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I am a Gurps fan, and I like how I can dial it to the genre/setting I am using it for.  But it does take some work.  I saw the Box set at my local store and picked it up (it was only 60 bucks) and I have to say I was very surprised at how much I liked it.   I do not love everything for Gurps 4th edition,  I do find myself buying just about anything they print.  

    Anyway, I decided to pick it up after reading this guy's blog for the past couple years http://dungeonfantastic.blogspot.com/p/my-df-campaign.html.   The characters do start out pretty powerful for "beginners" but this does allow a GM to have a bit more flexibility to offer challenges.   I just wish they had more modules/adventures, but I have a pretty easy time of eyeballing old school modules to the game and am about to start the players on G1-3.   Anyway, anyone else playing this?

I snapped up Dungeon Fantasy as a kickstarter. I've played GURPS since its first book, TFT before that, and most of my GURPS campaigns and play have been in fantasy/ancient/medieval settings with lots of action and a healthy share of dungeons and powerful stuffs.

Like you, I half-like 4e, but I do like the increased detail and quality that seems to go into the 4e supplements I've seen. I play with a mix of 3e, 4e, and rules from supplements and house rules.

I haven't thoroughly studied Dungeon Fantasy yet. I like that it makes a concise all-fantasy more-accessible version of GURPS with some nice components. One of my main gripes with the 4e Basic Set is that it tosses in nearly everything from all genres (most of which I will never use so it's mainly noise to me), and how it elaborates on assessing the point costs of various advantages (which I don't really care much about nor use, so is also noise to me), and Dungeon Fantasy nicely has none of that. However what it does have is cliche` D&D-like stuff such as what amounts to classes (that don't make sense), niche protection, generic dungeoneering settings, and other things which I don't like any better in GURPS than I do in D&D. There are also a few more dumbed-down or tweaked-for-newbies rules details which I also don't like. At most, I will use the maps and maybe use some specific content such as monster ideas, but that's about it.

I do sometimes toy with running certain dungeon settings from other game systems, but part of my interest is just to see how they play out using GURPS, because the way things work is so different that it seems like an interesting experiment in both directions. That is, it's interesting to see what happens to gonzo dungeons when combat and magic work differently and you play them out as situations rather that compartmentalized rooms, and it's also interesting to see how GURPS plays out when it has gonzo content such as extremely deadly/powerful magic items and traps and monsters. It's also mercifully short-lived, because the PCs tend to get defeated or routed pretty quickly the times I've tried it.

I've run it a bit, it's fun.  A fair bit heavier than I'd have gone for an introductory set but since it links to the pdf series it's understandable.

Quote from: oggsmash;1021518http://dungeonfantastic.blogspot.com/p/my-df-campaign.html

MOTHER OF PEARL!

This blog is friggin epic in it's scope and documentation of this guys campaign, colour me impressed.

Thanks for sharing the link oggsmash.

Quote from: Gwarh;1021856MOTHER OF PEARL!

This blog is friggin epic in it's scope and documentation of this guys campaign, colour me impressed.

Thanks for sharing the link oggsmash.

heh, reading it finally made me break down and get the box set.  It is pretty awesome.

I kickstarted it. Haven't played it and am still quite satisfied.

Nope. You can use GURPS really well for some types of fantasy (generally the grittier type), but for dungeoneering? Why not just stick with D&D, which was originally made for that?

Dungeon Fantasy characters start at 250 points so they perform more like seventh or eighth level D&D characters.  I generally feel GURPS is best at short campaigns.  Character creation is too slow for a one off and, because the character springs full grown from the player's head, there's not so much of a sense of character growth and development.  It's not just about the levels, though that concrete sense of progression keeps people's interest, but D&D characters start out very minimalist and grow into their depth through their careers, they build their background as they go and their depth grows organically.

Dungeon Fantasy characters are also fairly cinematic.  The Scout template has the Heroic Archer and Telescopic Vision advantages so they can ignore some range penalties (GURPS range penalties are brutal) and get their weapon's Accuracy bonus without aiming, and move and shoot without taking their bulk penalty.

Another feature of GURPS is its detail level, piecemeal armour, called shots to the neck, and so forth.  It makes visualization easier for some of us but it also creates some uniformity.  GURPS does tactical combat very well and Dungeon Fantasy is the game they should have had out when D&D 4e was cancelled.  

Dungeon Fantasy is full of sillier monsters.  It's not quite GURPS Disc World but there's a definite sense of old school gotcha monsters and weird tricks and traps.  It's not a full on parody like Munchkin but if you're attacked by carnivorous flying squirrels or a Triger (three headed tiger) don't be too surprised.  Game of Thrones this ain't.

I received this as a Christmas gift.  I'm impressed with the quality of the books and the boxed set.  That blog that was shared earlier is fantastic.  Reading it is getting me geeked up to play it!

Quote from: RPGPundit;1022217Nope. You can use GURPS really well for some types of fantasy (generally the grittier type), but for dungeoneering? Why not just stick with D&D, which was originally made for that?

Because I started playing with TFT, whose ITL campaign book also has dungeoneering in mind and has quite a few detailed rules for various situations with doors and traps and tunneling and how far noise travels and so on, and those rules seemed to make sense in a way that I relate to for non-mythic-underworld dungeons. To me, GURPS is just a more detailed and scalable version of TFT, and also works fine for dungeons.

Meanwhile I've never related positively to much of how D&D works/thinks in many ways that prevent me from enjoying it, and in comparison to TFT or GURPS there's very little I prefer about D&D. Now, I tend to give up when I try to read much D&D, so I may have missed something I'd want related to dungeoneering, but all that comes to mind that I do know about are:

* The game is designed to allow PCs to possibly survive long adventures in massive deadly dungeons with all kinds of wild stuff (unfortunately, I really don't like the way that balance works - high abstract hitpoints, levels, immunities, lots of powerful magic, healing magic, etc.).

* There's massive amounts of published dungeon content for D&D - skads of monsters and magics and dungeons - some of these sometimes tempt me to experiment, but I'd want to run them with TFT or GURPS, and then their balance is going to be wacky/deadly and I find them all a bit overwhelming and not in ways I like (so much magic and steep power curves to levels, monsters that are invulnerable to non-magic weapons, good/evil/neutral alignments, powerful magic, etc).

* The mythic underworld thing ... which I find ok as a concept but don't like the mechanics of much - it seems like a rationalization for the first game mechanics which always just seemed illogical to me - doors that are never locked for "monsters", darkness that all "monsters" can see through, PC races with "infravision" measures in short distances in feet, peculiar 1d6 mechanics for opening and spiking doors, monsters that don't need any kind of history of how they get where they are, dungeon levels that get predictably more dangerous in the same way the further you go down, eventually leading to "hell" levels, etc. (I eventually felt self-embarrassed enough by the number of rationalized little-explained dungeons in the wilderness I put in my first game world, even though they had almost none of those sorts of qualities.)

Quote from: David Johansen;1022233Dungeon Fantasy characters start at 250 points so they perform more like seventh or eighth level D&D characters.  I generally feel GURPS is best at short campaigns.  Character creation is too slow for a one off and, because the character springs full grown from the player's head, there's not so much of a sense of character growth and development.  It's not just about the levels, though that concrete sense of progression keeps people's interest, but D&D characters start out very minimalist and grow into their depth through their careers, they build their background as they go and their depth grows organically.

I wonder what it is that has you feel GURPS is best at short campaigns. I know what you mean about characters getting more into their characters, and character improvement during play helping that out, but I think that works great in GURPS especially because you can have PCs develop whatever skills they're learning during play, without character classes limiting how characters develop. That's one reason I prefer to start GURPS characters off at lower point totals without piles of adventuring skills, as I've often seen that kind of difference in how players relate to their own characters and their abilities (and how much they get into it and seem to enjoy it, too).

QuoteDungeon Fantasy characters are also fairly cinematic.  The Scout template has the Heroic Archer and Telescopic Vision advantages so they can ignore some range penalties (GURPS range penalties are brutal) and get their weapon's Accuracy bonus without aiming, and move and shoot without taking their bulk penalty.

Yeah, I don't much care for that aspect.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1022217Nope. You can use GURPS really well for some types of fantasy (generally the grittier type), but for dungeoneering? Why not just stick with D&D, which was originally made for that?

   I like GURPS, I played 1st edition AD&D, and I did like it alot.  Now older, I felt I wanted a few more things from it (DCC comes close to giving what I wanted from it).  I have several game systems (the only D&D 1 book I still have is the DMG, that is what I get for allowing my brother to be caretaker of my books when I left for boot camp 28 years ago) and the fast answer is, my players are enthusiastic, but not the biggest on getting different game systems down pat in a timely fashion.  GURPS makes it easy to go from fantasy to Post Apoc to Zombie Hordes to monster hunters.   I agree I thought GURPS a bit gritty for D&D type dungeon crawls....DF addresses a few of these in ready made advantages and templates.   I would LOVE to run a DCC campaign with my players, and I may, but GURPS is the one they know and it makes different genre campaigns easy.  

    I think system wise, DF Gurps can handle the genre no problem, what they really, really lack is published adventures.  They also lack monster books.   First RPG book I ever owned was the Monster Manual I got in 1981.  That book spoiled me, alot.  If Steve Jackson came out with a book with a few hundred fantasy monsters in it I would pay 60+ for it.

Yeah, there are a lot of good creature books for GURPS, but there isn't anything like a good Monster Manual fourth edition.  Even the 3rd edition Fantasy Bestiary lacked such a plentiful offering.

I thought I was going to like it more than I did; it is basically GURPS with a super high starting power level. I like GURPS and have played lots of it, but I don't think it is well suited to this genre, and it gets less manageable and less interesting as character point totals rise. Basically, I bought it, read it, and then kept playing TFT.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1022890I thought I was going to like it more than I did; it is basically GURPS with a super high starting power level. I like GURPS and have played lots of it, but I don't think it is well suited to this genre, and it gets less manageable and less interesting as character point totals rise. Basically, I bought it, read it, and then kept playing TFT.

  I thought this too regarding the manageable part.   After playing a session, I think I might have been hasty thinking that, but I think I will need 6-10 more to see where I fall on how "good" it really is.   The linked blog makes it seem as if a decent GM can manage it pretty easily, but I dont have much experience "driving the car" so to speak at this point.

It seems to me like it's so much easier to play starting with say 80-100 point starting characters, as there's so much less to think about. And I don't want any of the "make it be like D&D" content, conventions, templates or power scale, anyway. Personally, I think the first GURPS adventure and second-ever GURPS book, Orcslayer, is a nice place to start learning the system. The production value of Dungeon Fantasy is quite good, though, and at least it is a version of mostly what you need to start playing 4e with only fantasy/medieval content. But it actually has a lot of its own flavor of noise that I personally don't want. (But I'm not the main target audience, since I can make my own GURPS campaign from memory without any books, and I don't need any of it. And I do like the shiny books and maps and might use the monsters and some other bits and pieces.)

It seems the Dungeon Fantasy line is their pdf best seller.  Personally I'd have liked a simpler entry level game and lower point totals.  That said, the PCs are highly competent in play and feel very heroic and can do heroic things.

Quote from: David Johansen;1023010It seems the Dungeon Fantasy line is their pdf best seller.  Personally I'd have liked a simpler entry level game and lower point totals.  That said, the PCs are highly competent in play and feel very heroic and can do heroic things.

Which is generally more fun for players in my experience. Also, it makes adventures more fun to run. You can just be all "THIS!" at the table with less trepidation you are going to wipe the party.

SJ Games released their report to the stakeholders. Despise DF having sold well it isn't successful because they fucked up the production of it and couldn't hit their deadlines. I'm glad I sold out of my GURPS products for a nice sum.

I think trying another format was a good idea but I think it came in a little too expensive and was, well too generic.  It's a really nice box but there are lots of dungeon crawl games out there and it needed some gimmick or feature to set it apart.  I don't think miniatures would help, and miniatures are my thing.  Action figures might have, a link to a popular and recognizable property might have, but somewhere in there it just wasn't quite different enough.  I'm glad they tried it but I think it might actually send the right message to SJG.  GURPS fans will step up and pay upfront for physical product a year in advance but a boxed game won't help GURPS break into the mainstream.  I still think it was a good idea, I'd have streamlined things down to a simpler game.  Personally it's a bit much for an introductory product.  But I don't think that's why there isn't long term, stable demand for Dungeon Fantasy.  It just doesn't grab attention and stand out from the crowd.

Quote from: David Johansen;1025562I think trying another format was a good idea but I think it came in a little too expensive and was, well too generic.  It's a really nice box but there are lots of dungeon crawl games out there and it needed some gimmick or feature to set it apart.

They excel at capturing genres and history for sourcebooks but when it comes to specific settings oh boy!

They been trying the gimmick for years. Banestorm, licensed properties, etc. SJ Games is are not particularly good at picking what appeals. There are exceptions like GURPS Traveller but overall they tend to pick weird obscure things to do. This time they needed something bog standard.

The other reason and one that fans of Gurps refuse to hear or admit is that the system is  not as popular as it once was imo. They can waste a million dollars on production values and it probably will not sell as well imo. As long as they keep marketing to Gurps fans and only them I don't think things will improve imo. I also agree with the poster and Gurps poor choice of IPs. Was there really that huge of a demand for Mars Attacks. They also list and probably keep losing market share to Savage Worlds and Fate.

I find it to be basically indistinguishable from GURPS, and the suggested starting power level is too high for my tastes (I think GURPS is most interesting between 50 and 150 points, total, and becomes nearly unplayable above 200). So, while I've played and enjoyed a lot of GURPS, and would have been excited to play a variant that was a more fast playing tactical dungeon game, I don't feel like this is it.

Quote from: sureshot;1025566The other reason and one that fans of Gurps refuse to hear or admit is that the system is  not as popular as it once was imo. They can waste a million dollars on production values and it probably will not sell as well imo. As long as they keep marketing to Gurps fans and only them I don't think things will improve imo. I also agree with the poster and Gurps poor choice of IPs. Was there really that huge of a demand for Mars Attacks. They also list and probably keep losing market share to Savage Worlds and Fate.

