How do you get to GURPS?

innerdude · Jun 5, 2019

DMMike said:
But what if you have a different end point, or starting point? Do you soften up a game group with a light game, with the hopes of conditioning them to play a more difficult/complex game?

In short, no.

To "get to" GURPS from any starting point, you have to convince the group that the end result in play is worth it.

I don't care for GURPS in the least, but if I were trying to get someone to "go there," I'd emphasize things like:

It's ultra realistic. If you're tired of the "non-realism" of hit points/healing surges, falling of cliffs and not dying, etc., then this will be a step in the right direction.
You'll have the flexibility to play in any genre without having to completely re-learn the game.
You'll have extensive combat options if you want them.
You'll get to emphasize the roleplaying and non-combat portions of the game more, because combat is so deadly (and takes so long to resolve) that you'll actively avoid combat unless you have overwhelming advantage. ("Combat as war" players should feel right at home)
You'll get to pronounce to all the world that you're now part of the elite group of roleplayers who have "discovered" that GURPS is the greatest RPG of All Time, and anyone who says differently is a hater and clearly doesn't "get it." (I'm not being sarcastic in any way when I say that at least 3 people in one of my past gaming groups repeated this to me essentially verbatim.)

uzirath · Jun 5, 2019

innerdude said:
You'll get to pronounce to all the world that you're now part of the elite group of roleplayers who have "discovered" that GURPS is the greatest RPG of All Time, and anyone who says differently is a hater and clearly doesn't "get it." (I'm not being sarcastic in any way when I say that at least 3 people in one of my past gaming groups repeated this to me essentially verbatim.)

Sigh. That's so disheartening, isn't it? How bizarre that so many of us in this quirky niche hobby spend so much energy arguing that our game about imaginary worlds is the best game and that all the other games about imaginary worlds are stupid.

I appreciated your thoughtful list, even though GURPS ain't your thing.

The Crimson Binome · Jun 5, 2019

innerdude said:
It's ultra realistic. If you're tired of the "non-realism" of hit points/healing surges, falling of cliffs and not dying, etc., then this will be a step in the right direction.

You'll have the flexibility to play in any genre without having to completely re-learn the game.

As a nominal fan of GURPS, in theory if not in practice, I find this contradiction to be one of the major limitations of the system. That is to say, everything is so grounded in reality, that it tends to fall apart as you shift to non-realistic genres. It does street-level superheroes far better than it does cosmic stuff, for example; and a fight between two swordsfolk with above-average skill plays out far more satisfyingly than a fight between superhumanly-skilled combatants.

innerdude · Jun 5, 2019

Saelorn said:
As a nominal fan of GURPS, in theory if not in practice, I find this contradiction to be one of the major limitations of the system. That is to say, everything is so grounded in reality, that it tends to fall apart as you shift to non-realistic genres. It does street-level superheroes far better than it does cosmic stuff, for example; and a fight between two swordsfolk with above-average skill plays out far more satisfyingly than a fight between superhumanly-skilled combatants.

See, this is one of the really funny things about the gaming group I used to play with who loved GURPS ---- they completely played away from its strengths.

They were so in love with GURPS as a system, but would always insist on basically starting out with 250+ point characters. "Starting with anything below a 200 point character is basically a waste of time, and should probably be closer to 300."

One of the players was absolutely convinced that the only way to put the "epic" into "epic fantasy," was to have every GURPS character running around with 450 point builds, and wielding cosmic weapons that could essentially split mountains in half.

GURPS just basically falls apart when you do that.

When GURPS really shines when you play in the 110-140 point character range as a starting point. Enough to have a level of "core competencies", but you're not breaking the math right out of the gate.

The other thing is, in much the same way that "baseline" D&D has a playstyle / feel that is kind of its own thing, GURPS very much constrains gameplay from within its own assumptions. Even when you switch genres, it still feels like GURPS, in all the ways that GURPS is GURPS.

The Crimson Binome · Jun 5, 2019

innerdude said:
When GURPS really shines when you play in the 110-140 point character range as a starting point. Enough to have a level of "core competencies", but you're not breaking the math right out of the gate.

While I agree with the sentiment, 110 points is more than enough to break the game with superhuman abilities, if you try. It really helps to add explicit limits, like capping all skills at 18.

dbm · Jun 5, 2019

Were your friends playing third or fourth edition? Third was much more vulnerable to that problem in my experience. Fourth is more robust.

