Quote from: Skarg;1121693Well no, not the way you put it that I was responding to.

Yes, exactly the way I put it that you were responding to (glarf glarf garble goobleygook).

I was pointing out how you've been mischaracterizing what I said, just like the claim you made in the immediately preceding section, that I supported designing the game to support niche protection (I don't). You're extremifying my position in both cases, and then setting yourself up in opposition to what I never said. Based on your responses, we don't seem to actually disagree that much.

Quote from: Skarg;1121693But if their character is not someone good in a fight, I'll just make sure they understand that, not tell them they need to have a character that's good in a fight. And I would not ensure "that they all have things they're good at and nobody else is".

Here's another example. You're reading that as something I would enforce with all the coercive powers of GM. I find that ridiculous, it's best practices, not a law. I'm not going to tear up a character sheet or throw someone out because they really want to play a useless character. This isn't a matter of force, and that's so far from my way I thinking that I find it absurd.

But players generally don't want to play useless characters, and they do want to be able to shine at a few things. What I'm highlighting is the skill and communications gap, where they don't know how to make an effective character, inadvertently create characters that overlap too much, or create a character based on false expectations about the campaign.

Quote from: Skarg;1121693Yeah, I agree. We just have slightly different ideas, styles and/or experiences with player upsets.

It's almost never about player upsets, those are the extreme examples to illustrate the point, not the norm.

But it sounds like you play with a consistent group, with similar experience levels, and a shared set of expectations. Which means very little of what I've said applies to you, because I've been explicitly pointing out this is primarily an issue with new players, or where expectations change, for instance when switching to a new group, or trying something very different. If you have a stable group who all know each other and work well together, these things will generally get handled as part of the social interplay, without any need for specific attention.

Quote from: Pat;1121711But it sounds like you play with a consistent group, with similar experience levels, and a shared set of expectations. Which means very little of what I've said applies to you, because I've been explicitly pointing out this is primarily an issue with new players, or where expectations change, for instance when switching to a new group, or trying something very different. If you have a stable group who all know each other and work well together, these things will generally get handled as part of the social interplay, without any need for specific attention.

AD&D actually pointed that out as well. But the idiot brigade out there keep claiming it is some sort of lockdown declaration to "NEVER CHANGE ANYTHING!" When whats being said is. Change what you will. But keep in mind that A: understand the system first. B: Keep in mind that changes might break something. C: That your changes and style may be different from anothers. Keeping things on a more or less common ground makes transitioning groups less potentially onerous.

Same problem with Gurps. There are people who near fanatically cling to this belief that you MUST have EVERYTHING in the game every time everywhere. When the damn book tells you not to. Its up to the DM to prune the tree as it were and set some limits based on what their campaign and setting call for.

I don't have to much to add other than I'm enjoying the conversation and you guys are making me want to give GURPS another look.

Quote from: Brendan;1121729I don't have to much to add other than I'm enjoying the conversation and you guys are making me want to give GURPS another look.

Greetings!

I play DandD 5E. Long ago, I played in a Gurps campaign briefly. I never got into doing a Gurps campaign. However, I have been a loyal Gurps customer. I own Gurps Greece, Rome, Celts, Aztecs, Russia, Japan, China, Robin Hood, Egypt, Fantasy I, Fantasy II, and perhaps a good dozen others on historical civilizations, dinosaurs, monsters, and magic. All of these books are softcover, black and white art work within, about 200 pages or 300 pages, and are from 20 years ago and more. All are excellent resources, bursting with campaign ideas, NPC's, and wonderful chewy things for DM's of any campaign or game system.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

This is HERESY but... make it more like D&D.

Attributes: IQ is almost universally recognized as "too powerful/cheap", and Charisma is too cheap - according to Sean Punch /Kromm himself! Six abilities would function better. Dexterity might become too powerful (eh, probably not as much as D&D) if you don't keep the cost at 20/level, so split it between Dex and Agi if you want it to cost 10/level like everything else (and this STILL assumes picking locks requires the same talent than shooting arrows, but eh, at least if fits the archetypes).

So you got 7 attributes: Charisma Wisdom Intelligence Strength Dexterity Constitution (HT)... and Agility.

"Wisdom" is an odd thing, but GURPS already has means of further dividing it between perception and will if you really want to.

Skills: use "bang" skills to keep thing manageable. Maybe even call them "classes": barbarian, druid, bard, etc. In my own game I used about 8 skills... combat, survival, lore, etc.

Combat: use a d20. No, really. Makes combat faster and more exciting. Keep 3d6 for skills, works better than a d20. Also, get a decent critical hit table (RAW, "nothing happens" is the most likely result).

I wrote four extensive posts about the subject: https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/search?q=gurps.

