GURPS-Share your thoughts

[Umbran]

Excluding rabid fanboys and haters from either side of the aisle, I'll try to give you an objective assessment.
[...snip...]

GURPS in play, is extremely quick. In my experience, it's faster than d20 because there are fewer exceptions or special circumstances employed (such as feats, attack of opportunity, etc.). As Jurgen stated, combat is a more visceral & dramatic affair. There's no D&D hit point "what does it represent" ambiguity. Called shots, hit locations, etc. are built into the core rules as advanced options.

Okay, aside from a perhaps unintentional implication that those of us who don't agree are "haters". And aside form the idea that somehow you love the system, but are still "objective"...

It doesn't look like you're comparing apples to apples here. You say GURPS combat is quick, and d20 isn't bedcause of all the special circumstances - but you seem to be comparing GURPS *without* the advanced options to d20 *with* the options. ANd that's not right.

I've used GURPS without all the options. You're right, in tht it is quick. It is also about as dry as sawdust, rather like running d20 with no feats or situational modifiers in combat. Turn all the options on in both systems, and GURPS is the slower beast.

 

[Aus_Snow]

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 can't decide on a top 5, but the 5 I've got (over all) the most use out of, up to this point, would be:

Blood Types
Faerie
Celtic Myth
Imperial Rome
Transhuman Space


edit --- oh, my apologies, it seems I didn't answer fully. Well, these have all been used with a couple of systems, d20 being one of them, and GURPS being neither of them!

 

[Warrior Poet]

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 add GURPS: Horror and GURPS: World War II to that list, and both are very applicable to other systems, I feel. The mechanics don't necessarily mesh, but as many others have pointed out, as sourcebooks, they're almost unparalleled. Almost every page has something that could add to a plot, setting, NPC, style, or game flavor. GURPS: Horror has a huge index of recommended books, comics, and films that make great horror inspiration, for example, and GURPS: World War II has a good (brief) history of the war, including factors that led up to it, major personalities, major conflict regions, etc. And that's just to name a few advantages of just two books.

Warrior Poet

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I've used GURPS without all the options. You're right, in tht it is quick. It is also about as dry as sawdust, rather like running d20 with no feats or situational modifiers in combat. Turn all the options on in both systems, and GURPS is the slower beast.

Well, I've run GURPS combat with several of the options (hit locations, the option where you can decrease your opponent's Defence by lowering your effective skill, as well as a few others), and I'd say the fight against the five ogres took about the same time it would take me in D&D.

But somehow, the combat seemed more... visceral in GURPS. One character got his leg broken by an ogre, and the shield of the other one was destroyed when an ogre hit it a second time. And the ogres were so tough that they JUST.WOULD.NOT.DIE!

All in all, I was rather pleased with it.

 

[Renshai]

A friend talked me into getting the books for 4E, and while they are an interesting read, I'd never play it. I used the Character Generator to create a few characters and ran some sample combats with me son. Two or three of the characters had skills in their weapons that assured of hits most of the time, and also gave them a great chance at parrying. During the test the combat dragged out "forever". One would hit, the other would parry, rinse and repeat. When one finally got through armor absorbed enough of the blow to prevent it from being major damage.

I tried this several times and ended up with the same result. On paper the system looks great and fun, in play I just didn't like it.

 

[Nebulous]

But somehow, the combat seemed more... visceral in GURPS. One character got his leg broken by an ogre, and the shield of the other one was destroyed when an ogre hit it a second time. And the ogres were so tough that they JUST.WOULD.NOT.DIE!

That's something in d20 i've learned (with much practice, for better or worse) to ad lib. Critical hits are a pretty good way to recreate special situations, just don't do the bonus damage and supplement a new injury.

I wonder if GURPS is anything like Hackmaster. I own the Hack DMG, never played, i was just curious, but the complexity of combat and the charts and the hit locations and the...the...the...well, it gave me a headache just reading it.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

My top five favorites are:

- Transhuman Space - and not just because I am credited as a playtester and later wrote for the line!

This is probably the most realistic SF setting out there - and one of the strangest. It's probably hard to convert to d20 because of all the posthuman character types - how would you stat a sapient software program in d20? - but worth for all the thought-provoking stuff in it alone. Useful if you are running any sort of SF campaign, since it not only introduces new technologies, but also hints how these change societies - something all too often overlooked in RPG settings...

- GURPS Horror: Written by none other than Kenneth Hite, who knows this stuff, this is the definite book on RPG horror, as far as I am concerned... Little in the way of rules - most is GMing and campaign advice.

- GURPS Cabal: Also written by Ken Hite, this is a brilliant treatment of the "modern horror/supernatural conspiracy" genre. Like the World of Darkness, but without the Angst (though with plenty of horror...). Easily useable with d20 Modern with all the magic options.

- GURPS Alternate Earths 2: Another genre that SJG is good at - "Alternate History". Five alternate Earths, where history took a different turn. From a world where the Vikings were wealthy enough to permanently settle the New World (and which makes for a pretty darn nifty fantasy world if you add magic and fantastic beasts to it) to Caliph, a world where Muslims invented the printing press early on and built stargates different stars in our 17th centuries - these are all a great read, and a great inspriation. Since these worlds have little in the way of rules, they should be easily useable with d20. GURPS Alternate Earths 1 was an earlier and (in my opinion) slightly inferior compilation, though it was still good. If you want shorter summaries of these worlds, plus a parallel dimension-spanning war for the Future of the Multiverse (plus psionic Nazis), see the new GURPS Infinite Worlds instead.

