[DtG] New GURPS Players, $150 Each.

[Extrarius]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

I like a game that rewards thoughtful and attentive character building rather than one that avoids it.

As a GB patron, I've been able to see drafts of Delvers to Grow over its development.

I love character building in GURPS to the extent that I spend time building characters without a game to play them.

I very much support Delvers to Grow both in theory and in the actual execution. It greatly speeds up character creation without making one-dimensional characters. It does mean making a character with fewer choices, but that is something I think makes GURPS more accessible. Personally, I'll use it as a framework to "dial in" characters and then change things from there. Others that just want to play can use it straight to build a solid character very quickly. Anybody that plays DF or DFRPG can make good use of Delvers to Grow

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

I like a game that rewards thoughtful and attentive character building rather than one that avoids it.

Originally Posted by DaosusLeghki

I suspect a lot of people do, once they're familiar with the system. But to get them familiar, it helps to be able to play quickly, even if the character isn't as fleshed out as *edit*it would be if you'd taken some time*/edit*. I know when I got my current group started, we made characters and played a quick dungeon crawl to familiarize everyone with roleplaying and combat. If Delvers to Grow had been around, I'd have used DFRPG. Instead, I had to use DnD 5th.

My pitch isn't that this is the be all end all of your gaming. Rather, this is a tool for you to introduce people to the GURPS environment in a quick and easy way.

Implying that Delvers to Grow is thoughtless and inattentive to character building does Kevin a great disservice regarding how much work went in to making the packages complete, consistent with the end-state templates, and interesting. There's a lot of thoughtful and hard-learned wisdom in the modules (both in what they are and what they intentionally leave out).

This is streamlined chargen at lower point values. It gets you to a desired end state - playing the game with a well-rounded and capable character - in a fraction of the time it takes otherwise for both existing and potentially new players.

For those of us who have interest in growing the DFRPG/GURPS fan base, this is a good thing. For those who have actually seen new players recruited to the game real-time in the Game Store, it's an even better thing.

[Dalin]

I love making detailed, custom characters too. It's the main reason I switched from D&D to GURPS back in the early '90s. But, as others have pointed out, this doesn't work as well for new players. In college, when my friends and I had more time on our hands, we could luxuriate in learning a new system and having hours-long character generation sessions (followed by homework to finish fleshing them out). For a pickup session at a con or in a store? Doesn't work. Busy adults? Nope. Gaming club at school that only meets infrequently? Again, not a good fit.

In the past, pre-generated characters could fill that niche. I almost always provide pre-gens for new gamers (or new-to-GURPS). The big flaw with pre-gens, of course, is that they deny the players the joy of building their own characters. Delvers to Grow solves this problem. Players can create their own characters in record time and they are guaranteed to be viable. No need for careful GM review to make sure they didn't fall into any traps or exploit some loophole.

Even as an experienced player and GM, it will give me the chance to build fast NPCs or quick playtest characters. Do I usually fully stat my NPCs? No. But sometimes I want stats but just don't have time to develop a full sheet. Now I will have an option for that. Especially with GCS/GCA support... I am confident that I'll be able to whip up characters in a few minutes. Nothing will stop me from customizing them further, but the bulk of the work will be done.

That's a big deal.

[awesomenessofme1]

For me, it's as simple as "$40 is too much to pay for something I'm probably never going to use." I haven't gotten much use out of the previous two GURPS Kickstarters I backed, but those were $3 and $6, and they were at least in genres I actually play. Of course, there's no way a product like this could ever be cheap enough that I'd be interested and still have any hope of profiting, but I still thought I'd express my opinion.

[woefulhc]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

I like a game that rewards thoughtful and attentive character building rather than one that avoids it.

This appears to miss the point of the product. (At least as far as I have seen and experienced it.) The point of the product is to avoid having to have each player read through all of adventurers (or all of Basic Set) before the begin making a character before they can play. Pre-gens don't solve the problem. This involves the player in making meaningful decisions. This means they are more invested than they would be in a pre-gen. It also enabled those decisions for those that have not read the full rules.

