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Da King
2008-11-16, 10:36 PM
Hello, recently my DM has decided to start a campaign using the GURPS system. Unfortunately, both he and the players know nothing about the system, and I'm wondering what the best way to get started with it is. Few
questions:

1) How hard is the system to learn?
2) My DM described the campaign as being "20 minutes into the future, and that the characeters we would be playing would just be ordinary people. He described a small section of the campaign and it sounded like he would really appreciate the Black Ops book, but he said that the most of ther game would not be like this. Any idea what worldbooks he might like to use, if any at all?
3)How much of the main rules are given in the GURPS lite pdf?
4)I've heard that the game is much more lethal compared to 3.5/4E D&D, which are the only RPGs I have played. How true is this?
5)How hard is it to homebrew new things with the system?

Knaight
2008-11-16, 10:52 PM
1. No more difficult than D&D was, just try to get what you learned from D&D out of the way when learning it.
2. The core book is extremely comprehensive, and it should cover things.
3. A decent amount, you should be able to play the game with it, and only it, you just won't have all the details.
4. Its more lethal than 4e, but since 3.5 usually deteriorates into rocket tag by the end, its no more lethal than mid-high level play in D&D.
5. Its a bit harder than with 3.5 or 4e, but you also probably won't have to.

That said, find out why your GM is interested in GURPS. If its for the genre freedom, and homebrewing is important I strongly suggest Fudge (http://www.fudgerpg.com).

valadil
2008-11-16, 11:30 PM
GURPs character creation is hard. Make sure your GM helps people make their characters. Playing GURPs is easy. Roll 3d6 and add 'em up. If the result is below your skill you succeed.

Satyr
2008-11-17, 01:56 AM
1) How hard is the system to learn?

Extremely easy. There are many options, but the core rules are very easy and are used with utmot consequence - If you have understood the basic concept (which is as complicated as "roll 3d6 below the ability/skill +/- modifiers" you have learned the system. Congratulations! Now, there are more options and especially character creation has some more problematic tasks (too much freddom choice can lead to overstrain) but the basi rules are very, very easy, especially because they are not as arbitrary as many other systems but built on an intrinsic logic.


My DM described the campaign as being "20 minutes into the future, and that the characeters we would be playing would just be ordinary people. He described a small section of the campaign and it sounded like he would really appreciate the Black Ops book, but he said that the most of ther game would not be like this. Any idea what worldbooks he might like to use, if any at all?

The thing about Gurps is, you don't need any world book. You can probably take the setting of any other roleplaying game, occupy it and run it better than with the originally intended system. But this sounds like Black ops and / or High Tech.


How much of the main rules are given in the GURPS lite pdf?
All of them. What the Lite rules do not include are many of the additional options, but the basic rules are all in there.


I've heard that the game is much more lethal compared to 3.5/4E D&D, which are the only RPGs I have played. How true is this?

Yes and no. It is actually quite difficult to outright die or kill omeone in Gurps. It is quite easy to cripple and maim someone, though. On the default level of Gurps, it is pretty realistic (with a certain degree of abstraction) in questions of injuries, but if you want and have enough raw power at your hands, you can make characters who are invulnerable.
And yaou can actively defend yourself, which means that you don't need that many hitpoints - you are not hit that often if you plan accordingly.


How hard is it to homebrew new things with the system?

Extremely easy. Gurps is a giant toolbox with which you can make almost everything you want.


GURPs character creation is hard

That really depends. Only if you are used to be treated as if you can't think for yourself. I pretty much prefer the very free and organic character creation with a system like Gurps to the clumsy restrictive and prescriptive approaches of hidebound class systems.

warmachine
2008-11-17, 03:21 AM
As the GM has already described a part of the campaign, he already has a world and setting in mind, so I doubt he needs a world book. Black Ops is a genre book. Other genre books that might be helpful: High-Tech for equipment lists and Mysteries for investigative episodes.

Belial_the_Leveler
2008-11-17, 03:31 AM
1) How hard is the system to learn?
Rules-wise? Not at all as there is only one basic rule; roll 3d6 and if it is lower than the target number you succeed. But options-wise GURPS is about as hard as 3.5 edition DnD. There are many options there.


