Tratyn Runewind
First Post
Hello,
It's solid, and can be quite fun, but the level of detail in the system definitely rewards skillful combat play, especially at the lower Tech Levels. Standing in one spot like a D&D Fighter and simply swing, swing, swinging away, without taking advantage of the system's combat options, can be an excellent way to get killed quickly.
The sheer versatility of the system can make it difficult to produce "generic" modules, because there are so many possibilities to take into account, but whipping up adventures for a known party of PCs shouldn't be any harder than in most other game systems (as long as the players haven't been allowed any of the abilities that tend to complicate adventure design for any system; stuff like unrestricted time travel, precognition/retrocognition, etc. - nothing too likely to show up in a typical WWII game...
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The system is more detailed than d20; the level of realism can vary widely depending on which of the optional rules you want to use. The default is more realistic than d20/3E, and the combat options tend to encourage "realistic" behavior. As far as the realism of weapons data, historical data, and similar items goes, GURPS writers tend to do their homework very well indeed.
The power level of the magic system will depend heavily on the options the GM is willing to let the players use and the number of character points they will have to use them. Advantages like Extended Magery, Extra Fatigue, and Mana Enhancer can produce suitably epic wizards; fighter-types in such campaigns will typically have access to the Weapon Master Advantage and the cinematic Martial Arts Skills and Maneuvers to balance them against the mages.
And the Unlimited Mana system (from Pyramid Magazine, and available in the reprint collection Best of Pyramid Volume 2) can be a blast - literally, if your wizard draws too much power...
Funny, that's the opposite of the usual complaint about GURPS combat - that characters die too quickly...
Wow - cool GM, cool game world, cool fellow players, and still a bad time. That would be very unusual with ANY game system I've ever seen - so much so that I'd be tempted to chalk it up to sheer bad luck more than anything having to do with any particular game system.
There's a fair bit of truth to this. GURPS as it currently stands is fairly "crufty" - different authors in different sourcebooks chose different methods of dealing with similar problems, and while some of these concepts work very nicely (the Ritual Magic system from GURPS Voodoo and GURPS Spirits is one well-regarded example), some seem badly thought out or executed (GURPS Supers is notorious for this; many of its concepts seem to be adapted very poorly from Champions). Even the well-executed concepts can sometimes become unbalanced when slipped into game worlds other than the one they were designed for. Hopefully they'll clean a lot of this up in the much-discussed 4th Edition (currently in the "we're considering doing one" phase).
Well...there were some interesting concepts (the use of real faiths was a nice touch), but the execution definitely seemed on the weak side. And the production values were nowhere near those of the lavish TSR boxed sets of the era, its main competition. Still, they were usable enough with minimal tweaking, and I've seen far worse. (Didn't care for the bizarre Fantasy 2/Mad Lands thing at all myself, though.)
This is what the "Feint" maneuver is for. As mentioned above, the combat system is less abstracted than D&D's, and will require a certain amount of skilled use. High-skill characters will generally Feint "mooks" out of their jockstraps, and dispatch them soon after. Fights between more evenly-matched characters will be less affected by Feints, and the combatants will have to pull other tricks from their repertoires (attrition if your HP are higher, taking advantage of terrain, Luck, magic, ganging up with your buddies, etc.) to secure an edge - this is both realistic and true to typical adventure-story usage.
This isn't quite accurate. There are many Advantages that can be picked up after character creation (Literacy, many social Advantages, Wealth, and others). And new skills can easily give characters "kewl" new abilites (most dramatically with magic spells), and make them harder to kill (just cranking up any weapon skill will increase the chance of Parrying with the weapon). Maneuvers of the sort found in GURPS Martial Arts and GURPS Swashbucklers can provide interesting new combat capabilities with fairly small point expenditures, while for those with the patience to save up XP for a while, there are always the Trained by a Master and Weapon Master Advantages...
I was mostly with you there up until you said "Arthurian". GURPS Camelot and GURPS Celtic Myth were both excellent supplements, and magic in the Arthurian stories seems more subtle and GURPS-ish than the flashy invocations and combat-spells of D&D - it's a Fighter's world, no doubt about it.
