GURPS, Whitewolf, Werewolves, and Vampires Oh MY!

[DMScott]

The New (and highly superior IMHO..and I LOVED the original WoD) WoD was designed for the ground up to be much friendlier to crossovers.

Well, kind of. Setting down a common set of core rules will make them a bit friendlier mechanically - there won't be as much conversion to get a given effect to work in a different setting. But in balance terms, various posts on the WW boards suggest the authors have no real intention of shooting for balance between the different books, so you might find that some amount of conversion is still necessary if having a balanced power level is important to a particular crossover.

So far as the original thread topic goes, I think the fundamental question is: what style of game are you shooting for? GURPS is IMHO better at simulating a relatively realistic gameworld, while World of Darkness is better for a more cinematic sort of game. GURPS allows you to define your characters more finely, WoD will probably be a lot easier for players new to the system to create what they want to play. If you're playing a game with a lot of talking and only rolling dice in critical situations, WoD is probably better - it'll certainly play a lot faster. OTOH if you prefer a more tactical or "wargamey" feel, or if most situations are to be resolved with dice (for a skill roll or whatever else), GURPS is probably better.

 

[Sebastian Francis]

If you were going to start up a brand new game playing Garou (werewolves), and were choosing to ignore Whitewolf canon and play pre-apocalypse, what rule set would you use and why?

In 16 some-odd years of gaming, I've never used GURPS, read GURPS, or had any experience with GURPS. How well does it work? Has anyone tried GURPS: Werewolf?

If you knew the game would be relatively combat heavy, would that cause you to lean more towards Werewolf Revised, 2nd edition, or the GURPS ruleset?

Thanks folks!

GURPS is horrifically rules-heavy, and the new 4th edition doesn't make that any better. GURPS is the only game system I've ever seen where you calculate the amount of weight your character can lift over his head in one second using his left hand.

Brrrrr....

I'd use either D20 Modern or the new World of Darkness system.

 

[shady]

While GURPS is ridiculously rules heavy and slow (IMHO) some of the supplements are great for background information and occasionally for background crunch - Uplift and New Sun spring to mind.

So you might be able to pick up the GURPS WoD supplements more cheaply than the WW ones, and adapt to (say) D20 Modern, if you want a D20 version. Or Grim Tales. The GURPS books have plenty background to be going on with.

 

[marleycat]

I would keep with the NWOD book and maybe try to find W:tA used or on E-Bay cheap and wait till February and pick up the Foresaken book, good luck

 

[malichai]

So you might be able to pick up the GURPS WoD supplements more cheaply than the WW ones, and adapt to (say) D20 Modern, if you want a D20 version. Or Grim Tales. The GURPS books have plenty background to be going on with.

D20 modern? I haven't seen it or anything, but is it a level-less system?

 

[shady]

D20 modern? I haven't seen it or anything, but is it a level-less system?

Umm, no. It's D20 with rules for modern engagement (eg modern weapons) with more generic classes. Otherwise it plays much like D&D3E - prestige classes, feats, etc. Another major difference is that there's no epic level progression, I guess WotC assume nobody is going to run that long a campaign. Otherwise it's reasonably well supported - a monster book, a campaign book (feels much like shadowrun), third party magic, weapons, martial arts stuff. There's also the recent (and not very good) d20 Future book. Plus you could use Grim Tales from Badaxe games to layer some additional options on top of d20 modern, although the delta may not be enough to justify the purchase.

My assumption, given EnWorld's D20 focus, was that that was your starting point. Apologies if not. If it *is* your starting point, then you could use it as your rules base and layer WoD stuff on fairly easily, assuming you can pick up the background from somewhere (and the GURPS stuff is fairly compressed and clear from this point of view).

If you really want to move outside D20, you'd be better off with the new WoD stuff, since at least you'll get support if you want to move forward with the game. The licensing arrangements between WW and SJG got switched off after those core books (3 core games and 2 companions, I think) were published.

 

[malichai]

My assumption, given EnWorld's D20 focus, was that that was your starting point. Apologies if not. If it *is* your starting point, then you could use it as your rules base and layer WoD stuff on fairly easily, assuming you can pick up the background from somewhere (and the GURPS stuff is fairly compressed and clear from this point of view).

If you really want to move outside D20, you'd be better off with the new WoD stuff, since at least you'll get support if you want to move forward with the game. The licensing arrangements between WW and SJG got switched off after those core books (3 core games and 2 companions, I think) were published.

My mistake. I thought my original post indicated that I was looking to move to a level-less system. My apologies. You're assumptions are certainly valid w/o that knowledge.

Looks like our initial plan is to look at the new World of Darkness book and see about porting over Werewolf The Apocalypse to it. We'll also at least be taking a look at the old GURPS werewolf/vampire books since we picked some up. GURPS could have an edge simply because we play a combat heavy game, and supposedly GURPS has a better, albeit slower, combat system than WoD... (?)

Or, I suppose we could end up dumping the whole thing if we fall in love with Deadlands: Hell on Earth within the next few weeks as we also ordered some of those books (non-D20).

 

[Mercule]

Looks like our initial plan is to look at the new World of Darkness book and see about porting over Werewolf The Apocalypse to it. We'll also at least be taking a look at the old GURPS werewolf/vampire books since we picked some up. GURPS could have an edge simply because we play a combat heavy game, and supposedly GURPS has a better, albeit slower, combat system than WoD... (?)

The new WoD has much better (at least smoother) combat rules, by my reading (currently doing D&D, so haven't played). If you're looking for something more concrete/detailed/robust, I'd still recommend HERO over GURPS. Hero has a nicely scalable system that'll let you do anything from detailed hit locations, etc. to something as general as D&D, and you can layer the rules in as you get more proficient with the system.

 

[malichai]

HERO hasn't had a Wt:A conversion done already (as far as I know), so that would require a ton of extra work.

Don't get me wrong here, I enjoy D20. We have a D&D and a Star Wars game going that are great, I'd just like to take a break from it for at least one of our 2 games soon.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

GURPS is horrifically rules-heavy, and the new 4th edition doesn't make that any better. GURPS is the only game system I've ever seen where you calculate the amount of weight your character can lift over his head in one second using his left hand.

Here is what I do: I don't start with GURPS Basic, I start with GURPS Lite and then add the stuff from GURPS Basic that's useful for my campaign-

This makes GURPS rather rules light...