Has SJGames been working on GURPS 5th edition for 2 years, or is Steve just trolling?

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by zoncxs

This goes back to my main point from my first post that you decided to misrepresent: People haven't spent enough time learning the system.

I found GURPS easy to understand upon first reading, though nuances keep reappearing. I also think the core system is incredibly easy but the complexity increases with the number of options.
Changing the core rules or eliminating complex ones is not going to satisfy enough people over the people who would be unsatisfied.
I think the best solution is an easier on ramp and I'll make an official pitch on that after TT:Spirits is through editing.
Of course my ideas are out there in prior threads, maybe someone else has already pitched that idea.

Originally Posted by SilvercatMoonpaw

Because I tried that and it went nowhere: I kept buying systems, hoping to find one that met at least one of my tastes, and then never ended up using them. At this point I'm burned out on this line of thought and its implication that if I throw just a little more money and time at the problem that I might stumble upon something good.

I think this is why some people try to shoehorn everything into D&D.

Speaking of which: OSR tends to work because people are already familiar with it, either having lived and played when the works being cloned originally came out, or from playing a later incarnation.

Agreed. I used to buy lots of systems and got tired of new rules for every genre. Especially since most left me unhappy with the result anyway.
With GURPS I know what I am getting and have lots of help with various genres.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Mr_Sandman

I really don't think homebrewing a class or race for D&D is an easier or more newbie friendly proposition than making a character using GURPS, Hero, or especially FUDGE.

It is if you didn't already know one of those other systems. However, my main point about homebrew was that the frequency of homebrew is evidence that people do want more than is included in the base system.

Originally Posted by Mr_Sandman

What the perceived gains are is very dependent on the person doing the work. Also, how are we judging equally good?

That's actually a part of the problem.

The purpose of point accounting is to produce balanced characters; if it doesn't do that, it doesn't really have a purpose. If we can't even define balanced characters, there's no way point accounting can actually work.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Hero is not exactly a big success nowadays either. Probably for similar reasons to GURPS -- it's too much work for limited gains. If two GURPS characters with the same point value were actually reliably equally good, going through the details of GURPS point accounting might be worth the time, but they aren't.

No argument; I was more concerned about pointing out that GURPS isn't unique in the generic system market. (And HERO isn't one of the alternatives I was thinking of.)

[Mr_Sandman]

Originally Posted by Anthony

It is if you didn't already know one of those other systems. However, my main point about homebrew was that the frequency of homebrew is evidence that people do want more than is included in the base system.

Which is found in systems like GURPS, HERO, BRP, or any other point-buy system, which have been very common for a long time. I think we actually agree on this.

Originally Posted by Anthony

The purpose of point accounting is to produce balanced characters; if it doesn't do that, it doesn't really have a purpose. If we can't even define balanced characters, there's no way point accounting can actually work.

Another way of looking at point accounting is that it provides a broad, general agreement among the GM and players on the scope and scale of character abilities, and a means for a player to prioritize what they think is important in the character they are creating. Lots of players enjoy that process, and making the decisions that go into it. GMs can use the way a player creates a detailed character as a signal as to what that player wants to see in the game.

Absolute mechanical 'balance' is an essentially impossible and meaningless goal in any game, once it hits the table, due to the different ways that players play and GMs run games.

The other thing point accounting does is provide an agreed upon system, to avoid disagreements, discontent, and argument that often arise with homebrewing in games that don't allow that amount of flexibility and detail by RAW.

Originally Posted by Mr_Sandman

... homebrewing without causing a lot of contention among other players at your table. Having the character creation system that GURPS or Hero provides cuts down considerably on that.

I'm not arguing that GURPS shouldn't have a streamlined approach to character-building. I think things like Pointless Slaying and Looting, and Delvers to Grow are great, and should be used in more applications of GURPS that are offered. I just don't think throwing out the existing, detailed character creation system is necessary or helpful. It would turn off a lot of GURPS' player base, and it wouldn't really gain anything.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by kenclary

the OSR scene is chasing the actual old-school experience.

I played a little OSR and it did not turn me into a teenager again or even get me wired out of my mind on Mountain Dew. So the actual old school experience was not achieved.

Using a simply bad rules system was somewhat like the original experience but it wasn't the part I wanted to revisit.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Anthony

It is if you didn't already know one of those other systems. However, my main point about homebrew was that the frequency of homebrew is evidence that people do want more than is included in the base system.

Honestly, when I played around with d20, I found it more difficult and less intuitive to create homebrew races and classes than in GURPS, simply because the building blocks aren't there. Of course, if going by the idea that GURPS points don't result in any sort of balance, that doesn't make much difference - the GURPS benefit is that all the traits have point costs (and there are enough extant traits and options that you can typically eyeball the value for a novel one), but if those point costs are largely-meaningless, that's no benefit at all and you had might as well just make up whatever traits you want. But I don't agree that point values are largely-meaningless.

Originally Posted by Anthony

That's actually a part of the problem.

The purpose of point accounting is to produce balanced characters; if it doesn't do that, it doesn't really have a purpose. If we can't even define balanced characters, there's no way point accounting can actually work.

