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Old 05-23-2023, 09:12 PM   #41
tbone
 
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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 Donny Brook View Post
GURPS is weakest in its emulation of a certain niche dungeon-crawling genre pioneered by another brand.
Out of curiosity, are there specific weaknesses you've found?

If it's more of a broad "just doesn't feel right to me", there's nothing wrong with that. But when people do have concrete objections, those are always interesting to hear.
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Old 05-24-2023, 02:38 AM   #42
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Default Re: What is your favorite genre and how well does GURPS handle it?

1) Low Fantasy/Magic Realism
2) Grimdark
3) Urban Fantasy
4) Psi-ence Fiction

GURPS does all well.
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Old 05-24-2023, 08:31 PM   #43
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Default Re: What is your favorite genre and how well does GURPS handle it?

I've seen far too many "argue-bates" about what this or that setting is this or that genre, so I'm not going to fall into that trap, refplace. :D

My main crush at the moment is the Shadowrun meta-setting, so I guess that's fantasy, sci-fantasy, space opera, cyberpunk, retrofuturism, post-apocalypse, and, for me, a bit of hopepunk thrown in there.

As I think about it, this seems to play out in terms of the settings that appeal to me and their constituent "genre". There are some curveballs, though.

For example, I generally dislike "supers" settings (to mean four colour supers), but I have a huge crush on the Godsend Agenda, which I imagine to mean that I don't like generic supers.

* * *

The one thing that I have found that GURPS doesn't do well is... things that it doesn't have rules for. I know, I know, but this can be important for people coming into the system that don't know it inside out and just want to do "a thing" (because of the promise of the universal system).

I walked away hard from the system until Thaumatology: Sorcery was released. Ritual Path Magic also did a lot for me.

GURPS works well until it doesn't.
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Old 05-25-2023, 02:54 AM   #44
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Default Re: What is your favorite genre and how well does GURPS handle it?

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The one thing that I have found that GURPS doesn't do well is... things that it doesn't have rules for. I know, I know, but this can be important for people coming into the system that don't know it inside out and just want to do "a thing" (because of the promise of the universal system).
Of course I'm long familiar with GURPS. But for me, at least, this is contrary to my experience. 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.
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Old 05-25-2023, 05:00 AM   #45
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Default Re: What is your favorite genre and how well does GURPS handle it?

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Of course I'm long familiar with GURPS. But for me, at least, this is contrary to my experience. 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.
It may be an issue of personal ability. E.g. I find it difficult to adjust or make up rules for things because I have trouble turning imagination into numbers. Some people do much better with guidance.
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Old 05-25-2023, 07:47 AM   #46
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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
Of course I'm long familiar with GURPS. But for me, at least, this is contrary to my experience. 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.
Gurps is possible to do these things with, But its a fair amount of work. I had to hold off on running a campaign last year because I hadn't finished working out the magic system for Gurps but didn't realize it until my players tried to build characters.
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Old 05-25-2023, 09:21 AM   #47
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Default Re: What is your favorite genre and how well does GURPS handle it?

The 'tech tree' idea was first seen in the board game CIVILIZATION which Sid Meir took it from. (HARTLAND TREFOIL edition 1980). I'd imagine that something like one is going to be very important in say a post-Apocalypse recovery game. ("First bang the rocks together. No, not those, these. See how it sparks? Get some dry straw...")

I find that with one exception GURPS is satisfactory for everything I've tried using it for.

This includes Fantasy (from low and gritty, to medium and political, all the way up to incredibly high fantasy) which is unsurprising because it's what GURPS was first built for.

It includes space opera (in the form of INTERSTELLAR WARS), alternate history and time travel (which works its way into almost everything I do), horror and monster hunting. Historical and occasionally Supers.

The one thing I don't find it good for is anything where the simulation of a literary genre is more important than the simulation of a real world (ish) event. I'm thinking especially of comedy. While the DISCWORLD adaptation works very well I consider GIRL GENIUS a mistake, not because I dislike GG but because GURPS style brings in a level of clunkiness to the game play that kills the laughs.

There are things that GURPS does, presumably to the satisfaction of those who like but I just dislike as an idea. AUTODUEL for instance or MECHA.
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Old 05-26-2023, 11:40 PM   #48
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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
Of course I'm long familiar with GURPS. But for me, at least, this is contrary to my experience. 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.
I think that your first sentence kind of makes the point. If you don't know GURPS, then can you do GURPS?

