Over on the ideal game thread, someone asked me why I'd classified GURPS as irreparable but possibly salvageable for my purposes. What I wrote was mainly that I disliked the point-buy character generation and the incorporation of social/psychological advantages/disadvantages into the overall system.

Mulling this over I realized that it might be possible to just ditch the character generation system altogether, and, for a given genre or setting, just use a system of archetypes/templates similar to Talislanta or (I think) WEG Star Wars or Feng Shui. The idea is, you provide a base character with appropriate attributes for the concept, then you give a very simple tradeoff to allow customization of attributes--e.g., up to +2 distributed over 1 or 2 attributes, in exchange for equal subtraction from other attributes.

Then you have a set of standard skills for the archetype. And finally you can pick a certain number of optional skills. Some games with similar approaches allow a degree of specialization right off the bat (take the same skill twice to get it at a higher level). You could do this in GURPS, or simply start all skills at the level of their governing attribute.

The point here is, above all, simplicity and getting away from all the accounting and minmaxing (do I raise my dexterity and spend less on skills, or do I spend a lot in the really important skills and leave my dexterity fairly average?). And second, it seems it would allow the GM to ensure reasonably balanced characters (in every sense of the word) while removing from the equation those ads/disads that I don't care for.

At this point you have workable characters to use with the overall resolution systems, of which I've always been a fan since they basically just take TFT and give it a little more detail. Experience can be left as-is, but since the social/psychological ads/disads are gone, you no longer have to "buy off" disadvantages or "buy up" advantages like Wealth--those things just happen as a result of game play.

If base attribute values can't be increased through spending character points--something I'm rarely in favor of--then note that skills can simply be recorded as levels above base. Then resolution is a matter of rolling under attribute + skill. The benefit of this is that you can immediately see the cost of raising a skill instead of having to back-calculate by subtracting the attribute and then looking at the skill cost chart.

Of course, laying the groundwork is a fair amount of work--the GM needs to write up a few archetypes. And it does reduce flexibility, but you gain some structure along with speeding up character generation.

I'm wondering if anyone else has done this or seen a set of archetypes published using a similar simplified chargen system?

Also wondering if JAGS might have something like this, or could benefit from it. I remember reading over it and thinking it had some similarity to GURPS.

I really don't understand why you'd do this.  Point-buy chargen and it's flexibility is the main selling point of the GURPS system, without it it's just a bog standard roll-under system with nothing really to recommend it.

If you just like the 3D6 bell curve, there's other games that utilize it while offering simpler chargen such as you've described here.  Fusion, for example.

I remember looking at Fuzion, but not very closely. I'll take another look.

Again, I'm a big fan of TFT, and the clean procedures in TFT are still very visible in GURPS. 3d6 is only part of it. You've also got how weapons and armor work, options for map-based combat if desired, the magic system with its spell lists and cost/power/time tradeoffs. IIRC GURPS also has the TFT-y distinction between images, illusions, and summoned beings. (Images are purely visual and disappear if you touch them; illusions can cause damage but they go away if you concentrate and successfully disbelieve them; summoned creatures are real but they only stay as long as the mage keeps paying for them.)

The available source books probably also add some value, even with an archetype system.

Hmm, fair enough.  Do you find that Templates help for you in terms of shortening the decision load?  And have you tried using a chargen program?  I found I really didn't quite get into GURPS as heavily until I discovered MAKECHAR as a lad.

After a certain amount of work spent "fixing" a system, you realise it'd be less work and give better results to just design your own system from the ground up.

You can always steal the ideas and mechanics you like for your own game. That's what I did with GAMERS. First it was going to be a CT clone, turned out to be a son of CT, the kind of son who when you look at him you start wondering about how often the milkman visited.

Quote from: J Arcane;451916Hmm, fair enough.  Do you find that Templates help for you in terms of shortening the decision load?  And have you tried using a chargen program?  I found I really didn't quite get into GURPS as heavily until I discovered MAKECHAR as a lad.

Yes to the first question. I've made a few GURPS characters and it's always been a pain. Whereas I've made a few Talislanta characters, and a character in Shades of Fantasy, and it was easy once you decided the general type of character you wanted. (In SoF, there's a mix of random and point-buy, but the character type you choose carries a number of prerequisites which gives you a good "core" for the character. Then you spend remaining skill points on other stuff, but you pay double for extracurricular skills that aren't on your list, and you pretty much buy skills as base level.)

I understand that GURPS has improved in a number of ways since I was fiddling with 3e--from introduction of templates, to cost tweaks, to the availability of computer aids. (I know SJG sells one; I just turned up this one, and I'll bet there are others.)

