Character Advancement

[Toptomcat]

Originally Posted by Rupert

That depends on how long it runs...

I've been handing out points on a diminishing scale for some years now (3/session under 400 points, 2/session <800, 1/session at 800+), and have a couple of 1200-point PCs. Even disallowing explicitly cinematic advantages, they are monsters in their way.

Huh. What does a 'not explicitly cinematic' 1200-pt character look like?

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Toptomcat

Huh. What does a 'not explicitly cinematic' 1200-pt character look like?

They probably can't do anything that would be impossible for a human to do, while being an expert at a wide range of subjects, enough to compete with the best in nearly any field of endeavour.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by fridayparson

The issue was/is that, with the exception of skills, once one creates a character there is no real advancement to look forward to. Unlike games such as D&D, GURPS characters can play an entire campaign and maybe get to increase a few skills and buy some marginally better equipment. That's not very rewarding for 20 sessions of gaming.

The problem lies in that most of the coolest stuff are things like Advantages, most of which one can't get after creation and stat increases are prohibitively expensive. By contrast in games like D&D, all the coolest stuff is to be earned during play and leveling. In other words after 20 sessions a GURPS character is basically the same. 20 sessions of D&D and one has earned many more abilities, HP, and is exponentially more badass.

It's perfectly acceptable, if you want the effect it gives, to start characters with fairly low point values, say 50-100 for classic D&D-like fantasy game. Then hand out generous numbers of points per session (5-10 or even more), and allow players to buy stuff that in a strictly 'mundane' game might not be allowed as in-play purchases.

If you want a really D&D-like experience, put together 25-point packages and allow players to add one to their characters every 3-4 sessions (like levelling up in D&D).

If you want the whole D&D thing, with dungeons and all, I recommend buying either the Dungeon Fantasy series of supplements (the first couple, plus any others that cover something you're interesting in), or the complete in itself Dungeon Fantasy Role-Playing Game, which is GURPS 4e cut down for dungeon fantasy without all the bits that you don't need for that.

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by fridayparson

While I'm sure some reading this may want to snap off a "git guud scrub" or a "if you don't like GURPS gtfo", I was hoping someone may have a homebrew solution, or any other advice I can use to get my group excited about GURPS again?

If the problem is that their characters don't grow fast enough you can (a) simply assign whatever traits are suitable and justifiable based on the character's experiences during play or (b) give them whatever amount of points y'all find generates the expected growth speed. If (b), and the group is expecting something like D&D's growth speed, I'd suggest starting out by multiplying the default point awards by 5 and then adjusting from there to suit your group's taste.

[Black Leviathan]

GURPS advancement is slow. It doesn't feature rapid rises to power like D&D. Instead it creates a more realistic growth for a person. When I say "Realistic" I don't mean to say that your desire for faster character growth is bad or wrong, just that exceeding that recommended CP per game will increasingly make character development make less sense. Regardless of how much CP you hand out, most advantages are a reflection of aptitude rather than advancement and really shouldn't be "learned".

If your players want big increases, a good solution might be to just hand them cool powers. Give them equipment that makes them powerful or let them get strange abilities through wishes or cosmic empowerment.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Black Leviathan

GURPS advancement is slow. It doesn't feature rapid rises to power like D&D. Instead it creates a more realistic growth for a person. When I say "Realistic" I don't mean to say that your desire for faster character growth is bad or wrong, just that exceeding that recommended CP per game will increasingly make character development make less sense. Regardless of how much CP you hand out, most advantages are a reflection of aptitude rather than advancement and really shouldn't be "learned".

Maybe this is true to reality. Maybe. But it's not true to lots of gaming worlds and a number of fictional ones. And there's absolutely nothing about GURPS that compels you hew to that maybe-realistic theory of growth.

[mehrkat]

an alternative rule that i've allowed in my game that creates an advancement is that players can reformat points to increase attributes.

So say a character has 10 4 point intelligence skills they can pull 2 points from each of them to make 20 points and add a point of IQ. The points pulled must not lower any skill but then IQ is now one point higher and all skills are recalculated. I do that in essentially all games that starts at a low point level.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by mehrkat

an alternative rule that i've allowed in my game that creates an advancement is that players can reformat points to increase attributes.

So say a character has 10 4 point intelligence skills they can pull 2 points from each of them to make 20 points and add a point of IQ. The points pulled must not lower any skill but then IQ is now one point higher and all skills are recalculated. I do that in essentially all games that starts at a low point level.

I wrote up a similar procedure for GURPS Social Engineering: Back to School. At least one of the players in my current GURPS campaign, Fronteira, has used it.

[fritzbc]

Originally Posted by Black Leviathan

GURPS advancement is slow. It doesn't feature rapid rises to power like D&D. Instead it creates a more realistic growth for a person. When I say "Realistic" I don't mean to say that your desire for faster character growth is bad or wrong, just that exceeding that recommended CP per game will increasingly make character development make less sense. Regardless of how much CP you hand out, most advantages are a reflection of aptitude rather than advancement and really shouldn't be "learned".

If your players want big increases, a good solution might be to just hand them cool powers. Give them equipment that makes them powerful or let them get strange abilities through wishes or cosmic empowerment.

GURPS Advancement doesn't need to be slow, it can be as fast or as slow as you want it to be. As well as this, you don't need to give out CP for players to feel that they are advancing, fancy tools and equipment can provide that same feeling, although shouldn't be relied on. If players are feeling that they are advancing too slow, then maybe bump up their CP gain per session.

[mehrkat]

I have a standard rule that makes attribute raises allowable. When you get enough skill points that allows you to raise an attribute without losing levels I allow them to switch out the points.

So lets say you have 10 Dex level skills at the 4 point level you can drop them down to the 2 point level and add a level of Dex. Though I essentially never use different attributes for skills. I also give 2 to 3 points for each game and allow them to add advantages (with GM ok) that fit their circumstances. Also a lot of "magic" types use advantages for the powers if you make scalable powers they can easily grow.

I should warn that it takes about 30 to 50 games before we switch to a different game as the characters get kind of hard to challenge. I tend to run cinematic games in general but the feeling of no advancement is pretty easy to combat but you have to warn them that campaigns will be likely be shorter.