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One FRPG besides D&D
- Thread starter Theuderic
- Start date
lambdaZUG
First Post
I'm going to have to hop on the Ars Magica bandwagon. (best game EVAR!) If it weren't for 3e, I'd still be playing it.
I can't imagine why anyone would want to remove the grogs, they were really fun to play. We found that doing things troupe-style worked the best for them though. One player plays 1 to 4 grogs, the point grog making nobrow quips, and the rest of the lot doing the plebian working-joe schtick. Then for the next adventure, somebody else gets to play the grogs, and the grog-player gets to use one of his characters.
Anyhow, Ars Magica 4th was by far the best game I've played. And yes, it is quite funny/interesting how much D&D 3e resembles Ars. (Stats range from +5 to -5, skill checks, the "pyramidal" XP chart, &c). Glad Ars 4th had all the vampires in House Tremere killed though, saving us from ending up as Vampire: Dark Ages. Thanks Atlas!
(typo)
I can't imagine why anyone would want to remove the grogs, they were really fun to play. We found that doing things troupe-style worked the best for them though. One player plays 1 to 4 grogs, the point grog making nobrow quips, and the rest of the lot doing the plebian working-joe schtick. Then for the next adventure, somebody else gets to play the grogs, and the grog-player gets to use one of his characters.
Anyhow, Ars Magica 4th was by far the best game I've played. And yes, it is quite funny/interesting how much D&D 3e resembles Ars. (Stats range from +5 to -5, skill checks, the "pyramidal" XP chart, &c). Glad Ars 4th had all the vampires in House Tremere killed though, saving us from ending up as Vampire: Dark Ages. Thanks Atlas!
(typo)
Last edited:
Tratyn Runewind
First Post
Hello!
Hmm, interesting question. I'd probably go with GURPS, Runequest, or Fantasy Hero, in that order. I actually like 2nd (Chaosium) and 3rd (Avalon Hill) Edition RQ about equally - 2nd has more Glorantha stuff, but 3rd has the Sorcery magic system, which I also like.
Interesting pick from back in the day. I've seen both the 2nd Edition of this, by independent SPI, and the 3rd from after they were bought out by TSR. Typical TSR changes were made, sadly. The Black Magics college was excised entirely (though replaced with the Shaping college), Greater Summonings was reduced to Summoning and all the demonic stuff was culled (including the huge list of demon rulers), Necromancy and the Courtesan skill were edited slightly, and at least one adult reference was removed from the sample adventure.
Yes, if you fight like a typical D&D fighter, standing still and swing, swing, swinging round after round, you'll need a lot of armor to survive. If, on the other hand, you realize that the level of detail in GURPS will require you to explicitly make proper use of combat actions one might actually employ in a fight, like feinting and retreating defense, you'll do fine with lighter armor and either a good shield or a weapon that parries well (fencing swords, katanas, etc.). GURPS combat is not an abstracted hit-point-attrition-fest. And being outnumbered will tell in GURPS, moreso than in D&D 3e after the first few levels, so players may actually have to employ tactics, like withdrawing to a place where they can fight on a narrow front, for more of their careers than they would need to in D&D.
Yes, the standard magic system for GURPS is deliberately somewhat (brace yourself!) generic. GMs can use their own ideas to spice it up, or easily adapt concepts from myth, legend, or fantasy literature, or use one (or more!) of the many variants presented in GURPS sourcebooks for that (the ones in the aforementioned GURPS Cabal and in GURPS Celtic Myth are both fun). But there is not a thing in the rules limiting a wizard to "a small group of spells", beyond the character point totals that limit everyone in everything. Many highly useful spells, in fact, require broad-based magical knowledge, having as a prerequisite "at least one spell in each of X different magical colleges".
Yes, there are certain themes that are well represented across a broad range of magical colleges. Is this really so surprising, given the challenges mages typically face in literature and gaming? Detection spells are usually among the easiest of them, having few prerequisites in GURPS, costing few points in Fantasy Hero, being low level in D&D, or being at the first Rank of a Sphere in Mage. Combat-useful spells, offensive and defensive, are well represented in many colleges, because of the action-oriented nature of fantasy role-playing and the myths and books that inspire it. But all the GURPS colleges include other spells that can be interesting tricks to have up your wizard's sleeve - all you have to do is spend the points to learn them...
