thoughts on gurps 4e?

[nihil8r]

i'm thinking about trying out gurps 4th edition. does anyone have any experience or opinions about it before i buy the characters book? :)

[The Cat Goddess]

GURPS 4e really reduces the power of min-maxing characters alot.

It evens out the progression of statistics and advantages and generally smooths over a lot of stuff.

That being said... my group still refuses to switch. If we already have a bunch of 3rd edition stuff, they say, why spend all that money buying 4th edition?

[Severus]

If you already like gurps, I'm sure you'll like it. If not, read on.

Having run several campaigns with gurps (the most recent with 4e), I just don't like it. It puts too much weight on stats, and I think the magic system is kludgy. It is hard to balance encounters without a lot of practice. I just don't think it lives up to its design goals as a system.

For a generic system, I think Hero runs rings around GURPS. I think it is a more flexible system and easier to create balanced characters. Hero is a poor system, however, if you have munchkins and as a GM you don't control things as there are lots of ways to abuse the system. I don't mind because we play with mature gamers and we don't go there. The system itself tags powers subject to particular abuse to help newer GMs be aware of some of the issues. I think this ability to abuse is the natural consequence of a flexible, generic system, so it doesn't bother me.

[Gahrer]

I really like it. It's smooth and intuitive (most of the time) and the amount of things you can do is staggering. So your players want to be able to summon an ethereal mace with the extra ability to do massive knockback and stun? Sure. Your player wants to be able to shapeshift to a bear with giant bony spikes growing out of its forelegs? Simple. <-- Real examples from my current (second) campaign.

The problem I have felt the most as a GM is that there isn't a lot of statblocks in the books and almost no aid to create enemies. Combine that with a system of points that really doesn't tell you much about the combat prowess of a creature and you have a huge headache balancing combatencounters as a GM.
Add a rather lethal combat system at low power levels and what you thought should be a cakewalk could end up a near TPK.

[Edit: Spelling x3]

[Zuljita]

Where are you coming from? to be clear the differences between 3e and 4e are not, in any way, as substantial as the same in d&d. If you know previous incarnations of gurps and like them you will certainly like 4e...
I am a huge fan of gurps but it takes quite a bit of getting used to, and the system is harder to learn for players (simply from a chargen standpoint, its very easy in actual play) than other systems.

another question that bears mentioning: what do you intend to do with it? Dont try to do D&D with it... but it does better with lower fantasy or other more realistic settings. Combat is deadly, you are only one or two awful dice rolls away from death no matter your level point value, assuming appropriate foes. Beyond that, the skill system is better at representing real people IMO, and having disadvantages/advantages that spell out parts of your character's personality can really encourage role playing (YMMV).

[Severus]

As gahrer said, the difference between TPK and cakewalk is hard to judge in the system, particularly at low levels.

[nihil8r]

thanks for the replies, everyone. i've only played gurps twice before and the games were so short i don't remember anything about the mechanics, and i don't have any of the old books. :(

zuljita, i think you described exactly what i'm looking for, a game system that's very deadly in combat but also promotes role-playing. we are currently playing legends of the five rings and want a second game to play when we can't play l5r due to no-shows. the big problem is this game would only be for two players, so pathfinder or another combat-heavy system seemed like a bad idea, although maybe spycraft or d20 modern could be good ...

anyway thanks again everyone :)

edit: i used to be a hardcore wargamer so i'm not that concerned about tpk issues. :belkar:

[Folytopo]

Gurps is a good system to play a campaign in. The main problem that has already been mentioned is that it is a really hard system to GM for. The lack of premade characters and enemies is a lot of work for newcomers. It also takes a while to get a handle for what skills you need.

The other thing is that gurps has a lot of really good supplements.

[The Cat Goddess]

Actually...

On the SJGames website, there are sample characters.

There is a "random NPC generator" included in the rulebook (at least in 3e... I don't recall specifically for 4e). For the most part, NPCs don't need to be "fleshed out"... Relevant stats + relevant skills. Do we really care what non-combat skills the Guard might have? Probably not.

As for "point balance"... it doesn't truly exist in GURPS. A 150pt Soldier is going to easily defeat the 275pt Nuclear Physicist in a fight, for example. Relative skill-level is where the balance lies. If everyone on the team has skills in the 16-18 range, but one guy has skills in the 25-28 range... there's a potential problem.

[Natael]

I absolutely love it, though will agree that the base magic system is a little bleh (though not absolutely atrocious), you still have 1001 choices about how to manage it in your personal game. A lot of system works on "realistic" rather than "balanced." And in the end it can be tough to say whether it should be worth more points to have a gun built into your arm or to be able to see into all other spectrum of light.

Game balance can be wonky, depending on how you look at encounter balance. My philosophy, as well as the philosophy of a few of the other GMs I play under, is that you design the encounter to what makes sense, and let the PCs deal with it. There are some pretty decent guidelines in the system (such as that a skill level of 12 is about where you can start making money off of it), and how much training is involved with a single skill point.

On teaching new people GURPS, I've had a lot of difficulty converting D&D players to it, while on the other hand had a very easy time converting non-role players to character creation rules. So make sure your players are at least receptive to trying something new.

In the main books there are some character creation guidelines to help out, and depending on the genre, there are splat books that help flesh things out more as well (the Supers book for example). The main thing you need to realize is that GURPS is a bit more of a tool box than D&D, so there needs to be more GM guidance on how characters are created.

D&D is putting together an ikea desk - you get limited choices like color and size, but it is simple and you don't need many tools.

GURPS is buying lumber and tools from home depot and constructing your own desk - more complicated, but you have near limitless decision on the design, and once you get used to the tools, it winds up being nearly as quick as the ikea desk, and in the end, I have more fun building it by hand.

[Knaight]

I absolutely love GURPS as a player. As a GM, GURPS is just too mechanically heavy for me. I prefer not to have to focus much on mechanics while playing, as I feel that the game benefits from GM focus on setting, NPCs, player reactions (yes, player), and other such matters.

In short, if you like to GM heavier systems, GURPS is for you. Even heavier, go with HERO, otherwise fall back to a lighter generic system. Fudge, Fate, Savage Worlds, Cortex, ORE, and many others work fine. Of these I personally recommend either Fudge or ORE, both of which are essentially free.

[Cyrion]

I absolutely love GURPS as a player. As a GM, GURPS is just too mechanically heavy for me. I prefer not to have to focus much on mechanics while playing, as I feel that the game benefits from GM focus on setting, NPCs, player reactions (yes, player), and other such matters.

In short, if you like to GM heavier systems, GURPS is for you. Even heavier, go with HERO, otherwise fall back to a lighter generic system. Fudge, Fate, Savage Worlds, Cortex, ORE, and many others work fine. Of these I personally recommend either Fudge or ORE, both of which are essentially free.

As a counterpoint to this, though, GURPS actively encourages you to only use the rules you want to include. If you don't like/don't feel up to using a particular rule, it's very easy to compensate with "roll 3d6 against your [Insert Relevant Skill Here]" and apply whatever modifiers seem appropriate based on the difficulty of the task. Then you can add in the more detailed rules later as you get more comfortable.

Yes, character generation can be a pain the first couple of times through, but I've personally always found it easy to GM.

[Natael]

I don't think GURPS was ever intended to make use off all of the rules. There are a ton of optional rules splattered through the books to make the game more hard and gritty, or turn it into an action movie or wuxia.