Hope this helps!
It's solid, and can be quite fun, but the level of detail in the system definitely rewards skillful combat play, especially at the lower Tech Levels. Standing in one spot like a D&D Fighter and simply swing, swing, swinging away, without taking advantage of the system's combat options, can be an excellent way to get killed quickly.
The sheer versatility of the system can make it difficult to produce "generic" modules, because there are so many possibilities to take into account, but whipping up adventures for a known party of PCs shouldn't be any harder than in most other game systems (as long as the players haven't been allowed any of the abilities that tend to complicate adventure design for any system; stuff like unrestricted time travel, precognition/retrocognition, etc. - nothing too likely to show up in a typical WWII game...
)The system is more detailed than d20; the level of realism can vary widely depending on which of the optional rules you want to use. The default is more realistic than d20/3E, and the combat options tend to encourage "realistic" behavior. As far as the realism of weapons data, historical data, and similar items goes, GURPS writers tend to do their homework very well indeed.
The power level of the magic system will depend heavily on the options the GM is willing to let the players use and the number of character points they will have to use them. Advantages like Extended Magery, Extra Fatigue, and Mana Enhancer can produce suitably epic wizards; fighter-types in such campaigns will typically have access to the Weapon Master Advantage and the cinematic Martial Arts Skills and Maneuvers to balance them against the mages.
And the Unlimited Mana system (from Pyramid Magazine, and available in the reprint collection Best of Pyramid Volume 2) can be a blast - literally, if your wizard draws too much power...
Funny, that's the opposite of the usual complaint about GURPS combat - that characters die too quickly
...Wow - cool GM, cool game world, cool fellow players, and still a bad time. That would be very unusual with ANY game system I've ever seen - so much so that I'd be tempted to chalk it up to sheer bad luck more than anything having to do with any particular game system.
There's a fair bit of truth to this. GURPS as it currently stands is fairly "crufty" - different authors in different sourcebooks chose different methods of dealing with similar problems, and while some of these concepts work very nicely (the Ritual Magic system from GURPS Voodoo and GURPS Spirits is one well-regarded example), some seem badly thought out or executed (GURPS Supers is notorious for this; many of its concepts seem to be adapted very poorly from Champions). Even the well-executed concepts can sometimes become unbalanced when slipped into game worlds other than the one they were designed for. Hopefully they'll clean a lot of this up in the much-discussed 4th Edition (currently in the "we're considering doing one" phase).
Well...there were some interesting concepts (the use of real faiths was a nice touch), but the execution definitely seemed on the weak side. And the production values were nowhere near those of the lavish TSR boxed sets of the era, its main competition. Still, they were usable enough with minimal tweaking, and I've seen far worse. (Didn't care for the bizarre Fantasy 2/Mad Lands thing at all myself, though.)
This is what the "Feint" maneuver is for. As mentioned above, the combat system is less abstracted than D&D's, and will require a certain amount of skilled use. High-skill characters will generally Feint "mooks" out of their jockstraps, and dispatch them soon after. Fights between more evenly-matched characters will be less affected by Feints, and the combatants will have to pull other tricks from their repertoires (attrition if your HP are higher, taking advantage of terrain, Luck, magic, ganging up with your buddies, etc.) to secure an edge - this is both realistic and true to typical adventure-story usage.
This isn't quite accurate. There are many Advantages that can be picked up after character creation (Literacy, many social Advantages, Wealth, and others). And new skills can easily give characters "kewl" new abilites (most dramatically with magic spells), and make them harder to kill (just cranking up any weapon skill will increase the chance of Parrying with the weapon). Maneuvers of the sort found in GURPS Martial Arts and GURPS Swashbucklers can provide interesting new combat capabilities with fairly small point expenditures, while for those with the patience to save up XP for a while, there are always the Trained by a Master and Weapon Master Advantages...
I was mostly with you there up until you said "Arthurian"
. GURPS Camelot and GURPS Celtic Myth were both excellent supplements, and magic in the Arthurian stories seems more subtle and GURPS-ish than the flashy invocations and combat-spells of D&D - it's a Fighter's world, no doubt about it. Hope this helps!