Even with all that, I don't think it will match the more guided archetype approach. And it doesn't necessarily solve my concerns about social/psychological ads/disads.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;451917After a certain amount of work spent "fixing" a system, you realise it'd be less work and give better results to just design your own system from the ground up.

Your experience with Gamers suggests the design process wasn't "blank sheet", so starting with an existing design isn't a bad idea. In any case, working off of GURPS will be on the back burner for me--right now, if I do any major system hacking, it'll use RQ/BRP as a base.

I'm mainly just wondering if anyone else has already done this with GURPS.

Templates were actually introduced in 3e, they just weren't really covered in the core.  They were rather common in the sourcebook material, as it was an easy substitute for classes in settings where specific types of skillsets were a common thread.

I don't really find 4e improved the complexity at all personally, if anything I think it worsened it to appeal to the hardcore forum set that digs the crunch.

I think if you want a simpler GURPS core you should probably stay far away from 4e.

I'm not overly fond of the templates.  I thought the old lists of stuff you should have for various character types were clearer and easier to use for having the system details stripped out.

Generally if I want fast characters I hand out a prebuilt character and a small budget for customization, like 20 points.

But personally GURPS character creation is a weak point and the combat system and other detailed resolution stuff are the system's strengths.

What I did with CT to turn it into GAMERS was to keep,

• six attributes
• which you roll 2d6 to generate
• listed in order and noted with hexadecimals
• relatively short skill list
• skills which add to a 2d6 roll, compared to a difficulty number for success
• armour adds to difficulty to hit
• injuries are subtracted directly from attributes

and then I added what I liked,

• game title to help you remember the order of attributes (grit-awareness-mind, endurance-reflexes-strength)
• Social level as an attribute replaced by confidence, which I called Grit
• streamlined skill list to make it generic, 9 categories of 6 skills each. 54 skills in all - not counting specialties (eg Craft, Science, etc).
• skills are rolled, not chosen - you have the numbers 1-6 to assign to each skill category, assign and then roll. So if you want a "fighter", you had best assign 1-3 to Combat skills. This was in effect a shortened lifepath system.
• "familiarities" are added to skills, eg you could have Driving+3 and be familiar with Mack Truck, Corolla, and Zephyr Motorbike. Or you could have a single familiarity without any skill at all
• instead of -2 unskilled malus and +1 first skill level, since people "forget" to subtract the 2, I made it +0 and +3.
• difficulty to hit is the victim's Reflexes, not 10.
• if you take an extra action/time to do something, you can roll for "complementary traits" - in this way high attributes and other skills give a bonus to skills without all the fiddly skill-by-skill rules of CT.

And that's about it. I just drew out the bits I liked and built on them, rather than trying to fiddle with the bits I disliked.

Now, as to you and GURPS. You say you dislike the point-buy, but then talk about the player being able to adjust attributes and skills up and down. That is in effect point-buy. It's just you're taking all the social/mental dis/advantages out, ie the stuff you have to roleplay.

So what you want is a simpler point-buy system without dis/advantages, don't want the excess of choices. Thus I suggest something similar to what I've outlined with GAMERS - a streamlined skill list.

Here's a suggestion. Take the basic 8 attributes of GURPS and keep their normal point cost. Going from memory,

ST [10]
DX [20]
IQ [20]
HT [10]
Will [5]
Per [5]
HP [3]
FP [2]
Just have all begin at 10, higher costs XP, lower gives XP back. You could fiddle with the costs depending on whether you want to price based on reality or utility.

Now take the skill list of GAMERS and adjust it for GURPS. With the skills, some have compulsory specialisations; ie they're hydra skills like "Craft" or "Artist." A skill requiring specialisation has no default. Depending on the campaign world, different skills may be specialist ones. For example, Armoury might be a general skill for Europeans in 1112, but would be a specialist skill for Europeans in 2009.

Athletics
Acrobatics (DX/h)
Climbing (ST/h)
Jumping (ST/a)
Running (HT/a)
Sports* (DX/e)
Swimming (HT/a)

Combat
Blunt (ST/a)
Bows & thrown (DX/a)
Brawling (DX/e)
Edged (DX/a)
Firearms (DX/e)
Wrestling (ST/e)

Communication
Artist* (DX/h)
Diplomacy (WILL/a)
Intimidation (WILL/a)
Languages* (IQ/a)
Speech (IQ/e)
Writing (IQ/a)

Driving
Aircraft (DX/h)
Landcraft (DX/a)
Riding (DX/a)
Seacraft (DX/a)
Ski (DX/a)
Spacecraft (DX/h)

