GURPS would be more successful if it were more friendly to new players

[kommisar]

Given your criteria, I would suggest GURPS 3.5. Use Gurps Basic Set and Ultra Tech for 3rd Edition which you can find in ebay for ~$5 each. Poach the low hanging fruit out of GURPS lite 4e to get most of the improvements to 4e (stat costs, skill costs, removal of passive defense, language skills). This will result in a rules set that is somewhere between gurps lite and gurps basic in complexity and modestly priced.

[OldSam]

Originally Posted by sn0wball

What about a combination between an introductory adventure and GURPS Lite ?

Indeed, this would be very good!!

Originally Posted by Rev. Pee Kitty

... So Lite needs to be free, which means it can only include so much. ...

Good points, absolutely understandable.

But without expanding the Lite-rules...
Bundling it with a free, small introductory adventure with Lite would be good marketing, wouldn't it...?

Also or as another option:
>> A free, small "demo-game" could work really good IMHO...


A specific demo game setting, just showing the interested reader the flow of one or a few cool game scenes with GURPS...
Maybe just as a "nice to read"-introductory-pdf with some attracting art etc., not explaining much, but giving an idea how the system works and how it feels like...

Like I already suggested in another thread a few days ago, it could be something in that direction:

GI Joe is running over an old wooden bridge, being chased by a bunch of angry werewolves. An hour ago it has rained and the ground is slippery, so he has to be careful not to fall, though he just wants to get out of this hell as soon as possible. {{ The GM calls for a Dexterity roll to avoid falling. Joe`s player makes a roll against his DX-Attribute of 12... It's an 11, so he succeeds. }}
Joe manages to get over the bridge quickly, where he finds his parked Jeep. He jumps in, starts the engine and drives the car on the road through the Forest. A quick glance in the mirror shows him that meanwhile three Werewolves are very close after him, so Joe tries to reach top-speed immediately. About 50 Yards later Joe gets some trouble driving through a difficult curve. {{ Under the given circumstances at top-speed on a bad road the GM decides that Joe needs to make a driving roll with a penalty of -3 to succeed. Joe has Driving (Automobile) at 13, his Player rolls a 12, not good enough in that case... }}
He can't handle it, the Jeep gets off the track and he risks losing control over his vehicle. Now Joe has some real problems...

--

Also combined with a demo-game, ideally there could be a few introductory pages about GMing GURPS and in an Appendix it could include a few pages about "how to continue playing GURPS..."
("Buy the Basic Set but use it as a -toolbox- and not -everything-...". Recommending settings for beginners like dungeon fantasy and action... things like that.)

[joppeknol]

I bought and played Call of Cthulhu, gemini and GURPS. Although I think GURPS had the more flexible 'realistic' game system and I more or less switched to it, I wouldn't recommend it for starters. A comparison:

Gemini: 35 euro, contained rules, a great setting, tons of plot hooks, an introduction adventure, and 5 more adventures were downloadable. The setting and the adventures had a strong plot.

COC: 40 Euro. Contained rules, a setting with monster descriptions and 4 introduction adventures.

GURPS: 40 + 30 euros basic set (Yes, the local game store had to import it. I might be able to get it cheaper.). Then, I had to get a setting (banestorm 25$ pdf download). I also bought gurps magic in order to spice up the campaign. Now I still have to write my own campaign, draw maps, invent NPC's etc.

Another complaint with GURPS comes from one of my players. "Yeesh, you need an academic degree to understand the character sheet.". Compared to COC or Gemini, there are tons and tons of options, which makes it much harder to create a workable character. Templates make things easier, but still you have things like: 'pick 20 points from the following advantages ..<insert list of advantages which should be looked up>

So after the criticism*, what would I suggest to get new GM's and players?: Create a version of GURPS with

- A nice setting with lots of plot hooks. E.g. a part of Yrth. Megalos City or so.
- Drop all advantages, except for wealth and appearance.
- All needed skills grouped in say 10 bang skills, which cover all and do not overlap.
- A few nicely worked out adventures, maybe even a campaign with a lot of mystery and a few fights.
- a very stripped down equipment list.
- some guidance on how to GM and how to create interesting characters. 'what are the goals of the character?' What is his background? To which faction does he belong?'
- Gurps Light combat rules.
- New character sheets which are more simple and easier to understand.

