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smorty11
2022-03-03, 05:17 AM
I've been playing about 95% GURPS for a while and I like a lot about it. Mechanics. Playability. Not having to teach my rules-averse players new things every few months. I've even been pretty active on the GURPS forums.

Now, I'm pretty new over here and I see people fluent in lots of systems. So, I want to know what the shortcomings of GURPS are. What have I been missing by being so close to the system for so long?

Conversly, is there something that is just so much better in other systems that leave GURPS behind.

Satinavian
2022-03-03, 07:21 AM
GURPS is less a system and more a toolset to build a system perfect for your campaign.

That is not per se bad. But someone has to make the effort. Ideally someone who knows the GURPS rather well.

That means it is a huge hurdle for new GMs. It also means it is a huge initial time investment for a campaign that might not actually work out or run long.


Another reason would be that many other systems come with interesting settings people want to play and rules tailor made for it.


The last reason is that while GURPS can do lots of things, it often struggles to be the best option for many things. Sure, when your whole group is already familiar with GURPS, it is often easier to play it with GURPS. But what if not ? If you have a camapaign idea and look for the best fitting system because your players don't know an acceptable one well ?

Eldan
2022-03-03, 07:25 AM
Too much work. I line my generic systems very simple and my crunchier systems with a world already implemented.

Ideally both.

Glorthindel
2022-03-03, 07:32 AM
GURPS is less a system and more a toolset to build a system perfect for your campaign.

That is not per se bad. But someone has to make the effort. Ideally someone who knows the GURPS rather well.

That means it is a huge hurdle for new GMs. It also means it is a huge initial time investment for a campaign that might not actually work out or run long.


I've had a funny relationship with GURPS for a long time (I reckon it would be 30 years ago when I first tried it). I love, absolutely love the character creation process, but the second I actually tried to play the game, I just seemed to slam hard against wall after wall. There just seemed too much maths, too often, and you seemed to spend ages checking books and tables only to discover you've failed to achieve anything again.

However, I recently had an epiphany. I was looking to find a good Cyberpunk system (I love the setting for Shadowrun, the various attempts at the rules less so), and kept seeing comments to use GURPS. So I broke, picked up the rulebooks and braced myself for disappointment. And realised where everything had been going wrong. It was the various GM's, not the system. Its not a system that you play straight out the box, you have to take an axe to the rules and carve out the system you need from the various tools on offer. But if the DM isn't prepared and willing to do that, you risk drowning in the morass.

SimonMoon6
2022-03-03, 08:40 AM
It's been about 20 years since I've opened up a GURPS book, but here's what I remember not liking:

(1) The game is very much geared towards a certain power level, and that power level is "ordinary person" or "slightly above average person". At that power level, the game works very well. But once you start to venture beyond that power level, the game breaks down in any number of ways.

I recall a PC who was very accurate with his weapon. Every attack he ever made ended up being a called shot to the brain because that's how he could maximize his damage when he's incredibly skilled with his weapon. That's fine for the occasional attack, but every attack? He had no reason to do anything else.

I recall a PC who had a lot more health than the game expected someone to have. This ended up resulting in a situation where he could never be knocked unconscious. Sure, he could be killed (in a game where resurrections were not to be expected), but he could never be defeated otherwise.

And superpowers? Don't even think about superpowers. Yes, there are rules for "Supers", but they are an incredibly poor fit to the existing ruleset. GURPS just doesn't expect people to be that powerful and so it twists itself in weird ways as it tries to accomodate superpowerful people. And even then, we're not talking crazy Silver Age DC power levels. GURPS would just implode into a black hole if it tried to represent the pre-Crisis Superman. Just normal superheroes are already taxing the system to its limits.

(2) Weird prerequisites.

Like with spells, you can't learn a useful fire spell until you learn all the worthless wimpy fire spells first. That's just weird. I seem to recall something similar with superpowers but my memories are lost in the mists of time.

(3) The skill system is not my favorite. In particular, the way that skills are based off an attribute, so that a super-genius can never really be bad at any INT-based skill they've studied even a little bit. I recall "GURPS Wild Cards" having to create a new system for dealing with language skills just to get around the weirdness of the skill system. Prior to Wild Cards, you couldn't have a genius who only barely knew a foreign language; as soon as he learned even a single word of a foreign language, he was instantly fluent in the language. This band-aid for language skills doesn't apply to any other skills though.

ngilop
2022-03-03, 09:44 AM
I need to point out that this is not a 'what i do not like about GURPS' post, but rather, a 'after playing this is what i feel are it shortcomings".

1) GURPS plays best at a certain expected power level (like simonmoon6 stated above me) Only i think its a tad higher than 'average joe' if you go even a bit further than that, its starts to break down.

2) GURPS is a more gritty system, which can be hard for people coming in from the modern games where failure doesn't happen. I attribute failure not happening as including a 'you still succeed but take a minor penalty'


Even if you do not play GURPS id say the vast majority of their books are amazing for ideas.

DigoDragon
2022-03-03, 09:49 AM
I agree that GURPS requires a big up-front cost of time to set it up the way you want. That can be a pain when you only have an outline of the campaign in your head. Don't even think about one-shots. XD

But after that it does run decently smooth.



Like with spells, you can't learn a useful fire spell until you learn all the worthless wimpy fire spells first. That's just weird. I seem to recall something similar with superpowers but my memories are lost in the mists of time.

I never liked the way GURPS uses a skill system for magic. You put a big up front investment in your IQ and Magery advantage, and then you can pretty much buy all the spells at 1 point each and have a high skill where you get cost reduction benefits. But that also means having a bunch of prerequisite spells you'll never use just to have a decent attack spell.

I wanted to see a new magic system a bit more like psionics or super powers where you build the spell and the effects and just pay for that.

Anonymouswizard
2022-03-03, 11:01 AM
I wanted to see a new magic system a bit more like psionics or super powers where you build the spell and the effects and just pay for that.

I'm fairly certain 4e has that, called Sorcery or the like. Also an alternate version of psychic powers that works closer to magic with many smaller effects to purchase.

Then if course there's stuff like Path Magic (I believe it's Ritual Magic in 3e and earlier), where you buy your IQ and Magery, buy a Path as a skill, than if you want to be good at a spell you have to boy it up as a technique. But it also works because at the expected PC points values getting rid of the fairly big restrictions (IIRC they were time, reagents, and a preprepared casting space) requires a good number of CP as well.

kyoryu
2022-03-03, 11:18 AM
Did you make the reddit thread?

I love GURPS, but it's not the system I use for everything.

It's heavy and fiddly. Sometimes I want that, but often I don't. As far as generic systems, these days I'm a bit more likely to reach for Savage Worlds or Fate, depending on what I'm trying to do in a game.

Stonehead
2022-03-03, 11:59 AM
(full disclosure, I actually like GURPS)

Some of the rules and systems in GURPS (at least 4th edition, the one I've played) really have no excuse to be so clunky. RAW to calculate your damage with a slam attack, you need to multiply your hp by your velocity, and divide by 100. This is so clunky it has no reason to exist. People joke about tabletop rpgs needing math, but usually that's just adding/subtracting 1s and 2s, literal kindergarten stuff, not multiplication and division. There are plenty of people who can't do 13 * 7 quickly in their head. Also, because it uses the speed you moved that turn you can't just use a calculator during character creation, each slam could have a different amount of damage. And another thing, because of the math, it's basically never worth it for a humanoid to slam something. Even with incredible speed and hp, you're going to deal 1 damage maximum.

Slams are a particularly egregious example, but GURPS is full of really pointless over complicated rules like this. A successful jump roll lets you increase your "standard jump distance" by 20%. An hour of walking costs 1 fatigue with no save, regardless of your health score. Athletes get just as tired after 1 hour of walking as literal children. The if you fail a fright check, RAW you need to crack open the book, and roll on a table to determine the penalty. Most people just ignore these rules/subsystems, but if they're so bad, why do they take up so much space in the book?

Willie the Duck
2022-03-03, 12:00 PM
OP, it may be helpful to link your reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/t58m0q/tell_me_why_you_dont_like_gurps/)post of the same question, so people can see what you've already heard.

I actually like GURPS fairly well. It's at a level of crunch, complexity, and required investment I'm not interested in playing at this moment in my life, but it is hardly alone in that regard. It does, however, have a number of limitations.
Here is where I think the system has issues (for me):

The point build system -- yes, I know most people who promote GURPS also point to this as a key benefit. However, here's my issue: I don't know if it is actually stated, but it seems that they idea behind the points is that they are a limit keeping PCs of like limit relatively similar in capability*, gauge opponent ability, valuate the benefit of an ally group or burden of a dependent, or measure how much 'advancement' the GM is doling out to the PCs. However, to my mind the point system works very poorly in this regard. The system is imminently gameable, various options are strictly better, some abilities are more or less valuable for a player character than they are for an opponent or ally (but cost the same for both), disadvantages... well those are another ball of wax entirely. All in all, the point system just seems like it doesn't work for what I assume are the intended purposes.
*with some unavoidable issues with things like campaign specifics will sometimes make being a specialist will be better and sometimes being a polymath and don't build a combat monster if the campaign will be 90% talking and so on.

Rules purpose -- I've said before and will again that GURPS has a table and modifier and rule for anything and everything, but often these rules are reliable, consistent, and completely divorced from what they add to a game. Oftentimes you will spend massive amounts of time adding and subtracting modifiers (+1, -2, +3, -2, +1...) to move a character's 15 score to a 16 or 14 and... very slightly change your chance of success. At no point does it seem to be asked whether this enhances gameplay. Moving off modifiers, one thing I noticed is a rather exhaustive preoccupation lifting, carrying, and encumbrance rules. This is hardly unique to GURPS, as most trad games of the era did have such rules, but the amount of rules (and rules churn in 3e) make it seem like the designers thought it would come up more often than it often does in non-D&D/treasure hunting games. Especially when other aspects such as 'how do I do a social scenario?' or 'what does this skill in Botany actually do for me?' questions often went unanswered or came out in supplements long after the core books.

Realism -- Note also that at least some of this seems to be about making the game more 'realistic,' but by hewing to the gamist conceits of applying static +/-1s that then translate to shifts on a 3d6 bell curve, it really doesn't (so, for example, a circumstantial modifier which gives a '+1' to a person changes someone with a native 15 ability from a 92% chance to a 96%, but a person with an 8 ability from 28 to 39. Does that map to how circumstantial benefits would actually benefit people based on competence in real life? For all abilities and endeavors?).

Universality -- GURPS markets itself as universal, and certainly has supplements for all sorts of games, yet the sweet spot where the game works well (gritty, combat avoidant, skill-focused, relatively non-magical/super/psionic) is frankly pretty small. Other generics like Savage Worlds and maybe even Hero System (which is mostly just like GURPS except anti-gritty and good for superhero hijinks) have more breadth.

Disadvantages -- disadvantages work in GURPS like they do in real life -- you try to minimize how often they actually affect you. Obviously the GM has oversight ('no you can't get 100 extra points for 'terminal illness,' this is a one-off!'), but still the tactically best option is to choose a negative that either A) is unlikely to come up, or B) the consequences of invoking it are so horrific, either your character dies and you get to make a new one, or the GM just won't ever pull the trigger on it. I've heard the arguments for why this can be better than systems where you get benefits only when the disadvantage does come into play (pretty much 'those systems tend to incentivize someone who is extremely phobic towards spiders to crawl into web-filled tunnels, which isn't realistic'), but those other systems at least encourage players to engage with the adventure hooks their character build creates, which IMO is beneficial to the game at large (certainly better than the GM having a list of player weaknesses they have to try to weave into the scenarios in a fair way).

Mordar
2022-03-03, 02:51 PM
For me it is simply this: Rules/systems designed for a specific game in a specific genre make the game feel better.

Sure, GURPS can simulate World of Darkness. And Marvel Super Heroes. And Deadlands. But they all just feel like GURPS (see also Worlds, Savage).

I want the intricacies, conceits and foibles of the original systems for these games...in part because I (optimistically) believe the rules were designed to enhance the feel of the game, and I want that distinctness.

To me it is part of the trappings of the games. Kind of like how organized sports teams frequently have practice uniforms...it becomes part of the ritual to put you in the right frame of mind.

On top of all of that, I came up in an era where almost every game had its own ruleset, even those from a same company (TSR, FASA, Pacesetter...as I recall, Chaosium was the primary exception), so learning a new system was never perceived as a barrier to entry.

- M

Pex
2022-03-03, 03:00 PM
It's been a long time since I've played it, early 1990s. Not all that I have to say might still be applicable.

1) Your character does not improve. As you play sessions you only earn 1 to 3 points, which are only enough to improve one or two skills. You are doing the same thing at game session 30 as you did at game session 15 as you did game session 1.

2) NPC interactions only hurt you, not help you. If I save the village I cannot count on the people helping or liking me any more than when we first met until I save enough points to hopefully, eventually, buy Reputation. The Mayor will never do me a favor down the line because I'll never have enough points to buy him as a Patron. However, tick off the evil Necromancer spoiling his plans, he'll be a reoccurring Enemy. The King will never make me a Knight until and unless I buy Status no matter what I do in saving the day.

3) I cannot gain and keep vast wealth of treasure unless I buy Wealthy Advantage, which I'll never have enough points to buy. Bye bye loot.

Everything and anything costs points to use. Where 3E D&D suffered from "you need a feat for that" GURPS suffers from "you need to spend points for that".

Pauly
2022-03-03, 03:39 PM
The biggest downside of GURPS is the buy in. It takes time to learn and master the basics and the mind set of the rules. I think it is really important for the players to understand the intent of GURPS and how that informs the rules, otherwise players will rub up against the limits of the rules and complain that it can’t do what it isn’t intended to do.

The other major disadvantage is that it’s a reality based system, so very magical, very sci-fi, very superhero etc. genres tend to break it. For example if you want to play 1930s pulp fiction type superheroes (eg The Shadow, The Phantom, original Batman, **** *ie Richard* Tracy) GURPS does a fantastic job, bit if you want to play modern Marvel type superheroes, eh not so much.

After the buy in and an appropriate setting it runs fairly smoothly. As others have said there are a LOT of rules, so if you can decide on which rules to cut out, which modifiers you are willing to hand wave out of existence you can fine tune the system to run very smoothly. Normally I advocate for strict RAW, but I find GURPS is better for editing out the stuff you don’t want to use. One thing my group has done has been to halve (or third) the number of modifiers but double (or triple) the effect of each modifier.

It’s math heavy, which is a problem for some players. If we go back to the ‘what’s 13 x 7’ from earlier in the thread, for decision making you don’t need to know the exact number, just an approximate. The situation may be 50< Not worth it; ~100 Maybe worth a try; 150> just do it already. I played in a campaign we had to abandon because one player literally could not estimate which band 13 x 7 would fall into.

It assumes there is some degree of competitiveness between the GM and the players. If you look at SJG all of their best non GURPS games are competitive not co-operative (OGRE/GEV, Car Wars, Illuminati, Munchkin). If you want a game where the GM high 5s you and gives you a backslap for defeating the big boss, GURPS may not be the system for you. No TTRPG survives a truly adversarial character killing, player hating GM, but GURPS works better when the GM isn’t holding the player’s hands. As a drawback it means the players/GM have to be more emotionally mature than other games.

Jay R
2022-03-03, 10:06 PM
I like GURPS. I really do. Their approach to simulation is admirable. When they were building a table of weapon weights, they didn't base it on playability or balance. They brought in a bunch of weapons and weighed them.

GURPS is usually the second best system for the genre I'm trying to play. It's almost as good as D&D for fantasy, almost as good as Champions for super-heroes, almost as good as Flashing Blades for musketeers, almost as good as Traveler for science fiction, etc.

That's why I almost never play it. For any game I want to play, it's always one of the better systems, but never the best system.

DigoDragon
2022-03-04, 09:13 AM
I'm fairly certain 4e has that, called Sorcery or the like.

I'll have to find which book that is in and read up on it.



Some of the rules and systems in GURPS (at least 4th edition, the one I've played) really have no excuse to be so clunky.

I've played 3e and there's plenty of math in there too. Possibly more clunky in certain areas if my memory is correct. I remember Vehicles being the King Pin of clunk. XD

I've been playing in the GURPS system online for several years now and what really helps alleviate some of the math is that I created a "Plug-n-Chug" spreadsheet that does most of the work. Plug in the variables, it chugs out an answer.



2) NPC interactions only hurt you, not help you. If I save the village I cannot count on the people helping or liking me any more than when we first met until I save enough points to hopefully, eventually, buy Reputation. The Mayor will never do me a favor down the line because I'll never have enough points to buy him as a Patron.

3) I cannot gain and keep vast wealth of treasure unless I buy Wealthy Advantage, which I'll never have enough points to buy. Bye bye loot.

This part I might actually put fault in the GM. I'm fairly certain that there are guidelines where you can earn free points for this kind of stuff, such as getting Favors for saving folks (they're 1-2 points for a one time use and make a great reward option) and a windfall of loot should earn you a temporary wealth bump until you spend it. The wealth advantage is more for having a steady level of that wealth as an income.

Willie the Duck
2022-03-04, 10:06 AM
I've played 3e and there's plenty of math in there too. Possibly more clunky in certain areas if my memory is correct. I remember Vehicles being the King Pin of clunk.

Vehicles in GURPS 3e, in and of themselves, were... okay. In many ways they played a little too like just bigger persons or animals, just with acceleration on top of max speed and similar. The Gurps 3e Vehicle book, otoh, was absolutely an extreme exercise in rigor-searching-for-purpose. I can't imagine whose game benefits from there being cramped, normal, or spacious crew station rules for their horse-drawn carriage; nor different boat rules for standard hull, catamaran, and trimaran. And so on. I get that an absolute gear head might enjoy (or nitpick any inconsistency in) being able to take a car's weight/approximate streamlining and amount of power to which its' drivetrain is rated (powered by a power plant measured in wattage) and be able to determine acceleration, max speed, and fuel usage. That'd be a fun thing to do (once). Having to do ground-pressure calculations to determine how much speed reduction a half-tracked vehicle has in soft, muddy ground as compared to a wheeled vehicle, on the other hand, it just doesn't have a lot of game applicability for something that requires spreadsheet-level attention to detail (and realistically would change every time your occupants change weight). Especially once you get into the sci-fi stuff where it is all speculation anyways (also: GURPS future-weapon rules seem copied mostly from Traveller and seem quite wedded to the same 'what was 30 years out in 1950' framing. Gyrojet guns were to be all the rage, shaped charge and depleted-uranium-tipped shells rule physical weapons, energy weapons were going to be fed by space-age power cells with ridiculous energy-density, etc.).

KorvinStarmast
2022-03-04, 11:29 AM
Everything and anything costs points to use. Where 3E D&D suffered from "you need a feat for that" GURPS suffers from "you need to spend points for that". Not familiar with that system, but is this a 'spend game currency' kind of thing? (In Pirates and Dragons, for example, you can spend dubloons to vary the outcome of an encounter).

Why I don't like GURPS (Well, it's not really a dislike thing)
The early adapter in our gaming group, mid 80's, had picked up GURPS and told us all about it. We all had an interest in playing. (Runequest's GM had been suddenly deployed on a fast attack submarine and we had no idea when he'd be back).
Then he, the guy who had GURPS, moved. (A set of orders arrived that were, in his words, "too good to pass up" so rather than stay in Virgnina he went to Mississippi.
We never got to play.
*arrrrrrrrgh*
(Heck, within the next two years we all moved, that old Navy thing).

kyoryu
2022-03-04, 11:39 AM
The Gurps 3e Vehicle book, otoh, was absolutely an extreme exercise in rigor-searching-for-purpose.

This is a significant issue with GURPS in general. While it's almost all optional, the game as a whole tends to dive into ridiculous levels of detail on things, often at the expense of playability. Vehicles 3e for sure exemplifies this, notoriously so.

kyoryu
2022-03-04, 11:41 AM
Another issue with GURPS (especially in 3e, maybe this is better in 4e) is that with modern/future weapons large weapon dice pools end up being very consistent. Practically speaking, it ends up being that most hits are either absorbed or result in a splat.

You can argue realism (which is what GURPS argues for everything as a default), but I don't know that it's that great for playability.

Pex
2022-03-04, 02:00 PM
This part I might actually put fault in the GM. I'm fairly certain that there are guidelines where you can earn free points for this kind of stuff, such as getting Favors for saving folks (they're 1-2 points for a one time use and make a great reward option) and a windfall of loot should earn you a temporary wealth bump until you spend it. The wealth advantage is more for having a steady level of that wealth as an income.

It's possible the rules changed since I last played, but at the time this was the specific rule. In the example adventure of the book, you help one NPC and hurt another. You never gain the help of the NPC you help unless you buy him as a Patron. The NPC you hurt the DM can use like the Enemy Disadvantage, but you gain no points for it. You can't even gain the other NPC as a Patron and this NPC as an Enemy at the same time. As for wealth, the game says the GM should have you lose the wealth such as being stolen or need to spend taxes or some reason why you can't keep it unless you buy Wealthy, and it goes worse for you if you have Poverty Disadvantage.

Algeh
2022-03-04, 02:52 PM
GURPS is the system I've played the most and "think" in, inasmuch as if I get an idea for a campaign I'd like to run it's my first guess for what system to use for it. However, I haven't had a chance to run anything in it since shortly after college, because it is a very hard system to find other people running games in around here or to convince people to try if they're not familiar with it.

There's a high bar to entry in terms of needing to spend several hours wrapping your brain around how character creation works that makes it difficult to get people to just give it a try for the afternoon to see how it goes. This wasn't a problem in middle school or high school, when it was the dominant system among TTRPG players at my particular school, and it was only somewhat a problem in college, when we all lived in the dorms and had a lot of downtime in the same place, but getting actual adults to come over to my house and spend hours doing worksheets, even pretty interesting worksheets, so they can play a game the next time we can get 4-6 people's schedules to align has been a dealbreaker.

I definitely agree with the people who are saying that it's part of the GM's role is to figure out which parts of the rules they're using, too. Because I played so much GURPS early on in my gaming years, I didn't realize how unusual this was until I dealt with some other systems and their assumptions, but GURPS definitely is a large, diverse recipe book from which the GM will be planning their dinner party rather than a menu of options that are all available at all times. If your goal is to run an actual campaign in which things advance in some kind of coherent way toward some kind of goal, you absolutely have to work with your players to get everyone on the same page about what kinds of PCs make sense to bring to that campaign. I have run GURPS campaigns in which one of the PCs was an intellectual property attorney, and I played in GURPS campaigns in which we were all space mercenaries, and both of these campaigns worked in GURPS but used very different part of the rulebook to support what was going on.

The 3rd edition Magic rules also were built on a vision of magic in which magic is an intellectual pursuit and simpler spells with similar results help you learn more about the underlying systems involved and you gradually can learn more complicated related skills with those as a prerequisite, like if mathematics could set people on fire. Complicated, interesting spells that you wanted to have would have really long chains of prerequisite spells you needed to learn first. This is not a right or wrong way to think about magic, but it does lead to powerful magicians all knowing a lot of the same common prerequisite skills, rather than everyone having a grab-bag spell book focused solely on the spells they actually planned to use a lot. Building characters in this system throughout middle and high school made me very well prepared to figure out how to get the classes I needed for my major in college, but it doesn't work well for settings where magic is less "scientific" since it implies a certain approach to how/why magic works. (It also makes for cluttered character sheets full of spells you don't use much if you're building high point value magic using characters.)

Pex
2022-03-04, 03:33 PM
Way back when there was a parody of GURPS magic called the Cheese Wiz where a magic user character focused on cheese spells. There were spells like Seek Cheese, Move Cheese, lots of spells that did nothing unless there was cheese around. Eventually you get useful spells like Transform Into Cheese which could be used on others as an attack.

Kurald Galain
2022-03-04, 03:33 PM
From memory, the hideously complicated character generation. This skill costs three points but that skill costs five for no apparent reason, and everything defaults to some similar skill -2 or some seemingly unrelated thing -4 or some mixture thereof. Four attribute scores that all work differently from one another, and a hidden fifth (charisma) that is implemented via backgrounds instead, again for no apparent reason.

And the outcome of this is underwhelming, because of the system's overall low power level. Sure, Aberrant is complicated but it gives you some rather flashy and impressive powersets as a result, and GURPS just doesn't. Even combat becomes this complex slog with counter-rolls and guessing whether you should parry or dodge a particular enemy, and overall slow resolution for decidedly un-flashy outcomes.

I mean, 3E is obviously not stellar in that either, but at least you know that every feat costs exactly one feat slot, and every skill one skill point, and its resolution mechanic is clearly faster.

They have great setting books, I'll give them that. I highly recommend GURPS Time Travel to anybody who doesn't play GURPS.

vasilidor
2022-03-04, 03:43 PM
I do not like the basic mechanic it uses to resolve whether or not you succeed in a thing.
Roll dice and see if it is lower than a score on your character sheet.
I genuinely despise that.
I can have fun playing games that use it, but any fun would be entirely unrelated to the game mechanics.

Luccan
2022-03-04, 03:52 PM
I do not like the basic mechanic it uses to resolve whether or not you succeed in a thing.
Roll dice and see if it is lower than a score on your character sheet.
I genuinely despise that.
I can have fun playing games that use it, but any fun would be entirely unrelated to the game mechanics.

Haven't played GURPS, but while I actually like this resolution mechanic well enough, I find it becomes finicky if you do anything vs another character, whether it be a friendly card game or combat. Because then this relatively simple resolution mechanic where you always know your chance to succeed has to be flipped on its head or the game all but declares the person with a higher score the winner

vasilidor
2022-03-04, 03:57 PM
Haven't played GURPS, but while I actually like this resolution mechanic well enough, I find it becomes finicky if you do anything vs another character, whether it be a friendly card game or combat. Because then this relatively simple resolution mechanic where you always know your chance to succeed has to be flipped on its head or the game all but declares the person with a higher score the winner

This is a large problem I have with games that use this or similar mechanics.
Not the entire problem, but a large problem.

Pex
2022-03-04, 05:20 PM
Details are vague due to distance of memory, but I remember a player who took offense of having to pay an Advantage tax on being an archer. He had to pay for Quickdraw or something like that. With Quickdraw he could fire his bow every round. Because he didn't have it on purpose in protest, with every round of combat being 1 second, first round was taking the arrow out of the quiver, second round was string the arrow, third round was fire, so he was only able to attack every three rounds doing nothing else.

I know I wasn't happy playing a spellcaster. To cast a fire attack, it was only and always 1d6 damage. If I wanted to do more damage I have to spend the round doing nothing. For each round I did nothing I could add 1d6, so every two rounds I could attack for 2d6 damage, every three rounds for 3d6 damage. The combat would be over before I get to cast my big boom spell. Considering this was in college where I also played 2E D&D and I was casting 5d6 Fireballs and Lightning Bolts that increased by 1d6 per caster level at the same 3rd level spell slot, I was very underwhelmed by GURPS magic. Even Magic Missile increasing damage every other level to max 5 missiles for the same 1st level spell slot was more impactful.

kyoryu
2022-03-04, 06:01 PM
Details are vague due to distance of memory, but I remember a player who took offense of having to pay an Advantage tax on being an archer. He had to pay for Quickdraw or something like that. With Quickdraw he could fire his bow every round. Because he didn't have it on purpose in protest, with every round of combat being 1 second, first round was taking the arrow out of the quiver, second round was string the arrow, third round was fire, so he was only able to attack every three rounds doing nothing else.