As a representative fan of GURPS, I don't refuse to hear or admit that GURPS is not as popular as it once was. But as a fan/player/GM, it also isn't particularly my concern. I've always chosen and played games based on what I like, and when I see other games that I'm not interested in have more sales or players, I mostly shrug. GURPS seems to me like very different type of game from Savage Worlds of Fate, to the point that it seems like a strange idea to think they're dividing a market (except perhaps the market of people who buy games without having much idea what they're like beforehand, or who don't know what kind of RPG they'll like), except in that people who might prefer GURPS might never try it because they get exposed to other games instead.

But I also do feel like you're right that GURPS products are largely designed for people who like GURPS, and that there are few GURPS products well-suited to bringing in new players.

I also agree that Dungeon Fantasy seems to have an overly generic-and-generic-yet-specific setting which I wouldn't choose either. And I think it still looks pretty complex despite that, what with the high-point-level (therefore complex) characters, the template format, etc.

I'd think the way to get new GURPS players would be to have Powered By GURPS products that reduce the GURPS noise (complex characters and point systems and chargen calculations) more and present something that can be easily played without an experienced GURPS GM, and that showcases interesting mapped situations, because the mapped action is to me what the system does best, the main reason I choose it, and the thing it does that other systems don't do. Provide maps/counters so that it looks great and draws in players starting with the visual interest in seeing interesting play in action.

Maps and the cardboard pawns are great because they can be used with other games.

I think and I know Dungeon Fantasy is a much easier entry point for GURPS than the 4E line. I ran DF at two conventions here in Wisconsin and had players who have had never played GURPS or played years ago. Everybody was able to get in and play. Of course it's easier bellying up at a con than running a game at home. They even had fun with the two adventures included in the box.

I guess I just was so in the bubble I never was aware how little GURPS is played or known by people not already in the bubble. I don't think the GURPS names means anything to anybody that started playing RPGs with 3.x, 4x, or 5E. They just don't know.

Quote from: oggsmash;1021518Anyway, anyone else playing this?

I already have all of GURPS. Don't need to buy re-packaged merch from SJGames. I doubt anyone new to tabletop RPGs will buy it. It's target audience is the nostalgia purchaser. Kickstarters are all about nostalgia and fanboys.

Anyway, yes I play Dungeon Fantasy. Just not with GURPS anymore.

Skarg my criticism was not geared towards you it's just that no one wants to acknowledge the elephant in the room imo. Which is the complexity and crunchiness of the rules may keep some away imo. It's assumed it will fail if they even remotely try to simplify any part of the system. While changing nothing and expecting it to be somehow even more successful.

-They tried a new edition to fix some minor issues yet kept the complexity it seems to have done moderately well
-Better production values do not seem to be working either imo
-A emphasis on publishing lesser known IP such as Mar Attacks and Disworld. I can understand the second as a friend of mine who worked in a bookstore said the novels were popular. The first seems more a vanity project or maybe the rights for it were going cheap.  It kind of anger some fans who have been waiting years for Gurps Vehicles seeing those items get priority.
-Possibly doing what Pinnacle did with their Deadlands  rpg is have both a Gurps and a rules lite version published side by side.  

At this point I really don't know what they can do to drum up more interest in Gurps.

Update I missed the part about even Munchkin sales being affected and looks like Gurps is on the back burner for who knows how long until they can get Munchkin being profitable again. Boy did they get screwed on their translating the Port Royal card game.

They are launching a Munchkin CCG and I'm worried about that. Those games are so expensive.

Of course if you streamline GURPS too much you just get TFT which is going to be its own thing and likely quite successful in its own right.

However, there is a lot of multiplication and division in core GURPS.  Outside of purchasing levels of advantages, there is basic speed, base lift, parry, armor penetration, and damage type to consider.  For people who can't handle the math this is a huge barrier.  GURPS assumes you passed sixth grade math but for many these things are absolute barriers no matter how strange it may seem to the rest of us.

Quote from: sureshot;1025580...

At this point I really don't know what they can do to drum up more interest in Gurps.

....

First, I feel that the interest in GURPS doesn't need to be marketed or geared towards those looking for less crunch. I love GURPS because of the detail in it. It's why, when I go to other games, I miss that detail. Instead, GURPS should focus on a target demographic and continue to support that demo.

Second, GURPS could do WAY more to make it easier to organize, tweak and customize for any given game. It's a toolkit that supports microcosms, not genres. The game can literally be different between two tables running the same genre in the same setting. There can be a lot of moving parts to coral into "the game I want to run". GCA is clunky. GCS is too simple. http://www.gurpscalculator.com/DiceRoller is a great example of a modernizing the tools. It's why I support his Patreon.

Third, Dungeon Fantasy was the wrong direction! I complained about this from the beginning (insert Pundit like admonishment here for not following my sage advice...  :-D). People who want the detail available in GURPS don't need to play D&D. They have D&D. Or 20 odd clones and heartbreakers lovingly crafted to play D&D. Instead, what GURPS needs is ready to play, ready to run settings + adventures + pre-gen characters that SHOWCASE the awesome parts of GURPS. Include examples and walk-throughs with scenarios for social engineering, cultural familiarity, languages and the like. Showcase why one army uses polearms while another trains in Roman unit tactics. Demonstrate HOW having these details in a game make the game fun. I agree with your thoughts on the properties they licenced. Not necessary. Invent something unique and fun vs. something obscure. In my opinion, a fresh new thing would have greater appeal.

We (GURPS enthusiasts) don't need a "streamlined" GURPS. We need to teach the hobby about how WE play RPGs! ...and how and why we choose GURPS to do that.

I am super fan and enthusiast of tons of different games. I believe the variety is a good thing. You can find an RPG laser-tuned and 3D printed to your specifications. Story game stuff, light, fast, crunchy, tactical, imaginative, all the above... GURPS shouldn't have to transform itself to find fans. We (as GURPS fans) and SJGames (as the creators) need to do a better job of finding the people who WANT GURPS. We need to craft products that better serve the needs of GURPS players/GMs.

I don't see Dungeon Fantasy as toned down or cut back, just specialized.  The problem I see is that it doesn't have an obvious advantage over every other beautifully illustrated and packaged dungeon crawl game out there.  I don't think SJG will ever want to reformat it to 8.5 x 11 but I wish they'd consider it.   Try putting it out in a soft back for around $30.

Quote from: David Johansen;1025800I don't see Dungeon Fantasy as toned down or cut back, just specialized.  The problem I see is that it doesn't have an obvious advantage over every other beautifully illustrated and packaged dungeon crawl game out there.  I don't think SJG will ever want to reformat it to 8.5 x 11 but I wish they'd consider it.   Try putting it out in a soft back for around $30.

It was released as softcover books (the two main ones for $12.95 each) and there are 26 expansions (2 softcover, the rest PDF) before the DF boxed set.

I agree there isn't an obvious advantage over other games, though it seems to me it could show some of the advantage by running the game where it can be seen by people, and they could notice that the combat plays out in a different way from any other game, which to me is the reason I choose GURPS for pretty much everything. Nice components (maps & counters) and demonstrations of the game in play can, I think, expose that to the players who would appreciate it but who haven't seen it before.

However I think it would be even more accessible if the characters were lower-point (mainly so they were less complicated), and more attractive/interesting if the setting were less generic/cliche/D&D-like.

(Also I agree with most of what trechriron just posted.)

Yeah, I like lower point games too but they went with Dungeon Fantasy because it sells better than other lines and Dungeon Fantasy did 250 points.  I'd have liked some more setting and a little less silly but the silly's not overwhelming and a bit of self aware humour can be refreshing in a market dominated by grimdark all the time.

I hate to say "I told you so"... oh, who am I kidding? I love it!

Is GURPS an example of swine gaming now since you are so clearly gleeful that DFPRG isn't successful or are you just being a jackass?

Quote from: Manic Modron;1026369Is GURPS an example of swine gaming now since you are so clearly gleeful that DFPRG isn't successful or are you just being a jackass?

Just being a jack ass.

Quote from: Ulairi;1026420Just being a jack ass.

Some of us DID predict it would not do what it set out to do. Sometimes the truth just hurts. :P

It is the gravedancing that is the jack assery, not whether he was right, though his reasons are suspect.

Quote from: trechriron;1026454Some of us DID predict it would not do what it set out to do. Sometimes the truth just hurts. :P

I think some things were ill considered.  There was always a disconnect between appealing to the fans and making an accessible starter kit.  As it happens they leaned towards appealing to the fans and made something more complex than it could have been.  Don't get me wrong, it's a beautiful boxed set. I think it might have been better to include the GM screen and companion in the box but I understand that would have jacked up the price point too much.  I don't think going cheaper would have sold any more copies.  I don't think a book would have gotten SJG any data about whether a boxed set would do better.  The high point total and cinematic rules are a choice I wouldn't have gone with but I don't think it's the wrong choice.  People who try Dungeon Fantasy rpg will be playing with highly competent, powerful characters and that can be fun.  Failure is frustrating and I think it makes sense to try providing  positive first experience.

It just needed, something more.  Let's call it "ZING".  It might have been interlocking dungeon tiles.  It might have been a setting and more adventure material.  It might have been a random dungeon generator of some sort allowing solo play.  Heck, candles and a primer on real witch craft by The Pundit.  I don't know.  The reality is that the market is crowded and beyond the ruleset, DFRPG is just one more beautifully produced box on the shelf.

I think, given time, it might have staying power.  The product is solid.  If there's one thing SJG gets right it's solid product.  I just think it needed something more to grab people's attention.  I'm not claiming to know what.  I'm told half naked women were right out :D

GURPS is really good at certain things. D&D is not one of them.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1027034GURPS is really good at certain things. D&D is not one of them.

I haven't really heard that the game fails in play. Just that it wasn't a commercial success, in large part because of the expensive production costs.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1027034GURPS is really good at certain things. D&D is not one of them.

It depends what you mean by D&D.

For my part, I ran the Majestic Wilderlands with AD&D, OD&D, Fantasy Hero, Fantasy Age, Fudge/Fate, and GURPS. In all of them the players were doing the same things for the same reasons including exploring dungeons.

GURPS can do fantasy, but what it does well is low-power low-magic fantasy. Otherwise you're up to your wazoo in point-buy, and you don't get the right kind of inflation for high-level hp or spells.

Which only matters if you think that HP & spell inflation is essential to a game about a small team of specialists going into dangerous places for fortune and glory.

GURPS, specifically DFRPG, doesn't have to emulate D&D with all its D&Disms.  It just has to take the useful tropes of a traditional dungeon crawl and build its own game around the skeleton.

Granted, 3e was pretty choppy for the purpose, mechanically speaking.  4e has developed a lot of good tools for the purpose though, from DFRPG to the Dungeon Fantasy pdfs that inspired it to supplemental rules like Divine Favor,  Incantation Magic and the excellent advice in GURPS: Action.

The main problem these days isn't that GURPS isn't suited for it, but the examples and frameworks are all over the place.  

"Powered by GURPS" is still looking like it will be a good option for realized games instead of the system mastery required in the toolkit.  What isn't a good option is a pricey box set that is only good for one purchase per group.

I quite agree with the previous post!

I'm really curious about this detail:

Quote from: Manic Modron;1027487Granted, 3e was pretty choppy for the purpose, mechanically speaking.  4e has developed a lot of good tools for the purpose though, from DFRPG to the Dungeon Fantasy pdfs that inspired it to supplemental rules like Divine Favor,  Incantation Magic and the excellent advice in GURPS: Action.

What do you see as the 3e parts that were choppy for dungeon adventures?

It has been a long time since if had to deal with specifics, but I mainly mean that the higher the point totals were in 3e the more things felt like the pieces didn't click right.  Like what we wanted were Lego bricks but we only had a narrow range of brick sizes to work with.

In hindsight there were a lot of things we could have done, but I think that 4e has more examples of the systems flexibility and power than 3e had.  Not that it couldn't have been done back then, but the way wasn't nearly as clear as it can be now.

Ok, thanks.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1027318GURPS can do fantasy, but what it does well is low-power low-magic fantasy. Otherwise you're up to your wazoo in point-buy, and you don't get the right kind of inflation for high-level hp or spells.

I don't believe this is true anymore. I can have my players make 350 point characters, limit where they can spend stuff (this much goes to your template, attributes, spend this much on skills...) and I get solid, competent heroes that do not feel overpowered or wonky to me at all.

Also, instead of using GURPS hit-points, fatigue-points as D&D like hit points, allow them to start out with Ablative DR. It heals at the same rate as hit-points and essentially "pads" how long a person can withstand damage. You could easily link it skills (you are allowed 3 pts of Ablative DR for every point you have in the following skills above 12, as an example). Then limit starting skills to 14 or 16 to account for character growth.

Especially with 4th edition GURPS, you really don't have to just "go by the rules as written". When you explore Pyramid, various awesome posts on the forums, or the menagerie of PDF supplements, the customizability of GURPS becomes more apparent.

Or you can just add NPC companions of one sort or another.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]2262[/ATTACH]

(I can sense all the dead characters from a lifetime of playing TFT & GURPS rolling in their graves at the suggestion of adding ablative DR to give people metamagical hitpoint cushions...)

Quote from: trechriron;1027607I don't believe this is true anymore. I can have my players make 350 point characters, limit where they can spend stuff (this much goes to your template, attributes, spend this much on skills...) and I get solid, competent heroes that do not feel overpowered or wonky to me at all.

Also, instead of using GURPS hit-points, fatigue-points as D&D like hit points, allow them to start out with Ablative DR. It heals at the same rate as hit-points and essentially "pads" how long a person can withstand damage. You could easily link it skills (you are allowed 3 pts of Ablative DR for every point you have in the following skills above 12, as an example). Then limit starting skills to 14 or 16 to account for character growth.

Especially with 4th edition GURPS, you really don't have to just "go by the rules as written". When you explore Pyramid, various awesome posts on the forums, or the menagerie of PDF supplements, the customizability of GURPS becomes more apparent.

Well, I've heard later GURPS rules sets have been better at figuring out ways to avoid having to spend HOURS deciding how 350 points are spent. But I'm dubious. Shadowrun always made the same claims and they were always lies.
You give a character hundreds of "points" and then THOUSANDS of options of what they can spend with it, and you're asking for 5-hour-long character creation.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1027925Well, I've heard later GURPS rules sets have been better at figuring out ways to avoid having to spend HOURS deciding how 350 points are spent. But I'm dubious. Shadowrun always made the same claims and they were always lies.
You give a character hundreds of "points" and then THOUSANDS of options of what they can spend with it, and you're asking for 5-hour-long character creation.

