Seeking "An Argument For"

[Territan]

I've spent years running games, buying games, having favorite games that shifted around a little as newer things have come along. I've had to tend toward simpler games that everyone had or could get easily, so players could follow along...

...for some time, I've had this "joke" about how the TTRPGs of the 1970s were originally, technically designed to run on the same hardware then as now, but the modern processors have less memory and more trouble doing math. Or at least, it was a joke...

...anyway, I would always come back to GURPS as a game I want to play. But I didn't want to bring anyone with me because I didn't want to put up with the kicking and screaming of learning a new system with [whine]two main books? And that character sheet! It's too complex![/whine]

I think I want to start bringing people in, but now I'm in a group that knows nothing of GURPS, and the most vocal of the bunch doesn't see any reason why he should learn it, as he can always find a much simpler system (in trade paperback-sized books with ~48 pages, and I wish that was an exaggeration) to run whatever concept he wants to play in.

And I'm not sure how to sell him on something crunchier.

Run a demo set with pregenerated characters? Point out p.5 of the Basic Set books ("flexible," "organized," and "easy")? Some other argument? Some other portion of one of the books?

Or should I just take the "L" and resign myself to quiet, smug superiority?

[whswhs]

I don't know what your community of players is like. But when I was in San Diego, I ran games for a circle of players there, which grew by accretion; at its peak I had around eighteen players split among three campaigns. And what I would do is hand around a list of campaigns I might run, and then invite them to rank them on how much they wanted to play in them (including saying "I would rather not play than play in that"). I would figure out what system I wanted to use for each, and mention it in the list, but I would also talk about the genre, the setting, the appropriate player characters, and the typical mission. And my players would be sold by the high concept of the campaign (it was a little too long for an elevator pitch).

Of course it helped that (as one of my former players said) "Bill has players who would roleplay the phone book if he offered to use it to run a campaign." That is, I built up credibility as a GM, and that was one of my selling points.

This can take time. I began accumulating that circle in the 1990s; I didn't have it at the outset. But now it's three decades later and I'm still running campaigns for nine players from my San Diego circle, via Zoom, even though I now live in eastern Kansas. Look for an approach that's viable in the long term and the long term will arrive.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Territan

Run a demo set with pregenerated characters? Point out p.5 of the Basic Set books ("flexible," "organized," and "easy")? Some other argument? Some other portion of one of the books?

If you run a demo game, they'll play the game and then say, "Okay, we did what you wanted. Can we go back to Easy Game X now?"

Do this instead. Run a simple game. Maybe a Western. No magic, no zombies, no aliens, just a Western. Or a spy thriller. Or the adventures of a caravan on the Silk Road. Just something without a gazillion special cases that need rules. You can make it realistic or cinematic, but don't go very cinematic.

Ask your players to describe the characters they want to run in this game. Then make them yourself when they're not around. Keep the number of advantages, disadvantages, and skill low. Do not try to simplify the rules with suggestions like doing everything with wildcard skills or anything like that. Don't use any supplements that add rules. Don't use lots of optional or high-detail rules. Also, when you hand them their character sheets, don't use the complicated GCS or GCA sheets. Those overload people with information. You can just write out the character on paper — don't even bother listing the character points! — or you can find a sheet that only shows you the essential character information, one that doesn't surface all the extra info like health levels or hit locations and so on. The goal is to keep the players' experience simple.

When you play, if you don't remember a rule, don't spend time looking it up, or at least don't spend more time than the players are interested in. If you can't remember a rule, just make something up. In a game without tons of weird powers, most things resolve to "make a skill check," "make a secondary characteristic check," or "make a basic attribute check," in that order.

Also when playing, don't have the game revolve around combat. Make combat as quick and meaningful as you can. Enemies should check morale and run away when appropriate instead of fighting until dead. Make players aware that each combat turn in GURPS is one second, and the idea of "you get to do one interesting thing every turn" isn't relevant here. "One interesting thing" might involve several turns of setting up, like Aiming or Moving or Readying. Ask players to state their maneuvers quickly, then move on. Don't linger on every turn.

Make reaction rolls. Make all those traits that involve reactions count. Players will appreciate the fact that they got someone to do what they want because of their good Reputation or Charisma.

