Opinion: Do GURPS game masters put more work into their campaigns

[mehrkat]

I'm working with a lot of newbie players so I spend quite a bit of time working on the "setup" for my world. I do a lot of standard worlds like my current game is a significantly altered Spelljammer where all the PC's began on Krynn (Dragonlance) so I had to hunt up racial templates (it seems that someone has done almost everything), hunt up some templates for some of the special classes, tweak them to the taste of my players and me.

But once character creation is done and the world is built my plot is running behind the scenes in my head. I've found interestingly enough that I can sort of wing things by putting myself into a heroic movie mindset and knowing my players/character capabilities and making up the enemies as I go.

Set up probably 10 to 20 hours. an 1/2 an hour to an hour once a week to think about the next adventure and plotting my evil without even a notebook. maybe an hour here and there to work with players on their character and help them make interesting choices and give them interesting choices when they slip past my character creation document in new directions.

I tend to run lots of high fantastic worlds so I tend to have to spend quite a bit coming up with neat powers and effects.

[Phaelen Bleux]

Originally Posted by Toadkiller_Dog

Some systems come with more pre-made stuff, but I find that just means the GMs put in effort elsewhere.

I'd say this is the case for me. In all of my campaigns, I do a lot of work, because that's me. The system used just changes the nature of the work.

[johndallman]

The things I use GURPS for tend to demand more preparation time. I can improvise fantasy fights and humour without much difficulty. But I can't improvise alternate histories, NPC names and complicated who-knows-what structures so well, and semi-historical games demand research. It's the subject matter, not the game system, that occasion the work.

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by Layander

Do GURPS game masters put more work into their campaigns than people who run other settings, or is that just a personal issue I have? Sometimes I feel, or know, that I put to much effort into my game world, is that a common trait for people who run GURPs compared to other games?

I've put more hours into supporting my non-GURPS campaigns than I have my GURPS campaigns. The amount of time I save by not having to author as many of my own rule supplements is significant ...

[trooper6]

Other systems may have more "out of the box" stuff...but that isn't where I put my time when I get time intensive. When I get time intensive, it is about creating rumors, contacts, and locations individually crafted for each PC's background. Connecting PCs to the world. Then going over the PC character sheets to come up with really interesting moral conundrums/difficult situations that would play on their particular character. Or thinking deeply about the world consequences for their actions.

But I do that regardless of the game system I'm running.

On the other hand, I know GURPS well enough and so easily improvise in it. That if a bunch of people came to my house right now and wanted to play GURPS and start right then I could do something.

I'd probably start with either no-magic (or secret magic) fantasy or real world. I'd give them a brief set up, say: "You are an independent investigative freelance journalist team in Washington DC. Give me a character concept each, make sure it has built into it some personal motivations, and think about how you survive financially, since you all are not famously successful yet. Okay, you have 100cp to put into stats. Pick two advantages and two disadvantages that go with your concept. We'll leave your 5 Quirks blank to be filled in while we play. You'll have 50cp that you can use to add skills or other advantages as we go along, as long as it fits your concept. We'll do the same with equipment. So for example, if you thing your character knows Krav Maga, as about a 12, then we'll put it on your sheet and deduct the points from your pool of 50. Got it? Tone will be dark and conspiratorial. Opening Ideas?"

Abel: "I'll go with a former Army Journalist, who saw bad stuff in Afghanistan. Maybe I'm an amputee. I was injured and get a stipend. I'm using it to fund my investigative journalist career. I'm in it because I love journalism. I'm the researcher and writer."
Baker: "I'm the daughter of a rich family. I could have easily been a pretty face on the news, but I wanted to start on the bottom and work my up. I wanted to earn my cred. So I teamed up with these yahoos to work on our own. I have a trust fund. I'm the interviewer and person with connections."
Charlie: "I'm the tech nerd! I know all there is to now about cameras and surveillance. All self-taught. I hang out here because they let me play with toys and don't mind if I cross into legal gray areas. I earn money playing poker online."

Me: "Okay let's start!

It is a hot humid day in July and you all are in your cramped offices. The air conditioning is on the fritz and the landlord hasn't fixed it yet. It have been like this for weeks. You're last story sold to the alternative weekly in DC three weeks ago and was well received. It was on some corruption in the Department of Agriculture. Nothing too big, but it is getting your team noticed. But you haven't had that many leads on anything interesting since then. A man knocks on your office door before opening it. He is wearing a heavy overcoat, gloves, scarf, and hat. He is pale and is sweating, eyes darting around. He is a tall, handsome blond with piercing blue eyes and a square jaw, but he looks like he hasn't slept in days and there is fine, blond stubble on his face. His right hand is buried inside his coat..."

Then we'd be off. I'd have to improvise quite a bit. But that's okay. I'd only have to take notes on what I improvised, and make it through a 5-6 hour session before I decide a bit more where I wanted this to go.

[Dusqune]

I have played mainly two RPG's: GURPS and D&D

I started out on D&D. When I was into that (3.5*), I had everything memorized, and if the plot called for an npc with a given set of powers, I could quite literally run them without making any of the stats and then afterwards (if the npc became a regular) I could make the character sheet and stay fairly true to the power I represented them as having within the game. This is because D&D has a level system, and a lvl 5 character is roughly equivalent to another lvl 5 character (assuming we're not comparing warriors and wizards, here--apples to apples, oranges to oranges).

As someone who did immensely love spending days upon days coming up with my own campaign world(s), I loved GURPS from the moment I picked up the 3rd edition book and glanced through it. So much flexibility! So many choices! No restriction to the level system! It was amazing for me.

At the same time, what was my greatest draw (the no lvl system) was also my greatest weakness. Even now, when I'm ~75%-ish familiar with core GURPS rules just off the top of my head with no references, it is extremely easy to make a character as needed. However, I have so much difficulty gauging their combat prowess in relation to the PC's, because GURPS isn't built like that. You could have a 500pt character that loses every time to a housecat, simply because they took combat-disadvantages and non-combat advantages! Other than literally making someone with similar combat skill levels and stats to the PC, tweaking up or down to change difficulty, I have no baseline for how to make an 'even encounter.'

D&D had charts for this (where if you broke it down, sqrt(2) became your favorite number (you know you're a math nerd when...)) but there are absolutely no hard and fast rules for combat effectiveness in gurps. Generally, my combats fall on either extreme of "The PC's pwn the bad guys and save the day like superman" or "GM intervention Deus Ex Machina is required to keep PC's from a fate worse than death."

In preparation? D&D and gurps seem about equal. I can chose to prepare or not prepare with either, and they turn out relatively similar. On the one hand, D&D has reliable power levels. On the other, GURPS is immensely easy to tweak mid-battle (e.g., oh, the 'thug' is beating up the PC's with no problem? Disadvantage affecting a not yet used mechanic suddenly gained.) In-play, D&D is less work (for me) than GURPS.

I still love gurps much more than D&D.

*4e D&D was like the worst of both worlds. You had PC level and npc level and then you had this innate assuption that PC's were 10x as strong as npc's, even in a 'balanced' fight, and you can't improvise any character because the rules are so freakishly complex and different from any game I have ever seen... *regrets paying money for 4e books*