GURPS News updated

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Dalin

A bunch of middle-school theater kids signed up for the week-long DFRPG summer camp that I'm running with a colleague next week. (With a second camp two weeks later.) We've got 32 copies of DFRPG on hand to give to our attendees (thanks to a generous discount from SJG) and will be using Delvers to Grow and, if we can get it in time, Doug's new Bestiary (thanks to a similarly generous discount from Gaming Ballistic).

This is our second year trying this out. Last year was moderately successful, though we didn't provide any actual products to the kids. (I knew at least a few of them purchased material after the camp.) I've had plenty of success getting kids into DFRPG in small groups, but it is still fairly crunchy, even after paring down other genres. We're trying out this camp idea to see how it appeals when they have a chance to really dive into it for 30-some hours. My hope is that we'll be growing the local community of GURPS fans.

We still have a few spots open in either week, if any forumites live near the Twin Cities (Minnesota) and have (or are!) kids entering grades 6-9 next fall. Here's the link; scroll down to find the two Roleplaying Games options on the left side.

Very curious to know how it goes this time around with Delvers to Grow. DtG seems like an unambiguous step in the right direction to me, but there are still a few modules that will say "spend 25 points on bardic/druidic/holy abilities" which strikes me as not ideal.

[Kromm]

One of the hardest aspects of designing an RPG to be both a generic game and a quick-start one is the "separability problem": To break character creation into a few chunky choices to accelerate startup time, you must (1) arbitrarily decide which parts of key archetypes get put in what chunks, and (2) ensure that all chunks that can be used together actually work together or have a few words on how to address conflicts and/or overlaps. Thus, any conflicts or overlaps mean a more complex game . . . but none mean a game where certain "logical" combos are inaccessible.

Solving that is fairly straightforward for a single genre, like "hack 'n' slash fantasy" (as several of my Pyramid articles show). Indeed, were I told to go design a totally new single-genre RPG tomorrow, I'd be tempted to make it card-driven and have your "character sheet" be your hand. One card would govern basic potential, another primary career training, a few others some specific edges, and yet others your gear. Everybody would start with the same number of each type, and each would be roughly equal in power to all others of its type.

Solving that isn't at all straightforward for a game that has to cover all genres, including user-defined blends and crossovers. For that, point-buy is the best of a few bad choices. The complexity comes not from the author's love affair with crunch but from the desire to use one tool to address all genres.

Still, that doesn't quite explain why people want to go off tweaking things to death. That's a specific behavior of a specific generation of gamers. Plenty of CRPG players are entirely happy to pick one of a few classes, tweak one of a small handful of variables, and spend most of their "character creation" efforts on customizing the visuals of their avatar and then collecting gear in play.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Originally Posted by Kromm

I do think that there's merit to an OGL for an RPG. That wouldn't be my decision, however; I'm not even one of the six people out of 35 or so who'd get a vote. If ever GURPS goes south and I decide to self-publish a game, it'll definitely use the OGL model.

I still think there's something to be said for a cheaper version of the core rules to entice impulse buys. Like a more pretty/newer version of GURPS Lite.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Originally Posted by Kromm

That's a specific behavior of a specific generation of gamers.

Or gamers who have a specific vision of what they want to do and no one supplying the pre-built tools to do it. Like, I find it weird the hobby needs 1,000 fantasy games that all feel the need to always include the same races and archetypes.

(I'm sorry if I'm being overly hostile about this, but while I don't mind being told I'm not the intended consumer for GURPS any more I don't like the implication that I'm a "problem" because I find its "toolkit" nature useful.)

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Still, that doesn't quite explain why people want to go off tweaking things to death. That's a specific behavior of a specific generation of gamers. Plenty of CRPG players are entirely happy to pick one of a few classes, tweak one of a small handful of variables, and spend most of their "character creation" efforts on customizing the visuals of their avatar and then collecting gear in play.

Is this a generational thing, or is it something some gamers of in every generation will do if you let them (and GURPS lets them)?

Though maybe I'm not quite sure what you're talking about. It seems to me that this thing comes in a few flavors. One is munchkinism, which I'm pretty sure is an evergreen phenomena. Another is the GURPS players who care a lot about exactly emulating certain abilities from fiction or folklore, which I've never liked even though in many ways I'm a rules geek. Also, with GURPS specifically there's the fact that it's very self-consciously a set of building blocks, and when presented with such a diverse array of building blocks some people are going to start thinking about all the crazy unique things they can build with it. I'm really not sure how else you're supposed to use much of the material in Powers and Thaumatology and even to some extent the Basic Set.