While you could use the raw lists, GURPS 4th edition consistently presents templates for use in character creation.

For example this portion of the Wizards template.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2277[/ATTACH]

Or this example of a smaller point template I created for my Majestic Wilderlands campaign.

Myrmidon of Set (http://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/Gods%20-%20Set,%20Myrmidon%20Template.pdf)

Well, fair enough. But I think templates are their own source of problems.

Nothing to me beats randomization. And templates are almost entirely the opposite of that.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1028292Well, fair enough. But I think templates are their own source of problems.

Nothing to me beats randomization. And templates are almost entirely the opposite of that.

How do you do point buy with randomization?

I'm also a big fan of randomization. I used to really like GURPS because I could build exactly what I wanted but then I learned as I got older that letting the dice fall and picking up and playing with the pieces I'm given is a lot more fun than what I have in my head. I never know what 3d6 down the line will bring me and it's a ton of fun running that character.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1028292Well, fair enough. But I think templates are their own source of problems.

Nothing to me beats randomization. And templates are almost entirely the opposite of that.

That a different issue then the one you raised earlier which was it takes hours to make a GURPS character.

Random character generation versus pick and choose character generation is an age old divide in the hobby along side using miniatures or not using miniatures. Using class to define your character or using skills. In the amount it is a preference. If you like random character generation then GURPS is not the system for you. Then again neither is Fate, Hero System and a half a dozen other RPGs out there.

Having said that there is a random GURPS character generation made for 3rd edition. It not very good but there is one. There is nothing intrinsic about GURPS that precludes of creating a method of randomly generating character. Just nobody took the time to do a good one.

Quote from: Ulairi;1028324How do you do point buy with randomization?

I'm also a big fan of randomization. I used to really like GURPS because I could build exactly what I wanted but then I learned as I got older that letting the dice fall and picking up and playing with the pieces I'm given is a lot more fun than what I have in my head. I never know what 3d6 down the line will bring me and it's a ton of fun running that character.

To do point buy with randomization well, you'd get someone who knows both your game system really well, and knows probability, and have them make random tables with appropriate proportions. And you might possibly want to write a computer program.

The difficulty is more that GURPS has a huge number of options, which a randomizer should do something intelligent with, probably best by making a list of mini-templates and randomly choosing between those.

Templates are not "the opposite of randomization" if instead of treating them as complete pre-gen characters, you treat them as typical values that you then deviate from (randomly or by choice) to create an actual individual. For example, to randomize a GURPS stat from a template, you could roll 3d6 and apply your favorite D&D translation from 3d6 to "bonus", or invent one such as:

3: -4
4: -3
5-6: -2
7-8: -1
9-12: 0 = Use template value unmodified
13-14: +1
15-16: +2
17: +3
18: +4

To simulate D&D-style character creation, you could roll for your attribute adjustments first, and if you really want to be D&D-like, roll for the other D&D attributes like:

ST, DX, IQ, HT (i.e. constitution) - as above

Charisma: Roll on a table such as:
3: -40 points in appearance and odious personal habits, etc
4: -30 points
5: -25 points
6: -20 points
7: -15 points
8: -10 points
9: -5 points
10-11: 0 = Use template value unmodified
12: 5 points in appearance, charisma, social skills, etc.
13: 10 points
14: 15 points
15: 20 points
16: 25 points
17: 30 points
18: 40 points

(If you want to have no choice about what type of low/high "charisma" you have, you can make tables for that, too.)

Wisdom: use a table, say like the one for charisma above, but put the points into appropriate advantages/disadvantages (willpower, common sense, overconfidence, foolhardy, etc)

Then, to be D&D-like, you could choose one or more templates (akin to choosing a D&D class), and then either randomize bits of that too as for the attributes, and/or let players tweak some things up & down for points.

Quote from: Ulairi;1028324How do you do point buy with randomization? ...

Take a look at Dragonquest. You randomly determine the parameters to your point-buy pool (total points and maximum per stat).

For my money a randomly generated GURPS character would have to be using a lifepath system like Over the Wall.

LIfepath systems are the only ones I think are actually cool and interesting. Traveller is the original and best developed, but of course WFRP, Burning Wheel and a few others present similar ideas. The addition of Backgrounds in 5E is a sort of schematic hint of this idea

Quote from: estar;1028327Having said that there is a random GURPS character generation made for 3rd edition. It not very good but there is one. There is nothing intrinsic about GURPS that precludes of creating a method of randomly generating character. Just nobody took the time to do a good one.

I once adapted that random chart for 4th edition GURPS for different settings.

Will have to see if I can find my old printout of that version.

- Ed C.

Quote from: Ulairi;1028324How do you do point buy with randomization?

I don't.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1028541I don't.

That's kind of my point. To me, the lure of point buy is being able to do EXACTLY what I want, and the lure of randomized character creation I listed above.

I tend to fall on the side that randomized creation such as 3d6 down the line tends to make for better roleplaying.

You'd build it a lot like Mutant Chronicles Resurrection.  Fixed number of rolls to get a fixed number of packages built on fixed number of points with a few branches to make sure you don't get an ST 15, DX 9, IQ 8, HT13 Wizard.

Anyhow, played Dungeon Fantasy again last night and had fun.  Drauger are really dangerous.  ST22 4d+2 Cuting, skill 16, 27 HP.  I still feel it could have been beginner friendly, a lot of the special abilities are only special because they violate the normal GURPS rules.  Firing every round is only special if you are used to firing every third round.

I've been playing around with a GURPS clone again.  Probably because I have other work I need to be doing :D  But it gets me to the question of how compatible / recognizable to make it.  I think it becomes less useful to other people as it get farther from GURPS but presents more of a threat / legal problem the closer it gets.  Oh well, I'm not that serious about it, but the question of what I'd do and how I'd do it is always fun.

I was thinking 16 page core rules and 16 page supplements covering fantasy (magic, races, small world, small dungeon), science fiction (starships, aliens, worlds), spies (agencies, modern hardware, conspiracies), superheroes (powers, law, setting, characters).  Anyhow, the core rules might wind up being 32 pages.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1027034GURPS is really good at certain things. D&D is not one of them.

I always thought it shined the most in modern and science fiction settings, where the skill based system was entirely natural.  That isn't to mean that it cannot do fantasy (a different claim) but that all systems have strong/weak points.  So I agree here.

Quote from: Votan;1028757I always thought it shined the most in modern and science fiction settings, where the skill based system was entirely natural.  That isn't to mean that it cannot do fantasy (a different claim) but that all systems have strong/weak points.  So I agree here.

gurps is great for all sorts of pre modern tech level or fantasy games. but the speed and dangerousness of combat make it a very poor choice for d+d style dungeon crawls

Quote from: Larsdangly;1028774gurps is great for all sorts of pre modern tech level or fantasy games. but the speed and dangerousness of combat make it a very poor choice for d+d style dungeon crawls

Heh, well if someone's goal is to have D&D-style dungeon crawls where combat plays like D&D and not like GURPS, then hmm, yeah, maybe they should use a game that plays like D&D.

Dungeon Fantasy does adjust GURPS fantasy dungeon play (which IMO was already great fun in all its pre-Dungeon Fantasy forms) to be more D&D-like, what with the D&D-class-like character templates, the buckets of points and super-abilities, the dungeon focus, the slightly lighter realism/detail-focus, and the various flavors of deadly monsters with special abilities. Adding piles of abstract hit points would be the point where I'd almost rather be playing D&D (or not wanting to play, because I don't like piles of abstract hitpoints - I like specific injuries/damages/fatigues or avoidances of them).

Quote from: Skarg;1028806Heh, well if someone's goal is to have D&D-style dungeon crawls where combat plays like D&D and not like GURPS, then hmm, yeah, maybe they should use a game that plays like D&D.

Dungeon Fantasy does adjust GURPS fantasy dungeon play (which IMO was already great fun in all its pre-Dungeon Fantasy forms) to be more D&D-like, what with the D&D-class-like character templates, the buckets of points and super-abilities, the dungeon focus, the slightly lighter realism/detail-focus, and the various flavors of deadly monsters with special abilities. Adding piles of abstract hit points would be the point where I'd almost rather be playing D&D (or not wanting to play, because I don't like piles of abstract hitpoints - I like specific injuries/damages/fatigues or avoidances of them).

I once GMed a military GURPS game.  If somebody had a high enough firearms skill it was appalling lethal.  A sniper rifle aimed head shot was just berserk.  

To make very high fantasy work seems hard in such a setting.  Either the wizards have far less power than modern battlefield weapons or it is going to be rather hard for the fighters to compete.  I suppose some of this might be mitigated by the right feats and tools.  But I saw things like explosively realistic combat deaths to be a plus of GURPS.  But smart GURPS players seemed to start avoiding fights very, very quickly in my games.  When they did fight, it was all about the ambush.  

Maybe medieval weapons work less well then firearms at injuring people in GURPS.  But I remember a sniper rifle doing 7d of damage in a game where many of the characters had 12 health.  Body armor helped (except against the character who was able to reliably place a called shot to the eye with sufficient aiming), but getting shot generally just sucked if military grade equipment was around (and this was 1990's style stuff, I am sure things are worse today).

Quote from: Larsdangly;1028774gurps is great for all sorts of pre modern tech level or fantasy games. but the speed and dangerousness of combat make it a very poor choice for d+d style dungeon crawls

Not my experience in running 20 years of Majestic Wilderlands using the GURPS rules. It not 100% the same as how things play out in the AD&D campaigns I ran. However the characters continue do the same things for the same reason. Tactics change, the importance of ambush increases. What people forget that from 1st to mid levels D&D is as deadly.

Dungeon crawls are some of the first things I ran with GURPS.  It's really no worse at it that lower level D&D.  In fact, with wizards being able to learn healing spells it might even be better.

Let's talk GURPS survival tools.  Armour and shields are a must for low tech fighters.  Don't neglect limb armour, limb crippling hits will put you on the bench if they aren't the first step in dying.  Fencing weapons are fine but they break easily and penetrate armour poorly unless you're good enough to target the weak spots in the armour.  If you're in a fantasy world you need a healer or healing potions but never, ever, neglect to take First Aid skill.  Everyone in the party should have it so they can make themselves useful when they're the last man standing and the healing potions run out.  A good healer will extend your adventuring day.  Missile fire can be good but it's slow and people can dodge.  I could make a long rant about how Crossbows in GURPS are actually worse than they are in AD&D (where they're pathetic) because, people can dodge.  Bear that if you have lots of armour and a shield your dodge will be lower, that's okay until the advent of firearms.  Armour and a shield are more reliable than dodging.

Okay, now, when guns come along they're not the end of the heavy fighter's day, but you might want to ditch the limb armour to get your dodge up.  Dodging is pretty effective against slow loading weapons.  Once repeating firearms come along it's time to ditch the armour and dodge, well, until Kevlar comes along anyhow.  Even then it's debatable.  Cover matters at this point and fights are often won by the first volley.

Quote from: Votan;1028818I once GMed a military GURPS game.  If somebody had a high enough firearms skill it was appalling lethal.  A sniper rifle aimed head shot was just berserk.

A bit like a bullet through the brain? ;)

Quote from: Votan;1028818To make very high fantasy work seems hard in such a setting.  Either the wizards have far less power than modern battlefield weapons or it is going to be rather hard for the fighters to compete.  I suppose some of this might be mitigated by the right feats and tools.  But I saw things like explosively realistic combat deaths to be a plus of GURPS.  But smart GURPS players seemed to start avoiding fights very, very quickly in my games.  When they did fight, it was all about the ambush.

Maybe medieval weapons work less well then firearms at injuring people in GURPS.  But I remember a sniper rifle doing 7d of damage in a game where many of the characters had 12 health.  Body armor helped (except against the character who was able to reliably place a called shot to the eye with sufficient aiming), but getting shot generally just sucked if military grade equipment was around (and this was 1990's style stuff, I am sure things are worse today).

For GURPS Magic (there are a few different magic systems), the wizards have very different power than modern military weapons, and yes generally nowhere near the direct destructive power of modern military weapons (nor even a civilian revolver or semi-automatic pistol). A wizard can be very effective in other ways, though, especially if they are clever and not just trying to blast things directly.

Ancient/medieval fighting in GURPS is very different from gun combat. Shields and armor and dodging and parrying and maneuvering and so on can all be relatively effective at usually keeping people from being killed by the first thing that attacks them. An axe to the head can be just as deadly as a bullet, but it has much shorter range, lower rate of fire, and is easier to dodge or block, too. And there are all sorts of varieties of ways combats can play out. Playing out low-tech tactical combats in GURPS is more or less my favorite board game.

Fighting with guns, it makes sense to do whatever you can think of to not get shot, and ambush is one way. Planning on being able to survive getting shot more times than your opponents naturally isn't usually effective unless it involves bulletproof armor.

Quote from: Votan;1028757I always thought it shined the most in modern and science fiction settings, where the skill based system was entirely natural.  That isn't to mean that it cannot do fantasy (a different claim) but that all systems have strong/weak points.  So I agree here.

Yes. Though really, I think GURPS was at its best in Modern games.

I ran a couple of historical GURPS games back in the day, swashbucklers and the Scarlet Pimpernel. But the best GURPS campaign I ran was Illuminati.

Take a common sort of D&D combat encounter situation: say, 5-7 PC's facing off with 20 orcs. If you are playing pre-3E D&D, this is a 15 minute episode of play. Maybe less. Now do the same thing with GURPS and report back to me on how it went. It's o.k., I'll wait...

Individualized GURPS orcs or generic Dungeon Fantasy or GURPS Orcslayer orcs?

Experienced GURPS players or newbies?

Okay, anyhow, if it's DF PCs verses Orcslayer orcs, it'll be over fast enough.  A sixteen strength knight with an extra attack will be good for at least one orc per round and maybe two.  It depends a bit on the party.  A wizard slinging exploding fireballs or a scout dropping arrows into their eyes, which isn't unrealistic with Heroic Archer and Weapon Master (Bow), yeah, 20 of the basic 25 point orcs won't even work up a sweat.  The Dungeon Fantasy orcs are tougher and twenty is probably too many but even so, the combat could swing either way pretty fast.  One thing about Dungeon Fantasy is that the cost of armour has been massively jacked up relative to the Basic Set so the fighters won't be rocking full epic plate and they'll actually manage to take some damage.  Of course the situation matters an open field favours the orcs because they can fully exploit their numerical advantage and narrow corridors favour the adventurers.

