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Jimp
2008-06-21, 04:40 PM
While I'm familiar with the GURPS ruleset (3rd edition anyway) and have made a few characters with it before, I've never actually played a sessions of it.
What are people's experiences with GURPS sessions?

Archetype-
2008-06-21, 05:48 PM
I've only played one character in GURPS, but it's easily my most memorable character ever. My hacker/engineer Lee Prescott, hailing from New Zealand, was an interesting character to say the least. He was your stereotypical gamer nerd, living in his mother's basement and going to work at a cybercafe.

Before I go any further, I have to explain a bit about the world. It's modern-day earth, but there are Kaiju. I'm talking about Toho Kingdom monsters (http://www.tohokingdom.com/). We're all just ordinary humans, not much we can do to stop these guys other than distract them while the civilians evacuate. The best weapons the military has are lasers, missiles modified to penetrate their hides, and masers.

Anywho, these aliens called Xilliens land and offer aid in exchange for Antarctica. They were about to hand over control of this monstrously huge mecha that looks a lot like Gojira (a.k.a., Godzilla) to combat the Kaiju. We'd seen this thing take down Gojira without breaking much of a sweat. Lee, with his vast gaming experience, sees this as being a bad thing. Just about every time a human faction gains an uber weapon, they use it to try to screw enemies and allies over. So, he thinks it's a good idea to stop that. He jury-rigs an EMP cannon from spare parts he has and test fires it at a radio station's antenna, corresponding with a few people online who were able to listen to said station.

The test is successful, and Lee decides it's about time to find out how the heck to disrupt it from where he is. The ceremony to hand over the mecha is in New York, so he has about half the world to cover. Thanks to a triple-six on my part, he gets the idea that hacking into NORAD is the best idea. Everything goes according to plan, and I get it. Lee doesn't cover his tracks well enough, and a SWAT team breaks in and arrests him and his parents (they tried in vain to protect him). Not long after arriving at the police station, these FBI blokes arrive and claim jurisdiction over this case. I'm transported to the airport, whimpering the whole way save for one point when I'm asked if I know how many international laws I've broken. Knowing a good bit about laws, I start to answer “Forty-seven” before the guy in the back seat with me glares at me and I whimper again.

We arrive at the airport, and the guy in the back seat with me pulls out this strange pistol and shoots the driver in the back of the head. It's some kind of energy blaster, and I immediately assume that it's a Xillien. I get ushered onto this odd vehicle and in seconds I'm taken to this underground base and kept as a prisoner along with a bunch of other scientists. As in, some-of-the-best-in-their-field scientists. Apparently, it looks like my idea makes me a large threat to these guys.

Within days, another prisoner arrives. It's one of the other party members, a highly-skilled, borderline insane Australian pilot Weston Hammond. He's flown sorties against Gojira and other Kaiju with heavy bombers and fighters and lived to tell the tale. He hatches a plan... well, not really. He's given a flare by the alien that took him prisoner. Next mealtime, I provide a distraction by excitedly jumping up and grabbing my ration of disgusting nutritious sludge and cup of water. While the Xillien looks at me, the Weston takes out the guy with the flare. He grabs the blaster the guy has and the group begins to evacuate. We encounter some light resistance, and we get out alive thanks to Weston and the alien who brought him in.

Apparently, the Xillien Controller (their leader) got assassinated by the second in command and the latter is now using Mechagojira, Gigan (a sort of cyborg Kaiju), and a warship to conquer the world. We have to high-tail back to Japan and try to muster some sort of last stand type thing. During a short break, I let it slip that I've come up with a way to disrupt the alien's control over Mechagojira. I'm taken to General Kobayashi by means of the Xillien who aided us towing me along behind her in such a way that my feet do not touch the ground. I tell Kobayashi about my device, and he asks me if I can jury-rig another one.

I'm given a team of technicians to assist me, and I get the thing built in about twelve hours by heavily modifying an APC. The machine is tested successfully, and I'm sent out with three Griffons and a dozen Maser tanks to halt this thing. To make things a bit more difficult, Gojira's back and he's gone berserk. The crew gets my tank into position, and with a cry of “Haaaa-doooo-KEN!!” I fire the EMP cannon at Mechagojira. The small disruption created is enough for Gojira to leap in and rip Mechagojira in half. The Xillien controller is forced to commit Gigan to holding off Gojira, and Weston is taken onboard the warship along with two other party members. At this point, I call upon on of Lee's quirks and ask myself “What would Black Mage do?” My options were two-fold. I could either commence with stabbity death or unleash the biggest attack in my arsenal. I went with the former, obviously. We relocate and set up, I fire again. The effect isn't as great as I'd hoped, and he controller deploys a fighter ship to take out my little tank, which I might say doesn't look too pretty at all. I ask myself again what Black Mage would do and get the same answer, which doesn't make sense until I realize that there is something else I could do. I tell the rest of the tank's crew to run the heck away as I'm about to overload the thing. With another cry of “HAAAA-DOOOO-KEN!!” I set the thing to explode and high-tail it away from the front lines. The thing asplodes, and disables the warship, the fighter sent to destroy my little tank, and messes up Gigan to a small degree.

There's a lot more to the story than this, but my minds racing too fast right now to get it all straight. Needless to say, after this whole thing is over the Earth Defense Force is formed and I'm assigned to a team consisting of the party for tech support. I'm also part of the R&D team.

Yeah, that was a really fun game. GURPS is awesome.

-Archetype

Amiria
2008-06-21, 05:55 PM
I like GURPS, but I never played it. I single-handedly bought ...