As for what the "average wizard" might have - well, that very phrase means less in GURPS, where wizards aren't bound to a strict fixed progression by spell levels, with clearly superior and inferior spells in each level that make truly effective characters all wind up looking somewhat similar. But the GURPS equivalent of Knock, called Lockmaster, has few prerequisites and is in a college (Movement) with many other useful spells, and so is hardly difficult to come by. As a rough guess, small-hamlet hedge wizards will bother to learn it less often than "average", and wizards on retainer to big-city crime guilds will have it available more often than "average".
Not sure what version of GURPS you've been playing, but it sure isn't any one I've ever seen. You get one casting of Minor Healing and one of Major Healing per person per day in GURPS before you start running into serious and cumulative negative modifiers. Penalties for repeated Divination are even more harsh, and the various Divination spells all have high energy cost and relatively high prerequisite requrements, to boot. And the alarm bells for the potential campaign implications of Divination are sounded right at the beginning of the spell description itself. Constant Flight or Invisibility are possible, but hardly seem unbalanced - they're far more expensive in terms of points than the countermeasures to them.
Have you checked out Castle Falkenstein? Haven't had much of a look at it myself, but it has a reputation for being in that style of roleplaying, too. It might be worth a peek...
Hope this helps!
Hmm, interesting question. I'd probably go with GURPS, Runequest, or Fantasy Hero, in that order. I actually like 2nd (Chaosium) and 3rd (Avalon Hill) Edition RQ about equally - 2nd has more Glorantha stuff, but 3rd has the Sorcery magic system, which I also like.
Interesting pick from back in the day. I've seen both the 2nd Edition of this, by independent SPI, and the 3rd from after they were bought out by TSR. Typical TSR changes were made, sadly. The Black Magics college was excised entirely (though replaced with the Shaping college), Greater Summonings was reduced to Summoning and all the demonic stuff was culled (including the huge list of demon rulers), Necromancy and the Courtesan skill were edited slightly, and at least one adult reference was removed from the sample adventure.
Yes, if you fight like a typical D&D fighter, standing still and swing, swing, swinging round after round, you'll need a lot of armor to survive. If, on the other hand, you realize that the level of detail in GURPS will require you to explicitly make proper use of combat actions one might actually employ in a fight, like feinting and retreating defense, you'll do fine with lighter armor and either a good shield or a weapon that parries well (fencing swords, katanas, etc.). GURPS combat is not an abstracted hit-point-attrition-fest. And being outnumbered will tell in GURPS, moreso than in D&D 3e after the first few levels, so players may actually have to employ tactics, like withdrawing to a place where they can fight on a narrow front, for more of their careers than they would need to in D&D.
Yes, the standard magic system for GURPS is deliberately somewhat (brace yourself!) generic. GMs can use their own ideas to spice it up, or easily adapt concepts from myth, legend, or fantasy literature, or use one (or more!) of the many variants presented in GURPS sourcebooks for that (the ones in the aforementioned GURPS Cabal and in GURPS Celtic Myth are both fun). But there is not a thing in the rules limiting a wizard to "a small group of spells", beyond the character point totals that limit everyone in everything. Many highly useful spells, in fact, require broad-based magical knowledge, having as a prerequisite "at least one spell in each of X different magical colleges".
Yes, there are certain themes that are well represented across a broad range of magical colleges. Is this really so surprising, given the challenges mages typically face in literature and gaming? Detection spells are usually among the easiest of them, having few prerequisites in GURPS, costing few points in Fantasy Hero, being low level in D&D, or being at the first Rank of a Sphere in Mage. Combat-useful spells, offensive and defensive, are well represented in many colleges, because of the action-oriented nature of fantasy role-playing and the myths and books that inspire it. But all the GURPS colleges include other spells that can be interesting tricks to have up your wizard's sleeve - all you have to do is spend the points to learn them...
