Gurps? Where do I start?

[Jürgen Hubert]

Price is why I am going 3e. That is unless there is a major difference.

---Rusty

Well, all in all the 4E rules are a whole lot cleaner. GURPS 3E is alright for characters who are fairly close to mundane humans (although it is a lot easier to balance the "strong-but-clumsy" versus the "frail-but-nimble" character archetype in 4E - in 3E, most combat-focused characters will take as much DX as they can afford), but once the characters get cinematic, or strongly nonhuman, 4E is so much better that it's simply no comparison.

If your local store has GURPS Powers, look through it - especially the sample powers section. You don't have to buy the book, but if what you read in GURPS Powers interests you at all, go with 4E - it's really hard to do all these things with the older edition.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

Oh! I get to tell my GURPS story!

About a year or so ago, I spent a few months writing up a very extensive set of house rules for my D&D game. Eventually it came to the point that I was writing my own Players Handbook and then eventually I realized that the end result wasn't going to be D&D anymore at all. So I started looking for something similar to what I had in mind...

1. More realistic. I wanted the PCs to feel vulnerable at all levels of play.
2. No classes. Play what you want to play.
3. Skill based combat.
4. Races that mean something after 5th level.
5. No levels.
6. Better, more versatile, magic system.
7. More interesting combat system so fighter-types have the a similar range of options as spellcasters each round.

And then I found GURPS 4th edition, and my prayers were answered tenfold. The system is awesome. The books are magnificent. And character creation, while complex and detailed, allows for the creation of ANYTHING, which is amazing in itself.

Tack that onto a combat system that is the most impressive mix of "realistic" and "playable" that I've seen, and you have a real winner.

For the most part, I'm done with d20. I still play in a weekly D&D game, and it's still fun, but I often find myself wincing at how clumsy the d20 system is.

I doubt I'll ever run a d20 game again though. This DM has become a GM.

Oh, and please stop by my website. I've been working on a GURPS fantasy setting for some time now, and it's coming along really well.

 

[mcrow]

. . .regardless of whether you like the rules, GURPS has some of the best written and researched supplements out there. The wealth of information you can find in many GURPS books is astonishing. The HERO system also has excellent amounts of detailed information on various genres and historical settings. Both SJG and Hero Games produce excellent resources, no matter what system you prefer.

Yeah, while I don't play GURPS anymore I do still use the supplements for other games I play. GURPs easily has the best supplements.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

Oh, I almost forgot. A newbie convert from d20 to GURPS might be interested in my Iconic character conversions.

Download them here: http://www.mydatabus.com/public/AshremBayle/DandDIconics.zip

I've done Regdar, Lidda, Hennet, Jozan and Soveliss

Note that these are not direct mechanical conversions, instead they are sort of a GURPS re-envisioning that captures the flavor of the characters instead of doing a numbers conversion.

 

[DungeonMaester]

Sorry that I can not reply to every one.

Today, I stopped by a local book to pawn off books which where free from the local library. The guy who owns was a gamer since the early 70's since oD&D came out and has just about any game there with tons of source books no matter how obscure. Sure as shoot'n he had GURPS book thier, abiet old having been printed in 1987! I kept a eye on in the whole time we exchanged stories about games we played and people we played with. I was all set up with him to buy a ton of his AD&D stuff once the books, courtesy of TheDungeonDelver once the three core books plus all the other goodies he sent came though. However, my players expressed sufficiently that they had no interest in such a game.

After a few minutes of carry on we got right down to business. I asked to see what he had for GURPS books which he kept of a shelf. With much cation, he put the dekrepted old book on the counter for my (pah-rue-sal)? As I commented to him while looking through the pages, I was a little nervous of flipping through while each time I did, a page would fall out. He stroked his bears while debating something behind his soft blue eyes. After a moment of use two being in two different worlds, he spoke bring us back to earth.

"I can't sell it" My heart skipped a beat but I could not disagree. There had been books I too could not part with. "So, Take it." He spoke again, this time with some impaitiantness in his voice. I stared blankly at him. "I can't really seel it with so many pages falling out, so its yours."

Long story short, I have a really old 3rd ed gurps books. Happy days!

