GURPS or HERO?

[raven_walker]

GURPS vs HERO

Well, here's my $.02... (Disclosure: I have played GURPS in _every_ version for 20+ years, but only played earlier versions of HERO...)

GURPS, at its root, was built for medieval-style combat; Hero, at its root, was built for super-heroic (comic book) combat. Both have evolved over the years and can now be used for just about any sort of game you want to play (with varying degrees of work.)

BOTH systems handle combat well - I rather like the 12-part "turn" from HERO because it makes the character's speed a real factor in combat; I like the grittiness of GURPS combat which handles basic hand-to-hand melee very well. But I play GURPS because I think it does lower-level medieval/fantasy games better, because of the magic.

HERO is primarily a power/advantage based system and GURPS is primarily a skill based system (both systems have evolved to the point where this difference can be made negligible, but it is still true at the heart of the game.)

If you want D&D style Magic users with a wide variety of spells, then GURPS will work better for you. This might have changed in the current version, but the very essense of HERO is about building a handful of abilities that are _truly_ balanced agaist one another because they use identical mechanics. GURPS, on the other hand, has an established skill-based spell sytem that is pretty well balanced for standard fantasy games and has lots of non-combat spells for flavor.

My HERO mage had some attack and defense options, and that was about it, my GURPS mage, on the other hand, could do lots of little things that didn't affect the game very much, but added lots of role-playing flavor.

 

[greywulf]

Wow. So many opinions. All of them good

The thing is, with GURPS vs. HERO, you're comparing two games that are both very, very good indeed. I've been a long-time player and DM of both, and love them both equally well. HERO served as our superhero RPG system for almost 15 years, and it's only recently been superceded by Mutants & Masterminds. That change was more due to an influx of new players than anything. That said, MM is a truly great system; it's accessible to folks used to D&D, but can be granular enough for even the most picky of gamer. And a lot of my longtime gamer buddies can be very picky

We use GURPS mainly for modern and near-modern gaming where it's grittiness and ability to fine-tune your characters really shines through. I'd argue there's no better system for gaming the 20th-21st century if it's heroic rather than superheroic. That stands for 3e as well as 4e.

Either system is as grainy as you want it to be - an Energy Blast can be just an Energy Blast in either system - but it's all too tempting (and fun! Let's not forget that ) to keep remodelling and refining your character over time. That's a part of the charm of both GURPS and HERO, really. Your character can start off generated in wide sweeping paintbrushes then be increasingly detailed over time. Especially if you've got a Happy GM (like me) who doesn't mind a lot of points re-jiggling if it improves the character concept.

In short - both systems are as simple, or as complex, as you want them to be, but expect the complexity to grow on you over time.

In terms of feel, of the two, GURPS feels more gritty, and HERO more four-colour. There's no rules justification for this whatsoever, but it's there nonetheless.

That said, neither are the best system if you've got constraints on your time. There's a lot of downtime work involved in creating mooks, badguys and villains for either system. Fun to do, but time consuming.

If that's going to be a worry, Mutants & Masterminds might be your best bet. There's nothing you could do with either GURPS or HERO which couldn't be done in M&M.

 

[raven_walker]

Another quick $0.02

Another quick $0.02...

HERO definitely scales better at the higher levels (so if you want super-powerful Epic-level games HERO may be the way to go.) GURPS tends to be grittier at every level (and guns are truly deadly, even in a supers-level game.)

A lot of the disagreements come from (IMHO) the core split between skill-based and advantage-based design philosophies inherent in each system. People used to one may have difficulty coming to terms with the other.

I prefer the skill-based design (I feel that it models reality better) but others prefer the advantage-based design (which is more balanced - and this is a game... Which one works better for you depends on your own preferences...

 

[Slapzilla]

I havent seen GURPS 4e so if power/skill balance and continuity has been addressed, then good.
That being said, what I loved about Hero was the level of obsessive detail I could (or not) put into it. I don't know how many afternoons I whiled away trying to create/'perfect' a martial arts multi power pool, or just out of curiosity, trying to re-create a video game character's move set. Larger magic systems like D&D could be done using a separate endurance pool that only recovered when you slept, or you could go all Dragonball Z with power ups and huge endurance pools for crazy powers and if you get left behind, you get wolloped.
The GM sets the terms and (hopefully) all have fun. No system does everything excellently and roleplaying is a non-mechanics thing anyway. Do you care about tiny details and do you want to play with a consistent system? It sounds like there are many systems out there that will do all of that but you define 'tiny' and 'consistent'. Your mileage will vary, of course, but you also can't let analysis paralysis prevent you from moving forward with a game idea.

