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Old 05-27-2023, 09:16 PM   #51
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: What is your favorite genre and how well does GURPS handle it?

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Originally Posted by Kage2020 View Post
D

For me, this is not about probability. .
It was important to me from the perspective of a SR player trying to figure out if what my character wanted to do might work.

Usually in Gurps that's transparent. It's just barely more complicated than a straight percentile system but it's worth it to have the bell curve instead of a wildly swingy "flat" curve of probabilities.

In D20/D100 systems it's usually "Never mind what your chances are, What did your roll _this_ time?". That's also why you have the whole group try and do something in the hopes that somebody will get lucky this turn.

Dice pools though? They usually keep both GMs and players from knowing what's probably going to happen.

I wasn't talking about any mathematical conversion between game systems. the best proceedure is to convert conceptually.
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Old 05-27-2023, 09:16 PM   #52
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Default Re: What is your favorite genre and how well does GURPS handle it?

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Could you elaborate a bit more on how you were GMing this?
I ran it as a gritty horror/noir setting, as in I set the stage for lots of body and psychological horror, it was relatively lower powered (125 point PCs, so they were all generally competent in their specific field) and then gave them Impulse Points and used Impulse Buys.

So while death was generally threatening itself every time combat broke out or things got dangerous (environmental hazards, etc), the PCs generally had luck and serendipity on their sides.

Frex, one PC had Signature Gear (Working Vehicle), this played out as no matter what, if she lost her car, she'd be able to find a new one if it was possible, and if it was "impossible", she could spend IP to have one somewhere near in an area that wasn't yet described (or that was only described to her).

I(t wouldn't necessarily be a great car, it might be a two seater mini-car (with a party of 6 PCs one of whom was SM+1), but since I destroyed her car almost every session, and she often went whole sessions without one, I was generally decent about it when she did get around to wanting a replacement.

Another PC kept spending Perks on "Future Contacts", so with a good Diplomacy, Fast-Talk, or Carousing roll he could turn a newly met NPC into an "old friend or a friend of a friend" at the drop of a hat, as long as they weren't currently engaged in violence. Though I did once let him talk a potential combat down into an uneasy stand-off, and then he immediately decided to make friends with the raiders, because of course he did.


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Originally Posted by Kage2020 View Post
I think that your first sentence kind of makes the point. If you don't know GURPS, then can you do GURPS?
Of course I can (probably whswhs as well).

When I first got GURPS I hated the vanilla magic system, so over a couple of weekend I made a knew magic system. I based it on how Psionics worked in 3e, but actually almost identical like how the Create/Control Advantages in Powers work now. It used a Skill and a Power, I had the classic elements, time, gravity, body, mind, etc.

Easy-peasy. Granted, I understand a lot of people can't do that, but I'd been adhocing rules for D&D, Rolemaster, Monopoly, my friends and I made up a tactical miniatures game for our GI Joes when I was 10, etc for almost a decade, so what was GURPS going to do to stop me from making up rules for it? It would have been even easier had it been 4e as that lends itself to adhocing things in Powers, so I'd have probably just invented some not as elegant variant of Sorcery, instead of a weird variant of 3e Psionics.
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Old 05-28-2023, 07:40 PM   #53
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Default Re: What is your favorite genre and how well does GURPS handle it?

I like Modern Horror with magic and psi tossed in, IOW, pretty much everything. I am a big fan of lower level grittier characters as well, so much so, that my current summer campaign is 125 points, 1930 Detroit horror with minimal magic and no Psi.

After we finish up the regular campaign, a fantasy based game a friend of mine is running, I am switching to a Space campaign, based very loosely on the Marid Audran series (very loosely) but set on a space station.
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Old 05-28-2023, 07:45 PM   #54
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Default Re: What is your favorite genre and how well does GURPS handle it?

I don't think that the off topic discussion is productive as it contributes to the core discussion, so I'm going to bow out of this aspect. While I want to say something, it will just keep it going and I think I owe it to the OP just to let it slide. :)

Last edited by Kage2020; 05-29-2023 at 08:13 PM. Reason: Legibility.
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Old 05-29-2023, 11:22 AM   #55
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Default Re: What is your favorite genre and how well does GURPS handle it?