This is literally take it to the game store and run a pick up game. A pickup game where players did not need any rules familiarity. A game where each character can be as unique and detailed as desired. It is short or vertical take off for getting a game going, as opposed to spending hours and weeks of prep before being able to play. I will follow up with the 250 point Holy Warrior I made based on the 187 point Strong hero.

[(E)]

Thinking about it, my biggest single game book purchase was for fourth edition GURPS. What I considered core books for my usual low fantasy games. After shipping that came to something like $300 US and a long long wait. This was back when fourth edition came out, the equivalent today would be more.

The quality of the previous work sold me on the purchase. The question here is, is Gaming Balliatic's previous work good enough?

I have backed and I even had the additional challenge of my youngest losing my credit card and thus I had to ask my beloved if I could, pretty pretty please, use hers.

In my opinion at least this adds a whole new game to the RPG pile, a fast, easy pickup game for casual players and for when time is limited.

[kreios]

To add to this, for me there's a whole different level to it:

I am, shocking as it might be, not perfect.

That means I can spend two hours building a character only to find out that my Knight lacks fast-draw for his sword, my wizard would've really profited from having a touch-range spell, and I forgot to buy a sleeping bag for my swashbuckler.

Building a character using DtG is extremely fast and leaves you with a broadly competent character. If you want to, you can easily build a character in ten minutes - in the playtest, I built my wrestler within ten minutes while the session was already starting. He was very nice to play.

At the same time, that's not the way I would've done it for a longer-running campaign. For that, I would have first built the character using DtG to ensure I didn't forget anything. After those ten minutes, I would then be free to spend another hour or so tweaking the character, optimizing attributes and skill levels and equipment, and rounding out his personality. But I could to that while being certain the base character works. In contrast, in my previous approach I'd spend three hours building a character just to forget Gesture, or First Aid, or - in the Wrestler example - wouldn't have taken Wrestling up to DX+4 for that sweet, sweet +2/die CP for wrestling.

Summing up, DtG is - aside from the fast and easy introduction to the system for newcomers, which is huge - also a gamechanger for building normal characters because you can easily get a competent base character to customize and modify to your heart's delight.

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Implying that Delvers to Grow is thoughtless and inattentive to character building does Kevin a great disservice regarding how much work went in to making the packages complete, consistent with the end-state templates, and interesting. There's a lot of thoughtful and hard-learned wisdom in the modules (both in what they are and what they intentionally leave out).

This is streamlined chargen at lower point values. It gets you to a desired end state - playing the game with a well-rounded and capable character - in a fraction of the time it takes otherwise for both existing and potentially new players.

For those of us who have interest in growing the DFRPG/GURPS fan base, this is a good thing. For those who have actually seen new players recruited to the game real-time in the Game Store, it's an even better thing.

To be clear, I was not implying anything about the design process. I was merely pointing out why I'm not a customer for the product, i.e. because I don't feel a desire for a streamlined chargen or even more especially for the streamlining concept that produces DF or DFRPG..

I don't think that's a basis to consider me outside those who want to grow the GURPS fan base.

[GMsShadow]

Reading some of the replies on here I can say that I guess I understand those who feel they can't afford to buy it, or that there are other products which are cheaper, but I still really see the need for these books. I've been introducing a lot of people to GURPS recently and without fail the one thing that puts them off is character creation. And we're even talking about some experienced gamers here. Delvers to Grow is exactly the thing I needed, and in fact I was in the process of trying to do something similar myself. I can't afford a huge amount either, so again I get the discussion around the pricing, but the Gaming Ballistic stuff is always well worth the money. I love my physical copy of Hall of Justice to bits. Some things are worth paying that extra for.

[DouglasCole]

Well here we go. Less than 48 hours to the end.

Please pledge if you can. It’s a great book.