What is GURPS?

[Jürgen Hubert]

Would you mind expanding on that point, just a bit? Sorry, I know it's not quite on topic, but I'm intrigued. To be honest, I never gave Exalted a fair go - it got the 'don't like the looks of you' treatment, and was thereafter shunned. Occasionally, I'll do that.

Sure. In D&D, the default assumption is that the PCs go on some sort of "Quest" - they need to retrieve an item, defeat a bad guy (or a group of them), and so forth. The reward usually includes either money or better equipment. Once they have completed the Quest, they move on to the next one. Often they are given those Quests by some sort of NPC, and sometimes they figure out what to do by themselves (like finding clues to how they can destroy the Evil Artifact). But in general, the reason for the Quest comes from the outside.

I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with that approach - or even that this is the only approach possible in D&D. But it seems to be the most common and the general default assumption.

In the default Exalted campaigns - where the PCs are Solar Exalted - things are very different. Instead of running Quest-based campaigns, the adventures are motivated by the goals and ambitions of the PCs themselves. Basically, the game asks the question:

"You have the power to change the world - so now what are you going to do with it?"

This is a question the players have to answer, since each and every Solar PCs has some sort of motivation for how he plans to change the world in a major way (only people who have such ambitions become Solars in the first place). And thus, adventures don't spring from Quests, but from the choices and goals the PCs set for themselves.

As an example, a goal for a campaign arc might be: "We want to turn this province of the Realm to become independent and kick the Dragon-Blooded out." The PCs aren't doing this because someone told them to, but simply because they have seen how the Dragon-Blooded are tyrannizing the locals and want to do something about it. Now they need to figure out how to do this. They could openly conquer the province all by themselves, but that will draw a lot of attention to them and might make them enemies they are not ready for. They could begin a campaign of assassination against the Dragon-Blooded without getting detected as the assassins. They could use social manipulation to get the local Dragon-Blooded to turn upon themselves, and incite the population to revolt. They could try to convince the local spirit courts to side with them and sabotage the Dragon-Blooded.

There's a large number of possibilities on how to approach this, and each has its own advantages and disadvantages - and might lead to future complication and enemies. The PCs must decide for themselves how far they want to go and which of their ideals they want to compromise. Their moral and ethical choices will have consequences, but there is no higher moral authority who is able and willing to punish them for their mistakes - instead, their choices will color their relationships with their peers and inferiors.


In short, the PCs have great freedom to do what they want, and how they want - but there is also no one else whom they can blame for their mistakes. If they make the wrong decisions, a lot of people will die or suffer even worse fates. And sometimes this will happen even if they might the right choices - then, they get to decide who will live, and who gets to die. And they have no one to appeal to to ease their conscience.


And that's also how I will run future epic-level D&D campaigns: The PCs are metaphorical giants striding across the world, able to topple entire nations when they set their minds to it. But with that power also comes grave responsibility, and if the PCs have any morals at all, they need to face that people will suffer for both their mistakes and their inactions - and learn to live with it somehow.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

OK, I rest my case, you do not understand.

You failed to make your point.

Lets talk about mechanics.

True. But as I warned, mechanics is more than character creation. When discussing GURPS it seems inevitable that some people forget this.
Min-maxers and powergamers love GURPS, no doubt.

Min-maxers will find something to exploit in every game system - definitely including D&D. True, GURPS lends itself to abuse when the GM isn't careful about what kinds of advantages and disadvantages he permits in his campaign. But with some care, most abuses are easily avoidable.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Great! Thanks for responding, and clearly and eloquently at that. Whether or not I'll let up on my fervent distaste for all things Exalted remains to be seen , but I can definitely see how - as with other RPG books, such as GURPS supplements, which you also mentioned - the book(s) in question might help a GM to come to a different understanding of certain other systems and/or settings they might choose to use.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Great! Thanks for responding, and clearly and eloquently at that. Whether or not I'll let up on my fervent distaste for all things Exalted remains to be seen , but I can definitely see how - as with other RPG books, such as GURPS supplements, which you also mentioned - the book(s) in question might help a GM to come to a different understanding of certain other systems and/or settings they might choose to use.

Well, truth to be told the rule system is a bit dodgy at times. But parts of it are still nonetheless impressive. I mean, D&D 4E has a lot of very cool powers suitable for use in combat. So has Exalted - but what really impressed me is the sheer range of cool powers for use outside of combat. For controlling ships, persuasion of crowds, investigation of secrets... heck, they even made the Bureaucracy skill look cool!

In Exalted, there's almost always several ways of dealing with a problem, instead of just combat - something that I wish the 4E powers would support better...