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
If I'm dealing with something for which GURPS doesn't have rules, I find it possible to make up rules, in a way that isn't always the case for other game systems, because GURPS provides a fairly rational basis for figuring out what the rules ought to be.
That's one of the things I like about GURPS. It all boils down to a couple of simple core mechanics, and it's easy to play around those (some other systems like YZE also exhibit this quality, while some like BRP don't IMHO) So for any given situation, I can _probably_ boil it down to a modifier, maybe using a margin of success/failure, maybe passing it on to another roll. And I like that, in the moment, the players might not realize whether I came up with it on the spot, or whether it came from a specific rule from a specific supplement.

Anyway, to go back to the OP, my favourite genre is probably investigative horror games. I originally came to GURPS at the tail end of 3rd edition/beginning of 4th edition, and I used it mostly to play Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green (this was late 90s, 2000s, and into the early 2010s).

Interestingly, while GURPS added some welcome "grittiness" and "realism", it also ended up being quite less lethal than the original CoC system. Instead of changing characters because a PC died, the players ended up changing characters because a PC was severely injured and needed to convalesce for a couple months. The reason PCs survived better, I think, was that they can collapse easily in combat, but dying is not that easy in GURPS -- you need to go to negative HP and fail a HT roll. With good group dynamic, many PCs were rescued from dangerous situations. In contrast, in vanilla CoC, PCs that reach 2 HP or less become unconscious, and simply die at zero HP. If I was to use GURPS again, I might tweak the injury rules to make it more lethal.

How well GURPS handles investigative horror really relies on, well, the two aspects of the genre: investigation, and horror.

- Investigation is not any better or worse than other skill based systems (like, indeed CoC). While CoC has a lot less skills than GURPS, some people still find that it has too many. GURPS gets a bit of wiggle room to some degree here because skills default from other skills, so there's more guidance for "using one's skill for something different but related". But still, the older I get, the less I want long lists of skills.

- Horror had to be different. The specific SAN mechanic of CoC can't be reproduced exactly in GURPS because of the 3d6 scale and bell curve (and I didn't want an inelegant d100 incursion into my GURPS game) but luckily GURPS Horror provides all the guidance you need. It's not like CoC's SAN is the final word on this -- in fact, it's "only" the first word! One thing however is that GURPS was somehow missing some... "flavour" for it, I guess. I think this can be fixed by making a nice-looking character sheet specifically tailored for a given implementation of GURPS. A character sheet goes a long way to communicate what a game is about, and the vanilla GURPS character sheet looks way too bland (which isn't its fault because, by definition, it has to be bland). Again, if I get to play GURPS again, I would probably invest time designing a custom character sheet for each campaign.

Last edited by lordabdul; 05-29-2023 at 11:26 AM.
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Old 05-30-2023, 04:26 AM   #56
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Default Re: What is your favorite genre and how well does GURPS handle it?

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A character sheet goes a long way to communicate what a game is about, and the vanilla GURPS character sheet looks way too bland (which isn't its fault because, by definition, it has to be bland).
Agreed. If anyone wants inspiration here, check out the customized sheets used in adventures by One Shot Adventures. They're not big overhauls of the GURPS sheet, but they help set the mood through tweaks to headers and fonts plus a few added graphics.

And I see that the kind soul behind it all is even offering the character sheets on their own: https://1shotadventures.com/character-sheets/
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Old 05-30-2023, 07:25 AM   #57
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Default Re: What is your favorite genre and how well does GURPS handle it?

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I ran it as a gritty horror/noir setting, as in I set the stage for lots of body and psychological horror, it was relatively lower powered (125 point PCs, so they were all generally competent in their specific field) and then gave them Impulse Points and used Impulse Buys.

So while death was generally threatening itself every time combat broke out or things got dangerous (environmental hazards, etc), the PCs generally had luck and serendipity on their sides.

Frex, one PC had Signature Gear (Working Vehicle), this played out as no matter what, if she lost her car, she'd be able to find a new one if it was possible, and if it was "impossible", she could spend IP to have one somewhere near in an area that wasn't yet described (or that was only described to her).

I(t wouldn't necessarily be a great car, it might be a two seater mini-car (with a party of 6 PCs one of whom was SM+1), but since I destroyed her car almost every session, and she often went whole sessions without one, I was generally decent about it when she did get around to wanting a replacement.

Another PC kept spending Perks on "Future Contacts", so with a good Diplomacy, Fast-Talk, or Carousing roll he could turn a newly met NPC into an "old friend or a friend of a friend" at the drop of a hat, as long as they weren't currently engaged in violence. Though I did once let him talk a potential combat down into an uneasy stand-off, and then he immediately decided to make friends with the raiders, because of course he did.
Thank you very much. This narrative way of GMing and emulating it with advantages is something I, as a GM, struggle with. But I know GURPS can handle it. Your experience was very insightful for me.
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Old 05-30-2023, 10:49 AM   #58
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Default Re: What is your favorite genre and how well does GURPS handle it?

