Why I'm coming back to GURPS

[Poppyseed45]

Longish so bear with me.

In 2010 I swore myself off of GURPS. I thought it was "too complicated" or "too "traditional". I liked all those shiny new narrative games coming out, and decided in my "old age" that I wanted games that were easier or more narratively focused. So I sold off my GURPS collection and dived in.

I tried a lot of things that were more narrative or less complex (so I thought anyway) than GURPS. Fate was the big one (in the form of Diaspora and Strands of Fate first, then Fate Core later), followed by Burning Wheel and HeroQuest 2nd and Savage Worlds. Then there was a long time of ORE (Wild Talents and Reign). Recently ran FFG's Star Wars.

In all of it, I was trying for speed of character creation and play, or some sort of narrative focus to be more story oriented than not. Frankly, I found neither of the things I was looking for in all those games over the last 6 years. In those games that were "faster" I found I was missing details that I wanted or that my players wanted (like, in Fate, how strong is Physique +2?). I won't describe the disastrous supers game I tried in Fate Core.

Interestingly, ORE games were both well defined and not well defined enough in weird places. When I tried to run supers in Wild Talents, the game was crunchy enough to be interesting, but the powers are so...loosely defined (being either Attack, Defends, or Useful) that I found it hard to decide how things interacted with each other. While the die system should have led me right, it was really hard for me to keep the number of variables in my head straight, especially when more than one super went at it (we spent a lot of time arguing over what happened in any given scene after die totals were compared).

In Reign, the issue was looseness as well. Like, characters are defined, but very little is straight about things like Status levels (they're defined one way for each level in one part of the text, then entirely differently elsewhere in the text for the same levels; gah!). The barest guidelines existed for characters adding die modifications to Company actions. I found it hard to run. Also, took a LOT of work to define things for the game (like Magic system if not using the base setting for Reign).

Now, I should say that Burning Wheel is interesting and remains heavily used and popular in my group. It is crunchy and defined and narrative-ish all at the same time. However, if has the limitation of settings; it fits certain things very well, but if you want to branch out from that, it takes a lot of work to make it happen (not impossible, just lots of work; I adapted Burning Empires for a cyberpunk setting and it worked, but it was a lot of work for me).

Where does GURPS fit into this? Was talking to one of my players over beer and we reminisced about a supers game I ran, the best he'd even been in. The system? GURPS of course. And we got to talking about why. And then I remembered other games I'd run in GURPS, and how well they'd worked.

So I recently ordered Characters and Campaigns. I'm looking at them now and, weirdly, it felt as I read them that I got it.

Here were lovely lists of things to get. Here were crafting rules and travel rules and plenty of skills to use or tweak to taste. I didn't have to figure out how super powers worked and interacted and acted mechanically (as i did for my two Fate supers attempts) or sit around building lots of powers, only to shy away from using them (as I did in WT).

An interesting turn around. I like to do social or political games, and while I've used a bunch of social combat system and the like (I still think Diaspora's is something special and evocative) in few of those games do I feel like I understand, really, the society and characters involved. That lack of stats and so one for the characters made me doubt what I felt or knew.

The point of all this is that I'm back to GURPS. I want the reality/logically consistent focus of the game. I want there to be loads of options from me to choose from, rather than having to make them on my own. It's just easier, despite the fact that I thought at one time it would be the opposite. I want the detail; I can ignore it, of course, but it's nice to have there (like, really Mass Combat recently, I found that a Rome game I'd done in Fate (and later BW) would have benefited immensely from the info there, like on raising troops and the like).

So I'm back, and I've already got ideas for my next campaign...

[Nymdok]

Welcome Back :)

[GM Joe]

It sounds like your journey out and back gave you some wide experience with different ways to think about roleplaying that you can now bring to your GURPS games. :)

Welcome back!

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by StanTheMan

I like to do social or political games

In that case, you might be interested in the Social Engineering PDF. Expanded rules for the social traits like Wealth, Status, and Rank, what they're used for and how to use them, and more on the Influence skills and reactions.

[Minuteman37]

Welcome back into the fold, and I'm glad to hear Burning Wheel worked out fine for what it was. I've been meaning to pick up a copy when I get the chance.

[vicky_molokh]

Welcome back.

I think I'm currently in a phase to yours in 2010, albeit milder:
While I'm not even thinking about getting rid of my collection, I'm still quite curious about trying out the more narrativistic systems, particularly FATE Core.

So I'm wondering: could you please tell in more details about how the transition went?
Where the letdowns were immediate; where did they take a while to manifests? Where the alternate system did manage to conform to your expectations? Where they turned out to be better than GURPS despite the fact that overall you are returning? Etc. etc. etc.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

So I'm wondering: could you please tell in more details about how the transition went?
Where the letdowns were immediate; where did they take a while to manifests? Where the alternate system did manage to conform to your expectations? Where they turned out to be better than GURPS despite the fact that overall you are returning? Etc. etc. etc.

I've taken some long looks at Fate Core, and might possibly run my next campaign in it. I think one key is that it is a very abstract mentality compared to GURPS, and you have to embrace that mentality or you will just get nothing from it. You can't try to play it as GURPS with Fate dice, where +x ST is +y damage and +z carrying capacity. +2 is better than +1, but not as good as +3, and it's largely up to the group to decide exactly how to describe the relative abilities and outcomes.

[Poppyseed45]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

So I'm wondering: could you please tell in more details about how the transition went?

Where the letdowns were immediate; where did they take a while to manifests? Where the alternate system did manage to conform to your expectations? Where they turned out to be better than GURPS despite the fact that overall you are returning? Etc. etc. etc.

With Reign, the letdown happened after much playing - maybe 12-14 sessions total? With Wild Talents, that lasted two sessions. Savage Worlds I ran for I think 15 sessions or 20 sessions.

Burning Wheel more or less clicked with me from the beginning. It DID kill two of my groups; they fell apart after that, but I can say that's because BW and BE really forced me to get better as a GM and define what I want from a game. I was a bit frustrated at this at first, but I learned from it. I find if I do that, the game will be loads better. I think the Burning games really nail "getting to the point" with mechanics like Let It Ride and Say Yes. Those are getting ported to the next game I run, GURPS or not.

Fate (in three incarnations) was the odd one. I must have run 40+ sessions of it over the years. And each time I'd try, there be this weird feeling about it either from me or the group or both, I'd drop it, switch to something else, meander back, try again, wash, rinse, repeat. Something there is cool, I know it. I just can't seem to put my finger on it, after multiple attempts and lots of forum reading.

Does that answer your question?

[Poppyseed45]

Interesting development - I mentioned to one of my players that I have GURPS again now. He asks if we can switch the current BW fantasy two-shot we are doing to it, and make it the campaign in lieu of the FFG Star Wars game that is petering out now. So...looks like I'll get to run GURPS this weekend!

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by StanTheMan

Fate (in three incarnations) was the odd one. I must have run 40+ sessions of it over the years. And each time I'd try, there be this weird feeling about it either from me or the group or both, I'd drop it, switch to something else, meander back, try again, wash, rinse, repeat. Something there is cool, I know it. I just can't seem to put my finger on it, after multiple attempts and lots of forum reading.

Does that answer your question?

I was hoping for more details on that one, but if it's something you can't put a finger onto, then, oh well, thanks either way.