Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Trying out new systems
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Mailanka" data-source="post: 6109221" data-attributes="member: 6678497"><p>No actual GURPS fans around here? Then I'll bite:</p><p></p><p>If you want to get a glimpse of how GURPS works, look up GURPS Lite (I can't post a link, it seems, because I haven't posted enough yet). It's free, and it'll give you an idea how it works. If you want to invest more deeply, and you're a fan of D&D, try GURPS Characters, GURPS Campaigns (those are the main books), and the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy series (in particular, DF 1, 2 and 3). GURPS Magic might be worth a look. If you're a fan of Fantasy, but not dungeon crawling, try GURPS Fantasy instead of Dungeon Fantasy.</p><p></p><p>GURPS is very different from D20. Where D20 is <em>class</em> based, GURPS is <em>point</em> based. That is, instead of choosing your class, you get a budget of points with which you can built your character, and you can build him however you want, within the limits the GM places. Many GMs use "Templates," which are sort of pre-written character choices to cut down on the options, similar to classes but with more freedom. And as others have said, it uses 3d6 rather than a d20, which gives it a bell-curve, which I quite like. GURPS is also <em>very very detailed</em>. D20 gives you characer options in big chunks: Choose your class, get a big +1 modifier to a broad skill, pick a feat or 2. GURPS gives you ~150-300 points for most starting characters (though some campaigns will have more or less) and then proceeds to account for each point. Skills can cost as little as 1 point, for example, and there's an array of very cheap advantages called Perks that never cost more than 1 point. The result is that you get exactly the character you want, but you also have to do quite some work when building your character, and you can't really just say "I just want a half-orc fighter, man, just give me a half-orc fighter!" Unless you use templates, of course.</p><p></p><p>Skills are based on your attributes, usually Dexterity for physical skills and Intelligence for mental skills. Skills are rated from "Easy" to "Hard." Skills start very cheap and get progressively more expensive until they flatline at 4 points per level. The skills tend to be highly nuanced and specific (for example, a doctor might need to learn: Physician, Diagnosis, Surgery and Pharmacy, as opposed to "Medicine" in other games). If that's not nuanced enough for you, there are techniques as an optional part of the game, sub-divisions of skills. Mostly, you see these in martial arts games where the exact nature of one's technique is interesting to the player.</p><p></p><p>Combat is also fine-grained. Turns are split into seconds (one turn per second), and distances split into yards. On your turn, you get to choose a single maneuver, though there are plenty of options in a given maneuver that might allow you to do things like make rapid strikes, attack specific hit locations, or make your attack harder to defend against in some way. GURPS doesn't have "Armor Class," but instead, those who wish to defend roll against one of their defenses (usually Dodge or Parry) and if they succeed, they defend against the attack. Armor is represented by a reduction to damage inflicted, and sufficiently tough armor can easily reduce an attack to no damage. Characters are not stacks of hitpoints, though, and GURPS death-spirals very quickly, so a single bad hit can be enough to lay you out, especially if its from something like a gun. Thus, I find GURPS combat often feels about being one bad slip from death or great bodily harm all the time... which can make for a very exciting game! There are some options to mitigate that a bit, though.</p><p></p><p>GURPS is a "Generic, Universal" RPG. It's meant to run any genre and apply its rules to any game. Thus, it needs some kind of baseline, and it tends to take realism as that baseline. Thus, GURPS has a reputation for being "gritty and realistic." It doesn't have to be: I use it exclusively for cinematic, high-powered games, but it does tend to ground things like the damage, weight and costs of its weapons on actual, real-world statistics, and the hit points of things are determined consistently by the mass of them, and so on. As a result, GURPS supplements tend to be rigorously researched, which makes them valuable even if you're not a fan of GURPS.</p><p></p><p>GURPS is a broad, rich, deep game, and it can intimidate people who are dipping their toes into the water. I recommend GURPS Dungeon Fantasy (or GURPS Action, if you prefer action movies, or GURPS Monster Hunters if you prefer hunting monsters in a modern setting) because it tends to break the game down, show you what elements to focus on, show you what rules to play with and how they work, and it does a lot of the work upfront for you, especially for character creation. I use those books as templates for my own GURPS campaign design.