GURPS 2e and 3e didn't get converted to 4e, so if I ever get to run GURPS, I will use 3e.

I have never got to play or run GURPS, though I'd like to do both eventually. Anybody here have any experience or opinions on GURPS and if so, feel free to discuss GURPS in all of its editions.
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I've run Gurps 2E and 3E, I used it a lot in the 90, especially when I didn't have a genre-specific game to use instead. I'm quite fond of some of what it does and don't like some things (which tend to not use), a lot of good stuff like whatever they called them, Bang Skills where you have say a pulp game or a supers game and the hero has "SCIENCE!" and it means they roll for any science stuff at all, rather than needing to buy Astronomy, Physics, etc individually.

It was really great for running games where the players wanted to just play a game and didn't have a preference and I could do anything; Horror, supers, urban fantasy, where the PCs weren't in the "know" or actually already powered up, allowing me to do tied together origin stories, horror moments, or whatever.

Eventually, BESM2E replaced it for me for a time. Now I don't get as many options to do "let me just run something and you fold into the high weirdness of my brain" type games as much.
 
I have a fair pile of 3rd edition GURPS stuff but I haven't used any of it to play GURPS very much. For example, when I was running the Wild West time period for Call of Cthulhu, I pulled out GURPS OLD West to use as source material. I used GURPS Russia for a Werewolf campaign. There were a lot of really good sourcebooks for 3e.
 
The switch from D&D5e to GURPS4e a year ago certainly changed the tone of the campaign.

The translation from third level dungeon delvers to 175-point GURPS characters was, of course, far from perfect. A DnD5e character is quite a banquet of abilities, and some characters lost their spells and other balancing feats. In GURPS, you have to go on a diet. There is a budget: if you want to be special, you have to pay for it.

DnD5e races, backgrounds and class... uh... justifications seem casual in Forgotten Realms, but when interpreted in GURPS terms they can become huge elements that can shift the direction of the campaign. Nobility means something. Warlocks' pacts mean something. A pirate background means something. Maybe they mean something in Forgotten Realms as well, but in my experience it tends to flatten out all the rough edges of a social structure and it's tricky to write them back in. "Whose land is this valley, anyway?"

Now, we have a surprising and promising campaign in a stale and uninspiring setting. Maybe Forgotten Realms is one of those constraints that lead to creativity. Maybe.

We played a lot of 3rd edition GURPS thirtysome years ago, but this is our first fourth edition game. I've had to adopt the rules in a piecemeal fashion, because it is a bit more intricate than anything we've played in a while — and I doubt we played it "right" back in the day. Since our modified and derailed Forge of Fury has turned into political intrigue, I am reading through GURPS Social Engineering in the hopes of creating interesting social mini-games (where the bard would be like a fish in the water and the brawny battle-hardened noble knight less so).

This campaign started as an introduction to VTTs for my old group. With the schedules, commutes, families etc. it is the only feasible way to run any kind of game with this group. However, the switch to GURPS came with cost. Foundry VTT's support for GURPS is absolutely great, but it is not your average fill-in-the-form character sheet. The GURPS Character Sheet (GCS) tool is phenomenal, and I would not want to game without it, but it seems to overwhelm the players. I feel there is a loss of player agency with this stack of tools.

Thus, while according to the retrospective questionnaires there is a strong preference for GURPS, I am not quite at ease. Maybe a short GURPS Lite game (e.g., Zombietown USA) with face-to-face guidance in character creation would remedy this ailment.
 
Silverlion said:
Why would one ever do that? BE
FREE BE FREE! YOUR CHAINS ARE BROKEN!
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Honestly, this. Just make Fantasy characters in GURPS and play them!


And yeah, I'm a fan of GURPS as well. Played it pretty much exclusively for a few years when I was starting out with RPGs.

Then we branched out into other systems, including d100...:grin:
 
Fenris-77 said:
Trying to retrofit the pu-pu platter of 5E class design in a rational point buy system is not a project for the faint of heart.
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You are absolutely right. For us, it was a one-time off-the-cuff effort aimed at continuing the campaign with another system. For the pure of heart, it may justify the pharisaic all-caps admonishments above.

The interesting part (for me) was to observe how the tone and maybe the focus of the game shifted/changed as a result. GURPS brought, as it were, the background to the foreground.
 