4)I've heard that the game is much more lethal compared to 3.5/4E D&D, which are the only RPGs I have played. How true is this?
In DnD lvl 1-3, if you're hit by a raging barbarian, you die. In levels 15+, if you fail a save you die. So GURPS isn't any more lethal initially. However, once you use high-end weapons with plain human characters you can get killed in one shot so use those strike plates for +20 to DR.


5)How hard is it to homebrew new things with the system?
Easiest thing ever. But you shouldn't need to; the system covers a lot of things.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-11-17, 06:12 AM
Pretty sure Black Ops is a pretty specific campaign setting, rather than a sourcebook for actual black ops? (You'll want the ... Special Ops book, I think, for that?) It's Men In Black, black helicopters, and Greys from Zeta Reticul or somesuch? Basically X-Files with 500-point characters. I seem to recall finding it completely useless for, say, cyberpunk games.

Starshade
2008-11-17, 06:45 AM
What GURPS edition is you going to use? Black ops is a 3. edition book, right? and the latest edition is 4.
it is a conversion pdf for free who you can use to update old 3. edition books for use with 4. ed core rulebooks and 3. ed if you got 4. ed books. Not shure how awailable the old books are atm, since the new edition is out.

Evil DM Mark3
2008-11-17, 06:48 AM
One warning to GURPS users, there volume of material out there is insane and much of it needs at least A-Level maths or physics to use. This is both the system's greatest strenght and most painful weakness. Use only those parts that you need. Do not use the indepth vehicle rules that start from calculating engine hourse power unless your game centers around the creation and operation of custom turbo cars.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-11-17, 08:25 AM
One warning to GURPS users, there volume of material out there is insane and much of it needs at least A-Level maths or physics to use. This is both the system's greatest strenght and most painful weakness. Use only those parts that you need. Do not use the indepth vehicle rules that start from calculating engine hourse power unless your game centers around the creation and operation of custom turbo cars.

Total nonsense. I was using GURPS Vehicles, Space and Robots in high school, and I flunked out of advanced math. Placing numbers in stated formulae is not hard. There could be a lot of calculation (apparently all but eliminated in the new edition), but nothing about the game is complex mathematically, and you don't need any understanding of physics at all. (Indeed, Space tells you everything you'll need to know, and in a simple way. The formulae involved are no more difficult than those in Traveller.)

Incidentally, GURPS Vehicles specifically lacked accuracy like horse powers and engine modifications. If you created two cars with the same size engine and the same weight, they had the same performance, and no options for customization. ('course if you're talking about a 4th edition book, I'm not familiar with it.)

And the big benefit of the system is precisely the amount of material available in easy packages. Anything you want to play, there's a book for it. Maybe even some additional (not even remotely necessary) books. You can play GURPS in space with GURPS Space. If you want to add a huge technological dimension, get High Tech. If you want to add a huge biotech dimension, get Bio Tech (the 3rd edition version was actually designed to support entire campaigns focused around biotech, in the style of Transhuman Space).

Jayabalard
2008-11-17, 08:43 AM
1) How hard is the system to learn?Easy; but it's one of those things where you can always get to know the details more. You can get through the basics in 10-15 minutes.


2) My DM described the campaign as being "20 minutes into the future, and that the characeters we would be playing would just be ordinary people. He described a small section of the campaign and it sounded like he would really appreciate the Black Ops book, but he said that the most of ther game would not be like this. Any idea what worldbooks he might like to use, if any at all?
Need more info. High tech is probably a good one.


3)How much of the main rules are given in the GURPS lite pdf?All of them, but there are a bunch of details.


4)I've heard that the game is much more lethal compared to 3.5/4E D&D, which are the only RPGs I have played. How true is this?You don't increase hp as you level. Guns are particularly deadly.


5)How hard is it to homebrew new things with the system?GURPS is a game framework rather than a polished game system, so it's very very easy to make it whatever you want.

Jimp
2008-11-17, 11:32 AM
Make sure people spend their character points fairly and evenly. In the last GURPS game I ran I had two players, one of which had a nicely fluffed character with matching skill sets and the other had all his points dumped into 1 or 2 skills that he could not possibly fail on close of a natural 3. It was a turn of the century steampunky style setting. Player 1 had some points in pistols to make himself alright with them and a lot more in his mechanical skills since his character was an inventor/tinker. Player 2 was an ex-army guy and his skills were rifle use and brawling. That was it. Combat was pretty easy for them since Player 2 dominated everything around with his complete lack of miss chance. Out of combat they had pretty limited paths since only Player 1 had out of combat skills. Arguably I should been able to compensate but I'm still not that good at running GURPS.

