2E vs 3E: 8 Years Later. A new perspective?

[Henry]

In GURPS, the chapter on basic combat is six pages long. The supposeduly incredibly complicated advanced combat chapter is 23 pages long. The GURPS combat system covers everything from stone knives to ultra-tech fusion guns, and everything in between. Also sandwiched in those pages are rules for mass combat and unusual "dirty tricks" type tactics.

However, don't those same combat rules cover combat as second-by-second, where you have to roll vs. your own skill, then check against someone else's active defense, THEN check against their passive defense, then determine where the attack hits, and then figure out how much damage goes to the victim and how much "blows through", and apply the penalties for the result of the hit location? I enjoyed GURPS' rulebooks for their thoroughness and reading value, but the actual gameplay of the system always turned me off to it, because in addition to the lethality when using weapons deadlier than a sword, I also felt like it took two hours to resolve a seven-second long combat.

 

[prosfilaes]

Maybe release a module or magic item compendium every 3 months, or something to that effect. While your flagship product gets something new every month.

If you're going to print four volumes every three months, you make one of them an old edition only if that would make you more than making it the new edition. Even if that's true on a book for book basis, you've still got to wonder if splitting your audience is economically successful.

I would love to talk to the guys from Steve Jackson Games, particularly Sean Punch, and see what went wrong when they tried this method, apparently more than once.

The method they tried was reprinting books based on the sales of the used books. And what the most they'll probably tell you is that they say GURPS XYZ selling for so much on EBay, and they reprinted it, and it didn't sell worth anything. But Sean Punch (=Dr. Kromm) has an email address, if you really want to ask.

 

[Hussar]

He "designed" those game systems because RPG's have become rule intense.
If you go back and look at my original post though.......I said he left DnD, not TSR.

He left D&D 'cos he got sued when he tried to not leave D&D.

I have a problem with thinking that C&C is actually a rules light game. It's not. Any more than 2e was rules light. 2e wasn't rules light at all. You had far too many subsystems to be considered rules light. A game which has a different system for resolving every kind of action is NOT rules light.

I think the problem here is people seem to have very different definitions of rules light vs rules heavy. Rules light systems don't have several hundred pages of game rules. That 2e may or may not have been lighter than 3e is arguable, but, 2e in no way is a rules light system.

FUDGE is a rules light system. Amber is a rules light system. Dying Earth RPG is a rules light system.

2e ain't.

 

[Arauthator]

He left D&D 'cos he got sued when he tried to not leave D&D.

I have a problem with thinking that C&C is actually a rules light game. It's not. Any more than 2e was rules light. 2e wasn't rules light at all. You had far too many subsystems to be considered rules light. A game which has a different system for resolving every kind of action is NOT rules light.

I think the problem here is people seem to have very different definitions of rules light vs rules heavy. Rules light systems don't have several hundred pages of game rules. That 2e may or may not have been lighter than 3e is arguable, but, 2e in no way is a rules light system.

FUDGE is a rules light system. Amber is a rules light system. Dying Earth RPG is a rules light system.

2e ain't.

This is funny I have to keep explaining this.

DnD isn't a company you can leave. It's a game you CHOOSE to leave, or return to, or start playing.

You're entitled to your opinion on what is light or heavy on rules, I think Castles & Crusades is a light on rules game and I will call it as such. I agree with the term rules heavy when discussing 3e, because there are a million and one books out there for the game. Technically though, we can handle it at my game table because we make sure we know the rules on the components we choose to play with before we get to the game table. Sometimes those discussions take place via email, on the phone, or coming over to my house. I make sure I have the pages indexed that have the spells, feats, and skills of my players and I run through combat of certain monsters before the day of gaming. Therefore, I only call 3e rules heavy because everyone else refers to it that way. I bypass that burden by keeping the game centered around role playing and recruiting players who are not rules heavy.