I know I wasn't happy playing a spellcaster. To cast a fire attack, it was only and always 1d6 damage. If I wanted to do more damage I have to spend the round doing nothing. For each round I did nothing I could add 1d6, so every two rounds I could attack for 2d6 damage, every three rounds for 3d6 damage. The combat would be over before I get to cast my big boom spell. Considering this was in college where I also played 2E D&D and I was casting 5d6 Fireballs and Lightning Bolts that increased by 1d6 per caster level at the same 3rd level spell slot, I was very underwhelmed by GURPS magic. Even Magic Missile increasing damage every other level to max 5 missiles for the same 1st level spell slot was more impactful.

IIRC Quickdraw is a skill not an Advantage, so is much cheaper.

But, yeah, there's lots of "wait a turn to prepare for your next turn" kind of stuff.

Stonehead
2022-03-04, 07:57 PM
It's been a long time since I've played it, early 1990s. Not all that I have to say might still be applicable.

1) Your character does not improve. As you play sessions you only earn 1 to 3 points, which are only enough to improve one or two skills. You are doing the same thing at game session 30 as you did at game session 15 as you did game session 1.

2) NPC interactions only hurt you, not help you. If I save the village I cannot count on the people helping or liking me any more than when we first met until I save enough points to hopefully, eventually, buy Reputation. The Mayor will never do me a favor down the line because I'll never have enough points to buy him as a Patron. However, tick off the evil Necromancer spoiling his plans, he'll be a reoccurring Enemy. The King will never make me a Knight until and unless I buy Status no matter what I do in saving the day.

3) I cannot gain and keep vast wealth of treasure unless I buy Wealthy Advantage, which I'll never have enough points to buy. Bye bye loot.

Everything and anything costs points to use. Where 3E D&D suffered from "you need a feat for that" GURPS suffers from "you need to spend points for that".

Progression is definitely slower than DnD, where you double in strength roughly once every 6 sessions, but 1-3 points/session seems really low. The GM is supposed to hand out points for "good roleplaying" (whatever that means), as well as points as rewards upon completing adventures. The GM is even encouraged to hand out advantages instead of points if it makes sense in-universe (ie, wealth you loot a lot of treasure, or reputation when save a town). Without adventure rewards, you run into the problems you list.

Now, there are still plenty of issues with it, RAW they don't let you buy-off a lot of disadvantages from in-universe actions to try to stop people from gaming the system. The rules are poorly laid out, so I'm sure a lot of people just don't hand out rewards for in-universe actions. And progression is still a lot slower than DnD. Still, the book does advise the DM to give out rewards in a way that mitigates 2 and 3, and to a much lesser extent 1.

vasilidor
2022-03-04, 08:15 PM
D&D characters do not double in power every time they level.
What points they double in power really depends on how you measure power.
If you count action economy they double when they get an extra attack. and then a total of four attacks. or the ability to use an extra spell, if ever that happens.
If you count hit points they double in power every time their hitpoint total doubles an old total.
If you count bonuses to hit, then it is whenever their bonus to hit doubles.
Otherwise they get incremental improvements on level up that are not a doubling of power and whoever thinks that they double in power on level up is wrong.
Even if that person is a game dev.
unless they are talking about 3rd edition or earlier spell casters. Those guys doubled in power every time they got a new spell level.
Getting a few spendable points here and there every session means you make these incremental improvements at the end of each session rather than a bunch of incremental improvements all in one go after half a dozen sessions.
I would need to play a gurps campaign that actually gave experience points in order to figure out how I felt about it's progression.

Pauly
2022-03-04, 09:19 PM
One thing GURPS does really well is morphing a campaign.

The best Cthulu campaign I ever played was in GURPS. It started as a straight genteel investigator, think Hercuel Poirot or Father Brown type mysteries, and then slowly it was revealed that the over arching plot was an elder gods coming to reclaim England. What made it fun was some of the early adventures involved busting false cults or chasing a maguffin that was an African tribal idol and then when the real occult stuff started happening it was a very cool reveal.

I knew a group who had a very long running GURPS campaign set in the early 1700s that started as a group from a bloodline that could spawn Highlanders being hunted by the world’s Kurgan equivalent. Once the players realized they were being hunted by a terminator they got a ship and sailed to the Caribbean where the campaign morphed into a pirate campaign. Then they got chased across the Atlantic and were shipwrecked in Africa where they got dragged into a King Solomon’s Mines/Solomon Kane dealing with elder gods and magic game. Once they got out of that they ended up in the Barbary coast doing Zorro/Scarlet Pimpernel type masked vigilante pulp hero campaign. After they completed that they fled to Portugal and said Europe, America and Africa are too dangerous so they got on a ship to Goa where they did a straight historical exploration/opening trade routes/diplomacy campaign. The GM got bored with that so he dropped in a crashed ‘Ancient Alien/Chariots of the Gods’ spaceship lost in the jungles. It sounds crazy compressed into one short paragraph, but iirc it was over the course of 5 or 6 years these events happened.

Stonehead
2022-03-04, 11:37 PM
D&D characters do not double in power every time they level.
What points they double in power really depends on how you measure power.
If you count action economy they double when they get an extra attack. and then a total of four attacks. or the ability to use an extra spell, if ever that happens.
If you count hit points they double in power every time their hitpoint total doubles an old total.
If you count bonuses to hit, then it is whenever their bonus to hit doubles.
Otherwise they get incremental improvements on level up that are not a doubling of power and whoever thinks that they double in power on level up is wrong.
Even if that person is a game dev.
unless they are talking about 3rd edition or earlier spell casters. Those guys doubled in power every time they got a new spell level.
Getting a few spendable points here and there every session means you make these incremental improvements at the end of each session rather than a bunch of incremental improvements all in one go after half a dozen sessions.
I would need to play a gurps campaign that actually gave experience points in order to figure out how I felt about it's progression.

When I said "double in power every six sessions", I meant every other level. And by "double in power", I meant roughly double in combat efficiency. The reason for that is just that the xp tables rank 2 CR n characters as an equivalent challenge to 1 CR n+2 character. And a character with class levels gains 1 CR every time they gain a level (at least in Pathfinder, which is what I have the most experience in). It's the Core Rule Book that's claiming characters double in power every 2 levels, I'm just echoing their claim.

Also, like, if you think about it, it's not that you double in accuracy, or damage, or hp or anything. It's that you incrementally increase in all of the above with every level. And because of the math of the d20 distribution, minor changes to very high differences are weirdly a bigger deal than minor changes to very close differences. If you hit something on a nat 11 (50-50 odds), and you gain a +1 to hit, your average damage increases by 10% (10 hits out of 20 goes up to 11 hits out of 20). If you hit something only on a nat 20 and you get a +1 to hit, your average damage increases by 100% (1 hit out of 20 goes up to 2 hits out of 20).

Also, at no point did I say that exponential growth was a bad thing, I love Rags to Riches/Zero to Hero stories. The journey from being afraid of a few guards to taking down a dragon is great. You just gotta be honest about the power level changes. Obviously the math is never going to be perfect, but a character can handle roughly twice as many CR 1 goblins for every 2 levels they gain.

Mr Beer
2022-03-05, 06:13 PM
Probably shouldn't be posting because I *do* like GURPS. 90% of the games I run are D&D setting, GURPS engine. I used 3e for ages and then switched to 4e when there was a good body of work around it and I think it was a significant improvement.

The main issue with GURPS is the learning curve. You simply have to invest a decent amount of time into it, because as mentioned ITT, it's a toolkit for an RPG rather than an out of the box RPG. That learning curve though is placed upon the GM. Most of my players could not GM a GURPS campaign. I do the majority of the work building their characters, they do the fluff so to speak and I do the crunch. The game itself runs smoothly because actually playing within the structure I've built up is easy. I've taken players who have only ever played D&D and they are able to play without a problem on the first session of GURPS.

Again though this is smooth only because I've worked out what I do and don't want to use from the toolkit. For example, GURPS has an extensive ruleset for injury, complete with Major Wounds, Stun checks, Unconsciousness checks, Death checks, 0 HP, negative HP, instant death rules and so on. I use all of these for characters and none of them for anything other than major boss monsters. All other creatures simply "die" at 0 HP, because otherwise it's a complete PITA to manage combats with numerous enemies.

TL;DR The main issue with GURPS IMO is the time it takes for the GM to understand how to create a setting that works as expected.

EDIT

Some of the criticisms ITT can be addressed with an experienced GURPS GM. I strongly disagree that you need experienced GURPS players to play the game, however that *does* put the load back on the GM to build the characters or at least grab appropriate templates from the source books. "Slow progression" is a non-issue, just award more points. I ran a game recently where everyone started at 100 points and got an extra 50 points per session to get a rapid "zero to hero" feel. The campaign concluded at 550 points. GURPS has several magic systems in 4e, there's a skill based one which I generally use, Ritual Path Magic for a Harry Dresden type game, a points based one where you basically build powers as magic and some others.

Pauly
2022-03-06, 12:38 AM
With regard to the complaints of slow progression.

I think this misses the point of GURPS, because in some genres you do not want fast progression. For example a modern special forces type of campaign, Cthulu campaigns, straight historical campaigns all generally work better with slow progression.

What GURPS allows you to do is award more rewards to characters if you want to play in a faster progression genre. I get that because the RAW is slow progression and that it’s very easy to miss that there is the option of increasing player rewards if you want faster progression.

GURPS is built to handle slow or fast progression. Just because the default setting is slow progression doesn’t mean you have use slow progression. The same way the default setting for D&D is fast progression there’s nothing stopping a group from playing slow progression, and at least one official D&D setting (Dark Suns) IMO works better with slow progression.

u-b
2022-03-06, 11:00 AM
I know I wasn't happy playing a spellcaster. To cast a fire attack, it was only and always 1d6 damage. If I wanted to do more damage I have to spend the round doing nothing. For each round I did nothing I could add 1d6, so every two rounds I could attack for 2d6 damage, every three rounds for 3d6 damage. The combat would be over before I get to cast my big boom spell. Considering this was in college where I also played 2E D&D and I was casting 5d6 Fireballs and Lightning Bolts that increased by 1d6 per caster level at the same 3rd level spell slot, I was very underwhelmed by GURPS magic. Even Magic Missile increasing damage every other level to max 5 missiles for the same 1st level spell slot was more impactful.
GURPS has some powerful magics that is not the same as powerful D&D magics. So, if you wanted something good, you'd have to read the books to know what "good" is. Taking a D&D character and rebuilding it using GURPS rules absolutely does not work. I think it lacks the oomph of higher-level spells (psionics does that; it's funny how one is balanced against TL3, the other is balanced against TL7, but the mismatch is not mentioned anywhere), but you can, for example, maintain shapeshifting all day, if only you know it's a thing and take care.

I read it could be tedious to do the maths and lower-level combats, but I play right now here by PBP and at TL8 and with a computer as given, that does not hurt too much.

Beleriphon
2022-03-06, 12:35 PM
Not familiar with that system, but is this a 'spend game currency' kind of thing? (In Pirates and Dragons, for example, you can spend dubloons to vary the outcome of an encounter).

No, you expend character creation points. If you don't have them you can't use something.

Pex
2022-03-06, 05:09 PM
GURPS has some powerful magics that is not the same as powerful D&D magics. So, if you wanted something good, you'd have to read the books to know what "good" is. Taking a D&D character and rebuilding it using GURPS rules absolutely does not work. I think it lacks the oomph of higher-level spells (psionics does that; it's funny how one is balanced against TL3, the other is balanced against TL7, but the mismatch is not mentioned anywhere), but you can, for example, maintain shapeshifting all day, if only you know it's a thing and take care.

I read it could be tedious to do the maths and lower-level combats, but I play right now here by PBP and at TL8 and with a computer as given, that does not hurt too much.

I did like GURPS Psionics.

Gnoman
2022-03-07, 02:37 AM
Details are vague due to distance of memory, but I remember a player who took offense of having to pay an Advantage tax on being an archer. He had to pay for Quickdraw or something like that. With Quickdraw he could fire his bow every round. Because he didn't have it on purpose in protest, with every round of combat being 1 second, first round was taking the arrow out of the quiver, second round was string the arrow, third round was fire, so he was only able to attack every three rounds doing nothing else.


Arrow handling is an area where GURPS doesn't get it quite right, but in general the low fire rate of low-tech missile weapons is quite accurate - you actually can't fire those weapons that fast. This does make a "I am an archer, and will touch no weapon other than my bow" build impractical in a lot of situations, but that just means that you either arrange your encounters in a way that a bow is useful (make some fortifications, or have your fighters hold the line, or otherwise find a way to keep the enemy at range), carry a sword for after you open with an arrow (made quite easy because both swords and bows draw their damage from your ST score and the accuracy skill for both is based on DX), or just take the "this is unrealistic but we provided support for it" skills that are put in there for this exact purpose.

I know I wasn't happy playing a spellcaster. To cast a fire attack, it was only and always 1d6 damage. If I wanted to do more damage I have to spend the round doing nothing. For each round I did nothing I could add 1d6, so every two rounds I could attack for 2d6 damage, every three rounds for 3d6 damage. The combat would be over before I get to cast my big boom spell. Considering this was in college where I also played 2E D&D and I was casting 5d6 Fireballs and Lightning Bolts that increased by 1d6 per caster level at the same 3rd level spell slot, I was very underwhelmed by GURPS magic. Even Magic Missile increasing damage every other level to max 5 missiles for the same 1st level spell slot was more impactful.[/QUOTE]

That issue only crops up if you have the weakest possible casting "stat". There's a wizard in my current dungeon crawl game that can blast out 6d lighting bolts every other turn (takes one turn to create the missile, then throw it on the next turn). This is because he bought Magery 6 instead of Magery 1. This is no more a system failure than complaining that magic sucks in D&D because you only gave your wizard 8 INT.


Both of these, of course, are also greatly influenced by the fact that damage and health is much lower in GURPS than it it is even in 2e D&D. Your 1d6 spell goes pretty far in a setup where the baseline HP is 10, and a basic archer should be doing 1d6+3 with a basic bow - and that's impaling damage that triples anything that gets past armor. "One arrow before you switch to a sword" is a lot different when a single arrow has a good chance of killing the majority of enemies.


It's possible the rules changed since I last played, but at the time this was the specific rule. In the example adventure of the book, you help one NPC and hurt another. You never gain the help of the NPC you help unless you buy him as a Patron. The NPC you hurt the DM can use like the Enemy Disadvantage, but you gain no points for it. You can't even gain the other NPC as a Patron and this NPC as an Enemy at the same time.

This is a GM failure. The proper way to handle this situation would be to give the PCs a 0-point Ally, with a number of appropriate disadvantages. Which makes plenty of sense from a RP perspective. Your new friends won't be wholly devoted to you right away, so they'll only help you out from time to time (low Frequency Of Appearance) and might require aid from you as well (offsetting Dependent disadvantage). Through further work with them, you can gain greater trust and eliminate this (represented by spending your rewarded character points (which should be increased by good roleplay) to buy off the disadvantages).

You would also get the Enemy disadvantage and reduce your character point total, but this is fundamentally no different from if combat injuries gave you disadvantages like One Eye or Legless - you don't get to spend those points elsewhere.

[quote]As for wealth, the game says the GM should have you lose the wealth such as being stolen or need to spend taxes or some reason why you can't keep it unless you buy Wealthy, and it goes worse for you if you have Poverty Disadvantage.

No such rule has ever existed in any version of GURPS. You do not have to spend points to get your loot. Period, end of story, anybody who says otherwise is not following the rules.

The closest the rules come is a suggestion that, if you are playing in a setting where Status is linked to wealth level (in which case you get a social bonus for being rich and a penalty for being poor) GMs require PCs to buy off disadvantages like Dirt Poor or possibly even buy Wealthy because their loot has changed their place on the social ladder. Not "you don't get the loot", but "suddenly becoming a multimillionaire means you aren't a poor street kid anymore".

Mr Beer
2022-03-07, 05:14 AM
Arrow handling is an area where GURPS doesn't get it quite right, but in general the low fire rate of low-tech missile weapons is quite accurate - you actually can't fire those weapons that fast. This does make a "I am an archer, and will touch no weapon other than my bow" build impractical in a lot of situations, but that just means that you either arrange your encounters in a way that a bow is useful (make some fortifications, or have your fighters hold the line, or otherwise find a way to keep the enemy at range), carry a sword for after you open with an arrow (made quite easy because both swords and bows draw their damage from your ST score and the accuracy skill for both is based on DX), or just take the "this is unrealistic but we provided support for it" skills that are put in there for this exact purpose.


Yep this is a good explanation. If you want a movie-Legolas arrow spitting death machine instead of a realistic medieaval archer, there are a bunch of options to do exactly that.


The closest the rules come is a suggestion that, if you are playing in a setting where Status is linked to wealth level (in which case you get a social bonus for being rich and a penalty for being poor) GMs require PCs to buy off disadvantages like Dirt Poor or possibly even buy Wealthy because their loot has changed their place on the social ladder. Not "you don't get the loot", but "suddenly becoming a multimillionaire means you aren't a poor street kid anymore".

My interpretation of the rules is that your loot doesn't have plot armour, but your Wealth does, so loot can be stolen but not your standing in society. I would say that if you are Poor and have low Status, then acquire a massive amount of loot, you can choose to either buy off those Disadvantages, or you will continue to suffer the social consequences of them. So people will consider you to be an urchin who happens to have undeserved lucre, rather than a newly minted minor aristocrat.

DigoDragon
2022-03-07, 08:56 AM
That'd be a fun thing to do (once).

Yeah, once is about all I could stand. ^^;

I used the book once in a serious fashion to build the party a mobile vehicular base for a post-apocalypse campaign.



It's possible the rules changed since I last played, but at the time this was the specific rule.

I see, yeah that's frustrating. I should reread the 4e rules to see if they did change or if my group is just using house rules.

Willie the Duck
2022-03-07, 09:08 AM
I see, yeah that's frustrating. I should reread the 4e rules to see if they did change or if my group is just using house rules.


It's possible the rules changed since I last played, but at the time this was the specific rule.



No such rule has ever existed in any version of GURPS. You do not have to spend points to get your loot. Period, end of story, anybody who says otherwise is not following the rules.

The closest the rules come is a suggestion that, if you are playing in a setting where Status is linked to wealth level (in which case you get a social bonus for being rich and a penalty for being poor) GMs require PCs to buy off disadvantages like Dirt Poor or possibly even buy Wealthy because their loot has changed their place on the social ladder. Not "you don't get the loot", but "suddenly becoming a multimillionaire means you aren't a poor street kid anymore".

Why don't we all go find our books at some point here and look it up. Something tugs at my memory saying Pex brought this up last time GURPS was discussed and it was shown not to be the case in 3/4E. This might be the case of him running into a house rule/punitive GM.

Talakeal
2022-03-07, 12:39 PM
GURPS is unusual in my experience in that while there are lots of books and everyone seems passingly familiar with the game, I have never actually seen or known anyone to actually play it.

Willie the Duck
2022-03-07, 01:09 PM
GURPS is unusual in my experience in that while there are lots of books and everyone seems passingly familiar with the game, I have never actually seen or known anyone to actually play it.

Me and my friends played it in late HS, early college (so maybe '90-'95). At that point in our lives, fiddling around with a couple hundred points (or even half points, I remember 3e had entry-level skill proficiency for 1/2 pt.) was a positive. Likewise, there were fewer games where you could try to conceptualize 'anything.' That said, it was a game where a whole lot more characters were built for fun than ever saw table-play.

Gnoman
2022-03-07, 05:51 PM
Why don't we all go find our books at some point here and look it up. Something tugs at my memory saying Pex brought this up last time GURPS was discussed and it was shown not to be the case in 3/4E. This might be the case of him running into a house rule/punitive GM.

The specific wording in the book is




Wealth

Variable

Above-average Wealth is an advantage; it means you start with two or more times the average starting wealth of your game world. Below-average Wealth is a disadvantage; it means you start with only a fraction of average starting wealth. The precise meaning of each wealth level in a particular game world will be defined in the associated worldbook.


Wealthy: Your starting wealth is five times average; you live very well indeed. 20 points



Wealth and Status
In some game worlds, Status (see p. 28) is closely tied to Wealth. In a setting like this, if you are Wealthy or better, you get +1 Status for free. This bonus increases to +2 at Multimillionaire 1 and to +3 at Multimillionaire 2. No one may claim more than +3 Status from Wealth



Later Earnings

You can depend on your adventures to bring in money . . . or you can get a job (see p. 516). Remember that in many worlds, unemployment is cause for grave suspicion and bad reaction rolls.

If a poor PC becomes wealthy, the GM should require the player to “buy off” the disadvantage with character points – see p. 121.

Translated

"You can take the Poor disadvantage at character creation to give up some starting wealth, but if you get rich later you probably should have to give those points back because you are no longer poor."

elros
2022-03-07, 07:22 PM
My issue with GURPS was that I was usually the GM in my group. and I liked learning new rule systems and teaching them to the players. That seemed more fun to me than trying to figure out how to do new things in GURPS.
That said, I was a player in a GURPS game and it is a fun system, especially if used as a substitute for a game with a great setting but poor or unfamiliar rule system. It is also a better universal system than the Hero system, even though I know that one better and like it.

DigoDragon
2022-03-08, 08:50 AM
GURPS is unusual in my experience in that while there are lots of books and everyone seems passingly familiar with the game, I have never actually seen or known anyone to actually play it.

I'm currently playing in a Fallout campaign using the system, so you could know me. ^^

kyoryu
2022-03-08, 01:43 PM
I'm currently playing in a Fallout campaign using the system, so you could know me. ^^

Quite appropriate, given that the majority of the first game's development was with GURPS.

Pex
2022-03-08, 07:00 PM
QUOTE=Pex;25384607]It's possible the rules changed since I last played, but at the time this was the specific rule. In the example adventure of the book, you help one NPC and hurt another. You never gain the help of the NPC you help unless you buy him as a Patron. The NPC you hurt the DM can use like the Enemy Disadvantage, but you gain no points for it. You can't even gain the other NPC as a Patron and this NPC as an Enemy at the same time.

This is a GM failure. The proper way to handle this situation would be to give the PCs a 0-point Ally, with a number of appropriate disadvantages. Which makes plenty of sense from a RP perspective. Your new friends won't be wholly devoted to you right away, so they'll only help you out from time to time (low Frequency Of Appearance) and might require aid from you as well (offsetting Dependent disadvantage). Through further work with them, you can gain greater trust and eliminate this (represented by spending your rewarded character points (which should be increased by good roleplay) to buy off the disadvantages).



No, it was the official rule printed in the rule book as that's where the example adventure was published. I once wrote to the GURPS people about my issues of the game. To my absolute unexpected surprise they wrote back countering my issues (alright, complaints :smallyuk:) I wrote about this explicitly and they said that's just how it is. Like I said, this was many years ago 1990s. The rules could have changed since then.

Gnoman
2022-03-08, 08:11 PM
Fine. Prove it by finding and osting the official rule.


Because I've checked and that has never, ever been an official rule. Not in 1e, not in 2e, not in 3e, not in 4e. The rule you are complaining about does not exist and never has.


Most likely, when you wrote in they misunderstood your complaint and fobbed you off with a stock answer.


EDIT: I think I found what you're talking about - it isn't a core GURPS rule.

In the Dungeon Fantasy supplement, they suggest reflecting the social aspects of wealth by scaling sell prices.


Wealth in Play
“Society” can be summed up as “town, where we buy and sell stuff.” To give Wealth impact once play begins, assume that it represents business contacts. For all loot except coin and gems, it determines the percentage of an item’s new price that the adventurer can get when selling: 0% if Dead Broke, 10% if Poor, 20% if Struggling, 40% if Average, 60% if Comfortable, 80% if Wealthy, or 100% if Very Wealthy.

Even there, it doesn't say "can't get your loot". It says "unless it is raw money, you have a harder time selling it". Dungeon Fantasy is also directly intended for old-school Gygaxian Player-v-GM dungeon crawls, and you are not expected to backport anything from it into any other setting (or, for that matter, a "normal" faux-medieval setting more in line with modern gaming sensibilities).

Pex
2022-03-08, 08:48 PM
Fine. Prove it by finding and osting the official rule.


Because I've checked and that has never, ever been an official rule. Not in 1e, not in 2e, not in 3e, not in 4e. The rule you are complaining about does not exist and never has.


Most likely, when you wrote in they misunderstood your complaint and fobbed you off with a stock answer.


EDIT: I think I found what you're talking about - it isn't a core GURPS rule.

In the Dungeon Fantasy supplement, they suggest reflecting the social aspects of wealth by scaling sell prices.



Even there, it doesn't say "can't get your loot". It says "unless it is raw money, you have a harder time selling it". Dungeon Fantasy is also directly intended for old-school Gygaxian Player-v-GM dungeon crawls, and you are not expected to backport anything from it into any other setting (or, for that matter, a "normal" faux-medieval setting more in line with modern gaming sensibilities).

You've checked? About something I didn't like 30 years ago? I don't even have the rule book anymore. I said my piece.

https://i.postimg.cc/tCFNngBF/wrongontheinternet2.png

Gnoman
2022-03-08, 09:17 PM
You've checked? About something I didn't like 30 years ago? I don't even have the rule book anymore. I said my piece.

https://i.postimg.cc/tCFNngBF/wrongontheinternet2.png

I've checked rulebooks for every edition. The rule you are citing does not exist in any of them.

caden_varn
2022-03-09, 07:37 AM
I'll have to find which book that is in and read up on it.

Looks like it is in a specific Thaumatology: Sorcery supplement:

http://www.warehouse23.com/products/gurps-thaumatology-sorcery

This is just from a basic web search. No idea what it is like

KorvinStarmast
2022-03-09, 09:28 AM
You've checked? About something I didn't like 30 years ago? I don't even have the rule book anymore. I said my piece. I think it's kinda cool that he's got that kind of reach back. :smallsmile: When I try to post something about Empire of the Petal Throne I have to dig around on some bookshelves and sneeze due to the dust ...

https://i.postimg.cc/tCFNngBF/wrongontheinternet2.png

Willie the Duck
2022-03-09, 11:23 AM
You've checked? About something I didn't like 30 years ago? I don't even have the rule book anymore. I said my piece.
I'm just going to say it once. Yes, you have said your piece, and once again it looks like disapproval of game developers for cultivating a poor gaming experience you had previously, and again it turning out to not be in the game rules at all and the blame lies once again with the horrible Game Masters you have had in the past.


https://i.postimg.cc/tCFNngBF/wrongontheinternet2.png
This can be used by any forumite in any direction and it be equally valid going both ways in any conflict. It's the ultimate neutral statement.

Stonehead
2022-03-10, 01:04 AM
I'll chime in with an actual quote that, at the very least, shows modern GURPS wants to solve issues like this. On page 291 in the basic set, there's a box titled "Traits Gained in Play",


The GM may rule that you have suddenly acquired a new trait - most
often an advantage or a disadvantage - as a consequence of events in the
game: social interaction, combat, divine intervention, etc. This has
nothing to do with bonus points

When you acquire an advantage this way, write it on your character
sheet and increase your point total by the value of the advantage. You do
not have to pay for it with bonus points. For instance, if the GM rewards
you with a 10-point Patron after you save the life of a powerful duke,
your point value goes up by 10 points and the game goes on.