- GURPS Banestorm: The nifty "standard" fantasy setting for GURPS - medieval Earth humans get stranded on a fantasy world with the usual inhabitants and build Christian and Muslim kingdoms. The standard D&D rules don't quite fit because of different assumptions about magic, but the rules from Midnight make a good fit IMO.


But of course, there are many, many more good GURPS books. Here is a list...

 

[billd91]

GURPS is a fine game and we've had fun with it even if we do generally prefer D&D. We've played mostly sci-fi games with the GURPS system including a psionics game, Star Trek, and Babylon 5. And we've found it works pretty well, is very flexible, and doesn't bog down any more than any other game.

That said, there are some issues with it that I'm not necessarily keen on. Being a point-buy system, you tend to see a lot of people buying disadvantages to get more points but then cooking the character so that the disadv is marginalized. Really, you pretty much see that with all point-buy systems (like Hero) and it's easy to see situations where it gets out of control. The quirks, however, are quite nice as a way to define role-playing elements and then squeezing points out of them. But again, easy to abuse without GM approval.

The other issue I'd bring up here is the way GURPS resolves tasks: rolling 3d6. Unless you memorize the probability tables, determining the exact effect of a penalty on the odds of success is more difficult. In fact, depending on the character's target number, the same penalty will affect characters in different ways. A flat probability die roll is a LOT easier to intuitively grasp, especially when dealing with bonuses and penalties (which affect the odds of success in exactly the same way).

 

[Azgulor]

Okay, aside from a perhaps unintentional implication that those of us who don't agree are "haters". And aside form the idea that somehow you love the system, but are still "objective"...

It doesn't look like you're comparing apples to apples here. You say GURPS combat is quick, and d20 isn't bedcause of all the special circumstances - but you seem to be comparing GURPS *without* the advanced options to d20 *with* the options. ANd that's not right.

I've used GURPS without all the options. You're right, in tht it is quick. It is also about as dry as sawdust, rather like running d20 with no feats or situational modifiers in combat. Turn all the options on in both systems, and GURPS is the slower beast.

Um, no. Did you read my post?

It has been my experience that GURPS combat (using Advanced combat) is faster than combat in d20 if you're doing anything other than "I roll to hit" (i.e. grappling, attack of opportunity, feats that introduce exceptions to standard rules, etc.). If your experience is the opposite, fair enough - could it be that you know d20 better than GURPS? I never see people post such an admission. It's always GURPS is slower - period. Perhaps I know GURPS better than d20, I play both with equal frequency so it's hard to say for sure and I can concede the possibility. But overall, GURPS plays faster in my group - in and out of combat.

And as a fan of both GURPS and d20 (but I'm much less enamored of core D&D), I tried to provide specific examples of what GURPS does that I and my group enjoy and where I struggle with it as a system. I tried to do the same with D&D/d20. Therefore, I felt my opinions were more objective than the usual "GURPS rocks" / "GURPS sucks" threads. I never said or implied that those who didn't agree with me were "GURPS haters". I also fail to understand how stating that it's a tough choice for me to pick between Conan and GURPS as my preferred system places me in the biased-GURPS-advocate camp.

Azgulor

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

A friend talked me into getting the books for 4E, and while they are an interesting read, I'd never play it. I used the Character Generator to create a few characters and ran some sample combats with me son. Two or three of the characters had skills in their weapons that assured of hits most of the time, and also gave them a great chance at parrying. During the test the combat dragged out "forever". One would hit, the other would parry, rinse and repeat. When one finally got through armor absorbed enough of the blow to prevent it from being major damage.

This is true, and this was a problem for me when I started GMing GURPS as well. But I've learned a thing or two since then.

First of all, high skills are supposed to be rare in game worlds. Anything beyond a skill level of 12 is very good for an ordinary "mook" opponent - so if you are GMing, avoid high skill values for anything other than elite opponents. If you want to challenge the PCs, send them against larger numbers of lesser skilled opponents instead. Even the best swordsmen is in deep, deep trouble when he is surrounded in GURPS:

"I block the first attack!" (assuming the character has a shield)
"I parry the second attack!"
"Now I can either try to dodge the attack - with a much lower success chance - or parry it at -4 to my effective skill. Oh, bugger..."

This goes both ways - PCs can gang up on superior opponents once they have dispatched of his mooks, and he will be defeated in short order.

Another way to challenge the PCs is to let them fight against much bigger and stronger opponents with big weapons - like my ogres. Sure, they won't hit as often, but the damage they do is so significant that the players will sweat every time you roll to hit. Besides, if they try to block any hits with their shield, there is a chance that their shield will be damaged. Likewise, if they parry the attack, their weapon might break since it is likely smaller and lighter.


GURPS combat can run really well if the GM knows how to work the system. But it works under a different set of assumptions, and this is something that can catch new GURPS GMs off guard.