[GURPS] what even is the point of having a strength score - HELP ME PLEASE

[Rickshaw]

(just a heads up, sorry about all the CAPS. I was really EXCITED when I WROTE THIS last NIGHT and may have gotten CARRIED AWAY. Just pretend it’s written by someone who watches too much Terry Crews?)

New to the game, and I Just started building a character for a game I might have joined in a few weeks, but stopped in frustration. I've never had a character with full backstory torpedoed by the SKILLS system before! Problem is that while I want hulking strong character (15str? Kinda strong, yeah?) and I could really get his str as high as I want, what is the point? I might be able to hit things hard, but that’s pretty much all I could do. I would be worthless when I got out of combat, and that’s no fun. Every skill that SHOULD be Str based is instead Dx.

In fact, I did a quick breakdown of the skills, and Dx skills are fully 26% of the list (it would have been higher if I’d counted all the different skills under melee weapon, but that seemed unfair.) In fact, with IQ taking up fully 56.4% of the skills, even HT (6%), Will (5.2%) and Perc (4.8%) have more skills than strength does.

Strength has 0.4% of the skill list to itself, and that's because I was getting frantic and counted erotic art since it’s listed as one of the possible roles. Other than that, strength has ZERO SKILLS.

*NOTE* I get it that these other things are important in the skill, and that’s fine and dandy. Swinging a weapon is probably most modified by Dex. Surgery is probably mostly about IQ. Heck even running is probably more about Health and Stamina than it is about strength. But when it comes to strength, even things that are ALL ABOUT STRENGTH completely ignore the stat! Let's all take a look-see~

(yes, these are my opinions, and you are entitled to disagree, but I feel like these are fairly judged with sound reasoning.)

Bicycling - Yes you have to balance, but it is SO MUCH about leg and core strength. It doesn’t matter how wonderful your balance is, if two people of equivalent skill are biking and one person is simply stronger, the stronger person would win.
Climbing- again, Dex is important, but I would hardly say it is the MOST important part about climbing aka hoisting your entire freaking body off the ground, often with only your arms. Grabbing a rope ain’t hard. Hauling yourself, your gear, a panicking person who just finished almost drowning, and the water on both of you is MAIN STRENGTH.
Dropping - this is literally about dropping heavy things on someone. VERY little dex involved ther- oh I guess it’s also a skill that could potentially deal damage therefore it HAS to be dex.
Flying leap - A SKILL THAT LITERALLY IS ABOUT FLINGING YOURSELF AT SOMEONE. UGH. Strength? Nope.
Forced entry - kicking a door in is ALL ABOUT STRENGTH. Hitting a door with your foot isn’t hard, I do it all the time when I’m sleepy and have in fact broken a toenail off doing so. It doesn’t matter how ninja-tastic your little Dex mono-build is, he/she/it/they should not be BETTER at kicking in doors than a Big Boot Strength Character. In the descrip it even calls out lock picking as a great option for subtlety no wait - that’s IQ. wait WHAT??
Garrote - ugh another “combat skill” that is basically strength vs strength, but has to be Dex because… reasons?
Immovable Stance - Strength vs someone who is pushing you? Nope. for some reason placing your feet all perfect like a ballerina is more important than being a WALL OF MUSCLE. Why not just have this as a technique instead, and base it off of acrobatics or something??
JUMPING - THIS ONE. This is the one that did it for me. JUMPING is the coordinated effort of AS MANY MUSCLES AS POSSIBLE. YES - I am aware that I used the word COORDINATED. But again, having bigger muscles is EVEN MORE IMPORTANT.
Lifting - why is this not strength. It literally says in the discription “...trained trained ability to use your strength…” ????? USING YOUR STRENGTH IS NOT USING YOUR STRENGTH? (yes I’m aware lifting is a HT skill, NO I DON’T CARE.)
Mount - this one is weird, but one of the uses is for bucking riders. You know what’s important for that? BULLS DO. GO ASK ONE.
Packing - literally the skill of picking stuff up and putting it back down. I don’t understand.
Power Blow - Why not have the option to draw on your…. Outer strength? At least we finally have a skill that is kinda combat-y and isn’t freakin DEX.
Push - okay now I KNOW this game is just messing with me. Is the only option for pushing someone… using the freaking FORCE?
Riding - again. Not something I know a huge amount about. But I do know that it makes your muscles sore AKA STRENGTH IS NOT COMPLETELY IGNORED. If anything this should at least be HT.
Sling - ugh. Something that increases your leverage in throwing things? Nope. Dx.
Soldier - I don’t know if you guys have talked to many soldiers, but by a lot of accounts, the stuff listed here is the basic drudge work that doesn’t take much IQ. Just GRUNT WORK AKA STRENGTH. GUAAUGH.
Spear Thrower - not this again...
Sports - I mean, sports is a pretty broad thing. Broad enough that I almost feel this one should be something else, but strength is definitely a HUGE part of it.
Sumo Wrestling - okay. There is a lot of things on this list that I have a tenuous grasp of. But I used to be super into sumo wrestling. There is almost NOTHING about it that isn’t about PURE RAW STRENGTH. And you know what isn’t PURE RAW STRENGTH? Yeah it’s their mass. Other than that everything is knowing how to place your hands and feet aka skill in placing your hands and feET AKA SKILL RANKS I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY EVEN HAVE A SKILL SYSTEM IF EVERYTHING INVOLVING MOVING YOUR BODY IS BASED ON DEXTERITY?
THROWING ART - FLINGING THE BIGGEST ROCK YOU CAN FIND. STRENGTH.
WRESTLING - NO IT IS STRENGTH.