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Mailanka, post: 6109221, member: 6678497"] No actual GURPS fans around here? Then I'll bite: If you want to get a glimpse of how GURPS works, look up GURPS Lite (I can't post a link, it seems, because I haven't posted enough yet). It's free, and it'll give you an idea how it works. If you want to invest more deeply, and you're a fan of D&D, try GURPS Characters, GURPS Campaigns (those are the main books), and the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy series (in particular, DF 1, 2 and 3). GURPS Magic might be worth a look. If you're a fan of Fantasy, but not dungeon crawling, try GURPS Fantasy instead of Dungeon Fantasy. GURPS is very different from D20. Where D20 is [I]class[/I] based, GURPS is [I]point[/I] based. That is, instead of choosing your class, you get a budget of points with which you can built your character, and you can build him however you want, within the limits the GM places. Many GMs use "Templates," which are sort of pre-written character choices to cut down on the options, similar to classes but with more freedom. And as others have said, it uses 3d6 rather than a d20, which gives it a bell-curve, which I quite like. GURPS is also [I]very very detailed[/I]. D20 gives you characer options in big chunks: Choose your class, get a big +1 modifier to a broad skill, pick a feat or 2. GURPS gives you ~150-300 points for most starting characters (though some campaigns will have more or less) and then proceeds to account for each point. Skills can cost as little as 1 point, for example, and there's an array of very cheap advantages called Perks that never cost more than 1 point. The result is that you get exactly the character you want, but you also have to do quite some work when building your character, and you can't really just say "I just want a half-orc fighter, man, just give me a half-orc fighter!" Unless you use templates, of course. Skills are based on your attributes, usually Dexterity for physical skills and Intelligence for mental skills. Skills are rated from "Easy" to "Hard." Skills start very cheap and get progressively more expensive until they flatline at 4 points per level. The skills tend to be highly nuanced and specific (for example, a doctor might need to learn: Physician, Diagnosis, Surgery and Pharmacy, as opposed to "Medicine" in other games). If that's not nuanced enough for you, there are techniques as an optional part of the game, sub-divisions of skills. Mostly, you see these in martial arts games where the exact nature of one's technique is interesting to the player. Combat is also fine-grained. Turns are split into seconds (one turn per second), and distances split into yards. On your turn, you get to choose a single maneuver, though there are plenty of options in a given maneuver that might allow you to do things like make rapid strikes, attack specific hit locations, or make your attack harder to defend against in some way. GURPS doesn't have "Armor Class," but instead, those who wish to defend roll against one of their defenses (usually Dodge or Parry) and if they succeed, they defend against the attack. Armor is represented by a reduction to damage inflicted, and sufficiently tough armor can easily reduce an attack to no damage. Characters are not stacks of hitpoints, though, and GURPS death-spirals very quickly, so a single bad hit can be enough to lay you out, especially if its from something like a gun. Thus, I find GURPS combat often feels about being one bad slip from death or great bodily harm all the time... which can make for a very exciting game! There are some options to mitigate that a bit, though. GURPS is a "Generic, Universal" RPG. It's meant to run any genre and apply its rules to any game. Thus, it needs some kind of baseline, and it tends to take realism as that baseline. Thus, GURPS has a reputation for being "gritty and realistic." It doesn't have to be: I use it exclusively for cinematic, high-powered games, but it does tend to ground things like the damage, weight and costs of its weapons on actual, real-world statistics, and the hit points of things are determined consistently by the mass of them, and so on. As a result, GURPS supplements tend to be rigorously researched, which makes them valuable even if you're not a fan of GURPS. GURPS is a broad, rich, deep game, and it can intimidate people who are dipping their toes into the water. I recommend GURPS Dungeon Fantasy (or GURPS Action, if you prefer action movies, or GURPS Monster Hunters if you prefer hunting monsters in a modern setting) because it tends to break the game down, show you what elements to focus on, show you what rules to play with and how they work, and it does a lot of the work upfront for you, especially for character creation. I use those books as templates for my own GURPS campaign design. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Trying out new systems
Top