Has SJGames been working on GURPS 5th edition for 2 years, or is Steve just trolling?

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by Mr_Sandman

The thing that GURPS is missing, which other, now popular generic games have, is one or more user-friendly, easy to start, popular implementations, that get people comfortable and familiar with the system, so they want to learn how to use it to do other things. It needs to be less crunchy than DFRPG, which was an attempt towards that, and probably in a different genre than D&Dish, pseudo-medieval fantasy, because there is a lot of competition in that space.

...

But what could really get people into GURPS is stand-alone game that is focused on a popular genre, and starts characters at a lower level than DFRPG's 250 points, preferably with a streamlined character building system like Delvers to Grow. The other product I'd like to see is a more basic Basic Set, that is closer to 3rd edition's, is laid out better as an introduction and teaching tool for playing and running GURPS, and has just the really essential elements you need to run a lot of common character types from popular genres through standard adventures of those genres. The current Basic Set would then function more as an Advanced Set, or GURPS Encyclopedia.

There's definitely an opening for something simpler than DFRPG (maybe you could define tiers of complexity, e.g. standard DFRPG is Tier 3, and Tier 1 DFRPG has no hit locations and no knockdown checks and no unconsciousness checks below 0 HP and is designed to fit all the combat rules on a single flowchart which is included with the game).

However, DFRPG is a terrific system and could certainly appeal to D&D players without any redesign of the boxed set. But it needs better interop with the rest of the D&D and OSR ecosystem. GURPS writers care a lot about writing optional rules, and usually not very much about adventure design or scenario hooks or "lore". I remain very much convinced that DFRPG and GURPS are good systems to adapt and run well-regarded movie plots (D&D: Honor Among Thieves) and adventures (Curse of Strahd, Against The Giants, Barrowmaze), but doing so takes some system expertise which new-to-DFRPG GMs won't have. So there's a gap: it's a good system if you already know it, but if you don't then it may never occur to you to learn it.

Even a simple 5E-to-DFRPG conversion guide for PCs, traps, and monsters would go a long way towards encouraging DMs to try out a session or three in DFRPG. Something like:

"for PCs, treat 1st level as 62 points, 3rd level as 125 points, 5th level as 187 points, and everything beyond that as 200 points + 20 points per level above 5th. Let players build PCs on that budget but don't expect their abilities to match up exactly with their D&D abilities--the DFRPG versions will have similar power levels to the originals but just like the novelized version of a dual-scimitar-wielding dark elf may fight differently than the AD&D version of the same dark elf, even so the exact details of a 5E paladin may wind up fighting a little differently than his 5E version. Instead of spending spell slots to Divine Smite on every attack, he may say a brief prayer (Holy Might) to boost his Strength and Dexterity through the roof and then start cutting off enemy heads with incredible accuracy, and that's okay! As you gain more experience you might design more sophisticated conversion guidelines for your player characters, but the point guidelines listed here are a simple, good and fair place to start."

Then similar advice for traps and monsters, maybe with some specific callouts (for Mariliths use Peshkali stats, and optionally add spellcasting with spells XYZ). The goal isn't perfect conversion so much as being able to run an adventure while converting on the fly and still maintaining the basic feel; simplicity is an important feature. It doesn't matter if Strahd gains or loses certain tactical abilities (regeneration + mobility for hit and run attacks) provided he remains both challenging and beatable; it does matter that he feels like an arrogant master vampire with a lot of charisma and personal power to back it up.

It may be worth summarizing key points from GURPS: Social Engineering as part of the conversation guide.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

OSR nostalgia appears to center on AD&D1e or occaisionally the red box/blue box "Basic". The Castles & Crusades I played in was almost unchanged from 1e and they didn't fix _anything_ that I remember. Not the "roll 3D6 in order chargen" or the uselessness of the Fighter class.

My character was so dull that I named him "Lump" and he spent most of the session eating cheese in the back of a wagon. Cheese was about the only thing I could afford at the market.

So my answer is mostly "Bad compared to everything else that has come after 1e.". This includes 2e. I've played a couple of long AD&D2e campaigns in this millennium and 2e is enough like a real game system in comparison to be .....let's call it "usable".

In contrast I've played a single session of 1e that was fun but the DM totally broke chargen and started us at 2nd level too. We spent all session fighting kopbolds anyway and they were even more feeble than we were.

One of the 2e DMs totally broke chargen too to let us have "good" characters and it was a low combat/low magic game anyway.

So if you have nostalgia for the days of 1e I would suggest checking it for youth and caffienated soft drinks.

I started in the late 90s with 2e, so my nostalgia isn't for anything before that. But I'm not sure 1e and 2e were as different as you imply. A few years ago I picked up digital copies of the 1e books on DriveThruRPG so I can confirm that 4d6 drop lowest was already present in 1e—and I know it was still being presented as just one option in 2e. As for the other issues you mention, people still complain about the fragility of 1st level characters in 5e (partly due to monsters getting tougher, though there's also a psychological-treadmill effect), and can't say I care for the 5e solution to class balance, which is to try to force every class into the mold of "fighter in a funny hat".

