GURPS-Share your thoughts
- Thread starter sfgiants
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tetsujin28
First Post
Lots of little changes that in general add up to a better game. The most dramatic changes are that stats no longer cost the same (DX and IQ cost more than ST and HT), Passive Defense is gone (good riddance), and the point levels have gone up to compensate (there's no direct correlary, but a 100 pt. 3e PC is roughly equivalent to a 125-150 pt. 4e PC).sfgiants said:
Very, very well. I tend to look at GURPS as "90% of Hero, with 50% of the required effort". I've run it for more than ten years, and had great results. It's ended up my default system.
I like that the game is very modular. If I want a combat to run quickly, I just use the basic rules. If it's a fight with the Big Bad, I'll use some of the Advanced options. One thing to remember, as the inimitable Curt said over on RPG.net, "GURPS is like a cow. Don't try to eat the whole thing in one sitting."
I've used it for 19th-century horror, westerns, Glorantha, 'generic' fantasy, GURPS Mage: the Ascension, Hellboy...Experiences with the system are very welcome
...nearly everything. And the supplements (other than GURPS China, which, sadly, stank) are top-notch.
The Lost Muse
First Post
I think GURPS is great; however, it is a lot of work for a GM, while running D&D one can just pull out the monster manual and be good to go (combat wise, and in a time crunch)
YMMV, but I find GURPS very, very tedious. I've never run a game using it, but played in way too many, so it could be the GM.
I remember in a GURPS fantasy game having to run combat second by second: one second you would ready your mace, the next second you could actually attack with it. With each combat "round" being a second in the game, combat took forever. After that campaign, I swore off GURPS for ever. (That was 3e, I think.)
I remember in a GURPS fantasy game having to run combat second by second: one second you would ready your mace, the next second you could actually attack with it. With each combat "round" being a second in the game, combat took forever. After that campaign, I swore off GURPS for ever. (That was 3e, I think.)
I've not tried to run a game with the newest system, but by description it hasn't changed so much as to change my opinion of it. I find that GURPS puts so much effort into trying to be "General Use" that it has lost any hope of having flavor of it's own. In addition, the mechanic is tedious to work with, both in prep and in play. I use GURPS when I don't have any other ruleset that'll do the job at all.
In general, I think GURPS suffers from a simple fact - it is usually better to use a tool designed to do a specific job than to use a tool that's designed to do many jobs. A dedicated screwdriver will almost always d4rive screws better than the thing you find on your pocketknife. And these days, you have to go quite a way to find a genre that isn't reasonably covered by another system.
That being said, the supplements for GURPS are often fantastic, because they contain a great deal of fine informaton and ideas that aren't really wed to the rules.
In general, I think GURPS suffers from a simple fact - it is usually better to use a tool designed to do a specific job than to use a tool that's designed to do many jobs. A dedicated screwdriver will almost always d4rive screws better than the thing you find on your pocketknife. And these days, you have to go quite a way to find a genre that isn't reasonably covered by another system.
That being said, the supplements for GURPS are often fantastic, because they contain a great deal of fine informaton and ideas that aren't really wed to the rules.
Wombat
First Post
I love GURPS supplements; I am annoyed with the system.
I used to play it back in New Hampshire with a guy who worked on a couple of the supplements (Stephen O'Sullivan, very nice guy). The problem I found with GURPS is that in trying to be everything, it ends up being very little. This is what initially turned me off to "universal" systems. To this day I have yet to find a system that works with all genres, no matter what people try to sell me. I find the game far too crunchy and far too driven by the "hunchback albino midget" syndrome -- taking too many flaws to get the character you want to play.
That being I ran in a very good GURPS Tekumel campaign in Santa Barbara, CA, but that was mainly because the GM was very cool and we ignored a lot of the rules.
Still, SJG has put out some of the greatest gaming resource material on the face of the planet. In various supplements I have found fantastic quick-n-dirty info on: Classical Greece, The Book of the New Sun, modern arcane conspiracies, the Aztecs, Dynastic Egypt, futurist views for the next couple hundred years of human development, 17th century Europe, the Golden Age of Piracy, fairytale Russia, and an alternate early Victorian London populated by goblins... Each of these supplements has proven to be a treasure trove of facts, ideas, concepts, and gaming thoughts at a reasonable (for rpgs) price.
