What is GURPS?

[Mercule]

I'm planning on trying out either GURPS or HERO; the beginning of this thread sold me on HERO over GURPS, but now I'm not so sure. You guys need to make up your mind!

I'm going to make a radical suggestion: Both games have "lite" versions that are freely downloadable (IIRC). Check out GURPS Lite and Hero Sidekick and see which floats your boat more.

I much prefer Hero over GURPS -- in fact I put the two almost at opposite ends of the love-loathe scale. To be honest, though, the Hero main book reads a lot like a dictionary. Very few game manuals are particularly exciting, but the first parts of the Hero book are exceptionally... reference-y. GURPS 3e was about the same level as D&D 2e for readability (again, IIRC). So, even if you prefer Hero to GURPS, you aren't going to cause yourself any undue pain by reading some GURPS.

As far as what I like about Hero, you literally only ever need the single core book to play. It has all the building blocks to assemble characters for any genre. The expansion books are either settings or provide some templates for critters, starting builds, sample magic systems (i.e. consistent spell "feel"), etc. But, you really don't need them. From just the core book, I've seen Iron Man, V:tM vampires, ninjas, psychic aliens, King Arthur knock-offs, an incubus, a duelist, Ars Magica style mages, AD&D style wizards, W:tA werewolves, a semi-Incarnum style cleric, space-opera characters, hard sci-fi characters, cyborgs, an intelligent sword PC, Cthulhu-esque pulp, X-Files, and a bunch of others. All of those worked extremely well without any additional books.

My understanding of GURPS is that, at least in 3e, you often needed to get the additional source books to get the powers you needed for those genres and that the different genres often did not play well with each other, in practice. My experience is that GURPS had too few base stats (4 IRRC) and a chain of odd dependencies that resulted in odd consequences and made the presented powers hard to customize. But, it's been over a decade since I've played GURPS, so that may be skewed.

What I will say is that one would expect my worst gaming moment would be when I tried to play the original Temple of Elemental Evil with 24 players, 12 of whom showed up drunk -- and I was sober. That was probably even more painful than it sounds. Playing GURPS beat it by miles. After playing GURPS, I honestly can't imagine why it made it past 1e or why anyone would play it. But, others apparently see something I don't.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

also to repeat:

GURPS3e was really good


GURPS4e is astonishing and made of awesome

- with Powers, Martial Arts, and Thaumatology it requires huge amounts of stubborn effort to run boring one-dimensional combats or create cookie-cutter warriors, wizards, supers, monks, etc. with it!

I agree. You'd have to want it to suck.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

The only real problem I have ever had with GURPS was not with the system at all. The largest issue has been with a huge lack of adventure support. Back when I had lots of prep time I didn't care. Now that pdf sales are so common I hope to see some adventures for GURPS.

Well, there are a few on e23. But in general, Steve Jackson Games learned that adventures simply don't sell all that well for GURPS.

Which is understandable - after all, GURPS supports a staggeringly wide selection of campaign settings and genres, and any adventure they publish will only work for a very small number of these settings. Compare that to D&D/d20, where many of the settings start out with fairly similar assumptions and many of the adventures can be easily adjusted to the local setting...

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

This is a very good GURPS discussion.

Now, you GURPS people. There's two (major) things that bug me about GURPS. I hope maybe you can help me out.

1. AFAIK, GURPS prices advantages after their game usefulness, right? Then how come skills are priced after how easy they are to learn vs. how useful they are?

2. Why are there three rolls in combat, i.e. why is either the attack roll or the defense roll there? Without any particular I have more or less a 50% of missing someone with a baseball bat. That's ok if the other guy is doding as crazy. But hey, after I make my 50 % attack roll - then the other guy gets to dodge!
So basically I stepping on my own toes and such to justify my immense miss chance or what.

Don't tell me that it represents the chance of landing a telling blow etc. In that case, the other guys defense should be subtracted from my chances then, and not be a separate roll.

Thanks.

 

[Nadaka]

This is a very good GURPS discussion.