Now here's where it gets good. Once you've played a short campaign of this, end it. If they're still with you on the GURPS thing, start a new campaign. Make it a completely different genre. If you were running a Western, switch to a space opera, or post-apocalypse. Make it that different. But keep it as simple as before. When you start playing, your players will notice that they're playing something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT USING EXACTLY THE SAME RULES. That's the beauty of GURPS. Not that it can do anything, but that it can do almost anything using the same rules. You learn it once, and then you can play everything.

Once they're on board, you can start introducing new subsystems, like magic or psionics or super powers. These simply use the basic rules in new ways, so you're not really learning a lot that's new when introducing them.

All this is a strategy to take away the alleged overwhelming complexity of GURPS. GURPS isn't really that complex, but even its own proponents will hype up its complexity, to its detriment. But at its core, GURPS is a fairly simple system that allows for complexity without requiring it.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

All this is a strategy to take away the alleged overwhelming complexity of GURPS. GURPS isn't really that complex, but even its own proponents will hype up its complexity, to its detriment. But at its core, GURPS is a fairly simple system that allows for complexity without requiring it.

Mostly what Stormcrow said but I want to emphasis this part.
Let them know that as you add optional rules or magic things get more complicated but GURPS is really just roll 3d6 and hope for a low number.
Skills? Advantages? Just take the ones you want and the GM allows for the campaign. The list of options is long but not applicable to every campaign or setting. Even then you do not need to know all of them, just the ones you have or where to look them up if needed.

Also as you add optional rules or layers of detail let them know that they can take advantage or just use regular rules. So for example if you start without Hit Locations they can opt to just target the torso - or they can take a skill penalty to go for a more damaging attack.

[Shostak]

To the good advice already on the table, I'll add that if your simple adventure is long enough to give the characters some CP, the players can experience the fun of incremental character evolution that shows off GURPS's customization capabilities that I discuss in the most recent post over on my sporadic blog.

I'll also suggest that cosmic horror is a popular genre and one that can be run very successfully with GURPS Lite.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Shostak

I'll also suggest that cosmic horror is a popular genre and one that can be run very successfully with GURPS Lite.

If you go for cosmic horror, don't go crazy trying to stat up the cosmic horrors. Just focus on what effects they may have on the player characters. This can be a genre that tempts you overload on advantages and disadvantages. Resist the temptation. Don't let players be half-fish-people or anything like that. And be sure to learn how to use fright checks.

[Donny Brook]

People who are content to play two-dimensional characters like murder hoboes or knock-off TV characters in shallow pre-fabricated settings have no need for GURPS.

The converse of that statement, framed in a much friendlier way, is the argument you could make.

[Alden Loveshade]

For years, I typically ran five GURPS games at each of three conventions per year. (That's in addition to running GURPS at home games.) Some of my and other GMs' GURPS games were specifically titled to attract non-GURPS players (GURPS Monty Python, GURPS Star Trek, GURPS Paranoia, GURPS Gilligan's Island, GURPS Beavis & Butthead, etc.)

I introduced a few hundreds players to GURPS, and it was easy.

This is what I did:

1) Pre-design/fill out character sheets to fit a specific adventure.

2) Tell the players all they have to do is play their character and roll three six-sided dice (maybe more or less dice for damage, but for that or anything else they could ask the GM what to roll).

3) Start playing.

4) Later, tell the players they can use GURPS for virtually anything without having to learn a new system every time.

In my personal experience, I found GURPS to be the simplest RPG to play (largely because you don't have to keep asking, "What sided dice do I roll now?")

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by Territan

I've spent years running games, buying games, having favorite games that shifted around a little as newer things have come along. I've had to tend toward simpler games that everyone had or could get easily, so players could follow along...

...for some time, I've had this "joke" about how the TTRPGs of the 1970s were originally, technically designed to run on the same hardware then as now, but the modern processors have less memory and more trouble doing math. Or at least, it was a joke...