 

[Storm Raven]

However, don't those same combat rules cover combat as second-by-second, where you have to roll vs. your own skill, then check against someone else's active defense, THEN check against their passive defense, then determine where the attack hits, and then figure out how much damage goes to the victim and how much "blows through", and apply the penalties for the result of the hit location? I enjoyed GURPS' rulebooks for their thoroughness and reading value, but the actual gameplay of the system always turned me off to it, because in addition to the lethality when using weapons deadlier than a sword, I also felt like it took two hours to resolve a seven-second long combat.

No, they don't.

If you use the advanced combat rules, PD adds to a character's active defenses, it isn't its own seperate roll. You only have to randomly determine where an attack hits if you want to use that optional rule, hit locations are normally used for attemption to intentionaly strike a specific area, and picked ahead of time, and modify the attack roll by a fixed amount. Blow through damage is pretty simple to figure out: HT for the torso (only impaling and bullets are limited), HT/3 for hands or feet, HT/2 for arms or legs, HTx3 for head and vitals (also only for impaling and bullet damage), and no limit for brain hits.

The sequence is: roll an attack roll (your skill minus any modifier for attempting to hit a particular location), if successful, your opponent rolls a defense roll (his skill plus any PD), if he fails, roll damage, subtract DR, and, if using hit locations, evaluate blow through.

It has one more roll than the standard D&D system, and usually less needs to be looked up. And that's the advanced combat system. The basic one is quicker.

And yes, combat is deadlier when you use higher tech weapons. That's because higher tech weapons are generally more lethal than swords.

 

[MerricB]

This is funny I have to keep explaining this.

DnD isn't a company you can leave. It's a game you CHOOSE to leave, or return to, or start playing.

If Gary had remained at TSR after 1985, he would have remained as the chief designer of AD&D, most likely providing a streamlined version of AD&D (his 2nd edition) in the near future.

Gary still plays (DMs) original D&D from time to time; there was a notable session at the last GenCon with several EN World moderators.

That Gary, in the latter part of his designing career, has evinced a distinct preference for rules light games is not in doubt. To say that the "whole reason he left D&D" was because of it becoming too rules heavy ignores that he legally couldn't work on the game system any more.

Gary went from designing AD&D to designing Dangerous Journeys (an incredibly rules-heavy game... Gary himself says "[t]he DJ books were done in my rules-heavy period" - source), and finally to the rules-light Lejendary Adventures (1999). C&C is not originated by Gary, nor is he doing much with it, although he's adapted some of his D&D material for the game.

Cheers!

 

[Arauthator]

Touche' MericcB.

That's EXACTLY my take on it as well, for the most part. Although maybe I had some difficulty in making that point.

The whole rules heavy or rules light thing, is simply a matter of ones opinion.

As far as Dangerous Journeys goes, I concur. He's said on several different things I've read about him, he put every rule he could think of into that project.

I think we are sort of agreeing here, just in different words.

Hopefully that issue has been put to bed now....RIFTS anyone?

~lol~

 

[Henry]

Hopefully that issue has been put to bed now....RIFTS anyone? ~lol~

Nah, I prefer GURPS.

...PD adds to a character's active defenses, it isn't its own separate roll. You only have to randomly determine where an attack hits if you want to use that optional rule, hit locations are normally used for attemption to intentionaly strike a specific area, and picked ahead of time, and modify the attack roll by a fixed amount.

Thanks for the clarification: I could have sworn 3E GURPS advanced rules had that Passive Defense and Active Defense were their own separate rolls; my misreading also held that when you hit, you either rolled on the random chart OR if you called a location ahead of time that it used the penalty listed.

Blow through damage is pretty simple to figure out: HT for the torso (only impaling and bullets are limited), HT/3 for hands or feet, HT/2 for arms or legs, HTx3 for head and vitals (also only for impaling and bullet damage), and no limit for brain hits.