Even things like farmer or gunner or even archery could POTENTIALLY be strength. Yes you have to hit something with the projectile or the ground with your shovel, but you have to be strong enough to CONTROL THE THING. Even parrying, to me, should involve strength somewhere. I mean yes, in movies and video games you see a perfect woman gently place her tight shiny leather arm exactly in the right spot and cause the attack to miss by a hair but in real life there is more parrying via SHOVING A THING IN THE WAY AND KEEPING IT THERE. Which again is strength.

I guess what this ultimately boils down to is this: Why are so many skills dex based only on the reasoning that fine control is important? Would that not be expressed as skill ranks (or whatever they’re called in this game) in which the more skilled you are, the better you are at placing your feet/jumping/whatever? Why is fine control seen as more important than being able to do something with that fine control.

Someone please enlighten me. I must be missing something huge. Like my strength score.

[Anonymouswizard]

Short answer, if/ when a skill to should use Strength the GM should base the roll off of ST.

Also, since of the skills (Flying Leap, Push, and Immovable Stance spring to mind) are explicitly meant to be supernatural martial arts skills. Want to know how to push someone?

Make an opposed strength roll. The same roll as to lift heavy objects. Most Strength rolls just aren't skills.

It's still a weak stat though. IQ for the IQ god!

[Morty]

Strength being less useful than other attributes seems to be oddly common. It comes up in D&D, Storyteller games, and apparently also GURPS. It also came up in Dark Heresy when I played it.

[Ts_]

The usefulness of strength (ST) certainly depends on the campaign, in particular the tech level.

In a low-tech campaign, being strong (and having more HP unless you buy it down again) is certainly useful in combat. Swing-damage becomes a lot better, and absent of magic, how else do you damage someone?

ST allows heavier weapons, even 1-handing weapons that are typically 2-handed, and picks don't get stuck as easily.

ST affects certain skills like Bow indirectly: Max range of a bow is a multiple of ST for bows and being able to shoot farther is a nice advantage if you consider distances strictly. Also you need more ST for stronger bows to use them, so again more damage. (Although I'm not sure if there are bows for really high ST ... They aren't listed, but then again, why not make them?) Reload time for crossbows is also affected by ST.

