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
What is your Opinion of GURPS?
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="Tratyn Runewind" data-source="post: 1449363" data-attributes="member: 685"><p>Hello, </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Cinematic stuff can work just fine in GURPS <em>if</em> both the PCs and NPCs are built properly for it. In addition to properly cinematic stats, PCs will need a healthy dose of that most cinematic Advantage, Luck - preferably, at the maximum 100-point "Ridiculous Luck" level. NPCs will need to be as incompetent as they are in the movies, as well, with even the more competent "boss" NPCs having easily-exploited cinematic Disadvantages such as Megalomania, Overconfidence, or Unluck of their own. With just these simple guidelines, you can run a pretty cinematic campaign even without using any of GURPS's special little cinematic rules tweaks. </p><p></p><p>Outright four-color superhero stuff will require a bit more rules tweaking, and unfortunately, the tools provided for that in <em>GURPS Supers</em> mostly bite. Hard. Still, characters with superheroic point totals can work fairly well if they avoid the worst of the rules from that book - the mighty Galactic Patrol members of <em>GURPS Lensman</em> are a decent example, being built more from <em>GURPS Psionics</em> than <em>GURPS Supers</em>.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This sounds <em>more</em> munchkiny than the GURPS standard rules, not less. Munchkins will simply refuse to take Disadvantages, and still have the same number of points as the role-players who took them. And if players are forced to take Disadvantages, the system winds up being little different in practice than the regular rules, except for reduced flexibility - 100-point characters forced to take 20 points of no-benefit Disadvantages are just 80-point characters. Munchkins will still gravitate towards Disadvantages that can be easily compensated for - say, Enemies who can be easily killed off, or bad Reputations that they would likely acquire soon anyway with their munchkiny actions.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>"Story importance"? I don't believe this should ever be something the PCs have to pay for - they should always be important in some way to every story they are involved in, otherwise, why would they bother to run the risks of being involved in it at all? They don't always have to be the most powerful or important characters in town, but minimizing their importance too much will turn a campaign into one long session of "well, why don't Elminster/Khelben/Drizzt get off his fat keister and do something about this problem?" PCs might perhaps buy "story importance" <em>relative to each other</em>, but that sort of thing gets very close to cans of worms that are better left closed, <em>especially</em> with munchkiny players. The only "disadvantages" that I could reasonably see charging for are those that give enough extra role-playing opportunities to allow a character to rack up lots of "good role-playing" bonus experience points. Such "disadvantages" would be something of an investment, accepting lesser abilities now (because of points spent on the "disadvantages") for the chance of quicker advancement in the future through display of one's mad role-playing skillz. And I don't think it would be an easy thing to balance out point costs and experience awards for that sort of thing, especially if multiple players take them and compete for the spotlight in hopes of making their "investment" pay off.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Yes, this idea defies all logic - "I'm thoroughly nearsighted, so of course I decided to become the party's archer." Yet D&D uses it quite a bit because it feels it has to keep its Classes balanced against each other (especially since all Classes now use the same XP advancement table). The Archmage, for example, balances its new and powerful magical abilities by giving up its old and powerful magical abilities (permanent high-level spell slots). Heaven forbid a class called "Archmage" should actually be outright superior in spellcasting to other spellcasting classes...</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I always get a laugh out of this - two common gripes about GURPS, "combat is too slow" and "characters die too easily". Huh? If dudes are dropping dead so easily, what's slowing things up? Perhaps it's the fact that players used to the hack, hack, hack of D&D fighting haven't learned proper use of the "Feint" action, which lowers those annoying high defenses. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Don't know who you've been playing with, but they don't seem to have spent many points on Hobby Skill: Min-Max GURPS Character. Most wizards I've seen buy as much cheap Extra Fatigue as they're allowed, rather than taking the much more expensive route of buying up ST itself - often, they'll LOWER their ST for more points to buy the Extra Fatigue. True GURPS munchkins will even gain no actual physical benefit at all from this Fatigue, as it will be bought at even cheaper rates with the "usable for spellcasting only" Limitation. See <em>GURPS Myth</em> for some sterling examples here.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>All too true, alas. Sad was the day when so many of the poorly thought-out concepts from that work were effectively incorporated into the core rules in other supplements, and, eventually, the Compendia.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>May it be so; please, o Powers of Gaming, let it be so...</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This clears up one of my biggest annoyances with GURPS - the brutal kludges used to prevent giants, centaurs, and other non-stupid high-ST races from being spellcasting machines. The reduction of the need for <em>every</em> differently-sized-than-human monster to have "split HT" and the "Extra Hit Points" Advantage or the "Reduced Hit Points" Disadvantage is another benefit of this welcome change.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>That system is workable, but I really hope they have at least as an option in the new <em>GURPS Magic</em> a system similar to the "Ritual Magic" system from <em>GURPS Voodoo</em>, with the seperate Colleges as skills ("Fire Magics", "Healing Magics", "Metamagic", etc.) and the individual spells as Maneuvers defaulting from those Skills, and executable only by characters with appropriate pre-requisites, similar to the current GURPS spell pre-req webs.