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Old 06-19-2017, 06:37 PM   #11
benz72
 
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Default Re: Requesting ideas for a new campaign.

I would think that the campaign choice would be best informed by the aspect of GURPS you wish to display.
Are you looking to highlight the realism? (Hmm... a magical glaive, too bad I only use a guisarme, I guess we'll sell it at the next one-horse village for 1,000 g.p. in cash that the innkeeper happens to have)
Are you more interested in the ability to mix genera? (Pirates! In Zeppelins! With Lasers! Fighting Air-Sharks! With Frikken Lasers!)
Do you want to focus on the significantly freer character development? (Congratulations, you leveled up... roll a d10 for new HP... and you're done)
Have the players been upset by insufficiently detailed social interaction options? (You encounter an X... do you fight it or run away?)
Do your players want to explore morally ambiguous scenarios? (The Cleric is Evil, I kill him)

Silly examples aside, there is no shortage of aspects you could choose to highlight.

Similarly, tone can be an important determinant in campaign choice. Are you looking for a drama, or a comedy? If they just came out of Ravenloft perhaps GURPS Gothic Horror isn't the setting to choose... but maybe Illuminati University is.

My one caution would be to not involve too many sets of rules at the start. It is really cool that GURPS has detailed rules for Tactical shooting, martial arts, several magic systems, psionics, &c. but dumping all of those onto the players in the beginning highlights the (potential, not essential) complexity of the system. Break them in slowly. Along those lines, low powered characters facing low powered challenges are easier to understand and play than complex polymaths with multiple specialties. KISS.

If it were me, I'd do a modern adventure that touched on something ***strange***. I would give each PC one easy to define disadvantage and get my players used to roleplaying with them. I would run a few sessions of ***mystery*** before taking the temperature and seeing if it should be secret magic, aliens, demonic influences, elaborate hoax, whatever that is causing the weirdness and then develop the campaign from there. Heck, player speculation sometimes generates better plotlines than GM perspiration.

Good Luck
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Old 06-19-2017, 07:46 PM   #12
khorboth
 
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Default Re: Requesting ideas for a new campaign.

I'd also recommend a prospectus. I recommend sticking to genre they will be familiar with from other media. Zombie survival, superheroes, steampunk, etc. That way, you can show versatility just by having them as options then demonstrate one well by having it chosen.
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Old 06-19-2017, 10:48 PM   #13
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Default Re: Requesting ideas for a new campaign.

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Originally Posted by khorboth View Post
I'd also recommend a prospectus. I recommend sticking to genre they will be familiar with from other media. Zombie survival, superheroes, steampunk, etc. That way, you can show versatility just by having them as options then demonstrate one well by having it chosen.
Superheroes has the risk of overwhelming new players with too much complexity and too many options. If you want superheroes, I'd recommend keeping them on the low end until you're confident with character creation (especially building abilities with enhancements and limitations). The Netflix Marvel series would be a good source of inspiration for that style of play.

You can also combine. Steampunk superheroes fighting the zombie apocalypse. You need to be careful there to avoid losing focus, though. A good balance is to take just two familiar things and mash them together: a caper story set in Ancient Rome, clashes between the heroes of the ancient gods in modern New York, or just about any story IN SPACE!
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Old 06-20-2017, 01:44 AM   #14
Toman Briar
 
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Default Re: Requesting ideas for a new campaign.

Wow, thanks everyone. It's gonna take me a while to read through all the suggestions you've linked. You've definitely given me a lot to think about. I'll post again with an update once I've settled on something.
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Old 06-20-2017, 09:28 AM   #15
Joe
 
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Default Re: Requesting ideas for a new campaign.

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Originally Posted by benz72 View Post
My one caution would be to not involve too many sets of rules at the start. ... Break them in slowly. Along those lines, low powered characters facing low powered challenges are easier to understand and play than complex polymaths with multiple specialties.
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Superheroes has the risk of overwhelming new players with too much complexity and too many options. If you want superheroes, I'd recommend keeping them on the low end until you're confident with character creation (especially building abilities with enhancements and limitations). The Netflix Marvel series would be a good source of inspiration for that style of play.
I just wanted to echo both of these pieces of advice. In my experience, simple is definitely best with new players. The simpler the better.
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Old 06-20-2017, 10:09 PM   #16
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Default Re: Requesting ideas for a new campaign.

