Steve Jackson Games Forums - GURPS is becoming the only game I'll run

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Re: GURPS is becoming the only game I'll run

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mencelus (Post 1046296)

I want to run Paranoia at least once for this new group I've got forming.

Good grief. I haven't played Paranoia in years. I'd fly to Hungary for that one-shot.

Re: GURPS is becoming the only game I'll run

Quote:

Originally Posted by the_seeker (Post 1046302)

Good grief. I haven't played Paranoia in years. I'd fly to Hungary for that one-shot.

I'm thinking I should do either a CoC or Paranoia one-shot for halloween with my friends...

Re: GURPS is becoming the only game I'll run

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk (Post 1046306)

I'm thinking I should do either a CoC or Paranoia one-shot for halloween with my friends...

Yeah, but I can't get super-cheap flights from London to Albuquerque. I can get to Budapest for less than $100! <laugh>

Re: GURPS is becoming the only game I'll run

Man, I could go for a good Paranoia one-shot...

But I remember my first time introducing my group to GURPS, it took me nearly a year to convince them not only to give GURPS a shot, but to give me a shot as a GM. One of the players was constantly whining, if we were playing DnD we could be started by now. The moment he got to use a Car as an imporvized weapon against a helicopter (his character was that
strong) and the rules supported it, he fell in love.

A year later, I joined my first game, as a player, since then... about a week ago.

I tried running a Pathfinder RPG game... and a FATE game based in Xanth, but every time, my group is dissatisfied the ruleset. They demand GURPS.

Re: GURPS is becoming the only game I'll run

Quote:

Originally Posted by the_seeker (Post 1046308)

Yeah, but I can't get super-cheap flights from London to Albuquerque. I can get to Budapest for less than $100! <laugh>

Mate, you're invited. Don't know when though. This group is meeting for the first game next weekend, and as I said, it's GURPS. We'll play that for two sessions, since it's a two-parter for one of my friend's colleagues who's temporarily in Hungary for work reasons.

After that, I want to keep the same setting for a longer campaign, or another setting with GURPS as the engine (I've ideas, see?).

Still, you never know. At least one of them was in the last Paranoia one-shot I ran two years ago, and she really liked it (because she won, which means she got everyone else executed for treason, including her boyfriend (she's a lawyer IRL...). I WILL be trying to get this group to play it...

Re: GURPS is becoming the only game I'll run

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mencelus (Post 1046319)

Mate, you're invited. Don't know when though.

Google tells me Gödöllő is about 20 miles from Budapest. I have no idea where the airport is, but surely it can't be that much further (and might even be closer). Skyscanner lists indirect roundtrip flights from London to Budapest for as low as $53 in September and October. If we can work out arrival and departure dates and you don't mind having a rogue Time Lord spend a night on your couch, I'm interested. I absolutely love to travel. Seeing new places and meeting new friends is something of an avocation for me, and if I can work some quality gaming into the mix, so much the better!

This opportunity is almost as exciting as my idea to visit the Guinness brewery in Dublin. :)

Re: GURPS is becoming the only game I'll run

Quote:

Originally Posted by the_seeker (Post 1046328)

This opportunity is almost as exciting as my idea to visit the Guinness brewery in Dublin. :)

Well, it's Guinness, so that's given. Though I'd be lying if I said I didn't love Killkenny more, but I'm a heretic, I know. ;)

Re: GURPS is becoming the only game I'll run

PMs don't work for me so you'll have to e-mail me: xambrius@yahoo.com
I'll be a bit busy this weekend, but I should reply by Monday at the latest.
Hopefully we can work something out. I've never been to Hungary before.

Re: GURPS is becoming the only game I'll run

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mencelus (Post 1045285)

Seriously. The last campaign I ran started out in Spirit of the Century, but after great table annoyance with the rules (especially Aspects) I decided to switch it to GURPS and all was well.

Fast forward a few months. I have left said group for various issues, and starting a game with a new group. I originally pitched a particular fantasy idea for Reign, which the group agreed sounded good. So, I start giving out setting details, and they start sending character ideas. Reign, I discovered, simply wasn't flexible enough to handle some of what they wanted.

(And there was also the issue of shoehorning in the Company rules for no real reason, but that's more my issue than anything else).

So, naturally, I said, hey, GURPS, and nobody disagreed, and at least one player was happy with the idea (she'd played it with me before in a cyberpunk game).

Thing is, when I think of GURPS, I feel like it's easy, familiar, and the like. I also feel like it's just so damned logical and easy to adjudicate as a GM, that I'm finding it's harder and harder for me to use other systems now. The logic thing even holds for the illogical bits like magic and so on.

This is the second time in a row I've given some other system a pass in favor of GURPS.

Is it the same for you? Or almost? If so, why?

I understand what you're saying. Partly, it is because I'm lazy, and I don't want to bother learning a whole new system each time I run a new game, but I really don't see the advantage of using another system. GURPS will let me run any kind of campaign and it lets me model anything from gritty realism to cinematic powers. Every game system has its limitations, but GURPS has, to me, the fewest, and the most advantages. Obviously, this will not be true for everyone, but I have not yet experienced a situation where I felt that I could not handle a campaign better (or at least as well) with GURPS, so I just don't bother using anything else when I run a game.

Having said that, I'm perfectly happy to let someone else do the work and run some other kind of game. d20 has grown on me; it is good for certain kinds of campaigns and adequate for most other genres. Savage Worlds works quite well for cinematic action (it's like a cinematic-oriented little brother of GURPS). Other systems are fine, too. I just don't use them myself anymore when I'm either building or running a campaign.

Mark

Re: GURPS is becoming the only game I'll run

I have sat down to play different systems over the last few years with different GMs. Throughout each session I kept thinking "GURPS does this better". By the end of the day I'm saying to myself "why am I wasting my very limited gaming time trying to learn a different system when GURPS is better anyway?"