Gadgeteering
Armoury (DX/e)
Craft* (DX/e)
Electrics (IQ/a)
Engineer* (IQ/h)
Mechanic* (DX/a)
Scrounging (PER/a)

Intrusion
Deceit (WILL/h)
Filch (DX/a)
Lockpicking (DX/a)
Observation (IQ/a)
Stealth (DX/a)
Traps (IQ/a)

Knowledge
Admin & law (IQ/a)
Culture & history (IQ/e)
Interview (IQ/a)
Research (IQ/e)
Science* (IQ/h)
Search (PER/e)

Medical
Alt medicine (IQ/a)
Pharmacy (IQ/h)
Physician (IQ/h)
Psychology (WILL/h)
Surgery (DX/h)
Veterinary (IQ/h)

Wilderness
Foraging (IQ/e)
Hazmat (IQ/a)
Hunting (IQ/e)
Navigation (IQ/a)
Survival (PER/a)
Tracking (PER/h)

Obviously with less skills, the XP total granted to players to build their characters must change, and the relative importance of Attributes rises. Throws the pricing system out of whack a lot, I find. But you could nonetheless retain the 1, 2, 4, 8, 12 etc progression, with Easy skills 1xp buying Attribute+0 skill, Average skills 1xp attr-1, etc. Or you could just have them all be the same.

Look like something which might work for you?

Quote from: J Arcane;451921I don't really find 4e improved the complexity at all personally, if anything I think it worsened it to appeal to the hardcore forum set that digs the crunch.

I think if you want a simpler GURPS core you should probably stay far away from 4e.

I got the two core books a while back for a song. I haven't read them thoroughly, but I think they did simplify and rationalize a few things. It's obscured, though, by how the core book is now even more multi-genre. So if I want to play fantasy or historical/modern, I'd have to cross out all the supers and SF stuff. Also, the presentation has only gotten worse with each edition. 2e, two thin staple-bound booklets that lie flat, yay. 3e, an unwieldy perfect-bound book, meh. 4e, two heavy hardcovers with tissue-thin, glossy (read glare-y), full-color pages,

Quote from: David Johansen;451922But personally GURPS character creation is a weak point and the combat system and other detailed resolution stuff are the system's strengths.

That's what I'm saying.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;451923Look like something which might work for you?

I appreciate the time you took to type that up, but I'm really more interested in something more constrained, more archetype-y or lifepath-y, that gives players something to grab onto quickly. (And as I've said before, quick chargen is an antidote to being overprotective of characters.)

Cutting down the total skill list is a good idea, though.

Reducing the skill list leads to more character class-like play. After all, a character class (or "archetype" as you called it) is just shorthand for a bunch of skills. A short enough skill selection is just character classes by another name; a large enough class selection is just a skill list by another name. Of course some games have both of them being a large selection, which really confuses matters. But there you go.

To the attribute and skill lists you could just add arbitrary uncosted cultural or background or professional "traits" which sometimes help and sometimes hinder the character.

I'm sensing that you're just leery of having so many choices, since character generation then takes hours as players agonise over an xp here or there. And that's fair enough, because it does happen. But if you really don't want them to have to make any choices at all, just go with something like Basic D&D - you roll your attributes, these qualify you for 1-3 character classes, you choose that, and then away you go.

If you want them to have some choices but not so many they agonise over them, something along the lines of what I wrote above is the way to go.

Well, like I said, I'm not ready to try fixing or redoing GURPS at the moment. There are other games that will do with less work. If you haven't seen Talislanta 2e, it's a great example of what can be done to give players a lot of choice, without having to make too many decisions. There are almost 100 archetypes illustrated on a multipage layout; you see one that looks interesting to you, you look at the writeup a few pages after that. If you like it, you apply a small amount of customization and you're good to go. While Tal is a game of strongly-drawn, exotic peoples, I think something similar could still be done in other settings. E.g. for something like AD&D, you could basically have a template for each class-race combo (including multiclassed options, and maybe subtypes based on human cultures), add a little flair to further distinguish them*, and you have a quick, strong character generation system.

* I mean, since you don't have to worry as much about unintended rules combinations, you can include specific characteristics to distinguish elf wizards from human wizards, that might otherwise be hard to generalize.

I made a fairly large start on a GURPS redesign on the game design board here.  It very quickly diverged however and as I don't own GURPS and even SJG could bury me in court costs that's probably for the best.

Elliot, while I agree with you in spirit, I think making gurps characters is fun, though point buy is a little silly. It's the god awful combat and skill system that turns me off.

On principal, I never liked how role playing games suggest being good at fighting makes you less attractive, or using magic makes you weaker.

I like systems that let you pick from lists. I really dislike being given the option to drop my looks or wisdom to be better at fighting.