So currently I own over a dozen GURPS supplements, but no longer own the core rules.
I used to play it back in New Hampshire with a guy who worked on a couple of the supplements (Stephen O'Sullivan, very nice guy). The problem I found with GURPS is that in trying to be everything, it ends up being very little. This is what initially turned me off to "universal" systems. To this day I have yet to find a system that works with all genres, no matter what people try to sell me. I find the game far too crunchy and far too driven by the "hunchback albino midget" syndrome -- taking too many flaws to get the character you want to play.
That being I ran in a very good GURPS Tekumel campaign in Santa Barbara, CA, but that was mainly because the GM was very cool and we ignored a lot of the rules.
Still, SJG has put out some of the greatest gaming resource material on the face of the planet. In various supplements I have found fantastic quick-n-dirty info on: Classical Greece, The Book of the New Sun, modern arcane conspiracies, the Aztecs, Dynastic Egypt, futurist views for the next couple hundred years of human development, 17th century Europe, the Golden Age of Piracy, fairytale Russia, and an alternate early Victorian London populated by goblins... Each of these supplements has proven to be a treasure trove of facts, ideas, concepts, and gaming thoughts at a reasonable (for rpgs) price.
So currently I own over a dozen GURPS supplements, but no longer own the core rules.
Aus_Snow
First Post
Same here.Wombat said:
There are some very well-written supplements out there (and I have quite a few of them), but I just can't find the motivation to run GURPS campaigns these days.
Re: GURPS China - egads that's an expensive supplement (at Amazon)! And it's crap? Gee, what a great way to spend $100. Not to mention another option down in my search for good mythic China supps.
VirgilCaine
First Post
maggot said:
That's weird. I always though it would be faster than D&D, since you can only do one thing per round and not two or three. It's the order you have to choose, really. Draw a weapon or move in the first turn.
As for editions, 3e GURPS is like 2e D&D. 4th edition has brought a lot of modernization and streamlining that was needed.
Of course, I just want to use it for contemporary horror campaigns, so the myriad books aren't of much interest to me, neither are the myriad Pyramid sample articles (use the search function, lots of good stuff there, even for my limited wants) dealing with GURPS Fantasy and GURPS Black Ops and GURPS whatever.
Prince Atom
Explorer
Well, G3 was around for about 18 years, in one form or another.
I've played a few sessions, and it does seem that it takes you forever to do things in combat, but that's because of the magnification of the time scale. Zooming it out a bit and allowing more than one maneuver per turn might improve things.
I like the system, myself. I don't have to learn new rules and options when I switch games. Even with d20, there's a whole list of new skills and feats to learn when switching genres.
There are a lot of skills, though, and at first I found it hard to tell which were necessary to do what (what, precisely, do you need to roll against to analyze a crime scene? How about to get along in the wild?). To make matters worse, there's a lot of specialization going on, too. I often joke that you'd better remember which side you should part your hair on, or you'll be at -1 to some skills all day.
So I'd jettison a lot of the detail, myself, and run with lite rules. It provides a nice break from the d20 system, however.
TWK
I've played a few sessions, and it does seem that it takes you forever to do things in combat, but that's because of the magnification of the time scale. Zooming it out a bit and allowing more than one maneuver per turn might improve things.
I like the system, myself. I don't have to learn new rules and options when I switch games. Even with d20, there's a whole list of new skills and feats to learn when switching genres.
There are a lot of skills, though, and at first I found it hard to tell which were necessary to do what (what, precisely, do you need to roll against to analyze a crime scene? How about to get along in the wild?). To make matters worse, there's a lot of specialization going on, too. I often joke that you'd better remember which side you should part your hair on, or you'll be at -1 to some skills all day.
So I'd jettison a lot of the detail, myself, and run with lite rules. It provides a nice break from the d20 system, however.
TWK
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