* walks to RPG book cabinet and counts *

... twelve 3rd edition Gurps books. What a waste of money ... :smallfrown:

Character generation was fun, but quite complex with all those options. And there my experience with the system already ends.

Shhalahr Windrider
2008-06-21, 10:01 PM
Character generation was fun, but quite complex with all those options. And there my experience with the system already ends.
Reminds me of how a person once stated that GURPS is really more like an RPG game system toolkit rather than a game system itself.

I haven't actually played yet, either, but I'm starting to work on some campaigns. It seems to me that the whole thing is predicated on the GM being able to lay a lot of ground work on which traits, skills, equipment, etc. are available and providing enough basic templates in order to reduce that complexity. (Fortunately, there are a number of setting sourcebooks to cut the GMs' work down for them, too.) The rule set is indeed meant to be Universal, but an individual campaign needs limits, and it's up to whoever designs the setting to provide those limits.

Mike_G
2008-06-21, 10:21 PM
We played 1st edition GURPs for a while. It's ok. It's not tough to run and it's a fun enough system.

The good thing is you can pretty much make up anything. The bad thing is you can pretty much make up anything. The bonus build points from Disadvantages meant that Belkar would have about three times as many points to play with than Haley or Roy.

This led to many DM headaches as the party was full of Sadistic, Bloodthirsty, Alcoholic Pyromaniacs with body odor.

Any system that rewards you for creating a DM nightmare of a PC is trouble.

Shhalahr Windrider
2008-06-22, 12:08 AM
The good thing is you can pretty much make up anything. The bad thing is you can pretty much make up anything. The bonus build points from Disadvantages meant that Belkar would have about three times as many points to play with than Haley or Roy.
Of course, he should also be pretty well crippled when those disads come into play, if he's buying them that extensively. Of course, following the recommended disadvantage limit of 50% of one's starting points does tend to make tripling one's point value rather difficult.


Any system that rewards you for creating a DM nightmare of a PC is trouble.
Hence the recommendation of a Disadvantage Cap.

Really, almost every single option presented by the books is preceded by some variation of the phrase "If your GM allows." GURPS is heavily dependent on GM arbitration. Yes, you can make anything. No, you cannot play anything. If you don't fit within the limits set by the GM, he or she is within his or her rights to forbid it. Hell, that last statemtent describes every RPG—the only thing that makes GURPS unique in that respect is that the statement is the overridding feature.

GURPS is intended to support any setting. Therefore, it must allow for any character concept. But a particular setting does not have to allow for a particular trait just because the GURPS rules allow for it.

Titanium Dragon
2008-06-22, 12:27 AM
You've already gotten over one of the worst aspects of the system: the incredibly long, ardous character creation.

The game itself actually runs pretty well, assuming people aren't using weird rules (not always a valid assumption, but...). It does also suffer from being rather too lethal - it is pretty easy to die in GURPS, or to be very seriously injured. And if you die, if they can't bring you back to life, you get to go through the fun of character creation all over again! :P

TheOOB
2008-06-22, 01:13 AM
if they can't bring you back to life, you get to go through the fun of character creation all over again! :P

Though really that's just a GM hand wave away, there's no reason you can't just say "ohh, the priests can ressurect someone for 100 gold, no you can't learn that spell".

In my experience(which is remarkably little and a long time again), GURPS is much like the 3e bard, it can do anything, but it really isn't good at anything either. If you have the right group and you give it some love you can make it work and be fun, but usually you are better off finding a gaming system that is made for what you have in mind.

So if you are poor, or have a really esoterit game concept in mind, GURPS is good, if you want to do heroic fantasy, magical cyberpunk, or modern gothic, you best go with D&D, shadowrun, or World of Darkness instead(and so on).

Vespe Ratavo
2008-06-22, 01:19 AM
I've bought a LOT of GURPS books, all third edition (mostly because I get them at a good price at this store I go to), but I've never gotten to play. Why do I keep buying them? Fun to read. Yes, I read RPG books for fun, cause I'm weird like that. And I've kept hoping I could get a game started, but I've never been able to.

Hmm...

Maybe we should start up a game on the forums some time? Actually justify the investment? :smallbiggrin:

Zeta Kai
2008-06-22, 02:18 AM
Yes, I read RPG books for fun, cause I'm weird like that.

Wow, I thought I was the only one. :smallwink: I never did get around to running a game of Vampire: the Dark Ages...

Baxbart
2008-06-22, 05:10 AM
The first system I ever really learned (Aside from a few crazy Alternity sessions when I was 11) was GURPS 3rd Ed, and it's still my favourite system for sheer versatility.

Yes, it is a GM's nightmare to catalogue all those rules and optional rules that may or may not apply to any particular situation (fortunately I have a memory for rules... not much else though) - and it is, after all, a system built to be able to handle literally ANYTHING. You should see some of the crazy stuff I've been able to build over the years.

Just remember one thing, with regards to disadvantage limits: "It's a limit, not a target." (Some of my players have a tendency to actually build their characters around disadvantages unless I specify that the game is serious in tone)

If you want realism, look to GURPS. If you want to be able to fight a horde of orcs/demons/gerbils/whatever... you're probably SOL unless your GM has given you lots of points to play with or has an extensive knowledge of the cinematic rules.

warmachine
2008-06-22, 05:48 AM
As others have written, it is correct that GURPS is a system toolkit, not a game system in itself. You must have a world book for the setting you want or you can make it yourself. Making it yourself means stating which of the various traits apply and which don't. For example, Gizmos makes sense in a comic book setting but not in gritty World War II. Devising some setting specific Talents is a good idea.

