GURPS Fantasy / Dungeon Fantasy (and beyond)

[corwyn77]

There’s a ln advantage in one of the DF supplements for archers that reduces reloading time a lot.

Wizards, using the core system also spend multiple rounds in many instance to accomplish anything.

There is a similar Advantage in Delvers to Grow for Wizards to make missile spells castable and throwable in 1 turn. At the high end, 20 skill will reduce casting time as well.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I’m trying to remember which of my wargames used an array of regularly spaced dots instead of hexes or squares. It never caught on.

 

[dbm]

I saw one reviewed recently on The Player’s Aid YT channel. I think it was an American Civil War game.

 

[pawsplay]

The "problem" I have with the 1-second round is that once you remove modern firearms and the like, there's really no merit to the 1-second round as nothing is ever fast enough to need it. The crossbow, particularly the heavy, becomes so slow that no one bothers with it. It takes multiple rounds to even get off your first shot; it's just dull. No one wants to spends 80% of a combat reloading.

That just makes crossbows realistic. You load one or two of them. You fire them. If you're in close quarters, that's it. If you want to play a Gauntlet like game where you pew-pew-pew with a crossbow every round, GURPS out of the box is not friendly to that. You don't spend 80% of the combat reloading, you draw your broadsword and attack.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I’m trying to remember which of my wargames used an array of regularly spaced dots instead of hexes or squares. It never caught on.

I vaguely remember that too.

 

[Paragon Lost]

I’m trying to remember which of my wargames used an array of regularly spaced dots instead of hexes or squares. It never caught on.

Ok, now that's gonna drive me crazy. I seem to recall a few war/board games from the 1970s that made use of that type of map. I just don't know which company back then that did it, Victory, Wes End Games, Metagaming or Avalon Hill? SPI might be who did it, the more I think about it. Well, this will be a bug in my brain for a while. lol. Thanks for that! Too many decades on to recall now. <grumble>

 

[jolt]

To qualify, I don't think that most players are going to invest points in a skill that will maybe be used once and then ignored. I also feel like wandering around in Dungeon Fantasy with a loaded heavy crossbow is asking for an accident. I also don't think that the average encounter distance in DF is likely to make investing in a crossbow feel like a good buy (even without higher tech weapons). In any case, I'm not talking about the realism of the crossbow, I'm talking about the 1-second round which feels totally unnecessary and makes crossbow use feel like an unfun slog.

Battlesuit by Steve Jackson used dots instead of hexes. That's the only one I can think of.

 

[1QD]

I watched a game being played once...It started out everyone getting 1/2 thier normal starting character points. I am curious, was that normal?

 

[dbm]

The amount of character points PCs start with is up to the GM. While there are common point values, there are no specific rules defining that.

 

[Paragon Lost]

To qualify, I don't think that most players are going to invest points in a skill that will maybe be used once and then ignored. I also feel like wandering around in Dungeon Fantasy with a loaded heavy crossbow is asking for an accident. I also don't think that the average encounter distance in DF is likely to make investing in a crossbow feel like a good buy (even without higher tech weapons). In any case, I'm not talking about the realism of the crossbow, I'm talking about the 1-second round which feels totally unnecessary and makes crossbow use feel like an unfun slog.

Battlesuit by Steve Jackson used dots instead of hexes. That's the only one I can think of.

I won't disagree on DF. I went all in on the Dungeon Fantasy Kickstarter and actually have two of everything that they released for it. That said, the power level (250 point start), the snarky munchkin-ism implied etc made it feel limited. I say this is a me problem because when I ran 2e/3e from 1987 to 2000 I always started them at a points, it worked well for my low magic, dark fantasy setting used Thieves' World as the campaign. I'd translated from using originally RuneQuest when the Thieves' World box set released to Palladium Fantasy rpg when it released due to issues getting players to accept a skill based, lower hit point system that used amore active combat mechanics (parry, dodge, block and armor absorbing damage) system. Yet was similar to AD&D 1st edition to get them in the door.

Anyhow my players used missile weapons very well. Most crossbow use was tied to opening volley before drawing other weapons. Though we did have one summer where I wanted to run something different and so that summer we ran GURPS Swashbuckler and the players would great use of aiming with muskets from the crows nest at the other ships officers for example. As I said in a previous post it was easier to get players to embrace the 1 second round if you explained it in a more loose sort of way. I told them it was basically around 3 seconds and they shrugged and off we went.

I miss the days when players were more open to trying different systems. Since moving to where I'm at now, most of the game play is in ttrpgs that I don't have any real interest in. Plus organized play (Pathfinder/Starfinder Society and Adventurers League) are not my thing at all. I've tried it and just ugh, I'd rather play an mmorpg or a MUD in that case. Anyhow GURPS is definitely not something for those who want to focus on narrative primarily, not saying GURPS can't be narrative. I personally feel that all ttrpgs are narrative by default and folks who think they aren't are missing the point of table top Roleplaying game. Some have better tools to aid in narrative and roleplay, that's for sure. Though some feel clunky and I'd rather have immersive, organically happening roleplay. (shrugs)