</p><p></p><p>Other things I'd like to see in the book include the ditching of the "hard-coded" Magery, damage, and effectiveness limits, and the inclusion of the excellent "Unlimited Mana" rules mentioned a time or two above (which truly deserve a place in the book). The "Hermetic Magic" rules from <em>GURPS Cabal</em>, or at least guidelines for adding similar flavor-rich systems atop the deliberatly-generic standard magic rules in your own campaigns, would also be a welcome sight.</p><p></p><p>Hope this helps! <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Tratyn Runewind, post: 1449363, member: 685"] Hello, Cinematic stuff can work just fine in GURPS [i]if[/i] both the PCs and NPCs are built properly for it. In addition to properly cinematic stats, PCs will need a healthy dose of that most cinematic Advantage, Luck - preferably, at the maximum 100-point "Ridiculous Luck" level. NPCs will need to be as incompetent as they are in the movies, as well, with even the more competent "boss" NPCs having easily-exploited cinematic Disadvantages such as Megalomania, Overconfidence, or Unluck of their own. With just these simple guidelines, you can run a pretty cinematic campaign even without using any of GURPS's special little cinematic rules tweaks. Outright four-color superhero stuff will require a bit more rules tweaking, and unfortunately, the tools provided for that in [i]GURPS Supers[/i] mostly bite. Hard. Still, characters with superheroic point totals can work fairly well if they avoid the worst of the rules from that book - the mighty Galactic Patrol members of [i]GURPS Lensman[/i] are a decent example, being built more from [i]GURPS Psionics[/i] than [i]GURPS Supers[/i]. This sounds [i]more[/i] munchkiny than the GURPS standard rules, not less. Munchkins will simply refuse to take Disadvantages, and still have the same number of points as the role-players who took them. And if players are forced to take Disadvantages, the system winds up being little different in practice than the regular rules, except for reduced flexibility - 100-point characters forced to take 20 points of no-benefit Disadvantages are just 80-point characters. Munchkins will still gravitate towards Disadvantages that can be easily compensated for - say, Enemies who can be easily killed off, or bad Reputations that they would likely acquire soon anyway with their munchkiny actions. "Story importance"? I don't believe this should ever be something the PCs have to pay for - they should always be important in some way to every story they are involved in, otherwise, why would they bother to run the risks of being involved in it at all? They don't always have to be the most powerful or important characters in town, but minimizing their importance too much will turn a campaign into one long session of "well, why don't Elminster/Khelben/Drizzt get off his fat keister and do something about this problem?" PCs might perhaps buy "story importance" [i]relative to each other[/i], but that sort of thing gets very close to cans of worms that are better left closed, [i]especially[/i] with munchkiny players. The only "disadvantages" that I could reasonably see charging for are those that give enough extra role-playing opportunities to allow a character to rack up lots of "good role-playing" bonus experience points. Such "disadvantages" would be something of an investment, accepting lesser abilities now (because of points spent on the "disadvantages") for the chance of quicker advancement in the future through display of one's mad role-playing skillz. And I don't think it would be an easy thing to balance out point costs and experience awards for that sort of thing, especially if multiple players take them and compete for the spotlight in hopes of making their "investment" pay off. Yes, this idea defies all logic - "I'm thoroughly nearsighted, so of course I decided to become the party's archer." Yet D&D uses it quite a bit because it feels it has to keep its Classes balanced against each other (especially since all Classes now use the same XP advancement table). The Archmage, for example, balances its new and powerful magical abilities by giving up its old and powerful magical abilities (permanent high-level spell slots). Heaven forbid a class called "Archmage" should actually be outright superior in spellcasting to other spellcasting classes... I always get a laugh out of this - two common gripes about GURPS, "combat is too slow" and "characters die too easily". Huh? If dudes are dropping dead so easily, what's slowing things up? Perhaps it's the fact that players used to the hack, hack, hack of D&D fighting haven't learned proper use of the "Feint" action, which lowers those annoying high defenses. Don't know who you've been playing with, but they don't seem to have spent many points on Hobby Skill: Min-Max GURPS Character. Most wizards I've seen buy as much cheap Extra Fatigue as they're allowed, rather than taking the much more expensive route of buying up ST itself - often, they'll LOWER their ST for more points to buy the Extra Fatigue. True GURPS munchkins will even gain no actual physical benefit at all from this Fatigue, as it will be bought at even cheaper rates with the "usable for spellcasting only" Limitation. See [i]GURPS Myth[/i] for some sterling examples here. All too true, alas. Sad was the day when so many of the poorly thought-out concepts from that work were effectively incorporated into the core rules in other supplements, and, eventually, the Compendia. May it be so; please, o Powers of Gaming, let it be so... This clears up one of my biggest annoyances with GURPS - the brutal kludges used to prevent giants, centaurs, and other non-stupid high-ST races from being spellcasting machines. The reduction of the need for [i]every[/i] differently-sized-than-human monster to have "split HT" and the "Extra Hit Points" Advantage or the "Reduced Hit Points" Disadvantage is another benefit of this welcome change. That system is workable, but I really hope they have at least as an option in the new [i]GURPS Magic[/i] a system similar to the "Ritual Magic" system from [i]GURPS Voodoo[/i], with the seperate Colleges as skills ("Fire Magics", "Healing Magics", "Metamagic", etc.) and the individual spells as Maneuvers defaulting from those Skills, and executable only by characters with appropriate pre-requisites, similar to the current GURPS spell pre-req webs. Other things I'd like to see in the book include the ditching of the "hard-coded" Magery, damage, and effectiveness limits, and the inclusion of the excellent "Unlimited Mana" rules mentioned a time or two above (which truly deserve a place in the book). The "Hermetic Magic" rules from [i]GURPS Cabal[/i], or at least guidelines for adding similar flavor-rich systems atop the deliberatly-generic standard magic rules in your own campaigns, would also be a welcome sight. Hope this helps! :) [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
What is your Opinion of GURPS?
Top