Also, GURPS is munchkin's wet dream. You may think D&D players dump-statting CHA is bad but players can get points for making their PCs social cripples! A GM has to decide whether this extreme level of optimisation works in the game. In a game with lots of social interaction, such a player must hide and keep his mouth shut, thus not playing the game. In a straight dungeon crawl, other players might not like the character imbalance. If you have annoying rules abusers who argue with you in game, you might be better off with D&D, which strictly defines a lot and leaves much less to GM discretion.

Of course, it is a method actor's wet dream for the same reason or other flaws. Players get points for having a Code of Honour, for example. Therefore, think about what your players want to play.

Epinephrine
2008-06-22, 07:35 AM
GURPS is a great system; I played virtually nothing but GURPS for years once we discovered it (excepting a bit of Marvel and some White Wolf games). I've played GURPS supers, Fantasy, modern, and some fun campaigns made up by us (a future fatasy world in which guns were never developed, for example).

I missed some elements of D&D, so we converted AD&D to GURPS.

The 40 point disadvantage cap is necessary, and the GM shouldn't feel bad overruling certain choices of disadvantage.

Some of my most memorable characters are GURPS based; my first was a pubmaster (retired mercenary) who had sworn he'd never pick up a blade again. My 40-something year-old, balding, overweight ex-mercenary who disliked violence (but swung his hornbeam club like a professional) was my first ever non-heroic character - something D&D doesn't tend to encourage, but he navigated social situations, knew businesses and how to run them and had plenty of options in combat, since even though in GURPS one can be very lethal, one can also very easily NOT kill by striking at limbs with a blunt weapon, for example.

I'd heartily recommend trying GURPS out.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-06-22, 01:20 PM
GURPS is nice in theory, but I find that unless you have encyclopedic knowledge of the rules spread over several hundred pages of book (or books, in older editions), actually playing is even slower than freaking Rolemaster. A 10-second combat can take hours to resolve, which is just crazy.

Yahzi
2008-06-22, 01:40 PM
GURPS is great.

I ran a campaign in which tI actually pulled off an identity-switch (after the unknown heroic NPC dies, they pull off his helmet to discover it was an NPC they thought was a coward). The system is realistic as heck, which makes its departures from realism all the more fantastic (one PC mage gets his hand cut off; he grabs it and sticks it back on, casts a healing spell, and rolls a critical. Well, I decided that meant it worked, and he got his hand back. Later I had an NPC bard write a song (set to guitar music) about how the PC mage got his head cut off and stuck it back on with magic).

The only problem with GURPS is that it's too realistic. This means two things; one, the DM has to come up with the flavor of the world (since real-life flavor isn't all that game-worthy), and two, dumb players will die a lot. Givein them 300 points to build their character will help some; at that level, a PC can fence two or three bad guys at a time and still expect to win. If the baddies can only come at him a few at a time, he might even be able to beat a couple dozen.

I'm running a D&D campaign right now, but for very specific reasons, like I want to run a world in which the players can be hit by a freight train and walk away from it, and high-level fighters can wade into an entire regiment of ordinary soldiers and kill them all single-handedly.

Crow T. Robot
2008-06-22, 03:18 PM
I have far too many GURPS books and I have only played a few games, Though that is going to change soon. I have a supers campaign that is just waiting until I finish up the Eberron game I have been running for the past while.

Granted death is very easy to come by and even supers are going to bleed. Which is kind of the point of the setting I am aiming for so it works out in this case.

There are resurection spells but they have long spell prerequistes to get to them. A short cut is Power Investiture which lets the GM cherry pick devine spells assosiated with what ever god is being worshipped.

It is also the system for crazy crossovers. Unseen University Wizard, a WoD vampire and Ironman join forces to fight Cthulhu. All this from looking at the books I have.

DigoDragon
2008-06-23, 07:46 AM
I've played and run GURPS 3e and 4e games. I like the flexibility of the system that you can create nearly anything based on a point system. I always have a disadvantage cap set between 35-40 points as well for character creation.

The only downside is that the GURPS rule system is a bit math heavy with combat. Yes it can be really complicated, but I find that with my group we've managed to simplify the rules a bit to keep it quick paced. Once the rules are workable then everything else should fall into place. :smallsmile:

Klaz Eidron
2008-06-23, 08:18 AM
GURPS is so fun! A memorable campaign was when my group was just playing their favourite pop culture characters in a time-travelling campaign.

Only in GURPS can exist a party composed of Indiana Jones, Batman, Corto Maltese and Don Quixote.

random11
2008-06-23, 08:27 AM
My personal favorite system since I prefer realism over epic style, and point based systems over class based ones.

However, the game requires house rules to close possible exploits and fill missing gaps (the gaps can also be filled by buying extra books).
I personally didn't like the magic system, so I made a different options. The simplicity of the rules fits perfectly if you enjoy fitting your own style into the game.

One more point, the realism is very good in historical or fantasy, but may become a burden in present or futuristic settings.

Rhuadin
2008-06-23, 10:52 AM
I have mixed feelings about GURPS. On one hand, like the versatility and realism, which is always something that struck me as missing from D&D. On the other hand, I dislike the fact that the entire game is basically DM fiat, which makes railroading and other annoying things the default if your DM sucks. It takes a really really good DM to run a good GURPS game, but only a mediocre DM to run a good D&D game -- but I'd rather have the former than the latter.

