What is GURPS?

[Jürgen Hubert]

The one second round lets you play out action in exacting detail and this can be both a blessing and a curse. One of my first GURPS combat experiences involved our party getting ambushed by some bad guys during a fantasy adventure. My big warrior started taking off his backpack to drop weight and increase his move. This took 3 seconds-a virtual LIFETIME in combat. While I was busy getting ready, our wizard was busy getting his foot pinned to the floor with a dagger. I learned that a few seconds is long time. As Jurgen stated, being far apart from your friends is dangerous. In the movies its usually the one wandering alone that dies first.

And as I've said, GURPS rewards tactics that work well in real life. Ambushes are lethal in real life, and GURPS accurately models this. This can work for the PCs, but also against them, depending on who is ambushing whom.

So a GM who wants to spring an ambush on the PCs should give the PCs ample opportunity to spot it if he doesn't want to wipe them out - or make sure that the ambushers are weaker than they are.

One or more PCs should probably also have a fairly high Perception...

 

[ExploderWizard]

And as I've said, GURPS rewards tactics that work well in real life. Ambushes are lethal in real life, and GURPS accurately models this. This can work for the PCs, but also against them, depending on who is ambushing whom.

So a GM who wants to spring an ambush on the PCs should give the PCs ample opportunity to spot it if he doesn't want to wipe them out - or make sure that the ambushers are weaker than they are.

One or more PCs should probably also have a fairly high Perception...

I totally agree. That was the first GURPS campaign that I played in and the first real taste of D&D to GURPS culture shock Once I (not my character) broke out of mental stun caused by these differences the game was fantastic as were the many that followed.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Thats why letting others publish adventures for those specialized markets would be so great. Requiring that such publications advertise that they are NOT SJ Games products, include no rules for play, and that they require the use of the GURPS basic rules(and whatever source/worldbook the adventure is for). Having a large base of scenarios available from 3rd party publishers may help core book sales.

I don't think there's a huge market for those, however. Third-party adventures work well for d20/D&D, but the sheer range of settings possible for GURPS means that the possible market share for individual GURPS adventures is very, very small.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I totally agree. That was the first GURPS campaign that I played in and the first real taste of D&D to GURPS culture shock Once I (not my character) broke out of mental stun caused by these differences the game was fantastic as were the many that followed.

There are a bunch of important differences to the general feel of GURPS and D&D games (I'm assuming "medieval fantasy" as the genre here - that GURPS space opera games will feel different from D&D should be obvious). Here are a few I can think of at the top of my head:

- Faster rounds, slower movement: The characters won't be zipping around the battlefield unless the map is small. Especially if they are wearing heavy armor. So it's important that the PCs are already in tactically advantageous positions before the fight starts.
- Getting surrounded is a bad idea: In D&D, getting surrounded by mooks is just an invitation to use Cleave or even Whirlwind Attack (or their 4E equivalents). In GURPS, that means that some of your enemies will hit you, and you won't be able to defend yourself against this.
- Don't bring leather to a swordfight: Armor is much more important in GURPS than it is in D&D, since it directly substracts from damage. After two or three hits with a sword, pretty much anyone without armor will go down, but someone in plate armor will have suffered only minor injuries at best. So if you go into melee combat with weak armor, you should better make very sure that your defenses are very good.
- Easy to fall down, harder to kill: It's fairly easy to injure someone to the point where he will fall unconscious, but it is significantly harder to kill someone outright, especially if he has decent HT. This means that even if PCs go down, their odds of survival are actually pretty decent. Still, the risk of death is never entirely absent, so PCs should still be careful.
- Greater Character Customization: That's the biggest difference. Not only does GURPS allow a wider range of possible character archetypes to coexist within a single party (for example, you could easily have both a youngster with lots of raw potential = high attributes and lots of advantages - and an old veteran, who has put most of his points of skills, in the same party without unbalancing things), but you could have some really strange races and other characters which would be considered "unbalancing" in D&D. For example, many settings have elves which are generally just plain superior to humans. This would be problematic with the D&D game mechanics, but not in GURPS - all it means that their racial template costs more, resulting in elves with lots of innate advantages, and humans with more skills and training easily coexisting in the same party. And then there are plenty of rules and advantages for social interaction which D&D hardly even touches - if you want to play a noble with his entourage, you easily can, and the rule system easily lets you nail down just what kind of privileges the noble enjoys thanks to his social status.

 

[Kichwas]

There are a lot of differences in feel between GURPS and DnD. The note on faster rounds, slower movement above is one of the biggest 'smacks to head' you'll get when you jump into a GURPS combat for the first time.

In looking at the books you might come away thinking an archer, who gets 1 shot every2 (or was it 3) rounds is at a severe disadvantage, unless you realize that unlike in DnD the enemy can't run 10 miles in a single round and close with you. Even in a charge, you can probably kill half of them before they close the gap if your GM starts the encounter at a logical perception range (and there aren't obstacles / walls / etc that shorten it).