Now, you GURPS people. There's two (major) things that bug me about GURPS. I hope maybe you can help me out.

1. AFAIK, GURPS prices advantages after their game usefulness, right? Then how come skills are priced after how easy they are to learn vs. how useful they are?

2. Why are there three rolls in combat, i.e. why is either the attack roll or the defense roll there? Without any particular I have more or less a 50% of missing someone with a baseball bat. That's ok if the other guy is doding as crazy. But hey, after I make my 50 % attack roll - then the other guy gets to dodge!
So basically I stepping on my own toes and such to justify my immense miss chance or what.

Don't tell me that it represents the chance of landing a telling blow etc. In that case, the other guys defense should be subtracted from my chances then, and not be a separate roll.

Thanks.

Once a defence has been used, it can not be used again in a round (there are ways of getting extra defenses). So if you have multiple attacks coming at the same target, his defenses can be overwhelmed.

 

[ExploderWizard]

This is a very good GURPS discussion.

Now, you GURPS people. There's two (major) things that bug me about GURPS. I hope maybe you can help me out.

1. AFAIK, GURPS prices advantages after their game usefulness, right? Then how come skills are priced after how easy they are to learn vs. how useful they are?

2. Why are there three rolls in combat, i.e. why is either the attack roll or the defense roll there? Without any particular I have more or less a 50% of missing someone with a baseball bat. That's ok if the other guy is doding as crazy. But hey, after I make my 50 % attack roll - then the other guy gets to dodge!
So basically I stepping on my own toes and such to justify my immense miss chance or what.

Don't tell me that it represents the chance of landing a telling blow etc. In that case, the other guys defense should be subtracted from my chances then, and not be a separate roll.

Thanks.

1) In short, yes. Do not mistake usefulness for combat effectiveness. The point value of a character is not always a measure of his/her usefulness in combat. A 300 point character could be a wealthy socialite with many allies and connections but only as good as a normal untrained person in a fight. That same 300 points could be used to build one monster of a fighter instead.

2)The D&D combat round assumes multiple swings/ defenses are happening each turn (just not all rolled for) The GURPS one second combat round assumes nothing. Your attack roll indicates that your attack was good enough to strike a foe for real effect. The attack roll of skill 10 represents someone with little training trying to hit a target while still thinking about defending. If that person really just wanted to smack his target with a bat, then he could All Out Attack at 14 skill, making his chance to score a meaningful hit much higher.

The defense roll is a chance to actually take action against a credible attack. In GURPS terms everyone in D&D is making an all out attack every turn, increasing thier hit chance and giving up an opportunity to make an active defense. The defense roll gives combatants a bit more control over thier own fate. One can choose to swing like mad or fight in a cooler headed style. I like these options.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Now, you GURPS people. There's two (major) things that bug me about GURPS. I hope maybe you can help me out.

1. AFAIK, GURPS prices advantages after their game usefulness, right? Then how come skills are priced after how easy they are to learn vs. how useful they are?

A good question. The best explanation is probably that for a game that tries to cover as many genres as GURPS, it is very hard to figure out how "useful" a particular skill is going to be. I mean, the Crossbow skill can be very useful in medieval fantasy, but it's next to useless in a modern-day setting where guns are much more common and useful. Trying to figure out what a skill should cost for every possible genre would be too much work - for either the authors or the GM of a particular time. So they went with the "ease of learning" angle instead.

2. Why are there three rolls in combat, i.e. why is either the attack roll or the defense roll there? Without any particular I have more or less a 50% of missing someone with a baseball bat. That's ok if the other guy is doding as crazy. But hey, after I make my 50 % attack roll - then the other guy gets to dodge!
So basically I stepping on my own toes and such to justify my immense miss chance or what.

Don't tell me that it represents the chance of landing a telling blow etc. In that case, the other guys defense should be subtracted from my chances then, and not be a separate roll.