As for what the "average wizard" might have - well, that very phrase means less in GURPS, where wizards aren't bound to a strict fixed progression by spell levels, with clearly superior and inferior spells in each level that make truly effective characters all wind up looking somewhat similar. But the GURPS equivalent of Knock, called Lockmaster, has few prerequisites and is in a college (Movement) with many other useful spells, and so is hardly difficult to come by. As a rough guess, small-hamlet hedge wizards will bother to learn it less often than "average", and wizards on retainer to big-city crime guilds will have it available more often than "average".
Not sure what version of GURPS you've been playing, but it sure isn't any one I've ever seen. You get one casting of Minor Healing and one of Major Healing per person per day in GURPS before you start running into serious and cumulative negative modifiers. Penalties for repeated Divination are even more harsh, and the various Divination spells all have high energy cost and relatively high prerequisite requrements, to boot. And the alarm bells for the potential campaign implications of Divination are sounded right at the beginning of the spell description itself. Constant Flight or Invisibility are possible, but hardly seem unbalanced - they're far more expensive in terms of points than the countermeasures to them.
Have you checked out Castle Falkenstein? Haven't had much of a look at it myself, but it has a reputation for being in that style of roleplaying, too. It might be worth a peek...
Hope this helps!
Jürgen Hubert
First Post
Felon said:
True, but I just get kicks out of the idea of a grinning goblin with a big drill...
Oh, just because they don't have to prepare them in advance it doesn't mean they can do them indefinietly. The spells cost fatigue, after all...
Re: Re: my pick...
A good while = 1 4.5hr session per week, for about 14 months. We took weeks off for holidays.
I don't make up how things work on the fly. In BESM, players all create their own spells, buying them with magic points (like making a character with character points)...they chose from a big list of attributes to build the spells from. The attributes follow consistent rules etc.
What I do during play is...if I have to make up an NPC on the fly, I visualize that NPC and then assign necessary stats for anything that stands out. If said NPC is a magic wielder, I will build their spells in my head, on the spot, using the same rules that PC's use to build their spells during character creation etc. Voila, spells unique to the NPC, but they still follow the same rules all of the players already know.
For me, (YMMV), it's very difficult to come up with challenging but fair encounters for PC's in DnD. It's much easier for me to use BESM 2ndR to build NPC's and I can compare the total point values of NPC's/creatures against the parties, and easily scale it to consider the # of PC's present etc. The BESM system is just more intiutively congruent with my natural tendancies and mode of thinking I guess.
Felon said:
A good while = 1 4.5hr session per week, for about 14 months. We took weeks off for holidays.
I don't make up how things work on the fly. In BESM, players all create their own spells, buying them with magic points (like making a character with character points)...they chose from a big list of attributes to build the spells from. The attributes follow consistent rules etc.
What I do during play is...if I have to make up an NPC on the fly, I visualize that NPC and then assign necessary stats for anything that stands out. If said NPC is a magic wielder, I will build their spells in my head, on the spot, using the same rules that PC's use to build their spells during character creation etc. Voila, spells unique to the NPC, but they still follow the same rules all of the players already know.
For me, (YMMV), it's very difficult to come up with challenging but fair encounters for PC's in DnD. It's much easier for me to use BESM 2ndR to build NPC's and I can compare the total point values of NPC's/creatures against the parties, and easily scale it to consider the # of PC's present etc. The BESM system is just more intiutively congruent with my natural tendancies and mode of thinking I guess.
Re: Re: Re: my pick...
You've just related a lot of the things that I always enjoyed about playing GURPS. Combat is detailed, damage is damage (not abstracted as fatigue or the timely intervention of fate), and the ability to make decisions on a momemt-by-moment basis is critical because a character can only do one thing per round (as opposed to drawing a weapon from its sheath while moving sixty feet to an opponent and striking him down before he can react--all of this occurring, for all intents and purposes, instantly). All good and well. I'm glad GURPS has some folks out there staunchly defending it.