... Also:

Quirks: probably you don't need 5 to start with.

Disads: well, I am not sure you need them in most cases. Just limit them severely.

Quote from: Brendan;1121729I don't have to much to add other than I'm enjoying the conversation and you guys are making me want to give GURPS another look.

Its a good system if you like freeform point buy systems like this. And like D&D its abserdly adaptable to about any setting you can imagine. Runner up being TSR's Marvel Superheroes, BESM and in a way Mekton Zeta as these too are pretty freeform systems at their hearts. Amazing Engine wanted to be this. But just never really attained that goal.

Quote from: Omega;1121717Same problem with Gurps. There are people who near fanatically cling to this belief that you MUST have EVERYTHING in the game every time everywhere. When the damn book tells you not to. Its up to the DM to prune the tree as it were and set some limits based on what their campaign and setting call for.

That's one of the reasons why I think it's a shame they abandoned the Powered by GURPS route. Paring down huge comprehensive set of options, like in the Basic Set, can be a lot of work, and it can end up in conflict with player expectations, if they come from games where anything official is permissible. More contained rulesets are less work for the GM, easier for newbies to grasp, and it can be easier to expand than to cut back.

Quote from: SHARK;1121736I play DandD 5E. Long ago, I played in a Gurps campaign briefly. I never got into doing a Gurps campaign. However, I have been a loyal Gurps customer. I own Gurps Greece, Rome, Celts, Aztecs, Russia, Japan, China, Robin Hood, Egypt, Fantasy I, Fantasy II, and perhaps a good dozen others on historical civilizations, dinosaurs, monsters, and magic. All of these books are softcover, black and white art work within, about 200 pages or 300 pages, and are from 20 years ago and more. All are excellent resources, bursting with campaign ideas, NPC's, and wonderful chewy things for DM's of any campaign or game system.

Yes, the 3E sourcebooks were great. Most of them are 128 pages, with a few larger, and some of the older saddle stitched books are smaller. For people who don't actively play GURPS, I think the 3E versions are usually better than their bigger 4E counterparts; the new books are much heavier on crunch and fiddly details.

Quote from: Eric Diaz;1121751Attributes: IQ is almost universally recognized as "too powerful/cheap", and Charisma is too cheap - according to Sean Punch /Kromm himself! Six abilities would function better. Dexterity might become too powerful (eh, probably not as much as D&D) if you don't keep the cost at 20/level, so split it between Dex and Agi if you want it to cost 10/level like everything else (and this STILL assumes picking locks requires the same talent than shooting arrows, but eh, at least if fits the archetypes).

So you got 7 attributes: Charisma Wisdom Intelligence Strength Dexterity Constitution (HT)... and Agility.

"Wisdom" is an odd thing, but GURPS already has means of further dividing it between perception and will if you really want to.

Skills: use "bang" skills to keep thing manageable. Maybe even call them "classes": barbarian, druid, bard, etc. In my own game I used about 8 skills... combat, survival, lore, etc.

This is brainstorming not a serious suggestion, but why not do away with the attributes? You touched on it with your offhand reference about how shooting a bow doesn't necessarily correlate with picking a lock, but that's a broader problem. What people are good at in real life doesn't come in small number of equally matched and discrete sets. Instead of having a stock set of X attributes each worth Y points a level, expand talents and have them take the role of attributes, and break up the remaining characteristics that fall under attributes and combine and reconfigure them in different ways. Allow them to be narrow or broad, and to overlap. This is another step away from the D&D model, and fits with GURPS' focus on realism. You can look at what we've discovered about human learning and potential in real life, what traits correlate with what based on studies of human learning, emotional and moral behavior, social skills, and athleticism, and try to map that to the game instead of forcing everything into neat packages.

Quote from: Eric Diaz;1121751get a decent critical hit table (RAW, "nothing happens" is the most likely result).

Remember that the defender gets no defence against a critical hit, so the result on the crit chart is only part of the effect of a critical.

Quote from: Pat;1121759This is brainstorming not a serious suggestion, but why not do away with the attributes? You touched on it with your offhand reference about how shooting a bow doesn't necessarily correlate with picking a lock, but that's a broader problem. What people are good at in real life doesn't come in small number of equally matched and discrete sets. Instead of having a stock set of X attributes each worth Y points a level, expand talents and have them take the role of attributes, and break up the remaining characteristics that fall under attributes and combine and reconfigure them in different ways. Allow them to be narrow or broad, and to overlap. This is another step away from the D&D model, and fits with GURPS' focus on realism. You can look at what we've discovered about human learning and potential in real life, what traits correlate with what based on studies of human learning, emotional and moral behavior, social skills, and athleticism, and try to map that to the game instead of forcing everything into neat packages.