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Superheroes has the risk of overwhelming new players with too much complexity and too many options. If you want superheroes, I'd recommend keeping them on the low end until you're confident with character creation
I agree. When I introduced people to GURPS with supers, I had them make the 150 point characters and I built the powers. I then handed out each power on a card with both a GURPS description and a plain English description as it was discovered. It was a lot of work for me, but it was fun and totally paid off.
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Old 06-21-2017, 12:23 AM   #17
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Default Re: Requesting ideas for a new campaign.

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I agree. When I introduced people to GURPS with supers, I had them make the 150 point characters and I built the powers. I then handed out each power on a card with both a GURPS description and a plain English description as it was discovered. It was a lot of work for me, but it was fun and totally paid off.
I'm going to say that, on one hand, I would involve the players in the complete build process, but on the other hand, I would take whatever they gave me (from a wishlist to a rough sketch to a complete build), go through it, and build the whole character, checking point costs, arithmetic, rules legality, world plausibility, and so on, and run it past the player. Not just for new-to-GURPS or -gaming, but for every single player. No one gets to go away, build their own character, and come to the table and sit down with it, unexamined, not in any campaign I run.

But on the gripping hand, this is because I've run more than a dozen GURPS campaigns and I'm fairly confident about using the character creation rules. I'm not sure how much experience Toman has with them, and it may be better to come up with a campaign idea that doesn't involve rescuing players further into the deep end than Toman's comfortable with.
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Old 06-21-2017, 12:09 PM   #18
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Default Re: Requesting ideas for a new campaign.

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post

(SNIP)

But on the gripping hand, this is because I've run more than a dozen GURPS campaigns and I'm fairly confident about using the character creation rules. I'm not sure how much experience Toman has with them, and it may be better to come up with a campaign idea that doesn't involve rescuing players further into the deep end than Toman's comfortable with.
In keeping with this notion, it's generally quite beneficial to not only have a clear campaign description (in a prospectus, or whatever), but to also describe clearly the sort of characters the players should come up with, including the sorts of abilities they can and can't have, at character creation.

I know Bill, here, does this, and it worked really well when I set up the Facets campaign, too.

I did it, there, because I knew that if I just provided the campaign premise -- a wainscot magic setting where the secrets of magic and monsters were both terrifying and dangerous, which the characters learn about accidentally and then try to learn to survive and deal with -- someone would have come up with a fully-initiated mage with a crap-ton of points in Occultism.

That is not what I wanted. I wanted a campaign based on discovery of the unknown, both wondrous and horrible. To have a fully-initiated mage who could get answers with a die-roll didn't fit into that concept, so I specifically forbade any such thing.

Moreover, the one character who did have Occultism, I told couldn't use it until she had access to reliable research materials and expertise in the language to read them.
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Old 06-21-2017, 09:01 PM   #19
baakyocalder
 
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Default Re: Requesting ideas for a new campaign.

I ruined many a GURPS game with supplement creep, so my advice is to figure out what the players would like to play and stick with a simple setting.

While GURPS can be great with mashups and many rules, it's a lot easier to learn by starting out with a slice of the tasty game pie. You can always change the campaign later if players want by adding on some new templates to reflect character growth.

Something in our world, only slightly different makes finding maps and other source documents for game fun fairly easy.

You can have the players discuss what they want and help them build the characters. Being able to describe in plain language some GURPS mechanics will be far more satisfying than having players try and run all the GURPS rules to build what they want. The campaign planning sheet is your friend.
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Old 07-29-2017, 08:42 PM   #20
Toman Briar
 
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Default Re: Requesting ideas for a new campaign.

Thank you everyone for the advice.

I ended up running a GURPS Zombies one-shot, where everyone played as themselves, just as a short introduction. They really enjoyed it, and then one of them said "You know what this system would be great for? FALLOUT!" And then they all got very excited so, we're gonna play fallout next.
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