However, it's still not unusual to find yourself overwhelmed in a situation where tactics don't even the odds. Moreover, a single roll not going your way can spell the end of you. Granted, this may be entirely acceptable--even desirable--to some players, because they want a combat system that's realistic and lethal. However, considering the amount of effort that can go into making a character, it's tough to look at them as being as disposable. Life's not fair, but games should be. Many players are put off by a game where there's no buffer that prevents a single mistake or unlucky drop of the dice from spelling their characters' demise. Heroes need an edge, even dumb ones. That's why I refer to my experiences with GURPS fantasy strictly in the past tense. I can't get my friends to play it.
You may opt to fault those players instead of accepting any criticism of the game as having merit (in my experiences on this board that's been an all-too-common response), but realize that's not a terribly important point. Ultimately, they play a different game, and whenever that happens--and regardless of where blame lies--the players suffer less than the game does.
IMHO, if the folks at SJG want GURPS to be a truly generic, universal RPG, suitable for campaigns with fictional as well as nonfictional settings, they should reconsider whether harsh realism should be the first and foremost objective when designing a core set of rules. GURPS tacks on cinematic rules to various settings (manifested mainly in the form of outrageously expensive Advantages and Perks) as some sort of aberrant bastardization of that core system. Seems like a bad way to run an omniverse
I kinda have to be careful here, because I've recently gotten into heated debates about D&D and certain of its over-the-top elements that make player-characters superhuman. In those discussions, I took the position that D20 conventions such as level-scaled hit points made for a system that was too forgiving of sloppy tactics, to the point where players stop using their wits and just bulldoze their way through every challenge. Unfortunately, I have yet to encounter a system that provides a happy medium. Most games go for the gritty, realistic approach--perhaps as some sort of rebellion against the Big System.
The detail and quality of GURPS sourcebooks are generally among the best you'll find in the industry. I have quite a few that I've purchased impulsively, read thoroughly, enjoyed immensely, and eventually placed somewhere in my pile of unused gaming material. However, I'm talking about the magic system of GURPS Fantasy here, not other books published as separate supplements. It's pretty darn dull ("generic" need not be synonymous with "flavorless"). As for alternate magic systems, you're preaching to the choir. I tried to play up the strengths of GURPS' skill system, creating "low magicks" that were relatively easy to learn (Mental/Average) and yielded small benefits and "high magicks" that required the utmost discipline (Mental/Very Hard) but produced awesome effects. For many GM's, however, the fact that they can replace GURPS Fantasy's college-based magic with their own homebrew system or go out spend $25 on another book to incorporate into their existing campaigns is of little consolation. And imagine the look on a player's face when he says "OK, I'll play a wizard!" and you hand him a 150-page book as required reading.
Admittedly, I haven't played any recent incarnations of GURPS Fantasy (I'm traveling back farther in time than I like here). I know in the version I used to play, a decent magic skill (around 18-21) mitigated all of the various penalties associated with magic (fatigue, concentration, gestures, incantations, etc.) to a point where they could fire off their spells without much more than a single word or the flick of a finger. Perhaps things have changed? Lemme know.
Ah, good old piercing damage. Hmm. Is Drill an Easy, Average, or Hard skill?
See above.
Interesting. I'll check it out. Does spell creation bear more than a passing resemblence to designing Powers in Hero System?
Tratyn Runewind said:
You've just related a lot of the things that I always enjoyed about playing GURPS. Combat is detailed, damage is damage (not abstracted as fatigue or the timely intervention of fate), and the ability to make decisions on a momemt-by-moment basis is critical because a character can only do one thing per round (as opposed to drawing a weapon from its sheath while moving sixty feet to an opponent and striking him down before he can react--all of this occurring, for all intents and purposes, instantly). All good and well. I'm glad GURPS has some folks out there staunchly defending it.