Admittedly, D&D can run big fights faster than GURPS, but those DF characters are heavy hitters and nothing's a bucket of hit points in GURPS.  Of course it depends on which version of D&D you're playing.

Rolemaster does it faster than either because everybody's dead and maimed after a couple of rounds.

Quote from: David Johansen;1029246Rolemaster does it faster than either because everybody's dead and maimed after a couple of rounds.

What the what? I wouldn't have predicted anyone would go there with this question. The scenario I described would take a couple of hours to resolve with Rolemaster, unless the PC's are 30th level or something.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1029241Take a common sort of D&D combat encounter situation: say, 5-7 PC's facing off with 20 orcs. If you are playing pre-3E D&D, this is a 15 minute episode of play. Maybe less. Now do the same thing with GURPS and report back to me on how it went. It's o.k., I'll wait...

An hour to resolve on average depending how the opening of the encounter plays out. Max maybe two hours if the situation is fluid.

If the time to resolve an encounter your criteria then yes GURPS is a poor choice, but then by that criteria for any type of campaign GURPS would be a poor cihoice.

But why does it take longer? It is a bunch of unneeded rolls and rules? Or rather is what GURPS chooses to focus on and the level of detail? GURPS combat takes longer because the defender has a roll along with tactical options. This means an encounter goes back and forth longer. D&D in contrast has a flat modifier for defense that the attacker has to overcome. But add options like healing then suddenly D&D style combat starts to balloon out to GURPS length.

It boils down to a matter of taste. Those of use who like GURPS like the detail. Like the fact that in GURPS very little is abstracted. The consequence is that from the start of the campaign, combat encounters will take longer to resolve.

Except for one thing, GURPS has the option of making combat an opposed roll. This makes resolving combat encounter a lot quicker. While the defender has a roll, skill now counts a lot more making combat between disparate foes resolve a lot faster.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1029241Take a common sort of D&D combat encounter situation: say, 5-7 PC's facing off with 20 orcs. If you are playing pre-3E D&D, this is a 15 minute episode of play. Maybe less. Now do the same thing with GURPS and report back to me on how it went. It's o.k., I'll wait...

It would probably take about the same amount of time if I was running for one of my groups, but I've been running GURPS for 28 years and I know quite a few tricks.  I will say if it was for a group of complete newbies, it would take at least an hour as I'd have to explain everything and give them time to make decisions.

I'm making quite a few assumptions here, like that the orcs would retreat instead of fighting to the death when enough of them were killed or disabled.  As with so many other things, it depends on the specifics of the scenario.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1029078Yes. Though really, I think GURPS was at its best in Modern games.

I ran a couple of historical GURPS games back in the day, swashbucklers and the Scarlet Pimpernel. But the best GURPS campaign I ran was Illuminati.

I've always ran GURPS as modern and thought it did best with modern settings. I have run Dungeon Fantasy a few times since I got the box set and it does show GURPS can do dungeon adventuring but.....running S&W, AD&D, Palladium, etc. can do it easier (for me).

Quote from: Larsdangly;1029263What the what? I wouldn't have predicted anyone would go there with this question. The scenario I described would take a couple of hours to resolve with Rolemaster, unless the PC's are 30th level or something.

I guess it's true that there's nothing you can say on the internet that won't be taken seriously if you don't use a smiley :D

Never the less, run properly, Rolemaster can be very fast.  The biggest part is to have everyone work out results simultaneously rather than sequentially.  If you skipped action declaration you multiplied the time needed to run combat by the number of people at the table.  As I said, the reason Rolemaster combat can be faster is that there's no defense roll and no bucket of hit points that can't be brought down by a single lucky blow.  Admittedly RM combat can drag out, but it can also be as fast as, a single 00 on the critical roll.

Quote from: David Johansen;1029300I guess it's true that there's nothing you can say on the internet that won't be taken seriously if you don't use a smiley :D

Never the less, run properly, Rolemaster can be very fast.  The biggest part is to have everyone work out results simultaneously rather than sequentially.  If you skipped action declaration you multiplied the time needed to run combat by the number of people at the table.  As I said, the reason Rolemaster combat can be faster is that there's no defense roll and no bucket of hit points that can't be brought down by a single lucky blow.  Admittedly RM combat can drag out, but it can also be as fast as, a single 00 on the critical roll.

If Rolemaster ran as a phone Ap it would be quick as lightning. But the reality is you spend hours per session leafing through tables trying to sort out all the little numbers and text blurbs.

Quote from: Ulairi;1029294I've always ran GURPS as modern and thought it did best with modern settings. I have run Dungeon Fantasy a few times since I got the box set and it does show GURPS can do dungeon adventuring but.....running S&W, AD&D, Palladium, etc. can do it easier (for me).

I mostly ran GURPS as ancient/medieval fantasy from the start and I've always thought GURPS shined brightest at doing ancient/medieval combat.

My theory is that GURPS seems best at settings one has a lot of experience running, even more than most other systems. There's a learning curve (especially in 4e whose Basic Set dumps on a reader about 30 settings' worth of options on character creation, and presents a universe-hopping mode of play as a default setting), and is rather different from D&D, and personally I think it mainly gets good when you get into some detailed aspect of it and the GM runs that well. With a learning GM, it may seem quite confusing and weird, slow, too lethal, whatever.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1029241Take a common sort of D&D combat encounter situation: say, 5-7 PC's facing off with 20 orcs. If you are playing pre-3E D&D, this is a 15 minute episode of play. Maybe less. Now do the same thing with GURPS and report back to me on how it went. It's o.k., I'll wait...

Quote from: ThatChrisGuy;1029293It would probably take about the same amount of time if I was running for one of my groups, but I've been running GURPS for 28 years and I know quite a few tricks.  I will say if it was for a group of complete newbies, it would take at least an hour as I'd have to explain everything and give them time to make decisions.

I'm making quite a few assumptions here, like that the orcs would retreat instead of fighting to the death when enough of them were killed or disabled.  As with so many other things, it depends on the specifics of the scenario.

Yes, exactly. I'd add though that a GM can also not explain everything, and explain what's going on in real-world terms and translate what they say they want their PCs to do into game moves and so on.

To me, what I mainly notice about the comparison is that the prospect of that scenario in D&D seems like a fairly predictable task, that even D&D players tend to relate to as something to get through to continue with play, and the time it takes to get it over with is the main consideration, but to me anyway, a 5 vs 20 GURPS combat is more of a juicy fun interesting prospect, and the tactics and mid-battle development of the combat details and the choices they lead to are the play I want to get to.

I didn't say you couldn't do it; I said it would take all night. And I stand by that. If you want to play a tactical melee game all evening, that's cool. If you want to have a dungeon crawl, better have some snacks and adult diapers handy because you are going to be sitting at that table resolving fights 90 % of the time

Quote from: Larsdangly;1029332I didn't say you couldn't do it; I said it would take all night. And I stand by that. If you want to play a tactical melee game all evening, that's cool. If you want to have a dungeon crawl, better have some snacks and adult diapers handy because you are going to be sitting at that table resolving fights 90 % of the time

I'll give it a shot tonight and let you know how long it takes me.

But it seems to me it's more telling to look at the difference in what a combat is like in the two systems. A typical encounter in GURPS generally isn't 20 orcs, because the power curve isn't so steep, there are no blobs of safety hitpoints, and orcs aren't sub-humans and combat isn't abstract and trivialized. There are quick easy fights in GURPS just probably doesn't mean 20 orcs, and even a 5 vs 8 or a 2 vs 5 or a 1 vs 2 fight can be fun and interesting and not a chore.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1029332I didn't say you couldn't do it; I said it would take all night. And I stand by that. If you want to play a tactical melee game all evening, that's cool. If you want to have a dungeon crawl, better have some snacks and adult diapers handy because you are going to be sitting at that table resolving fights 90 % of the time

I don't agree, and I'm talking from experience.  I spend less than half of each session, on average, on combat.  We typically spend more time bullshitting with each other.  For an example, Peter Dell'Orto's run a dungeoncrawl (https://dungeonfantastic.blogspot.com/) using GURPS for years and he often has several fights per session.  He has had fights that took the whole session, but back when I was playing AD&D regularly in the early '90s it took whole sessions for some battles.

GURPS isn't going to work well for everyone, but who gives a crap?  Play D&D (etc.) if that's what you want, it works just fine for people who like it.  I don't enjoy playing or running it, so I run something else.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1029312If Rolemaster ran as a phone Ap it would be quick as lightning. But the reality is you spend hours per session leafing through tables trying to sort out all the little numbers and text blurbs.

No, you just need to be a bit organized.  I even use the experience rules as written.  You can very easily track stuff like skill use and criticals on the same sheet you track monster hp.  The players should have copies of their weapon, spell list, and critical tables, it can be helpful to write your skill on each weapon table and track your hit points on the one you use the most to cut flipping and shuffling.  The same thing applies to the referee.  You can handle each monster with a different weapon with a little Arms Law familiarity but it's usually best to keep it to a couple tables per encounter.  Again, the thing that makes Rolemaster fast is lethality.  Fights don't last many rounds.  Somebody gets stunned, and then dies when their foe doesn't parry and gets in a serious blow.

In GURPS or Rolemaster being outnumbered by orcs is the worst possible scenario for the PCs.  Numbers kill, still, the fight will be over quickly one way or another.

I ran an encounter last night between 20 mostly-individualized orcs* versus 5 actual PCs (quite different, various point values). It took me about 30 minutes to resolve, using full rules including my Combat Sense rules.  (* different attributes, skills, ads/disads, equipment, variable armor on various body parts, etc)

At first I considered how an actual encounter in-campaign would work, and realized the most likely result was the PCs would tend to detect the 20 orcs first and either avoid them or observe them and then try to set up a situation where they'd be most effective, such as waiting for the orcs to camp for the night and then slaughtering them in a night attack.

However that seemed out of scope for what you had in mind, so I chose a close-ish-range starting position that made some sense - the PCs following a road and chatting and assumed to not have noticed the 20 orcs who also didn't notice them until they were 50-80 feet (~15-25m) away due to some bushes and large rocks the orcs were lounging behind. I resolved the details of what each orc and PC was aware of, thinking and doing.

The PCs had one archer who rightly guessed who two of the best orcs were and managed to send one barely able to stagger away with with an arrow to the guts, and dropped the leader with an arrow to the head. The orcs had a good crossbowman and some archers, but the charge of all the others blocked most chances for a clear shot at the PCs - one got a shot off but it missed. A group of several of the biggest orcs with two-handed battleaxes reached the PCs but three of them were immediately dropped by two PCs - one PC with a quarrterstaff who knocked one out with a stop-thrust to the face and broke another's right arm, and a strong PC with a fine greatsword who landed a critical hit to a giant orc's head for 52 damage (sliced the head in half). With five of their best wiped out by single attacks in six seconds before the orcs got anywhere near the PCs, I checked morale and they panicked and routed.

I noticed that most of the real-world time was spent actually running the orcs realistically reacting to spotting the party and making their way through and around the rocks! I'm curious to see how long it takes if I force the groups to start out more or less right in front of each other at close range - maybe rounding a street-corner at the same time.

I understand how GURPS works and remain unconvinced. A solo-run fight that gets cut off after 6 seconds is not very much like what happens at a table with a big fight, 3-5 players nattering away and making decisions.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1029518I understand how GURPS works and remain unconvinced. A solo-run fight that gets cut off after 6 seconds is not very much like what happens at a table with a big fight, 3-5 players nattering away and making decisions.

It is if

a) I handled it as I would during play, to the point where one side routed.

b) The GM doesn't let players natter away or take time to decide what to do when it's their turn to say what they do next.

And never mind that running such a fight is actually fun, interesting, uncertain and has possible significant consequences, and the results make detailed sense?

What do you think your point is?

Should I do it "theater of the mind" with generic identical orcs as a meatgrinder battle to the death? Ok, I will. ... 17 minutes, and still more interesting to me than running a D&D fight. (The results were a bloodbath. The PC archer got two shots off and felled two orcs with gut shots. Then they were able to mostly kill them about as fast as they came, suffering several hits but none that got through armor. Three of the orcs' shields were chopped to pieces, four of them had their weapon arms crippled - three by greatsword and one by quarterstaff. Six of them were run through their vital organs with a bastard sword, six were felled by single mighty cutting blows to the torso by greatsword, battleaxe or poleaxe, and two were beaten to unconsciousness by quarterstaff.)

I think it can both be true that a highly experienced GURPS person can run a complex fight especially fast (quicker than I could manage it) and that GURPS fights generally take more time than OD&D (for example).  I found high level 3rd edition D&D, 4th edition D&D, and Pathfinder also run slowly.  Some of it can be sped up by system mastery (what does this feat or power do is a time suck).  

Sometimes the complex combat is the point of the game.  If this is what people enjoy then BRAVO.  

If I want less rules mastery then something like Lamentations of the Flame Princess or BECMI or OD&D has a very low barrier to entry.  It also models a lot of of combat less accurately and has some very quirky rules.

Some rules sets support certain play styles more directly than others.  You can certainly do dungeon GURPS and I totally get it might add a dimension that might be really enjoyable.  But it seems to play against type if we are considering the old style classic games.  A good GM can obviously make the system work well and I would play dungeon GURPS with a good GM in a hot second (good GMs are hard to find).  But my instinct says it would be easier to adapt earlier style of games for an old school open table dungeon crawl with high character mortality.  

But people do dungeon crawls with Pathfinder all of the time and I don't think it is faster then GURPS, either in combat or character creation.  I have, mostly as the GM.  I can't see how GURPS wouldn't be just as effective.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1029312If Rolemaster ran as a phone Ap it would be quick as lightning. But the reality is you spend hours per session leafing through tables trying to sort out all the little numbers and text blurbs.

Nah.

I ran MERP/Rolemaster for years.  You give every player their weapon tables, and use a good GM screen.  After a few sessions, things start to hum.  Players get some levels under their belt and some decent quality weapons, they can do some serious orc-carving.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1029518I understand how GURPS works and remain unconvinced. A solo-run fight that gets cut off after 6 seconds is not very much like what happens at a table with a big fight, 3-5 players nattering away and making decisions.