ST also affects things you might consider DX(dex)-based: You Dodge and Move (and many DX-based skills based) are drastically affected by your encumbrance. If you have really high ST, you can move fast and dodge well even in heavy armor and with a heavy shield (or carrying a captured royal and/or loot). It also means you will lose less FP (fatigue) because of the lower encumbrance penalty.

Is all of that worth it? I think it can be. But like many things in GURPS, you don't want to overspecialise: ST 15 will be useful in low-tech melee, ST 30 might not be. If you never get into a fight, likely ST 10-12 is all you need.

Also note that there are some optional rules for ST-based super heroes, like making Jumping ST-based (think of the Hulk's jumping). Plus, supers have options for Super-Strength, which is basically "Here's a 1000 ST for the cost of 10 ST". (The numbers are slightly off, but it's almost like that.)

But in general, ST is the odd one among the attributes. It's really not meaningful for skills as you pointed out and more a secondary characteristic like Move, even though ST is not derived. (Then again, if you allow arbitrarily buying single stats up and down, Move also isn't derived in any meaningful way.) It also falls in a completely different curve (reaching higher even for mundane humans) and typically isn't used in 3d6 rolls.

So yeah, it kinda sucks unless you really need to hit someone or get hit a lot.

Regards
Ts

[Rickshaw]

Thanks for the advice y'all- I might give it another chance then!

I'm playing a low tech game indeed, and I do plan on being hit A Lot- I have the unlucky disadvantage and am likely going to be the forward melee position

[Anonymouswizard]

Strength being less useful than other attributes seems to be oddly common. It comes up in D&D, Storyteller games, and apparently also GURPS. It also came up in Dark Heresy when I played it.

True, you'll notice it's omnipresent in Schenectady fiction games, to the point I tend to houserule it and CON together. In a science fiction setting Strength doesn't give you extra damage (as you're likely using a gun) and carrying capacity is less important (get it brought in by a drone out vary your adventuring equipment on a grave sled). My game uses four stats, Physique, Agility, Intellect, and Presence (used to be five, but the Charisma equivalent got split between Intellect and Willpower/Presence).

[RazorChain]

This is very simple from game mechanical perspective.

ST is the only stat that is almost limitless. The bigger the creature the higher the ST. Skill default to stats, most creatures have stats somewhere between 10 and 20, with the upper limit being rare. This means that skills default to those stats at -3 to -5, very hard skills almost never default to a stat but would be -6 if they did. This means a giants, ogres, dragons etc would have all ST based skill at 15 as the highest default is from 20 and they often have ST well above 20.

So it's mostly about game mechanics.

As has been mentioned a good GM will often ask you to make ST based skill rolls and Skills that rely on good ST like for example Wrestling often have included bonuses for having good ST. Dexterity is also about muscles but more about how you coordinate your muscles, having tremendous ST helps when you are splitting a log..but doesn't help much if you don't hit that log.

ST gets less relevant if you play modern or Sci-Fi, but in Fantasy ST gets really underestimated by the DX monkeys. The best melee fighter I've made in Gurps relied on ST and HT, with ST 15 you have sw 2d+1 and thrust at 1d+1. Now grab an axe and shield and you are going to be doing 2d+3 cut in damage. That is 10 cutting in average, even against somebody wearing a medium mail shirt with DR4 you are doing 9 (6*1.5) in damage and crippling their limbs and inflicting major wound if they have HP 17 or less. High ST fighters tend to end fights in a single blow, they do enough damage to stun or cripple on average damage rolls and that's when the kicking starts.

Also ST only costs 10 points per level while DX is 20 and you should never underestimate having more HP which means you are harder to stun and cripple and you can wear heavier armor without taking penalty to move or dodge which means you'll be even harder to cripple. The DX monkey usually wants to have as light armor as possible to maximize dodge. In fact I recommend you buy your HP to 16 so you'll be harder to stun and cripple. Cheap way to get a little extra damage is Striking ST which only costs 5 points per level but is usually limited to 2 levels for humans, It essentially splits your ST but your damage is calculated using Striking ST while HP, Encumbrance and ST rolls are made using your regular ST.