Hrm, I can see that. A lot of the little blah blah blah flsvortext elements that don’t have any mechanical impact suddenly do in GURPS if you allow it.

Perhaps I should propose a GURPS game for my folks.
 
This is a rather timely thread for me. GURPS has traditionally been pretty hard for me to get into for various reasons. But it's also one I keep finding myself drawn to, because in theory I really like the toolkit nature. I have other games that do the same sort of thing on different scales (OVA, EABA & BESM for example), and I really appreciate what they do. But there's always been something about GURPS that keeps me frustrated enough that I don't bring it to the table.

And yet, I find myself once again looking sideways at it and wondering if this time I can convince myself to push through and see what it can do.

I dunno if I will. The jury is still out. So, I'll watch this thread with interest to see if it adds any fuel to that flame.

One thing I think would help, which should probably be its own thread, is a "show, don't tell" style thread that shows me how to create various genres say, like Exalted, Glorantha for fantasy or The Mummy or Mission Impossible. I know there are game lines that supposedly do this (like GURPS Action!), but I tend to find they fail in the "show, don't tell" category, or do so in a way that still manages to leave me cold and unconvinced. Something that goes beyond listing out (dis)advantages and provides a launching pad for my imagination.

EDIT: Didn't notice the necro until Toadmaster Toadmaster pointed it out. I guess it isn't that timely after all lol...
 
Well I didn't respond 6 years ago, but...

HERO is my preference in the point buy, universal system space, but I do like GURPS. I strongly favor 3E over 4E, and my comments are heavily based on my 3E experience.

I feel it's strength is in being more modular than HERO, as it is easier to add a subtract pieces. I find HERO is more scalable, GURPS is more grounded in "reality".
Where I favor GURPS tends to be at that closer to reality scale, modern, sword & sorcery etc.

My personal opinion of GURPS 4E and HERO 6E is that they tried to hard to re-imagine the games closer to their competitor. I don't think either are terrible games, but I far prefer the more pure earlier editions over the compromises of the current editions.
 
I always wanted to love GURPS (a few of my mates did). But while I love the setting and resource books I thought the system was a bit crunchy. That's the only reason I didn't get into it... I tend to go rules-light these days.
 
Savage Schemer said:
This is a rather timely thread for me. GURPS has traditionally been pretty hard for me to get into for various reasons. But it's also one I keep finding myself drawn to, because in theory I really like the toolkit nature.
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GURPS is laser-focused on resolving specific actions or describing characters accurately for the genre/setting. Case in point Bulletproof Nudity, totally unrealistic but accurate for the various settings and subgenres that have near naked characters surviving in unbelievable combat situations without armor.

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Savage Schemer said:
One thing I think would help, which should probably be its own thread, is a "show, don't tell" style thread that shows me how to create various genres say, like Exalted, Glorantha for fantasy or The Mummy or Mission Impossible.
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You start by describing the various characters in the genre and what they do in English. Including other elements like spells, monsters, and treasure. Describe as if you were there looking at what happened.

For example here is my description of Myrmidons of Set/Sarrath.

Myrmidons of Sarrath

Fighters may choose to start as Myrmidons of Sarrath. Myrmidons are called by the god Sarrath to be his champions. Their traditional enemies are the Paladins of Delaquain. Myrmidons must be Lawful and follow the Laws of Ma’at.

Any act of Chaos or violations of the Laws of Ma’at will cause the Myrmidon to lose their powers, the Myrmidon’s Arkados (see the Myrmidon’s abilities) will leave him and a Myrmidon of equal level will challenge the ex-Myrmidon to a duel to the death. If the character wins the duel, he is free to leave. If the ex-Myrmidon wishes to atone for his misconduct after the duel, the referee may allow him to undertake a Trial of Ma’at. Sarrath will arrange the circumstances of the trial. It will test the character's dedication to each of the Laws of Ma'at. The trial will involve killing a powerful chaotic creature. Any further violations will cause the Myrmidon’s status to be revoked permanently. The ex-Myrmidon will then be hunted down by his former peers and killed.

