New to GURPS: Zombie Apocalypse

[Kromey]

Originally Posted by Stripe

You sound like a GURPS player! :)

I think maybe I was born to be!

Originally Posted by Stripe

Yes. We are well aware of this. The prejudice goes both ways in equal amounts.

The difference is, we're right! ;)

Is it really prejudice if you're right? Isn't it just fact at that point? ;)

Originally Posted by Stripe

Don't. Not if you want your players to enjoy the game. Remember why you chose to go with GURPS? The freedom? That goes for players more than anything. In fact, it's the #1 selling point of GURPS and you're getting ready to completely cut it out.

Let them play the characters they desire. If they want to be Rambo, let them. If they want to be Dirty Hairy, let them. They will have way more fun than if you force them, pigeon-hole them into what your idea is of what you think their characters somehow are supposed to be. That's very restricting. And, they'll want to break free.

That's totally fair. But how do you reconcile this with bringing pre-generated characters to the table so that all the players have to do is start rolling the dice? Don't I have to bring full characters to the table?

I mean, I fully intend to give them the freedom to be who they want to be when-and-if we play an actual campaign using GURPS. But a simple blackboxed one-shot requires that I bring in fully-made characters, doesn't it?

Originally Posted by Stripe

I suggest a power level of 100 or 150-point characters with a -50 or -75-point disadvantage limit (p. 11 of Basic Set).

See Power Level, p. 487 of the Basic Set for a discussion of starting points.

Part of the reason for the lower points limit was to make it a little easier on me to build all these characters beforehand. But the bigger reason is that, at least according to GURPS Lite, 25-50 is "average", and 50-100 is your star athletes and such. Which seems like where I'd want to put your run-of-the-mill survivor -- at least in the early days -- of a zombie apocalypse.

Originally Posted by Stripe

Below is my fantasy zombie template which has been play-tested extensively. To make it a contemporary one, just remove its Dependency to magic and its susceptibility to spells.

[snip pure awesomeness]

That awesome, and pretty much exactly where I wanted to go with my zombies, I think! I'll have to go over it in more detail when I have the books and can actually figure out what half this stuff even means, but thanks!

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

I think it would be a mistake to convert powers directly to GURPS. IIRC, many powers do things like "grant an extra healing surge" or "slide enemy three space".

Sorry, I wasn't clear -- I meant translate over the concept of powers, not a direct translation of the powers themselves. Because, you're right, easily 75% of that stuff just wouldn't translate at all!

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

Sigh. I'm afraid it's not cheap switching game systems.

True enough. But the thing is that we're not switching, at least not yet. We're just giving GURPS a test drive. GURPS Lite (which I have downloaded, yup) doesn't feel like quite enough from a GM's perspective, which is why I've already bought the Basic Set -- sinking $50 already into what very well could turn out to be a single one-shot session!

If, however, my group does express an interest in actually playing a full campaign using GURPS, then I have no problem buying more books -- money well spent, as far as I'm concerned. It's just the thought of sinking even more money into something we may never touch again that makes me shy away from buying e.g. Horror right now.