[Lovewyrm]

I grew up in the German sticks, so I have no real nostalgia for early D&D.
The only D&D I have nostalgia for is 3.5e, and technically...even less so than for 'light analogies' like Heroes Quest, even though I played 3.5 a lot more than any of that.

Man, I could have gotten into GURPS a decade earlier too, had I actually looked into it and not have just taken the common notion of "Yeah it's good but noone plays it cause the premade systems already do what most want"

Meaning I played more limited videogames that followed similar point buy schemes and enjoying them immensely while missing out on GURPS.

The name didn't help either. It just reminds me of gastric functions...not roleplaying.
How deprived I've been because of these things.

D&D...pfwah... it's the "Imagine if there was an XYZ" in game form, cause yeah, you really gotta do imagine a whole lotta stuff.
With the fluff being all hype, but the actual gameplay being kind of stifled and awkward.
Hot dang I love GURPS combat and skills and the advantage and disadvantage system.
Why'd it have to be named GURPS...

Edit:
I think I have missed the mark a little since the topic is now OSR.
So I'll add:
From what I have gathered, the 'general stream of consciousness', OSR is popular because it's from a time before all that 'current year' cancer. Not because of mechanics.
I've touched on it before but on the internet, one has to lie even more than IRL at this point, because so many things can net you 'social assasinations' these days, bans, censorship.

And the olden tymes, well, regard D&Ds old times for a moment, where you could just smash a 'chaotic evil by the book' orks head in with a heavy cudgel without having to worry that you've committed a hate crime against Blackasianhispanicaboriginalinuits, or whatever.
(Which, of course, was the result of people wanting orks to be more 'human' and not just 'a wholly evil brute monster race'...so...yeah)
It's not to get back to THAC0. And I'm sure 5e could be played with more crunch, too. It's just that 5e might as well be "Das Rollenspiel" by Marl Karx.¹
(And by Rolle it is not referred to as a role, but playing with the manhose. Openly, preferrebly in public)

Too much BS """""""these days""""""" and people are and will always be sick of it.
I mean...uh...its great. I love it.
Lol.
(I hate it, and being open about it does put me at a risk but whatever man.)

Edit2
¹In some minor, recent hindsight, I think that comparison fits more to that Critical Role/Matt Mercer Role playing game,
5E is still pretty bad, though...but whew...Candela Obscura is ...a real dumpster fire.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

t I'm not sure 1e and 2e were as different as you imply. .

2e had a clumsy but usable "skills" system. 1e did not.

Options for other than "roll 3D6 straight" seem to have been removed in some of the OSR games.

There was some small but significant rules clean up between 1e and 2e. Some more in presentation as well.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

2e had a clumsy but usable "skills" system. 1e did not.

Options for other than "roll 3D6 straight" seem to have been removed in some of the OSR games.

There was some small but significant rules clean up between 1e and 2e. Some more in presentation as well.

The rules for initiative were reworked. They're much simpler in 2e. That's probably the change that people would notice most at the table, especially the GMs.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

In my experience as someone who periodically tries to drag friends into playing GURPS, mechanical complexity once you start playing has never been the issue for me (except maybe when it comes the more free-form magic systems). It's always been players experiencing decision-paralysis during character creation. For some players, occupational templates help a lot—but for others, even that's too many decisions up front. To fix that problem, something like Gaming Ballistic's Delvers to Grow needs to be a core SJGames offering.

There's already Delvers To Go which is even simpler, since it already has derived stats like Dodge and Parry and DR calculated, and already has equipment loadouts.

Once people have played a combat or two, it's no longer so mysterious what "Enhanced Block" or "Hard To Kill" does or how much "One Eye" hurts you.

The initial onramp for new players should start by teaching how to play the game, and teaching them chargen then becomes a lot more straightforward. Pregens, random tables, or budgetless play ("pick whatever you want from this template and don't worry about the cost or which skills you leave blank") are all viable strategies IME for getting new players playing quickly, without bogging down in chargen. But you also have to make it clear that they won't be stuck with these initial decisions forever.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by Lovewyrm

When I was new:
A post Icelander made about the combat system completely sold me on GURPS.
Otherwise I always enjoyed point buy systems in general.

Feints, deceptive attacks, the active defenses etc... genius, man...genius.
I'll take that kind of awesome over narrative focus any day, since that is easier to add than coming up with such big brain moves.

For me it was a post on rec.games.frp.dnd about a fight between Conan and a dozen surprised cultists.