So, you save some peasants, and the GM rules they're grateful, you get an appropriate advantage. Reputation, allies, etc. They even cite wealth later on as an example advantage you could gain.

Cadex Sideris
2022-03-10, 12:56 PM
I play and GM GURPS almost exclusively now (I've tried and have largely given up on FATE and D&D), but to echo some of the sentiments already said here:

GURPS requires a high level of GM preparation and oversight or else it breaks, or loses much of what makes it (IMO) the most flexible generic system. "Game Balance" is hinted at with point costs, but not all Advantages and costs are created equal and many can be twisted to create game-breaking interactions. Balance between the party members has to be carefully monitored, and the guiding principles that are true in one setting might be completely wrong in another.

However, after everything is said and done, it can work beautifully for many kinds of games. I've played or GM'd 50-point students in a murder/survival setting, 100-point regulars in an action/shonen setting, 150-point adventurers in a dark fantasy setting, 150-point time-traveling psions, 250-point superheroes in medieval times, 400-point isekai cheat characters in fantasy-Roman times, 400-point heroes/monsters in a modern urban fantasy . . .

The combat is also slow to play. The fine resolution of details and the breadth of options means that lots of players have decision paralysis, even though I keep telling them that they can just describe what their character would try to do (as in a play-by-post RP, as most of my players have a heavy PbP background) and it can translate 1:1 into GURPS. The fastest turns happen with players who either don't care about the numbers and percentages and just want to find out if their cool thing succeeded or failed, or are veterans who know the system well and already have their maneuvers and modifiers on deck.

elros
2022-03-10, 01:57 PM
I play and GM GURPS almost exclusively now (I've tried and have largely given up on FATE and D&D), but to echo some of the sentiments already said here:

GURPS requires a high level of GM preparation and oversight or else it breaks, or loses much of what makes it (IMO) the most flexible generic system. "Game Balance" is hinted at with point costs, but not all Advantages and costs are created equal and many can be twisted to create game-breaking interactions. Balance between the party members has to be carefully monitored, and the guiding principles that are true in one setting might be completely wrong in another.

However, after everything is said and done, it can work beautifully for many kinds of games. I've played or GM'd 50-point students in a murder/survival setting, 100-point regulars in an action/shonen setting, 150-point adventurers in a dark fantasy setting, 150-point time-traveling psions, 250-point superheroes in medieval times, 400-point isekai cheat characters in fantasy-Roman times, 400-point heroes/monsters in a modern urban fantasy . . .
What you describe is what has intrigued me about GURPS. I used to GM two Hero system games (Champions, Danger International), but I felt that system did not quite support the full range of power levels. I tried running a Cthulhu style mystery adventure using the Hero System, but found that Call of Cthulhu was a better system for that genre.

I dabbled with GURPS as a player, but it didn’t grab our group so we moved on. Now I wonder if we should have stuck it out…

Gnoman
2022-03-10, 03:32 PM
The combat is also slow to play. The fine resolution of details and the breadth of options means that lots of players have decision paralysis, even though I keep telling them that they can just describe what their character would try to do (as in a play-by-post RP, as most of my players have a heavy PbP background) and it can translate 1:1 into GURPS. The fastest turns happen with players who either don't care about the numbers and percentages and just want to find out if their cool thing succeeded or failed, or are veterans who know the system well and already have their maneuvers and modifiers on deck.

The player options can also screw players over if the GM is not prepared to nudge a player to use them (or if the player refuses to take the hint). I was in one game where the guy who was built as a hand-to-hand fighter lost multiple fistfights because he didn't want to do anything but a basic attack over and over. This despite the GM repeatedly mentioning the other options he had, and eventually having an enemy bust out the full martial arts playbook (the guy in question had Martial Arts, and used some of the specific content in his build) to demonstrate just how effective a hand-to-hand guy could be,

Lucas Yew
2022-03-15, 09:58 AM
1. The full Core rules (Lite doesn't count) not being legally "free" as in being free of a potential suing if you publish a fiction and made your in-book character sheet GURPS style. S.Jackson's history with TFT makes it understandable why he'd never publish a SRD equivalent, but still makes me feel sour.

2. The 4 primary stats not weighted equally. More an aesthetical displeasure for this one, though. I'd split DX and IQ each into 2 separate stats, and keep the other 2 as the current 4E.

Although apart from these two big dislikes, GURPS is like a blissful dream for the diehard simulationist that lives inside my brain...

jjordan
2022-03-16, 10:08 PM
In today's day and age GURPS really needs a D&D Beyond solution that allows you to electronically edit the beejezus out of it. Take the basic rules, add the content you want, remove what you want, edit what you want, pay for content ala carte and put the whole thing into an electronic document of PDF that you can share with your players. That would make the game far easier to set up and take care of most of the problems people have. Setting up a game is a really high bar to clear.

Stonehead
2022-03-17, 11:18 PM
1. The full Core rules (Lite doesn't count) not being legally "free" as in being free of a potential suing if you publish a fiction and made your in-book character sheet GURPS style. S.Jackson's history with TFT makes it understandable why he'd never publish a SRD equivalent, but still makes me feel sour.

2. The 4 primary stats not weighted equally. More an aesthetical displeasure for this one, though. I'd split DX and IQ each into 2 separate stats, and keep the other 2 as the current 4E.

Although apart from these two big dislikes, GURPS is like a blissful dream for the diehard simulationist that lives inside my brain...

On the topic of #2, I have another fairly in-depth complaint about GURPS.

Attributes have linear point costs, and some attributes are based on others, which doesn't really make much sense. IQ for example, starts at 10, and costs 20 points per point per +/-1. Will and Perception both start at IQ, and cost 5 points per +/-1. So, mechanically, it's indistinguishable from IQ costing 10 points, and Will and Perception starting at 10.

The central conceit of a point-buy system is that things should be priced roughly equivalently to their utility, but going from 10 to 11 isn't nearly as useful as going from 14 to 15, especially because of the way defaulting works with the 3d6 curve.

Honestly, I think a lot of prices in the book would benefit from an exponential curve cost. They even have a similar system with skills, where +1 costs 1 point, +2 costs 2 points, +3 costs 4, and from there it's 4 points per increase. I don't understand why the rest of character building doesn't follow this template. A 4d6 damage attack is more than twice as useful as a 2d6 attack, which you could do with a sword anyways.

Gnoman
2022-03-18, 01:50 AM
I'm not fully getting what you're meaning here.

The ability to increase the derived statistics is for cases where you want a little more (or less, possibly to offset taking a very high attribute score for lots of skills) HP/PER/Will without adjusting the base stat. You do not have to pay to raise both - by default Will and Perception are identical to whatever IQ you have, and they increase directly.


Skills are the only place where increasing them costs a non-linear amount because that is how the game tries to adjust for difficulty - First Aid is simpler (and costs less points) than Surgery. You could make the argument that the balance between attributes and skills is wonky - it is usually cheaper to raise the attribute if you have more than three or four skills keying off it, but I don't think putting a curve on attribute costs would fundamentally change that. You already have to put an immense amount of points into an attribute to get ahead of the bell curve with defaults.

Rynjin
2022-03-18, 02:04 AM
The problem with GURPS is that first word. "Generic".

It's designed for you to be able to play any kind of game in the one ruleset.

In theory, this is very cool. In practice, it creates a mediocre play experience for 20 different kinds of game instead of a satisfying play experience for 1 kind of game.

The d20 chassis also isn't that inherently interesting on its own, to boot. The main allure of d20 games is the abundance of content, new and old, and published adventure material for it.

So for a "generic" system, I'd rather play something like Savage Worlds, which is less flexible, but still flexible, and has amore instantly engaging ruleset.

But realistically, I wouldn't want to play a generic ruleset anyway. Why not pick a specialized game system and run that? Eg, if I want to play a cyberpunk game, why would I choose GURPS over Shadowrun or, well...Cyberpunk?

The final nail in the coffin is that most existing popular d20 systems...have enough flexibility and content to run any kind of game anyway. So if I want to run a cyberpunk game, why wouldn't I just use the existing material available for Pathfinder (1st and 3rd party) and some homebrew to do so instead of learning some generic system that doesn't bring anything else to the table?

GURPS has no real reason to exist in the first place, because the very concept of a "generic" roleplaying system is flawed in a way.

Edit: For some reason I conflated GURPS and d20 Modern in my head, probably because I recently tried to make a character for a d20 Modern game for the first time in forever and just couldn't drum up any interest for it. My general complaints still stand, but I did a big dumb. The d20 specific complaints apply to d20 Modern and its similar ilk.

MoiMagnus
2022-03-18, 05:50 AM
I'm not fully getting what you're meaning here.

The ability to increase the derived statistics is for cases where you want a little more (or less, possibly to offset taking a very high attribute score for lots of skills) HP/PER/Will without adjusting the base stat. You do not have to pay to raise both - by default Will and Perception are identical to whatever IQ you have, and they increase directly.

I think that what he means is that to get a certain value of IQ, PER and Will, what you need to pay is by the rules:

(IQ-10)*20 + (PER-IQ)*5 + (Will-IQ)*5

But that's equivalent to

(IQ-10)*10 + (PER-10)*5 + (Will-10)*5
In other words, IQ could cost 10 per point instead of 20, and PER and Will could be decorrelated from IQ and starting at 10 and that would lead to the same result, but with less maths.

DigoDragon
2022-03-18, 06:45 AM
Honestly, I think a lot of prices in the book would benefit from an exponential curve cost. They even have a similar system with skills, where +1 costs 1 point, +2 costs 2 points, +3 costs 4, and from there it's 4 points per increase. I don't understand why the rest of character building doesn't follow this template. A 4d6 damage attack is more than twice as useful as a 2d6 attack, which you could do with a sword anyways.

The attribute cost table from 3rd edition worked on an exponential curve, and all the attributes costed the same. Might be close to what you are looking for.

Skill cost was more exponential in 3e too.



But realistically, I wouldn't want to play a generic ruleset anyway. Why not pick a specialized game system and run that? Eg, if I want to play a cyberpunk game, why would I choose GURPS over Shadowrun or, well...Cyberpunk?

Well, GURPS has the advantage of needing to only buy two books to play several genres. Whereas if I buy a Cyberpunk rulebook, it's really only good for playing Cyberpunk games. I don't disagree that GURPS doesn't excel in any particular genre; it does need a bit more work than other systems to put together a campaign, but that's the trade off with a generic system.

u-b
2022-03-18, 06:46 AM
In other words, IQ could cost 10 per point instead of 20, and PER and Will could be decorrelated from IQ and starting at 10 and that would lead to the same result, but with less maths.
Mostly the same result. They play differently with the disadvantage limit, but yes, there are no further problems if the GM chooses one or the other.

Lord Raziere
2022-03-18, 07:07 AM
Well, GURPS has the advantage of needing to only buy two books to play several genres. Whereas if I buy a Cyberpunk rulebook, it's really only good for playing Cyberpunk games. I don't disagree that GURPS doesn't excel in any particular genre; it does need a bit more work than other systems to put together a campaign, but that's the trade off with a generic system.

Yeah, and specialized systems don't exist for everything. sure if you want to play something established as a specialized rpg, you don't need GURPs, its when you want to play something no one has made an rpg for that you need something like it.

Willie the Duck
2022-03-18, 08:03 AM
Well, GURPS has the advantage of needing to only buy two books to play several genres. Whereas if I buy a Cyberpunk rulebook, it's really only good for playing Cyberpunk games. I don't disagree that GURPS doesn't excel in any particular genre; it does need a bit more work than other systems to put together a campaign, but that's the trade off with a generic system.

That is definitely a theoretical advantage. For the specific historic implementation of the game that ended up happening, it runs headlong into the issue that those supplemental books are/were often considered the best part of the system. Thus if you wanted to play GURPS: specific genre, you would get the GURPS player's book and GM's book (or in 3e likely the GURPS basic set and compendium I) and GURPS: Genre. Compared to a 1-2 book specific genre game unto itself (or, as we often did, a 1-2 book specific genre game and GURPS: genre and only use the well-researched setting information), this doesn't really change much.

Mordar
2022-03-18, 01:00 PM
The problem with GURPS is that first word. "Generic".

It's designed for you to be able to play any kind of game in the one ruleset.

In theory, this is very cool. In practice, it creates a mediocre play experience for 20 different kinds of game instead of a satisfying play experience for 1 kind of game.

The d20 chassis also isn't that inherently interesting on its own, to boot. The main allure of d20 games is the abundance of content, new and old, and published adventure material for it.

So for a "generic" system, I'd rather play something like Savage Worlds, which is less flexible, but still flexible, and has amore instantly engaging ruleset.

But realistically, I wouldn't want to play a generic ruleset anyway. Why not pick a specialized game system and run that? Eg, if I want to play a cyberpunk game, why would I choose GURPS over Shadowrun or, well...Cyberpunk?

The final nail in the coffin is that most existing popular d20 systems...have enough flexibility and content to run any kind of game anyway. So if I want to run a cyberpunk game, why wouldn't I just use the existing material available for Pathfinder (1st and 3rd party) and some homebrew to do so instead of learning some generic system that doesn't bring anything else to the table?

GURPS has no real reason to exist in the first place, because the very concept of a "generic" roleplaying system is flawed in a way.

I agree with all of this - my mindset is one of "play the game in the system designed for the game", in no small part because I grew into RPGs when there were 20 different systems and that was the default assumption. No one complained about learning a new system...it was just an accepted cost of playing a new game.

I do think, though, GURPS deserves some credit for doing this way back in 86, before d20 meant anything other than what you rolled to hit and for saving throws on a chart. It provided opportunity for mixed-universe games...and even mixed-in-universe games like WoD that those games didn't provide...and deserves credit for doing that in a way that appealed to a lot of people.

Thus I give credit to GURPS which paved the way for D20 and Savage Worlds as universal systems.

That being said, I would always rather play Deadlands in the original system, not the universal system it spawned...because generic is a term best limited to medicine, IMO.

- M

Mr Beer
2022-03-18, 02:04 PM
The central conceit of a point-buy system is that things should be priced roughly equivalently to their utility, but going from 10 to 11 isn't nearly as useful as going from 14 to 15, especially because of the way defaulting works with the 3d6 curve.

Not really true, when we try to roll under 10 it's 50%, under 11 is 62.5%, so we increase our chances by 12.5%. 14 is 90.74% and 15 is 95.37%, so we increase our chances by 4.62%.

It is true to say that a skill monkey is incentivised to have DX and/or IQ as a high stat, rather than spread the points around, in order to obtain a high default and then buy a bunch of skills cheaply. That's not the same thing though - it's not that any particular value is much more or less effective than the preceding value plus 1, rather that 'the higher, the better'.

SimonMoon6
2022-03-18, 03:31 PM
I will say (at least) one thing in defense of a "generic" system.

I would love to have a system that really was capable of being a generic system, a game that you can use for any setting and have it work easily and well. And there's a very good reason for that. Superheroes.

Specifically, I'm talking about comic book superheroes and how they play in a game system. There are many problems with trying to have a game system for comic book superheroes and the biggest problem is scale. Superheroes are a *lot* more powerful than mere action heroes or fantasy wizards and warriors. A LOT more. No, I mean a LOT more. Like, way more than you can imagine.

Superheroes can lift mountains. Heck, they can lift planets. They can chain together all the planets from an entire galaxy and fly through space with them. (Superboy actually did this once.) Superheros are really really powerful. And they regularly fight cosmic beings that are of incomprehensible power levels. No, not gods. These cosmic beings are more powerful than mere gods. They're on a completely different scale.

So, if your game system is stuck at a low power level, where you're seriously worried about the difference in damage between a .38 and .44 pistol... or the difference in damage between a halberd and a guisarme... then you're too caught in the tiny details to every be able to run a game of the power levels appropriate for a superhero game.

And, yes, not every superhero is that powerful. But if you're going to run a superhero game, you have to be able to cope with the power level of every possible superhero.

So, that's a big issue. GURPS can not handle that sort of power level obviously. It would be great if it could, but it's just not generic enough.

But there's another, related issue. Superheroes can be *anything*. Sure, they might just be guys with powers. Or they might be guys with skills. Or they might have skills and powers.

But they might also be wizards. So, the game needs to handle wizards.

They might be spaceship pilots. So, the game needs to handle spaceships.

They might be vampires. So, the game needs to handle vampires.

They might be dimension travelers, so the game needs to handle interdimensional travel.

They might be time travelers, so the game needs to handle time travel.

They might be cyber-enhanced punks, so the game needs to handle cyberpunk stuff.

And so forth. Etc ad nauseum.

A superhero universe contains every kind of genre. So only a generic game can handle a superhero universe. And there are very few that come close to being able to do so. Sadly, GURPS is not one of them, but it's not a failure in my eyes because it tried to be generic. It's a failure in my eyes because it failed to be generic enough.

I have often run multi-genre games, games where depending on where you go, the rules for the universe are different. I've done a multiversal game with various published fictional universes being the universes that exist, each with their own rules. I've done a game where there was a mosaic world, where each part of the world was from a different universe each with its own genre (and therefore rules). This is the sort of game that is my specialty, the sort of game that my players have enjoyed more than any other games I've run. But I had to use a superhero game system for anything like that. Even when the focus is mostly on swords and sorcery... you need a superhero game because only a superhero game is generic enough.

I did try using GURPS once for a multi-genre game based very loosely on the Philip Jose Farmer's The Dungeon series, and it was fine, but there was no way that superheroes could've been involved.

Luccan
2022-03-18, 03:50 PM
The problem with GURPS is that first word. "Generic".

It's designed for you to be able to play any kind of game in the one ruleset.

In theory, this is very cool. In practice, it creates a mediocre play experience for 20 different kinds of game instead of a satisfying play experience for 1 kind of game.

The d20 chassis also isn't that inherently interesting on its own, to boot. The main allure of d20 games is the abundance of content, new and old, and published adventure material for it.

So for a "generic" system, I'd rather play something like Savage Worlds, which is less flexible, but still flexible, and has amore instantly engaging ruleset.

But realistically, I wouldn't want to play a generic ruleset anyway. Why not pick a specialized game system and run that? Eg, if I want to play a cyberpunk game, why would I choose GURPS over Shadowrun or, well...Cyberpunk?

The final nail in the coffin is that most existing popular d20 systems...have enough flexibility and content to run any kind of game anyway. So if I want to run a cyberpunk game, why wouldn't I just use the existing material available for Pathfinder (1st and 3rd party) and some homebrew to do so instead of learning some generic system that doesn't bring anything else to the table?

GURPS has no real reason to exist in the first place, because the very concept of a "generic" roleplaying system is flawed in a way.

Edit: For some reason I conflated GURPS and d20 Modern in my head, probably because I recently tried to make a character for a d20 Modern game for the first time in forever and just couldn't drum up any interest for it. My general complaints still stand, but I did a big dumb. The d20 specific complaints apply to d20 Modern and its similar ilk.

In defense of the actual game I'd argue d20 Modern is an Urban Fantasy book and the designers were just in denial. While d20 Past is the pulp/adventure equivalent. They just bought their own "everything can/will be d20!" hype a bit too much and said "we can do hard Sci-Fi and mecha!" rather than doing Science Fantasy, which still would've fit their other stuff. There's an alternate universe where, just like it's stated that Past connects to the light worldbuilding in Modern, Future is said to be the end result. Where Shadow is just an accepted parallel universe and wizards and goblins work on spaceships openly.

Theoboldi
2022-03-18, 05:22 PM
Well, GURPS has the advantage of needing to only buy two books to play several genres. Whereas if I buy a Cyberpunk rulebook, it's really only good for playing Cyberpunk games. I don't disagree that GURPS doesn't excel in any particular genre; it does need a bit more work than other systems to put together a campaign, but that's the trade off with a generic system.


Yeah, and specialized systems don't exist for everything. sure if you want to play something established as a specialized rpg, you don't need GURPs, its when you want to play something no one has made an rpg for that you need something like it.

There's also the issue that often more spezialised systems come with their own quirks and peculiarities that you may not enjoy so much, like being bound to a very specific setting, demanding a certain playstyle that you don't like, or emphasizing parts of the genre or setting in their mechanics that you would actually rather gloss over.

Having a generic system that you know you enjoy can offer a preferable experience in that case, as it lets you personally adjust how you wish to experience the genre.

DigoDragon
2022-03-19, 11:33 AM
There's also the issue that often more spezialised systems come with their own quirks and peculiarities that you may not enjoy so much, like being bound to a very specific setting, demanding a certain playstyle that you don't like, or emphasizing parts of the genre or setting in their mechanics that you would actually rather gloss over.

For me, that's Shadowrun. The system and setting seem pretty much married together. Perfectly fine if you're wanting to play Shadowrun. Not so much for anything outside that.

On the other hand, I was able to hack Starfinder to run a cyberpunk game pretty well. The setting isn't as integrated, so it wasn't too difficult to make it work with my homebrew setting.

MoiMagnus
2022-03-19, 12:19 PM
There's also the issue that often more spezialised systems come with their own quirks and peculiarities that you may not enjoy so much, like being bound to a very specific setting, demanding a certain playstyle that you don't like, or emphasizing parts of the genre or setting in their mechanics that you would actually rather gloss over.

Having a generic system that you know you enjoy can offer a preferable experience in that case, as it lets you personally adjust how you wish to experience the genre.

A generic system can also has its share of quirks and peculiarities, and playstyle that work better.

In a good specialised system, you can get a feel if those quirks and emphases playstyle by reading through the universe and associated art. For example, you'll probably understand if the PCs are supposed to be bold and adventurous (meaning the the system is forgiving enough to fall back to plan B if things go wrong) or cautious and well prepared (meaning that the system heavily reward preparation/scouting/...).

However, I'll fully agree on the last point: mastering at least one generic system that you enjoy is a very good idea. Both because it allows you to always have a system compatible with whatever campaign idea you might want to try, and because it gives you a comparison point to evaluate any other system you might encounter.

Theoboldi
2022-03-20, 01:42 PM
On the other hand, I was able to hack Starfinder to run a cyberpunk game pretty well. The setting isn't as integrated, so it wasn't too difficult to make it work with my homebrew setting.

Right, and that's something that I think is somewhat understated when it comes to RPG discourse. Hacking a system that is meant for a specific playstyle or setting for an entirely different setting or kind of game can work very well if you enjoyed its mechanics and know how to adapt them. There's nothing inherently sacred or important about the creator's original intent, and in fact that kind of hacking is how we got many of the larger design movements in the industry, like D20 or Powered by the Apocalypse.


A generic system can also has its share of quirks and peculiarities, and playstyle that work better.

In a good specialised system, you can get a feel if those quirks and emphases playstyle by reading through the universe and associated art. For example, you'll probably understand if the PCs are supposed to be bold and adventurous (meaning the the system is forgiving enough to fall back to plan B if things go wrong) or cautious and well prepared (meaning that the system heavily reward preparation/scouting/...).

However, I'll fully agree on the last point: mastering at least one generic system that you enjoy is a very good idea. Both because it allows you to always have a system compatible with whatever campaign idea you might want to try, and because it gives you a comparison point to evaluate any other system you might encounter.

I do want to reiterate that I do not disagree with you at all. Yes, each generic system has its own particular style, and is suited especially for certain games and groups. It is simply my belief that a specialized system is not necessarily a silver bullet for a group's needs, and that far more needs to be considered when choosing what to play than just whether something was created with the intent for a specific playstyle or setting.

What generic systems could stand to do is, in fact, to make their own peculiarities and intent more clear and immediately open, just as specialised systems should. That way, it would be easy to pick one based on tone and gameplay, whether that be GURPS' focus on detail and world simulation, or FATE's focus on character-focused stories and building narrative momentum to win scenes.

Psyren
2022-04-04, 11:52 PM
On the other hand, I was able to hack Starfinder to run a cyberpunk game pretty well. The setting isn't as integrated, so it wasn't too difficult to make it work with my homebrew setting.

That's actually intentional; you could run a Starfinder game that takes place entirely on, say, Absalom Station, or Continuum, or even the Burning Archipelago - and it would end up feeling very cyberpunk what with all the corporations, hackers, corrupt officials, and artificia/augmented humanoids running around. You don't actually have to do any of the space travel stuff.

Tanarii
2022-04-05, 12:30 AM
Specifically, I'm talking about comic book superheroes and how they play in a game system. There are many problems with trying to have a game system for comic book superheroes and the biggest problem is scale. Superheroes are a *lot* more powerful than mere action heroes or fantasy wizards and warriors. A LOT more. No, I mean a LOT more. Like, way more than you can imagine.

Superheroes can lift mountains. Heck, they can lift planets. They can chain together all the planets from an entire galaxy and fly through space with them. (Superboy actually did this once.) Superheros are really really powerful. And they regularly fight cosmic beings that are of incomprehensible power levels. No, not gods. These cosmic beings are more powerful than mere gods. They're on a completely different scale.
&

But there's another, related issue. Superheroes can be *anything*. Sure, they might just be guys with powers. Or they might be guys with skills. Or they might have skills and powers.I've never before really been able to put my finger on why superheroes as a genre, in comic book, film and RPG form, slightly turned me off.

Reading this post, it crystallized. THESE are the reasons the superhero genre rubs me the wrong way! Moment of clarity :smallamused:

Pauly
2022-04-05, 01:36 AM
&
I've never before really been able to put my finger on why superheroes as a genre, in comic book, film and RPG form, slightly turned me off.

Reading this post, it crystallized. THESE are the reasons the superhero genre rubs me the wrong way! Moment of clarity :smallamused:

It also hits on why GURPS isn’t a satisfactory vessel for superhero games. GURPs works in the premise that physics are real and human limits can be stretched but not broken.

Eldan
2022-04-05, 03:25 AM
The other problem with running a game based on a kitchen sink superhero setting like DC & Marvel, especially, is that superheroes can't just be incredibly powerful, they can also be quite weak. You have 1 superhero chaining planets together and towing them around, and another superhero who has the powers of "wearing a mask" and "being pretty good at stick fighting", for example. Or "carrying a gun". No, not amazing supergunfighting ala Deadshot, there's literally superhero characters who just carry a gun and have the power of shooting two goons. And comics have trained people to assume that these are not only characters who act in the same world, but can occasionally team up and have the same adventure. Now, most superhero RPGs solve that with some kind of powerlevel, meaning The Question won't commonly team up with Superboy, but even then, people expect that a superhero system is able to model both characters and make them interesting.

"Superhero" is too many different archetypes and power levels. The span is too wide.

Lord Raziere
2022-04-05, 03:45 AM
The other problem with running a game based on a kitchen sink superhero setting like DC & Marvel, especially, is that superheroes can't just be incredibly powerful, they can also be quite weak. You have 1 superhero chaining planets together and towing them around, and another superhero who has the powers of "wearing a mask" and "being pretty good at stick fighting", for example. Or "carrying a gun". No, not amazing supergunfighting ala Deadshot, there's literally superhero characters who just carry a gun and have the power of shooting two goons. And comics have trained people to assume that these are not only characters who act in the same world, but can occasionally team up and have the same adventure. Now, most superhero RPGs solve that with some kind of powerlevel, meaning The Question won't commonly team up with Superboy, but even then, people expect that a superhero system is able to model both characters and make them interesting.

"Superhero" is too many different archetypes and power levels. The span is too wide.

*rolls eyes*

Eldan, please.