Satyr
2008-11-17, 11:59 AM
One warning to GURPS users, there volume of material out there is insane and much of it needs at least A-Level maths or physics to use.

You can get A levels in maths and physics if you are able to add and substract double figures and now how to use percentages? I suddenly come to think I went to school on the wrong side of the Atlantic.

Seriously, the math of gurps is not complicated. For character creation and 95% of the game, the most complicated calculations is stuff like "10% of 15". The percentages are not used in complicated steps, and since all advantage costs can be divided through 5, this is not really complicated.

warmachine
2008-11-17, 12:05 PM
Others have already described the ease of skill resolution. Forget the D&D combat system, GURPS is more realistic and use what you understand of the real world. If you only choose the Attack maneuver with a rifle, you're going to miss a lot because that's snapfire and rifles are bulky. Pistols are less bulky and are better for hair trigger fire. With rifles, use an Aim maneuver first because rifles are accurate. Obvious, really. As you're playing an ordinary person, you don't even have know any magic or exotic traits. Easy!

Where GURPS is a lot of work is GMing. In D&D, the player roles are defined by the game. In GURPS, the GM has to invent what the players can do by himself. In D&D, the players kill things and steal their stuff. In GURPS, you can play the Scooby Gang that run away from 'monsters' and give stuff back to their rightful owners. D&D can't properly describe such a campagin.

Jayabalard
2008-11-17, 12:22 PM
The other had all his points dumped into 1 or 2 skills that he could not possibly fail on close of a natural 3.A natural 3 is a critical success... at least it was last time I played.


Arguably I should been able to compensate but I'm still not that good at running GURPS.Honestly, you just need to be saying something like "Yeah, and how have you survived in the world up to this point with only combat skills?"

valadil
2008-11-17, 12:42 PM
That really depends. Only if you are used to be treated as if you can't think for yourself. I pretty much prefer the very free and organic character creation with a system like Gurps to the clumsy restrictive and prescriptive approaches of hidebound class systems.

I found two things difficult in character creation. There was too much material to read (skills are easy enough, but advantages take forever) and some of the math required a calculator. The player who spends the most time calculating the lowest cost to get a particular effect is usually the one who comes up with the most effective character in my experience. Dealing with all that is more bookkeeping than I care to do.

Here's an example. I had a character with a close range force effect that would deal knockback damage to everyone around me under certain conditions. The effect would cost 2.2 points. Just out of curiosity we looked at what it would cost to make the effect hit selective targets. 2.7 points. Both rounded up to 3, so naturally I went with the selective one. This was just happenstance though. Figuring out how to cram as many effects in there at the lowest cost possible is something I have no desire to do. Ever. The way it usually works out in my group though is that my GM knows the rules. We request abilities and he figures out if there's a way to represent those abilities within the rules. This seems like a reasonable way to do things, but this is the only GM I've had who has made GURPs enjoyable.

Da King
2008-11-17, 03:34 PM
OK, thanks for all the responses, your answers have been really helpful. I probably should have given more information about the second question, but most here think that the GM won't need any worldbooks. However, I found out today that he is planning to use magic in the game, and I was wondering how well the basic rules cover it. Also, I'm pretty sure that the campaign is not going to be very high tech at all. Few more questions:

1)So does the entire system just use six-sided dice?
2)How fast does a game session run? Can you get through a lot in one session?
3)How much paperwork is it to run a GURPS game compared to D&D?

Epinephrine
2008-11-17, 04:12 PM
OK, thanks for all the responses, your answers have been really helpful. I probably should have given more information about the second question, but most here think that the GM won't need any worldbooks. However, I found out today that he is planning to use magic in the game, and I was wondering how well the basic rules cover it. Also, I'm pretty sure that the campaign is not going to be very high tech at all. Few more questions:

1)So does the entire system just use six-sided dice?
2)How fast does a game session run? Can you get through a lot in one session?
3)How much paperwork is it to run a GURPS game compared to D&D?

1) Yes.
2) Yes. Combat can take a while, depending on the level of detail being used, and the active defenses involved, but so can D&D.
3) I don't think it differs much. You still need a campaign and world, you still need NPCs, and much like 3.5, you want a battlemat - but with hexes rather than squares.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-11-17, 05:51 PM
Honestly, you just need to be saying something like "Yeah, and how have you survived in the world up to this point with only combat skills?"