Certainly we are playing Dungeon Fantasy and 250pt characters are really not epic.

practicalm · Jun 6, 2019

Saelorn said:
As a nominal fan of GURPS, in theory if not in practice, I find this contradiction to be one of the major limitations of the system. That is to say, everything is so grounded in reality, that it tends to fall apart as you shift to non-realistic genres. It does street-level superheroes far better than it does cosmic stuff, for example; and a fight between two swordsfolk with above-average skill plays out far more satisfyingly than a fight between superhumanly-skilled combatants.

I think that when you have high level skills the goal is to be using feint and other maneuvers to make things more interesting.

Cosmic level super powers are harder to run in GURPS but a duel between two skilled fighters should be like Princess Bride where Wesley and Montoya are playing around because they are the best.

uzirath · Jun 6, 2019

innerdude said:
When GURPS really shines when you play in the 110-140 point character range as a starting point. Enough to have a level of "core competencies", but you're not breaking the math right out of the gate.

Over on the SJG GURPS forum, there's a current thread about low-powered campaigns posted by a guy who likes playing high-powered games. As these things tend to go, a lot of the debate is overly nit-picky, but Bill Stoddard posted a summary of GURPS campaigns that he's run in the past decade or two. Bill is the author of numerous GURPS books, including Fantasy, Supers, and Steampunk, among many others. He gave me permission to repost his list here since I thought it might be of interest in this conversation, both in terms of the variety of campaign styles that a successful veteran GM has run, and the range of point-levels.

Bill Stoddard said:
Worminghall: 75 points. Beginning students of magic at a medieval English university, typically aged 14. I provided a default template worth 75 points, with room for customization.

Dying Mars: 120 points: Travellers from a steampunk Earth exploring Lowellian Mars as written up in GURPS Mars.

Salle d'Armes: 120 points. Students at an academy of the smallsword in 1710s Paris, with an eccentric swordsmaster.

Water Margin: 150 points. A group of adventurers recruited by a wealthy English merchant in a Chinese-dominated world to act as troubleshooters.

Tapestry: 200 points. Characters from varied backgrounds in a fantasy world with varied races buy a ship and set out to trade with unknown lands.

Fixers: 250 points. A group of "consulting criminals" with high levels of somewhat specialized skills (face, driver, second story, assassin).

Inhuman Space: 250 points. A cosmic horror campaign set in Transhuman Space; most PCs were veterans of a former encounter with horrific technology a decade or two past.

The Foam of Perilous Seas: 300 points. Every character gets a standard package worth 70 points for free. Dwellers in the spirit realm sailing the Pearl Bright Ocean.

Sovereignty: 1500 points. High-end superheroes recruited by NATO as a rapid response force against top end supers who go outside the limits of international law.

In general, my low-end campaigns have been campaigns where PCs weren't expected to wage war, or be constantly in potentially deadly fights. Two of them were about students, respectively of magic and of swordsmanship; two were about people trying to make their fortunes in a remote region, and focused as much on cultural strangeness and making deals as on action/adventure. Lower point values work quite well for those sorts of things.

GMMichael · Jun 6, 2019

As a non-GURPS player, the idea of making a "300 point build" sounds pretty intimidating.

A game master gains a level of prestige AND demand when she is able to GM a difficult or enigmatic game.

So, Bill Stoddard?

Me, I'd love to get into a game of Zweihaender, but the rules overwhelm me. It's like this: to make a check, just roll d100. But it has to be under your score, not over. But every ten points of success is a benefit. But sometimes you switch your dice, and your 47 becomes 74. But sometimes you roll doubles and get a critical, but only if your doubles are below your score. But sometimes you discover that you have the Black Plague, and you die before you can roll. But sometimes...

Since there's no Zweihaender-Lite (Einhaender?), I risk burning out before I get to enjoy what looks like an awesome game. Or drying out...it's like the time I made a 16th level D&D sorceror, and died at first sight of the BBEG because he cast Horrid Wilting on the party...

Guest 6801328 · Jun 6, 2019

DMMike said:
Recent ENWorld comments like these beg the question: how do you condition your gaming group for increasingly complex RPGs? I use GURPS as the titular example because it's the first system that comes to mind when I think of the sheer number of pages and books dedicated to rules and tables.

The answer, in GURPS's case, is "one book at a time."

But what if you have a different end point, or starting point? Do you soften up a game group with a light game, with the hopes of conditioning them to play a more difficult/complex game?

There seems to be an assumption underlying this post...forgive me if I'm wrong...that somehow complex/crunchy games require a more sophisticated palette to be appreciated, and that players can be "trained" to be sophisticated enough to appreciate them.

If so, I don't really think that's the case. In my gaming group are people who, like myself, have been playing various RPGs for decades, and we've gone down the road of complex, crunch-heavy games, and concluded that we just don't like them as much.