In my experience probably somewhere between 30 minutes  to an hour, largely because of the out of game bullshitting that goes and the occasional prolonged "should I do this, or that".

Understand the basic sequence is

1) Pick a maneuver.
2) Attack and/or more in accordance to the Manevuer
3) If Attack roll 3d6 under skill. If successful then
4) Defender rolls 3d6 under his chosen defense
5) If Defender fails, attacker rolls damage
6) Defender subtract armors. Multiplies the remainder by the type of damage it is. Subtracts it from his hit point (based on Strength).

The maneuvers can be summed up as either you move or you take a single three foot step and attack.

The more complicated maneuvers are generally rely on having certain skills (Judo, Fencing, etc) and are a paragraph in length. So for those players with those skills you make a cheat sheet. For everybody else it either move, or take a step and attack.

Of course if you want to get into it, there are modifiers, and ifs and buts. But GURPS clearly distinguishes between basic combat, advanced combat, and combat with all the options in the supplement like with GURPS Martial Arts.

It takes longer to resolve because of the defense roll. However once a target is damaged the possibility of a death spiral mean the odds are that combat will end quickly is greatly increased. Quite simply, the damage you take is also shock and acts as a negative modifier on your next to hit roll and defense roll.

If you don't use the published cheat sheets or fail to make your own. Then yes the game will slow as you wade through rulebooks laid out as generic toolkits leafing through sections used by other genres than the one you are running.

But those of us experienced in GURPS know this beforehand and prepare accordingly. And SJ Games is not blind to this and has published numerous reference sheets.

I get people don't find GURPS to their taste. That different than exaggerating how long things take to resolve. The design of GURPS is outstanding in how it maps it's mechanics to real world (and fictional) concepts. If you know a genre and learn GURPS, it is very easy to figure how to make work after reading a few examples in the supplements they publish.

The appropriate D&D edition comparison is fourth.  GURPS has a fantastic tactical combat system.  GURPS doesn't have D&D 4e's focus on balanced encounters, but careful maneuvering is the key to victory in tactical combat.  I've always felt something like Dungeon Fantasy would have really cleaned up when WotC cancelled 4e.

Quote from: David Johansen;1029677The appropriate D&D edition comparison is fourth.  GURPS has a fantastic tactical combat system.  GURPS doesn't have D&D 4e's focus on balanced encounters, but careful maneuvering is the key to victory in tactical combat.  I've always felt something like Dungeon Fantasy would have really cleaned up when WotC cancelled 4e.

I concur with the comparison to D&D 4e. My view is that while not exactly D&D, 4th edition's combat system was very well designed to allow relative novices to enjoy tactically detailed combat. And rewarded those who took the time to master it.

It was more aligned with replicating fantasy superheroics than the more grounded take of GURPS. Nothing wrong with that on principle except if it is the only thing you ever serve up with the mechanics.

As an aside, I found that unmodified 4th ed. Fantasy Hero ran more slowly for the reasons being speculated with GURPs.  Namely, you have the more complicated options of GURPs, but because Hero is more forgiving, the tactical aspects could drag out instead of ending up with orc brains scattered all over the place or orcs running for the hills.  Hero very much shows its Champions roots in that respect, as it defaults to people staying in fights until unconscious.  System mastery helps, but doesn't fully handle the situation.

What does handle it is to modify Hero to be a little grittier than normal and change the SPD chart to an initiative roll to give more uncertainty.  Then you get something about halfway between AD&D and GURPs--which is what I wanted at the time.

Quote from: estar;1029676In my experience probably somewhere between 30 minutes  to an hour, largely because of the out of game bullshitting that goes and the occasional prolonged "should I do this, or that".

Understand the basic sequence is

1) Pick a maneuver.
2) Attack and/or more in accordance to the Manevuer
3) If Attack roll 3d6 under skill. If successful then
4) Defender rolls 3d6 under his chosen defense
5) If Defender fails, attacker rolls damage
6) Defender subtract armors. Multiplies the remainder by the type of damage it is. Subtracts it from his hit point (based on Strength).

The maneuvers can be summed up as either you move or you take a single three foot step and attack.

The more complicated maneuvers are generally rely on having certain skills (Judo, Fencing, etc) and are a paragraph in length. So for those players with those skills you make a cheat sheet. For everybody else it either move, or take a step and attack.

Of course if you want to get into it, there are modifiers, and ifs and buts. But GURPS clearly distinguishes between basic combat, advanced combat, and combat with all the options in the supplement like with GURPS Martial Arts.

It takes longer to resolve because of the defense roll. However once a target is damaged the possibility of a death spiral mean the odds are that combat will end quickly is greatly increased. Quite simply, the damage you take is also shock and acts as a negative modifier on your next to hit roll and defense roll.

If you don't use the published cheat sheets or fail to make your own. Then yes the game will slow as you wade through rulebooks laid out as generic toolkits leafing through sections used by other genres than the one you are running.

But those of us experienced in GURPS know this beforehand and prepare accordingly. And SJ Games is not blind to this and has published numerous reference sheets.

I get people don't find GURPS to their taste. That different than exaggerating how long things take to resolve. The design of GURPS is outstanding in how it maps it's mechanics to real world (and fictional) concepts. If you know a genre and learn GURPS, it is very easy to figure how to make work after reading a few examples in the supplements they publish.

I found that I needed a map for GURPS, but maybe my spatial skill is low.  I needed one for Pathfinder too.  I can do OSR without one.  That is one piece.

The other is that the modifiers are slow.  Cheat sheets were essential when I ran it (many moons ago) but I am not good at keeping it all in my head.  Maybe enough experience would have helped.

But Rolemaster (which I play now) is at least as slow and it isn't like it isn't fun.

Quote from: trechriron;1025764http://www.gurpscalculator.com/DiceRoller is a great example of a modernizing the tools. It's why I support his Patreon.

This looks interesting, but the site requires you to create a user account to use the tools. Before I give out my email, can you tell me a bit about the content?

Quote from: estar;1029679I concur with the comparison to D&D 4e. My view is that while not exactly D&D, 4th edition's combat system was very well designed to allow relative novices to enjoy tactically detailed combat. And rewarded those who took the time to master it.

It was more aligned with replicating fantasy superheroics than the more grounded take of GURPS. Nothing wrong with that on principle except if it is the only thing you ever serve up with the mechanics.

The Dungeon Fantasy characters are pretty much fantasy superheroes.  The problem is that unless the players are used to GURPS they sit there looking at the characters and wonder why you need Heroic Archer and three skill rolls to fire a bow once per round.

Quote from: David Johansen;1029836The Dungeon Fantasy characters are pretty much fantasy superheroes.  The problem is that unless the players are used to GURPS they sit there looking at the characters and wonder why you need Heroic Archer and three skill rolls to fire a bow once per round.

1) You are right
2) It because DF is designed to reflect Sean Punch view of how dungeon crawling works. Which among other things mean that character can deal with a major portion of a dungeon without having to leave and regroup in town.
3) As a consquence DF start off character 250 pt. In contrast everything I did in the Majestic Wilderland with GURPS starts off at 125 pts (40 pts disads) with some campaigns being at 50 point (20 pts disad) and 75 pts (also 20 pts disads). Very much the opposite of superheroic.

I tend to award 150 to 200 points but then only allow 20 points of disadvantages and require them to make some kind of sense.

Anyhow, I must confess, a major issue I have in GURPS campaigns is players giving up after a big fight and not pressing on to find the treasure.  I really don't feel most npcs should be carrying a treasure chest or indeed anything more than a bit of pocket money on their persons.  Searching the bodies is a trope I can do without really.  I like hierocentric exchange better than looting any day of the week.

Quote from: estar;10298391) You are right
2) It because DF is designed to reflect Sean Punch view of how dungeon crawling works. Which among other things mean that character can deal with a major portion of a dungeon without having to leave and regroup in town.
3) As a consquence DF start off character 250 pt. In contrast everything I did in the Majestic Wilderland with GURPS starts off at 125 pts (40 pts disads) with some campaigns being at 50 point (20 pts disad) and 75 pts (also 20 pts disads). Very much the opposite of superheroic.

I've always wanted to run Gurps. It looks like it would accomplish what I aiming for (low fantasy/low magic) but it needs some engineering. How would this work:

• Gurps Lite as a base, maybe some options in Characters.
• 150 points + 50 points Disads.
• Atts range 10 to 13. I'm trying to avoid att maxing.
• No hit locations. I don't want the game to become "I shoot him in the eye, every time."
• No TBAM, Weapons master, Enthrallment skills.
• No manuevers.
• Nothing that lets you attack more than 1x round. Having trouble figuring out all of the possibilities here.
• Not sure what to do about magic. Probably stick with the classic system in Characters or Magic (I have both).

Here are the things I need help with:

• Nothing that lets you attack more than 1x round. Having trouble figuring out all of the possibilities here.
• Not sure what to do about magic. I'd like to stick with the classic system in Characters or Magic.

Basically I wat to run a fantasy game in Gurps, not D&D in Gurps. Something like Game of Thrones + some Tolkien + D&D spells up to level 4.

Quote from: David Johansen;1029845Searching the bodies is a trope I can do without really.  I like hierocentric exchange better than looting any day of the week.

What's heirocentric?

The money comes from the top of the hierarchy.  That is to say your lord or patron pays you for your service.  It gets rid of a lot of the anti-social tendencies in play.  You do need to make sure the PCs boss doesn't screw them over.  If they do the job and behave themselves, they get paid.  Trust is a hard issue for players for some silly reason :D

Quote from: David Johansen;1029883The money comes from the top of the hierarchy.  That is to say your lord or patron pays you for your service.  It gets rid of a lot of the anti-social tendencies in play.  You do need to make sure the PCs boss doesn't screw them over.  If they do the job and behave themselves, they get paid.  Trust is a hard issue for players for some silly reason :D

Trust is an issue for many reasons, starting with GMs who take the "your patron lied and screws you out of your pay" route. If that happens it's supposed to be a Major Issue that drives subsequent adventures, not "Oh, it must be Tuesday."

Quote from: Aglondir;1029849I've always wanted to run Gurps. It looks like it would accomplish what I aiming for (low fantasy/low magic) but it needs some engineering. How would this work:

• Gurps Lite as a base, maybe some options in Characters.
• 150 points + 50 points Disads.
• Atts range 10 to 13. I'm trying to avoid att maxing.
• No hit locations. I don't want the game to become "I shoot him in the eye, every time."
• No TBAM, Weapons master, Enthrallment skills.
• No manuevers.
• Nothing that lets you attack more than 1x round. Having trouble figuring out all of the possibilities here.
• Not sure what to do about magic. Probably stick with the classic system in Characters or Magic (I have both).

Here are the things I need help with:

• Nothing that lets you attack more than 1x round. Having trouble figuring out all of the possibilities here.
• Not sure what to do about magic. I'd like to stick with the classic system in Characters or Magic.

Basically I wat to run a fantasy game in Gurps, not D&D in Gurps. Something like Game of Thrones + some Tolkien + D&D spells up to level 4.

It shouldn't be hard to limit number of attacks per turn. The things that come to mind that could do that would be:

* Trained By A Master and Weapon master and other optional rules from GURPS Martial Arts or GURPS Action, which are normal to not allow.
* The Extra Attacks advantage - didn't exist before 4e; perfectly reasonable to not allow it.
* The Rapid Strike option (B370) - didn't exist before 4e; perfectly reasonable to not allow it.
* The All Out Attack maneuver with the (double) option. This isn't so normal to disallow for balanced weapons, as it means you get no defenses, but go ahead and don't allow it if you want to.
* Some monsters attack with multiple types of attacks at once (e.g. dragon breath & claw) but that I imagine may not be what you meant - your call what to do with those.

For magic, since you want low magic, and think GURPS Magic is fine, I would recommend you do what I do, which is:
Rule that pretty much all magic spells are learned from a person or writing (not from being a wizard with spare character points lets you get whatever spells you qualify for).
If you think some people with Magical Aptitude ought to be able to intuitively learn to do a bit of magic, pick and list exactly which spells that is possible for.
When developing the campaign world, list the groups of people who know any magic, and decide which exact spells they know, where they are, and under what conditions they are willing to teach those spells. I usually make it a pretty limited list of related spells for each group, even when I am planning to have a fair amount of magic in a game, because it helps keep me sane and I like the flavor of limited spell lists by group. It can take a while, but I would go through the whole list of spells and pick the ones you want to be available and which groups know them and what it takes to get them to teach them, and possibly add some more prerequisites to some of them, if you feel like it, and/or nerf or tweak them a bit in interesting ways.

As for your list, I might would tweak it slightly:

* 150 points + 40 points Disads & up to 5 for Quirks, or a single disad of any value.
* Some attributes at 8 or 9 can be OK for some characters.
* For maneuvers, go ahead and ignore them at first, but I think eventually after you get used to the system, you'll probably start to want to allow most of the maneuvers as options. They're really just how you do different things during combat other than "I attack generically". It's how you do such things as ready/change/reload weapons, take time to do something, cast a spell, run, or cower behind a shield rather than trying to hit someone.

Quote from: Skarg;1029915It shouldn't be hard to limit number of attacks per turn. The things that come to mind that could do that would be...

Thanks for the list; exactly what I was looking for. I'm going to disallow items 1-3; All-out attacks and multiple attacks for monsters are fine.  

Quote from: Skarg;1029915For magic, since you want low magic, and think GURPS Magic is fine, I would recommend you do what I do, which is...

All of those are great ideas. I just re-read the magic chapter in Characters and nothing stood out as a red flag, except for the ability to eschew gestures/invocations at high ranks. I prefer that they are always required; I don't want mages casting lightning bolts just by thinking about it. Actually, the spell list in Characters seemed a bit limted, so I'm going to look through Magic next.

Quote from: Skarg;1029915As for your list, I might would tweak it slightly:

Cool, I will try that. Not sure about Manuevers; maybe after I get some experience with the system.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1029241Take a common sort of D&D combat encounter situation: say, 5-7 PC's facing off with 20 orcs. If you are playing pre-3E D&D, this is a 15 minute episode of play. Maybe less. Now do the same thing with GURPS and report back to me on how it went. It's o.k., I'll wait...