Batman characters aren't even hard to make effective at the same level as other supers. mostly its just a matter of the stats they'd used at lower levels being given a couple more points, thats it. those characters are meant to be superhero skill monkeys anyways, and are probably more practically useful than a world-destroyer or whatever anyways because in most conceivable situations, what use do you even have for destroying a world for a hero? you either have encountered something incredibly hyper-evil like a planet of demons with like, a core of pure hatred or something in which case, things have probably gone pretty south/contrived so the GM can make it useful, or your just some dude committing genocide and thus not a hero at all.

I mean you can argue that such a character so strong could do the save the planet from a meteor thing but if they're that strong to toss around a planet, a meteor should be nothing but an easy strength check. which isn't a common situation compared to say, investigating where a criminal went, which is probably a very common check to make if your a superhero fighting crime.

and thats not even the end of it. like MnM 3e, take Int 10, Inventor advantage, Technology 10, and you have like a big skill check to just making whatever technology you need to help out in the current plot, no powers needed. takes some prep-time, but as Batman, 3.5 wizard, and such demonstrate prep-time is a small price to pay for being able to have a potential solution to anything.

Batcathat
2022-04-05, 04:12 AM
*rolls eyes*

Eldan, please.

Batman characters aren't even hard to make effective at the same level as other supers. mostly its just a matter of the stats they'd used at lower levels being given a couple more points, thats it. those characters are meant to be superhero skill monkeys anyways, and are probably more practically useful than a world-destroyer or whatever anyways because in most conceivable situations, what use do you even have for destroying a world for a hero? you either have encountered something incredibly hyper-evil like a planet of demons with like, a core of pure hatred or something in which case, things have probably gone pretty south/contrived so the GM can make it useful, or your just some dude committing genocide and thus not a hero at all.

I mean you can argue that such a character so strong could do the save the planet from a meteor thing but if they're that strong to toss around a planet, a meteor should be nothing but an easy strength check. which isn't a common situation compared to say, investigating where a criminal went, which is probably a very common check to make if your a superhero fighting crime.

and thats not even the end of it. like MnM 3e, take Int 10, Inventor advantage, Technology 10, and you have like a big skill check to just making whatever technology you need to help out in the current plot, no powers needed. takes some prep-time, but as Batman, 3.5 wizard, and such demonstrate prep-time is a small price to pay for being able to have a potential solution to anything.

Yeah, this was my thought as well. I'm not sure about GURPS, but at least in M&M, building Batman would probably take at least as many points as building Superman considering all the skills he's supposed to have.

elros
2022-04-05, 04:32 AM
When I GMed Champions, the players knew we were not recreating the DC or Marvel universe. The Avengers was a great movie, but would be impossible to GM. They even lampshaded that in Age of Ultron when Hawkeye commended that the world was ending and he had a bow and arrow. Hard to match the power of Thor and the Hulk.

I always struggled with world building a superhero game because of the complex relationship between the government, law enforcement, and superheroes. I know that theme has been well covered in Civil War, the Watchmen, and other comics, but I struggled GMing it. For example, one of my players wanted to make a character that could teleport enemies right into a jail cell (which would have screwed up a lot of encounters), and I had to say the laws prevented detainment without due process. He argued that causing violence legally and beatinf someone into submission was legal, so why wouldn’t teleportation? I didn’t have a good answer, but the player went along with it for the sake of the game. Frustrating though!

Rynjin
2022-04-05, 04:33 AM
Yeah, this was my thought as well. I'm not sure about GURPS, but at least in M&M, building Batman would probably take at least as many points as building Superman considering all the skills he's supposed to have.

Which is the issue, IMO. I think it's kind of annoying that building "peak human" (or slightly beyond) characters like Batman, Deathstroke, Captain America, etc. is actually more difficult (and less effective) than building a character with powers, since the latter can make better use of arrays to get proper bang for their buck.

I like M&M but attributes are WAY overpriced. Why would I waste 40 points on boosting Fighting to 20, then need to rely on further points in Equipment to get my damage (totaling up to about 60 points), when I could just take Damage 20 and Close Combat (Skill) 20 for a total of 30 points?

Eldan
2022-04-05, 04:35 AM
*rolls eyes*

Eldan, please.

Batman characters aren't even hard to make effective at the same level as other supers. mostly its just a matter of the stats they'd used at lower levels being given a couple more points, thats it. those characters are meant to be superhero skill monkeys anyways, and are probably more practically useful than a world-destroyer or whatever anyways because in most conceivable situations, what use do you even have for destroying a world for a hero? you either have encountered something incredibly hyper-evil like a planet of demons with like, a core of pure hatred or something in which case, things have probably gone pretty south/contrived so the GM can make it useful, or your just some dude committing genocide and thus not a hero at all.

I mean you can argue that such a character so strong could do the save the planet from a meteor thing but if they're that strong to toss around a planet, a meteor should be nothing but an easy strength check. which isn't a common situation compared to say, investigating where a criminal went, which is probably a very common check to make if your a superhero fighting crime.

and thats not even the end of it. like MnM 3e, take Int 10, Inventor advantage, Technology 10, and you have like a big skill check to just making whatever technology you need to help out in the current plot, no powers needed. takes some prep-time, but as Batman, 3.5 wizard, and such demonstrate prep-time is a small price to pay for being able to have a potential solution to anything.

That's not what I meant. I know you can make Batman work in a Superman game.

What I Mean is that "superhero" is an enormously broad concept and making all superheroes work in the same game system is very hard. Not at the same level. At different levels. I'm saying that making a system where you can have a low level character with no powers, a masked vigilante who fights small group of gangsters, as well as a high level character who rearranges planets is difficult and having both high and low levels work by the same system and having both the highest and lowest power ends of the system work is complicated.

What I mean is that if you want to make every possible superhero comic character in the same system, the system has to be able to model a character who is a normal person with one or two skills marginally higher (say, Zorro or Green Hornet or the Phantom) as well as a character who operates on a cosmic level (say, Lucifer) and that having both in the same system is weird. Not in the same party and have both be useful. Just modelled in the same system.

"Superhero game" is a weird concept. That's all I meant.

(And I specifically didn't mention Batman, because Batman is a really weird case of someome who has nominally no superpowers, but has so many advantages that he fights on the same level as the superpowered guys anyway.)

Batcathat
2022-04-05, 05:30 AM
Which is the issue, IMO. I think it's kind of annoying that building "peak human" (or slightly beyond) characters like Batman, Deathstroke, Captain America, etc. is actually more difficult (and less effective) than building a character with powers, since the latter can make better use of arrays to get proper bang for their buck.

I like M&M but attributes are WAY overpriced. Why would I waste 40 points on boosting Fighting to 20, then need to rely on further points in Equipment to get my damage (totaling up to about 60 points), when I could just take Damage 20 and Close Combat (Skill) 20 for a total of 30 points?

To be fair, part of that is arrays being very abusable with a permissive GM (not necessarily a bad thing, but worth keeping in mind). But sure, I can agree that attributes are pretty pricey considering what you get for them.

Talakeal
2022-04-05, 12:28 PM
Yeah, this was my thought as well. I'm not sure about GURPS, but at least in M&M, building Batman would probably take at least as many points as building Superman considering all the skills he's supposed to have.

In the official DC book Batman actually has his own sidebar explaining why Batman costs more points than Superman despite being lower power level.

SimonMoon6
2022-04-05, 08:47 PM
I think the Justice Society is perfectly emblematic of the difference in power levels between superhero characters.

On the one hand, you've got the Spectre who is powered by Yahweh himself, with virtually unlimited power , capable of growing large enough to hold a planet in his hands and hit someone with it.

And on the other end of the spectrum, you've got some other heroes each with one minor gimmick. Like Wildcat, who's a good boxer and that's it. Yeah, he owns a motorcycle too. But he has nothing else going for him. (They retconned in a "nine lives" power later.)

Or consider the Golden Age version of the Atom. His gimmick is... he's shorter than most guys. And that's it. I mean, okay, he then went and trained to be really physically fit because he kept getting picked on. But he's just a physically fit guy with nothing else (at least until they retconned him into having superstrength, which he kind of seemed to have anyway because Golden Age comic books weren't the most clearly written and illustrated stories in the world).

Or the Golden Age Sandman. He's just a normal guy except he also has a gas mask and a gas gun. And that's it. Later, he got rid of those two special gimmicks so that he could have a skintight costume and a sidekick.

Or Doctor Mid-Nite. He at least has a little bit of a gimmick. He can see in the dark. And he has some sort of gas bombs that make it dark. But with all that phenomenal power, he has to have a weakness: he can't see in normal lighting conditions unless he wears his special goggles which have a tendency to break in combat.

And these guys are not only in the same world as the Spectre, they are his teammates.

icefractal
2022-04-06, 04:45 PM
I wouldn't say I actively dislike it, but I did run into a few issues when we played it.

1) Stats seem to be balanced for a combat-heavy game with significant use of melee weapons and armor. In a modern/future game where people have guns and also don't get into fights that often, IQ is the god-stat, DX is useful for action-y characters, the other two are much lesser.

2) Related to that, IQ is too broad. I had a high IQ because I was the "science guy", but because all the social skills also run off IQ, that made me technically a better "face" than the face for any skill I put even one point into.

3) Related to that, it really seemed like "max stats, one point in skills" was the optimal strategy. So much so that it was apparently "cheesy" to put a 16 IQ, for a scientist character. I'm aware that generic systems require somewhat more self-balancing on the players' part, but "a smart character putting too many points in being smart breaks the game" seems like a huge flaw.

4) There were so many skills that it was easy to forget one that the character conceptually should have, leading to looking foolish when it came up.

5) The one-second rounds and large number of possible actions led to rather slow combat. Probably avoidable with sufficiently disciplined players, but IME it was slow.

Mr Beer
2022-04-06, 05:14 PM
I wouldn't say I actively dislike it, but I did run into a few issues when we played it.

1) Stats seem to be balanced for a combat-heavy game with significant use of melee weapons and armor. In a modern/future game where people have guns and also don't get into fights that often, IQ is the god-stat, DX is useful for action-y characters, the other two are much lesser.

2) Related to that, IQ is too broad. I had a high IQ because I was the "science guy", but because all the social skills also run off IQ, that made me technically a better "face" than the face for any skill I put even one point into.

3) Related to that, it really seemed like "max stats, one point in skills" was the optimal strategy. So much so that it was apparently "cheesy" to put a 16 IQ, for a scientist character. I'm aware that generic systems require somewhat more self-balancing on the players' part, but "a smart character putting too many points in being smart breaks the game" seems like a huge flaw.

4) There were so many skills that it was easy to forget one that the character conceptually should have, leading to looking foolish when it came up.

5) The one-second rounds and large number of possible actions led to rather slow combat. Probably avoidable with sufficiently disciplined players, but IME it was slow.

These are legit criticisms. There are available rules to deal with most of these issues but like a lot of things in GURPS, you need a GM who knows the system well.

1. I think this relates to being a generic system. ST is too cheap at very low tech levels and IQ is too cheap in a high tech, skill based environment.

2. Yep agree. Using Talents tends to solve this, so for example you can cap IQ at say 14 and require scientists to take a Talent giving them IQ bonuses to science-type skills only. The face would have Charisma, Appearance and/or Voice bonuses and a face Talent.

3. Yep this can be an issue. See 4 for options. A broader potential problem with GURPS is that the points balancing is weighted towards combat utility = expensive. That means that non-combat options are relatively cheap. So a skill-monkey, or a diplomancer, or a Scrooge McDuck, are all much cheaper to buy than a combat wizard. In a low combat, high RPG game, this can be problematic.

4. One resolution is "bang skills", where you just clump seperate skills under one uber-skill. Another is to cull the skill list.

5. I sped combat up a lot by using mook rules, so enemies 'die' at 0 HP for example.

Mike_G
2022-04-06, 05:58 PM
My biggest issue with GURPS was that building characters was more fun than playing the game.

Combat was slow. One second round mean that anything other than "make an attack" was going to take you out of the action for many rounds.

There were a bunch of weird ways that stuff interacted, and some of the stuff, like damage multipliers could get stupidly complex.

And my own pet peeve was that the Disadvantage system explicitly rewarded player for playing a jerk. Take all the "difficult pain in the ass to work with" disadvantages and get a boatload of build points to be a more effective sadistic narcissistic impulsive bloodthirsty pyromaniac with odious personal habits.

Gnoman
2022-04-06, 09:35 PM
And my own pet peeve was that the Disadvantage system explicitly rewarded player for playing a jerk. Take all the "difficult pain in the ass to work with" disadvantages and get a boatload of build points to be a more effective sadistic narcissistic impulsive bloodthirsty pyromaniac with odious personal habits.

That's one of the reasons you're explicitly supposed to have Disadvantages capped. Only being able to get a certain number of points from disadvantages reduces the incentive to get the jerk traits.

Mike_G
2022-04-06, 10:01 PM
That's one of the reasons you're explicitly supposed to have Disadvantages capped. Only being able to get a certain number of points from disadvantages reduces the incentive to get the jerk traits.

Regardless of capping the total, players will choose something like "bloodthirsty" over "code of honor" because one of them restricts your actions and the other gives you cover to play a jerk and claim "hey, my character is Bloodthirsty. Of course he massacres the prisoners."

Yeah, I know the GM can ban or restrict stuff, but it always turned into a thing. Whoever thought a sadistic impulsive pyromaniac should get more build points was an idiot.

Gnoman
2022-04-06, 11:40 PM
I've never run into that as a player or GM. In my experience, stuff like Code Of Honor is popular because it works well for RP purposes and integrates the character's mechanics with their fluff.

Rynjin
2022-04-06, 11:46 PM
In my experience with Savage Worlds, the most popular options are actually stuff like Code of Honor over, say, Bloodthirsty, because stuff like Bloodthirsty and Greedy tend to get you killed more often than having a Code of Honor, mechanical penalties like Bad Eyesight (which can be mitigated with glasses anyway), or even Death Wish.

At least the latter usually only ends up getting you killed when your ultimate goal is in reach.

icefractal
2022-04-07, 12:23 AM
I've seen that one in Champions too, and it's always puzzled me - stuff like "No reluctance to kill" or "Ruthless" as a psychological limitation. As a social one, it could make sense - you have a bad rep because of your ruthlessness. But as a PsyLim, it isn't one. You can still choose not to kill people if it would be disadvantageous.

Mostly seen this on villains, but it's not like NPCs need to be the same number of points anyway, so IDK.

Satinavian
2022-04-07, 12:26 AM
And my own pet peeve was that the Disadvantage system explicitly rewarded player for playing a jerk. Take all the "difficult pain in the ass to work with" disadvantages and get a boatload of build points to be a more effective sadistic narcissistic impulsive bloodthirsty pyromaniac with odious personal habits.
That is mostly a problem of table rules.

How much do the other characters have to accommodate a jerk ? Can they just expel them from the party or even kill them ? Is the player responsible to make the character fit into the group ? Are there taboos at the table everyone has to keep ? Does the GM just veto characters they are not comfortable to have in the game ?

I can't say i have seen Jerk-disadvantages in the rules really create problems so far.

Rynjin
2022-04-07, 12:37 AM
I've seen that one in Champions too, and it's always puzzled me - stuff like "No reluctance to kill" or "Ruthless" as a psychological limitation. As a social one, it could make sense - you have a bad rep because of your ruthlessness. But as a PsyLim, it isn't one. You can still choose not to kill people if it would be disadvantageous.

Mostly seen this on villains, but it's not like NPCs need to be the same number of points anyway, so IDK.

In Savage Worlds, at least, no you can't "still choose not to kill people". It's worded that way and enforceable.

Eg. Bloodthirsty:

Your hero never takes prisoners unless
under the direct supervision of a superior.
His cold-blooded ruthlessness causes
enemies to respond in kind, often costs
vital information, creates constant
enemies, and may get him in trouble
with his superiors or the authorities,
depending on the setting.

Or Greedy:

A miser measures worth in material
possessions or wealth. If a Minor Hindrance,
he argues bitterly for more than his fair share
of any loot or reward the party might come
across. As a Major Hindrance, he fights
over anything he considers unfair, and may
even kill for it if he feels slighted or covets
something he cannot have

Compare/Contrast softer wording on Code of Honor:

Honor is very important to your character.
He keeps his word, doesn’t abuse or kill
prisoners, and generally tries to operate
within his world’s particular notion of proper
gentlemanly or ladylike behavior

or Death Wish:

Having a death wish doesn’t
mean your adventurer is
suicidal—he might just think
his life is worth less than some
noble but clearly deadly goal.
Those with a Death Wish
don’t throw their lives away for
no reason, but when there’s a
chance to complete a goal they
do anything—and take any
risk—to achieve it

Interestingly, the previous edition also imposed mechanical penalties on Bloodthirsty (a -4 to Charisma if your sadistic tendencies were known by the person you're talking to; this is a HUGE penalty in that system and almost ensures failure), I hadn't noticed that they removed it in SWADE until now.

Mr Beer
2022-04-07, 01:23 AM
Regardless of capping the total, players will choose something like "bloodthirsty" over "code of honor" because one of them restricts your actions and the other gives you cover to play a jerk and claim "hey, my character is Bloodthirsty. Of course he massacres the prisoners."

Yeah, I know the GM can ban or restrict stuff, but it always turned into a thing. Whoever thought a sadistic impulsive pyromaniac should get more build points was an idiot.

I think the major problem with not keeping a rein on Disadvantages is that people end up with a long grab-bag of problems that they don't play, and if they did, it would be unworkable. I cap them at a fairly low limit so they tend to be easily defined characters rather than walking assortments of crazy.

Never had a problem with people abusing the system by always picking 'evil' Disadvantages over 'good' ones. My players aren't the type to get off on running manical firebugs who get hard for torture, and if I did let someone play that type of lunatic, those extra points are unlikely to save them from repercussions.


In my experience with Savage Worlds, the most popular options are actually stuff like Code of Honor over, say, Bloodthirsty, because stuff like Bloodthirsty and Greedy tend to get you killed more often than having a Code of Honor, mechanical penalties like Bad Eyesight (which can be mitigated with glasses anyway), or even Death Wish.

At least the latter usually only ends up getting you killed when your ultimate goal is in reach.

This is my experience in GURPS. I often have players taking Sense of Duty: Party [-5] because it's effectively 5 free points to behave in a way that they would anyway.

Pauly
2022-04-07, 02:46 AM
Just because players can ‘game the system” by picking loads of disadvantages to power up their desired skills, I’ve only seen it done by high school students trying to be edgelords.

It’s another example of things that people quote to say ‘[this game] is broken because [theoretically possible loophole’], yet in real play it rarely or never is an issue.

JellyPooga
2022-04-07, 04:54 AM
(2) Weird prerequisites.

Like with spells, you can't learn a useful fire spell until you learn all the worthless wimpy fire spells first. That's just weird. I seem to recall something similar with superpowers but my memories are lost in the mists of time.

Why is it weird to have to learn to walk before you run? It was a draw to the system, for me, that wizards couldn't just learn how to conjure honking great fireballs without learning the "basics" of creating fire in the first place. Yeah, I can see an edge case where someone with uncontrolled magical ability might not have the refinement to create anything less than a big explosion, but on general the D&D method where someone can learn Major Illusion before they ever learn Minor Illusion (if they ever bother to) is what's weird.

DigoDragon
2022-04-07, 06:29 AM
Yeah, I know the GM can ban or restrict stuff, but it always turned into a thing. Whoever thought a sadistic impulsive pyromaniac should get more build points was an idiot.

My experience is that disadvantages only become a problem when the character faces no consequences for their actions with them. If they're setting fires everywhere, they should be getting a visit by their local fire marshal.

Disadvantages should not be free points.

Willie the Duck
2022-04-07, 07:49 AM
For me, the issue with disadvantages isn't whether people try to get the most points for the least constraints, it is that 1) plenty of GURPS disadvantages are the kind that the GM has to keep track of and make game-relevant, and even 2-3 per character is going to become burdensome, 2) plenty of disadvantages are stealth advantages in that they are screen time, so to speak, and 3) part of the entire dissonance of having a game with length character creation and complex backstories that are to be integrated into the ongoing campaign plot also be a game where doing risky things is realistically risky and characters can die with fairly great frequency.


That's one of the reasons you're explicitly supposed to have Disadvantages capped. Only being able to get a certain number of points from disadvantages reduces the incentive to get the jerk traits.

I've never run into that as a player or GM. In my experience, stuff like Code Of Honor is popular because it works well for RP purposes and integrates the character's mechanics with their fluff.

What I've found is that a lot of... Characters designed without expectation of play (i.e. not expecting a GM to veto) have a lot of 5 point 'low-level' versions of disadvantages get picked to pad out disadvantage totals to the cap. Sense of duty towards your close friends? I was going to follow that anyways. Compulsive or Obsession with adventure-preparedness? Practically a secret advantage. Fanatacism towards <team good guy> on a heroic character? Why not?


Just because players can ‘game the system” by picking loads of disadvantages to power up their desired skills, I’ve only seen it done by high school students trying to be edgelords.
Wouldn't that be the opposite case? If they are picking up disadvantages to power up their desired skills, that (powergaming) would be their motivation, not being (ugh) 'edgelords?' I would think the edgy player would pick disadvantages based on said disadvantages ability to make the play sessions all about their character instead of any mechanical benefit.


It’s another example of things that people quote to say ‘[this game] is broken because [theoretically possible loophole’], yet in real play it rarely or never is an issue.
I think your experience differs from other people here who have extensive experience playing the game. Obviously no ones' anecdotes trump any one else's.

Mike_G
2022-04-07, 08:42 AM
My experience is that disadvantages only become a problem when the character faces no consequences for their actions with them. If they're setting fires everywhere, they should be getting a visit by their local fire marshal.

Disadvantages should not be free points.

It's not that they're free.

Even if the local authority comes after the character, now the planned adventure is derailed and the whole party has to deal with the consequences of the one pyromaniac. Now the adventure is them versus the city guard or lynch mob. Which I hate a player and won't tolerate as a GM.

I get that player in no way have to play jerks. But the murder hobo trope is a trope for a reason, and GURPS explicitly lets you take extra build points to be extra murdery.

I just don't see that having those disadvantages adds anything to the game, and if there is a loophole, somebody's going to exploit it.

Tanarii
2022-04-07, 11:35 AM
It’s another example of things that people quote to say ‘[this game] is broken because [theoretically possible loophole’], yet in real play it rarely or never is an issue.The point is that point buy based systems, it isn't just an theoretical issue that rarely or never is an in-play issue. It's endemic.

Even with non-point buy systems but that give a huge number of levers to modify, like DND 3e or Warcraft, this shows up. But not to the same degree.

PhoenixPhyre
2022-04-07, 12:04 PM
Why is it weird to have to learn to walk before you run? It was a draw to the system, for me, that wizards couldn't just learn how to conjure honking great fireballs without learning the "basics" of creating fire in the first place. Yeah, I can see an edge case where someone with uncontrolled magical ability might not have the refinement to create anything less than a big explosion, but on general the D&D method where someone can learn Major Illusion before they ever learn Minor Illusion (if they ever bother to) is what's weird.

I agree. I find the D&D's "atomic spells" style to be really weird and unthematic. You're a pyromancer, so of course you learn the fire spells. But in D&D, you pick up the one or two big ones and then you learn to teleport, change people into beasts, and make astral fortresses. Huh. Much thematic. Much logical progression.

Tanarii
2022-04-07, 12:15 PM
I get that player in no way have to play jerks. But the murder hobo trope is a trope for a reason, and GURPS explicitly lets you take extra build points to be extra murdery.

I just don't see that having those disadvantages adds anything to the game, and if there is a loophole, somebody's going to exploit it.
It's only necessarily a problem if each player has one character and those characters are expected to adventure together for some time.

It's like assassins in AD&D. If you're playing in a classical campaign, an open table sandbox, when the character gets outed, the party kicks them out, turns them over to the authorities, murders them and steals their loot, or happily joins in the murder hoboing, as they see fit. And maybe the next table / session reacts differently. It's not disruptive except to the person who just lost a character and now has to go home early and play different characters next time except in the last case, and even then it's not necessarily disruptive because sandbox, and also other PCs very well might come wipe out the murderhobos.

But in a one party being followed through a series of adventures "campaign"? Yeah, totally disruptive. GMs running those kinds of campaigns need to set appropriate guidelines about character building. That's always true, but "appropriate guidelines" can vary wildly between this kind of "campaign" and a classical campaign.

As an example, in my campaign I set a "no evil characters" rule, because why the heck not skip having to think about that murder hobo party issue, where "evil character" was defined as: in my personal opinion, regularly behaving as any of the behaviors associated with D&D 5e alignments.

Mordar
2022-04-07, 12:57 PM
Just because players can ‘game the system” by picking loads of disadvantages to power up their desired skills, I’ve only seen it done by high school students trying to be edgelords.

It’s another example of things that people quote to say ‘[this game] is broken because [theoretically possible loophole’], yet in real play it rarely or never is an issue.

Like a couple others upstream, I really wish that were the case. My experience (though some years removed) is very much one of lots of people doing it and seldom is it limited to high schoolers or younger. In fact it was most often older players in the game store/game center that wanted to wish fulfill through that kind of thing and were aiming for powergaming as either the primary or secondary benefit.

Other examples, though less immediately egregious, were the advantage tricks that allowed you to default skills to attributes with reduced penalties, offset by disadvantages that made it harder to build skills...and then tromping over other character's spotlights because you have "system mastery". Same idea, different execution, different kind of powergamer wish fulfullment.

- M

icefractal
2022-04-07, 03:25 PM
As far as disadvantages, I like them, but I don't think the "self-limiting" model works - as in, the maximum amount you can take is unlimited or very large, and the expectation is that players won't take the maximum.

IME, people do take the maximum, even if they don't really want to. Because the "self-limiting" idea is based on IC thinking, and even when people are playing in character-stance, they aren't generally building characters that way.

Like, IC, if I was offered the deal of "You can run twice as fast, but an organized crime syndicate will be trying to kidnap you", then no, I wouldn't take it. But also, I probably wouldn't be an adventurer-type at all! If I was deciding it IC, I'd probably be something like "Immortal guy who passively benefits the world just by existing, has no enemies, and doesn't have to worry about anything."

And when you look at it OOC, a lot of "disadvantages" are really "you can be more powerful, in exchange for ... having more spotlight time". It's all upside. Even for players who'd rather have less IC stress, their party members' problems are usually their problems too, so if even one person goes "maximum disadvantages" then the others might as well also - at least they'll have more power to deal with all the problems that arise.


Not sure how this compares to GURPS, but in Hero 6E they made three changes:
1) They're called "Complications", not "Disadvantages"
2) The default amount to take is halved
3) The phrasing is changed - instead of "150 points + up to 150 in disadvantages", it's "300 points with 75 points of matching complications". Just a semantic difference, but it acknowledges the reality that people will generally be taking the maximum.

All of these, #2 in particular, have been improvements, IME. Previously, our group ended up with so many Hunted (you have an enemy) and Dependent NPC (aka Aunt May) disadvantages that it would be impossible for the GM to feature them as often as intended even if there was no other plot!

kyoryu
2022-04-07, 03:31 PM
I personally like the Fate model of "you get a bonus when your complication comes into play" over what turns into "pick complications that you think you can minimize".

I say this as a long-time GURPS fan.

Segev
2022-04-07, 04:42 PM
GURPS, for me, has the major problem that if you don't min/max, you suck at whatever you're trying to do. Everything requires skill checks to be able to do it, sometimes multiple skill checks, and the odds of success if you're following the guidelines for "balanced" (as opposed to min/maxed) characters leave a lot of room to fail on a very regular basis. Again, especially when you need to make 2-3 checks to finally activate whatever ability you spent points on.

