Gurps is still AWESOME
 

I haven't posted here in a while...I have been trying to learn Pathfinder rules enough to run a game. As I learn that game I am also learning how flexible and awesome Gurps really is. Let me just say this....hexagons are the WAY TO GO! NO DOUBT.

Anyhow, Pathfinder is very good in a lot of ways, but Gurps is Awesome in the amazing options you have to indeed build your own game one optional rule at a time.

Re: Gurps is still AWESOME
 

Once they added skills to D&D with 3.x / 3.5, I wondered why anyone would play that over just playing GURPS. But apparently there's still some allure to the d20 system. To each their own. :)

Re: Gurps is still AWESOME
 

Wow! I'm in the exact same boat. Never played d20/D&D 3 or newer. Only played GURPS since well before AD&D 2nd Ed. came out.

I picked up Pathfinder's core book, the first Bestiary, and one of the adventure path's first books and am trying to teach myself the game so when I move I can get in with another group.

Went to a good-sized hobby shop in Florida chalk full of gamers and only 1 was a GURPS player. I am very outgoing and talked to maybe 15 people all with separate groups of people around, so I think I hit about everyone there.

Time to learn Pathfinder so I can infiltrate the gamers and poison them with GURPS! XD

Re: Gurps is still AWESOME
 

You know, I hear this sort of thing all the time. I've never done things that way. I hand around a list of campaign I might be interested in running, and invite people to pick the ones that sound good, and then I run a couple that are popular. But I don't offer just one system (well, lot of GURPS!), and I don't think my players tend to choose on the basis of system. I'm just saying, "Here's what I want to do and what settings I want to explore; tell me which ones you think are cool." And as far as I can tell, my players are generally willing to try out a new system if the campaign sounds fun.

I'm wondering how much of the lack of interest in GURPS is that people are set in their habits and not willing to try anything they haven't already played, and how much is that they're hearing, "Well, I want to run this game called GURPS, and I'll come up with a campaign idea when I get players signed up"? Do these D&D loyalists turn down specific cool campaign ideas purely because they aren't D&D?

Bill Stoddard

Re: Gurps is still AWESOME
 

I think a lot of gamers are more interested in cool (prepackaged) backstory and shiny books than in robust mechanics. Something I tend to hear when I talk to other gamers about GURPS is, "But what is the setting like?" >_<

Re: Gurps is still AWESOME
 

"Which one? They've got a bunch!"

I'm currently running a campaign (my second) in Transhuman Space, which I seriously nominate for the absolutely coolest and most interesting gaming setting ever.

Bill Stoddard

Re: Gurps is still AWESOME
 

Re: Gurps is still AWESOME
 

GURPS is to D&D what MMA was to BOXING

And I honestly think anythong who has ever played gurps can get into a DnD group and infect them with the gurps virus

;)

Re: Gurps is still AWESOME
 

My millage differs Bill :) Monster Hunters is looking rather tasty...

Re: Gurps is still AWESOME
 

I often run into that problem. I do think system matters, and that different systems feel different, but I often have a hard time justify walking away from the few games I already regularly use. D&D 4e, for example, is very neat and it does cool things, but as a friend of mine points out, it has poor non-combat support, especially when compared to GURPS, and it lacks the flexibility to stray too far outside of its comfort zone, and GURPS DF is just as tactically fun as D&D4e... so why should I bother?

It's tough on me, because I'm a system's collector, but when you're already invested in a system like GURPS, it's hard to justify playing anything else.

Reputation matters. You can walk up to your group and say "I'm running GURPS set in a magical 15th century Europe," and people will say "It's Bill Stoddard, he's awesome, we'll play in his game." I'm in the same situation. I can walk up to my local RPG association, and say "I want to run GURPS in Sengoku Japan," and I'll have more people signed up for my game than I can actually handle including people who have stated that they don't like GURPS. Or Japan. I regularly walk in there with systems nobody's heard of and drum up players because they know I'm a good GM.

On the other hand, at the same RPG association, Dutch Wolf has a hard time drawing people into his GURPS Project Wolf games, or even to try some of the systems he's messing with (like Fudge). This is because he isn't tried-and-true yet (as I think he has the potential to be something really special as a GM). Other people who aren't tried-and-true often have great success running D&D, though, because everyone knows what to expect with D&D, they know what they're getting, and they know (more or less) that they can trust it.

tl; dr: People are willing to try new things with people they trust, or try new GMs with systems they trust, but they're not willing to trust new systems with new GMs.