This way, players have less to choose, the GM has more guidance to run his adventure, and if turns out to be fun, they can go to the full GURPS while still using the same setting.

These are my ideas about GURPS. They are colored by the fact that I play with occasional players who do not like lots of rules. I also never played in 'the other game'. OTOH, I also think that a lot of posters on this forum played so much GURPS that they cannot see the difficulties of the game anymore (no offense intended, I also think this happens to most experts in any field.).


* I skipped the parts of great things about GURPS in order to save space.

[Anders]

It's like this:

GURPS Lite - improvised equipment (-2 to Game rolls)
Basic Set (both books) - basic equipment (no modifier)
Add two or maybe three appropriate books for your campaign - Good Quality (+1 to Game rolls)
Add a half-dozen appropriate PDFs or another two or three books - Fine Quality (+2 to Game rolls)
Everything published - Best equipment possible (+4 to Game rolls)

[OldSam]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

Everything published - Best equipment possible (+4 to Game rolls)

hehe, mostly I would agree but not with the last line - it should read:

"Everything published - Best equipment possible" ( -1 Encumbrance, needs IQ-Roll* )

*: If IQ-Roll is successful +4 to Game rolls, if unsuccessful: -2 to Game rolls due to information overload and great confusion... :D

[Luke Bunyip]

Just thought I should wade in and point out that I am running a group of 10 year olds through a 'hobbits in a tunnel complex' DFesque campaign. Tis a bit closer to Lite than standard GURPS, but they are coping OK.

[smurf]

Funny really. I found other RPGs harder to game with.

adad: I just did not understand THAC0 or why a mage forgot magic.
T2000: Why was the 'Russian' stuff so bad and bullets did not hurt much IIRC.

GURPS said to me I can do XYZ and we did!

[bumbot]

In my experience, GURPS is very friendly to new players with the right resources. My wife is new to GMing, and we're playing a game with people who are all new to GURPS except me, and I'm no seasoned veteran. We're playing Dungeon Fantasy, and between templates from the book and GURPS Character Generator, everyone got a character made up no problem. From then on, roll to hit, roll to dodge, roll damage. Easy as pie.

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by RyanW

With a group consisting of myself, two beginners, and an old-hat D&D player, we had pretty close to zero problems when I ran All Flesh Must Be Eaten. The D&D player has just started a Pathfinder game, and the beginners were absolutely flummoxed during character creation.

Yes, some games are still simple enough to let beginners try them without the least experience... These usually are games where the rules are much less important than the world. Which is impossible with a universal role playing system, of course.

But also note that your group had a player who already knew what a role playing game is, and could explain it to others (the old-hat D&D-player).

Originally Posted by RyanW

I'm probably running GURPS next with pre-gens or narrow templates.

In my humble opinion, pre-generated characters are the best for a very first game. They allow to learn what a role playing game is without having to begin with a lot of more or less complex calculations. Templates are not sufficient here, because you still have a lot of math to do before begining to play. With pre-gens, you just choose your character and begin the game within a minute.

Furthermore, per-gens can be very attractive for newcomers, if they are printed with a beautiful picture found on the Net. It also allows to reorganize the character sheet completely: to erase everything which is not useful for the character, and to write no abbreviation. Not the least one! Abbreviations are a pain for beginners.

"Make a intelligence roll. - Intelligence? Where is my intelligence stat? - IQ. - Oh! IQ... Yes. you already said it..."

[Guillaume Ponce]

Pre-gens are the way to go for beginners (new to RPG) for the reasons you said.

Plus, they won't be frustrated falling in a trap at character creation (too bad you forgot tracking for your ranger).


In my experience, pre-gens can also be good for seasoned players of other systems but new to GURPS.


I posted earlier in this thread that I failed as a GM by allowing too much exostism for PCs.
But the players were asking for it.

When you are coming from a system where options are few and two (level 1) fighters are quite similar, when you see all the options that GURPS offers, you want to try all that you could never do so far.
This new freedom can be exhilarating at first and some players tend to push it a bit too far.