Of course, I only have mediocre DMs at the moment, so D&D it is!

valadil
2008-06-23, 11:49 AM
I've played in a handful of GURPs games. It's not my favorite system, but I do keep coming back to it. The quality of any GURPs game depends on the GM. Like, even more than other RPGs. Theres too much material out there and you need a GM who will find and use appropriate rules while discarding the rest.

GURPs can handle any setting and excels at none - I like to compare it to the Java programming language. GURPs is great for any setting that doesn't have a game system, but if I want fantasy I'll play D&D and if I want cyberpunk I'll go with Shadowrun. What GURPs does do that nothing else will is let you mix settings. I once played in a game where players made any character they wanted and they were all brought together in spite of their vastly different backgrounds. The system held together pretty nicely.

Playing GURPs is easy enough. Roll 3d6. Rolling under your skill level is success. Character creation is hard though, especially if you're making your own powers and abilities. I'm of the opinion that for simplicity's sake RPGs should not involve fractions. GURPs fails at this. I also don't like that there are several ways to achieve a single ability and their cost always varies. It rewards munchkins a little too much in my opinion.

Coplantor
2008-06-23, 11:50 AM
All i've done with GURPS (4th ed) was helping two friends creat their characters and prepare myself to GM. Those characters are sooooooooo unbalanced, they have like, three skills each. Both of them have computer programming and hacking, one of them have pistol and the other one katana and drive. I have to talk to those guys because their characters are quite usless, specially if you consider the stats, the first one has good stats considering that he is a gunslinger/hacker: ST 8 DX 13 HT 7 IQ 18, the other one is a katana wielding hacker with nanobots in his body with ST 7 DX 15 HT 7 IQ 15. The guy with the katana has a damage of 1d -1.

nagora
2008-06-23, 12:03 PM
Played it once or twice. Overly complex and has a point-based character generation system, which is something I really dispise.

Had that authentic "my character is just a list of numbers" feel of mid 80's systems, and a hit-location system so that you can waste playing time in order to pretend your combat system is realistic.

Jayabalard
2008-06-23, 12:20 PM
Reminds me of how a person once stated that GURPS is really more like an RPG game system toolkit rather than a game system itself.Yup. For the most part, you should think of GURPS as a framework for building an RPG. Sure, there are lots of rules, but they're just suggestions; use as many or as few as you want to get to the system that you want to play, and only use as many as you need to get the level of realism that you want.

If you try to just use it out of the box as if it were a complete and polished RPG, you're most likely going to be disappointed and overwhelmed by the number/complexity of rules, especially once you start using lots of sidebars and mixing in multiple genres.

GURPS sourcebooks can be quite useful, even if you're not going to be playing GURPS itself; the genre and place books can be pretty useful no matter what system you're playing in.

for example:
One of the posters here wanted to play a D&D game set in china, and used GURPS china as a resource.

GURPS Time traveler is a great dissection of the different types of time/dimensional travel. It sets you up with all of the questions and possible answers for them. Can you take stuff with you or do you arrive naked like in the terminator, or is time travel only spiritual/psychic like in Quantum leap? Can you communicate with your "present day" directly or does the future monitor the past like in Millennium or are you limited to time capsules and delay mail? Can you travel both backwards and forwards in time, or is it limited to only one way? Is the past mutable or fixed? If mutable, do paradoxes cause new time lines (new universes) while leaving the original as it was or is there only a single timeline? etc.

Shhalahr Windrider
2008-06-23, 12:22 PM
On the other hand, I dislike the fact that the entire game is basically DM fiat, which makes railroading and other annoying things the default if your DM sucks.
No, no, no. GM fiat and Railroading are two very different things. The latter only necessarily follows if the system's reliance on the former goes to the GM's head. Saying, "I have to fill in the gaps on this rule" doesn't mean I will say, "No, you can't open that door at all because you have to go down the corridor."

The Glyphstone
2008-06-23, 01:17 PM
Since there's so many GURPS characters frequenting this, one question: Is it really possible, under standard GURPS rules, to have your character die during character generation? Someone told me that once as an example of why GURPS was a "bad system", and I've always wondered if it was true, or true in the way that Candle of Invocation cheese makes D&D a "bad system".

Shhalahr Windrider
2008-06-23, 01:27 PM
Uh… nooooo… :smallconfused:

Unless maybe you're making a vampire character or something like that.

Fhaolan
2008-06-23, 01:35 PM
Since there's so many GURPS characters frequenting this, one question: Is it really possible, under standard GURPS rules, to have your character die during character generation? Someone told me that once as an example of why GURPS was a "bad system", and I've always wondered if it was true, or true in the way that Candle of Invocation cheese makes D&D a "bad system".

No. I have seen RPG systems like that... such as Traveller, which is famous for it's life-path generator and was the basis from which later RPGs with life-paths drew from, such as Cyberpunk, and the Central Casting series. However, GURPS doesn't have that... unless... I have a vague memory of a GURPS conversion Traveller book. Maybe that had it?

mostlyharmful
2008-06-23, 02:10 PM
Since there's so many GURPS characters frequenting this, one question: Is it really possible, under standard GURPS rules, to have your character die during character generation? Someone told me that once as an example of why GURPS was a "bad system", and I've always wondered if it was true, or true in the way that Candle of Invocation cheese makes D&D a "bad system".

Well I suppose you could combine a Mana-dependant race or template or flaw or whatever with a Mana-Sink one, dependant on the world setting that might kill your character automatically but it's really really obvious that that build is trying to self immolate.

Personally I don't think its such a big detraction that a system built to be good at representing anything you care to think of can be used to create internal contridictions, its not got a label on the back of the books that says "Idiot Proof" after all.:smallsmile:

Another_Poet
2008-06-23, 03:18 PM
Well, even if it is possible to do in GURPS, it's possible in most other RPGs too.