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And I see that the kind soul behind it all is even offering the character sheets on their own: https://1shotadventures.com/character-sheets/
Oh nice, thanks for sharing!

But beyond the graphical design of the character sheet, there's also what rules/stats are on it. So for instance I might remove the Encumbrance box for lighter implementation of GURPS. For a horror game, I would add boxes for Stress & Derangement (if I'm using that from GURPS Horror). And so on. I may go so far as to even have a "fixed" list of skills (instead of the usual empty table) for games in which I use the "!" wildcard skills or other sort of heavily shrunken down skill list.
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Old 06-01-2023, 09:46 AM   #59
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Default Re: What is your favorite genre and how well does GURPS handle it?

How well does GURPS do my preferred genres?

Modern-Day/Near Future Action/Cyberpunk: Does these well with just the Basic Set, and the Action line, High-Tech, and Ultra-Tech boost that to very well. The cyberpunk cyberware in Ultra-Tech needs a touch-up, but easily enough handled by the GM. Grade: A+

Space Opera: Also very well, indeed, and has gotten better over time. Whether your space opera is Star Wars or Star Trek - or somewhere in the middle like Babylon 5 - GURPS covers them well. Grade: A

Superheroes: This is the big thing where everyone says GURPS doesn't do it right, isn't it? Well, in my experience, having run a superhero campaign in GURPS for several years, it handles superheroes excellently! The GM and players have to be mindful of certain genre tropes - unless they're intentionally going for deconstruction. The key thing to remember is that point values do not equal balance, and use and abuse the variant optional rules to fit the genre, and toss out the harsh realism rules on their collective butts. Grade: A

Monster/Vampire Hunters: These variants of Urban Fantasy - in World of Darkness terms, this would be Hunter: The Reckoning or Hunter: The Vigil, depending on the version you play, rather than Vampire or Werewolf - are quite well done, IMO. I haven't done much outside of that in the wider "urban fantasy" genre, as my tastes tend to be "I don't want to be the only vampire hunter among a party of vampires, and not end up staking the entire party." Grade: A

Renaissance Fantasy: aka "Fantasy with Guns!". Not a popular genre among those of That Other Game, or so it seems at times, but it's what drove me to look closer at GURPS with my own fantasy setting. GURPS does this better than That Other Game, because of how it separates defenses from meat points, and wearing armor protects against damage, not stops you from getting hit - all of which help with making pulling a gun on a dragon something more likely to happen and be enjoyable. Grade: A-

Mecha! This is a genre that takes some doing, but thankfully there are Pyramid articles for it. I haven't yet gotten to play in a true BattleTech style mecha game like I want to, so I can't say for certain how well it plays. Grade: B+

...

Honestly, I cannot think of a genre that GURPS absolutely cannot do.
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Old 06-02-2023, 06:56 AM   #60
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Default Re: What is your favorite genre and how well does GURPS handle it?

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Superheroes: This is the big thing where everyone says GURPS doesn't do it right, isn't it? Well, in my experience, having run a superhero campaign in GURPS for several years, it handles superheroes excellently! The GM and players have to be mindful of certain genre tropes - unless they're intentionally going for deconstruction. The key thing to remember is that point values do not equal balance, and use and abuse the variant optional rules to fit the genre, and toss out the harsh realism rules on their collective butts. Grade: A
I usually prefer to deconstruct or subvert superhero comics tropes, so GURPS worked pretty well out of the box for the few supers campaigns I've run.

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Renaissance Fantasy: aka "Fantasy with Guns!". Not a popular genre among those of That Other Game, or so it seems at times, but it's what drove me to look closer at GURPS with my own fantasy setting. GURPS does this better than That Other Game, because of how it separates defenses from meat points, and wearing armor protects against damage, not stops you from getting hit - all of which help with making pulling a gun on a dragon something more likely to happen and be enjoyable. Grade: A-
I had a great time with a swashbuckling campaign in Elizabethan England with secret magic and supernatural goings on. I used Path/Book magic, and impulse buys to encourage feats of derring do. I don't know of another game that has a great reputation for handling the genre better. I'm curious, why A-?
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