Laws of Ma’at

Strength Only through a Myrmidon’s Strength will Order succeed.
Hardiness A Myrmidon overcomes all adversity.
Loyalty Only by the trust of absolute loyalty can chaos be held at bay.
Obedience Those above must be obeyed, those below must obey.
Certainty There is no doubt that the will of Sarrath is the right and correct way.
Dedication A Myrmidon never wavers in fulfilling the will of Sarrath.
Integrity A Myrmidon must resist all worldly temptations.
Order Without Order, Chaos will leave nothing behind.
Wholeness The Laws of Ma’at are whole and must be followed in its entirety.

Here is how I implemented this in GURPS.


This is how I implemented in OD&D.
docs.google.com

Myrmidons of Sarrath.docx

Myrmidons of Sarrath Fighters may choose to start as Myrmidons of Sarrath. Myrmidons are called by the god Sarrath to be his champions. Their traditional enemies are the Paladins of Delaquain. Myrmidons must be Lawful and follow the Laws of Ma’at. A Myrmidon must possess the following minimum abi...
docs.google.com docs.google.com

Their magical abilities differ because in the first I opted to remain consistent with how GURPS Magic worked. In the second I opted to remain consistent with how D&D magic and how holy warriors like Paladins are traditionally depicted.

How in the decades I have been running GURPS and my Majestic Fantasy RPG stuff, players roleplayed both version the same. And they wind up doing similar things for similar reasons. And are harder to handle than regular fighters at the same level of experience.
 
Too bad after almost two decades in development they scrapped plans to release Gurps Vehicles.

Is the character generator worth buying?
 
robertsconley said:
No is about enabling Dungeon Crawling with GURPS in the way that Sean Punch views Dungeon Crawls.
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Sure, but the author's intent shapes the product is true of any other product by any other author.

What Dungeon Fantasy does is give you character templates. The core game keeps it to a fairly limited range and the various GURPS Dungeon Fantasy supplements add stacks more templates.

Dungeon Fantasy focusses on 250 point characters. Competent heroes equivalent to perhaps 7th level D&D characters. I think for short campaigns and one shots it's appropriate. It also eschews world building, there's the dungeon and there's town. The game is about the dungeon not about a milieu. Dungeon Fantasy is also silly, comical, and deadly.

Both of us would hava preferred a different approach. For myself I think it's terribly over complicated for a starter set aimed at getting new players to try GURPS. But it is well suited to selling GURPS Players a boxed game.

The kickstarter funded, but SJG declared the project a failure due to time and cost overruns, cut the print run, and then did another kickstarter to reprint it. The boxed set is still available from their webstore so the second run has not sold out unless there was a third run. I respect that they were trying to be financially cautious and their experience of the market exceeds my own. They've been in this market a long time and I have not.

I've been playing around with ideas for an open 3d6 system that people could use to write and publish their own adventures and worlds for a long time but I'm not really interested in doing an open GURPS clone and honestly feel that essentially kills the project. I did a d% WFRP based 40k game earlier this year it got about zero interest. People who want GURPS want GURPS not my game. So I mostly fiddle around with my own percentile games and write odds and ends that appeal to me.
 
Can someone give me a sum up of the difference between 3e and 4e? I played 3e many moons ago and have books but have not spent much time with 4e
 
3e has an incremental cost progression for stats held over from first edition 10 points for ll - 13, 15 points for 14 - 16, 20 points for 17 - 19, 25 points per point after 20. Or something like that. Strength does damage and Health provides hit points. 4e has 10 points per point for Health and Strength and 20 points per point for Dexterity and Intelligence. Hit points are based on Strength not Health. In combat 3e has the Snap Shot rating for ranged weapons which gives an additional -4 if your skill drops below it due to modifiers. 3e autofire uses the 4 round burst hits by margin of success table, 4e uses an 'recoil' rating as the number of points of margin per additional hit. 4e makes percentile modifications to advantage costs a core concept rather than limiting it to supers. 4e also implements a more coherent system of traits that make things a bit more uniform across the line.

Those are the big, core changes but there are numerous changes to specific Advantages and Disadvantages. There's also a shift in the attitude towards character creation that's a bit hard to describe. It moves more from representing something realistic to representing something in a game. I think there's probably a whole essay on this and how GURPS Vehicles doesn't fit with the rest of the system I could write.

Perhaps the biggest change is presentation with 4e being more dense and less attractive to look at. It also exchanges Dan Smith's charming drawings for somewhat realistic Poser art. I'm not sure what's Poser or not any more than I'm sure what's art or not.
 
