lot's of D&Ders, but does anyone play GURPS

[injijo]

Ive played at least one tabletop game in about 15 different role-playing systems and I gotta say Gurps is easily my favorite system. It allows for any setup but is still really detailed. The only problem is, no one i know around here(richmond VA) plays it. My friends from high school play, but they're two hours away and i cant make the drive enough to play consistent campaigns. The local shop mostly plays Vampire: The Masquerade and D&D 3rd edition. I find both of those games too limiting. It may just be the DM's, but I need a wide open system to play in. Anyway, I encourage everyone to take a look at gurpsand give it a try.
¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ mojo injiJo-Jojojo ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤
The Lord of [B]Scary!Edited by: injijo at: 2/17/02 5:41:04 pm

[Brelkor]

someone GAVE me a bunch of gurps books. They are rather complete in many areas, but i never felt the need to play it.

Gurps is like the oposite end of the spectrum from Rolemaster hehe.

[EZ_Swipey]

I always had a problem with gurps...

Namely, it is pretty much always better to buy up your int if you are going to have more than abut 3 skills, than it is to buy up the skills.

[EZ_Martard]

Having played a vast number of systems, GURPS is one of my least favorites that I will play. Meaning that I would never pick it, but don't mind it. Character creation can get down right insane (without the GCA) if you are allowed to use a fair number of books. The afore mentioned stat problem is also true. Dex and Int are linked to skills in such a way that it is often highly adventagous to have a very stat heavy character that is by large unskilled than to have a relatively average character with lots of skill. The points just don't work to your favor for skills. Also *most* GM's I have played under cannot get into there heads what an average person is, and what a good roll is. I end up in games that you practically have to have a crit success to actually suceed, granted this is not a fault of the system, but a fault that the system seems to have on GM's.
For the record, my favorite systems are D&D 2nd Ed, west end Star Wars, and 7th Sea.

'Do we have anything even resembling a plan??' - 13th Warrior

[EZ_Kintire]

I've played a good deal of gurps. Not a bad system, but has its flaws. IQ is far far too important, Dex is far too important.
Also, it is a little prone to powergaming.

I do prefer the design system to random generation though, which is a wargaming legacy that needs to die now. Its the main main flaw of 3rd edition... that and the class system.

[injijo]

Most of the problems with GURPS come with bad GMs. It's easier to GM a lot of other systems because they aren't so open ended. A lot of GM's end up giving out too many points and the players become to powerful, a lot of gm's let players start with too many points. It's true it is better to buy a really high Dex or Int then to buy several skills, but it's easy to fix that. I usually put a cap on the amount of points that a player can put into those two attributes and I disallow or alter defaults on a lot of skills.

[EZ_Telurinon]

The biggest problem I had with GURPS is that it is very difficult to make a decent Mage with the base 100 starting points...unless you go for one of the cliched powergaming routes. Dual Flame Jets, anyone? *yawn* Telurinon Aelvenborne, 50th Rogue of Black IsleMangore Orcsplitter, 39th Warrior of Black IsleDewin gan'Bran, 24th Wizard of black Isle
Skating away on the thin ice of a new day.

[injijo]

I disagree, you could make a decent mage with 100 points, especially if you added 10-20 pts of disadvantages and the 5 quirks. You could have like a 12 int and a 12str abd 3 levels of magical aptitute and still have like 20-45 points to spend on spells. Which could be like 15-30 spells at IQ level or higher. Unless you are talking about the mage: the ascension gurps translation, then I agree, but i think they are recommened to be 200-300 point characters.
However the basic book only has about 40 or so starting spells, So we created levelbased spells. The spell in the book is level 1. But for 2x the point cost and ^2 the mana cost you could get the output of the spell times two. And you can have a multiplier up to the level of magical aptitude you have. So you could buy up to Lighting 3 if you had magical aptitude 3. That would also do 3 times the damage of lighting 1, but it would also take 3 times the mana to cast it. We also bought the grimore book for extra spells.

[EZ_Telurinon]

By decent mage, I mean one capable of casting a couple decent level buffs, an attack spell or two in combat and not having to burn out 3 power stones to do it.

For instance, say you want to cast Charm on someone. Say you have Charm at level 15. Say the target of the spell is 5 hexes away from you. Fatigue Cost is 6 base, 5 with reduction for high skill. Since the range to the target is 5, you have a -4 to skill to cast it, giving you a 50% chance of success. Once cast, it is resisted by Will. Odds are in your favor here, but sill not 100%. If you are a pretty standard mage, you probably have a Str of 9 to 12. 5 points of Fatigue is a huge chunk of your casting ability taken up with a single spell.