Combat is a nightmare of fiddly bonuses and penalties, maneuvers that have weird timing requirements, and trying to figure out how to use your weapons and the like can take forever. It rewards system mastery, which is good, but to exploit that mastery to get the reward can mean very lengthy discussions every single turn in combat.

It touts itself as "generic" (it's the "G" in the name), but the vision of how magic, psionics, etc. work is very rigid and dictates truths about whatever setting you're playing in at least as much as, if not more than, any edition of D&D ever did. You can construct "magic" without GURPS's magic system, but at that point you're just making general powers and saying "and this one's magic," which makes it fall into the more usual trap of a points-based system: it's same-y.

There's possibly no good solution to that conundrum, honestly, but it is something I dislike about GURPS because by claiming to be "generic," it fools people into trying to run it on settings that don't support its magic system assumptions, which just gets messy and unsatisfying.

Rynjin
2022-04-07, 06:17 PM
As far as disadvantages, I like them, but I don't think the "self-limiting" model works - as in, the maximum amount you can take is unlimited or very large, and the expectation is that players won't take the maximum.

Yeah. Not to toot Savage Worlds' horn as a better generic system too much, but it likewise limits how man Hindrances you can take; or, at least, how many you can benefit from.

You get 4 points worth of Hindrances, max. Major Hindrances are worth 2. Those points can be spent on other upgrades (a single Edge costs 2, an attribute costs 2, a skill costs 1, etc.).

This keeps the benefits relatively low. Characters with Hindrances have a noticeable, but not insurmountable advantage mechanically over those that don't, but each Hindrance is enforced and has to be played into.

I think it works very well.

Eldan
2022-04-08, 05:26 AM
I agree. I find the D&D's "atomic spells" style to be really weird and unthematic. You're a pyromancer, so of course you learn the fire spells. But in D&D, you pick up the one or two big ones and then you learn to teleport, change people into beasts, and make astral fortresses. Huh. Much thematic. Much logical progression.

Heh. I actually houseruled that, along with some other changes to arcane magic, by dividing D&D spells not into 8 schools, as they are now, but in many different "lores" (inspired by Warhammer lores). Works pretty well and is quite thematic.

DigoDragon
2022-04-08, 08:44 AM
What I've found is that a lot of... Characters designed without expectation of play (i.e. not expecting a GM to veto) have a lot of 5 point 'low-level' versions of disadvantages get picked to pad out disadvantage totals to the cap. Sense of duty towards your close friends? I was going to follow that anyways. Compulsive or Obsession with adventure-preparedness? Practically a secret advantage. Fanatacism towards <team good guy> on a heroic character? Why not?

I get that player in no way have to play jerks. But the murder hobo trope is a trope for a reason, and GURPS explicitly lets you take extra build points to be extra murdery.

I just don't see that having those disadvantages adds anything to the game, and if there is a loophole, somebody's going to exploit it.

In the defense of GURPS, the book explains that GMs need to be actively involved in character creation. Disadvantages that don't give a meaningful detriment (like the mentioned example above, Sense of Duty to close friends) need to be either veto'd or be awarded no points. Disadvantages that can be very disruptive to the campaign should also likewise be limited or veto'd (for example, buying a high TL to access lasers and power suits in a setting that takes place in the 1980s). A few disadvantages even mention limiting them within their entries.

If the GM just accepts any build at face value, then that's going to cause exactly the issued you both have brought up. And I find this is not just a GURPS issue, but in any system. GMs should not sleep through their "session zero". :smalltongue:

As an experienced GM with GURPS, I set a very low cap on disadvantages and just raise the overall points available for character creation. This way players add just one or two flaws to define their character and not a laundry list that can cause a problem (e.g. instead of 150-pt characters with up to 75-pts in optional disadvantages, I'd make it 200-pt characters with a 25 pt cap in disadvantages).

kyoryu
2022-04-08, 09:08 AM
In which GURPS edition is the number of disads unlimited? I've never seen that.

Willie the Duck
2022-04-08, 10:58 AM
In the defense of GURPS, the book explains that GMs need to be actively involved in character creation. Disadvantages that don't give a meaningful detriment (like the mentioned example above, Sense of Duty to close friends) need to be either veto'd or be awarded no points. Disadvantages that can be very disruptive to the campaign should also likewise be limited or veto'd (for example, buying a high TL to access lasers and power suits in a setting that takes place in the 1980s). A few disadvantages even mention limiting them within their entries.

If the GM just accepts any build at face value, then that's going to cause exactly the issued you both have brought up. And I find this is not just a GURPS issue, but in any system. GMs should not sleep through their "session zero". :smalltongue:
That is why I specified that this happened for characters created without a specific GM/campaign in mind (so what a lot of internet faff would be, but probably not what happens at tables).

I'm of two minds on this, particularly since the premise of the thread is a general critique of the system (i.e. yes we are expected to look for faults in the thing, that's what we were asked to do).

On one hand, 'I can break this thing in a thought experiment that has no relationship to the game as played' is, in my mind, nearly unrelated to the quality of the thing (non-GURPS example: there are plenty of valid critiques of D&D 3e, but Pun-Pun is not a meaningful one).

That said, I don't want to pretend some of these issues aren't actual systematic weaknesses of a game design strategy at the same time. That the optimal strategy for character creation is to take a bunch of disadvantages that require you to play the way you wanted to do so already, or to pick ones you think will not come up, are fundamentally tied to the design strategy of 'benefits up front, penalties as the GM invokes them.' Other point buy games where the benefit of the disadvantage occurs when the disadvantage actually becomes relevant have their own issues (for example, they incentivize playing characters who wallow in their flaws instead of do their best to avoid them, creating what some consider unrealistic characters), but they do eliminate the incentivization structure of picking flaws that won't be, well, flaws. For that reason, I don't want to neglect analyzing these things, even though yes usually a (good) GM will be able to head the worst of this off at the pass.


As an experienced GM with GURPS, I set a very low cap on disadvantages and just raise the overall points available for character creation. This way players add just one or two flaws to define their character and not a laundry list that can cause a problem (e.g. instead of 150-pt characters with up to 75-pts in optional disadvantages, I'd make it 200-pt characters with a 25 pt cap in disadvantages).
I've tended in the past few times I've GMed GURPS (which has been a while, but that has more to do with the group's game-complexity desires than GURPS itself) to just have a 225 pt game, and if you think your character ought to have a given flaw to write it down. Given that most of them give spotlight time, people haven't stopped taking them just because they don't give points.


In which GURPS edition is the number of disads unlimited? I've never seen that.
I don't have anything from before 3e anymore, but I don't recall any edition not having the concept of a limit. However, I think most of them indicate that the GM sets it at whatever they like (with most editions and settings indicating a normal Disad limit along with a normal point total).

Mike_G
2022-04-08, 12:40 PM
In the defense of GURPS, the book explains that GMs need to be actively involved in character creation. Disadvantages that don't give a meaningful detriment (like the mentioned example above, Sense of Duty to close friends) need to be either veto'd or be awarded no points. Disadvantages that can be very disruptive to the campaign should also likewise be limited or veto'd (for example, buying a high TL to access lasers and power suits in a setting that takes place in the 1980s). A few disadvantages even mention limiting them within their entries.

If the GM just accepts any build at face value, then that's going to cause exactly the issued you both have brought up. And I find this is not just a GURPS issue, but in any system. GMs should not sleep through their "session zero". :smalltongue:

As an experienced GM with GURPS, I set a very low cap on disadvantages and just raise the overall points available for character creation. This way players add just one or two flaws to define their character and not a laundry list that can cause a problem (e.g. instead of 150-pt characters with up to 75-pts in optional disadvantages, I'd make it 200-pt characters with a 25 pt cap in disadvantages).

Sure, a good GM can work around the flaws in GURPS, but a good DM can work around flaws in any system. GURPS just has a steep learning curve for DMs

The thread was for reasons we don't like GURPS, and my big one is the Disadvantages. This isn't a theoretical exploit that never happens. I played a good bit of GURPS (not sure which edition but it was early on) and most people either took Disadvantages that weren't going to be a problem, or that were the way they were going to play anyway, or were outright disruptive.

It had nothing to do with the limit. Regardless of how many points they could take, nobody ever took a disadvantage that was actually disadvantageous. The benign ones were "Sense of Duty:Friends" which is so not a disadvantage, or the guy who wanted to murder-hobo his way through the world took "Extra Murdery" and "Odious Personal Habit: Hobo."

I never saw them add anything to the game.

icefractal
2022-04-08, 01:44 PM
TBF to "disadvantages that're just how you were going to play the character anyway", I think they can serve a purpose when trying to open up "overly success-oriented" players to the possibility of roleplaying even when it's suboptimal.

Not recently, but back in the day, I've been in a couple groups where not only did some players always do the most effective thing (and I don't just mean CO, I mean looting every single copper and never taking even the slightest risk if it could be avoided), they got upset if any other players didn't!

I'm talking about stuff like:
"Why did you let that goblin go?!"
"He surrendered and told us the info we wanted."
"He could get reinforcements!"
"Those would be at least a day away, and we're leaving within a few hours."
"Well we could have looted him!"
"For what, a dagger, goblin-sized leather armor, and a few copper pieces?"
"YES! And that better come out of YOUR SHARE!"

In a situation like that, I could definitely see the appeal of. "Sorry bro, got the Merciful disadvantage, I had no choice. Point your whining at the rulebook instead of me."

Mike_G
2022-04-08, 01:57 PM
TBF to "disadvantages that're just how you were going to play the character anyway", I think they can serve a purpose when trying to open up "overly success-oriented" players to the possibility of roleplaying even when it's suboptimal.

Not recently, but back in the day, I've been in a couple groups where not only did some players always do the most effective thing (and I don't just mean CO, I mean looting every single copper and never taking even the slightest risk if it could be avoided), they got upset if any other players didn't!

I'm talking about stuff like:
"Why did you let that goblin go?!"
"He surrendered and told us the info we wanted."
"He could get reinforcements!"
"Those would be at least a day away, and we're leaving within a few hours."
"Well we could have looted him!"
"For what, a dagger, goblin-sized leather armor, and a few copper pieces?"
"YES! And that better come out of YOUR SHARE!"

In a situation like that, I could definitely see the appeal of. "Sorry bro, got the Merciful disadvantage, I had no choice. Point your whining at the rulebook instead of me."

Sure, but in my experience, the other guy would have taken Greedy or Bloodthirsty and used that as an excuse to hunt down the goblin for his fillings.

It might not have been every table, but it was every table I ever played. Even the people who didn't take Bloodthirsty or Pyromaniac took Impulsive so they could excuse their disruptions.

Like I said, you can counter it, but it's in the rules in black and white. It doesn't take a dishonest reading of the rules, like trying to Iron Heart Surge your way out of death.

Gnoman
2022-04-08, 07:12 PM
The other thing about Disadvantages in GURPS that can be missed is that they are mechanically enforced. If you take a "extra murdery" disadvantage, you have to roll to not murder if you don't want to. This is something I've seen heavily criticized because it "forces" a player to role play in a certain way.

Tanarii
2022-04-08, 08:15 PM
The other thing about Disadvantages in GURPS that can be missed is that they are mechanically enforced. If you take a "extra murdery" disadvantage, you have to roll to not murder if you don't want to. This is something I've seen heavily criticized because it "forces" a player to role play in a certain way.
It's not forcing anything if the player chose the disadvantage.

Pauly
2022-04-08, 08:59 PM
The other thing about Disadvantages in GURPS that can be missed is that they are mechanically enforced. If you take a "extra murdery" disadvantage, you have to roll to not murder if you don't want to. This is something I've seen heavily criticized because it "forces" a player to role play in a certain way.

Tell that to the LG paladin players who commit genocide “for the greater good” or the CE drow assassins who act like choir boys “because that’s what ‘intelligent’ evil does”. I prefer a system that enforces the disadvantages than a system that doesn’t.

It doesn’t matter what the system is. You are going to have a certain element of players who min-max and power game it. Game designers have a choice - go the D&D route and embrace it fully or take the GURPS approach and try to enforce it mechanically.

Mr Beer
2022-04-09, 02:32 AM
Disagree with most of this.


GURPS, for me, has the major problem that if you don't min/max, you suck at whatever you're trying to do. Everything requires skill checks to be able to do it, sometimes multiple skill checks, and the odds of success if you're following the guidelines for "balanced" (as opposed to min/maxed) characters leave a lot of room to fail on a very regular basis. Again, especially when you need to make 2-3 checks to finally activate whatever ability you spent points on.

Not min/maxing definitely doesn't make you suck at everything, unless you're talking about very low point PCs, in which case that's kind of the point. You shouldn't be routinely failing at tasks unless you are either bad at them or just terrible at everything. Skills receive situational bonuses. 12 to 14 is professional range. Say you drive a taxi and have skill 12 in Drive: Automobile, you don't have to roll 12 or less to drive a customer across town. Either the DM handwaves it or you get a minimum of a +5 bonus because it's an easy task.

Min/maxing is usually a bad strategy in GURPS. Bad ST and you are terrible at melee combat, die easily and can't carry much or wear good armour. Bad IQ and you are bad at many skills and vulnerable to magic, psionics and things like Fright Checks. Bad HT and you die *really* easily and you tire quickly. Bad DX and you are bad at all the other skills, especially combar ones. There's no good dump stat, ST is probably the best candidate as long as you're going to melee but even then it has problems.


Combat is a nightmare of fiddly bonuses and penalties, maneuvers that have weird timing requirements, and trying to figure out how to use your weapons and the like can take forever. It rewards system mastery, which is good, but to exploit that mastery to get the reward can mean very lengthy discussions every single turn in combat.

Much more true. GURPS requires a good grasp of the system by the GM. The GM should decide which rules are and aren't being used, and unless you are running a one-on-one arena combat game I would avoid a lot of the optional ones. I tend to write most of my players' characters based on what they want and then I write out their best combat options so it's much easier for them to pick something quickly and effectively.


It touts itself as "generic" (it's the "G" in the name), but the vision of how magic, psionics, etc. work is very rigid and dictates truths about whatever setting you're playing in at least as much as, if not more than, any edition of D&D ever did. You can construct "magic" without GURPS's magic system, but at that point you're just making general powers and saying "and this one's magic," which makes it fall into the more usual trap of a points-based system: it's same-y.

There's possibly no good solution to that conundrum, honestly, but it is something I dislike about GURPS because by claiming to be "generic," it fools people into trying to run it on settings that don't support its magic system assumptions, which just gets messy and unsatisfying.

Not true at all, there are a number of magic systems in GURPS: The default spells-as-skills version, powers as spells, Sorcery, Syntactic and Ritual Path Magic plus Thaumatology provides guidelines on building your own bespoke magic system.

MoiMagnus
2022-04-09, 05:37 AM
It's not forcing anything if the player chose the disadvantage.

I disagree. It's similar to strictly enforcing alignment in D&D and saying its ok because it's the player that chose their alignment at the beginning of the campaign. It's still the rules forcing the player's RP at a given moment, even it relies on a player choice a few months ago.

Which kind of go against the standard answer to "It's what my character would do so don't blame me for being a jerk" which is "It's what you as a player chose to do, you get the the last call on everything you character do so don't hide behind your character sheet, and please burn your character's consistency in a fire if that's the only way you find to not ruin the fun of everyone else."

[Admittedly, a good GM would probably not enforce those disadvantage in situations where it would literally ruin the game.]

Eldan
2022-04-09, 07:11 AM
That's where I really like how FATE does it. You get points for failling something thanks to your disadvantages, which you can then spend to succeed at something thanks to your advantages, basically.

It's surprising how eager it makes your players to play out their failings. There's not many systems where your players will ask if they may please badly fail this roll instead of succeeding.

SimonMoon6
2022-04-09, 10:06 AM
One of my more memorable experiences with GURPS (in regard to disadvantages) involved one player who made a character to be a typical action movie hero kind of guy. He took disadvantages that made him rude and obnoxious, thinking of himself as the guy who says these over the top things but in a cool badass way rather than (as the rules actually made him) an obnoxious loser that nobody liked. This came to a head when the PCs met a princess and this particular PC made some sort of Charisma check and I mentioned how it didn't go well because of how rude he was to her. His reaction was something like "I wasn't going to be rude to HER."

But... that's the point of the disadvantage.

Of course, I think this is also how a lot of players think a low Charisma works in D&D. They don't realize that a low charisma doesn't make you the cool rude dude, it makes you the mild-mannered wallflower hiding in the corner that nobody pays attention to, who stammers and stutters when forced to actually speak. So, it's not just a GURPS problem.

Segev
2022-04-09, 10:36 AM
Disagree with most of this.



Not min/maxing definitely doesn't make you suck at everything, unless you're talking about very low point PCs, in which case that's kind of the point. You shouldn't be routinely failing at tasks unless you are either bad at them or just terrible at everything. Skills receive situational bonuses. 12 to 14 is professional range. Say you drive a taxi and have skill 12 in Drive: Automobile, you don't have to roll 12 or less to drive a customer across town. Either the DM handwaves it or you get a minimum of a +5 bonus because it's an easy task.

Min/maxing is usually a bad strategy in GURPS. Bad ST and you are terrible at melee combat, die easily and can't carry much or wear good armour. Bad IQ and you are bad at many skills and vulnerable to magic, psionics and things like Fright Checks. Bad HT and you die *really* easily and you tire quickly. Bad DX and you are bad at all the other skills, especially combar ones. There's no good dump stat, ST is probably the best candidate as long as you're going to melee but even then it has problems.



Much more true. GURPS requires a good grasp of the system by the GM. The GM should decide which rules are and aren't being used, and unless you are running a one-on-one arena combat game I would avoid a lot of the optional ones. I tend to write most of my players' characters based on what they want and then I write out their best combat options so it's much easier for them to pick something quickly and effectively.



Not true at all, there are a number of magic systems in GURPS: The default spells-as-skills version, powers as spells, Sorcery, Syntactic and Ritual Path Magic plus Thaumatology provides guidelines on building your own bespoke magic system.
Fair enough. I've only played GURPS with one GM. He's a major fan of the system, wants to convert everything into GURPS if he can convince the players to play in that system, and it has been my experience that you either hand-wave things your you fail a LOT.

And you don't get to hand-wave away the built-in subsystem things like "now roll to activate your psionic powers, then roll your skill to see if you can do what you wanted to with them, now roll to hit..." which I think, if I'm exaggerating (I am operating from memory), I am only exaggerating a little. The inability to use my powers without 1-3 rolls minimum led me to my min/maxing preference.

I have found that, to build a character I would not find a laughable joke of incompetence, I have to max IQ and dump the rest, and then do my best to find ways to use powers that lean into that IQ to remove my character's need to use physical stats.

12 or 14 is "professional," but without hand-waving it or begging the GM for ad-hoc bonuses, you fail with a 14 in your stat+skill something like 40% of the time (I don't have the bell curve in front of me nor do I have the math memorized, but it's surprisingly high).

Maybe magic is more flexible than I give it credit for; the GM in question has all those books, though, and never builds a coherent magic system and just says we can use them. I can't make head nor tails of what we're supposed to be doing, and I feel like GURPS is constantly scolding me for mathematically examining the system to figure out how to reliably do what I want to do, because "role playing" says I should "trust" their ratings, even though their ratings mathematically give me high chances of regular failure at basic things.

And, again, combat. Ugh, combat.

Finally, while I appreciate that you're happy to build your players' characters for them so they can do what they describe, I have found that when GMs do that for me, I am highly dissatisfied with the characters, because I don't know the nuances the GM built into them, they don't perform reliably the way I want them to at the things I want them to do (rather than the GM's determination of what he thinks they should do...and even not that, often, because again I don't know the system well enough to use the fiddly tricks built into the character). If I can't build the character, myself, I generally don't know how to use it.

I find GURPS to think itself a lot more flexible than it really is, and to rely on layers upon layers of systems and subsystems that it expects you to have mastered and memorized because you can't take any of the top-level things-you-buy at face value; everything winds up interconnected deep down in the guts in ways that distort them from how they appear to be advertised.

Tanarii
2022-04-09, 12:02 PM
I disagree. It's similar to strictly enforcing alignment in D&D and saying its ok because it's the player that chose their alignment at the beginning of the campaign. It's still the rules forcing the player's RP at a given moment, even it relies on a player choice a few months ago.No, it's not. They chose to take a bonus in return for acknowledging that under certain circumstances, their specific decisions would be limited. That's nothing like Alignment, which is required, has no bonus, and is broad guidelines on overall behavior.

Furthermore, there is nothing inherently wrong with roleplaying rules restricting player decision making. But in this case, it's not forced. They chose to take the bonus and accompanying future restriction when it's not required to do so.


Which kind of go against the standard answer to "It's what my character would do so don't blame me for being a jerk" which is "It's what you as a player chose to do, you get the the last call on everything you character do so don't hide behind your character sheet, and please burn your character's consistency in a fire if that's the only way you find to not ruin the fun of everyone else."players being jerks and this disadvantages enabling it is an unrelated, and IMO perfectly valid, point.

"you get the the last call on everything you character do" isn't. That's not an inherent thing in TTRPGs, nor is it necessarily a beneficial thing to want. That's not saying it's necessarily unbeneficial, just that it's not necessarily beneficial. There are many TTRPGs that don't go anywhere near this idea, even going completely the opposite direction, and it works great for tables that know how to make it work.

JellyPooga
2022-04-09, 02:07 PM
12 or 14 is "professional," but without hand-waving it or begging the GM for ad-hoc bonuses, you fail with a 14 in your stat+skill something like 40% of the time (I don't have the bell curve in front of me nor do I have the math memorized, but it's surprisingly high).

Just to clarify, there's about a 10% chance (it's actually a little under) of rolling over 14 on 3d6. Having 14 in a Skill in GURPS makes you extremely competent. Sure, when you're trying the tricky stuff, that 14 drops fast, but not every task has negative modifiers (many have positive ones!). It doesn't really take a lot of points to make a character good, if not great at a lot of things if you know how to build characters in GURPS. Yes, it takes a degree of system mastery to wrap your head around some of the pitfalls and cross-synergies between skills, advantages and other stats, but once you know it, character gen can become remarkably quick.

The other big advantage of GURPS is just how front-loaded it really is. Yes, it takes a lot of work for the GM to tailor the system to the campaign in question and yes it can take a lot of head-space and time to finalise your character sheet, but once it's done...largely speaking it's all very straightforward. Once you realise that all the rules are just example difficulty mods, you understand that pretty much every rule in the books boils down to that one table of example difficulties (you know, the one with firing a bazooka while driving a car with your knees at high speed in a blizzard being a -10 modifier...that table).

Rynjin
2022-04-09, 03:12 PM
One of my more memorable experiences with GURPS (in regard to disadvantages) involved one player who made a character to be a typical action movie hero kind of guy. He took disadvantages that made him rude and obnoxious, thinking of himself as the guy who says these over the top things but in a cool badass way rather than (as the rules actually made him) an obnoxious loser that nobody liked. This came to a head when the PCs met a princess and this particular PC made some sort of Charisma check and I mentioned how it didn't go well because of how rude he was to her. His reaction was something like "I wasn't going to be rude to HER."

But... that's the point of the disadvantage.

Of course, I think this is also how a lot of players think a low Charisma works in D&D. They don't realize that a low charisma doesn't make you the cool rude dude, it makes you the mild-mannered wallflower hiding in the corner that nobody pays attention to, who stammers and stutters when forced to actually speak. So, it's not just a GURPS problem.

I mean, no, you can be the "cool rude dude", but it's the charisma that makes it work for you.

It's the difference between being Renegade Commander Shepard, who is a bit of a **** but charming enough to pull it off...and Duke Nukem, who is literally a joke.

Gnoman
2022-04-09, 03:28 PM
Fair enough. I've only played GURPS with one GM. He's a major fan of the system, wants to convert everything into GURPS if he can convince the players to play in that system, and it has been my experience that you either hand-wave things your you fail a LOT.

And you don't get to hand-wave away the built-in subsystem things like "now roll to activate your psionic powers, then roll your skill to see if you can do what you wanted to with them, now roll to hit..." which I think, if I'm exaggerating (I am operating from memory), I am only exaggerating a little. The inability to use my powers without 1-3 rolls minimum led me to my min/maxing preference.

I have found that, to build a character I would not find a laughable joke of incompetence, I have to max IQ and dump the rest, and then do my best to find ways to use powers that lean into that IQ to remove my character's need to use physical stats.

12 or 14 is "professional," but without hand-waving it or begging the GM for ad-hoc bonuses, you fail with a 14 in your stat+skill something like 40% of the time (I don't have the bell curve in front of me nor do I have the math memorized, but it's surprisingly high).


There's serious GM issues here. The standard rule, not a hand wave, is that you only roll for non-routine tasks where there is a consequence for failure. Routine tasks don't get rolls unless you're trying to use a skill you don't have (via the Default system). Driving, for example, should never need rolls unless you're trying to drive aggressively to get somewhere faster than is safe, or evading somebody, or in some sort of vehicular combat. General point-to-point transport is roll-free as long as you've got the "knows how to drive" skill.

The default magic system is never more than two rolls unless you get hit while holding it (which is the equivalent of a Concentration check in D&D). You roll to cast the spell, and sometimes that spell requires an attack roll (only found on melee and missile attack spells - there's plenty of spells that just affect a target or area without a roll). Note that this is two different skills, which discourages min-max. 3+ rolls should never happen. Either you're remembering wrong, or the GM was slapping extra rolls on you in the name of "balance".

You should not be failing that often with a skill of 14. The odds of success on an unmodified 3d6 roll are (skill/percent)



3
.46


4
1.85


5
4.63


6
9.26


7
16.2


8
25.93


9
37.5


10
50


11
62.50


12
74.07


13
83.8


14
90.74


15
95.37


16
98.15


17
99.54


18
100



If you have skill 14 and are failing more than 10% of the time, you either have bad dice or your GM is applying a ton of modifiers that he shouldn't be - a common mistake for overly enthusiastic but inexperienced GMs. Bad rolls happened (the party in the old-school Deadly Dungeon Crawl I'm running narrowly avoided a TPK a few days ago because two out of 3 players failed a Fright Check of 13), but they should not be happening consistently, and the odds don't support what you're saying.

Mr Beer
2022-04-09, 05:10 PM
Fair enough. I've only played GURPS with one GM. He's a major fan of the system, wants to convert everything into GURPS if he can convince the players to play in that system, and it has been my experience that you either hand-wave things your you fail a LOT.

And you don't get to hand-wave away the built-in subsystem things like "now roll to activate your psionic powers, then roll your skill to see if you can do what you wanted to with them, now roll to hit..." which I think, if I'm exaggerating (I am operating from memory), I am only exaggerating a little. The inability to use my powers without 1-3 rolls minimum led me to my min/maxing preference.

I have found that, to build a character I would not find a laughable joke of incompetence, I have to max IQ and dump the rest, and then do my best to find ways to use powers that lean into that IQ to remove my character's need to use physical stats.

12 or 14 is "professional," but without hand-waving it or begging the GM for ad-hoc bonuses, you fail with a 14 in your stat+skill something like 40% of the time (I don't have the bell curve in front of me nor do I have the math memorized, but it's surprisingly high).

