GURPS Fantasy / Dungeon Fantasy (and beyond)

[Thomas Shey]

My favorite kind of grid is offset squares. You get a lot of the benefits of both squares and hexes. I used to get my own custom offset square battlemat printed and laminated. I wish Foundry had that as an option for the grid.

There's always been an argument for offset squares, but I think its always been just a little too odd for any game system to embrace, and these days good luck getting a VTT to work with it properly.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Though now that I think about it, that wouldn’t work for the more tactical combat rules in GURPS all that well, since it doesn’t work well with facing. But other than that, offset squares are awesome.

You could make it work, but it'd probably be quirky.

 

[corwyn77]

My favorite kind of grid is offset squares. You get a lot of the benefits of both squares and hexes. I used to get my own custom offset square battlemat printed and laminated. I wish Foundry had that as an option for the grid.

What do you do with half squares? With hexes, I tend to assume half hexes are whole hexes and you can't enter hexes any smaller. My only issues are with flanking when using them for D&D.

 

[Voidmoji]

What do you do with half squares? With hexes, I tend to assume half hexes are whole hexes and you can't enter hexes any smaller. My only issues are with flanking when using them for D&D.

I always just treated them as whole squares. Sometimes it felt dd, depending on the layout, but other than for hallways it didn't come up that much.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I always just treated them as whole squares. Sometimes it felt dd, depending on the layout, but other than for hallways it didn't come up that much.

You should see it regularly in any square room, but I guess in a lot of cases its not extremely relevant.

 

[Voidmoji]

You should see it regularly in any square room, but I guess in a lot of cases its not extremely relevant.

Most of my use of offset squares was 4e D&D, and so I tended to have larger rooms to allow for a lot of movement, so the two of the walls in a larger square room that had half squares didn't come up as often. But I get your point.

 

[jolt]

GURPS went all in on the toolkit approach. That's fine and all, but it meant that they had to account for the possibility that one side might have a guy with a heavy crossbow whereas the guy on the other side had a Kalashnikov RPL-20.

One of the reasons many people didn't like introducing firearms into fantasy games is that systems rarely had a method to model what made a modern firearm superior to the ancient stuff. Firearms usually end up feeling like reskinned wands. The 1-second round fixes that, but in a fairly unsatisfying way (gaming wise) as it makes anything "slow" generally not fun to use. And if you aren't using firearms, you don't need that 1-second round at all (it's no longer solving anything but the slow stuff is still not fun).

 

[Argyle King]

GURPS went all in on the toolkit approach. That's fine and all, but it meant that they had to account for the possibility that one side might have a guy with a heavy crossbow whereas the guy on the other side had a Kalashnikov RPL-20.

One of the reasons many people didn't like introducing firearms into fantasy games is that systems rarely had a method to model what made a modern firearm superior to the ancient stuff. Firearms usually end up feeling like reskinned wands. The 1-second round fixes that, but in a fairly unsatisfying way (gaming wise) as it makes anything "slow" generally not fun to use. And if you aren't using firearms, you don't need that 1-second round at all (it's no longer solving anything but the slow stuff is still not fun).

There's a tradeoff. Yes, reloading a Crossbow takes time (as it should). However, that creates meaningful tactical choice. There are pros and cons to different weapons.

There are also narratives that can open up.
"Can I charge the bunker and make it before they reload the machine gun?"
"As the Orc horde is charging toward me, so I tell my troops to try to reload got another volley or do we draw our melee weapons and brace?"

That being said, I also feel that further refining the GURPS toolkit to better suit a specific experience is where boxed sets like Dungeon Fantasy or the upcoming Mission X can shine.

 

[The Soloist]

My favorite kind of grid is offset squares. You get a lot of the benefits of both squares and hexes. I used to get my own custom offset square battlemat printed and laminated. I wish Foundry had that as an option for the grid.

Three things:
1) They are not squares. They are offset rectangles so they have equal distances in all six directions.
2) If facing is important, hexes are better with their six sides when using chits.
3) Arcs of fire and cones effects are symmetrical in all directions with hexes.

 

[Voidmoji]

Three things:
1) They are not squares. They are offset rectangles so they have equal distances in all six directions.
2) If facing is important, hexes are better with their six sides when using chits.
3) Arcs of fire and cones effects are symmetrical in all directions with hexes.

The playmats I had printed were offset squares. And, I did mention the facing issue above, and thus why they aren't a great idea for GURPS.