Rob Necronomicon said:
I always wanted to love GURPS (a few of my mates did). But while I love the setting and resource books I thought the system was a bit crunchy. That's the only reason I didn't get into it... I tend to go rules-light these days.
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To be honest, most of GURPS complexity is front-loaded. And it's mostly due to the lists. The lists are just huge, so if you're not already familiar with their content it can be a bit going throught them. 4e does a few things to make this easier. The advantages have little symbols that tell you what genres and maybe some other stuff they're suited to, so the GM can quickly tell you which ones are available w/o having to go through the whole list. And out of the box, it has 3 separate complexities of combat. When I got to play, we used the simple combat and only had a couple additional rules from the other combat sections because a couple PCs had abilities that took advantage of them. It ran fine, and the game only ended because the GM literally joined an Orthodox monastery and wouldn't be available for a while.
 
David Johansen said:
Those are the big, core changes but there are numerous changes to specific Advantages and Disadvantages. There's also a shift in the attitude towards character creation that's a bit hard to describe. It moves more from representing something realistic to representing something in a game.
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I think 3e treats 'balance' in terms of 'How powerful/useful is trait X when used the way it is in the source material?", while 4e goes with "How powerful/useful is trait X when in the hands of players?"

You can see this is psionics - 3e has this system for psionics that is fine for 100-150 point characters that would be in a movie of novel about low-level psions doing their thing, dodging anti-psi cops, hunting down supernatural badies, etc. However, with more points and/or in the hands of players willing to use the psionic powers to their full potential they're wildly unbalanced compared to normal folks (and supers, for that matter), though not against a GURPS mage (because high-point mages are insane if intelligently played).

In 4e psionics are built like any other super power (aside from standard GURPS magic), and are thus much more expensive and a 150 point starting character will be much less flexible than the 100-150 point 3e psion, and much better balanced compared to other PCs assuming their power is used whenever it'd be useful.

The result is that 4e is a bit harder to break (though it still assumes active GM management and an adult, non-adversarial relationship between GM and players), especially by accident than 3e is, but feels a bit less like a genre emulator in tone.
 
I have a love/hate relationship with GURPS which I played for years before 4e came out and then ducked out never to really return.

It is as realistic as you want/believe, which used to sit in my favourite genres' sweet spot.
The skill list is comprehensive, but it is exceptionally long. The latter templates only exemplify this.
The sourcebooks are brilliant, with succinct but gameable material.

The real problems I found with the system are the creation of NPCs, as they are created as PCs (for anything other than superficial depth). I found them just too complicated to create on the fly, and my genres didn't have anything like a 'bestiary' to pull from at a moments notice.

Also, 'realism' can mean many things. I'm now happier to handwave results to give my own realism level in much lighter systems like Freeform Universal.

Saying that I would return to GURPS over HERO or BRP, both generic systems that I simply 'missed' and see no need to try and compare.

Funnily enough I chose GURPS because of Steve Jackson, and no, not that Steve Jackson (possibly a common confusion in the UK?). Coming from D&D it was a massive breath of fresh air. A system that just made sense.
 
I'm a bit of a potential GURPS heretic because what I like mostly focuses on the stuff that happens after creation. If GURPS 5E would ditch "character points" and would do fixed templates or something like that in the basic game, I'd probably be okay with it. "Potential" because I only ever used the point buy rules myself.

CPs are kinda neat for constructing balanced subsystems, e.g. a spell system, but for characters, I'm a bit meh about it.
 
robertsconley said:
GURPS is laser-focused on resolving specific actions or describing characters accurately for the genre/setting. Case in point Bulletproof Nudity, totally unrealistic but accurate for the various settings and subgenres that have near naked characters surviving in unbelievable combat situations without armor.

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You start by describing the various characters in the genre and what they do in English. Including other elements like spells, monsters, and treasure. Describe as if you were there looking at what happened....
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Hard to put into words, but on some level I can intuit that this is exactly why I bounce off GURPS - despite being drawn back several times by the massive amount of excellent setting books. Because of the game design philosophy, not the nudity thing!

Going from concepts like "bulletproof nudity" into rules terms feels kind of the wrong way round. Or put another way, it feels storygamey. Sorry, I'm not being very clear, I know.

Not trying to say there is anything objectively wrong with it as an approach, but it doesn't work for me.
 
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