I can do a great deal in a system that I know, but if I'm coming to GURPS cold as something that I'm adopting because I had an issue or beef with another system?

One of the reasons that I came to GURPS was because I had a problem with the Shadowrun system, which included that they used another system for the fantasy version of their game. My vision was to use GURPS because, well, one system is better than three. Why learn three systems of magic when you could learn with some minor variations? Why use three combat systems when you can just deal with one...

With all the downward-negotiations of what I wanted to what I could do in [I]GURPS[/I, would it have been better to use the original systems and just be damned with my preferences? I would have just had to deal with using three systems...

And don't get me wrong. I'm not shilling or otherwise leveraging this to argue for using "lite" systems.

Last edited by Kage2020; 05-26-2023 at 11:48 PM.
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Old 05-27-2023, 08:13 AM   #49
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Default Re: What is your favorite genre and how well does GURPS handle it?

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would it have been better to use the original systems and just be damned with my preferences? I would have just had to deal with using three systems...

.
Maybe, but in Gurps you can figure out the odds much more easily. I eventually came to mostly understand Shadowrun probability but it was much harder work than doing it in Gurps.

Earthdawn was too much work to do _anything_ beyond basic chargen. I made an Obsideman of maximum strength and toughness but who did no magic and was happy but the campaign died under the weight of the system, eseciallyas it applied to characters who were not so focussed.

Note that i came to Shadowrun when it was brand new and this was in fact before much of Gurps was fully developed (1989 v. 1986). So it's not that I knew Gurps that much better. I became _very_ familiar with SR 1-3 and at one time was very impressed with all the buttons to push and levers to pull in the SR magic systems. I opted out at 4 because they seemed frightened that mages and shaman could be different and tried to erase that.

I could adapt the SR world to run in Gurps but I wouldn't mind if the magic systems did not work exactly the same (even though i once liked the SR versions). Unhappiness when trying to adapt game mechanics to Gurps is pretty common.
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Old 05-27-2023, 08:58 PM   #50
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Default Re: What is your favorite genre and how well does GURPS handle it?

Don't get me wrong, you make very valid points in your post.

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Maybe, but in Gurps you can figure out the odds much more easily.
Maybe I'm in an unusually lucky situation that I've involved in a wonderful group that has many, many experts in GURPS. You're going to have to trust me on that one.

With that said, with such a fantastic resource there can be some problems that a noob has to address. For example,
  • Learn to speak enough GURPS so that you can communicate your ideas sufficiently that people can help you. This is kind of like trying to get into Linux. (But also a wonderful reminder of being very focused with your descriptions--a lesson that I am still learning, somewhat slowly.)
  • Understand that you're going to be focused on getting the GURPS-adjacent answers rather than those that you might want from a more setting perspective.

In reference to the second point, it's kind of like some of the earlier "conversions" of SR that you can find out there. They used the skill-based magic system and had "D&D magic cyberpunk" but in so doing missed out on a whole bunch of flavour.

Remembering, of course, that people are sometimes (often) coming to GURPS as an alterative to a pre-established, often dedicated/bespoke, system. Me? I didn't want to use different systems to run a single campaign in the SR meta-setting with Highlander-esque transitions between different parts of the game. Now I'm just in the grind to try and get the project compete because, seriously, too many years faffing around with this darned project.

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I eventually came to mostly understand Shadowrun probability but it was much harder work than doing it in Gurps.
For me, this is not about probability. As I think about it, thus far the only thing that I've used as a point or reference between the two systems was figuring out what a starting character could do if they maxed out on their magical shenanigans. Once I had that as reference for "converting" over to Sorcerous Empowerment things were good to go.

This is, however, converting settings and not systems as the 'ole mantra goes.

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
Earthdawn was too much work to do _anything_ beyond basic chargen.
As above, I wouldn't touch the statistics of SR. I'm more concerned about how to bring it to reality in GURPS, make it work with SR an EQ, and I'm happy with all the other extra widgets that GURPS provides.

If I could figure out how to get those things.

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
I opted out at 4 because they seemed frightened that mages and shaman could be different and tried to erase that.
Personal note. I cannot abide what SR did with the premise of shaman, and that's even before they get to the in-game premise of how they compare to mags. :/

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Unhappiness when trying to adapt game mechanics to Gurps is pretty common.
Which is not something that I'm trying to do.
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