Maybe magic is more flexible than I give it credit for; the GM in question has all those books, though, and never builds a coherent magic system and just says we can use them. I can't make head nor tails of what we're supposed to be doing, and I feel like GURPS is constantly scolding me for mathematically examining the system to figure out how to reliably do what I want to do, because "role playing" says I should "trust" their ratings, even though their ratings mathematically give me high chances of regular failure at basic things.

And, again, combat. Ugh, combat.

Finally, while I appreciate that you're happy to build your players' characters for them so they can do what they describe, I have found that when GMs do that for me, I am highly dissatisfied with the characters, because I don't know the nuances the GM built into them, they don't perform reliably the way I want them to at the things I want them to do (rather than the GM's determination of what he thinks they should do...and even not that, often, because again I don't know the system well enough to use the fiddly tricks built into the character). If I can't build the character, myself, I generally don't know how to use it.

I find GURPS to think itself a lot more flexible than it really is, and to rely on layers upon layers of systems and subsystems that it expects you to have mastered and memorized because you can't take any of the top-level things-you-buy at face value; everything winds up interconnected deep down in the guts in ways that distort them from how they appear to be advertised.

Sounds like a GM issue to me.

You should not fail often with skills in the 12 -> 14 range. An unmodified roll is used for combat situations, so for example if you're an accountant, you roll against your unmodified skill if I put a gun to your head and make you do my taxes as quickly as you can. Doing taxes is your wheelhouse, you will succeed almost always without such a high degree of pressure. You should get multiple skill bonuses for many tasks e.g. having the right equipment, the task being easy, having as much time as you need to get it done etc. etc. These are not things you should need to 'beg the GM' to get, they are baked into the system.

Now, if every roll you're making is a combat roll or coming in loaded with reasonable situational penalties, OK fine you're going to fail a lot with skill 12. If I'm running a game where the characters are supposed to be good at what they do but everything they're going to roll for is difficult, fine their core skills are going to be higher than 14. I run combat heavy games, so front line fighters generally start with skills in the 16 to 20 range. It's not fun building a badass warrior dude, only to fail every time you try to do a badass attack, or get chopped up by a couple of goblins or something.

Infinite choice magic systems are fine, again someone has to know the system in order to offer these and if the GM can't easily explain how it works to a player, then the GM should not offer that system.

Combat is easy when run right and if its stressful for the players, which it shouldn't be, it's trivial to further simplify it. I take players who have never played GURPS and they're taking <30 seconds to decide what to do in a fight. Again a GM issue.

Character build...this sounds like a communication issue to me, if you have the points budget, you can build whatever you want within the scope of the game world. That said, if you don't understand the system but don't want the GM to help you build your desired character, yeah that's going to be a problem.

Strong disagree that GURPS isn't flexible, it's literally a systems toolkit, a crunch based approach couldn't be more flexible IMO. It certainly requires strong GM understanding though.

EDIT

I don't want to overstate the case either, I can understand not liking GURPS, it's not a perfect system and it's not for everyone. It's crunchy and there are other approaches to RPG systems, sure because GURPS is a toolkit you can in fact de-crunch it as much as you like, but at sime point you'd be better off just using a different system. I do think most or all of the above is a GM issue because these are not problems that occur in my games.

Segev
2022-04-16, 01:42 AM
Failing ten percent of the time to, for example, telekinetically open a door is laughably incompetent.

And as far as I could find, there are no rules in TURPS for not requiring psionic activation rolls if the task is "routine."

This tends to carry over to other subsystems as well. You cannot be baseline competent at routine tasks.

Nobody would casually cast a utiLity spell if he had a ten percent chance of failure every time.

And if it's actually a combat ability, ten percent jumps to far higher when, even if you succeed, the other guy gets to defend. I am actually less opposed to this than the issue with activating subsystem powers on dramatic or trivial tasks, but it still is an issue.

If I don't min/max in GURPS, my PCs feel pathetic in actual play. And even when I do, the amount of shoehorning required to make the character kind-of what I wanted is weirdly greater than in a less "universal" system like D&D.

GURPS's obsession with rolling to see if attributes and flaws are even available is, fortunately, easy to rule away, becauSe it is awkward and irritating in the extreme to try to work with in game. Yes, I totally appreciate having a huge investment of points denied to me most adventures, and I definitely feel like my backstory and associated flaws are relevant when the GM only brings them in at literal, dice-determined randon.

Again, you can ignore those rules, but when the solution to much of a system is "ignore the system," I believe there is a problem.

Mr Beer
2022-04-16, 03:47 AM
I don't know how else to tell you this man, the chance of failing in routine tasks when you have relevant training in that task is simply not 10%, it's either handwaved or 1.85% (17+ on 3d is a fail). If your GM does it differently, they are doing it wrong per RAW, end of story.

Combat is not "routine" in GURPS in the sense that its a high stress, demanding situation. A real world skilled warrior might have skill 14, a real world skilled opponent might have an effective defense of 14. It might take take 20 to 30 seconds before one of them kills each other in an all-out death match. That doesn't sound unrealistic to me. If the same warrior is trying to murder an unarmed pleb, they can either ignore their own defense or use an obvious attack to gain a bonus and swap the 10% chance of failure to 1.85% instead. If that's the campaign flavour, that's what you get.

Contrast this to a combat heavy dungeon bash where our (unrealistic) heroic fighter has skill 25 + multiple attacks and the mooks have a defense of 12. The heroic fighter takes a skill penalty to sap enemy defenses and will take out a mook or two every second. Different campaign flavour, different result.

Min-max with attributes is basically terrible in GURPS and that's objectively true per game mechanics as I explained. If you want to debate that further, please provide a concrete example.

Not sure what "rolling to see if attributes and flaws are even available" means. Attributes are things like ST, HT etc. which are always available. I guess flaws = Disadvantages which are always in play? You can try to go against some but not all Disadvantages and that requires a roll.

kyoryu
2022-04-16, 03:28 PM
Not sure what "rolling to see if attributes and flaws are even available" means. Attributes are things like ST, HT etc. which are always available. I guess flaws = Disadvantages which are always in play? You can try to go against some but not all Disadvantages and that requires a roll.

Some disads come up per session based on a roll - dependents, duty, etc.

Pauly
2022-04-16, 03:55 PM
Failing ten percent of the time to, for example, telekinetically open a door is laughably incompetent.
.

irl I screw up opening doors I am unfamiliar with all the time. Push instead of pull; turn the knob the wrong way, fail to undo the latch , not realize it isn’t an automatic door but I need to push a button to activate it and so on.

What happens though is that because it’s a trivial task it just takes a second (i.e. a combat round in GURPS) to rectify the error.

So having a 10% chance to fail to open a door isn’t laughably incompetent. What is laughably incompetent is having a DM insist on a roll in non stressful situations instead of high stress situations such as being chased by a tentacle beast or putting on a display in front of high level NPCs.

vasilidor
2022-04-16, 05:47 PM
This would not just be doors you did not know, but doors in your own home.
Every door everywhere.
If you fail to open a door in your own home 10% of the time, you have problems.

Talwar
2022-04-16, 05:50 PM
I'll echo earlier comments that combat moves very slowly, and communication in one-second rounds is a real challenge/nuisance.

I found with powers/magic that a lot of lethal options cost less than non-lethal options and thought that seemed backwards.

Pauly
2022-04-16, 09:09 PM
This would not just be doors you did not know, but doors in your own home.
Every door everywhere.
If you fail to open a door in your own home 10% of the time, you have problems.

From the GURPS Lite pdf freely available on the internet
WHEN TO ROLL
To avoid bogging down the game in end- less die rolls, the GM should only require a success roll if . . .
• A PC’s health, wealth, friends, reputa- tion, or equipment are at risk. This includes chases, combat (even if the target is station- ary and at point-blank range!), espionage, thievery, and similar “adventuring” activities.
• A PC stands to gain allies, information, new abilities, social standing, or wealth.
The GM should not require rolls for . . .
• Utterly trivial tasks, such as crossing the street, driving into town, feeding the dog, finding the corner store, or turning on the computer.
• Daily work at a mundane, non adventuring task.

That’s the RAW. You do not have to roll for opening a door unless it is a high stress type of situation.

NichG
2022-04-16, 11:17 PM
Amusingly, this thread got me to look at GURPS and I definitely think I'd crib a lot of stuff, particularly from the Advantages section, as inspiration for other game systems. The realism focus seems to contribute to the system calling out specific potentially interesting characteristics which in other systems wouldn't be mechanically significant enough to make note of, but which are good bits of fiction in order to make the impression of what it would like to be a specific character seem much more distinct. I don't know that I'd take the dice, attribute/skill, or combat systems based on what I've seen, but as basically a laundry list of 'things that could be special about characters' it seems like a great resource.

Talwar
2022-04-17, 08:52 AM
Oh, there's a lot of things I did like about GURPS, but that wasn't the point of the thread.

Saint-Just
2022-04-17, 05:41 PM
I'll echo earlier comments that combat moves very slowly, and communication in one-second rounds is a real challenge/nuisance.

I found with powers/magic that a lot of lethal options cost less than non-lethal options and thought that seemed backwards.

The reasoning has been made explicit by designers on their forums: if you incapacitate someone you can usually slit their throats, no die roll required. I wouldn't pretend it works perfectly, but it is a valid reasoning.

Tobtor
2022-04-18, 02:40 AM
I'll echo earlier comments that combat moves very slowly

Sorry to use your quote specifically, I want to comment more on the general notion, and your quote was the last one and very clear:

I had only limited DnD experince (1 and half campaign) when joining a GURPS campaign (a fantasy campaign with monsters and GURPS magic), and my experience was quite different. Yes, it moves very different than a DnD combat, but overall I felt that we spend less time on each combat. Especially as a fighter character DnD can be somewhat reptititive: "I attack, I roll to hit/miss, roll to do deal damage, repeat", and EVERYONE one have a lot of hit points. In GURPS I quickly felt I had choices that mattered in combat (should I thrust or cut with the sword? Fight defensively or all out attack? Hog for the head or try to cut of his hand? And so on). Yes, that does give some more work in hand-to-hand combat, especially if you do not know the system.

But comparing a mid campaign fight in DnD with several magic users which multiple spells with various effects and resistances, various bonuses from feats, bards bonuses (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0034.html) is it on/off etc, I felt my first GURPS campaign combat ran a lot smoother than DnD my experience.

Also combat felt more epic, when you can cut the hand of the enemy and gloat when he is still alive!


communication in one-second rounds is a real challenge/nuisance.

True. However I do think it is meant that way. I mean, in reality there is limits to how much communication you can have in a fight. Things goes really quickly.

Tanarii
2022-04-18, 09:13 AM
True. However I do think it is meant that way. I mean, in reality there is limits to how much communication you can have in a fight. Things goes really quickly.
Depends if we're talking about modern firearms or not.

1 second rounds are far too short for abstracting muscles or muscle powered weaponry, and there's plenty of time for yelling during a hand combat fight. Even modern D&D's 3-4 6 second rounds is actually too fast.

Tobtor
2022-04-18, 12:15 PM
Depends if we're talking about modern firearms or not.

1 second rounds are far too short for abstracting muscles or muscle powered weaponry, and there's plenty of time for yelling during a hand combat fight. Even modern D&D's 3-4 6 second rounds is actually too fast.

My experience with re-enactment, HEMA and LARP tells me otherwise. Not all fights end that fast, but that is mainly because people are observing each other before going at it. Usually attacks etc, goes way faster than a second. A second is a long time. So one attack pr. second is probably a good estimate (for a slow/careful fight).

Can you yell during a skirmish. Yes! Can you have conversations or elaborate planning? No!, At least when the fighting starts. If your are more people in a formation, then perhaps you can, as there will be pauses in the combat.

kyoryu
2022-04-18, 12:37 PM
My experience with re-enactment, HEMA and LARP tells me otherwise. Not all fights end that fast, but that is mainly because people are observing each other before going at it. Usually attacks etc, goes way faster than a second. A second is a long time. So one attack pr. second is probably a good estimate (for a slow/careful fight).

Can you yell during a skirmish. Yes! Can you have conversations or elaborate planning? No!, At least when the fighting starts. If your are more people in a formation, then perhaps you can, as there will be pauses in the combat.

I think he's saying something slightly different - at the 1 second level, you're not really abstracting anything, you're kind of doing it blow-by-blow.

If you look at old school D&D (1 minute rounds), that was very abstract - you can get a result out, but how that result was achieved was far more vague.

Vahnavoi
2022-04-18, 12:50 PM
Depends if we're talking about modern firearms or not.

1 second rounds are far too short for abstracting muscles or muscle powered weaponry, and there's plenty of time for yelling during a hand combat fight. Even modern D&D's 3-4 6 second rounds is actually too fast.

1 second rounds are too short for abstracting everything that goes into a melee exchange, but a second is not too short to cover actual strike and counter strike. Human reaction time is 200 milliseconds, or fifth of a second, and human limbs can reach speeds of multiple meters per second, so once people are in range, a blow can begin and land, and even be countered, in a second's span. Watch enough clips of virtually any contact martial art and you will see it happen.

On the flipside, because of limitations of human reaction speed, firing of a firearm cannot actually happen much faster than a melee strike. The actual difference firearms make is changing when people are in range.

6 seconds is actually generous for a single exchange. Again, if you watch enough clips of virtually any contact martial art, you will find entire matches that ended in that time because someone scored a knock-out or full point in that time. But the original round, way back in early D&D, was supposed to include more than just a single exchange. It was meant to abstract, well, an entire 1-minute round of combat, including identifying your target, getting into range, pressure, feints etc. with your number of attacks being just those attacks with chance of getting through.

The question then becomes, what is GURPS trying to model here? A single exchange, with assumption that people are already in range? Or something else?

Willie the Duck
2022-04-18, 01:57 PM
I think he's saying something slightly different - at the 1 second level, you're not really abstracting anything, you're kind of doing it blow-by-blow.

If you look at old school D&D (1 minute rounds), that was very abstract - you can get a result out, but how that result was achieved was far more vague.

The abstraction papers over a lot of things, in particular things that are hard to quantify or hard to incentivize in a rule system that does map 1:1 to the blow-by-blow, and that can be a case of the attempt at realism sometimes ending up in a non-realistic place. Combat RPGs, minus any other guardrails*, really incentivizes getting in as many attempted blows as possible. That (unless they are subsumed by abstraction) can lead to things like the observing, feinting, waiting for openings, etc. seeming suboptimal. Same with things like suppression fire -- with GURPS I ran into a lot of people using machine guns for massively multiple shots on target, and rarely for suppression fire. Likewise I didn't really run into anyone in a fantasy game wielding an axe, because the 1 second recovery time was simply too great a cost when someone with a sword or the like might get twice as many shots per turn. Mind you, this last one is a case where D&D has the same thing, albeit with ranged weapons**: the AD&D crossbow was used almost exclusively by those without the option to take bow proficiencies (so 1E thieves), as 2:1 compared to 1:1 or 1:2 was too good to pass up.
*And to be fair, I believe 3E GURPS Martial Arts and GURPS High Tech had optional rules for this (for circling and . However, that it needed to shows how the base ruleset can run into issues at times.
** the place where the abstraction broke down anyways, since you only expended one ammunition/thrown weapon per attack roll.

NichG
2022-04-18, 03:00 PM
The abstraction papers over a lot of things, in particular things that are hard to quantify or hard to incentivize in a rule system that does map 1:1 to the blow-by-blow, and that can be a case of the attempt at realism sometimes ending up in a non-realistic place. Combat RPGs, minus any other guardrails*, really incentivizes getting in as many attempted blows as possible. That (unless they are subsumed by abstraction) can lead to things like the observing, feinting, waiting for openings, etc. seeming suboptimal. Same with things like suppression fire -- with GURPS I ran into a lot of people using machine guns for massively multiple shots on target, and rarely for suppression fire. Likewise I didn't really run into anyone in a fantasy game wielding an axe, because the 1 second recovery time was simply too great a cost when someone with a sword or the like might get twice as many shots per turn. Mind you, this last one is a case where D&D has the same thing, albeit with ranged weapons**: the AD&D crossbow was used almost exclusively by those without the option to take bow proficiencies (so 1E thieves), as 2:1 compared to 1:1 or 1:2 was too good to pass up.
*And to be fair, I believe 3E GURPS Martial Arts and GURPS High Tech had optional rules for this (for circling and . However, that it needed to shows how the base ruleset can run into issues at times.
** the place where the abstraction broke down anyways, since you only expended one ammunition/thrown weapon per attack roll.

I mean, I guess the logic in something where defense and attack are separate unrelated rolls that can be succeeded on regardless of the other party's skill is that if you're attacking someone with a 95% rate of successful defense, lowering that to 80% in exchange to attacking, say, only once every three rounds would actually be a worthwhile trade, modulo opportunity costs for being locked into a course of action for >1 round in order to get the payoff. But that sort of math only works well at the very swingy end ranges, where the vast majority of 'fast attacks' would miss or do nothing. Since e.g. for a 1 in 3 rounds setup to be worth it, the enemy has to be dodging at least 2/3rds of all attacks-sans-setup automatically or its not even possible to break even.

But actually resolving that kind of thing in a blow-by-blow way would be extremely tedious, since most actions would resolve to 'nothing changes'...

Gnoman
2022-04-18, 03:18 PM
GURPS does have the "problem" where damage usually outpaces HP by a considerable margin, even with muscle-powered weapons. In my current game, I've had fairly high-powered PCs nearly killed by a single 1D arrow fired from ambush (which, because they didn't see it coming, prevented them from employing active defenses).

This genuinely does skew tactics toward spamming blows unless you're fighting a very skilled opponent with high parry/block abilities (at which point you have to reach into the toolbox and start using feints and such), because one hit that gets through armor is crippling. It also can reduce the value of magic (because, unless you have high magery, it takes several seconds to build a potent spell) and can hurt low-tech missile weapons (where you might want to take a turn to Aim to get a nice hit bonus, cutting you to one shot every two seconds even if you have a way to cut load time down.

Pauly
2022-04-18, 03:59 PM
GURPS does have the "problem" where damage usually outpaces HP by a considerable margin, even with muscle-powered weapons. In my current game, I've had fairly high-powered PCs nearly killed by a single 1D arrow fired from ambush (which, because they didn't see it coming, prevented them from employing active defenses).

This genuinely does skew tactics toward spamming blows unless you're fighting a very skilled opponent with high parry/block abilities (at which point you have to reach into the toolbox and start using feints and such), because one hit that gets through armor is crippling. It also can reduce the value of magic (because, unless you have high magery, it takes several seconds to build a potent spell) and can hurt low-tech missile weapons (where you might want to take a turn to Aim to get a nice hit bonus, cutting you to one shot every two seconds even if you have a way to cut load time down.

Some people would say that an advantage of the system.

If you want D&D cartoon-y style violence and a disregard for physics then you probably shouldn’t be playing GU.RPS.

kyoryu
2022-04-18, 04:18 PM
GURPS does have the "problem" where damage usually outpaces HP by a considerable margin, even with muscle-powered weapons. In my current game, I've had fairly high-powered PCs nearly killed by a single 1D arrow fired from ambush (which, because they didn't see it coming, prevented them from employing active defenses).

This genuinely does skew tactics toward spamming blows unless you're fighting a very skilled opponent with high parry/block abilities (at which point you have to reach into the toolbox and start using feints and such), because one hit that gets through armor is crippling. It also can reduce the value of magic (because, unless you have high magery, it takes several seconds to build a potent spell) and can hurt low-tech missile weapons (where you might want to take a turn to Aim to get a nice hit bonus, cutting you to one shot every two seconds even if you have a way to cut load time down.

Hit locations and blow-through help a lot of that, though you're still likely to have a limb disabled.

At high tech levels, though, hits tend to be either absorb or splat if you're armored.

JusticeZero
2022-04-18, 05:17 PM
Honestly?

IQ and DX. Those two things give you far too much leverage to apply multiple levels of diminishing return curve to too many things, allowing you to affordably get things to troubling probability levels while sacrificing individuality.

vasilidor
2022-04-18, 07:13 PM
Considering that in real life out intelligence and dexterity are what catapulted us into being the global spanning species with multiple civilizations that we are, it makes sense for the game to highly incentivize those abilities.

Tanarii
2022-04-18, 07:25 PM
Considering that in real life out intelligence and dexterity are what catapulted us into being the global spanning species with multiple civilizations that we are, it makes sense for the game to highly incentivize those abilities.
Or, yknow, they're the things us geeks who write and play games (and many other forms of media) tend to consider themselves to be above average at and idolize, respectively.

vasilidor
2022-04-19, 12:25 AM
If you really get down to it, our strongest cannot compete with things that would eat things our size. Not in the slightest. For us, competing with them, tools are what give us the ability to survive. And as our tools get better, strength becomes less important, but the intelligence and dexterity needed to make and use the tools become paramount.

Willie the Duck
2022-04-19, 08:40 AM
Some people would say that an advantage of the system.

If you want D&D cartoon-y style violence and a disregard for physics then you probably shouldn’t be playing GU.RPS.
Okay, seriously, we were literally discussing how these aspects of GURPS was creating unrealistic situations.


If you really get down to it, our strongest cannot compete with things that would eat things our size. Not in the slightest. For us, competing with them, tools are what give us the ability to survive. And as our tools get better, strength becomes less important, but the intelligence and dexterity needed to make and use the tools become paramount.

There's a lot more nuance than that. A lot of those tools were muscle-powered, we also had the ability to chase things down without rest because our locomotion doesn't inhibit deep breathing like it does for many quadrupeds, and our competition in ecological niches are not limited to things that can eat things our size. That said, it certainly is true that you or I don't spend a lot of time dealing with our individual, tool-assistance-absent strength. That said, we also don't really use our dexterity all that much in modern life either (even moreso if they ever got self-driving cars working).


Or, yknow, they're the things us geeks who write and play games (and many other forms of media) tend to consider themselves to be above average at and idolize, respectively.

Pretty much a strong bit of this. Although, as I get older, the value of a Health score certainly seems more impressive than Dex; and the longer I am a manager of IT professionals, the less I'm impressed with raw INT and more with maturity, dedication, and ability to apply knowledge to actually solving problems.

Tanarii
2022-04-19, 01:56 PM
That said, it certainly is true that you or I don't spend a lot of time dealing with our individual, tool-assistance-absent strength. That said, we also don't really use our dexterity all that much in modern life either (even moreso if they ever got self-driving cars working). I used dexterity all day long to type. But that's not really the kind of Dexterity most games use it for. :smallamused:


and the longer I am a manager of IT professionals, the less I'm impressed with raw INT and more with maturity, dedication, and ability to apply knowledge to actually solving problems.Hallelujah to that.

vasilidor
2022-04-19, 02:02 PM
there is a difference between knowledge and intelligence.
Problem solving is part of intelligence, being able to apply learned knowledge is intelligence.
Realizing that using said knowledge to built an explosive device is hazardous is wisdom.
Thus we have at minimum 3 mental stats that are not entirely unrelated.

Willie the Duck
2022-04-19, 02:55 PM
I used dexterity all day long to type. But that's not really the kind of Dexterity most games use it for. :smallamused:
Okay, I don't do this much, but in this case I am invoking 'you know what I meant.' But that does raise a good point about the various types of Dexterity that games tend to lump together.


there is a difference between knowledge and intelligence.
Problem solving is part of intelligence, being able to apply learned knowledge is intelligence.
Realizing that using said knowledge to built an explosive device is hazardous is wisdom.
Thus we have at minimum 3 mental stats that are not entirely unrelated.

I posit that the vagueries are broad enough that you can have massively multiple competing models of human 'smart-ness,' each with their own number of independently variable mental qualities and how you divide them up.
Regardless, I have had several classmates and later employees who are proverbially still patting themselves on the back for the SAT/IQ test they took 10, 20, 30 years ago*. Whatever that intelligence is often needs to be shepherded rather strongly to be good at solving problems (or at least solving the problem for which a solution was actually asked).
*where the proctors had to come over and make sure they weren't cheating, they were doing so well. Honest, guys!


Hallelujah to that.
It's certainly why I buy the 'geeks are proud of DX and IQ, and thus make them important in games' framing.

I suspect is also has to do with, once you have things split up into ST, DX, HT, and a mental stat, it's relatively easy to say 'this is mostly about dexterity, with the other bits secondary.' Running being an exception (and HT-based in GURPS), but any martial art, any gymnastics, rock climbing, dancing, any of those include components of all 3 physical stats. Yet if you were to ask, 'so what's the primary attribute for rock climbing?,' the response can easily be, 'well, if you mess up the DX portion of it, you're a splatter on the canyon floor, so I guess DX,' and a bunch of other equivalents. Combat being notable in that it is DX-based for the to-hit and ST based for the effect, (with DX for the defensive skills and HT for the defensive effect). More skills probably should follow this model.

vasilidor
2022-04-19, 04:07 PM
Okay, I don't do this much, but in this case I am invoking 'you know what I meant.' But that does raise a good point about the various types of Dexterity that games tend to lump together.



I posit that the vagueries are broad enough that you can have massively multiple competing models of human 'smart-ness,' each with their own number of independently variable mental qualities and how you divide them up.
Regardless, I have had several classmates and later employees who are proverbially still patting themselves on the back for the SAT/IQ test they took 10, 20, 30 years ago*. Whatever that intelligence is often needs to be shepherded rather strongly to be good at solving problems (or at least solving the problem for which a solution was actually asked).
*where the proctors had to come over and make sure they weren't cheating, they were doing so well. Honest, guys!

I can grant that.


It's certainly why I buy the 'geeks are proud of DX and IQ, and thus make them important in games' framing.

I suspect is also has to do with, once you have things split up into ST, DX, HT, and a mental stat, it's relatively easy to say 'this is mostly about dexterity, with the other bits secondary.' Running being an exception (and HT-based in GURPS), but any martial art, any gymnastics, rock climbing, dancing, any of those include components of all 3 physical stats. Yet if you were to ask, 'so what's the primary attribute for rock climbing?,' the response can easily be, 'well, if you mess up the DX portion of it, you're a splatter on the canyon floor, so I guess DX,' and a bunch of other equivalents. Combat being notable in that it is DX-based for the to-hit and ST based for the effect, (with DX for the defensive skills and HT for the defensive effect). More skills probably should follow this model.
One thing I have noted about dexterity though is that increasing dexterity in real life also improves physical strength, up to a point. Like professional dancers are dexterous and strong and have good endurance because dance requires those things to be higher for someone to be good at it.

MoiMagnus
2022-04-19, 06:06 PM
I can grant that.

One thing I have noted about dexterity though is that increasing dexterity in real life also improves physical strength, up to a point. Like professional dancers are dexterous and strong and have good endurance because dance requires those things to be higher for someone to be good at it.

Though that's only one side of dexterity. Increasing your dexterity through lock-picking, making high-precision chirugical operations, sewing cloths, etc doesn't increase physical strength all that much.

The "agility" part of dexterity is indeed quite linked to physical strength. But the "precision" part not so much.

Kraynic
2022-04-19, 07:08 PM
Though that's only one side of dexterity. Increasing your dexterity through lock-picking, making high-precision chirugical operations, sewing cloths, etc doesn't increase physical strength all that much.

The "agility" part of dexterity is indeed quite linked to physical strength. But the "precision" part not so much.

In my experience, people really inflate the effect of attributes. In life, training and practice seem to have a much larger affect than much else. Physical and mental attributes may reduce the amount (hours) of training and practice needed to be proficient at something, but that is about it.