OK, so you are assuming a weapon skill of 10. Your 50% chance to hit assumes the following:

- You don't have time to aim carefully - i.e., you are trying to hit within the space of a single second. If you are attempting to hit a completely unaware target and have time to aim carefully, a bonus would certainly be appropriate (I don't have the book with me, so I can't say what kind of bonus would be appropriate).
- You are also watching your own defense - you want to hit your opponent, but also want to avoid getting hit yourself, either by him or someone else. If you don't care about that, you can make an All-Out Attack for a +4 bonus - giving you a 90% hit chance!
- Furthermore, someone with a weapon skill of 10 is rather inexperienced - some experience and physical fitness usually translates into a weapon skill of at least 11 or 12, which means to hit chances of 62.5% or 74% - a huge difference in probabilities. True professionals - who have to fight on a regular basis - should probably have weapon skills of 13-14 or more.
- Turning Defenses into some kind of penalties doesn't work all that well with the bell curve of the dice penalties - even a small penalty can mean a huge reduction in the odds of hitting someone. Plus it's more math - GURPS has a "roll under" system instead of working with target numbers, so it makes calculating effective skill level an additional chore with which you don't want to deal during combat.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Once a defence has been used, it can not be used again in a round (there are ways of getting extra defenses). So if you have multiple attacks coming at the same target, his defenses can be overwhelmed.

That only applies for Parries and Blocks - Dodges can be used as often as you want. Granted, Dodge is usually the worst defense, but still...

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

As far as what I like about Hero, you literally only ever need the single core book to play. It has all the building blocks to assemble characters for any genre. The expansion books are either settings or provide some templates for critters, starting builds, sample magic systems (i.e. consistent spell "feel"), etc. But, you really don't need them. From just the core book, I've seen Iron Man, V:tM vampires, ninjas, psychic aliens, King Arthur knock-offs, an incubus, a duelist, Ars Magica style mages, AD&D style wizards, W:tA werewolves, a semi-Incarnum style cleric, space-opera characters, hard sci-fi characters, cyborgs, an intelligent sword PC, Cthulhu-esque pulp, X-Files, and a bunch of others. All of those worked extremely well without any additional books.

That's now pretty much true for the GURPS 4e Basic Set. Granted, that's now two books - but I don't think the page count is that different from Hero.

My understanding of GURPS is that, at least in 3e, you often needed to get the additional source books to get the powers you needed for those genres and that the different genres often did not play well with each other, in practice.

Again, that's fixed in 4E.

My experience is that GURPS had too few base stats (4 IRRC) and a chain of odd dependencies that resulted in odd consequences and made the presented powers hard to customize. But, it's been over a decade since I've played GURPS, so that may be skewed.

Nah, 3E indeed had some problems in that regard. But again, most of this has been fixed in 4E. And while there are still only four base stats, it's easy to modify derived values with advantages. Want more hit points than your base ST implies? Buy some levels of Extra Hit Points. The same is true for Will, Perception, Carrying Capacity and so forth. And all of these have flat costs per level, so it's much harder to min-max them.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Well, there are a few on e23. But in general, Steve Jackson Games learned that adventures simply don't sell all that well for GURPS.

Which is understandable - after all, GURPS supports a staggeringly wide selection of campaign settings and genres, and any adventure they publish will only work for a very small number of these settings. Compare that to D&D/d20, where many of the settings start out with fairly similar assumptions and many of the adventures can be easily adjusted to the local setting...

Thats why letting others publish adventures for those specialized markets would be so great. Requiring that such publications advertise that they are NOT SJ Games products, include no rules for play, and that they require the use of the GURPS basic rules(and whatever source/worldbook the adventure is for). Having a large base of scenarios available from 3rd party publishers may help core book sales.

The main reason I went from a decade of GURPS to 3E was the great selection of support material from guys like Green Ronin, Goodman games, and Necromancer. The WOTC adventures for 3E were kind of limited and I could get lots of great stuff from these other companies.
Even though I liked GURPS better as a system, I just didn't have the prep time available to create everything. Its kind of frustrating to have tons of awesome worldbooks to run games in and no adventures for any of them.

A supplement (non official product) agreement from SJ Games would be great. That way other publishers could take all the risk of adventures possibly not selling and SJ just might sell more rulebooks.