Let's say you're making a D&D character. You assign your lowest roll, a 6, to his constitution score. Then you choose a race with a -4 to CON and a template with a -2 to CON. You are dead.

In Shadowrun, just keep adding cyberware until your Essence reaches 0. You are dead. It's actually pretty easy to do - most of my characters who used cybergear at all reduced their essence all the way to .5 or so.

ap

Thrud
2008-06-23, 03:38 PM
Wow, last time I played gurps was . . . (pulls out fingers, counts backwards, pulls out toes, uses them too . . . Looks around for other things to count with. . .) sheesh, 22 years ago. I remember that i was entertained by it, but character creation sucked unless the Gm knew exactly what they were doing and provided lots of helpful hints along the way, just as did game play itself. Don't try it without an experienced DM. Find one and play a few games with him before you try doing it youself, unless there is no other way. It will help a lot.

Still, I have never found a game that is actually universal WITHOUT any splatbooks other than Hero system. Once again it is a game system that requires a good GM to set rules, but if you have that you can duplicate anything else without needing more than a single core book.

Crow T. Robot
2008-06-23, 04:51 PM
As far as dying in generation, that is a flat out no unless you seek some perverse pleasure in making a PC that can't stay alive in the given enviroment of the setting.

There is terminally ill which will kill a player in 24 hours to one year depending on the sevarity. Though these are all examples of things player will walk into with their eyes open so I can't see this as a major strike against the game system.

Shhalahr Windrider
2008-06-23, 09:25 PM
Still, I have never found a game that is actually universal WITHOUT any splatbooks other than Hero system.
GURPS 4th edition really expanded the advantages and disadvantages available in the Basic Set to include almost every one from the 3e genre books. (That's one of the reasons they split the basic set back into two books.) To my understanding (as I only own the Basic Set), the genre books are primarily tips on running the genre and sets of pre-built Templates (sets of pre-chosen traits, disadvantages, and abilities that can easily be grabbed as a customizable package), and equipment rather than outright new rules. It is now almost trivally easy to go with just the basic set as long as the GM has some idea what he or she is doing.

kladams707
2008-06-23, 09:28 PM
I've played gurps twice. Once as a centaur drifter and the other as a paranoid, callous superspy who could change his appearance. Both games were quite fun, especially since it involved realism as well as letting me create my own concept. I also like the fact it uses fewer dice than d&d:smallbiggrin:.

Coplantor
2008-06-23, 09:31 PM
GURPS 4th edition really expanded the advantages and disadvantages available in the Basic Set to include almos every one from the 3e genre books. (That's one of the reasons they split the basic set back into two books.) To my understanding (as I only own the Basic Set), the source books is primarily tips on running the genre and sets of pre-built Templates (sets of pre-chosen traits, disadvantages, and abilities that can easily be grabbed as a customizable package), and equipment rather than outright new rules. It is now almost trivally easy to go with just the basic set as long as the GM has some idea what he or she is doing.

With my players, we just created a character while following the book to understand how to play, we're having our first adventure next weekend or the other.
It was pretty easy to understand actually.

Leewei
2008-06-23, 11:54 PM
As a fan, former player and GM of both GURPS and RoleMaster, I'd say that any GURPS combat running longer than RoleMaster has problems external to the system.

GURPS is a fine system in 3.0 or 4.0 version. 3.0 in particular has an enormous number of source books including decent fantasy, historic, martial arts and even Conan source material if you look around. Creating a campaign outside of the world books they offer takes some effort due to the generic (i.e. G in GURPS) nature of the game. Character advancement is smooth due to point buys. This makes for less of a thrill than leveling up, but also more realistic and intuitive character advancement. GURPS allows you to spend time training up a skill, or to make money during downtime.

GURPS futuristic and cyberpunk settings work quite well. The fantasy stuff is decent, however every spellcaster has a similar feel. Quirks are a neat way to make memorable characters (one of my favorites was "Chivalrous code of honor -- when being closely watched").

The one thing GURPS ironically excels at is giving rise to truly unique worlds due to the selection of races and ease of homebrewing game rules. While the standard fantasy rules don't give much flavor to a world, I've played in dozens of fantasy games with different themes and feels -- and enjoyed the vast majority of them.

Shhalahr Windrider
2008-06-24, 04:56 PM
GURPS is a fine system in 3.0 or 4.0 version. 3.0 in particular has an enormous number of source books including decent fantasy, historic, martial arts and even Conan source material if you look around.
Pretty useful, given that 4e is supposed to be extremely backward compatible. :smallbiggrin:


The fantasy stuff is decent, however every spellcaster has a similar feel.
Not too bad if you're doing your best to keep Magic A as Magic A (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicAIsMagicA) and the setting has no Magic B, I guess. :smallsigh:

InaVegt
2008-06-24, 05:38 PM
The fantasy stuff is decent, however every spellcaster has a similar feel.

This is not actually true, at least, not in 4e.

Make the world normal mana (so that nobody except people with special magical skills can use magic)

Then, create, using special modifiers and abilities, several different types of magic. A few examples: (Note, this is using 4e)

Bardic magic (Magery with the song limitation [-40% is standard])
Clerical magic (Use power investure instead of magery, replace mana with sanctity [The power of magic depends on the amount of influence your god has on an area])
Sorcerous magic (Standard magery)
Vancian magic (Use standard magery, but instead of normal spells use the modular ability [super memorization] with the requirements in grimoire (+10%) enhancement with the Spells only [-20%], Limited use 1/day [-40%] and 10 minutes preparation required [-20%] limitations, buy this several times [perhaps at differing levels])

It would not be unreasonable to have several of these in the same world, as they all exist in the D&D world.