[Knaight]

A lot of the listed skills are combat skills, where the skill part reflects coordination. They tend to still interact with the damage table, and strength scores are by far the single most important thing on that table.

[kyoryu]

What Knaight and Ts_ said.

In low tech games, especially for warrior types, Strength is invaluable. Hitting all day doesn't matter for much if you're not actually hurting anybody. And the ability of high strength to deal with larger weapons (ignore unready, one-hand two-handed weapons etc.) is amazing.

For high tech games? Not so much, and for non-warrior types, not so much.

[thedanster7000]

The reason all these are Dex is because its a measure of the coordination required to pull them off. For instance, with your garrote example, the Dex-based skill is used to coordinate the attack, while Strength is used to calculate damage and chances of them getting you off.

(But yeah, not as valuable in High-Tech games). I think the thing is that with GURPS, a couple of points of strength could be the difference between leaving a guy standing and ripping his leg off, it really can be invaluable in Low-Tech games.

[JellyPooga]

You're looking at skills the wrong way; if your ST is high enough, you don't need the skill. Take Lifting, for example; a strong character can lift X amount. A weaker character with Y in Lifting can also lift X. The strong character with Y in Lifting can lift Z, which is higher than X. The thing to understand is that the skill of lifting doesn't actually have much, if anything, to do with how strong you are. It's technique, it's coordination, it's knowledge. To get better at lifting stuff, you can do one or both of two things; learn how to lift efficiently and/or actually get stronger. The former is learning the appropriate skill, the latter is improving your ST score.

The same applies to all the other skills you mention. ST is a measure of your ability to physically move things through pure muscle. No more. Your skill at performing tasks relating to those activities has a connection to ST, by their nature, but isn't improved by it, per se. The skill itself is (usually) dependant on DX or IQ.

[daniel_ream]

GURPS is a heavily expanded version of The Fantasy Trip, a rules-light dungeon crawl game. The four attributes are entirely a holdover from that game. For a non-pre-industrial setting, there's not much reason for ST to be an attribute while Charisma is an Advantage that bases off of IQ, but there it is. It's a legacy issue.

[RazorChain]

GURPS is a heavily expanded version of The Fantasy Trip, a rules-light dungeon crawl game. The four attributes are entirely a holdover from that game. For a non-pre-industrial setting, there's not much reason for ST to be an attribute while Charisma is an Advantage that bases off of IQ, but there it is. It's a legacy issue.

Charisma has nothing to do with IQ in Gurps. Charisma only gives you reaction bonuses, those bonuses are only used if you use the reaction table, you could just as well take reputation, status or attractiveness to gain those bonuses.

[daniel_ream]

Sorry, I oversimplified to the point of losing the meaning. Skills that would normally be based on a "Charisma" stat had to be based off of IQ and modified by the Charisma Advantage, because IQ was the only mental stat. They've hacked at this over the editions, but all of the variants end up with weird edge cases. Willpower is a similar problem.

[RazorChain]

The only advantage that gives bonus to influence skills is voice. Charisma doesnt give skill bonuses.

[daniel_ream]

How Charisma is handled has changed significantly over the editions.

You can keep nitpicking irrelevant details, or we can return to the central point: the attributes in GURPS are wonky because they're a holdover from a dungeon crawling game where you only needed one not-physical stat.

[RazorChain]

How Charisma is handled has changed significantly over the editions.

You can keep nitpicking irrelevant details, or we can return to the central point: the attributes in GURPS are wonky because they're a holdover from a dungeon crawling game where you only needed one not-physical stat.

I stand corrected....Charisma gives bonus to Panhandling, Fortune Teller, Performance and Leadership, and gives you bonus when you are substituting skills instead of using the reaction table. That is you can use fast talk, diplomacy etc vs Will to get a good reaction from somebody, but then again you get all your reaction bonuses from status, reputation, good looks on that roll.