Tanarii
2022-04-19, 07:38 PM
there is a difference between knowledge and intelligence.
Problem solving is part of intelligence, being able to apply learned knowledge is intelligence.
Realizing that using said knowledge to built an explosive device is hazardous is wisdom.
Thus we have at minimum 3 mental stats that are not entirely unrelated.
In most RPGs, Intelligence is either knowledge or a being able to get a clue and knowledge. Problem solving is usually player skill.

In GURPs it kinda means "everything not-physical stat".

Wisdom is just a horrendously named stat for modern usage. In modern D&D, the source game for the stat, it's changed entirely to awareness/in-tune-ness.


Yet if you were to ask, 'so what's the primary attribute for rock climbing?,' the response can easily be, 'well, if you mess up the DX portion of it, you're a splatter on the canyon floor, so I guess DX,' and a bunch of other equivalents. Yeah, and I always find that hilarious. As a semi-regular (but not particularly muscled/flexible or for that matter skilled) rock climber and forms-based martial artist, even at my level of skill, strength is pretty key to both. People that do some kind of regular muscle development are very good at both. It's just that they both also require a lot of flexibility, and just developing muscles tends to reduce that a bit unless you work on it. Which in most gamers minds translates into "bulky" vs "wiry" strength, and Dex is often used for the latter.
(Also from every parkour video I've ever watched, it appears to be in the same category.)


In my experience, people really inflate the effect of attributes. In life, training and practice seem to have a much larger affect than much else. Physical and mental attributes may reduce the amount (hours) of training and practice needed to be proficient at something, but that is about it.Absolutely. On the other hand, another way to look at it, from a game design perspective, is that ability scores include training and practice. As in you can have a centra stat driving several things, but that it's both inherent ability and training and practice on several related things. This works okay if it doesn't drive too many separate things, and they're not too unrelated.

D&D 5e goes that route. Ability scores are natural ability and training. Proficiency in a skill or weapon just means "a focus in one aspect/sub-set of everything the ability score covers that I'm better at", no matter the source of that focus, ie it also could be natural skill or training or even divine inspiration.

u-b
2022-04-20, 05:28 AM
Honestly?

IQ and DX. Those two things give you far too much leverage to apply multiple levels of diminishing return curve to too many things, allowing you to affordably get things to troubling probability levels while sacrificing individuality.
That's realism for you, sort of. IRL, you cannot easily train a dumb person to be good at IQ-based skills, the same presumably goes about DX. You can easily train a smart person. But I am now building a 250-point character without Status and Wealth. In games, sort of a common occurence. IRL? Well, that's one young Steve Jobs, and the man was good at what he chose to be doing.


In my experience, people really inflate the effect of attributes. In life, training and practice seem to have a much larger affect than much else. Physical and mental attributes may reduce the amount (hours) of training and practice needed to be proficient at something, but that is about it.
Nope. Selection has a much larger effect. You literally cannot take random inept person and train them to be PhD. No way in hell.

Willie the Duck
2022-04-20, 07:26 AM
One thing I have noted about dexterity though is that increasing dexterity in real life also improves physical strength, up to a point. Like professional dancers are dexterous and strong and have good endurance because dance requires those things to be higher for someone to be good at it.
This is a great example of the natural framing of which I was talking. That's a case of dexterity, strength and endurance improving all at once when practicing a skill that uses all three, but linguistically it defaulted to the others being riders on top of dexterity (and correspondingly, Dance is a DX-based skill in GURPS).


Nope. Selection has a much larger effect. You literally cannot take random inept person and train them to be PhD. No way in hell.
I've met a large number of not-universally brilliant people with terminal degrees. There may be a minimum 'native ability must be this high to ride' requirement, but that's about it.


Yeah, and I always find that hilarious. As a semi-regular (but not particularly muscled/flexible or for that matter skilled) rock climber and forms-based martial artist, even at my level of skill, strength is pretty key to both. People that do some kind of regular muscle development are very good at both. It's just that they both also require a lot of flexibility, and just developing muscles tends to reduce that a bit unless you work on it. Which in most gamers minds translates into "bulky" vs "wiry" strength, and Dex is often used for the latter.
(Also from every parkour video I've ever watched, it appears to be in the same category.)
It probably varies from skill to skill (longbow archery is going to require more strength than shooting sports which take more than watchmaking), but I think this is a general truism (and challenge to sorting life aptitudes into 'attributes'). That probably goes to a general issue with (generally 'sim') skill-based RPG systems -- not all skills are going to be best modelled using the same framework.

u-b
2022-04-20, 08:17 AM
I've met a large number of not-universally brilliant people with terminal degrees. There may be a minimum 'native ability must be this high to ride' requirement, but that's about it.
I think GURPS models that as well (the Talent advantage).

Kraynic
2022-04-20, 04:48 PM
Nope. Selection has a much larger effect. You literally cannot take random inept person and train them to be PhD. No way in hell.

PhD is nothing more than an indicator of a longer time spent in training (and much more financial investment in that training).

I suppose it depends on exactly what you mean by "inept". According to webster:


Definition of inept

1 : generally incompetent : bungling inept leadership
2 : lacking in fitness or aptitude : unfit inept at sports
3 : not suitable to the time, place, or occasion : inappropriate often to an absurd degree an inept metaphor
4 : lacking sense or reason : foolish

Both 1 and 2 are things that can be overcome with training and practice. if there is a barrier there, it is (in my experience and opinion) more likely to be lack of interest.

3 doesn't really apply.

If 4 is what you mean, then you also aren't going to be able to take that random person and get them to reliably deliver newspapers.

NichG
2022-04-20, 05:13 PM
At least in Physics, the difference between a PhD and Bachelors/Masters is not just time in training, its the subject of the training as well. Over a five year PhD I only had classes in the first year, and the rest was completely dedicated to research projects. So pre-PhD you get training on things other people have learned/discovered and how to apply those things to problems. During PhD, your training is about how to find new things to learn, what would make those new things useful or interesting to others, how to organize those things and communicate them to a field such that other people extend or use them, what makes for a good question or bad question to research, etc.

I wouldn't say that there's a particular level of innate intelligence required to viably get a PhD. More that there's an attitude towards knowledge versus outcomes which matters, and may be more to some peoples' tastes than others. In some cases, an output might be something like 'having a theoretical framework that permits being able to more coherently talk about this concept' even if that framework doesn't actually let you build or do anything and is very abstract. If you don't learn to see the potential for those things as targets that can be pursued (or don't feel like they call for pursuit), then its going to be harder to find a novel research topic to build a thesis around. That said, you don't absolutely have to be able to do all of that stuff yourself - your advisor might bring 90% of that to the table, and in some extreme cases you might end up just spending 5 years babysitting a piece of equipment, and still get the PhD.

So in the end, I think its less innate ability, more of a question of 'Is this really how you want to spend 5 years of your life? Is this actually compelling enough to you to put your life on hold for it?'

Tanarii
2022-04-20, 05:38 PM
I've met a large number of not-universally brilliant people with terminal degrees. There may be a minimum 'native ability must be this high to ride' requirement, but that's about it.
There's also plenty of people who are fairly intelligent by most folks view on what constitutes intelligent, but failed out trying to get a bachelors. Because they are missing the native ability of whatever provides the necessary focus and dedication high enough to stick with that ride. Or some other trait required for classroom and book learning. Then throw those same people into the workplace and they excel.

SimonMoon6
2022-04-20, 06:55 PM
At least in Physics, the difference between a PhD and Bachelors/Masters is not just time in training, its the subject of the training as well.

It really really depends on the discipline. My impression is that a number of humanities PhD's are a lot easier to get than STEM PhD's.

For example, for a math PhD (the only PhD I've ever gotten), you go through training to get a Masters. Then you take a test (two tests really on two different topics). These are the hardest tests you've even seen. If you pass both of the qualifying tests, you are allowed to try to get a PhD. If you fail, you get one more try to pass. If you fail again, you are not allowed to try to get a PhD. I failed the first time (as did a friend of mine) but I passed the second time (and my friend failed the second time and was only allowed to get a Master's degree).

And then, you can start working on your PhD dissertation topic while also doing other things. And to get a PhD, you have to write a paper, proving some new thing that nobody has proven before, and it has to be relevant enough to get published in a journal. That's not easy. Not everybody can hack it.

Another friend of mine was working on a chemistry degree and eventually was unable to continue making progress on his dissertation and had to give up on his degree completely.

So, it's not just a matter of time spent training. You have to actually be capable of doing super-clever things that nobody has done before. Just "hard work" and "nose to the grindstone" isn't going to cut it.

I feel like some humanities people can just do some research, put it all together, throw in an opinion, and they've suddenly got a PhD. I don't know for sure though. I'm not sure how hard or easy a PhD in English is, for example. But I don't think it's anything like as hard as a PhD in a STEM field.



I wouldn't say that there's a particular level of innate intelligence required to viably get a PhD.


Again, I'd say, it depends on the field. An idiot will never be able to get a PhD in Math, but maybe in English? I don't know. I can't say how easy or hard a PhD in English would be. (But my most "educated" friends who have seemed the least intelligent are the ones who were English majors.)

NichG
2022-04-20, 07:12 PM
It really really depends on the discipline. My impression is that a number of humanities PhD's are a lot easier to get than STEM PhD's.

For example, for a math PhD (the only PhD I've ever gotten), you go through training to get a Masters. Then you take a test (two tests really on two different topics). These are the hardest tests you've even seen. If you pass both of the qualifying tests, you are allowed to try to get a PhD. If you fail, you get one more try to pass. If you fail again, you are not allowed to try to get a PhD. I failed the first time (as did a friend of mine) but I passed the second time (and my friend failed the second time and was only allowed to get a Master's degree).

And then, you can start working on your PhD dissertation topic while also doing other things. And to get a PhD, you have to write a paper, proving some new thing that nobody has proven before, and it has to be relevant enough to get published in a journal. That's not easy. Not everybody can hack it.

Another friend of mine was working on a chemistry degree and eventually was unable to continue making progress on his dissertation and had to give up on his degree completely.

So, it's not just a matter of time spent training. You have to actually be capable of doing super-clever things that nobody has done before. Just "hard work" and "nose to the grindstone" isn't going to cut it.


Ehh, I agree that the quals are a break-point (though they depend so much on which school you're going to and which professors are writing the exams that year that I think you could dodge the hardest ones), but as far as having to be super-clever to find something novel and publishable, a lot of that can be mitigated by having a good advisor - they'll point out how to search the literature for holes, how to port over an idea from one area into another area where it hasn't been used, how to identify things which are big ideas that haven't been developed by the community but where there's a general feeling 'something is over there' and which things are kind of dried out and dead. Or even not a 'good' advisor but just one who has a big lab or an established line of research with a lot of low hanging fruit and easy variations available. If you're in a group where the advisor, for example, is the inventor of some new measurement method, then there's a lot of potential publications of the form 'we apply our method to system X', 'we apply our method to system Y', etc. Some advisors will ask the student to do most of the writing for papers, but others will actually want to do a lot of the writing themselves, so again this can vary a lot. Large labs can mean more support from peers as well as high author count shared publications that provide some protections against 'my research direction was a bust, guess I have to pivot and take another 3 years'.

All of this won't necessarily position you well to actually know how to direct your own research at the end of course.

The thing is, graduate students are students, but they're also cheap labor. So professors aren't generally going to be incentivized to let you stumble around in the dark if they could put you to work at doing things they know are publishable, and they know how to do, but which just take time/labor to complete.

Of course there are also many bad advisors who will exploit that labor but not leave the student in a position to write their thesis successfully. Or worse, they might intentionally try to get the student to drag their heels and not actually get out the door since they're trained, cheap labor at a fixed rate of pay - so rather than pushing to get the thesis done and defend, they'll mire the student there for 7 or 9 years.

u-b
2022-04-20, 11:42 PM
PhD is nothing more than an indicator of a longer time spent in training (and much more financial investment in that training).
Not only that. Those doing it have to demonstrate good effect of said training. It's not about just the hours spent, even if you have the money.


I suppose it depends on exactly what you mean by "inept".
I think meanings 1 and 2 are close to what I had in mind. Well, GURPS agrees with you that everything can be overcome, but sometimes the training needed gets prohibitively extensive.

Not sure I have an opinion regarding lack of interest, but take a random high school for example, or a class thereof. Everyone gets the same amount of training. Some people pass, some people fail, some people get honours. And that's only considering those fit to get in. If everyone could get in, it would have been worse.

Satinavian
2022-04-21, 01:46 AM
PhD is nothing more than an indicator of a longer time spent in training (and much more financial investment in that training).

I disagree as well.

But the main reason for your impression is that you generally don't hear much about those who fail. Someone successfull proudly presents the title but someone who tried and didn't get one generally hides the fact. And there are a lot of those, especially if you include those that gave up during their bachelor/master time.

And if you keep in mind that those starting to study a topic at university generally have an interest in the topic or above average layman abilities related to it and (depending on your nations education system) have to have proven their general education and university-readiness somehow, that is already a preselected group most likely to successfully get the phd. It would be far worse for the general population.

And while money might play a role in some countries, there are enough in the world with free university education so we can eliminate that factor.

----------------

As for the role of attributes : I don't see any problem here. Attributes are general competence in a wide area, skills are special competence in a small area. Where does the idea come from that only skills get increased with training and attributes are inborn talent ? That does not need to be the case at all. You should be able to train both and which will increase more depends on how focussed your training is. Most kinds of training will give you something applyable elsewhere too.


As for climbing and strength : Climbing of course needs strength above all else. But at the same time climbing is all about moving your own body, which is easier the lighter it is. So muscles that you don't need for the climb are actually derimental. And that is where the "wiry" strength stereotype comes from.

The problem is more the quite unclear meaning of strength and dex. Personally i would like if strength would be the strength you can apply elsewhere, dex to be your ability to move your own body (including both related strength and coordination/muscle memory) and a third stat for precicely manipulating objects and hand-eye coordination. There are actually games that do so.
There are still some problems like how high dex/low strength persons realisticely should be rather small and lightweight and vice versa but we have long made excuses for unrealistic looks in fantasy. It is also still not tricial to balance.

As for skills, there are many games out there linking skills not to one but two attribute (or in some cases even three and allowing duplicates). And i have seen that min-maxing attributes suddenly becomes much less interesting in all of them.

Eldan
2022-04-21, 02:23 AM
Roughly a third of people who begin PhDs fail, from what I heard. And that's people who already have a Master's degree and passed the initial interviews and tests. Publishing is hard. In my field, it's three papers and and a thesis, by the way, all of which have to be published. In respectable journals, too, the committee can turn you down if they think you published below value.

Pauly
2022-04-21, 03:55 AM
Roughly a third of people who begin PhDs fail, from what I heard. And that's people who already have a Master's degree and passed the initial interviews and tests. Publishing is hard. In my field, it's three papers and and a thesis, by the way, all of which have to be published. In respectable journals, too, the committee can turn you down if they think you published below value.

It isn’t just publications, it also depends a lot on your advisor.

I have a friend whose advisor wasn’t going to let him pass because they were butting heads on the direction of his research. He ended with 2 publications in Nature and his third in Science before his advisor relented, but it still took him 6 years to get his Ph.D. awarded.

u-b
2022-04-21, 04:46 AM
As for the role of attributes : I don't see any problem here. Attributes are general competence in a wide area, skills are special competence in a small area. Where does the idea come from that only skills get increased with training and attributes are inborn talent ? That does not need to be the case at all. You should be able to train both and which will increase more depends on how focussed your training is. Most kinds of training will give you something applyable elsewhere too.
I have been told people are up to 3/4 raw IQ by age 12 (schooling included), but yeah, good point.

Batcathat
2022-04-21, 05:06 AM
Attributes are probably similar to HP in that they work best if you don't think too hard about exactly what they're supposed to represent. Even something as simple as "Constitution" (or similar) usually cover everything from taking a punch, to running far to withstanding an infection, all of which are fairly different in reality.

Willie the Duck
2022-04-21, 09:03 AM
There's also plenty of people who are fairly intelligent by most folks view on what constitutes intelligent, but failed out trying to get a bachelors. Because they are missing the native ability of whatever provides the necessary focus and dedication high enough to stick with that ride. Or some other trait required for classroom and book learning. Then throw those same people into the workplace and they excel.

Oh, to be sure. There are brilliant people who never went to school, dropped out, or who did get through whatever degree they pursued but are pushing brooms (or in a case with which I'm personally familiar, work as a parks ranger because they just can't stand sitting at a desk for a living). I'm not trying to defend or attack either intellect or education. I'm just noodling around your thought on geeks/nerds being proud of DX and IQ, and thus make them important in TTRPGs. That, plus a thought on a trend I've noticed among my programmers (and some of the MDs and JDs that work with us) where they defined themselves early in life by their academic success and perhaps have clung a bit tightly to those trappings/metrics of success. Perhaps because those metrics are obvious and readily communicable outside of one's field (roughly put, people don't say, 'what a bright young wo/man you are' for being a 10x employee doing job tasks they don't understand). Absolutely none of this is a problem unless it feeds into other issues, but I've seen a fair share of them. For all the talk in nerd circles about being mistreated by jocks or 'cool kids' in high school, no one seems to be meaner to nerds than other nerds looking to stake claim to a proverbial territory (as well as looking down on people who aren't part of nerd culture or the academic/career fields usually associated with it). That's how we got Trekkers vs. Trekkies, 'not a real fan,' theoretical vs. applied*, being mean (or outright ignoring) so-and-so's spouse in a discussion at a party because they're 'merely' a butcher/baker/lit. major, and similar. Beyond that (and much more frequent), about half my role as a manager is ending pissing matches between self-described geniuses, and another good chunk is dealing with self-esteem issues among perfectly capable people who think they must be doing something wrong because the incentive-reward structure of adulthood doesn't have the same dopamine-high as they got from getting an A on a paper. That last one is heartbreaking to see and I have a half-formed idea I keep meaning to post to the Personal Advice thread in the Banter subforum about a particular case (anonymized, of course). It's a conundrum I've been slowly musing on for a while. As someone who had a bit of an ego about my brain before the TBI (now I know for sure about someone who would be higher on the intellect scale than I -- the version of me who didn't get their head nearly caved in), I often wonder as to where the line is between when accolades and social prestige foster positive and negative results.
*I'm pretty sure that's mostly a TV/Movie trope.


It really really depends on the discipline. My impression is that a number of humanities PhD's are a lot easier to get than STEM PhD's.
...
Again, I'd say, it depends on the field. An idiot will never be able to get a PhD in Math, but maybe in English? I don't know. I can't say how easy or hard a PhD in English would be. (But my most "educated" friends who have seemed the least intelligent are the ones who were English majors.)
So you acknowledge that you do not know what goes into getting a PhD in humanities, but go on to suggest* that it probably is easier than STEM PhDs. Aside from the basic issue of drawing conclusions without the necessary information with which to draw them, do you recognize how this quite possibly is the case of confirmation bias rearing its' head?
*I acknowledge, not state outright

Kraynic
2022-04-21, 01:49 PM
Attributes are probably similar to HP in that they work best if you don't think too hard about exactly what they're supposed to represent.

That is probably true.

I have just been thinking about it more, due to running a pathfinder (1E) game as a favor to a couple guys that have never had the chance to play in a game together, but have played in each other's games. The more I run it, the more I despise that skill system.

As far as the PhD conversation goes, I'm not sure I am getting out of it what I should. What I am getting is that a PhD is actually pretty worthless. You already have the training/practice at that point, and all you are after is the approval of a specific group of people, which seems about as worthwhile to me as an achievement in a video game. I also find it funny that people immediately think that someone who doesn't stick with a line of college training is automatically demoted to pushing a broom. I suppose people with that sort of interest that simply bypass the years of schooling and go into construction/fabrication/service lines of work really are just too dim to have a clue they should be pushing a broom.

NichG
2022-04-21, 05:29 PM
As far as the PhD conversation goes, I'm not sure I am getting out of it what I should. What I am getting is that a PhD is actually pretty worthless. You already have the training/practice at that point, and all you are after is the approval of a specific group of people, which seems about as worthwhile to me as an achievement in a video game. I also find it funny that people immediately think that someone who doesn't stick with a line of college training is automatically demoted to pushing a broom. I suppose people with that sort of interest that simply bypass the years of schooling and go into construction/fabrication/service lines of work really are just too dim to have a clue they should be pushing a broom.

A PhD, ideally, is training for being able to independently set and pursue meaningful research agendas that are relevant to the current state of a particular field of study. It's not a certificate of cleverness or innate ability.

The thing that makes PhDs unnecessary for most careers is that 'independently' bit. Most careers provide structure and expectations as to what you're supposed to do. A PhD ostensibly should have some experience (with an advisor supervising) with a workflow that starts without that structure and has to analyze a field and figure out what would be useful to do, do it, and communicate it to others in a way that they'll accept.

It doesn't mean a PhD is a prerequisite to being able to do that. But it's like seeing that someone successfully conceived, developed, and published a piece of software, versus someone who says they know how to code and wants to lead a development team. It's proof that they have been through all the stages of the workflow successfully.

Kraynic
2022-04-21, 06:32 PM
It doesn't mean a PhD is a prerequisite to being able to do that. But it's like seeing that someone successfully conceived, developed, and published a piece of software, versus someone who says they know how to code and wants to lead a development team. It's proof that they have been through all the stages of the workflow successfully.

Does the PhD somehow inherently make that person better/more equipped for that field than someone that skipped the PhD, assembled a team, and wrote software? I mean, I'm sure no one has ever done that without some group of people first telling them they were qualified to do so. I'm only bringing this up due to the (in my opinion) extremely dismissive language applied to someone that didn't get the PhD. From your words, the PhD is competent, while the contrasting individual isn't but says they are.

PhoenixPhyre
2022-04-21, 07:08 PM
Does the PhD somehow inherently make that person better/more equipped for that field than someone that skipped the PhD, assembled a team, and wrote software? I mean, I'm sure no one has ever done that without some group of people first telling them they were qualified to do so. I'm only bringing this up due to the (in my opinion) extremely dismissive language applied to someone that didn't get the PhD. From your words, the PhD is competent, while the contrasting individual isn't but says they are.

Yeah. Speaking as someone with a hard science PhD now writing software, PhDs are strongly overrated for all purposes. They're 25% a secular priesthood initiation rite, 50% "slave" labor for existing faculty and 25% useful. Best case.

JusticeZero
2022-04-21, 07:57 PM
IQ and DX are things that make intuitive sense.
But regardless of whether they are realistic or not, their effect on the playability of the game, because of how they push the statistical curves, is negative.

GURPS is also a game that requires a lot of discipline from GMs on their willingness to not use all the material available to them. There's just too much gritty realism stuff mixed with romantic swashbuckling material, and it needs discipline of picking and choosing.

Also, too easy to die. But that's an issue with a lot of games.

NichG
2022-04-21, 08:10 PM
Does the PhD somehow inherently make that person better/more equipped for that field than someone that skipped the PhD, assembled a team, and wrote software? I mean, I'm sure no one has ever done that without some group of people first telling them they were qualified to do so. I'm only bringing this up due to the (in my opinion) extremely dismissive language applied to someone that didn't get the PhD. From your words, the PhD is competent, while the contrasting individual isn't but says they are.

It's a form of job training, so basically it gets you there if you weren't already there for some other reason. From an employer's point of view, the person with the PhD proved they got there, whereas the person saying 'I can do it' hasn't necessarily proved any ability to follow through. So the PhD is a lower risk hire - for the specific know-how that the PhD trains you for. From the point of view of, say, a self-employed individual, getting a PhD means you can take advantage of someone who already knows that field and how to prosper professionally in it. So again, you could just try to take your shot and start a research lab without the PhD and there's no guarantee you'd fail, but you'd basically be relying on trial and error to navigate that space and make it work.

And the 'being there for some other reason' isn't about innate talent or something. It's information, knowing the status of the field, the research and publishing culture, making contacts in the field, etc. You can get those things independently, but they're things you have to go and get, you don't just have them for being particularly talented. For example, how to write a paper so that it's difficult for someone to attack and so that people are more likely to take it seriously or feel compelled to respond. How to manage referees. What conferences are prestigious, and what the culture and interests of each conference or journal are like (so you position a paper to the people most likely to do something with it). What funding opportunities are available and how to pitch research to be competitive for particular grants in the field (so-called 'grantsmanship'). Those things aren't general 'everyone should have this' things, but they're important if what you're doing relies on interfacing with that culture to pay off.

There are some things which are perspective or ways of thinking rather than just cultural clutter. How to ask questions where regardless of the answer it's useful. How to ask questions which can be decisively answered through experiment or theoretical work. Workflows to avoid because of risk of self-deception (often subtle things like 'if you look at a simulation run before choosing whether to stop it or continue it, that introduces confirmation bias'). These you could just happen to have an intuitive grasp of without the training or without doing equivalent individual study. But since not everyone will have those things, going through a PhD program is a way to make sure you get them.

Satinavian
2022-04-22, 04:04 AM
Does the PhD somehow inherently make that person better/more equipped for that field than someone that skipped the PhD, assembled a team, and wrote software? I mean, I'm sure no one has ever done that without some group of people first telling them they were qualified to do so. I'm only bringing this up due to the (in my opinion) extremely dismissive language applied to someone that didn't get the PhD. From your words, the PhD is competent, while the contrasting individual isn't but says they are.
No, the PhD has proven competence, the non-PhD might be competent or not, your risk.

It is like basially every other certification as well. Sure, people might have years of experience and no title, but if you are not an expert in the field you can't really evaluate their work. Maybe they fumbled around all the time. With a title, you know they have a certain minimum competence according to experts in the field.


People are usually quite willing to prefer the academic medic with degree to the self-taught healer even if the latter has years upon years of practice and happy customers convinced of their remedies. Why should it be different in any other field ?

Eldan
2022-04-22, 04:39 AM
Yeah, that. A PhD certifies that you worked closely for three years with a known researcher in the field, published reputable articles (or a monograph, in many social sciences), handed in your thesis on time and proved it had merit to a committee of experts. In purpose, it's no different from a driver's license, a craftsman's diploma, a course certificate. You can look at it, and see that you did a certain thing, and who certified it.

Yes, you can learn every single job relevant thing you do in a PhD on your own. But you can't easily prove it in a short job interview and most academic positions won't accept you without one.

Mameluco
2022-04-22, 09:42 AM
IQ and DX are things that make intuitive sense.
But regardless of whether they are realistic or not, their effect on the playability of the game, because of how they push the statistical curves, is negative.

GURPS is also a game that requires a lot of discipline from GMs on their willingness to not use all the material available to them. There's just too much gritty realism stuff mixed with romantic swashbuckling material, and it needs discipline of picking and choosing.

Also, too easy to die. But that's an issue with a lot of games.

As a long-time fan of GURPS, I have to stop my lurking tendencies and write my first post here because I've read a couple of times people saying characters die too easily. And I'd like to understand why are you saying that.

I've played a lot of 3ed, and some 4ed. And my personal experience is yes, combat is dangerous. A couple of good hits is enough to drop a character to negative hit points and to start rolling HT to not passing out. But dying rolls don't start until you reach -HT, so 20 point of damage and missing a 50% roll for an average human to die.

So, unless the PCs are unarmored, have low ST and HT, and/or against formidable opposition, death ican happen but it isn't that likely.

SimonMoon6
2022-04-22, 01:59 PM
As a long-time fan of GURPS, I have to stop my lurking tendencies and write my first post here because I've read a couple of times people saying characters die too easily. And I'd like to understand why are you saying that.