Given my love for hit points, that is to complicated for me for a round-by-round system. Then again, for a system that deals anywhere from 5 to 15 dice of damage to a guy with 10 to 15 hit points, it's also very necessary, I would think.

The sequence is: roll an attack roll (your skill minus any modifier for attempting to hit a particular location), if successful, your opponent rolls a defense roll (his skill plus any PD), if he fails, roll damage, subtract DR, and, if using hit locations, evaluate blow through.

It has one more roll than the standard D&D system, and usually less needs to be looked up. And that's the advanced combat system. The basic one is quicker.

And yes, combat is deadlier when you use higher tech weapons. That's because higher tech weapons are generally more lethal than swords.

It's funny, but when I read the basic system, I recall that it seemed to have lots of assumptions in every place else BUT the basic system that you were using the advanced system - it made it harder to adjudicated a lot of that stuff outside of the combat chapter. (Plus, when you are using hit locations, body armor was a lot more complex, having to keep track of which body part had different PD and Damage reduction (or whatever it was called).

And the high tech weapons were more deadly, but given what I see on the nightly news about people surviving gunshot wounds, I still have reservations about a gun being 5 to 10 times more lethal than a bow or sword. But that gets into too much semantics over complexity of a game system. I still absolutely love Ultra-tech's TL16 Tachyon Gun -- the ultimate one-shot kill is to just make your enemy GO AWAY.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

My personal experience with GURPS was fairly extensive for a brief time- my game group in Austin featured several GURPSophiles. (We even playtested GURPS Vampire.)

I never saw GURPS as rules light or heavy, I just found portions of it to be inconsistent with its name of being "generic" and "universal," especially in comparison to HERO.

 

[Storm Raven]

Thanks for the clarification: I could have sworn 3E GURPS advanced rules had that Passive Defense and Active Defense were their own separate rolls; my misreading also held that when you hit, you either rolled on the random chart OR if you called a location ahead of time that it used the penalty listed.

I just looked them up, and the PD is added to your active defense. The random hit locations are something you can use if you want to, and a lot of people do, but I have found that it can be unbalancing (but not unwieldy, since the roll is always against the same chart so you memorize it pretty quickly), giving away big hits with no cost.

Given my love for hit points, that is to complicated for me for a round-by-round system. Then again, for a system that deals anywhere from 5 to 15 dice of damage to a guy with 10 to 15 hit points, it's also very necessary, I would think.

Pretty much one or two hits ends most fights in GURPS anyway, so it doesn't really make a big difference most of the time.

It's funny, but when I read the basic system, I recall that it seemed to have lots of assumptions in every place else BUT the basic system that you were using the advanced system - it made it harder to adjudicated a lot of that stuff outside of the combat chapter. (Plus, when you are using hit locations, body armor was a lot more complex, having to keep track of which body part had different PD and Damage reduction (or whatever it was called).

You got it right, DR is damage reduction. And yes, individual body armor parts can get annoying. Which makes the basic system very attractive to use, since it doesn't bother with that. Or you can use the advanced combat system without hit locations, which is pretty easy to do.

And the high tech weapons were more deadly, but given what I see on the nightly news about people surviving gunshot wounds, I still have reservations about a gun being 5 to 10 times more lethal than a bow or sword. But that gets into too much semantics over complexity of a game system. I still absolutely love Ultra-tech's TL16 Tachyon Gun -- the ultimate one-shot kill is to just make your enemy GO AWAY.

Well, most guns aren't that much more lethal - a broadsword does sw+1, or 1d+1 for a person of average strength; and thr+1, or 1d-1 for that same person. A Beretta 9mm does 2d+2, which is twice as much, but very survivable for a 10 HT person. Rifles do more - an M1 Garand does 7d+1, and an M16 does 5d, which sounds really nasty until you consider that most of that damage will usually get lost due to blow-through unless you score a brain hit. And since you don't automatically die when you are dropped to 0 HT, those hits can be easily survivable if you receive medical treatment.