Gurps has already broken up IQ into 3 stats in all but points and since 4th ed. my group has bought up IQ, Will and Perception separately. There are Gurps players that want more mental stats and those people mostly talk about an emotional intelligence stat instead of charisma. Some want to break it up some more. The only benefits I see to that is when you are playing a smart character that's supposed to be socially inept, in that case if you have IQ of 16 you already have a default fast talk of 11. Else if you want to be socially inept then just don't take social skills or just take some disads that penalize your social skills like truthfulness or shyness.

For my part I don't think the stats in Gurps are particularly wonky. You have ST, DX, IQ, HT, Perception and Will. These are 6 stats and I can't see how Gurps benefits from removing ST even it's not as relevant in modern or sci-fi setting.

[daniel_ream]

For my part I don't think the stats in Gurps are particularly wonky. You have ST, DX, IQ, HT, Perception and Will. These are 6 stats

No, there's four stats. Perception and Will used to be baselined on IQ but this had the problem of high IQ people also being the most iron-willed and keen-eyed, which didn't always make sense, and so they've been hacking away at it for four editions now rather than just add or change the primary stats.

GURPS has been all but abandoned by SJG, and even the line developer in charge of it admits what he runs at home bears little resemblance to the published rules. It is what it is.

[RazorChain]

No, there's four stats. Perception and Will used to be baselined on IQ but this had the problem of high IQ people also being the most iron-willed and keen-eyed, which didn't always make sense, and so they've been hacking away at it for four editions now rather than just add or change the primary stats.

Yes they have split up the stats and give options of buying them separately, I and my group have been doing it for years. All the stats break up. ST is Striking ST, Lifting ST and HP rolled into one stat. DX is DX and 0.25 SPEED in one stat. IQ is IQ, WILL and PER in one stat. HT is HT, 0.25 SPEED and FP in one stat. If you want to you can break these up and buy separately. But yes I agree that IQ, WILL and PER should be separate stats but the rules give you options to treat them as such.



GURPS has been all but abandoned by SJG, and even the line developer in charge of it admits what he runs at home bears little resemblance to the published rules. It is what it is.

And what is it? Sean "Dr Kromm" Punch might be playing Fate for all I care, just like Mike Pondsmith is probably sitting at his home playing Cyberpunk V3 (yuck). What hacks or homebrews they run doesn't concern me much. You do realize that there are published alternative rules for Gurps all the time and he is the line editor...things like tactical shooting, technical grappling or the deadly spring (alternate rules for bows). he makes sure that the rules match with the rest of system, what he plays is his own business. He can't force me to play only Gurps and I'm sure not going to force him to play it

If Gurps was abandoned then they wouldn't be releasing things like Gurps Mars Attacks or Gurps Discworld and supporting Monster Hunters, Action, Dungeon Fantasy, Loadouts, Vehicles, Locations, After the End and more.

Edit: In 2002 after the D20 OGL in 2000 there were doomsday predictions that SJG would convert their books to D20 and Gurps would be abandoned, now it's 2017 and I'm still playing Gurps and buying Gurps products.

[Anonymouswizard]

No, there's four stats. Perception and Will used to be baselined on IQ but this had the problem of high IQ people also being the most iron-willed and keen-eyed, which didn't always make sense, and so they've been hacking away at it for four editions now rather than just add or change the primary stats.

Four stats (ST, DX, IQ, HT), 2 half stats (Will and Per, based on IQ). In 4e Will and Per became official sorta stats, in theory being based off of IQ but in practice being independent, which has the sad effect of making IQ effectively only 10points/level.


GURPS has been all but abandoned by SJG, and even the line developer in charge of it admits what he runs at home bears little resemblance to the published rules. It is what it is.

Yeah, although I'm enjoying that they're doing PoD for some titles, it makes it possible for me to get older ones. EDIT: I don't agree it's abandoned exactly, but I don't think it's a priority. I'm looking forward to see if the Dungeon Fantasy box does well, if it does we might get more 'genre boxes'.

I suspect when I run GURPS next I'll use five stats (Physique [PH] at 10pt/level, DX at 20pt/level, IQ at 20pt/level, Will at 5pt/level, and Per at 5pt/level), but that's because I'll be running it in a time period where the main use for ST is 'be able to carry your gun'. Or maybe I'll just make Will and Per separate, along with HP and FP.