One issue here is that how useful a given character is happens to be heavily-dependent on the campaign itself. Saitama from One Punch Man would be an extremely high-point character that could absolutely dominate any straight fight... but none of that would do him much good in a courtroom drama or similar. House, MD would probably wind up with points comparable to a DF character (perhaps higher, I've never tried to stat him out) and could largely dominate most medical dramas... but put him in a combat situation and he's most likely less than useless.

But if you take two characters of equal point value and build both for combat, they're both going to do well in combat. Take two characters of equal point value and build both for a medical or courtroom drama, they'll both do well in the situation they're designed for. Certainly, the one made by someone with a greater degree of system skill (and/or inclination to min/max) will be more effective, but that's typically the case for any system that has choices in it - plenty of newbie players of That Other Game have screwed up their skill and Feat selections to generate characters who simply aren't up to par while the veteran min/max'ers can create monstrosities like Pun-Pun the Kobold (particularly if they can Fast Talk the GM - sorry, I meant Bluff the DM - into letting the more questionable bits through).

That said, GURPS could stand to have some housecleaning - the skill list alone is entirely too large (as we discussed in a previous 5e thread). But I feel you're overselling the problem a bit, here. Having worked templates to riff off of for each genre can certainly help, and GURPS does deliver such (albeit typically in genre-specific supplements, like DF, Action!, MH, AtE, etc).

As already mentioned in this thread (and pretty much every other 5e/"How to get new players" thread since the relevant work came out), something like Delvers to Grow for each of several genres would be extremely useful for new players to learn effective character design from (and for less-new players to speed things up - Shigran was almost certainly my fastest character build, and I nonetheless find him an interesting character I'd certainly love to play if I had a group). Maybe have semi-lite versions of it for each of Fantasy (cribbing off the original DtG), Modern (cribbing off Action!), and Science Fiction / Space Opera (cribbing off Mission X, provided that gets to become a thing - which I'm really, really hoping for) in a Revised Basic Set or whatever (possibly even as a free download akin to GURPS Lite, although that would potentially be a lot of work invested for an indirect payout), then have dedicated versions available for purchase for those genres and others (and probably some Pyramid articles talking about how to modify them for specific campaigns, like Delvers to Grow + Operators to Grow - Fantasy + Modern - for a fantasy swashbuckling campaign, mundane Delvers to Grow for a non-fantasy LT campaign, etc). But I don't know if the payoff would ultimately be worth the sort of investment SJGames would have to put into it for something like that.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I played a little OSR and it did not turn me into a teenager again or even get me wired out of my mind on Mountain Dew. So the actual old school experience was not achieved.

Using a simply bad rules system was somewhat like the original experience but it wasn't the part I wanted to revisit.

Honest question: bad compared to what? While I'll probably never put the effort into roping my friends into playing OSR that I use to rope my friends into playing GURPS compared to 5e (which I play a lot of because it's what everyone else is playing) there's definitely things I miss about the pre-Y2K editions.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Honest question: bad compared to what? ns.

OSR nostalgia appears to center on AD&D1e or occaisionally the red box/blue box "Basic". The Castles & Crusades I played in was almost unchanged from 1e and they didn't fix _anything_ that I remember. Not the "roll 3D6 in order chargen" or the uselessness of the Fighter class.

My character was so dull that I named him "Lump" and he spent most of the session eating cheese in the back of a wagon. Cheese was about the only thing I could afford at the market.

So my answer is mostly "Bad compared to everything else that has come after 1e.". This includes 2e. I've played a couple of long AD&D2e campaigns in this millennium and 2e is enough like a real game system in comparison to be .....let's call it "usable".

In contrast I've played a single session of 1e that was fun but the DM totally broke chargen and started us at 2nd level too. We spent all session fighting kopbolds anyway and they were even more feeble than we were.

One of the 2e DMs totally broke chargen too to let us have "good" characters and it was a low combat/low magic game anyway.

So if you have nostalgia for the days of 1e I would suggest checking it for youth and caffienated soft drinks.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Honestly, when I played around with d20, I found it more difficult and less intuitive to create homebrew races and classes than in GURPS, simply because the building blocks aren't there.

Modern-style d20 games have the drawback that each class has to be built all the way to the level cap, and these days they're expected to have special moves and powers and to get an improvement or something new most levels. It's a lot of work to build a decent class unless you make minor changes to an existing one (and then you're not really making a new class). Some OSR games trend this way too. It's yet another way in which d20 games hide complexity and 'weight' from the starting player by transferring it onto the GM.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

So if you have nostalgia for the days of 1e I would suggest checking it for youth and caffienated soft drinks.

I do have nostalgia for those days - but not for AD&D1, which we did not play back then. I miss the long sessions, and the youthful enthusiasm and energy. I don't much miss most of the rules we used - Space Opera was fun, but a poorly proofed and edited and very unwieldy mess. Chivalry & Sorcery simply didn't bother explaining a number of important rule assumptions. Aftermath! was okay, but GURPS does everything it did at least as well, and generally better. The same applies to Runequest, and the other games we played. I'd only use them today if I wanted something very specific that they did and GURPS doesn't (a short run of Rolemaster for the critical tables, for example).