Game Settings Written for the Game System vs. Generic Systems

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Anthony

This is...oft stated, but not actually true. A 10th level D&D fighter in mundane armor (say, chainmail and shield) goes down pretty fast to a horde of goblins.

"Small army" was an exaggeration - I was thinking more along the lines of up to two dozen or so. A single 10th-level Fighter is considered to be CR 10; 24 goblins (which are CR 1/3 according to the 3.5 SRD) counts as the same as 8 CR 1 foes, which is an overall (if I'm remembering how CR works correctly) CR 4 encounter. Even without level-appropriate gear, I'd expect a 10th-level fighter to have a very good chance at taking them down (I might just build an SRD "elite array" Fighter when I get home and see how he fairs).

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Varyon

"Small army" was an exaggeration - I was thinking more along the lines of up to two dozen or so.

You're also not considering configuring GURPS to behave more like D&D. I also question how you arrived at the idea that a 250-point GURPS character roughly equals a 10th level D&D character. The fact that you think a 10th-level D&D character can do something a 250-point GURPS character can't kind of disproves the premise.

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy isn't "D&D with the serial number filed off, wink, wink." It's a replication of the D&D genre, done in the GURPS way. If you want it to "feel" like D&D, you have to configure the GURPS rules: reduce skills to wildcards, remove special combat rules, and so on.

But this is talking about mechanics, not setting, and the thread is supposed to be talking about "game settings written for the game system versus generic systems." You would have no trouble at all playing GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, or even a more general GURPS game, in the World of Greyhawk or the Forgotten Realms. The rules are different, how you accomplish things is different, but there's no problem at all with GURPS running adventures in D&D settings.

I am reminded of that section of the AD&D Dungeon Master Guide that talked about taking your AD&D characters into the Boot Hill or Gamma World settings. Some basic conversions were given, and when the transition happens, you just start playing the new game. "After all is said and done, role playing is role playing and the setting is not of paramount importance" (Gygax, p. 112).

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Varyon

"Small army" was an exaggeration - I was thinking more along the lines of up to two dozen or so.

This is one of those situations that is pretty edition dependent, I've been playing 5e recently where 24 goblins would slaughter the fighter (a fighter using gear on the level of starting DF characters has AC 18 and probably 84 hp; the goblins have attack +4/1d6+2 with bows so they need about 44 attacks to drop the fighter, or two rounds. It's realistic for the fighter to kill two goblins a round, so 24 goblins isn't close. 12 goblins is close).

In 3.5e, the goblins do a lot less damage and the fighter might have great cleave, making surrounding him moot.

The equivalent goblins in GURPS have no attacks better than 1d and it's not that exotic for a fighter to have DR 6, so they're going to need a bunch of special tactics to even do damage.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

You're also not considering configuring GURPS to behave more like D&D. I also question how you arrived at the idea that a 250-point GURPS character roughly equals a 10th level D&D character. The fact that you think a 10th-level D&D character can do something a 250-point GURPS character can't kind of disproves the premise.

The idea DF characters are roughly equivalent to 10th level characters from 3.x DnD is something that's been suggested before, although I think it's more accurate to peg them at somewhere between 5th and 10th level (that is, +1 level in DnD is roughly equivalent to between [+25] and [+50] in GURPS).

And, yes, there are ways to make DF feel more like DnD - but it's a lot of work to do so, which is what I said in the original post. Personally, I don't have a problem with that - I favor the feel of DF to that of DnD - but it's a serious tonal shift when someone expecting Record of the Lodoss War finds him/herself playing Goblin Slayer (even with the more objectionable parts of the latter removed).

Originally Posted by Anthony

This is one of those situations that is pretty edition dependent, I've been playing 5e recently where 24 goblins would slaughter the fighter (a fighter using gear on the level of starting DF characters has AC 18 and probably 84 hp; the goblins have attack +4/1d6+2 with bows so they need about 44 attacks to drop the fighter, or two rounds. It's realistic for the fighter to kill two goblins a round, so 24 goblins isn't close. 12 goblins is close).

In 3.5e, the goblins do a lot less damage and the fighter might have great cleave, making surrounding him moot.

Yeah, my experience is almost exclusively 3.5e, so that's what I was thinking of (and Great Cleave in particular, which seemed a fairly common choice for Fighters when I played).

(Late) EDIT: I have now run the scenario, and it was a bit closer than I expected (the goblins had pretty good dice luck, including winning initiative, allowing them all to throw javelins before the fighter got into melee), but the fighter won. Of the 11 Feats he was allowed (1 for being human, 6 for being a 10th-level Fighter, and one each for levels 1, 3, 6, and 9), I only gave him 6 that were relevant to the fight (Weapon Focus/Specialization/Greater Focus, Power Attack, Cleave, and Great Cleave). He was armed with a masterwork longsword (and between his ST bonus and Weapon Specialization, any hit automatically downed an opponent), chainmail, and a heavy wooden shield. I didn't play the goblins particularly smart - once he got into melee, they swarmed him (with those who couldn't reach throwing javelins into melee), when they would have been better served keeping their distance, spreading out, and throwing javelins. Combat lasted 4 rounds (would have only been 3, but he rolled poorly twice in a row, ending his Cleave combo and then missing with his reduced-bonus second attack). The goblins reduced him to just below 1/3rd of his HP total - they dealt 47 HP (23 of which was in their opening javelin salvo) out of his total of 70, leaving him with only 23 remaining. Better tactics by the goblins (such as being better spread out to restrict his use of Great Cleave, and spamming javelin attacks) may have allowed them to be victorious, although they likely would have lost a lot of gobs.

