GURPS-Share your thoughts

[The Cardinal]

As a GM of GURPS for over 10 years the big different in combat flavor is what my group calls the "tin can" syndrome. Take a high skill opponent with a shield and plate armor magicked up to the hilt and you get a situtation where you keep making your hit rolls but the opponent keeps making the defense rolls. It starts to boil down to who makes a critical first.

...a good reason to switch to GURPS 4th Ed.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

You know, Fantasy II has a certain strange appeal. I mean, a weird, alien, and deadly fantasy landscape reshaped by the whims of cthonic deities modelled after Winnie the Pooh and friends can't help but be fascinating.

But I can't imagine actually playing such a campaign. Still, the monsters were way cool, and perhaps I will steal them at some point...

I can believe that group of players who are all really interested in roleplaying would get a kick out of the Madlanders' society and environment.

It's a fascinating read, but just as a for-instance: What the Hell is the point of detailing soulless society to the extent it was? The book doesn't really support playing them, and no Madlander who enters their cities is going to a) survive long enough to appreciate it and b) understand it even if he did.

The monsters are fantastic, as is the culture and folklore. What a bleak-minded society.

 

[glass]

As a GM of GURPS for over 10 years the big different in combat flavor is what my group calls the "tin can" syndrome. Take a high skill opponent with a shield and plate armor magicked up to the hilt and you get a situtation where you keep making your hit rolls but the opponent keeps making the defense rolls. It starts to boil down to who makes a critical first.

...a good reason to switch to GURPS 4th Ed.

What does 4e do to address this issue?


glass.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

What does 4e do to address this issue?

Body armor no longer adds to your defense rolls - only shields do. Standard Defense rolls are:

Dodge: Move + 3
Block: Shield Skill/2 + 3
Parry: Weapon Skill/2 + 3

The concept of Passive Defense is gone.

Oh, and there is an optional rule for highly skilled fighters - by taking a penalty to your effective melee skill, you can reduce your opponent's Defense roll on a -2/-1 basis.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

As a GM of GURPS for over 10 years the big different in combat flavor is what my group calls the "tin can" syndrome. Take a high skill opponent with a shield and plate armor magicked up to the hilt and you get a situtation where you keep making your hit rolls but the opponent keeps making the defense rolls. It starts to boil down to who makes a critical first.

Well, duels between two people with good equipment and high skills will take a lot of time. Possible solutions to this are:

- Don't send lots of highly skilled people against the PCs - after all, highly skilled people are supposed to be rare.
- Make it possible for the PCs to either use the environment against them or gang up on them if they use decent tactics. Even highly skilled opponents will have problems if they are surrounded...

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I like the idea of two skilled warriors battling with strikes and parries until one makes the first mistake, ie getting hit with a critical, thus allowing thier foe to make the fatal strike. Reminds me of movie sword fights I've seen and Jedi lightsaber battles.

 

[harmyn]

....GURPS works very well for grim-and-gritty, low-magic campaigns. X-Files? Saving Private Ryan? King Arthur? Cthulhu? Constantine? Dracula? Firefly? Babylon 5? Sam Spade? All good.

Star Wars? Star Trek? Lord of the Rings? Battletech? Warhammer? Batman? D&D? Sin City? Cyberpunk? Not quite so good, but doable.

X-Men? Thor? Dr. Strange? Superman? The Matrix? Wuxia? Slayers? Not really up to it.

Generally, the farther away from "standard human" a character's race/skills/powers are, the harder it is to simulate him in GURPS. The system handles swinging a sword or shooting a pistol quite well, but doesn't scale well to swinging a battleship or shooting a Wave Motion Gun.....

I can't really agree with this. I've playing in or run GURPS games set in things like X-Files, King Arthur, Star Trek, Mecha-Anime, Batman, Noir-Supers, X-Men Mutant Styled, The Matrix Concept, and a couple of real kick-ace Wuxia-Hollywood Action Mini-Campaigns. It was always simply a matter of applying different optional rules and choices in character creation. All is very doable if you put forth just a wee bit of effort.

Another point of interest, I can't accept d20 games as "universal" systems because they are class-based. To take the "classic sales-tag-line" from GURPS, if I wanted to take my Fantasy Mage and team him up with a World War II Operative and send them searching for treasure in Renaissance Italy; I can. In d20 I would need d20 Past, D&D, and d20 Modern (or its WWII equivalent) to cover all the needed classes and options that are expected by most to give the characters variety and options.

Each time you go off in a direction that isn't clearly laid out and need additional options you have to try and figure out proper multi-classing options or find classes from other sources, or make your own up and hope they are well balanced.

Don't get me wrong I have enjoyed many games in D&D 3.5 and am typically the DM, but I have a far easier time running a thrilling GURPS Supers game in 3rd or 4th edition rather than a mid to high level D&D game. But that's just me.

There are other systems out there can be adapted to universal systems, West End Games D6 system, the Reisus (sp?) game, World of Darkness, but they are all typically skill based. Class based systems can do what they are designed to do very well, but to take them off into different areas other than they were specifically designed can make for some hard work.

-------------------------

As for my favorite books, hard to say but the ones I have used the most are:

Horror
Blood Types
Creatures of the Night
Supers
Psionics

Historical ones would be:

Imperial Rome
Vikings
Celtic Myth
Aztecs
Old West

 

[harmyn]

I like the idea of two skilled warriors battling with strikes and parries until one makes the first mistake, ie getting hit with a critical, thus allowing thier foe to make the fatal strike. Reminds me of movie sword fights I've seen and Jedi lightsaber battles.

I agree, I do like this imagery myself. I've noticed in D&D that when two equal warrior types are battling it out one-on-one it frequently comes down to the same issue about one good blow. Either it is an impressive critical hit that ends the day or both end up down to about 10hp's and whoever hits first wins the day. Seen this happen several times.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I like the idea of two skilled warriors battling with strikes and parries until one makes the first mistake, ie getting hit with a critical, thus allowing thier foe to make the fatal strike. Reminds me of movie sword fights I've seen and Jedi lightsaber battles.

True, these are fun - but you shouldn't do them too often or they will loose their drama and only get tedious. And make sure that there are other things than just the two duelists - a dramatic environment or hordes of mooks that the other PCs can fight while the "champions" are duking it out...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Another point of interest, I can't accept d20 games as "universal" systems because they are class-based. To take the "classic sales-tag-line" from GURPS, if I wanted to take my Fantasy Mage and team him up with a World War II Operative and send them searching for treasure in Renaissance Italy; I can. In d20 I would need d20 Past, D&D, and d20 Modern (or its WWII equivalent) to cover all the needed classes and options that are expected by most to give the characters variety and options.

Maybe its just an artifact of older editions of the game (I learned in GURPS 2Ed, and own the basic book & some suppliments from GURPS 3Ed), but my personal experience was like Stormrunners- as he pointed out it was very difficult to simulate certain PCs with the basic books. Some PC designs were only viable in various settings with setting-specific books.

I once tried to make a "regular Joe" whose one ability was telekinesis- in all of its forms and at great power. While my fellow players had nice powerful PCs of their own, my guy could barely lift a bowling ball, and lacked fine control and so forth. Even devoting all of my build points to one area, my PC was as useful as a bag of pasta. I abandoned the design in favor of a nympho nutcase with a bunch of skills.

On the other hand, had we been allowed access to GURPS Supers, my guy could have lifted cars or performed surgery with his telekinetic hand.

So, in my experience, GURPS is no more generic than D20.

HERO, on the other hand, has more than earned the right to be called generic IMHO.