 

[Kafkonia]

I like both systems, but if I had to choose one I'd go with GURPS 4e (caveat: I don't have Hero 5e, just the BBB.)

There are a few reasons:

1) I find that the quality of the writing is higher. Hero had some good supplements, but it also had some shoddy ones; I've never bought a GURPS book that was less than adequate, and usually they're quite good.

2) I feel that the character creation is simpler. Four basic stats in GURPS vs. 7 (IIRC) for Hero is a good indicator -- although the derived stats are about even. And there are two costs for basic stats (10 and 20) vs. the three or four for Champions. This streamlines character creation, and if you're going to be introducing a system to new players that's probably a good thing. Both systems can take a while, depending on the type of players you have.

3) With 4e, GURPS has really improved its scalability for high-powered games. Now, I don't know about 5e Hero, but back with the Big Blue Book the stats were very chunky. By which I mean, if you were going to buy a strength higher than 10 (baseline), there was almost no point in stopping shy of 13 -- strengths of 10, 11, and 12 were identical in play (ignoring derived stats.) If you have problems with "dead levels" of stats in D20, you'll find no respite with Hero. You basically have Strengths of 3, 5, 8, 10, 13, 15, etc. With GURPS, every increase in a stat has a palpable effect.

4) Time progression in combat is more intuitive. Now, it's a bit of a change going from 6-second rounds to one-second rounds, but it's less complicated than the Hero turn/phase/segment approach. (A turn is 12 seconds, there are 12 segments in each turn, and you have a number of "phases" per turn equal to your speed.) It can make it easier to deal with characters with wildly different speeds/reaction times (ie the Flash vs. Terrible Turtle), but at the same time you have to refer to a chart to figure out who goes when.

I recently started running a Victorian supernatural GURPS game, and I wouldn't dream of using another system (and this is after considering and discarding Masque of the Red Death d20, Etherscope, and Call of Cthulhu.) There has been quite a bit of roleplaying, no combat, and (I think) a good time has been had by all.

Both systems are quite good, though. But in the end, I've only upgraded one of them to the current edition -- and I don't regret it for an instant.

 

[Hand of Horus]

Anything I'd want to say has been said. Damn..

Nonetheless, though, in my experience, HERO has helped increase focus on role playing. It also makes combat go much smoother and quicker.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

4) Time progression in combat is more intuitive. Now, it's a bit of a change going from 6-second rounds to one-second rounds, but it's less complicated than the Hero turn/phase/segment approach. (A turn is 12 seconds, there are 12 segments in each turn, and you have a number of "phases" per turn equal to your speed.) It can make it easier to deal with characters with wildly different speeds/reaction times (ie the Flash vs. Terrible Turtle), but at the same time you have to refer to a chart to figure out who goes when.

I can see it being a pain when you first get used to it, but the turn based combat is one of the major thing HERO adherents love - there isn't another combat system like it out there. It's not round based with everyone taking a turn, everyone can have a different number of actions a turn, and all be acting at different times. It makes the combat a good deal more free flowing. That is one of the major things I like about HERO, myself.

The chart is pretty easy, and after a while, you just get it memorized.

 

[Olive]

I went to buy the GURPS basic books yesterday but they were out of stock at the LGS, so I've ordered them off Amazon with some other stuff...

 

[Kafkonia]

I went to buy the GURPS basic books yesterday but they were out of stock at the LGS, so I've ordered them off Amazon with some other stuff...

You won't be disappointed.

And I'll take the time to shill for www.warehouse23.com -- They sell more than just GURPS, but you can get a large number of 3e supplements for under $10.00 each, and an order of over $80.00 gets you free shipping. And the nice thing about GURPS is that not only can you convert between 3e and 4e easily, but most of their books are generic enough that you can use them for other systems as well.