GURPS-Share your thoughts

[buzz]

I know that numbers play is something some people enjoy...I just don't comprehend why. Looking at it, it sounds as much fun as playing with a spreadsheet. Is that wrong? Not at all. Can it slow down the game? Sometimes. My preferred style of play isn't, despite some 3rd party claims to the contrary, the only one out there.

Gotcha, JH. I've seen many a game derailed by excessive metagaming. Nonetheless, I like to keep the numbers in mind and try to make optimal choices. Not so much becasue I like math, but because I like suceeding spectacularly. D&D also rewards this to a certian extent ("resource management"), so I see it as just part of the play experience. I tolerate/enjoy it the same way I do point-optimization in HERO; sometimes, it's the means to a desired end and enjoyable play experience. For me, at least.

Even given my dislike of 3e, I'd say give it another chance - con games are going to be in many cases radically different from a more normalized tabletop session. Hey, maybe if we ask nicely, Jurgen'll do some 4e in an online game...

Yeah, I don't blame the system at all. I do feel bad that GURPS and SJG were represented this way at the major gaming con, though.

I don't see any of my current gaming groups haknering for a GURPS 4e campiagn any time soon. However, I tend to use ENWorld gamedays as my RPG laboratory. I'll probably end up running some GURPS at one of them. It's going to have to wait until after I run some Savage Worlds, though.

 

[Shayd3000]

As far as I'm concerned, any system is as good as the GM. And a GM should run any system that they are personally comfortable with.

Here here!

You want quick....try Torg on for size

George

 

[Ethernaut]

Here here!

You want quick....try Torg on for size

George

Ah, nothing beats Risus for quickness.

But Risus was inspired by the West End D6 system, so there you go.

 

[Ethernaut]

Yeah, I don't blame the system at all. I do feel bad that GURPS and SJG were represented this way at the major gaming con, though.

I don't see any of my current gaming groups haknering for a GURPS 4e campiagn any time soon. However, I tend to use ENWorld gamedays as my RPG laboratory. I'll probably end up running some GURPS at one of them. It's going to have to wait until after I run some Savage Worlds, though.

I had a similar experience at GenCon this year. My only GURPS game was terrible. It's a shame, since I had two excellent GURPS games at GenCon '04 (the Mystery Men game was absolutely inspired).

Maybe I'll run a GURPS game next time I make it to a game day...

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Welcome, of course. GURPS Eberron, hm? Eenteresting...

So here's a question, and trying not to drift the thread too much - how do you deal with the differences between D&D's fire and forget spell system and GURPS' spells as skills? Or has that changed between 3rd and 4th?

Well, none of the PCs wanted to become a wizard so far... Still, I worked some rules out.

As a matter of fact, there is a "spell memorization system" in the new Basic Set - it is under "Modular Abilities". I worked it out that you gain a "spell slot" for every 5 character points. You can prepare any spell from your spell book (which can contain any spell you have copied from somewhere else, though you do have to follow the standard prerequisite chains for this - but you don't have to spend any character points on the spells themselves, only the spell slots). This takes one minute to do. This means that wizards are unlikely to have as many spell slots as mid- to high-level D&D wizards (which I consider to be a blessing, since that got really annoying after a time), but they can recover them faster since they don't have to rest for eight hours. They still need to pay the usual energy costs for GURPS spells, though.

One PC is playing a priest of Kol Korran, and for variety I use the ritual magic system explained in the 4e Basic Set for priestly magic. Though it does have some similarities with the system from GURPS Voodoo/Spirits, it is not the same. Basically, you learn each college of magic as an IQ/Very Hard skill, and you can cast any spell in that college - but at a penalty equal to the number of prerequisites they have (though you can buy off that penaltey as a Technique). I gave each deity four different college their priests could use.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Even given my dislike of 3e, I'd say give it another chance - con games are going to be in many cases radically different from a more normalized tabletop session. Hey, maybe if we ask nicely, Jurgen'll do some 4e in an online game...

Hmmm... Intriguing suggestion. I've never done online games before, though I might be willing to do a one-shot as an experiment. Did you have any particular genre in mind?

(If this thread does get closed, anyone interested should feel free to mail me at

jhubert AT gmx DOT de )

 

[Jim Hague]

Hmmm... Intriguing suggestion. I've never done online games before, though I might be willing to do a one-shot as an experiment. Did you have any particular genre in mind?

(If this thread does get closed, anyone interested should feel free to mail me at

jhubert AT gmx DOT de )

Me personally, I'm a sucker for pulpy horror, conspiracy horror...you may begin to see a pattern here.

 

[Shayd3000]

Ah, nothing beats Risus for quickness.

But Risus was inspired by the West End D6 system, so there you go.

At least Torg wasn't/isn't D6....blah. Though the Ghostbusters incarnation of D6 was rather fun to play and GM....

Like the gentlemen said before, teh game is just the toolkit, and each GM really needs to use the toolkit that lets him best tell the story.

George

 

[buzz]

I had a similar experience at GenCon this year. My only GURPS game was terrible.

Dare I ask, was it the Banestorm "weekend with friends" event? And was it run by a, um, portly gentleman with a Southern (US) accent?

I got the impression that the guy was an SJG MIB (their promo/outreach fan club), which made me doubly sad for SJG. :\

Sorry to keep digressing.

 

[Shayd3000]

Also, I find that most GMs, rather than accepting how deadly GURPS combat is (and the fact that it should be used as a last resort) simply find ways to fudge around it -

...

- and I realize that there might have been circumstances I'm not aware of - but on the surface, reading about something like a combat between PCs and multiple ogres sort of makes me cringe. The fact there were no multiple fatalties as a result of fighting extremely strong monsters so tough they could be hit multiple times and keep on making their Health rolls to avoid passing out or dying tells me either punches were pulled, or the PCs were godlike. Four brutes that use even rudimentary tactics and can shrug off tons damage = let's all full-out attack one PC at the same time since we won't be able to dodge their blows anyway, so what do we need an active defense for = one dead PC)

Or that perhaps the GM was playing the Ogres as BIG DUMB BRUTES. This means that they would not be using any kind of tactic, no matter how "common sense" we might think it is.

In the games that I run, Intelligence is an important factor in determining what tactics I use. If the Int of the NPC's is higher, I play them smarter, and let them "know" (ie. intuit) who the right targets really are. If the int is lower, then I tend to have them go after random targets, which usually comes off as being stupid.

Now my players tend to be tactics challenged so it can get to be a challenge to play the opponents as being dumber....

Of course this has nothing to do with GURPS.....

...except that we should be careful to distinguish between a GM's technique and game mechanics/rules...DISCLAIMER: this has been your obligatory on-topic sentence, now move along, move along.

George