The only reasonable way to make a reasonable Mage is with the bonus Fatigue advantage, but that is kind of cheesy. another thing you can do is set your game world in a high or very high mana zone so power stones recharge more quickly, but that has other drawbacks as well. Telurinon Aelvenborne, 50th Rogue of Black IsleMangore Orcsplitter, 39th Warrior of Black IsleDewin gan'Bran, 24th Wizard of black Isle
Skating away on the thin ice of a new day.

[injijo]

Ah, i see the main difference, I never add fatique for distance within the characters skill in hexes *2. So if the caster has a skill of 10, he can cast up to 20 yards away with out using up extra mana. I forgot we had changed that rule. After that 20 yards though, fatigue rises as normal. I dont really like couting hexes either though.

[EZ_Kintire]

Since when does GURPS add fatigue costs for distance? you get a penalty to skill, but there's no cost increase, except for some specific spells, like teleport.

That said, it is perfectly true that mages burn out terrifyingly quickly. You just have to have high skills for the fatigue breaks... which cuts down the number you can have of course. Also, the magic system is very mechanistic and flavourless, or at last I find it so. The Gurps Voodoo magic system is much better...

[EZ_Telurinon]

I really like the GURPS Vooodoo book. Lots of flavor in it. I'd love to try a game of it with a good GM... Telurinon Aelvenborne, 50th Rogue of Black IsleMangore Orcsplitter, 39th Warrior of Black IsleDewin gan'Bran, 24th Wizard of black Isle
Skating away on the thin ice of a new day.

[EZ_Turlo]

Gurps has several good ideas. The magic system is interesting. However, when we tried to run a combat with multiple skilled opponents, it took...forever. There are way too many skills that allow seperate rules for parry, etc. that take away from the flow of the game. At least that is my experience in the matter.

[EZ_Telurinon]

Turlo, yes, that happens frequently.

Our group took to using the rules for quicker combat from the GURPS Supers book. Essentially, if I recall correctly, instead of parry being rolled seperately, it was folded into the to hit roll as a sort of average. It really helped reduce combat length, although you do lose an element of the tactical game.

It's a trade off. You'd have to try it and decide for yourselves whether it would benefit your group. Telurinon Aelvenborne, 50th Rogue of Black IsleMangore Orcsplitter, 39th Warrior of Black IsleDewin gan'Bran, 24th Wizard of black Isle
Skating away on the thin ice of a new day.

[injijo]

I guess we're just good at it, but our combat always flows smoothly. I guess an experience GM will help it a lot too.

[EZ_Telurinon]

The problem lies with characters who have 16 or better Defensive skills (Dodge, Parry, or Block). Hitting them is virtually impossible if they do not do something foolish like try to fight waist deep in thick sucking mud. Telurinon Aelvenborne, 50th Rogue of Black IsleMangore Orcsplitter, 39th Warrior of Black IsleDewin gan'Bran, 24th Wizard of black Isle
Skating away on the thin ice of a new day.

I don't know if there is a god; I think there is some power behind all of this but I don't think it is aware of us as individuals.
If it is, I am SO going to kick it's ass when I meet it.

[injijo]

Usually when characters have high Def skills they have proportionaly high attack skills. So If a player is badass enoguh to pass by 10 on an attack the defending player has to defend by 10. If he defends normally than I make the hit normal and not critical. It works the same if players have a 20 attack or a 50 attack skill, except it stacks.

[EZ_Thanak Kalahed]

everytime I play or GM GURPS, we use double the cost for IQ and STR and give a little more points to compensate... kind of fix the probleme.

Still you alway manage to have the 15 IQ, edietic memory lvl 2 I put 4 point into a skill to have it to 20 type of player.

Along the line of GURPS I like the Hero system too... But then again you have to raise the cost of Dex from 3 to 4 character point if you want some kind of balance.
Baron Thanak Kalahed
Assassin in the land of Morell Thule
Nightshade of the Ys server

[EZ_Kintire]

you DOUBLE strength? Halve it more like....

Feint maneuver. you have to use it at high skill. which is realistic enough I suppose

[EZ_Thanak Kalahed]

Agh my bad, we double the cost of DX and IQ... str we leave as it is.

[EZ_Kintire]

Ah, yes. Much more sensible.