Well, I kinda agree. It might make GURPS a completely different game instead of simply "house ruled", but it is a good ideas. For my own group, I think I'd put simplicity over detail and realism, but could work for other groups.

Quote from: dbm;1121766Remember that the defender gets no defence against a critical hit, so the result on the crit chart is only part of the effect of a critical.

Ah, yes, good catch! And since active defenses are quite powerful in GURPS, this is a very relevant effect.

However, I find that if you have a critical hit table (especially in GURPS where crits are hard to come by), having "nothing happens" as a common result ruins part of the fun.

GURPS has enough "roll the dice, nothing happens" in combat as it, I think, mostly because of active defenses.

Quote from: Pat;1121711You're extremifying my position in both cases, and then setting yourself up in opposition to what I never said. Based on your responses, we don't seem to actually disagree that much.

Oh, sorry then.

Yeah, we don't disagree on much.

Quote from: Pat;1121711Here's another example. You're reading that as something I would enforce with all the coercive powers of GM. I find that ridiculous, it's best practices, not a law. I'm not going to tear up a character sheet or throw someone out because they really want to play a useless character. This isn't a matter of force, and that's so far from my way I thinking that I find it absurd.

I didn't mean to suggest that.

Quote from: Pat;1121711... What I'm highlighting is the skill and communications gap, where they don't know how to make an effective character, inadvertently create characters that overlap too much, or create a character based on false expectations about the campaign.

Agreed.

Quote from: Pat;1121711But it sounds like you play with a consistent group, with similar experience levels, and a shared set of expectations. Which means very little of what I've said applies to you, because I've been explicitly pointing out this is primarily an issue with new players, or where expectations change, for instance when switching to a new group, or trying something very different. If you have a stable group who all know each other and work well together, these things will generally get handled as part of the social interplay, without any need for specific attention.

Yes, they do.

Although I have sometimes played with new and inexperienced people, and seem to be able to do those things with most of them, too. Unless they've got fixed expectations that don't work with my style. (e.g. "My starting character has two Very Fine rapiers enchanted with +3 to hit, +3 damage, which are not very expensive in GURPS. He keeps them poisoned at all times and has a gallon of weapon poison in his pack." He vanished (thankfully) when I mentioned the actual price/availability of enchantments.)

Quote from: Pat;1121759That's one of the reasons why I think it's a shame they abandoned the Powered by GURPS route. Paring down huge comprehensive set of options, like in the Basic Set, can be a lot of work, and it can end up in conflict with player expectations, if they come from games where anything official is permissible. More contained rulesets are less work for the GM, easier for newbies to grasp, and it can be easier to expand than to cut back.

Yes. Though they didn't abandon it entirely. They're just  s l o w. And they could (/should) have done far more. DFRPG is Powered by GURPS, and Kromm is writing another Powered by GURPS title currently.

Quote from: Pat;1121759This is brainstorming not a serious suggestion, but why not do away with the attributes? You touched on it with your offhand reference about how shooting a bow doesn't necessarily correlate with picking a lock, but that's a broader problem. What people are good at in real life doesn't come in small number of equally matched and discrete sets. Instead of having a stock set of X attributes each worth Y points a level, expand talents and have them take the role of attributes, and break up the remaining characteristics that fall under attributes and combine and reconfigure them in different ways. Allow them to be narrow or broad, and to overlap. This is another step away from the D&D model, and fits with GURPS' focus on realism. You can look at what we've discovered about human learning and potential in real life, what traits correlate with what based on studies of human learning, emotional and moral behavior, social skills, and athleticism, and try to map that to the game instead of forcing everything into neat packages.

Assuming you mean for DX and IQ but not for ST and HT, that sounds interesting. Another approach is to make increasing DX and IQ expensive enough that it gets quickly prohibitive, which is functionally similar but still allows for people to have different general levels of physical or mental ability.

Quote from: Skarg;1121818Although I have sometimes played with new and inexperienced people, and seem to be able to do those things with most of them, too. Unless they've got fixed expectations that don't work with my style. (e.g. "My starting character has two Very Fine rapiers enchanted with +3 to hit, +3 damage, which are not very expensive in GURPS. He keeps them poisoned at all times and has a gallon of weapon poison in his pack." He vanished (thankfully) when I mentioned the actual price/availability of enchantments.)

Brand new people are sometimes the easiest, because they have few preconceptions. Though that's not always true, because books, film, TV, and other forms of fiction give us certain expectations about how narrative situations will play out, and RPGs have their own conventions which often violate that (the hero doesn't always win is a big one). But the clash between the unspoken assumptions of players from different tables is typically a bigger challenge. Which can be very hard to talk about, because we don't pick up that kind of thing from a book. We learned things like who brings the snacks, how deadly the game is, how much competition is appropriate, all the other social conventions, plus all the minor house rules or precedents, through social osmosis. That means it operates below the level of conscious thought, which not only can be difficult to express, but it often operates at a moral level where what we're used to just feels right, and anything different feels wrong. That reflexive rejection can be intractable at a rational, didactic level; and something that needs to be handled by socialization and group dynamics, which requires a very different approach.