[RazorChain]

Four stats (ST, DX, IQ, HT), 2 half stats (Will and Per, based on IQ). In 4e Will and Per became official sorta stats, in theory being based off of IQ but in practice being independent, which has the sad effect of making IQ effectively only 10points/level.



Yeah, although I'm enjoying that they're doing PoD for some titles, it makes it possible for me to get older ones. EDIT: I don't agree it's abandoned exactly, but I don't think it's a priority. I'm looking forward to see if the Dungeon Fantasy box does well, if it does we might get more 'genre boxes'.

I suspect when I run GURPS next I'll use five stats (Physique [PH] at 10pt/level, DX at 20pt/level, IQ at 20pt/level, Will at 5pt/level, and Per at 5pt/level), but that's because I'll be running it in a time period where the main use for ST is 'be able to carry your gun'. Or maybe I'll just make Will and Per separate, along with HP and FP.

Nah Gurps isnt their flagship product anymore, munchkin is. But they'll support Gurps while it pays off. I'm not sad about they're mostly into PDFs, I have over 100 books in 3rd edition and have mostly moved over to PDFs. The days of carrying all these books are over :)

As for IQ I suggest you price it at 15 points per level if you split PER and Will from it. Remember that DX included 0.25 speed which costs 5 points.

[Anonymouswizard]

Nah Gurps isnt their flagship product anymore, munchkin is. But they'll support Gurps while it pays off. I'm not sad about they're mostly into PDFs, I have over 100 books in 3rd edition and have mostly moved over to PDFs. The days of carrying all these books are over :)

Yeah, 4e's my baby and it's the game I'd always run if I had the choice, but I tend to run for groups that prefer easier to create characters. Not a massive loss, I just use the supplements to inform homebrew for other games. I don't mind that it's mainly pdfs, but I do want a physical copy of Ultra-Tech because I'm likely going to reference it a lot when running games, and prefer it with a physical book. The rest I can deal with in pdf.


As for IQ I suggest you price it at 15 points per level if you split PER and Will from it. Remember that DX included 0.25 speed which costs 5 points.

It's reasonable, but IQ is likely going to be more useful than DX in the game I'm planning.

[daniel_ream]

Nah Gurps isnt their flagship product anymore, munchkin is. But they'll support Gurps while it pays off.

GURPS doesn't pay off. At all.

SJG has a nice arrangement that combines freelancing and electronic publishing, so that David Pulver can make pizza money by knocking out a new PDF pamphlet every couple of months, but 4E 1st printing dropped 13 years ago. That's longer than all previous editions combined, times four. (1st to 3rd was three whole years). The major physical-print sourcebooks haven't been updated in ten years.

My point about the line developer is that the people responsible for developing and designing the system know full well that what's currently available in print is clunky and out of date and needs major revision, but that doesn't matter because there's never going to be a GURPS 5 while SJ is alive.

To the OP: ST exists because the core game design is a holdover from a dungeon crawl game where muscle power mattered. In a future-tech or modern setting you could replace ST with CH (Charisma), base all ST skills and HP off of HT and be fine with the result.

[RazorChain]

GURPS doesn't pay off. At all.


How do you know?



SJG has a nice arrangement that combines freelancing and electronic publishing, so that David Pulver can make pizza money by knocking out a new PDF pamphlet every couple of months, but 4E 1st printing dropped 13 years ago. That's longer than all previous editions combined, times four. (1st to 3rd was three whole years). The major physical-print sourcebooks haven't been updated in ten years.

My point about the line developer is that the people responsible for developing and designing the system know full well that what's currently available in print is clunky and out of date and needs major revision, but that doesn't matter because there's never going to be a GURPS 5 while SJ is alive.



You realize that David Pulver is a freelance writer and hasn't worked on many 4e supplements.

Why should they update the sourcebooks while they are still in 4e?

