GURPS-Share your thoughts

[tetsujin28]

4. Voodoo/Spirits - my favorite magic system... which can be adapted to other games

Gotta agree with you. It's the coolest magic system out there, including the over-rated Ars Magica.

 

[Numion]

I mean, if someone's having fun doing it, great...but IME it's more often someone that's either trying to gain what amounts to a metagame advantage, or that views the game as a competition between GM and players. And in both cases, that's not a Good Thing.

So sure of your opinion, you are [/Yoda]. Have you ever seen the player type who thrives on this type of thing? I have, and it's not necessarily disruptive. We're all big boys, and as long as the DM keeps the game from devolving into munchkinism a little number crunching doesn't hurt anybody.

The player just has to do his maths 'on the fly' in a timely fashion as not to disrupt the game. Using power attack is one factor the fighter can control in his hacking - deciding how much accuracy you sacrifice for straight power in the blow is no different from a sorcerer applying empower metamagic or whatnot.

As for Gurps .. I really like the game in theory. It is designed in a fashion that it makes sense. Today at the game shop I even almost caved in and got the 4th ed, but since I already have 3rd ed and no functional campaign or even a one-shot came out of that, I decided not to go for it. All the pieces are there, but it just doesn't translate to good gaming for me.

 

[Jim Hague]

So sure of your opinion, you are [/Yoda]. Have you ever seen the player type who thrives on this type of thing? I have, and it's not necessarily disruptive. We're all big boys, and as long as the DM keeps the game from devolving into munchkinism a little number crunching doesn't hurt anybody.

The player just has to do his maths 'on the fly' in a timely fashion as not to disrupt the game. Using power attack is one factor the fighter can control in his hacking - deciding how much accuracy you sacrifice for straight power in the blow is no different from a sorcerer applying empower metamagic or whatnot.

As for Gurps .. I really like the game in theory. It is designed in a fashion that it makes sense. Today at the game shop I even almost caved in and got the 4th ed, but since I already have 3rd ed and no functional campaign or even a one-shot came out of that, I decided not to go for it. All the pieces are there, but it just doesn't translate to good gaming for me.

Hi! Go back and read what I said again - I know there's people for which that sort of activity is fun; I simply find it incomprehensible.

As a GM I wouldn't allow it save for a few concepts where it made sense in character for the person in question to calculate the odds. Obviously, I couldn't stop a player from doing so in their head, but the moment it did become a disruption or slow the game down, the hammer gets applied.

In any case, we're derailing things a bit. As a GM, I don't find that GURPS satisfies my needs in gaming anymore. Lite really wasn't enough to sway me back to a system I came to loathe (admittedly at least some of that was my fault), but I still pick up GURPS supplements that have interesting topics since the information in them is almost universally useful.

 

[VirgilCaine]

There really are a lot of supplements you should consider if you're going to be doing contemporary horror: GURPS Horror, Spirits, Voodoo, and Cabal are all excellent. You might also want to take a look at the two volumes of Suppressed Transmission.

Given, but that's four of them. I'm not planning on it being ghost-heavy (Supernatural, I'm looking at you...) and I'm going for more of a CoC feel to it.

 

[mmu1]

What surprises me in all this is that people are bothering to calculate percentages for success. There's very, very few ways a characters would know this in all but the most general and nebulous way...why sit there and play the numbers game when you could be roleplaying the encounter, whatever it may be? Isn't that called metagaming and generally frowned upon?

Yeah, taking the time to plan your next combat move (because you play under the assumption that someone who adventures for a living might have a solid grasp of tactics, especially when his life depends on it every day) while other people are taking their turns in combat is metagaming. It's awful, the way game play would speed up if everyone did it.

 

[Conaill]

Yeah, taking the time to plan your next combat move (because you play under the assumption that someone who adventures for a living might have a solid grasp of tactics, especially when his life depends on it every day) while other people are taking their turns in combat is metagaming. It's awful, the way game play would speed up if everyone did it.

No, it's awful that you insist on playing in a game system where it takes complex calculations to figure out what the most tactically sound next combat move is!

 

[mmu1]

No, it's awful that you insist on playing in a game system where it takes complex calculations to figure out what the most tactically sound next combat move is!

Wait... You mean I can't play D&D without doing complex math? That's it, it's Storyteller for me from now on.

 

[Conaill]

Amber, baby! Diceless all the way...

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Given, but that's four of them. I'm not planning on it being ghost-heavy (Supernatural, I'm looking at you...) and I'm going for more of a CoC feel to it.

Then go for GURPS Horror and the two Suppressed Transmission volumes - which technically aren't GURPS, but are full of weirdness with often explicitly stated connections to the Cthulhu Mythos.

If you are reading them without getting dozens of adventure and campaign ideas, you are doing something wrong.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I've never played GURPS but i like what i'm hearing about the supplements. Those that enjoy them, what would you say are the top five supplement books out there? And are they generic enough to be applied to a d20 game, or any other system?

I'd go with the more generic ones, myself. Things like the Martial Arts supplements are simply excellent, and you can easily use them to flesh things out in ANY RPG stystem with a little work.