[Michael Thayne]

One thing I'll say—while I can admit to being a rules geek, the thing that keeps me coming back to GURPS when everyone else is playing D&D is the feature of GURPS often called "realism" but that could probably more accurately be called visualizeability. In D&D you're constantly having to BS your way to a half-decent explanation of what it means that Bob is down 42 hitpoints out of 47, and I've played with people who make heroic efforts to do this but sooner or later the GM always resorts always resorts to saying, "Okay, he takes a fireball to the face. He's not down yet, but he's, uh... he's unhappy." Whereas in what GURPS calls a "cinematic" campaign, you might survive a fireball to the face but the rules that let you do that are consciously modeled on actual movies so the result is more likely something like "so last turn he got thrown across the room like you'd expect in a cheesy action movie, but now he's starting to pick himself back up..."

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by SilvercatMoonpaw

(I'm sorry if I'm being overly hostile about this, but while I don't mind being told I'm not the intended consumer for GURPS any more I don't like the implication that I'm a "problem" because I find its "toolkit" nature useful.)

Eh, so long as they don't start blackboxing traits alongside somehow managing to repeal Rule Zero, I think there will still be usable content for us gearheads. And I'm rather confident the "part of the problem" statement wasn't meant to be at all malicious, it's just a simple fact that, if the exposure people have to GURPS online is people working out and/or arguing over the minutiae of building such-and-such overly complicated power, those people are going to think GURPS is an overly-complex game meant entirely for gearheads, and that's going to rather turn off people who aren't inclined toward that sort of thing. Which is a shame given that, while GURPS certainly can accommodate gearheads, it's more than capable of working well for more casual gamers as well.

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

One thing I'll say—while I can admit to being a rules geek, the thing that keeps me coming back to GURPS when everyone else is playing D&D is the feature of GURPS often called "realism" but that could probably more accurately be called visualizeability. In D&D you're constantly having to BS your way to a half-decent explanation of what it means that Bob is down 42 hitpoints out of 47, and I've played with people who make heroic efforts to do this but sooner or later the GM always resorts always resorts to saying, "Okay, he takes a fireball to the face. He's not down yet, but he's, uh... he's unhappy." Whereas in what GURPS calls a "cinematic" campaign, you might survive a fireball to the face but the rules that let you do that are consciously modeled on actual movies so the result is more likely something like "so last turn he got thrown across the room like you'd expect in a cheesy action movie, but now he's starting to pick himself back up..."

Yeah, that's a big advantage to GURPS over more abstract combat systems (although GURPS certainly has no small amount of abstraction built into its combat, for playability) - getting hit means getting hit, not "Oh, I actually avoided that strike, but I'm, uh, running out of morale and luck, I guess? And my movement has become sluggish in a manner consistent with having been affected by the poison on that knife that totally missed me because... because Reasons. Oh, and the knife that missed me no longer has a coating of poison on it because it totally fell off with this attack, even though it stayed on when it got deflected by my armor earlier. Yeah."

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Varyon

I'm rather confident the "part of the problem" statement wasn't meant to be at all malicious

You would be correct. I mean, I included myself in there . . . I'm not a masochist! Moreover, after doing this job for so long, not keeping secrets, and being as honest as I know how, I'd like to think that people know I'm not a malicious person.

We in the GURPS-o-sphere imagine that "builds" and "crunch" are normal gamer interests that people can ignore if they dislike. However, they're niche gamer interests, and the majority of gamers who don't share them find the mere existence of support for them worrisome. That's less about "hurting wrong fun" than it is about "all the editorial and production efforts directed toward sifting through a page of crunch could be put toward X pages of ready-to-use content." Given SJ Games' limited resources, people who feel that way aren't wrong, even if I think their valuations of X are a little iffy – it's closer to 1.5 or 2 than to 5 or 10.

I guess it's a bit like the market for precision tools: Most people don't need or want them, but there are professionals and dedicated amateurs who do. The difference is that for most kinds of tools, those who are interested are willing to pay high margins to make up for low volume. Whereas gamers mostly aren't . . . indeed, a lot of the attraction of crunchy toolkit games is that they let you "roll your own," saving money. That's a hard-to-bridge divide, rooted in the fact that gamers appear not to weigh the value of their hours into the math; perhaps that's where I differ, being a contractor paid an hourly rate.

[Eric Funk]

Originally Posted by Kromm

In the same vein, SJ Games has poured a lot (a lot) of energy into self-contained games that simplify GURPS – i.e., the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game

Many thanks Master KROMM! I have been in GURPS for over 25 years (in various capacities) and the "Dungeon Fantasy" and "GURPS Dungeon Fantasy" lines really helped me get my party started up quickly. As the only one not new to GURPS I asked my players the big picture questions and then filled in characters from those lines. The prefab monster, guild, treasure tables from the above lines makes things a breeze. I also have NPCs showcase similar powers the PCs /could/ have to let them know to ask for...

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

As someone who has bought 3e GURPS books solely for the non-mechanical content, I'm not going to mind some easy-to-use rules. Dungeon Fantasy just isn't something I need GURPS for: I've already got too many games for it.