A recent conversation with a DFRPG newcomer seems relevant:

Him: So he's all up in my face with an all out attack, I know there are rules for attacking specific body parts, do you recommend using that rule for beginners?

Me: Sure. It's realistic and easy to understand intuitively. Your main dilemma is that you don't know (yet) if zombies die when you bash out their brains. (Targeting the skull is a -7 penalty to hit.)

For beginners, my rule is "use any rule that makes things work like they would expect them to from common sense (or even movies)."

Him: That is something attractive to me about gurps. Often beginners to d&d want to attack the eyes or something and I can see they're disappointed when I say "d&d doesn't work like that"

I feel like that conceptual simplicity is a strength of GURPS. To a great extent, if you can imagine it happening "in real life" then it can be GURPSified. (The recent D&D: Honor Among Thieves movie actually looks more like a GURPS playthrough than a D&D playthrough, since HP and spell slots are not things that can be easily imagined in real life.)

It takes some expertise though. Dresden Files and Malazan Empire would both require custom magic systems that scale differently from the GURPS: Magic system. I'm not familiar enough with RPM to know if it would work for either of those but I assume not. At any rate I'm certain a newcomer would not know how to run Dresden Files or Malazan in GURPS without quite a lot of help.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

Him: That is something attractive to me about gurps. Often beginners to d&d want to attack the eyes or something and I can see they're disappointed when I say "d&d doesn't work like that"[/i]


It takes some expertise though. Dresden Files and Malazan Empire would both require custom magic systems that scale differently from the GURPS: Magic system. I'm not familiar enough with RPM to know if it would work for either of those but I assume not. At any rate I'm certain a newcomer would not know how to run Dresden Files or Malazan in GURPS without quite a lot of help.

Yeah, that was a good draw for me too, and a number of players.
And I dont know about Malazan but RPM definitely works well for Dresden Files.
Book/Path could handle it too, though I think RPM is a little better fit.
Certainly better than the Fate system and I am in a Dresden game using Fate.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Yeah, that was a good draw for me too, and a number of players.
And I dont know about Malazan but RPM definitely works well for Dresden Files.
Book/Path could handle it too, though I think RPM is a little better fit.
Certainly better than the Fate system and I am in a Dresden game using Fate.

I would love to see some worked examples of Fuego, Defendarius (shield), Forzare, and Harry's wall of molten fire from White Night (and also sort of from Ghost Story), plus Molly's dozen decoys including Motorcycle Molly and Harry opening a Way to the Nevernever. Are they big enough, damaging enough, and not dominated by other, better choices?

Maybe I'll take another stab at RPM myself to look for these answers but I'm sure a new GM would need some help and maybe I do too.

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by Opellulo

Guys, if we are discussing about adoption, ease of use and market in general, opinions like "for me it works because i have 20+ years experience" are not going to get us anywhere:

I don't think that particular argument has been made. Pretty sure most GURPS fanatics were maybe 5-10 years "veterans" when they found GURPS and it appealed to them because it was an "open system", it's just easier to go outside the lines and create your own stuff in GURPS. It's easier to break the rules and create house rules because so much is just simple and easy to see how it works together.

Personally I'd been gaming for 6-8 years and GMing for like 4 when GURPS was handed to me. It solved so many problems I had with every other system I'd ever seen that I was an instant convert.

Another approach that I find quite limited is "My campaign has this and that and for this reason is only possible with GURPS", first those are settings (something that GURPS was always good at) and second we all know that the limiting factor of any weird or custom adventure is that or all the players are knowledgeable with the setting or somebody is going to have a very miserable experience; this stuff is not properly where novice players starts.

Weird. My first GURPS campaign, I didn't even own the books I was borrowing a friend's* books because he didn't like GMing regardless of system, I created a whole new magic system because I didn't like vanilla Magic. And there was no "Divine Patron" so I invented a "prayer" system for the one 'cleric' PC we had. I ran Spelljammer/Star Wars as the setting and my Players didn't know Spelljammer before hand...

My point here is, we weren't knowledgeable with the rules, we learned new stuff every week, and we damn sure weren't knowledgeable about the setting, we made stuff up as we went along (mostly me as the GM, but I riffed heavily on Player suggestions, even if they didn't realize it).

And yes, GURPS is good at being adaptable to any setting, thats'... that's rather the main point of GURPS. That's not an argument against it.


* When that campaign ended I bought my friend a new Basioc Set because I'd written so many house rules in the margins, underlined rules, highlighted things, etc. He mildly upset because he wanted the copy with the marginalia!

So I went through that next weekend and put all the notes, underlines, highlights, and one coffee stain in his new copy (I still wanted to replace his set as the covers and come off and the book split into so many sections I'd transferred it to a massive three-ring binder with slipcovers). He was quite pleased.

Also what I was referencing with "diverse experiences" are games like "Alice is missing", "Bluebeard's wife", "Masks", "Brindlewood Bay", "Coyote And Crow", "Duralande"...

