From 4E to GURPS: D&D and Simulationism

[Ariosto]

GURPS 4e uses far different math for attacks and defence than the older material.

Thanks for the heads-up! I sometimes give a game another go after a spell away.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Well, for example we ran a Wierd War 2 campaign for the last 3 years. Nazi soldiers are laughable mooks, even SS; they were never any kind of threat, even at platoon or company strength plus heavy weapons.

If you thought the enemies were weak, then your GM was deliberately playing them that way. Plausibly, their weapons should have been no less dangerous than those of the PCs.

The wierdness of the GURPS range system and the IMO overinflated damages for WW2 weapons are roughly the equivlent of everyone firing Save or Die spells at long range. For those not familiar with the system, an average human has 10-15 HP, and a battle rifle inflicts 7 or 8D6 damage.

It should be pointed out that losing those "10-15 HP" meant that your character would be forced to start rolling versus unconsciousness every round, not that he was automatically dead. With 8d6 damage, a 10 HP character would be at -18 HP, which in GURPS 4E would mean that he needs to roll versus HT once to see if he stays alive.

Which is entirely realistic - WWII weapons were very lethal, and I don't see what's supposed to be overinflated about it.

I'm not always the GM, in the game we play on alternating weekends the GM is very stingy, sometimes handing out 1/2 a point for a game session. In this setting character development is a joke.

That's simply bad GMing, and not supported by the rules in any way - the rules recommend 1-5 character points for every session. So don't blame the system for that.

In this fantasy setting I find myself as a player bored to tears in combat, simply repeating the same hack or fireball against ork #2342 ad nauseum.

If all your character has bothered to learn are fireballs, then that's not surprising. What other spells can he cast?

Disposable mooks are not the problem although they contribute greatly to boredom in combat. Uberbosses that are immune to gunfire arn't the solution either cause then players feel railroaded and just roll their eyes.

How about picking up some of the volumes of "Creatures of the Night" from e23? These monsters should be useful for both fantasy and Weird War II - and provide challenges which require a variety of tactics to overcome.

Apart from that, use different terrain (steep hills and cliffs, bunkers and other fortifications) or environments (snow, rain, fog, night) to make things interesting. Let the defenders use their brains for once. Let the PCs figure out how to pass by kill zones to get to superior positions. Make the enemies use all the same dirty tactics as the PCs, and more besides (since they usually have more time to prepare for a combat). This can make any fight a lot more interesting.

Yes, it does. A character can be quite round on 1000 points.

1000 CP is not needed for a well-rounded character - it's perfectly possible to create such a character on 150 CP, just as long as you remember that GURPS attribute values don't mean the same things as their D&D counterparts and don't attempt to sink all your points into your attributes.

IQ 13 is entirely sufficient if you want to create a "brainy" character, and DX 13 if you want to create a character who specializes in physical things. Remember to leave at least 30 points available for skills, and you shouldn't have too much trouble in creating a well-rounded character.

"Well-rounded" doesn't mean "getting everything you want" - that's what experience is for.

The GURPS magic rules can bring home the inflexibility of a complex system, if one has a quite different view of how that aspect of a fantasy world is to work.

Pick up GURPS Powers, which is brilliant for coming up with your own system of supernatural powers - or GURPS Thaumatology, which provides numerous examples for varying the existing spell system (as well as some entirely different variants as well).

 

[pawsplay]

But, that can create rather different problems.

Sure. I was just pointing out that if a character cannot be rounded on X number of points, you can simply keep adding points until it is feasible. It is a ridiculous premise that there will never be enough points to round a character.

Player: My 150 point character doesn't feel well-rounded. I need 37 more points to buy the abilities I want.
GM: Here. Have 37 more points.
Player: Noooo!!!!! What have you done?

 

[pawsplay]

1000 CP is not needed for a well-rounded character

Generally it's not needed for anything but a junior X-man and up. But it would be laughable to claim it is not sufficient for fixing any deficiency of roundness for any reasonable character below that level.

"Well-rounded" doesn't mean "getting everything you want" - that's what experience is for.

I think it means "getting everything you want." That is, everything you want for your beginning character. There is no way to build a "well-rounded" knight-turned-vampire on 100 points. But if you add together the cost of the knight template and the vampire template, you should have a good idea of what the right neighborhood is.

 

[ProfessorPain]

I highly recommend Savage Worlds. It is a universal system, like GURPS, but its much smoother. It definitely leans toward a certain style of play (high energy, cinematic); but its a great system and you can use it for virtually any genre.

 

[pawsplay]

I highly recommend Savage Worlds. It is a universal system, like GURPS, but its much smoother. It definitely leans toward a certain style of play (high energy, cinematic); but its a great system and you can use it for virtually any genre.

Counterpoint: I find it less versatile than D6, to say nothing of GURPS or Hero, and I could never get it to do Star Wars right, which is mostly what I bought it for.

 

[ProfessorPain]

Counterpoint: I find it less versatile than D6, to say nothing of GURPS or Hero, and I could never get it to do Star Wars right, which is mostly what I bought it for.

I haven't really had this experience with it. Sure it is less fleshed out than something like GURPS, but it is meant to be a streamlined system. GURPS is definitely a more complete system. Personally I find GURPS a little on the cumbersome side and a little old fashioned for my taste. Still a fan though. I have a bunch of GURPS books at my house. And no one does historical supps like GURPS.

Haven't played d6 yet, looking forward to giving it a whirl when I get a chance.

 

[Ariosto]

My own "generic" favorite is the grand-daddy of them all: Chaosium's Basic Role Playing System.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I highly recommend Savage Worlds. It is a universal system, like GURPS, but its much smoother. It definitely leans toward a certain style of play (high energy, cinematic); but its a great system and you can use it for virtually any genre.

I own Savage Worlds, and though I have not tested it yet like it well enough - the rules are simple and quick.

That being said, I wouldn't use it for games with characters diverging significantly from the human norm.

 

[Aus_Snow]

I'm puzzled to how it is that Savage Worlds (and now BRP) came into it, given that the thread's (meant to be?) about 'D&D and Simulationism', and more specifically 'from 4e to GURPS' in fact.

Now, SW and BRP are fine, and do what they do pretty well IMO, but what they don't do is anything like what GURPS does. Not at all.

But hey, no big deal.