Why do people update game systems? The main reason is to make money, when a new edition comes out all your older stuff gets irrelevant and you have to buy everything again. Whether editions go out of date is debatable as there are still people who play Cyberpunk 2020, D&D BECMI and oWoD. Games don't get bad because they are old.

Gurps being clunky is up to peoples personal taste. I don't find it more clunky than a lot of other systems I've played.



To the OP: ST exists because the core game design is a holdover from a dungeon crawl game where muscle power mattered. In a future-tech or modern setting you could replace ST with CH (Charisma), base all ST skills and HP off of HT and be fine with the result.

That isn't entirely true and if you play Gurps you should know this. Even when playing future settings muscle power will matter as you might encounter large creatures with tremendous Strenght. If you give them HT of 50 and calculate swing and thrust and HP from that you will end up with a creature that you most likely have to drop down to -250 HP to kill as it will never fail its HT check. It will mean that strong characters will never get sick, always resist poisons, never get stunned, never fall unconscious etc. Which will mean that players would find that unacceptable and split ST from HT. Or you could just pump yourself full of steroids, train like an idiot and never get a heart attack

[Anonymouswizard]

Why do people update game systems? The main reason is to make money, when a new edition comes out all your older stuff gets irrelevant and you have to buy everything again. Whether editions go out of date is debatable as there are still people who play Cyberpunk 2020, D&D BECMI and oWoD. Games don't get bad because they are old.

Yeah, money is the reason. Although unless it's something like D&D, which seems to go out of it's way to make old stuff irrelevant, generally it becomes 'your stuff still works, but requires a lot more work'.

I mean, Mongoose Traveller 2e is almost exactly the same beast as 1e rules-wise, it's presentation just makes more sense and some systems have changed slightly. The only thing that isn't really cross compatible is the ship design, and in all honesty it's just better in 2e (although 1e had nice simple ship design).


Gurps being clunky is up to peoples personal taste. I don't find it more clunky than a lot of other systems I've played.

I find GURPS to be distinctly unclunky, but with a ton of stuff. Like so much stuff it's nearly impossible to guide people through character creation. That's why I've stopped using it as a system, it's much easier to pinch the technology rules and research and apply it to another system then it is to help a group of 4-5 players make characters.

It's what killed running Eclipse Phase for me, yeah I could guide people through the problems of it, or I could use the official Fate hack.


That isn't entirely true and if you play Gurps you should know this. Even when playing future settings muscle power will matter as you might encounter large creatures with tremendous Strenght. If you give them HT of 50 and calculate swing and thrust and HP from that you will end up with a creature that you most likely have to drop down to -250 HP to kill as it will never fail its HT check. It will mean that strong characters will never get sick, always resist poisons, never get stunned, never fall unconscious etc. Which will mean that players would find that unacceptable and split ST from HT. Or you could just pump yourself full of steroids, train like an idiot and never get a heart attack

Yeah, but this is why I'd argue you should separate HP from ST even more than it is. HP is a rather poor investment for GURPS characters anyway, as past low tech games it's a significant chunk of your points per shot you want to absorb (a pistol is what, 10 damage on average, 17 for a rifle?). It becomes much better to invest in wealth and buy an expensive suit of armour that might have DR in the high tens to low fifties (assuming it exists at the TL you're playing).

That's not to say that ST is useless in science fiction settings, it's just you rarely need it at a level higher than what you need to use your weapon and carry your basic gear, so 10-12 should generally do the trick. Which honestly isn't that bad, you're probably going to be buying basic ranks in a few more skills than you would in a swords and sorcery setting. Engineering, computers, drive, mechanics, and similar skills become significantly more important the more technology increases.

I do see your point, I'd have ended up kludging together big monsters with lots of extra hp and striking strength. So what if most people will leave ST at 10 and not carry a ton of equipment, that's a valid way to play.

[RazorChain]

I find GURPS to be distinctly unclunky, but with a ton of stuff. Like so much stuff it's nearly impossible to guide people through character creation. That's why I've stopped using it as a system, it's much easier to pinch the technology rules and research and apply it to another system then it is to help a group of 4-5 players make characters.

