Dragged kicking and screaming from the candy-store

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by CousinX

What?? I can't imagine why that would be....

Well, okay, I can. ;)

Perhaps you would be happier if I were on yours.

[Alden Loveshade]

Originally Posted by Brett

I begin to suspect that few of us have shared your success in converting gamers to the GURPS side.

Originally Posted by whswhs

I find that kind of high involvement mandatory in pretty much any system. I sit down with players as a group and discuss concepts; have them do first drafts and submit them to me; review them for correct arithmetic, rules legality, efficient design, absence of traits that make sense for the character's history and background, presence of traits that don't make sense, possibilities of clever designs, and possibilities of cool little additions. Then I send the players detailed critiques and lists of suggestions, and ask them to respond. Often we go back and forth a couple more times.

This avoids characters that are poorly designed, characters that don't fit my world assumptions, and characters that will create problems when played with other characters.

Bill Stoddard

With me it depends on the player. Some players come in having played more than a dozen roleplaying games; with them I do something similar to what you do. With those with little or no roleplaying experience or who get confused by changing gaming systems, I say, "Forget about the gaming system. You don't need to know more than how to roll three six-sided dice. Here's a basic description of the world your character will be in. Now what kind of character do you want to play?" As they tell me what they want, I fill in their character sheet with them.

To add to my original post about how I've got people into GURPS, I left out adapting GURPS to things they want to play. My games at conventions have included GURPS: Paranoia, GURPS: Gilligan's Island, GURPS: Horror High School, GURPS: Monty Python, etc. Some of my friends have run GURPS: Star Trek, GURPS: Beavis & Butthead, GURPS: Sailor Moon.... That's a really good way to attract players who know nothing about GURPS.

Alden Loveshade

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Alden_Loveshade

With me it depends on the player. Some players come in having played more than a dozen roleplaying games; with them I do something similar to what you do. With those with little or no roleplaying experience or who get confused by changing gaming systems, I say, "Forget about the gaming system. You don't need to know more than how to roll three six-sided dice. Here's a basic description of the world your character will be in. Now what kind of character do you want to play?" As they tell me what they want, I fill in their character sheet with them.

Even with the latter type of players, I take the character sheet home, review it, and get back to them with suggestions for fine tuning.

Bill Stoddard

[Alden Loveshade]

Originally Posted by chimchim

I have "converted" several groups from other games to gurps. The first was way back yonder. I had a group who were 100% fixed on D&D and were very anti change especially one particular player who had always been the GM up untill i took over the job. I tried but failed initially to get the group to even consider GURPS until during one session the old GM's character (he was playing a bard D&D 2nd ed) life depended on someone being able to pick a lock. He was convinced lock picking was a bard skill but it turned out it was not. He then asked :-
"Could my PC try to pick that lock under GURPS?"
I replied yes but the default skill would be low.
The group began converting their PC's to GURPS right there and then and that group are still using GURPS as a system of choice.

Motivated self-interest wins out once again. I love that example.

I once got in an argument with a GM running a different game system. He insisted that while my character was very highly skilled at throwing a net on people from a distance even if they were trying to avoid it, by the rules it was impossible for my character to simply drop a net on a person who was sleeping. ???

And by the way, that GM was credited in the book for the system he was running.

Alden Loveshade

[Ubiquitous]

I actually just suggested GURPS to an online group I joined, tipping it a wink every time we played Dark Heresy or talked about D&D.

Then I showed off a few of the rulebooks, let them look around.

Entire group has, to a man, decided to run their own campaign with it now, sometimes two.

It feels reeeaaal good. Granularity finally has a place.

[Wicked Lurker]

In my case the first contact with GURPS (as a player) impressed me because of a non-random character creation system (I had only played games that had random character creation before).

The nice
Much later, when I started to GM GURPS this was also one of the main things that drew other people to it - you can build your character exactly as you want him/her to be.

The affinity to realism also drew me and some other gamers I know to GURPS over other games on the market.

The ugly
What, on the other hand, turned a lot of people off (and those that refused to switch to GURPS all said that) is the lack of streamlining in the rulebooks and lack of user-friendlyness.

I have to say I agree to that as well and hope the new edition will adress this issue.

[SolemnGolem]

My gaming group was great fun in DnD 3.5, which I DM'd.

When DnD 4E came out, I decided to swap systems and I researched a load of different rulesets over two days spent browsing at my FLGS. Eventually I settled on GURPS as a jack-of-all-trades system.

I was lucky to have a loyal group of players. They picked up GURPS just so they could stick with me, and we're now running a postapocalyptic stone age campaign in sub-Saharan Africa with scavenged TL8-9 tech.

My players all agree that it would be hard to do that under d20 rules.