GURPS or HERO?

[Olive]

If I had to choose between those two... it'd be HERO all the way.

There have been a few comments like that in this thread but little in the way of explanation.

Is there a why? TB's comment about lower powered GURPS characters being more differentiated sounded good to me, and I'm leaning towards GURPS anyway because I've already got some Transhuman Space books.

 

[Mercule]

TB's comment about lower powered GURPS characters being more differentiated sounded good to me

With all due respect to TB, I think he's dead wrong on differentiating low-powered characters. Or, more precisely, he may be right (or not), but Hero lets you differentiate well enough that I can't imagine that there's value-added in further differentiation. It's like saying there may be a system that better differentiates between arcanists and sword-slingers than D&D does -- it may be true, but I find it hard to imagine a situation where anyone would care.

As far as elaborating on the differences between GURPS and Hero, I really can't say much more than I already have. I've played both and found Hero incredibly fun and capable of building very nearly any character/concept I've wanted to. After looking over the rules, I cannot find anything that GURPS can do better than Hero. It's a clean sweep across the board.

 

[WayneLigon]

If your group is not big on combat and really emphasizes roleplaying then honestly, I'd go with neither of the two. Try FATE; it's free.

If you have to go with either of the two choices mentioned, I'd go with GURPS. In generaly you're going to get more in the way of choice and have a better mechanism for determining how cinematic you want it to be.

 

[Olive]

As far as elaborating on the differences between GURPS and Hero, I really can't say much more than I already have. I've played both and found Hero incredibly fun and capable of building very nearly any character/concept I've wanted to. After looking over the rules, I cannot find anything that GURPS can do better than Hero. It's a clean sweep across the board.

What about the comments that HERO is simply much more complex than GURPS?

 

[jdrakeh]

deleted. double-post.

 

[jdrakeh]

What about the comments that HERO is simply much more complex than GURPS?

HERO is not really more complex than GURPS, it merely requires a great deal more preperation to play due to its 'nuts and bolts' approach to gaming. As I mention earlier, HERO is much more a tool-kit to build games as oppsoed to a set of rules that simply allows you to play them. It isn't so much about complexity as it is about time. If time is an issue, I rceommend that you steer clear of HERO.

I had to drop HERO in favor of GURPS back in 2002 specifically because working a 9-5 job didn't leave me enough time to GM HERO and get the essentials (e.g., laundry, grocery shopping, etc) taken care of in a timely fashion. And I eventually gave up GURPS for d20 (also due to time constraints). That said, if it's a choice between HERO and GURPS and time is an issue, it must be GURPS.

GURPS, to be clear, still requires more prep time than a game designed to be played 'out of the box' (e.g., Call of Cthulhu), though due to the substantial palette of pre-constructed equimpent, character options, spells, creatures, etc in the core books, it involves considerably less prep time than HERO (which expects you to create most of these things yourself using the different construction systems that it provides).

 

[Olive]

If time is an issue, I recommend that you steer clear of HERO.

That's probably going to be the clincher for me.

9 - 5 job? Check (plus occasional travel)
Baby? Check

Time poor is a pretty apt descriptor.

 

[jdrakeh]

That's probably going to be the clincher for me.

9 - 5 job? Check (plus occasional travel)
Baby? Check

Time poor is a pretty apt descriptor.

Definitely GURPS, then (or possibly something even less fiddly, like FATE). HERO works best when you have the free time that it demands and, as a HERO fan mentioned futher up the thread, doesn't work at all if you can't give it that time. This is the system's biggest flaw, really.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

With GURPS, it didn't seem like it had the same editor throughout the supplements so things seemed strangely imbalanced at times but you get out of it what you put into it.

Well, GURPS 3E existed for 15 years. It was very consistant in the beginning, but in later supplements all sorts of rules were added onto it that made it somewhat less consistant in some cases. The GURPS Compendia made it worse by merely being a collection of all those rules from the various books, instead of trying to make it all coherent.

With GURPS 4E, all those various rules bits were examined throughly and put into one consistent whole - and it shows.

 

[Andor]

That's probably going to be the clincher for me.

9 - 5 job? Check (plus occasional travel)
Baby? Check

Time poor is a pretty apt descriptor.

Yeah, if time is an issue, go with GURPs, although personally I'd prefer HERO. Honestly the biggest problem with GURPs is that it descends form an ancient (1980~) game about gladiatorial combat, so while it's really good at covering two guys in a pit with clubs it starts to break down as you get beyond that power level. The system starts showing cracks at about the level of modern weaponry, and just looks rediculous for things like modern military weaponry. Superheros and epic spells? Be prepared for the system to show it's flaws. But if you are doing more of a swashbuckley Fafherd and Grey Mouser approach to your game it should work fine.

And GURPs really does have the finest supplements in gaming.