Now that's pretty niche, as I've never even heard of 'em. Granted I don't hang out on that side of rpg town, where the excessively lite rules play lives, but I do follow some artists who love to play rules-lite games. Granted they're deep into Blades in the Dark or Gumshoe, so maybe they've found their rules-lite niche.

And instead GURPS friction for play is unnecessary high and this not for its core design but for some specifics of its "vision": we got more detailed sheets for 7.62 long barreled nato guns that for generic reusable NPCs, more precise tables for irreversible radiation poisoning than for adventure hooks, more magic systems than ways to use fatigue in combat (or anywhere else really), more skills than any PC would ever need in a campaign.

Ahhh... I see.

NPCs are highly subjective and reliant upon what genre is being run, but, we do have plenty of NPC stat blocks for generic fantasy and Nordic DFRPG, which are the most heavily covered genres for GURPS right now. Likewise, adventure hooks? Why would SJG put out something that's hugely covered and completely system agnostic? Need a d1000 adventure hook generator? Hit google you'll find half a dosen in seconds. SJG does put adventure hooks and NPCs stats into specific genre and campaign books, usually. Not so much for DFRPG's boxset, but I suspect they were tight on word count and hoping it would sell well enough they'd be launching another product line. Regardless, you can pick up DF stuff that has those things and the Nordlond books for DFRPG, or prior made fantasy and historical source books.

I don't get the "more magic systems than ways to use fatigue in combat (or anywhere else really)". There are like four magic systems, maybe a few more, but Effect Shaping/Energy Gathering. Skills as Spells, Advantages as Spells, and maybe Divine Patron if I'm feeling frisky (I usually am). You have Extra Effort (usable for anything you're doing), Extra Effort in Combat (with 10 different specific things), powering items, and powering abilities. Do you need something else to use FP on? In general or combat specifically?

And instead of Game Flow, the focus is always on "setting verisimilitude", it's almost like GURPS has the opposite problem of D&D: more GM (and custom settings) than players.

What do you mean by "setting verisimilitude". I have you have an argument here, but I don't even understand what your complaint is.

Originally Posted by Anthony

Plenty of gamers want smoother mechanics for flexible character creation in games -- look at all of the homebrew classes and races and all for D&D. They just want it for less work than is involved in doing it with GURPS (or Hero, or FUDGE)

But it's not "less work", it's less work the Player (or GM) has to do. It's like I keep saying, chargen in all system involves hard work, it's either done by the genre/system book writer, the GM, or the Player.

Too many new GURPS GMs put all that work on the Player. Took me a long time to realize this, I too was a holdout against Templates*, when I figured out the above, it was like a lightbulb snapped on. I'd done the work before when I ran other systems and made up classes, races, etc... but with GURPS because it lays all the building blocks out, I felt it was something easy to let the Players do themselves, it never occurred to me that a great many Players are not 'crunchy gearheads" like I am.

Of course that could be the problem we're all having here. Too many us GURPS fanatic GMs are geaheads. We enjoy building our own powers, rules, systems, genres, etc. It comes "easy" for us. And we're not able to see how the system is "radically hard" for those not "talented" the same way.


* I toyed with using Templates for a few years, but they still "didn't work" for me. Now I prefer to use Lenses, pre built to allow for easier chargen, but will include everything I want int he game. It's kinda like the way Delvers to Grow does things, but... better... because it's done my way. /sweatdrop

(Sorry PKitty, just, you know how it is.)

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

There's definitely an opening for something simpler than DFRPG (maybe you could define tiers of complexity, e.g. standard DFRPG is Tier 3, and Tier 1 DFRPG has no hit locations and no knockdown checks and no unconsciousness checks below 0 HP and is designed to fit all the combat rules on a single flowchart which is included with the game).

I could see that. I doubt SJG will do that, but that would certainly make things easy to add in rules.

I'd stear away from "not making HT checks for consciousness under 0HP" though. If you're going to be changing the rules (instead of adding more in, like Hit Locations), then the added rules shouldn't make the game "harder" on the PCs. And a rule that 'now' says "fights are harder because now you can fall unconscious below 0HP" means Players will balk, even if it actually benefits them because now enemies will also have the chance to fall unconscious. Instead, I'd keep the rule and just make sure that newby PCs all have Hard to KO and Hard to Kill*, meaning they're likely to remain up. Then when they make new characters, they'd have to chose those Advantages, they'd see where maybe they'd be able to afford different Advantages...


* Maybe even a 5 to 10 point No Nuisance HT Rolls In Combat "perk". I've allowed that when a PCs HT roll was 17+. I usually do it at 5 points, but really if it also affects environmental hazard and poisons, and such, 10 points is probably more 'balanced'. If it's just Consciousness and Death Checks to due to wounds in combat, 5 points feels fair.