Jimp
2008-06-24, 07:21 PM
One question, one request:
1. What's the difference between 3rd edition and 4th?

2. Can someone explain to me how mages work in GURPS 3rd edition please?

InaVegt
2008-06-24, 07:27 PM
One question, one request:
1. What's the difference between 3rd edition and 4th?
The differences are minor, the most important difference is that there is much more in core in 4e.

2. Can someone explain to me how mages work in GURPS 3rd edition please?
The difference between mages isn't big in between 3rd and 4th, the most important reason why I said that it was for 4e is that I'm not sure what the exact differences are.

Shhalahr Windrider
2008-06-24, 08:19 PM
Thanks for the description of magic, Gezina. I was kinda thinking along those lines, but not being fully versed in all the rules, I couldn't manage it. :smallbiggrin:

Epinephrine
2008-06-24, 09:40 PM
Can someone explain to me how mages work in GURPS 3rd edition please?

Well, the standard system involves an advantage called Magery, which allows one to learn spells (typically Mental/Hard skills, a few are Mental/Very Hard).

Spells have prerequisites, so to cast a Flame Jet one would need to first learn Ignite Flame, then Create Flame, then Shape Flame (or something like that, it's been a while and I don't have the books around atm); more complex spells might draw on prerequisites from several types of magic, metamagic requires knowledge from many types. To add flavour there are restricted magery versions as well (single college - Fire only for example, day mages, night mages, moon mages (vary in power with lunar cycles), solitary magery, and you can pretty much make up styles by modifying the cost, based on how often you have full access to powers and how bad the penalties are when your conditions aren't met)

Casting a spell fatigues the caster (for example, Flame Jet costs 1 to 3 fatigue, for 1 to 3 dice of fire damage).
Fatigue is regained by resting (1 point per 5 minutes is pretty typical). Hence, no limit on number of spells cast in a day, provided you can keep upwith the fatigue costs. More limiting in combat. Higher skill levels gain benefits - 15+ skill reduces cost by 1 (and can result in a cost of 0), 20+ reduces cost by 2, etc. Spells can be maintained, and if the maintenance cost is free you can simply keep a spell running all the time, though you suffer cumulative penalties for having spells active.

That's pretty much a snapshot of the system, though there are many alternatives. Gezina listed a few, there are also rules for runic magic (use runes to cast spells, make magic items), power words (similar to runic - words of power influence spheres of magic). Runic magic and power words don't have "spells", instead one might use the rune for creation and the rune for fire, concentrate on the effect desired (a wall of fire) and then summon it into being.

I'm a big GURPS fan, and I think you can typically fit a magic system to your world easily enough. I really liked GURPS default magic rather than Vancian; the prerequisite system made so much sense to me, the fact that you are never without magic is nice (except very temporarily, but you can recover easily without an overnight rest), and one of my early characters was a ghoul illusionist (ghouls were a race, not undead) who managed to be part of a party without them ever realising it, thanks to the maintained illusion disguise etc.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-06-25, 12:54 AM
The differences are minor, the most important difference is that there is much more in core in 4e.

Actually, core character generation - attributes, mainly - has changed in small but significant ways.

Cybren
2008-06-25, 01:40 AM
This is not actually true, at least, not in 4e.

Make the world normal mana (so that nobody except people with special magical skills can use magic)

Then, create, using special modifiers and abilities, several different types of magic. A few examples: (Note, this is using 4e)

Bardic magic (Magery with the song limitation [-40% is standard])
Clerical magic (Use power investure instead of magery, replace mana with sanctity [The power of magic depends on the amount of influence your god has on an area])
Sorcerous magic (Standard magery)
Vancian magic (Use standard magery, but instead of normal spells use the modular ability [super memorization] with the requirements in grimoire (+10%) enhancement with the Spells only [-20%], Limited use 1/day [-40%] and 10 minutes preparation required [-20%] limitations, buy this several times [perhaps at differing levels])

It would not be unreasonable to have several of these in the same world, as they all exist in the D&D world.

Don't forget Ritual Magic, Magic-as-Powers, the esoteric skills such as the Chambara Skills that require trained by a master, which are quite mystical, and the enthrallment skills.

Learnedguy
2008-06-25, 02:06 AM
I've only played one character in GURPS, but it's easily my most memorable character ever. My hacker/engineer Lee Prescott, hailing from New Zealand, was an interesting character to say the least. He was your stereotypical gamer nerd, living in his mother's basement and going to work at a cybercafe.

Before I go any further, I have to explain a bit about the world. It's modern-day earth, but there are Kaiju. I'm talking about Toho Kingdom monsters (http://www.tohokingdom.com/). We're all just ordinary humans, not much we can do to stop these guys other than distract them while the civilians evacuate. The best weapons the military has are lasers, missiles modified to penetrate their hides, and masers.

Anywho, these aliens called Xilliens land and offer aid in exchange for Antarctica. They were about to hand over control of this monstrously huge mecha that looks a lot like Gojira (a.k.a., Godzilla) to combat the Kaiju. We'd seen this thing take down Gojira without breaking much of a sweat. Lee, with his vast gaming experience, sees this as being a bad thing. Just about every time a human faction gains an uber weapon, they use it to try to screw enemies and allies over. So, he thinks it's a good idea to stop that. He jury-rigs an EMP cannon from spare parts he has and test fires it at a radio station's antenna, corresponding with a few people online who were able to listen to said station.