Originally Posted by Anthony

The equivalent goblins in GURPS have no attacks better than 1d and it's not that exotic for a fighter to have DR 6, so they're going to need a bunch of special tactics to even do damage.

If not using Hit Locations, yeah, the goblins would indeed be rather SOL there. If you are, All-Out Attack (Committed) + Telegraphic Attack against armor chinks works well, but using Armor Gaps from Low Tech is even more brutal (and, admittedly, is what I was thinking of).

[Black Leviathan]

Yeah, GURPS is not the best system for every game. World of Darkness, Shadowrun, Star Wars RPG, Starfinder and Pathfinder are all game genres that are better suited to their systems because of the scale of their approach and the design choices they make. My favorite version of Star Trek is GURPS Prime Directive, similar case with my favorite version of Traveler. In fact GURPS is my favorite version of most of the games we play for a lot of different reasons, but none the least is that I'm attracted to the kinds of stories that fit well within the scope of GURPS mechanics and that contain the kinds of adventures that are well articulated by GURPS. And if you don't, then that's kind of just what you like.

[whswhs]

My feeling about rules systems is that the well designed rules systems characteristically have an underlying analogy or metaphor that describes what you are doing, and that shows through regardless of genre or setting. For example, in Big Eyes Small Mouth, you are playing characters who can be visually imagined with the level of resolution a visual image would provide; in Champions, you are playing entities in a tactical situation with various combat capabilities; in FUDGE, you are playing characters in a verbal narrative; in GURPS, you are playing real physical beings in a physical world. These different metaphors provide different representations; for example, in GURPS, you have rather precise units of distance, but in BESM, you have distance ranges separated by factors of 10, which are about where the resolution in an anime series would be.

An implication of this is that different fictions would better or worse with different root metaphors. When I ran a Middle-Earth campaign, for example, I used BESM, because Tolkien's storytelling is intensely visual, and because the animistic assumptions underlying BESM are a surprisingly good fit to Middle-Earth, and also because the Body/Mind/Spirit triad of BESM is a better fit to Tolkien's worldview than the ultimately materialistic implications of GURPS stats.

I've done original settings for all of BESM, FUDGE, and GURPS, and in each case I chose the rules system that seemed to give the feel I wanted for the setting and genre.

[L.J.Steele]

Originally Posted by panton41

So it kind of dawned on me (rather recently) that the years I spent trying to shoehorn other system's settings into GURPS would have been better spent just learning those systems and to use GURPS for the things it does better. (Though, honestly, I think GURPS could do Shadowrun better than the actual Shadowrun system.)

Does this make sense to other people here?

Yes. I've often said that GURPS is the 2nd best system for many settings. A bespoke system will focus on the core activities of that setting or genre and optimize for them. GURPS has to try to cover a very wide field and can only focus on so much without distortion.

You can do alot with GURPS or Fate or Hero, but each system has its sweet spot. A Traveller game in classic Black Books will feel very different in what the characters can do from characters designed in TNE or GURPS Traveller, or the newer editions of the game.

[L.J.Steele]

To build on some of the ideas here:

What does the system emphasize as the core activity? _Bubblegumshoe_ is about teen detective stories using a version of Gumshoe. The combat system is explicitly rudimentary. Players are expressly discouraged from combat that could get someone killed. Instead, it has detailed social combat systems for that high school shark tank feel.

Nights Black Agents, on the other hand, also Gumshoe has lovingly detailed combat and chase scenes because that's the core activity. There are social rules there, but characters primarily shoot while making quips.

Is there xp and, if so, how do you get it is another driver. Do you get it for fighting things? figuring things out? social interaction? Or something else?

I've been messing around a bit with some of the Blades in the Dark systems where you get rewarded for doing risky things, but also for things that satisfy your character's drives and goals. You can fail or ignore the mission utterly and still come out with decent xp with the right drives -- and that can emulate, say, Firefly where Jayne is willing to betray part of the group and risk a good paying job if it gets him cash.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by whswhs

An implication of this is that different fictions would better or worse with different root metaphors. When I ran a Middle-Earth campaign, for example, I used BESM, because Tolkien's storytelling is intensely visual, and because the animistic assumptions underlying BESM are a surprisingly good fit to Middle-Earth, and also because the Body/Mind/Spirit triad of BESM is a better fit to Tolkien's worldview than the ultimately materialistic implications of GURPS stats.

I think that is a great description of why GURPS is better for L. Sprague de Camp stories than four-colour stories. Oddly, D&D is sort of 'its own self-referential thing' because it was put together from different influences by people who had no idea what they were doing. CoC and WoD all had clearer models in traditional storytelling.

[khorboth]

There are very few things I've found that I can't readily import into GURPS. Particularly with Powers and Thaumatology in my toolbox. They do exist, but they are rare.

The barrier to entry to new systems, though is higher than you represent. First, I, as a GM, would have to learn the rules. Then, I'd have to experiment and get comfortable in them. Then, I'd have to run a few little things in the system to get familiar with them. THEN I'd have to teach those rules to my players. All this so that I could run a single game/campaign in the world or system of my choice. The work/reward structure is not in favor.

For several of the people I play with, learning new rules and systems is excruciating. It's the absolute worst part of the role-playing experience. These are people who are excellent at getting into character, bring tonns of narrative strength to the table and help everyone's immersion. They are perfectly capable of learning systems; I put them through Rolemaster for crying out loud. But it's taxing and not fun. GURPS reduces the not-fun and gets to the fun for these people by being consistent and modular.

And more often than not, the prospective system turns out to be seriously broken somewhere along the way. Most games lack the consistency of GURPS, and I would certainly lack the experience in that system. Therefore, the odds of having to scrap the idea in early stages (RIFTS) or the campaign going totally off the rails because of some system-related thing (In Nomine) are much higher.