Actually, those games both use dice pools where the dice are not added together but compared to a target number. The exception with Shadowrun being you reroll a six and add it to itself again, but that is not the same as adding 10-20 dice together. The way both games work is roll your handful of dice and then those equal or higher than the target threshold succeed. You count the successes, and that tells you the degree of success.

Dice pools are actually more realistic. The pool gives a good curve over the skill range of the roll, instead of unnatural all or nothing type rolls that happen in linear dice tests (i.e. d20). While the degree of success gives you a more accurate result of how well they do. Both WoD and Shadowrun have tight systems tested over many editions and years, so either is worth playing. Shadowrun mixes magic and technology welll, and its premise is great for D&D style adventuring while WoD is moody and got great style behind it, the concepts of the games might be a bit much for how closed minded your group sounds. I would go with Shadowrun and just learn to use dice pools correctly.

I miss playing Shadow Run and WoD. 'Specially WoD. It has been two years since I have played Wod and 10 years (Some where along the lines) since Shadow Run. I guess it shows in how much I remember the rules. But I did love shadow run's trolls.

<snip for lenght>
Oh, and please stop by my website. I've been working on a GURPS fantasy setting for some time now, and it's coming along really well.

Done and done.
My guess is they won't like gurps either btw. It uses 3d6 to test, its options are all over the place and there is no predetermined setting at all, it is all up to you to paint the canvas and choose what you want to go with it from the rules. Your players sound like they will hate you for it.

 

[Lord Rasputin]

About a year or so ago, I spent a few months writing up a very extensive set of house rules for my D&D game. Eventually it came to the point that I was writing my own Players Handbook and then eventually I realized that the end result wasn't going to be D&D anymore at all.

I had a similar moment of truth. Throughout the Nineties, I used AD&D 2e for fantasy, GURPS for everything else. (Especially Space. I first bought GURPS in 1990 in large part because GURPS Space was so damn cool.) My AD&D 2e patches more and more resembled GURPS ... so I just threw in the towel and used GURPS. (My breaking point, incidentally, was Active Defenses rolls for D&D.) Actually, I wound up in between games for an extended period, running an isolated game from time to time, so by the time I wound up in a regular fantasy game again, D&D 3e was out, and it was much cleaner than earlier versions.

So now I have a dichotomy. If I want to run something other than fantasy, I run GURPS. For fantasy, if the game is just whacking something, I just use D&D. Otherwise, I run GURPS for fantasy. Good thing I'm not into superheroes, however, because I'd be in a choice of least bad system. (Actually, I think I'd run BESM, which would make a good Star Wars as well.)

 

[jdrakeh]

2) My players are anti non d20. I dont know why. the rejected 1st ed campaign after 10 min of play.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you need new players. You seem to have an interest in branching out and trying new things, while your players seem pretty determined not to. You need to find some players who share your curiosity and open-mindedness.

 

[TGryph]

Hey DM!

Don't give up...I convinced half of my 8-person 3.5 D&D group to switch over to Gurps, and almost 3 years later we have added a couple more, and are still going great guns.

In fact, I have another old 3rd Edition Gurps Book. If you are in the US, drop me a PM at my e-mail address and I will send it to your free of charge. You can go ahead and give your ragged copy to one of your gamers, and keep the better one for yourself. Hell, I have an extra Fantasy Bestiary I will donate to your cause as well.

C'mon Gurpsheads...anyone elsa wanna pony up to help this guy out?

TGryph

tgriffith@earthlink.net

 

[00Machado]

Consider Hero if you're willing to play a crunchy toolkit system. I think it's more flexible than GURPS. As for me, I'm interested in rules lite right now, and am considering Savage Worlds.

 

[Najo]

Originally Posted by PhantomNarrator
. . .regardless of whether you like the rules, GURPS has some of the best written and researched supplements out there. The wealth of information you can find in many GURPS books is astonishing. The HERO system also has excellent amounts of detailed information on various genres and historical settings. Both SJG and Hero Games produce excellent resources, no matter what system you prefer.

Yeah, while I don't play GURPS anymore I do still use the supplements for other games I play. GURPs easily has the best supplements.

I will second and third these guys, gurps has some great source material for GMS, I don't play gurps but I use their books for reference all the time.