The test is successful, and Lee decides it's about time to find out how the heck to disrupt it from where he is. The ceremony to hand over the mecha is in New York, so he has about half the world to cover. Thanks to a triple-six on my part, he gets the idea that hacking into NORAD is the best idea. Everything goes according to plan, and I get it. Lee doesn't cover his tracks well enough, and a SWAT team breaks in and arrests him and his parents (they tried in vain to protect him). Not long after arriving at the police station, these FBI blokes arrive and claim jurisdiction over this case. I'm transported to the airport, whimpering the whole way save for one point when I'm asked if I know how many international laws I've broken. Knowing a good bit about laws, I start to answer “Forty-seven” before the guy in the back seat with me glares at me and I whimper again.

We arrive at the airport, and the guy in the back seat with me pulls out this strange pistol and shoots the driver in the back of the head. It's some kind of energy blaster, and I immediately assume that it's a Xillien. I get ushered onto this odd vehicle and in seconds I'm taken to this underground base and kept as a prisoner along with a bunch of other scientists. As in, some-of-the-best-in-their-field scientists. Apparently, it looks like my idea makes me a large threat to these guys.

Within days, another prisoner arrives. It's one of the other party members, a highly-skilled, borderline insane Australian pilot Weston Hammond. He's flown sorties against Gojira and other Kaiju with heavy bombers and fighters and lived to tell the tale. He hatches a plan... well, not really. He's given a flare by the alien that took him prisoner. Next mealtime, I provide a distraction by excitedly jumping up and grabbing my ration of disgusting nutritious sludge and cup of water. While the Xillien looks at me, the Weston takes out the guy with the flare. He grabs the blaster the guy has and the group begins to evacuate. We encounter some light resistance, and we get out alive thanks to Weston and the alien who brought him in.

Apparently, the Xillien Controller (their leader) got assassinated by the second in command and the latter is now using Mechagojira, Gigan (a sort of cyborg Kaiju), and a warship to conquer the world. We have to high-tail back to Japan and try to muster some sort of last stand type thing. During a short break, I let it slip that I've come up with a way to disrupt the alien's control over Mechagojira. I'm taken to General Kobayashi by means of the Xillien who aided us towing me along behind her in such a way that my feet do not touch the ground. I tell Kobayashi about my device, and he asks me if I can jury-rig another one.

I'm given a team of technicians to assist me, and I get the thing built in about twelve hours by heavily modifying an APC. The machine is tested successfully, and I'm sent out with three Griffons and a dozen Maser tanks to halt this thing. To make things a bit more difficult, Gojira's back and he's gone berserk. The crew gets my tank into position, and with a cry of “Haaaa-doooo-KEN!!” I fire the EMP cannon at Mechagojira. The small disruption created is enough for Gojira to leap in and rip Mechagojira in half. The Xillien controller is forced to commit Gigan to holding off Gojira, and Weston is taken onboard the warship along with two other party members. At this point, I call upon on of Lee's quirks and ask myself “What would Black Mage do?” My options were two-fold. I could either commence with stabbity death or unleash the biggest attack in my arsenal. I went with the former, obviously. We relocate and set up, I fire again. The effect isn't as great as I'd hoped, and he controller deploys a fighter ship to take out my little tank, which I might say doesn't look too pretty at all. I ask myself again what Black Mage would do and get the same answer, which doesn't make sense until I realize that there is something else I could do. I tell the rest of the tank's crew to run the heck away as I'm about to overload the thing. With another cry of “HAAAA-DOOOO-KEN!!” I set the thing to explode and high-tail it away from the front lines. The thing asplodes, and disables the warship, the fighter sent to destroy my little tank, and messes up Gigan to a small degree.

There's a lot more to the story than this, but my minds racing too fast right now to get it all straight. Needless to say, after this whole thing is over the Earth Defense Force is formed and I'm assigned to a team consisting of the party for tech support. I'm also part of the R&D team.

Yeah, that was a really fun game. GURPS is awesome.

-Archetype

Most awesome roleplaying story ever:smallbiggrin:

Sebastian
2008-06-25, 08:04 AM
I like GURPS, but I never played it. I single-handedly bought ...

* walks to RPG book cabinet and counts *

... twelve 3rd edition Gurps books. What a waste of money ... :smallfrown:


Nonsense, gurps books are never a waste of money, unless they are the really mechanic heavy ones, like robots or vehicles, they can always be used as sourcebooks for other RPGs.



The good thing is you can pretty much make up anything. The bad thing is you can pretty much make up anything.

This sum up GURPS (and other generic RPGs) pretty well. :D

warmachine
2008-06-25, 09:57 AM
1. What's the difference between 3rd edition and 4th?
I'll try to expand in what others have written. Almost anything 3e will convert to 4e with ease though point values may change.

The cost of attributes is linear, rather than some exponential table, and differ for each attribute. DX and IQ cost more as skills are based on them.
HP (Hit Points) are based off ST, not HT. FP (Fatigue Points) are based off HT, not ST. This eliminates the odd dual HT of animals.
Per (Perception) and Will are now secondary attributes based off IQ, rather than advantages/disadvantages.
Skills are based off primary or secondary attributes (ST, DX, IQ, HT, Per and Will), rather than being physical/mental. Sex Appeal, for example, is based off HT.
Chosen Talent levels add to a set of related skills and are cheaper than increasing attributes. This encourages specialists, rather than high IQ/DX polymaths.
Languages come in None/Broken/Accented/Native levels, rather than skills. This is simpler.
PD (Passive Defence) is gone. This eliminates knights improving their Dodge by wearing full plate armour.
IQ bonus to Gun skills are gone. It was nonsense anyway.
Laser fire stacking together on the same spot of armour is gone. That was silly.
Psionics is based on advantages, rather than skills. They are no longer broken.

