Is monster hunters suitable for a first campaign?

[Appletoe]

Pretty much what it says in the title. I recall reading a post on here that said monster hunters, dungeon fantasy and action were best for first-timers, although I was originally planning to do a crusaders campaign but it requires too much research for me. So, what are your thoughts? Also, how lethal is combat at 400-points?

[weby]

Yes monster hunters, dungeon fantasy and action are good for first campaigns because one of the hardest parts of being a GURPS GM is done for you: Choosing what abilities the PCs should have and not have.

Of those I would rate DF easiest for people who have played other RPGs, but it is kind of limiting in the "only dungeon" way.

Action works nicely for most people as it is easy to get into the idea of being in an action movie and none of the things in it require deeper system understanding.

Monster hunters is also easy for players to get into as it is also a popular genre, but the availability of things like magic makes it a bit more complex than Action. Specially running/balancing RPM can be daunting as there are no ready "spell lists"

As for lethality of combat in MH:
The basic lethality is fairly low due to characters having Luck, wildcard points and fairly high defenses combined with the low probability of enemies with big guns. But overconfident PCs can get into big problems when they meet opponents that ignore their attacks or come in large packs and such..

[Minuteman37]

I'd air on the side of no, handling a TL8 setting, RPM and 400 point characters can be a lot and if it really is your first time GM and you don't have previous experience with GURPS it can be hard to take on.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Minuteman37

I'd air on the side of no, handling a TL8 setting, RPM and 400 point characters can be a lot and if it really is your first time GM and you don't have previous experience with GURPS it can be hard to take on.

the characters don't handle hand 400 point characters, really. If you stick close to the templates they handle like lower point characters.

A lot of the templates are actually really easy to play and GM. The hard ones are as follows:

RPM (Its a big challenge to GM)
Techie (Gadgeteering has the open ended quality of RPM with even less rules on it)

It can be hard to build Psi's and crusaders, but once they're built, they play fairly simply.

Combat in RPM doesn't tend to get that deadly unless you give the bad guys guns they can use effectively. But if your players don't know when to run, that can change. Monster hunters is intentionally made to favor hunters who know exactly what they're hunting.

[whswhs]

A first campaign ever, or just a first GURPS campaign? If the latter, what sorts of games have you run before?

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by weby

Of those I would rate DF easiest for people who have played other RPGs, but it is kind of limiting in the "only dungeon" way.

'Only dungeon'? It's not that limited.

[Appletoe]

Thanks for the responses.

Originally Posted by whswhs

A first campaign ever, or just a first GURPS campaign? If the latter, what sorts of games have you run before?

First campaign ever. Most of my role playing experience is confined to pbp and that's probably how I'll play this too.

[weby]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

'Only dungeon'? It's not that limited.

Alright seems that I need to start writing longer again, as any time I try to keep a thing shorter than a page I get the complaint that It do not write long enough explanations... ;)

DF is indeed also other things than traditional dungeons if you buy all the expansions, you have also wilderness as dungeon, tavern as dungeon and such, but the basic premises of it is "Kick in the door, kill everything, loot the bodies and go home to tall the tale". The expansions do not change that, just give more options and places to do those.

Basically there is no socio-economic model and most of the social traits and similar are either absent or simplified to their effect on dungeon ransacking.

Trying to do anything besides those things with the DF templates requires again work from the GM, negating the primary benefit of DF/MH/Act lines of being "ready to run".

Personally I use a lot of the material from DF in my current fantasy game, but as it has a lot of other elements besides dungeon crawling I had to do big modifications. I ended up doing my own Templates to replace the DF ones and so on. But I still get a good benefit from the DF material by picking pieces that fit from there.

But when giving advice to a New GM or a GM that is new to GURPS I definitely recommend to run DF or Action as it is to get the feel for how things like combat runs, unless they plan to run totally non combat campaigns.

The run may be a short adventure one if they want to run something more serious soon, but the ready made templates and selection of powers and other balancing that has gone into the things are definitely worthwhile to see in action. If they try to build their own thing as the first thing without any experience, the toolkit nature of GURPS will likely cause more problems if they have not seen how a worked out example acts in play. They will not know what things to take into consideration and how things balance.

Is that a long enough explanation of what I tried to condense? ;)

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by weby

Alright seems that I need to start writing longer again, as any time I try to keep a thing shorter than a page I get the complaint that It do not write long enough explanations... ;)

I could stand to some " :) , ;) , and 8D " around occasionally as well.

Basically there is no socio-economic model and most of the social traits and similar are either absent or simplified to their effect on dungeon ransacking.

Well, yes, it is rather Orc and Pieish with the expansions Orc and Picnic and Orcs in the Tavern.

But other stuff can be done... as PK said somewhere around here the other day, his group uses DF to run Banestorm.

Trying to do anything besides those things with the DF templates requires again work from the GM, negating the primary benefit of DF/MH/Act lines of being "ready to run".

Which turns it back into GURPS, as everything in GURPS requires work from the GM.

Personally I use a lot of the material from DF in my current fantasy game, but as it has a lot of other elements besides dungeon crawling I had to do big modifications.

I use DF Wilderness in almost everything I do (that has wilderness). But then I tend to run ACTION! and the DF rules heavily support that.

I ended up doing my own Templates to replace the DF ones and so on. But I still get a good benefit from the DF material by picking pieces that fit from there.

Yeah, I don't use templates.

But when giving advice to a New GM or a GM that is new to GURPS I definitely recommend to run DF or Action as it is to get the feel for how things like combat runs, unless they plan to run totally non combat campaigns.

Monster Hunters ought to be fine, but I'd recommend a lower Character Point setting for a new GM, say 200CP.

But if this is to be a pbp... then Appletoe ought to have plenty of time to think about things as they come up, so I'd say GO FOR IT!

Is that a long enough explanation of what I tried to condense? ;)

OMG! I had to read through all of that... TOO LONG!




;)

[Randyman]

Originally Posted by Appletoe

Pretty much what it says in the title. I recall reading a post on here that said monster hunters, dungeon fantasy and action were best for first-timers, although I was originally planning to do a crusaders campaign but it requires too much research for me. So, what are your thoughts? Also, how lethal is combat at 400-points?

Start with How to be a GURPS GM.

As others have mentioned, RPM makes Monster Hunters tough to run. If you don't want to prohibit magic for PCs, consider replacing RPM with Sorcery, which greatly downplays improvised magic and emphasizes known spells.