...anyway, I would always come back to GURPS as a game I want to play. But I didn't want to bring anyone with me because I didn't want to put up with the kicking and screaming of learning a new system with [whine]two main books? And that character sheet! It's too complex![/whine]

I think I want to start bringing people in, but now I'm in a group that knows nothing of GURPS, and the most vocal of the bunch doesn't see any reason why he should learn it, as he can always find a much simpler system (in trade paperback-sized books with ~48 pages, and I wish that was an exaggeration) to run whatever concept he wants to play in.

And I'm not sure how to sell him on something crunchier.

Run a demo set with pregenerated characters? Point out p.5 of the Basic Set books ("flexible," "organized," and "easy")? Some other argument? Some other portion of one of the books?

Or should I just take the "L" and resign myself to quiet, smug superiority?

You're overcomplicating your argument by telling yourself untruths, especially to your most vocal player.

He doesn't need to learn a new system with two main rulebooks. Not that that's especially a problem for older games. Dungeons and Dragons, at least from the time of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, never had less than two main rulebooks, one of which was 122 pages of more densely packed type than GURPS and absolutely mandatory for the players to know inside and out. But that's D&D, and this is GURPS.

The only person who needs the two main rulebooks is the GM, presumably you.

Your vocal player whines that he can find a system that he can learn that comes in a 48-page trade paperback set of rules? To him, I say, Ha! You want a simple to learn system, try GURPS! Just four (4) pages of rules. Granted they're bigger than trade paperback size, they're a whole 8.5" x 11" and printed back and front! But it's only four pages. Let me say that again, four pages, two sheets of paper stapled together. That's a simple system, but such a steep learning curve! He might need five minutes to properly digest the whole system! Then again, maybe he's clever and will learn it faster.

Maybe the character sheet is intimidating. It definitely needs to be well-organized for actual use in play. So, don't overwhelm your players with choices during character creation. Tell them about your setting, broadly. Tell them about the kinds of adventures you'll be running and how you expect trhe characters to behave. Then have your players start describing their characters, one at a time, or bit by bit in rotation. Who's strongest? Who's quickest? Who's smartest? What can they do? Drive cars? Ride horses? Fire guns? Fence with swords? Do first aid? Sneak around? Talk to the local gang? Talk to the mayor? Who has a buddy on the police force/in the town watch? Who always seems to have his nose buried in a book (heavens, without any pictures, even)? Use their answers to rough out Attributes, Advantages and Skills. Disadvantages are a bit tougher, but someone's probably a brooding, short-tempered brawler and someone else probably has or wants a romantic interest, and somebody else has a really cool enemy that shows up from time to time, so even the Disadvantages aren't that hard. Once you've roughed out the character sheets, make good copies, with all the Advantages, Disadvantages and Skills listed in alphabetical order in their proper sections, so they're easy to find during play. Make two copies of each character sheet. One for the player and one to keep for yourself, maybe run off an extra copy beyond that for the player who forgets his sheet, borrows your copy and then forgets to return it.

Character creation will be the hardest part of the sell because GURPS is front-end loaded. All the hard work comes before your adventure even gets off the ground.

Now for the really good part. All your players have their character sheets? They've read the system rules handout? They're almost ready to go. But not quite. There's still a lot of work to be done before they're ready to play. They need to gather up dice, lots and lots of 6-sided dice, at least three of them. They need to find pencils and scratch paper. Finally, but it is optional if you're not doing combat on a hex-grid map, a miniature to represent their character. Once they spend the time gathering all those things together, then and only then are they ready to get together, sit down and play GURPS*, but once they have those things they have everything they need to play. I hope the prospect hasn't been too daunting.

* This is the final untruth, and we tell it to ourselves almost every day. The truth is: nobody plays GURPS. The adventure/scenario is the game that we play. GURPS or D&D or Champions is just the set of rules that we use to get us through the game, but they aren't the actual game. So, if you're really worried that they'll resist GURPS just go ahead and play the game you want. If you're the GM, you may think of it as a GURPS game, but it's just your game, and if you find GURPS helpful in running your game, that's nobody's business but your own.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Alden Loveshade

In my personal experience, I found GURPS to be the simplest RPG to play (largely because you don't have to keep asking, "What sided dice do I roll now?")

I have played with these people, however. One player, someone had to hand him dice, because apparently remembering what 3d6 was was beyond him.