Make sure to say it after they've died because they lacked a proper assortment of skills. GURPS should never be about a bunch of fights strung together by poor plot, it should be about all sorts of physical challenges.

Watch any action movie, and fighting is only part of the action. And many times the fighting takes place during some other dangerous physical activity - climbing, swimming, diving, balancing, driving, flying...

Satyr
2008-11-17, 06:27 PM
How fast does a game session run? Can you get through a lot in one session?

In my experience, this depends much more on the group and their individual pace and the plot at hand than on the system. But Gurps works well enough to be no hindrance to the game from the side of the rules.
Especially combats are much faster and especially much, much more suspensive than in D&D, because they are more decisive, while give you more influence to survive and participate in the struggle.


How much paperwork is it to run a GURPS game compared to D&D?
It is more work to create a character (because you have an almost infinite sdurplus of character facets and options), so character creation can be take its time. Not that this is a bad thing, as no good character is created hastily.
In the actual gameplay, the system is much easier and does not afford as much work or bookkeeping.

I found out today that he is planning to use magic in the game, and I was wondering how well the basic rules cover it

Hard to tell. there are around seven or so systems of magic covered in Gurps, which are mostly included in the Corebook. The most important ones are advantage-based Powers and the skill-based spell tree (you have to learn basic spells before you can master more advanced ones. So before you can throw fireballs you have to learn to create and control fire at first).
The advantage-based system is particulalry fn, because you can create your own spells completely freely.


GURPS should never be about a bunch of fights strung together by poor plot, it should be about all sorts of physical challenges.

No roleplaying ever should be degenerate to this. I even find the limitation on physical chalenges unnecessarily restrictive.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-11-18, 06:34 AM
No roleplaying ever should be degenerate to this. I even find the limitation on physical chalenges unnecessarily restrictive.

Unfortunately, the older and more traditional RPGs had no challenges aside from combat (at least mechanically), so it's kinda stuck for a lot of players and a lot of games.

And I certainly didn't mean only physical challenges. I was referring to action, specifically.

valadil
2008-11-18, 10:06 AM
1)So does the entire system just use six-sided dice?
2)How fast does a game session run? Can you get through a lot in one session?
3)How much paperwork is it to run a GURPS game compared to D&D?

1) Yes. It works very well too. If you aren't familiar with probability, while rolling 3d6 gives a similar value to 1d20, the likelyhood of rolling somewhere in the middle goes up, while extreme values (3 and 18) drop. This is much more realistic than having the same chance at rolling a 10 as a 20.

2) Depends on the group. GURPs has a lot of rules. Some of them need to be filtered out. We usually cut out hit locations and just treat the whole body as one big target. I also find that rolled defenses instead of static ones make combat take longer, just because it's one more die roll. On the other hand you never have to go looking for dice. Everybody gets 3d6, end of story.

3) Haven't run it, can't say for sure. I imagine it's the same.

fusilier
2008-11-19, 07:01 PM
For easing character creation, a program is often helpful. I recommend GCS (Gurps Character Sheet). It doesn't perform all the mathematics for you, but it provides book/page number references for everything, so it's easy to check up the rules.

I've only run a couple games myself. For minor NPC's, I simply make up attributes/skills that seem appropriate, and don't even calculate point cost. It's worked well so far.

In the last campaign I ran I tried to limit my games to one combat per session, because of the amount of time they would consume. But, I don't play/run often enough to know the rules really well, without the books (and I only managed to get a 3rd edition GM screen recently). Also that game was set in the early 17th century, so most fighting was with swords/daggers, and not guns.

Vehicles in 3rd edition certainly have horsepower (ok GURPS uses kiloWatts). Vehicle creation can be quite detailed, but it is easy enough to follow, and will usually get results that are close to real-life. GURPS WWII has a simplified vehicle creation section which looks pretty good. Instead of designing everything from the ground up, you pick particular pre-designed modules to create your vehicle. I still wouldn't bother with that amount of detail, unless the campaign revolved around vehicles in some way (such as all the characters are members of a tank crew).

mikeejimbo
2008-11-19, 07:53 PM
I've only run a couple games myself. For minor NPC's, I simply make up attributes/skills that seem appropriate, and don't even calculate point cost. It's worked well so far.


This is actually the official recommendation anyway.