  If we are talking Dungeon Fantasy and assuming a party of the classic 4 with support (in this instance I will say a Knight (Fighter), Scout, Thief, Wizard, Cleric) in the form of the extra fighter (scout is the extra).  I would take about 10-15 minutes assuming mook level orcs and a minimum amount of joking about exploding orcs.  Add in two more characters, say a Barbarian and a Swashbuckler and half the orcs are likely dead/incapacitated or combat ineffective after the first time all the players have had a turn.   Gurps handles mook fights very fast IMO, if you are willing to play them as mooks, in that they go down/run/play dead when they get smashed a time or two.  Where GURPS can take a long while is when you fight the tough boss/high skilled important figure.   Then it can become a gamble for a critical, a need to overwhelm the skilled bad guy's defenses or flank him, or having a fighter take the attention of the antagonist while going all out defense until a caster can ramp up a spell or get a back stabber in place.  

   So for me, mook fights are a breeze.  Fights with high skilled participants on both sides, can drag on for a long bit.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1029332I didn't say you couldn't do it; I said it would take all night. And I stand by that. If you want to play a tactical melee game all evening, that's cool. If you want to have a dungeon crawl, better have some snacks and adult diapers handy because you are going to be sitting at that table resolving fights 90 % of the time

  This is not true at all.  Assuming DF characters.  Now a fight with 150 pt chars and 20 orcs, that could take a while.  As I said in my explanation, mook fights are fast for me in GURPS.  It is when you find the high health/DR/Skill boss that a fight can drag on a good deal, but I have had a critical shut a fight down in 1 round before too, so it can be unpredictable.

Quote from: oggsmash;1031115This is not true at all.  Assuming DF characters.  Now a fight with 150 pt chars and 20 orcs, that could take a while. ...

The characters I used in my trials above were averaging around 150 points and were plain non-DF GURPS characters using just mundane abilities and equipment. Took me slightly longer than you estimated, but not much longer.

They've announced a new adventure for DFRPG

http://www.sjgames.com/ill/archive/2018-04-01

Nice.  I am ok at converting 1st and 3rd ed adventures to GURPS, but it does take some time, and I think the move for SJG would be to churn out adventures in PDF version.   Maybe it would not be a money maker, but seems a good move.

I am certain that's an April Fools joke, the tip off is that it's a GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Grappling Quickstart...

Maybe, but they have been working out the more incremental grappling rules for a few years now, so that is not exactly a tip off, since Cole is the guy who worked on the rules alot the past few years.

I'm with the SJG forum speculation in that it looks real to me, although I think there's ironic humor in that it probably does have a DF version of Cole's grappling rules.

Cole posted on the forums, it is real.

Does that mean DF isn't being cancelled after all?

DF is a GURPS line.
DFRPG is a lite-er "powered by GURPS" line that had the boxed set released for it. The boxed set seems like it won't be printed again.
This is a new adventure written for DFRPG which includes some new rules, so evidently they may continue to make more DFRPG content.

DF will certainly continue to get new stuff, too.

I'm pretty sure they did the Dungeon Fantasy game based on the popularity of the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy pdf line.  Personally, DFrpg is not a good introductory GURPS game, too much front loaded complexity.  On the other hand it's a fun thing for GURPS fans.  The thing I'd really like to see is a big box of Card Board Heroes like the ones in the box.  They're the real gem, heavy card, nice plastic stands with a facing arrow.  I'm a serious miniatures junky but sometimes you want something that's easy to take with you or a more comprehensive set for a lower price.

A game shop near me went out of business, so I just picked up boxed set of Dungeons & Dragons: GURPS edition and the DM screen for the princely sum of $20. I'm reading through the manual, and let me tell you: I don't get the point of this game. I've started reading through the rules and so far, the question ringing in my brain is, "Why did Steve Jackson Games think it was a good idea to rewrite Dungeons & Dragons using a 3d6 roll-under system?" I've been playing D&D for a few years (since around the time 4e came out), and at no point did having a different statistical distribution of my core die rolls ever seem all that important.

The rule books have misleading titles. "Exploits" is not a book of feats and character options, it's actually a bit DMG and a bit PHB. Organization is kind of confusing, and it clearly needed some testing with someone who had never played GURPS before, because they do stuff like allude to the obvious result of somebody have a 16 on his sheet meaning something else having a -2 or whatever that apparently I'm supposed to just know what the heck that is. While I appreciate this nod to classic AD&D 1e's organizational principles, this is really confusing.

The most disappointing thing so far is just how D&D-y it is. Its concept of "fantasy" is far too Gygaxian and thus presents nothing interesting or unique to a first-time reader. That's why I don't know what the point of this game is. It seems like hardcore GURPS fans already would have the Basic Set and DF expansions. But if you're a D&D fan, there's nothing that really stands out in the basic presentation. It is literally the same old D&D classes and D&D races laid out for you, just with different mechanics. And if you're new to RPGs, why would you not just pick up the real D&D first thing?

I haven't read it thoroughly; these are just first impressions. But first impressions are how you make the sale, so it's no wonder this was unsuccessful. I'm really bored already by reading this (yawn...okay...now the gnome rogue pick locks with 3d6 instead of d100 or d20, who cares?). If the combat system looks cool, I'll give it a shot, but they really should have had a better idea that "Do what Gygax and Arneson did, but with different dice."

Just read the combat section. It looks really cool.

GURPS has a fantastic tactical combat system and dungeons provide fantastic tactical combat situations, it's a natural fit.  GURPS is a very flexible game while D&D is generally more structured and rigid.  There are advantages to both approaches but I've had people play demons, manticores, dragons, and animals in my GURPS fantasy games and it handles them fine.  GURPS has more pitfalls than D&D but Dungeon Fantasy holds your hand and gives you very combat effective character templates.

Still, I've felt the box was rather more aimed at existing GURPS fans than new players.

The text and presentation feels like it's trying to cash in on the current D&D craze to sell GURPS. The problem is it comes off as too similar to D&D without going all the way and converting the SRD    monsters to their system. Personally, I'd be more interested in doing the work to learn this if it weren't Gygaxian fantasy with different numbers. People buy games for the content, not the mechanics.

Steve Jackson Games seems to feel GURPS fans buy GURPS for the mechanics not the content.  Despite the good reputation world books had in earlier editions they're deemed insufficiently profitable these days.

On the other hand, I don't think it was ever an attempt to cash in on D&D's current popularity.  It was an attempt to gauge the willingness of GURPS fans to support a kickstarter.  It's clearly not an introductory level game.  Go look at the armour cost and weight tables and tell me that's aimed at new players.  Now look at the genericness of the very nice box, books, and components, in a market saturated with fantasy board games what does it do to stand out?  It's very nice, but they're all very nice.  The reality is Dungeon Fantasy is the most popular line of GURPS pdfs and this box is aimed at that market.  Sure SJG would have been happy if it was a break out success but really they were testing the willingness of GURPS fans to support a kickstarter like this.  They're looking for a way to produce support for GURPS.  World books only appeal to a fraction of the fan base, they've done Mars Attacks and Disc World last years and they did okay but not great.  The thing is that world books are wants not needs and gamers are notorious for waiting to buy things.  What kickstarter does for SJG is give them direct access to the fans and their money, something retail and the distribution system are increasingly bad at (and I'm a retailer).  The DF box has been deemed a failure due to delays and cost over runs but it has shown that the fans are willing to put money up in advance to get support for GURPS.

Another important data point is that Steve Jackson probably knew he was getting his original tactical fantasy game The Fantasy Trip back and didn't make a simpler GURPS Dungeon Fantasy game because they'd overlap too much.

Anyhow, GURPS fits some people's needs very well and others not so much.  At some point I'd like to put together some templates and a world map and a dungeon but I'd aim it at a more introductory level of play.  Even so, it'd have to be a freebie so it's not a real priority.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1034117The text and presentation feels like it's trying to cash in on the current D&D craze to sell GURPS. The problem is it comes off as too similar to D&D without going all the way and converting the SRD    monsters to their system. Personally, I'd be more interested in doing the work to learn this if it weren't Gygaxian fantasy with different numbers. People buy games for the content, not the mechanics.

The appeal of GURPS is the mechanics.

The point that many of us adopted GURPS to play D&D style fantasy with more realistic rules. The problem with GURPS is the lack of stuff like monsters, magic items, etc. Some of it had been addressed over the years like magic items and fantasy races, and some of it hasn't like monsters.

The GURPS Dungeon Fantasy line was created to address the demand for stuff. It wasn't perfect because instead of giving stuff meant to work with the 120 to 150 point most of us started our campaigns at it opted for a 250 point target.

The Dungeon Fantasy RPG was created to address the fact that GURPS Dungeon Fantasy was a supplement to the GURPS Core Book. That there were complaints that the buy-in was off putting and confusing.  So the DF RPG was written as a complete standalone RPG based on GURPS rather than as a supplement to the GURPS core book.

Again to be clear, the heart of it is the fact that people used GURPS as a alternative to D&D to play a fantasy campaign*. Sean Punch missed the mark with the initial release of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy (not the RPG) by focusing on 250 pt characters. The RPG just carried over that design flaw.  And yes the 250 point template was chosen to make Dungeon Fantasy work a little more like D&D but only in one respect. To give the characters a similar endurance to D&D character in exploring a dungeon level.

What Sean Punch failed to realize that most D&D campaigns occurs at 6th level or below. And even with later editions, D&D characters are just as fragile as 120 point to 150 point GURPS characters in exploring dungeons. What he considered to be an important distinction wasn't as big as he thought it was.

Also understand that aside from being 250 points character the rest is bog standard GURPS in a different presentation. The new advantages and others are just separate GURPS mechanics combined and re-written to be more clear as part of a stand-alone RPG. My criticism of starting out at 250 pt aside, the DF RPG is a good representation of what it looks like when you use GURPS to run a fantasy campaign that uses D&D stuff like orcs, dungeons, and dragons.

Of course GURPS, designed to be generic, can run other types of fantasy campaigns some very different in the type of fantasy they depict. But for many of us GURPS gamers, it was used to run the same kinds of campaigns we were running with AD&D and D&D. Just now we have explicit support were before we had to cobble a lot of ourselves using GURPS as a toolkit.

Maybe. The way it was displayed in this and one other store makes me think they were trying to sell to D&D fans. The way it's written doesn't seem to assume I know what GURPS is (lots of "If you like this and want more...check out GURPS Basic Set!" scattered around), it's just badly organized.  If you already have the Basic Set and know the system pretty well, and you don't want to learn D&D, this seems like a reasonable product (but again, they should have converted the entire SRD if that's where they were going). But it wasn't marketed that way in the store.

I guess Steven Jackson is happy in his niche of catering to system nerds, but it would have been nice to have a boxed RPG that is more than a different mechanical system for D&D activities.

One thing that makes me a little skeptical is I've seen asides like "even if your skill is 108!" Targets and modifiers much larger than the dice are bad news, because they destroy player intuition. This was a major gripe I had with 3.x and 4e. Just skimming the rules, it's intuitive that having 15 in a skill is quite a bit better than 12. But if 108 can happen...does that mean 105 is bad? 16 must be a terrible skill level! Or does 16 become worthless as the game advances, much like having +3 to a skill check eventually became useless in 3.5?

In GURPS anything over 16 is really only good for eliminating penalties.  With a skill of 30 you can hit an enemy in the eye in total darkness more than half the time and reliably parry any blow.  Missile range penalties are brutal in GURPS, so high skill is important if you want to fire rapidly without aiming much.

Steve Jackson doesn't seem to feel that the GURPS fan base will grow much and makes most of his money on Munchkin, a game that's mostly about mocking D&D.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1034122Maybe. The way it was displayed in this and one other store makes me think they were trying to sell to D&D fans.

If you are any RPG aside from D&D, Star War, and maybe Shadowrun, you are trying to sell to D&D fans. Either has an alternative genre, alternative fantasy, or perhaps another way to run the same kind of fantasy that D&D addresses.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1034122The way it's written doesn't seem to assume I know what GURPS is (lots of "If you like this and want more...check out GURPS Basic Set!" scattered around), it's just badly organized.

I didn't have any issue with its organization, but it doesn't mean the consensus or individuals may have issues with it. I do know that it was written, organized, and laid out in accordance to how SJ Games does things as opposed to taking a look at how similar rule sets are presented elsewhere in the industry.

SJ Games does excellent work most of the time. But there are things for which where they have blinders on.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1034122If you already have the Basic Set and know the system pretty well, and you don't want to learn D&D, this seems like a reasonable product (but again, they should have converted the entire SRD if that's where they were going). But it wasn't marketed that way in the store.

Again, there is a pre-existing line of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy supplements that provided the foundation for the DF RPG.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1034122I guess Steven Jackson is happy in his niche of catering to system nerds, but it would have been nice to have a boxed RPG that is more than a different mechanical system for D&D activities.

While not boxed sets SJ Games has done that several times like with Discworld and Mars Attacks. People are even less interested

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1034122One thing that makes me a little skeptical is I've seen asides like "even if your skill is 108!" Targets and modifiers much larger than the dice are bad news, because they destroy player intuition. This was a major gripe I had with 3.x and 4e. Just skimming the rules, it's intuitive that having 15 in a skill is quite a bit better than 12. But if 108 can happen...does that mean 105 is bad? 16 must be a terrible skill level! Or does 16 become worthless as the game advances, much like having +3 to a skill check eventually became useless in 3.5?

Here the section you are referring too.

QuoteCritical Failure
A critical failure is an especially bad result. You score one as follows:
• A roll of 18 is always a critical failure. (Yes, even if your skill is 18, or 28, or 108!)
• A roll of 17 is a critical failure if your effective skill is 15 or less; otherwise, it's an ordinary failure.
• Any roll of 10 or more greater than your effective skill is a critical failure: 16+ on a skill of 6, 15+ on a skill of 5, and so on.

It is an attempt at humor not meant to be taken seriously.  

A 28 may be reached but considering it would take a 100 points on skill and attribute to get there it is not likely. And for most skills what it the only will get you over having a 18 skill is the ability to win contest of skills and eliminate penalties. There is an optional 3rd edition rule that at skill 20 your critical becomes 7 and improves by +1 per 5 points until you reach the max which is making a critical hit on a 10 or less (or maybe 11 or less).