I've played a lot of 3ed, and some 4ed. And my personal experience is yes, combat is dangerous. A couple of good hits is enough to drop a character to negative hit points and to start rolling HT to not passing out. But dying rolls don't start until you reach -HT, so 20 point of damage and missing a 50% roll for an average human to die.

So, unless the PCs are unarmored, have low ST and HT, and/or against formidable opposition, death can happen but it isn't that likely.

Well, as I recall (from having played the game briefly a few decades ago), there are also problems on the upper edge of HT scores. You're not really meant to have a really big HT. One of the PCs in my game did have a really big HT. So, he would always make the rolls to avoid passing out. Which meant that the only way to defeat him with damage would be to kill him.

NichG
2022-04-22, 03:21 PM
How would GURPS model something like a Kaiju, with really extreme values? Or I guess, how should GURPS model it?

Willie the Duck
2022-04-22, 03:25 PM
As a long-time fan of GURPS, I have to stop my lurking tendencies and write my first post here because I've read a couple of times people saying characters die too easily. And I'd like to understand why are you saying that.

I've played a lot of 3ed, and some 4ed. And my personal experience is yes, combat is dangerous. A couple of good hits is enough to drop a character to negative hit points and to start rolling HT to not passing out. But dying rolls don't start until you reach -HT, so 20 point of damage and missing a 50% roll for an average human to die.

So, unless the PCs are unarmored, have low ST and HT, and/or against formidable opposition, death ican happen but it isn't that likely.
Part of it is going to be game played. GURPS Sci fi tend to have power armor PCs rarely get to wear, but lots of weapons that will quickly grease anyone not in them. Likewise GURPS is possibly the only 'modern' (20-21st century) game people have played (excepting ones where you are urban vampires and werewolves), which is often firearms and little to no armor. And when talking fantasy, it is likely in comparison to D&D, where taking 5-7 sword hits is a lot more survivable at certain points in the gameplay.

Probably more important to how the notion happens, GURPS is pretty lethal given the fact that character creation takes a long time. Many of the other somewhat lethal game systems (say, paranoia) are also ones where you can be up and running again in minutes. For a game where you plan out characters with personality traits and relationships and careers and things, it is at least notable that it also is a game that hew towards realistic lethality of life-threatening events.

Mr Beer
2022-04-22, 03:36 PM
"Easy to die" is a pure flavour choice. In a D&D-esque setting, you can be very difficult to kill with high HT, high HP (ST), armour/innate DR etc. etc. I've run a lot of these type of games, as in 1,000s of game hours, and PC deaths are rare.

In a high-tech setting, well machine guns and military lasers will kill humans easily, that's true, but there are various routes you can go to avoid doing so. The one thing you can't avoid is a semi-realistic campaign in which humans fire high-powered weapons at each other without an extremely high chance that people are going to die. But that's a feature not a bug.

Mr Beer
2022-04-22, 03:48 PM
How would GURPS model something like a Kaiju, with really extreme values? Or I guess, how should GURPS model it?

High SM (Godzilla is SM+11), high ST obviously (my quick estimate is ~1,200 ST based on 100K tons bodyweight), very high Hardened DR (decide what can hurt it and model accordingly), then probably Regeneration and some other features. Innate Attacks, causes Fright Checks, that kind of thing.

https://gurps.fandom.com/wiki/Size_Modifier

http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/resources/4eupdate.pdf

Massive Creatures
Massive creatures are stronger than
humans primarily because of sheer body size.
Such creatures have had ST scores assigned
in various ways in Third Edition, not always
consistent. In Fourth Edition, calculate a
“normal” massive creature’s ST score based
on its mass as follows, rounding down:
ST = 2 ¥ (cube root of weight in
pounds)

Rynjin
2022-04-22, 04:15 PM
The one thing you can't avoid is a semi-realistic campaign in which humans fire high-powered weapons at each other without an extremely high chance that people are going to die. But that's a feature not a bug.

I'd say it's still a bug. If you can die much faster than you can make a new character, something is wrong.

Mr Beer
2022-04-22, 05:39 PM
I'd say it's still a bug. If you can die much faster than you can make a new character, something is wrong.

That seems like an arbitrary criteria that should be broken into two parts:

1. Can you die quickly using a simulationist system in a setting which has high-powered weapons interacting with normal humans who do not have exceptional resources? Yes and that's a feature not a bug.

2. Does character generation take too long in GURPS? Much more reasonable complaint, although I tend to use templates which allow relatively fast creation e.g. sub-30 minutes. That might be too long though for some people, if that's a deal breaker, go with a different system.

Rynjin
2022-04-22, 05:51 PM
30 minutes is a long time in a system where one bad roll can kill you. Look at D&D/Pathfinder as an example, where the swingiest level (level 1), where you CAN die from a single bad roll has few enough moving parts that you can hammer out a dude in like 5 minutes.

Same with Savage Worlds (better GURPS), where even Veteran etc. characters can be hammered out very quickly. Maybe 15-20 minutes for a higher level character, 5-10 for a starting Novice level one. This makes the high lethality in that system not as egregious.

Gnoman
2022-04-22, 06:10 PM
As a long-time fan of GURPS, I have to stop my lurking tendencies and write my first post here because I've read a couple of times people saying characters die too easily. And I'd like to understand why are you saying that.

I've played a lot of 3ed, and some 4ed. And my personal experience is yes, combat is dangerous. A couple of good hits is enough to drop a character to negative hit points and to start rolling HT to not passing out. But dying rolls don't start until you reach -HT, so 20 point of damage and missing a 50% roll for an average human to die.

So, unless the PCs are unarmored, have low ST and HT, and/or against formidable opposition, death ican happen but it isn't that likely.

Unarmored wizard hit by 6 Imp damage to the torso takes 12 damage, He has 8 HP. That puts him at only 4 damage from the death roll threshold.

Armored cleric takes 3D damage from an impaling tentacle attack. Die roll was 16, she has 10 HP. After armor, damage was reduced to 12 before damage type. If it hit her in the torso instead of the leg, she'd be at -14 HP and making death rolls. One hit.

icefractal
2022-04-22, 06:15 PM
30 minutes is a long time in a system where one bad roll can kill you. Look at D&D/Pathfinder as an example, where the swingiest level (level 1), where you CAN die from a single bad roll has few enough moving parts that you can hammer out a dude in like 5 minutes.Lol no. I mean, yes, you technically can, if you already have a concept, it's a concept the system easily supports, and you don't care at all about optimizing or qualifying for future stuff.

But by that same standard, you can bang out a GURPS character really quick too, if you don't care about using your points efficiently or having all the skills needed to fit the concept.

I don't really agree for Savage Worlds either. I mean, SW is faster than Pathfinder, but it can still take a while, a lot more than 5-10 minutes IME, depending on the setting (core SWADE only is one thing, a setting with 3-4 books to look through is another).

And regardless of mechanics, you still need a character concept! A character name! To figure out how you'll relate to the other characters! Like honestly, I can't think of any game where characters dying in five minutes doesn't suck, except maybe something super improv like Fiasco.


And FWIW, while Hero isn't the same as GURPS, it's closer than many systems are. And personally speaking, I can create a Superheroic character in Hero, that I'm happy with mechanically, much faster than creating a mid-level or high-level Pathfinder character.

Just being able to say "this is the effect I want, how much does it cost?" instead of "this is the effect I want, now where in these various books can I find the lego pieces to create it?" is a big timer saver. Not that I don't enjoy the lego-hunting in 3.x/PF1, I enjoy it quite a bit. But fast, it isn't.

Lord Raziere
2022-04-22, 06:38 PM
Just being able to say "this is the effect I want, how much does it cost?" instead of "this is the effect I want, now where in these various books can I find the lego pieces to create it?" is a big timer saver. Not that I don't enjoy the lego-hunting in 3.x/PF1, I enjoy it quite a bit. But fast, it isn't.

Yeah the lego-hunting is a big reason I don't like those systems for building whatever character I want. sure it can make people feel smart for contriving together a bunch of weird pieces together to achieve an unintended effect but if you need to do that, it means the system is incredibly inefficient for what your using it for.

Rynjin
2022-04-22, 08:36 PM
Lol no. I mean, yes, you technically can, if you already have a concept, it's a concept the system easily supports, and you don't care at all about optimizing or qualifying for future stuff.

It is really not hard to do all of this stuff for a level 1 character (specifically) in PF. Especially since in most circumstances just going 1-20 in a class is most optimal anyway.



I don't really agree for Savage Worlds either. I mean, SW is faster than Pathfinder, but it can still take a while, a lot more than 5-10 minutes IME, depending on the setting (core SWADE only is one thing, a setting with 3-4 books to look through is another).

The only SW book I've played with that makes me feel like making a character take too long is Superpowers, since it's like a mini-Mutants and Masterminds style charop but without the bonus M&M has of it being like...nearly impossible to actually die for real, forever.

RIFTS can be a smidge slow too, but only because it takes so long to write down all the free abilities you get and that can be shortcutted. By just doing it later: they're already in the book.


And regardless of mechanics, you still need a character concept! A character name! To figure out how you'll relate to the other characters! Like honestly, I can't think of any game where characters dying in five minutes doesn't suck, except maybe something super improv like Fiasco.

Concept and name are the bits that will take you probably 4 of those 5-10 minutes, yes.

This is the benefit of letting go of the archaic idea that you need a 10 paragraph backstory and just embracing the fact that the primary thing about your character that matters is their personality. Everything else can be "discovered" in play when it would be most interesting.

PhoenixPhyre
2022-04-22, 08:48 PM
This is the benefit of letting go of the archaic idea that you need a 10 paragraph backstory and just embracing the fact that the primary thing about your character that matters is their personality. Everything else can be "discovered" in play when it would be most interesting.

And in 5e, you can even dispense with the need to go deep for a concept (because the mechanical playing field is such that "I'm <full class X with obvious choices>" is generally good enough).

icefractal
2022-04-22, 09:36 PM
It is really not hard to do all of this stuff for a level 1 character (specifically) in PF. Especially since in most circumstances just going 1-20 in a class is most optimal anyway.Pathfinder is quite front-loaded - for example, if I make a 1st level Wizard, I have to choose:
* Archetype - which will affect me for all 20 levels.
* School - which will affect me for all 20 levels.
* Arcane Bond - ditto, but there's fewer options
* Starting Spells - which will be a big chunk of my total spells known for several levels, most likely
* Starting Feat(s) - ok, this is only the 1st level ones, fair enough

So if you're trying to make high-quality mechanical choices (defined not as "most powerful" but "will best produce the result you want while playing the character"), then you have to consider the effects of your archetype (and other similar choices) over the course of the whole campaign.

I suspect that if you're dashing out characters in five minutes, you're either:
A) Sticking mostly to core and utilizing your existing familiarity with it.
B) Picking options at random or by low-quality metrics such as what they're named.
And those work fine, but you can do them in GURPS too.


Also, who's writing 10 page backstories? Not me. :smalltongue:
My philosophy of char-gen is basically about one question - what will the character look like in play? How do I want to interact with people? What do I want to do in combat? What kind of stuff do I want to focus on? Will the other players enjoy this?
And yeah, this can take a bit of thought. Because sometimes my first idea isn't a good one (or maybe a good one for another player, but not something I can personally portray in a satisfying way), and no amount of "develop in play" can fix a rotten foundation.

Once I have that core - a mental picture of the character being played at the table - other elements like backstory and mechanics get filled in as necessary to serve that. Which for mechanics means picking the options that best contribute to that table experience. And that can take a while too, because I want well-fitting choices - poorly suited ones are like a pebble in my mental shoe.

Tanarii
2022-04-22, 10:26 PM
I like how not having a detailed and long backstory, an idea which is the oldest of TTRPG character building concepts, is somehow less archaic than having one. :smallbiggrin: Although I agree that having a overloaded backstory is definitely not modern either ... personality traits of some kind that actually drive motivations in play are.


IMX I can build a D&D 5e level 1 character in about 15 minutes, along with alignment and personality traits from backgrounds, including noting down all equipment you start with automatically from class & background. That's probably about the same time as a BECMI character, in which far less time is spent generating the character and far more time buying starting equipment. :smallamused:

Mameluco
2022-04-23, 01:47 AM
Unarmored wizard hit by 6 Imp damage to the torso takes 12 damage, He has 8 HP. That puts him at only 4 damage from the death roll threshold.

Armored cleric takes 3D damage from an impaling tentacle attack. Die roll was 16, she has 10 HP. After armor, damage was reduced to 12 before damage type. If it hit her in the torso instead of the leg, she'd be at -14 HP and making death rolls. One hit.

These two examples are quite extreme, I can't say they cannot happen, they did. In any case...

First example, 6 imp damage is a really good hit in pre-industrial games, fantasy or not. The skinny mage is quite close to death, and probably unconscious. That's exactly what I say when combat is dangerous.

The attack of the impaling tentacle... The damage is equivalent to being shot by a magnum with special rounds. That'll kill most people easily. Also, the GM rolled 16 damage, which is quite unlikely.

Interestingly, both characters had average or below HP. In a combat-heavy game is a gamble the player has to accept.

Both scenarios put the players against what I called formidable opposition in my original post. In that case, yes, it's lethal. Like throwing a couple of dragons to a party of low-level PCs in d&d.

Saint-Just
2022-04-23, 05:20 AM
These two examples are quite extreme, I can't say they cannot happen, they did. In any case...

First example, 6 imp damage is a really good hit in pre-industrial games, fantasy or not. The skinny mage is quite close to death, and probably unconscious. That's exactly what I say when combat is dangerous.

The attack of the impaling tentacle... The damage is equivalent to being shot by a magnum with special rounds. That'll kill most people easily. Also, the GM rolled 16 damage, which is quite unlikely.

Interestingly, both characters had average or below HP. In a combat-heavy game is a gamble the player has to accept.

Both scenarios put the players against what I called formidable opposition in my original post. In that case, yes, it's lethal. Like throwing a couple of dragons to a party of low-level PCs in d&d.

6 Imp happens all the time - 33% chance for Joe Average holding a spear in two hands, 100% for someone swinging a halberd beak-forward (min ST for halberd means sw is d6+2). That's not dragons. There are alternative systems that moderate damage, but in the Basic ST-based damage is insane, especially given how easy it is to get something that penetrates as good as 357 magnum and inflicts twice as much injury. I say it as someone who loves GURPS.

Tobtor
2022-04-23, 05:56 AM
6 Imp happens all the time - 33% chance for Joe Average holding a spear in two hands, 100% for someone swinging a halberd beak-forward (min ST for halberd means sw is d6+2). That's not dragons. There are alternative systems that moderate damage, but in the Basic ST-based damage is insane, especially given how easy it is to get something that penetrates as good as 357 magnum and inflicts twice as much injury. I say it as someone who loves GURPS.

If your 8 HP character with no armour is in front of your party and is expected to withstand that an opponent is swinging a halberd at you, you are doing something wrong (or perhaps your GM is). Then, yes you should expect to die.

It is true that in GURPS your group need to actually defend people with low HP, low combat abilities and no armour.

I played many GURPS campaigns and only few DnD campaings (an only 2nd edition, and one session of 3rd edition). In GURPS fantasy settings I haven't seen many characters die. Only one really (and then one who got so mangled up by a missing limp that they chose to make a new character).

But, yes combat is more dangerous than in DnD (DnD only really gets safe after 5 lvl or so). However I think it exaggerated how much more dangerous GURPS is. It is true that you need to think a bit more about protection. What can be something you need to consider is that in in a world where magic healing isn't available or scarce, serious wounds takes time it heal and thus you cannot go from deadly combat to deadly combat every day. So if that is what you want, you need to make sure magic healing is readily available.

Gnoman
2022-04-23, 05:00 PM
6 damage on a 1D arrow is unlikely. But the only reason that it was a 1D arrow is that it was basically harassment fire from ambush, and was using a fairly weak class of bow. If the same goblin had been firing a basic crossbow, it would be 1D+4, while a longbow is 1D+2. That starts making danger-zone level hits much more likely without advanced technology or cheese.

Now, if I wanted cheese, I could have that same ST 13 goblin firing a windlass crossbow instead. That would be only one shot (but it was a hit and run thing where only one shot was fired anyway), but giving it an effective ST of 36. Translating to 4d+3 impaling. In which case a minimum roll would put that wizard really close to the danger zone.


((Don't tell my players what I have planned for level 2 - this is supposed to be a old-school adversarial campaign, and I'm way behind on my PC kill quota. As in I somehow haven't managed to kill even one of them yet.))

fusilier
2022-04-25, 12:17 AM
Unarmored wizard hit by 6 Imp damage to the torso takes 12 damage, He has 8 HP. That puts him at only 4 damage from the death roll threshold.

Armored cleric takes 3D damage from an impaling tentacle attack. Die roll was 16, she has 10 HP. After armor, damage was reduced to 12 before damage type. If it hit her in the torso instead of the leg, she'd be at -14 HP and making death rolls. One hit.

Wait . . . uhhh . . . Why are you ignoring blow through? Were those rules removed in 4th? I've mostly played 3rd, but I thought 4th also had blow-through rules. Blow through limits the amount of damage a particular location can take, based on damage type.


Unarmored wizard hit by 6 Imp damage to the torso takes 12 damage, He has 8 HP. That puts him at only 4 damage from the death roll threshold.

Impaling to the to the Torso does x2 damage, but blow-through on the torso is (HT). So, assuming the Wizard has 8 HT, then at most he would take 8 points of damage, and be at 0 HP.


Armored cleric takes 3D damage from an impaling tentacle attack. Die roll was 16, she has 10 HP. After armor, damage was reduced to 12 before damage type. If it hit her in the torso instead of the leg, she'd be at -14 HP and making death rolls. One hit.

Again, assuming she had 10 HT, then the most damage a single impaling attack could do is 10, so she's at zero hit points.

Once you're at zero, chances are the character is going to pass out (or at least fall over), and no longer be part of the combat, which usually diminishes the likelihood of sustaining another max damage hit to the torso.

In all the GURPS games I've played/ran, I don't know if I ever saw a character killed -- and I ran a good number which involved mauser rifles that do 8d6 damage! Generally speaking I find it quite hard to kill a character in GURPS (with the caveat that I didn't play many high powered sci-fi games). Instead, in these kinds of fights, it was easy to knock a character out of combat with a single blow. And recovery times can be slow (1 hit point a day), and very slow if a limb was crippled.

Looking at my Basic book for 3rd edition, the Blow through rules are in a side bar in the advanced combat rules chapter, so maybe they are optional? But the rules for impaling damage are also in side bar in the same chapter, so . . . shrug.

I guess if you *want* to make GURPS significantly more deadly you can ignore those rules?

Gnoman
2022-04-25, 12:24 AM
Limb hits explicitly cannot do more than 1/2 HP damage, and extremities cannot do more than 1/3. I can find no such rule for torso hits.


Found an explanation - that was removed entirely for 4E. There's an optional version in High Tech, but it explicitly isn't a default.

fusilier
2022-04-25, 12:29 AM
If your 8 HP character with no armour is in front of your party and is expected to withstand that an opponent is swinging a halberd at you, you are doing something wrong (or perhaps your GM is). Then, yes you should expect to die.

. . .

However I think it exaggerated how much more dangerous GURPS is. It is true that you need to think a bit more about protection. What can be something you need to consider is that in in a world where magic healing isn't available or scarce, serious wounds takes time it heal and thus you cannot go from deadly combat to deadly combat every day. So if that is what you want, you need to make sure magic healing is readily available.

I'm absolutely astounded. :-) I learned to play GURPS in the late 90s, and I always played with the blow-through rules. Do people really not play with these rules (but still do double damage for impaling, etc.)? In third edition, both are listed on the hit charts on the GM screen . . .

No wonder people think GURPS is really deadly!! :-)

fusilier
2022-04-25, 12:33 AM
Limb hits explicitly cannot do more than 1/2 HP damage, and extremities cannot do more than 1/3. I can find no such rule for torso hits.


Found an explanation - that was removed entirely for 4E. There's an optional version in High Tech, but it explicitly isn't a default.

Wow. That's interesting! I guess another reason for me to stick with 3rd edition.* Wonder why they removed it? If you think about blow-through from a high power rifle, clearly a lot of the energy from the projectile is going to pass through a torso. Although I did notice that they seem to have generally lowered the damage from many weapons in 4th edition.

* EDIT -- I guess if it's an option in high tech, I can always implement it in a 4th edition game.

Gnoman
2022-04-25, 12:35 AM
The optional 4E version is an attempt to make bullet wounds more deadly. You roll 1D for torso hits. On a 1, the torso hit turns into a vitals hit.

On 2-6, one of two things happen:

If you don’t use Bleeding, injury can’t exceed twice the target’s HP. Any excess is lost
If you do use Bleeding, injury can’t exceed the target’s HP. Any excess is lost but still counts when determining the HT penalty for bleeding rolls.



This is the only time in which torso damage is limited. It was one of the concepts removed from the game because it was too easy to make characters really hard to kill. Passive Defense was also removed.

fusilier
2022-04-25, 12:56 AM
The optional 4E version is an attempt to make bullet wounds more deadly. You roll 1D for torso hits. On a 1, the torso hit turns into a vitals hit.

On 2-6, one of two things happen:

If you don’t use Bleeding, injury can’t exceed twice the target’s HP. Any excess is lost
If you do use Bleeding, injury can’t exceed the target’s HP. Any excess is lost but still counts when determining the HT penalty for bleeding rolls.

Well, in a way it makes them less deadly, on a 2-6 the damage is limited to HP and bleeding occurs. Bleeding isn't too bad, as long as the fight doesn't become stupidly protracted, and someone can bind your wounds.


This is the only time in which torso damage is limited. It was one of the concepts removed from the game because it was too easy to make characters really hard to kill. Passive Defense was also removed.

Yeah, I knew PD was removed, but they also gave a bonus to basic dodge, which was lacking in 3rd. (When most characters had a dodge score of 5, it was very rare when an unmodified dodge attempt succeeded).

Mameluco
2022-04-25, 07:18 AM
In all the GURPS games I've played/ran, I don't know if I ever saw a character killed -- and I ran a good number which involved mauser rifles that do 8d6 damage! Generally speaking I find it quite hard to kill a character in GURPS (with the caveat that I didn't play many high powered sci-fi games). Instead, in these kinds of fights, it was easy to knock a character out of combat with a single blow. And recovery times can be slow (1 hit point a day), and very slow if a limb was crippled.

That's exactly my experience! I must reckon my RPG experience pre-GURPS was mainly RuneQuest and Call of Cthulhu. So, I was used to systems where combat is dangerous, and my expectations and play style aligned with GURPS'.

That's why I was so puzzled by other posters stating the lethality of the game. :smallsmile:

Willie the Duck
2022-04-25, 08:16 AM
That's exactly my experience! I must reckon my RPG experience pre-GURPS was mainly RuneQuest and Call of Cthulhu. So, I was used to systems where combat is dangerous, and my expectations and play style aligned with GURPS'.

That's why I was so puzzled by other posters stating the lethality of the game. :smallsmile:

I'll say again that it probably has to do with D&D**, and that framing probably the level range where D&D is least lethal. Also I don't think people have specifically been saying that it is lethal exclusively. Also that it is brutal or dangerous or other terms*. And I think that is accurate, or at least a reasonable impression -- some super build with 20 HT and other advantages to conscious all the way to -5xHT or something notwithstanding, you tend to max out at ~40 damage points of being up, there are shock rules, bleeding rules, limb crippling, slow healing (and potentially no or less healing magic), combat penalties for fighting when injured, and all of a sudden combat looks more like something you avoid whenever possible rather than go seeking. For that reason, even if you never loose a character, the perception that combat is more brutal is, IMO, not without merit.
And I think a lot of the comparisons are late-2e/3e D&D to GURPS 3E, as that seems a sweet spot for when people played both.
**do not have the time to go through and make sure these were in this thread, but anecdotally I see the rest of the terms brought up many times.

Also, your GURPS character has an entire build full of dependents and defined careers and hopes and dreams and things you have the plot designed around, meaning that a X week hospital stay will have different consequences than a D&D game where one can say (not that you likely will have to, given healing magic) 'oh well, my paladin is out for six weeks, I have a druid I need to level up, let's keep going.'

Regardless, I think it is possible that a significant chunk of it is simply from different games being played. Sci fi with heavy weaponry and light armor until you get to the powersuits (whereupon the opponents have fusion weapons or gamma lasers). Cliffhanger or urban fantasy where people have guns but little or no armor. And so forth.

MoiMagnus
2022-04-25, 03:10 PM
Regardless, I think it is possible that a significant chunk of it is simply from different games being played. Sci fi with heavy weaponry and light armor until you get to the powersuits (whereupon the opponents have fusion weapons or gamma lasers). Cliffhanger or urban fantasy where people have guns but little or no armor. And so forth.

Yes. The only feedback I had from GURPS is a friend who played a short campaign in which the optimal strategy degenerated into:
(1) pull out the pin of a grenade
(2) drop it on the floor/table [do NOT throw it otherwise it might require a check]
(3) run away and close the door behind if possible, alternatively jump through the window
(4) and then come back to finish off the few wounded peoples that were not insta-killed by the grenade [I assume this means no one is the setting was wearing protection able to withstand to a grenade]

Reading through this thread, I have to deduce that the GM was not great at his job. But on the other hand this was the first (and last up to my knowledge) experience of everyone at this table with GURPS, GM included, so inexperience was expected.

Mike_G
2022-04-25, 03:24 PM
Yes. The only feedback I had from GURPS is a friend who played a short campaign in which the optimal strategy degenerated into:
(1) pull out the pin of a grenade
(2) drop it on the floor/table [do NOT throw it otherwise it might require a check]
(3) run away and close the door behind if possible, alternatively jump through the window
(4) and then come back to finish off the few wounded peoples that were not insta-killed by the grenade [I assume this means no one is the setting was wearing protection able to withstand to a grenade]

Reading through this thread, I have to deduce that the GM was not great at his job. But on the other hand this was the first (and last up to my knowledge) experience of everyone at this table with GURPS, GM included, so inexperience was expected.

So long as you have a good escape route, that's not necessarily unrealistic.

I think you have hit on one of the issues with GURPS. You need a good DM. Many systems can work with a mediocre DM, but GURPS really can't.

But the thread isn't "Why is GURPS bad" it's "Why don't you like it."

So things like slow combat, too many fiddly modifiers and multipliers, high lethality combined with exhaustive character creation and %$%^&ing disadvantages are all why I didn't like it. Maybe people felt those were features, not bugs, but they just didn't work for me.

fusilier
2022-04-26, 12:33 AM
That's exactly my experience! I must reckon my RPG experience pre-GURPS was mainly RuneQuest and Call of Cthulhu. So, I was used to systems where combat is dangerous, and my expectations and play style aligned with GURPS'.

That's why I was so puzzled by other posters stating the lethality of the game. :smallsmile:

Yeah. I also played a lot of 3rd ed. GURPS (still do). With the removal of blow-through for torso hits in 4th it would make it noticeably easier to kill a character. Although still difficult to "insta-kill" it is much easier to take a character from full hit points to "roll versus death" in a single hit. Probably would depend upon the particular weapons used in the setting. Sounds like the optional rule in High-Tech would be a good addition, if you don't want to kill your PC's all the time.

Also, as others have noted, you need a good GM, and I found it took experience to figure out what set of rules work well for what kind of campaign/setting.