It's what killed running Eclipse Phase for me, yeah I could guide people through the problems of it, or I could use the official Fate hack.



I'm running a Gurps game now for relative newbies. 3 of them had played D&D 5e for a year or so, while 2 had no RPG experience. The Chargen I resolved with a session zero, prior to session zero we had communicated via email and facebook so I just showed up with templates according to the players wishes and spent time fine tuning and cobbling together backgrounds and stuff.

The system has posed no problem at all, it's easy enough to roll 3d6 against skill and they're getting expert tacticians using the advanced combat system with a lots rules from Martial Arts.

[Anonymouswizard]

I'm running a Gurps game now for relative newbies. 3 of them had played D&D 5e for a year or so, while 2 had no RPG experience. The Chargen I resolved with a session zero, prior to session zero we had communicated via email and facebook so I just showed up with templates according to the players wishes and spent time fine tuning and cobbling together backgrounds and stuff.

The system has posed no problem at all, it's easy enough to roll 3d6 against skill and they're getting expert tacticians using the advanced combat system with a lots rules from Martial Arts.

Oh, the system itself is fine, and I'd totally be willing to game a load of templates. But when you have a group who decides on a game and expects a session zero right there it's difficult.

I mean, I REALLY want to run a science fiction game with GURPS. The core set, Space, and Ultra-Tech, and you should have enough to go. I just haven't been illustrating why I haven't very well. 150 point characters, give players a 120 point template and 30 points to increase stats and skills, and you could start quickly.

[RazorChain]

Oh, the system itself is fine, and I'd totally be willing to game a load of templates. But when you have a group who decides on a game and expects a session zero right there it's difficult.

I mean, I REALLY want to run a science fiction game with GURPS. The core set, Space, and Ultra-Tech, and you should have enough to go. I just haven't been illustrating why I haven't very well. 150 point characters, give players a 120 point template and 30 points to increase stats and skills, and you could start quickly.


Well I have an advantage, I put the group together via a facebook group centered on RPG's in the country I live, so I just told what I was going to run and chose among the applicants. Good GM's are hard to find so I had to turn people away. Either they were interested in playing Gurps or they wanted to play in the Mythic Europe setting I'm running. Now a year and a half later there are still people that want in on the game, mostly people that have played with my players. Decent GM's are worth their weight in gold I suppose.

I've told the group when this Campaign finished in a year or so then I'll take a short break and let one of them run a game with me as a player while I plan my Gurps Cyberpunk campaign. One player will leave the group then because he doesn't like Sci-fi. I won't cry mostly because our playstyles clash. He's a decent player but he likes combat, magic items and boss monsters so I think he'd have more fun playing D&D. There is no problem but my games don't focus on those things.

I still haven't run that Transhuman Space game I wanted run a 15 years ago or so :)...but I'll use it for inspiration for the Cyberpunk game I'm going to run.

[Anonymouswizard]

I still haven't run that Transhuman Space game I wanted run a 15 years ago or so :)...but I'll use it for inspiration for the Cyberpunk game I'm going to run.

Ah, Transhuman Space, I love that setting. It's one where I really want to get all the books, despite the work required to update stuff.

Parts of it inform the Space Opera game I have planned, with Bioroids, Rejuvenation, and the various biotech and AI. I'm not using the Brain Uploading as a major element, but I'm stretching the technology across about 50-100 star systems (all with multiple bodies colonised). I really want to run it, but I've found few people willing to play such hard science (although it's not that hard, only hard in comparison to most SF gaming).

So I'm taking the hard science elements I want and slotting them in a setting with laser guns and 'pocket drives' (imagine that someone shamelessly stole the implementation of hyperdrive from the Commonwealth Saga). I was going to go with a jump drive, but in my experience most people are more comfortable with hyperspace or warp drives than interstellar teleportation. It ends up as a sort of 'Culture-light', although all the sapient species in the setting come from Sol.