But in 4th edition that was capped at 6 or less.

GURPS Magic confers additional benefits to spells with extremely high skill levels mainly a reduction of casting time and mana cost. But even there are hard lower limits.

There is little reason to push any skill beyond 20. You are better off putting the points into broadening your skills or maybe at first increasing an attribute.

Quote from: estar;1034126If you are any RPG aside from D&D, Star War, and maybe Shadowrun, you are trying to sell to D&D fans. Either has an alternative genre, alternative fantasy, or perhaps another way to run the same kind of fantasy that D&D addresses.

I actually think this is why so many products sell poorly. Too much "slightly different D&D" out there, not much attempt to really tap into new trends in YA entertainment. Last I know of that wasn't a licensed product was Vampire.

QuoteWhile not boxed sets SJ Games has done that several times like with Discworld and Mars Attacks. People are even less interested

Both those seem like really, really bad ideas, Discworld being a somewhat less bad idea than Mars Attacks, since it's less dated (how many people under 30 have even heard of Mars Attacks?). If I were making an RPG today, I'd make something about plucky teenagers in a dystopian postapocalyptic world run by an authoritarian corporate entity. Or maybe it would be about watching other people play video games on a live feed in a dystopian world where nobody actually knows anybody in person.

QuoteI didn't have any issue with its organization, but it doesn't mean the consensus or individuals may have issues with it.

Probably because you know GURPs. If I read a disorganized 5e OGL-based game, I probably wouldn't notice a lot of issues because my brain would fill in blanks. I can type examples, but it overall seems heavily stream-of-consciousness-style writing, which is bad for game manuals.

Anyway, the technical combat looks interesting, so I'm going to try to wrap my head around it and inflict it on some players. I think it would be a lot more interesting if they tried to step away a little from D&D classes and do their own thing, but I guess they constrained themselves to trying to organize what they'd already been selling to GURPS fans.

Quote from: estar;1034126There is little reason to push any skill beyond 20.

I tend to set things so up so rarely anyone manages to, but there can be good reasons to want higher skill levels. Not just to handle penalty situations, but to attempt difficult things and do things only masters can do. Notably for weapon skills, to defeat other masters.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1034138Anyway, the technical combat looks interesting, so I'm going to try to wrap my head around it and inflict it on some players.

The tactical combat is the reason I have always preferred TFT & GURPS to all other systems, as it's a mode of play I love which doesn't exist in the same way in other games.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1034138I think it would be a lot more interesting if they tried to step away a little from D&D classes and do their own thing...

Yeah I agree. I don't even like the non-basic classes in D&D, and the flavor of the DF campaign assumptions feel annoyingly cliche` and bland to me. They do at least demonstrate how to do D&D-esque in GURPS, so at least new players wouldn't have to learn new settings ideas, and it would I suppose provide a reference point if someone wanted to convert D&D-esque content to DF or GURPS.

While I think both Mars Attacks and Disc World are fun and indeed, Disc World is in itself a complete rpg in one book, I don't think the overlap with readers and collectors of obscure card sets from the sixties are all that great.  I feel the settings both put off more people than they bring in. Though I did play in a brief Mars Attacks game, I was quite disappointed the GM wouldn't kill my obnoxious American tourist off.  I had a long list of rotten people for the Martians to disintegrate :D

I've agitated for an introductory GURPS Fantasy supplement for GURPS Lite for years and years because it would help to bring new people in.  GURPS Lite is amazing for what it is but it's really insufficient to run much of a game.

Even so, fearsomepirate, I would suggest reading over GURPS Lite, especially combat.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1034138Both those seem like really, really bad ideas, Discworld being a somewhat less bad idea than Mars Attacks, since it's less dated (how many people under 30 have even heard of Mars Attacks?). If I were making an RPG today, I'd make something about plucky teenagers in a dystopian postapocalyptic world run by an authoritarian corporate entity. Or maybe it would be about watching other people play video games on a live feed in a dystopian world where nobody actually knows anybody in person.

There are plenty of companies that try to chase the latest entertainment fad for example Margaret Weis before she closed up shop. Vampire worked because it was well written and published at the right time. Despite the Anne Rice Vampire novels being bestsellers at the time there was no reason to think that it was any more catchy than any of the other popular early 90s entertainment. And Vampire did not dethrone AD&D 2nd ed

The problem with GURPS is that Munchkin stole GURPS mindshare in the company. It not a criticism. Munchkin started to pay the bills. But as a consequence only one thing at time was tried and even then until the DF Boxed Set as much of the previous way of working was reused. At this point my opinion the only way forward to salvage GURPS is open up to 3rd party publishing. Doesn't have to involved open content,  what needed is a variety of 3PP publishing trying different formats and different types of products. So what ever works to accomplish that.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1034138Probably because you know GURPs. If I read a disorganized 5e OGL-based game, I probably wouldn't notice a lot of issues because my brain would fill in blanks. I can type examples, but it overall seems heavily stream-of-consciousness-style writing, which is bad for game manuals.

(shrug) to me it as clear and informative as anything else that Sean Punch writes generally I find pretty good.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1034138Anyway, the technical combat looks interesting, so I'm going to try to wrap my head around it and inflict it on some players. I think it would be a lot more interesting if they tried to step away a little from D&D classes and do their own thing, but I guess they constrained themselves to trying to organize what they'd already been selling to GURPS fans.

The key things to remember are

1) One second combat round which means you do one thing and only thing only per round. Most non-move actions allow for a single 3-foot step.
2) You attack, the target defends.
3) Damage is reduced by armor. Anything that gets through is modified by the kind of damage it is.
4) What you can do in a round is called a maneuver. Most are one or two line description. But of the more complex ones are a paragraph. The good new that everything you need is in that paragraph. And only encounter them if you decide to use all the options like GURPS Martial Arts.
5) Everything in GURPS start what you can do for real and the mechanics correspond one for one. There is little if any abstraction.
6) However You can resolve anything in GURPS abstractly by a contest of skills or attributes.
7) Templates are your friends in figuring how all the character creation options hang together.
8) GURPS has multiple multiple magic systems. The standard system works but considered bland by many.
9) A skill point has a real world correspondence. It represents X hours of learning.

In general what novices get hung up on is being able to do one thing and only one thing during a combat round.

My cursory reading of the combat suggests there's a lot of shuffling around for optimal position before unleashing hell, much like an X-COM game. Fair?

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1034162My cursory reading of the combat suggests there's a lot of shuffling around for optimal position before unleashing hell, much like an X-COM game. Fair?

Position matters but like real life whether it means anything depends on circumstances and opportunity. In general you are taking a bunch of move actions until you reach your target and then you do a step and attack. When you or target gets injured you may decide to do a different maneuver like all-out attack, or all-out defense. But there are consequences to every type of maneuver. The decisions you make in GURPS track pretty well with the decisions you make if you were actually fighting.

By far the best course of action is for the party to do scouting and try to lay ambushes whenever they can.

Here a blog with a more detailed explanation.
http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2010/06/basic-gurps-combat.html

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1034162My cursory reading of the combat suggests there's a lot of shuffling around for optimal position before unleashing hell, much like an X-COM game. Fair?

That's one sort of thing that can make sense to do. Depends on the situation - some close encounters can be very "one action leads to another till one side is down". But position and facing and weapon reach and how many people are in position to attack whom each turn can be decisive.

As has been mentioned before, in GURPS, numbers kill.  It's important to support your comrades and control frontage.

Does anybody else feel Caverntown was a great release?

I haven't looked at Caverntown.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1034162My cursory reading of the combat suggests there's a lot of shuffling around for optimal position before unleashing hell, much like an X-COM game. Fair?

  In  a game with modern, or futuristic firearms, this is very, very true.  Without some pretty big cinematic advantages, getting caught in the open with people shooting at you is a quick night.  I would say in DF, with magic and some of the cinematic ranged advantages this is true to a degree.  Close Combat focused characters are well suited to function in sudden, chaotic, close encounters.  But for sure setting up a formation and having casters rain down on enemies as combat specialist hold a front line is very, very effective.

Quote from: Malfi;1034217Does anybody else feel Caverntown was a great release?

Never even heard of it.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1035592Never even heard of it.

It's a PDF release for GURPS Dungeon Fantasy which is different from the Dungeon Fantasy RPG, Powered by GURPS but can be used by the Dungeon Fantasy RPG with little to no work by the referee. It's a good product my issue is that SJ Games doesn't have a fucking clue how to manage an RPG brand anymore. Sean Punch is a great line developer but the nitwit running the company doesn't like RPGS and never played RPGS. He doesn't know how to sell to the modern RPG market and is trying to sell their RPGs like they do their board games or Munchkin supplements. It's stupid.

Caverntown should have been advertised and marketed to people that purchased the Dungeon Fantasy RPG. Dungeon Fantasy RPG released after the con season last year, sold out quickly, and they dropped support. They didn't even give it a year to try to sell it. They didn't even bring it to fucking conventions to sell. Fuck SJ Games.

Yeah, I'm a little tired of their approach to GURPS too at the moment.  But at least they gave it a shot.  I've always thought making a free point of entry that covers magic and monsters would do more to bring people in and while I can appreciate their desire to showcase what GURPS can do, a simpler point of entry would also be to their advantage at the moment.

Over the years I've started work on a GURPS clone that fans could use to write GURPS content without getting sued.  The problem is that in turning switches and dials to obscure the relationship it always moves too far away from GURPS.  The problem with creating a new standard is that it only becomes another standard rather than unifying everyone under a single banner.

Anyhow, I've been putting some work into a 3d6 system that draws on what I've learned by running GURPS for years.  It gets rid of many of the stumbling blocks like defense rolls calculated from skill, skill purchasing, mundane advantages, cinematic advantages, and powers all in a single alphabetical list, one second rounds.  It probably won't come to anything.  The roleplaying market is saturated and I'm just one guy noodling around with concepts.

They 'gave it a shot' and because Phil Reed doesn't like RPGs he sent it there to die so he could tell Steve Jackson that RPGs just aren't feasible in todays market. I really think their stupid Munchkin CCG is going to do have serious blowback to the company. CCGs are expensive and that game is going to fail.

Munchkin has a lot of fans, that's okay, it's a bit like hating Magic the Gathering for keeping gaming stores alive in the nineties.

I can't speak to Phil Reed's likes and dislikes but I think rpgs struggle in the modern retail market.  What's really needed is on site print on demand but nobody on the manufacturing end is interested in taking the step of giving retailers a discount on pdfs.

I've read some more of the material, and it seems like DF offers high "crunch" without being a broken clusterfuck the way 3.x is. I do think this is a really bad product (already seeing it in Half-Price Books), not because of anything in the rules, but because of the aforementioned issues with presentation (sterile, not sure who its audience is, more interested in mechanics than content, etc). I think that if this is nothing more than "a crunchier way to play D&D," then they should have gone all the way and converted all the SRD monsters to GURPS.

It seems like a good game, but not a good way to make money. It seems like the perfect engine for making a Fallout-like RPG.

Quote from: David Johansen;1035633Munchkin has a lot of fans, that's okay, it's a bit like hating Magic the Gathering for keeping gaming stores alive in the nineties.

I can't speak to Phil Reed's likes and dislikes but I think rpgs struggle in the modern retail market.  What's really needed is on site print on demand but nobody on the manufacturing end is interested in taking the step of giving retailers a discount on pdfs.

I think RPGs are thriving in the modern retail market. They aren't doing well in the traditional retail market. The traditional retail intermediary model doesn't work anymore because the volume for anything other than D&D just doesn't work. RPG publishers (outside of WoTC) sell most of their product direct to consumer which is great because it's higher margin but bad because they cannot spread the risk out and it's lower volume. The other way is through conventions, I talked to Kevin about this over the weekend at the open house and one reason Palladium has started going out to more conventions than they did 10 years ago, is not only the CRISIS of TRECHARY is behind them, but they are selling more inventory at conventions than they used to. It used to be, 10-15 years ago, they'd sell most of their product through the intermediaries. SJ Games is still built on that model.

SJ Games never advertises (and I mean just on their site, social media, facebook, newsletters, etc) conventions and they never ask fans to run GURPS games at conventions. I have run Dungeon Fantasy RPG and 3 conventions over the last two years and every game has been filled. If SJ did a push for volunteers to run games at conventions and they had materials to help support the games that would go along way. Palladium sent me a zip file with a bunch of materials I can use to run store and convention games: advertisements, pre gens, etc. SJ Games could have something like that and create it for very little money.

There are things they could be doing but they aren't interested in it because Munchkin.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1035635I've read some more of the material, and it seems like DF offers high "crunch" without being a broken clusterfuck the way 3.x is. I do think this is a really bad product (already seeing it in Half-Price Books), not because of anything in the rules, but because of the aforementioned issues with presentation (sterile, not sure who its audience is, more interested in mechanics than content, etc). I think that if this is nothing more than "a crunchier way to play D&D," then they should have gone all the way and converted all the SRD monsters to GURPS.

It seems like a good game, but not a good way to make money. It seems like the perfect engine for making a Fallout-like RPG.

Fallout was originally going to be a GURPS computer RPG but they deal fell through so they created the SPECIAL system in its place. I actually think a post apocalyptic box would have sold better.

I'll admit I'm a traditional retailer and have a certain bias towards physical product.

Quote from: David Johansen;1035626Over the years I've started work on a GURPS clone that fans could use to write GURPS content without getting sued.  The problem is that in turning switches and dials to obscure the relationship it always moves too far away from GURPS.  The problem with creating a new standard is that it only becomes another standard rather than unifying everyone under a single banner.

Anyhow, I've been putting some work into a 3d6 system that draws on what I've learned by running GURPS for years.  It gets rid of many of the stumbling blocks like defense rolls calculated from skill, skill purchasing, mundane advantages, cinematic advantages, and powers all in a single alphabetical list, one second rounds.  It probably won't come to anything.  The roleplaying market is saturated and I'm just one guy noodling around with concepts.

My friends and once a long time GURPS fans is working up his own as well. Our group tried Fantasy AGE (3d6 based) and liked it somewhat. When no 3rd party publishing license was forthcoming, he opted to make up his own 3d6 point based system.

I think basic ideas behind Fantasy AGE really nails the sweet spot and mixed in with some of the idea behind Fudge could get a system most of the way to GURPS.