However, it's still not unusual to find yourself overwhelmed in a situation where tactics don't even the odds. Moreover, a single roll not going your way can spell the end of you. Granted, this may be entirely acceptable--even desirable--to some players, because they want a combat system that's realistic and lethal. However, considering the amount of effort that can go into making a character, it's tough to look at them as being as disposable. Life's not fair, but games should be. Many players are put off by a game where there's no buffer that prevents a single mistake or unlucky drop of the dice from spelling their characters' demise. Heroes need an edge, even dumb ones. That's why I refer to my experiences with GURPS fantasy strictly in the past tense. I can't get my friends to play it.
You may opt to fault those players instead of accepting any criticism of the game as having merit (in my experiences on this board that's been an all-too-common response), but realize that's not a terribly important point. Ultimately, they play a different game, and whenever that happens--and regardless of where blame lies--the players suffer less than the game does.
IMHO, if the folks at SJG want GURPS to be a truly generic, universal RPG, suitable for campaigns with fictional as well as nonfictional settings, they should reconsider whether harsh realism should be the first and foremost objective when designing a core set of rules. GURPS tacks on cinematic rules to various settings (manifested mainly in the form of outrageously expensive Advantages and Perks) as some sort of aberrant bastardization of that core system. Seems like a bad way to run an omniverse
I kinda have to be careful here, because I've recently gotten into heated debates about D&D and certain of its over-the-top elements that make player-characters superhuman. In those discussions, I took the position that D20 conventions such as level-scaled hit points made for a system that was too forgiving of sloppy tactics, to the point where players stop using their wits and just bulldoze their way through every challenge. Unfortunately, I have yet to encounter a system that provides a happy medium. Most games go for the gritty, realistic approach--perhaps as some sort of rebellion against the Big System.
The detail and quality of GURPS sourcebooks are generally among the best you'll find in the industry. I have quite a few that I've purchased impulsively, read thoroughly, enjoyed immensely, and eventually placed somewhere in my pile of unused gaming material.
However, I'm talking about the magic system of GURPS Fantasy here, not other books published as separate supplements. It's pretty darn dull ("generic" need not be synonymous with "flavorless"). As for alternate magic systems, you're preaching to the choir. I tried to play up the strengths of GURPS' skill system, creating "low magicks" that were relatively easy to learn (Mental/Average) and yielded small benefits and "high magicks" that required the utmost discipline (Mental/Very Hard) but produced awesome effects. For many GM's, however, the fact that they can replace GURPS Fantasy's college-based magic with their own homebrew system or go out spend $25 on another book to incorporate into their existing campaigns is of little consolation. And imagine the look on a player's face when he says "OK, I'll play a wizard!" and you hand him a 150-page book as required reading. Admittedly, I haven't played any recent incarnations of GURPS Fantasy (I'm traveling back farther in time than I like here). I know in the version I used to play, a decent magic skill (around 18-21) mitigated all of the various penalties associated with magic (fatigue, concentration, gestures, incantations, etc.) to a point where they could fire off their spells without much more than a single word or the flick of a finger. Perhaps things have changed? Lemme know.
Jürgen Hubert said:True, but I just get kicks out of the idea of a grinning goblin with a big drill...
Ah, good old piercing damage. Hmm. Is Drill an Easy, Average, or Hard skill?
See above.
jfiz said:
Interesting. I'll check it out. Does spell creation bear more than a passing resemblence to designing Powers in Hero System?
Last edited:
shadow
First Post
I'm an old school gamer so I'd choose either Hackmaster or Imagine.
Hackmaster in all its old school glory is essentially D&D1e updated with new rules and new classes.
Imagine is an interesting retro RPG that I brought recently. It's definately not for the rules light crowd. With a huge amount of charts and stats it's an old school gamer's dream. On the downside the combat system is overly complex and their is no support beyond the core books. However I'm looking forward to getting my group to play a game.
Hackmaster in all its old school glory is essentially D&D1e updated with new rules and new classes.
Imagine is an interesting retro RPG that I brought recently. It's definately not for the rules light crowd. With a huge amount of charts and stats it's an old school gamer's dream. On the downside the combat system is overly complex and their is no support beyond the core books. However I'm looking forward to getting my group to play a game.
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