Quote from: Skarg;1121818Yes. Though they didn't abandon it entirely. They're just  s l o w. And they could (/should) have done far more. DFRPG is Powered by GURPS, and Kromm is writing another Powered by GURPS title currently.

Is Dungeon Fantasy officially Powered by GURPS? I thought it was just a standalone game, and checking the Powered by GURPS and the Dungeon Fantasy pages doesn't show a link.

I think there's a subtle but significant difference. If you have two games based on the same rules but with minor differences throughout, you have to read the whole thing each time to find the differences, and it can be hard to keep them straight. PbGs had the advantage of a relative stable core -- the 32 pages of 3E's GURPS Lite -- which you didn't have to re-read each time, because it stayed the same (more or less). The only thing you had to look for was new modular parts.

Quote from: Skarg;1121818Assuming you mean for DX and IQ but not for ST and HT, that sounds interesting.

I was initially thinking that, but I changed my mind as I was writing it. You could do it for all them. Break the attributes into their component parts, like HP or FP, and do the same with derived stats like Speed, and then reassemble them in different ways. The key isn't whether they're tied to some game mechanic like skills, but whether they're associated in the real world, and how. One non-insignificant issue would be overlap -- GURPS 4E books already spend a lot of time highlighting which metatraits may overlap, and this would make it worse.

Quote from: Morlock;1120245I really miss B&W art. AD&D had a lot of crappy B&W art, but all of it was evocative. And Trampier and Roslof were masterful. I'd love to see special edition of D&D 5e with old Trampier/Roslof/best of art next to new stuff, maybe from guys like MacDougall or Mike Mignola, etc.

I'm not an expert, but I've used GURPS a few times. If you like B&W and a slightly more straightforward system I'd go with 3rd edition. When 4th came out I couldn't stand it.

Quote from: Pat;1121861Is Dungeon Fantasy officially Powered by GURPS? I thought it was just a standalone game, and checking the Powered by GURPS and the Dungeon Fantasy pages doesn't show a link.

Well it says so on the box, the Kickstarter page, and the DriveThruRPG page. The SJGames description, while it doesn't mention that brand, does describe it: "It harnesses the customizing power of the award-winning Generic Universal RolePlaying System (GURPS), and streamlines it so you have exactly what you need to take fully-realized characters on fantastic adventures."

Quote from: Pat;1121861I think there's a subtle but significant difference. If you have two games based on the same rules but with minor differences throughout, you have to read the whole thing each time to find the differences, and it can be hard to keep them straight. PbGs had the advantage of a relative stable core -- the 32 pages of 3E's GURPS Lite -- which you didn't have to re-read each time, because it stayed the same (more or less). The only thing you had to look for was new modular parts.

I'm not familiar with all Powered By GURPS books' rules, but the description of the line says that they include "a specially adapted version of the GURPS Lite rules in each one". The huge GURPS World War II line is Powered by GURPS, and is certainly much more involved than GURPS Lite (it even recommends and involves GURPS Vehicles). It's core book includes a GURPS Lite For World War Two section which is like GURPS Lite 3e but with all the appropriate skills and weapons plus quite a few additional (i.e. not in GURPS Lite 3e) rules appropriate for World War 2 weapons and combat, travel, injuries, etc.

GURPS Lite 3e is better than GURPS Lite 4e, but it still lacks the tactical combat system, which is my favorite part of GURPS, so if that were the standard, I'd think that were an atrocious omission unless the genre doesn't include melee combat.

But yeah the Dungeon Fantasy RPG also changes quite a few little details to mechanics compared to GURPS 4e, which I don't think GURPS Lite for World War Two does at all. It's also far more complete and crucially does include the tactical combat rules.

Quote from: Pat;1121861I was initially thinking that, but I changed my mind as I was writing it. You could do it for all them. Break the attributes into their component parts, like HP or FP, and do the same with derived stats like Speed, and then reassemble them in different ways. The key isn't whether they're tied to some game mechanic like skills, but whether they're associated in the real world, and how. One non-insignificant issue would be overlap -- GURPS 4E books already spend a lot of time highlighting which metatraits may overlap, and this would make it worse.

So you mean break out each of the derived stats into their own stats, rather than just not have a non-average measure for striking ST or health, right?

Just play the Fantasy Trip.

And take -3 DX for 3 points of armour in a game where a sword does 2d damage?

NEVER!