Interestingly, the average person will still almost certainly be incapacitated by forced cold turkey from tobacco addiction for 2 weeks.

Jimp
2008-06-25, 12:43 PM
Would people recommend updating to 4th edition?

EDIT: Another spellcasting question: since you buy spells like skills, to cast them do you have to roll the appropriate skill check?

Crow T. Robot
2008-06-25, 06:34 PM
I switch over to 4th ed and the chages are rather subtle, but I like them. I only own a few books and depend on the the older stuff for alot of setting stuff.



EDIT: Another spellcasting question: since you buy spells like skills, to cast them do you have to roll the appropriate skill check?

Yes. Roll the skill of the spell. And don't forget power stones. You don't want to pass out half way through a battle.

For those who have no idea what I just wrote, power stones were a way use magic with out using up the fatigue of the mage. Basically the stone hold extra fatigue for casting. The drawbacks are they take along time to recharge and only one can be used for casting at any given moment. And big stones are going to have flaws.

Now this thread has taught you everything you need to know to start using GURPS magic.

Ted_Stryker
2008-06-25, 07:44 PM
3e has the problem that it's very stat-intensive, i.e., putting most of your CP into attributes is pretty efficient. 4e lessens the importance of attributes by making DX and IQ (the attributes for which almost all skills are based) a flat 20 points per +1 in those stats.

The flip side is that there isn't as much in the way of source books for 4e (yet) compared to 3e, but that balance improves with the passage of time. I probably would have converted but I have a fair amount of 3e GURPS V:tM, and I don't think there's much chance of WW and SJG getting together again.

Jimp
2008-06-25, 08:40 PM
Thanks for the info on magic. It all makes sense now :smallbiggrin:

Rhuadin
2008-06-26, 12:08 PM
No, no, no. GM fiat and Railroading are two very different things. The latter only necessarily follows if the system's reliance on the former goes to the GM's head. Saying, "I have to fill in the gaps on this rule" doesn't mean I will say, "No, you can't open that door at all because you have to go down the corridor."

Fair enough, I understand what you're saying. I guess I used improper terminology. The specific mediocre GM in my group (and unfortunately also the most prolific) has a specific habit of always choosing the interpretation of the rules that most benefits him (which, in his eyes, forcing his plots counts as a benefit to him). This extends to other games as well that don't have very very clearly defined rules, like Monopoly.

So when I say 'DM fiat making railroading the default', I mean that the ability to turn on and off rules as you encounter them, instead of having a well specified, internally consistent system, simply makes his job of hitting us over the head with his plot hammer much, much easier.

I'm notoriously unclear when I try to explain stuff, so let me provide specific examples:

I prefer playing D&D under this specific DM because rules negotiations can be summarized as 'These books are allowed, except I will evaluate spells on an individual basis.' Unfortunately, this DM has a habit of involving plot events where we all have to go to jail for some misunderstanding/are somehow stripped of all our equipment and rendered powerless so our characters can stand back and watch his plot transpire, etc. This unfortunately leads to the side effect of us trying to munchkin as much as possible so as to have a chance at fighting off/escaping from the 20 higher level guards come to arrest us for a crime we didn't commit/the entire fleet of highly trained gishes that we were magically captured by in our sleep (and then ended up on boats in said fleet with no land in sight) without our equipment, spellbooks, etc, and when we somehow managed to defeat a couple of them by luring them away from the main barracks, we found that we weren't proficient with their swords and armor, despite looking and functioning exactly like the kind our characters were used to. Oh, and the magical artifacts that they used to counter various no-save-or-suck spell effects were all mysteriously expended at that point, too.

We even have to optimize against him fudging rolls behind his screen, i.e. I have to pick spells with a touch attack and no save (like ray of enfeeblement).

He also has a habit of sending the party on wild goose chases with no point other than to get us away from key NPCs/locations so that he can kill them/kidnap them/suddenly are invaded by a conquering army completely fortified against outside attack.

Realizing this, in the last campaign we played, we quickly identified said key NPCs, convinced them to stay with us, herded them into the identified key location, and came up with a way to guard them and keep them perpetually safe there within the limits of the rules that we had agreed upon before starting the campaign (this campaign being D&D and not GURPS). Because his plot *must* happen in a specific way, he's not flexible enough to just change who the key NPCs and locations are.

His solution? His home brew setting's equivalent of 'Rocks fall, everyone dies.' "Undead stream in from the corners of the world and kill everyone except for a few survivors, creating a post apocalyptic nightmare where a few heroes struggle for survival. Oh, I'm running this setting."

Needless to say, I've decided to sit this next campaign out.

Epinephrine
2008-06-26, 01:32 PM
Rhuadin, that just sounds like a very lousy and somewhat childish DM.

Rhuadin
2008-06-26, 02:32 PM
Rhuadin, that just sounds like a very lousy and somewhat childish DM.

Well, to his credit, he comes up with interesting stories -- I'd mind his railroading a lot more if he came up with boring ones.

He may be lousy and railroady, but I think childish is perhaps a bit severe. I think of him as 'unaccommodating to others'

He ended up selling his books after the 'rocks fall everyone dies' event, so it's also likely that he simply wanted to end that campaign also to switch over to 4e