 

[pawsplay]

No, it is not. In GURPS sword does about 1D damage and 9mm handgun does 2D+2. In reality, if somebody hits you with a sword, you die; with handguns you probably die (without modern medicine at least).

Neither is true. Most handgun wounds are not immediately fatal, and more people died of infected wounds than ever died of super ninja sword moves in history.

 

[pawsplay]

GURPS has a huge number of well researched, written and playtested supplements that are useful as sourcebooks even if you don't play GURPS. However, those supplements are not neccessarily balanced with the Core rules or with other supplements- they're designed to model a particular focused setting or campaign style. For instance, the Core rules for psionics are not as flashy and are more expensive than in some of the sci-fi or superheroic supplements. Where a Core PC may spend a host of build points to telekinetically lift a bowling ball, a supers Teke could spend the same amount of build points and toss a motorcycle.

In principle, this is a fair complaint, but
* As of 4e, all super powers, be they psionic or mutant, use the same advantages to build them
* Even in 3e, telekinesis was actually one of the few ways for a "normal" character to do insane amounts of damage on a budget. Forget bowling balls... lifting tons was not out of the question, and 4e is actually kind of a TK nerf.
* As far as I can recall, there is no 3e "super telekinesis" power anyway, I think they just made you buy psionc telekinesis and call it super.

So your criticism makes sense, if you refer to a previous version and use a completely differently example. I believe the comparison you were looking for was "various ways to do 3d6 points of fire damage at a range."

 

[pawsplay]

For certain values of simple. A vanishingly small number of values.

Most non-gamers consider Monopoly to be a complex game and Risk to be taxing. Yes, Hero (sticking with my experiences) involves balanced, internally consistent rules with 3rd grade math. But it still isn't exactly what I'd throw down in front of a green player to digest on their own.

That's how I learned it, and my previous experience was with D&D, AD&D, TMNT and Other Strangeness, Star Wars (D6), Marvel Super Heroes, Talislanta 2e, Runequest, and GURPS. Piece of cake.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

How I became a GURPS fan...

A few years ago I sat down at my computer with a very ambitious goal. I was going to rewrite the D&D Player's Handbook (3.5) to better satisfy my need for more realism and detail. After about 60 pages into my outline, I realized the end result really wasn't going to be D&D anymore at all.

So I came to the conclusion that what I really wanted wasn't D&D, but another game altogether. So I started searching around. The game I was looking for had to meet certain criteria:

1. Highly customizable characters.
2. The ability to create characters that resembled real people more so than "video game" characters.
3. Lethal combat. No matter how great a warrior was, a commoner with a knife had to at least be a minor threat.
4. Combat needed to have options. "Fighters" needed as many cool tricks as "Wizards".
5. No Vancian magic system. Magic needed to be more flexible.
6. Interesting critical hits and failures.
7. Interesting combat. I wanted more options for different combat techniques.
8. And the most important thing: Players needed to be rewarded for being clever and strategic in a manner more meaningful than just "+2 to hit for flanking".

In the end, I settled on GURPS. It hit all of the above criteria and was designed with the idea that you can build everything around real-world simulation. But can it do it without dragging the game to a snail's pace?

It does, and it does it well. All the complexity is in character creation. So the good news is that you can make uber-detailed and interesting characters of any genre. The bad news is that character creation can take hours.

It's worth it to me.

So a little over a year ago I dropped my D&D 3.5 campaign in favor of GURPS. I reveled in the "simulationist" aspects of the game, and I've had a lot of fun with it.

So now I have GURPS for my "hardcore" gritty campaign and D&D4e for my high action "over the top" campaign.

And I'm very happy with both.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Neither is true. Most handgun wounds are not immediately fatal, and more people died of infected wounds than ever died of super ninja sword moves in history.

In my experience, many complains about the supposed lack of realism of GURPS can be traced back to that the complainant had done less research on the subject than the authors of GURPS books.

Say what you will about GURPS, but the research and playtesting that have gone into GURPS books are top-notch, and are, in fact, setting the industry standard for the most part. Only Wizards of the Coast matches Steve Jackson Games on playtesting, and even then not with all their books.

 

[Storm Raven]

No, it is not. In GURPS sword does about 1D damage and 9mm handgun does 2D+2. In reality, if somebody hits you with a sword, you die; with handguns you probably die (without modern medicine at least).

I'm left to wonder about casualty lists from actual historical battles, which usually list two to three times as many wounded as killed - and the weapons normally used were swords, spears, guns, and artillery.

I guess those battles just weren't very realistic.