The bit above me on don't bring leather - Not as true in 4E as it used to be. Hit avoidance as a tactic in combat is still a poor choice, but it is more viable than it used to be. And... one of my favorite memories as a GURPS GM was in a fight between a PC lizardman in fullplate and an Orc by the side of a river...

Trip

He actually didn't die... but it was very close by the time he managed to drag his character out of the water, and only because I, being a softy back then, fudged 2 rolls in his favor.

The weight of the gear your character carries around will matter a lot more in GURPS than it does in DnD.

In science fiction the system can break for playability. Armor and damage are in extremely high numbers, but the dice are on a bell curve that gets tighter the more of them you add. Eventually you hit a point where there are so many dice and so much armor that a slight bump up or down for either side means an almost assured outcome. Either the opposition is de-facto immune to your attacks, or at 5 less points of armor out of their 80-100 points... you can reliably one shot them.

While that might make sense... it makes those genres very hard to game in without adding in a host of cinematic optional rules.

It does do fantasy well, but the default magic system is too strongly preset, and despite the claims here that Powers presents another option, that isn't "obvious" until you are very deeply invested into the system. It should have been the other way around - the default option should have been generic, and what we get in the default option should have been presented in a setting book for 'Yrth.'

I happen to think that Hero is better at fantasy, but GURPS is a close third (first in my book is BESM), and would be in that spot even if the Magic issue I have were not there.

I find it very easy to get killed or kill in GURPS, rather than hard, but I guess that's a matter of playstyle and perception. Getting surrounded though, is always a bad idea. No playing a World of Warcraft style paladin in GURPS.

 

[pawsplay]

I don't think there's a huge market for those, however. Third-party adventures work well for d20/D&D, but the sheer range of settings possible for GURPS means that the possible market share for individual GURPS adventures is very, very small.

I think the market is actually pretty good sized, but not in all the settings GURPS covers.

 

[Mercule]

There are no Hero equivalents to his disliking deep water, loving high places, and being sensitive about his height.

Wow. I have a hard time believing anyone who has ever made ever a single Hero character -- or even just thumbed through the disads chapter -- would say that. Those are great examples of where Hero works quite well.

Except GURPS 'quirks' aren't actual flaws that impact game play mechanically. Hero limitations, conversely, are. . . erm. . . limiting.

You can write down personality traits in Hero, too. Mechanical stuff has point costs. Non-mechanical stuff doesn't. You don't have to pay to like Chinese food, either.

Hero's psychological limitations have always bothered me.

Psych lims can be looked at two ways. From a purely mechanical viewpoint, they can force even the most purely gamist player to deal with significant personality issues.

Really, though, we've generally used them as a guide to how inconvenient the limitation is. The stick exists for the GM, should you start to ignore them. But, if you're hamming it up just fine (i.e. you're limiting yourself enough), the GM doesn't have to police it. I've found the latter method to be much more fun and character driven -- but the numbers on the sheet still encourage the role playing.

 

[Mercule]

invasion from the Vegan system

Darn those vegans and their militant anti-meat agenda.

*Not an honest political quip. Just lightening the mood.

 

[pawsplay]

Wow. I have a hard time believing anyone who has ever made ever a single Hero character -- or even just thumbed through the disads chapter -- would say that. Those are great examples of where Hero works quite well.

Well, I just don't consider "does not have this same mechanic" or the alternative, "This is a psychological limitation worth 5 or more points" working well. It's not something Hero does, and I'm fine with that. I would not expect Hero to have quirks, and if I did, I would just import them from GURPS. But by default, Hero does not do this, and this is not a great example of where Hero works well. This is an example of something too specific, too below the radar, to really be a Hero trait.

Psych lims can be looked at two ways. From a purely mechanical viewpoint, they can force even the most purely gamist player to deal with significant personality issues.

And from a purely mechanical standpoint, they can be used to take an interesting character and a very dramatic story and run them into the ground.

Really, though, we've generally used them as a guide to how inconvenient the limitation is. The stick exists for the GM, should you start to ignore them. But, if you're hamming it up just fine (i.e. you're limiting yourself enough), the GM doesn't have to police it. I've found the latter method to be much more fun and character driven -- but the numbers on the sheet still encourage the role playing.

The numbers on the sheet, if they say Total, put the character in as serious a bind as AD&D alignment, and the specific behaviors in question may be even more vague. I don't mind GMing characters with these traits, because I take the holistic approach, as you do, but I've read some statements from some Hero GMs that make me shiver at the idea of trying to play someone like Superman in their games. The rules are not on the side of "You've earned your points, and that sounds consistent with this character." The rules say, "This disadvantage occurs approximately this often and has this effect on the character's actions."

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

And... one of my favorite memories as a GURPS GM was in a fight between a PC lizardman in fullplate and an Orc by the side of a river...

Trip

He actually didn't die... but it was very close by the time he managed to drag his character out of the water, and only because I, being a softy back then, fudged 2 rolls in his favor.

Like I said... good real world tactics will work in GURPS as well.