Quote from: David Johansen;1035633Munchkin has a lot of fans, that's okay, it's a bit like hating Magic the Gathering for keeping gaming stores alive in the nineties.

I can't speak to Phil Reed's likes and dislikes but I think rpgs struggle in the modern retail market.  What's really needed is on site print on demand but nobody on the manufacturing end is interested in taking the step of giving retailers a discount on pdfs.

I think they need to open up GURPS and let the fans assume the risk of trying multiple things at once. They keep looking for the magic fucking bullet. They might as well use the money to buy lottery tickets with that approach. With the fans in the lead they can look at what works and decide what they want to do with the official GURPS releases with actual data rather than the guessing game they play now.

Quote from: Ulairi;1035637Fallout was originally going to be a GURPS computer RPG but they deal fell through so they created the SPECIAL system in its place. I actually think a post apocalyptic box would have sold better.

Me too (and I remember that about Fallout). It's as big a pop-culture thing as elves & orcs now. IMO D&D sold well because of the success of Tolkien & pulp fantasy. People played it because they wanted to be Conan and Merlin fighting Smaug, not because they thought throwing percentile dice to determine if a trap is disarmed is intrinsically fascinating.

But without knowing a whole lot about the 80s scene, it seems like Steve Jackson himself completely missed the forest for the trees, and built the GURPS brand on fascination with bell curves and having a unified core mechanic (which of course WotC shamelessly cribbed for 3rd edition). But people who are mainly interested in probability distributions and the extensibility of a mechanic are a niche of a niche. I guess it's a stable niche, but the growth potential seems to be in the neighborhood of zero.

The entire tone of the DF box set comes off as trying to appeal to a hypothetical novice gamer who is interested in "Fantasy RPGs," but not D&D in particular, who has perhaps heard of GURPS (for some inexplicable reason), and has picked up the DF box set instead of the D&D PHB because it's a hefty box with attractive art for a reasonable price. I know people in this thread are saying that the intended audience of this was primarily hardcore GURPS fans, but that's completely inconsistent with the presentation of the text or the way the box was displayed and sold in the store (if I was going to make a set for hardcore GURPS fans, it wouldn't be this, too much wasted volume on the damn box, and I'm pretty sure GURPS fans already have plenty of D6's). I know what a product for enthusiasts looks like, and this ain't it. This product is trying to sell me GURPS all over the place; it's not assuming I've already bought in.

It's like the D&D Basic Set or Pathfinder Beginner Box, but for GURPS.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1035592Never even heard of it.

Well I am not suprized, I don't peg you as following GURPS DF releases.
Its just a release that was kinda long overdue IMO. It actually presents a sample town, which is a pretty big deal if you read dungeon fantasy's rules and it has neat ideas and is well designed to boot.

I actually like DF but my personal beef with it is that its design philosophy is 50% dnd and 50% Diablo, with no clear boundaries between them. I would rather have a gurps attempt that is obviously more faithful to dnd, something like Classic Fantasy from Mythras for example.

At the very least it should have monsters with treasure types and either difficulty levels or experience awards. Without this it just doesn't cut it for me.
It still good though because what GURPS lacks is clear limitations and context, which DF provides.

Also I would like to actually see a pointless GURPS and DF could have been it. I mean actually pointless not the pyramid articles that basically package points into specific advantages and you end with close to the same thing, but actual classes that have a fixed progression.
If you go that route you actually have more freedom as a designer to award cool abilities since you don't need to balance everything with everything else.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1035592Never even heard of it.

For some reason my initial reply was deleted when I pressed edit.

I am not suprized you haven't heard of it, I don't peg you as a person that follows DF releases.
It was a release that was long overdue, if you read the DF rules a town is implied but we never have had an actual example. Caverntown is a good example of such a town with neat ideas and examples of how certain things can be done.

I didn't realize it was a Dungeon Fantasy product.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1035928I didn't realize it was a Dungeon Fantasy product.

The release of GURPS 4th edition was followed up by the line of genre and setting sourcebooks. The setting sourcebooks were a bit meh and as the genres approached the coverage that 3rd edition had people want better support.

So starting with Dungeon Fantasy Sean Punch created a line of Print/PDF release that covered a subgenre in more specific detail. They saved time buy going through all the options that GURPS had and presenting the ones needed for the subgenre. In addition they were little more generic than the setting books like Banestorm, Voodoo, Cabal, etc. In the same way editions of D&D are generic.

They are

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy (http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/dungeonfantasy/)
GURPS Monster Hunters (http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/monsterhunters/)
GURPS Action (http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/action/)
GURPS After the End (http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/aftertheend/)

The Dungeon Fantasy RPG builds on the work done in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy but it is a standalone product

Another way to put it is in a time line.

GURPS 4e
GURPS  Fantasy/Banestorm
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy
Dungeon Fantasy RPG.

Unlike most RPG Companies, all subsequent products are built on top of GURPS 4e just presented differently. The "new" stuff in DF RPG are really GURPS 4e X Advantage/Disadvantage with Enhancement/Limitation written as a standalone element.

Quote from: estar;1035945The release of GURPS 4th edition was followed up by the line of genre and setting sourcebooks. The setting sourcebooks were a bit meh and as the genres approached the coverage that 3rd edition had people want better support.

So starting with Dungeon Fantasy Sean Punch created a line of Print/PDF release that covered a subgenre in more specific detail. They saved time buy going through all the options that GURPS had and presenting the ones needed for the subgenre. In addition they were little more generic than the setting books like Banestorm, Voodoo, Cabal, etc. In the same way editions of D&D are generic.

They are

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy (http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/dungeonfantasy/)
GURPS Monster Hunters (http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/monsterhunters/)
GURPS Action (http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/action/)
GURPS After the End (http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/aftertheend/)

The Dungeon Fantasy RPG builds on the work done in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy but it is a standalone product

Another way to put it is in a time line.

GURPS 4e
GURPS  Fantasy/Banestorm
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy
Dungeon Fantasy RPG.

Unlike most RPG Companies, all subsequent products are built on top of GURPS 4e just presented differently. The "new" stuff in DF RPG are really GURPS 4e X Advantage/Disadvantage with Enhancement/Limitation written as a standalone element.

Something odd to me about 4e (though I get how/why) is that the 4e Basic Set contains most of the material (especially character traits) from the 3e Compendium books, which means practically every screwball special power or nonhuman ability from all the countless 1e-3e world books, plus systems for adjusting them and calculating how many points that should cost, and it also has content for various genres (some high tech, some magic, some psi...) and some setting info about the Infinite Earths campaign setting (which isn't a novice setting IMO unless you don't mind winging a lot of stuff). Even I (the guy who loves and has internalized megatons of GURPS crunch) find those aspects of the 4e Basic Set cumbersome, overwhelming, and mostly noise I don't want and will never use and just have to work around (if I had more time to kill, I'd get a PDF or hardcopy and black/cut out all that noise).

The thing is, it's much more than many GMs will ever need, so if you're going to run a specific campaign set in one time period and without psionics or supers or mutant PCs, there is a LOT that won't ever get used.

So the used rules for a campaign are some fraction of what's in 4e, plus whatever you want from additional books.

In addition to that, the subgenre lines estar mentioned above (at least Action and DF - I haven't really looked all that much at After The End or Monster Hunters) also tend to suggest a lighter-seriousness playstyle that what I tend to expect from GURPS.

My main genre is fantasy, but I am not about to use (or even adapt) much of anything from GURPS Fantasy because it's not a generic material book but a setting that's mostly not what my homebrew settings are like. Dungeon Fantasy is even farther from what I usually run, and I mostly avoided it too until the DF RPG came out, which I got because it looked like a way to get most DF stuff, had nice components including counters and maps, and I wanted to support the effort to put out an entry-level fantasy-focused GURPS product.

I think the DF RPG succeeds as a shiny entry product that lets you get all you need to run fantasy GURPS games with tactical combat and without all the noise from irrelevant content.

I agree with several others here that I'd rather it were not the generic D&D/Diablo-like setting DF uses... except they've already committed to that with DF. But creative GMs can of course invent their own settings as usual.

GURPS seems more like a DIY RPG kit than an RPG. The Dungeon Fantasy RPG seems like a decent example of how to build an RPG out of GURPS, just not one many people have a reason to buy.

I've read farther, and holy shit are there a lot of different things to roll 3d6 for.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1035960GURPS seems more like a DIY RPG kit than an RPG. The Dungeon Fantasy RPG seems like a decent example of how to build an RPG out of GURPS, just not one many people have a reason to buy.

I've read farther, and holy shit are there a lot of different things to roll 3d6 for.

According to the publisher, that's exactly what GURPS is, and what Dungeon Fantasy RPG is. Hence the appeal of GURPS is chiefly limited to those who want the tools to DIY.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1035960GURPS seems more like a DIY RPG kit than an RPG. The Dungeon Fantasy RPG seems like a decent example of how to build an RPG out of GURPS, just not one many people have a reason to buy.

I've read farther, and holy shit are there a lot of different things to roll 3d6 for.

This is exactly right and by demand. They should OGL GURPS and watch it explod.

Quote from: Ulairi;1035965This is exactly right and by demand. They should OGL GURPS and watch it explod.

Either that or they should license it out to someone with a good idea for an RPG (i.e. not a straight clone of D&D with less interesting monsters) who doesn't want to go through all the BS of designing your own system from the ground up.

I've been thinking about putting together a DF dungeon, but the more I think about it, the more I want to do GURPS reduced to Hero Quest (the Milton Bradley one).  A deck of encounter cards, geomorphic tiles, treasure cards, pregenerated characters without points costs listed.  It'd be usable with DF of course, but functional with just GURPS lite.  Maybe it's just the influence of the guys playing Warhammer Quest Silver Tower in the store just lately.

Quote from: Ulairi;1035965This is exactly right and by demand. They should OGL GURPS and watch it explod.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1035968Either that or they should license it out to someone with a good idea for an RPG (i.e. not a straight clone of D&D with less interesting monsters) who doesn't want to go through all the BS of designing your own system from the ground up.

I thought the fan-made version of the Warhammer Fantasy RPG remixed for GURPS was a good example of this. There have been some other fan-made campaign books posted e.g. for Star Wars and WW2. Though the quality and editing and playtesting/development tends to suffer in comparison to official GURPS stuff, what gets presented tends to be much more like content useful for actual play rather than overviews without enough crunchy content, which has been the issue with most GURPS worldbooks and what leaves them mostly being tools for GMs who will do the rest of the work, rather than ready-to-play.

Quote from: Skarg;1035959Even I (the guy who loves and has internalized megatons of GURPS crunch) find those aspects of the 4e Basic Set cumbersome, overwhelming, and mostly noise I don't want and will never use and just have to work around (if I had more time to kill, I'd get a PDF or hardcopy and black/cut out all that noise).

It is designed and written as THE GURPS Toolkit Reference. Your reactions doesn't surprise me. I think it needed but not as the main product entry. The only thing good is that they held true to not adding anything to the core rules since it release. Everything is either in addition to (like GURPS Ritual Path Magic) or calculated with the elements of the core books.

Quote from: Skarg;1035959The thing is, it's much more than many GMs will ever need, so if you're going to run a specific campaign set in one time period and without psionics or supers or mutant PCs, there is a LOT that won't ever get used.

In the early 2000s they staked their claim to the the generic toolkit RPG and driven it deep into the Earth. I debated this point often. That the main appeal of the GURPS 2nd edition boxed set was that it was obvious to see how to use it as a alternative to D&D.


In addition to that, the subgenre lines estar mentioned above (at least Action and DF - I haven't really looked all that much at After The End or Monster Hunters) also tend to suggest a lighter-seriousness playstyle that what I tend to expect from GURPS.

My main genre is fantasy, but I am not about to use (or even adapt) much of anything from GURPS Fantasy because it's not a generic material book but a setting that's mostly not what my homebrew settings are like. Dungeon Fantasy is even farther from what I usually run, and I mostly avoided it too until the DF RPG came out, which I got because it looked like a way to get most DF stuff, had nice components including counters and maps, and I wanted to support the effort to put out an entry-level fantasy-focused GURPS product.

I think the DF RPG succeeds as a shiny entry product that lets you get all you need to run fantasy GURPS games with tactical combat and without all the noise from irrelevant content.

Quote from: Skarg;1035959I agree with several others here that I'd rather it were not the generic D&D/Diablo-like setting DF uses... except they've already committed to that with DF. But creative GMs can of course invent their own settings as usual.

In my view they missed the fucking point with the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy. Everybody I knew who played GURPS in Eastern Ohio and Western PA, did it because it was grittier, more hard core alternative to D&D that oh by the way lets you make the exact character you want to play. And did it in a well designed set of rules that made sense.

What we didn't look to do was play 250 point Fantasy Superheroes which GURPS Dungeon Fantasy does. And I don't know what D&D campaign Sean Punch played but until you reached higher levels, there were numerous times you had to cut and run or make sure you stealth around. As well as be smart and setup ambushes where you can. We didn't grind through room after room during a course of a session.

But setting it at the 250 points it makes everything that much more complex. And on top of it the monsters are scaled to boot so it winds up in the same point my 100 to 150 pt GURPS Majestic Wilderlands campaigns were at.

Quote from: RandyB;1035962According to the publisher, that's exactly what GURPS is, and what Dungeon Fantasy RPG is. Hence the appeal of GURPS is chiefly limited to those who want the tools to DIY.

The problem is that their market share imploded. GURPS at one time was the #4 RPG.

Quote from: estar;1035977It is designed and written as THE GURPS Toolkit Reference. Your reactions doesn't surprise me. I think it needed but not as the main product entry. The only thing good is that they held true to not adding anything to the core rules since it release. Everything is either in addition to (like GURPS Ritual Path Magic) or calculated with the elements of the core books.

I totally agree. I think it's great that they integrated the Compendiums into an uber central rules module, and I want it on my shelf for the occasional times I'm interested in that. But for absorbing 4e, making a 4e character, and reference to the 4e rules I usually use in play, probably most of it could/should be left out.

QuoteIn the early 2000s they staked their claim to the the generic toolkit RPG and driven it deep into the Earth. I debated this point often. That the main appeal of the GURPS 2nd edition boxed set was that it was obvious to see how to use it as a alternative to D&D.

Yep, the 1e/2e Basic Set content is nicely limited to what rules are actually needed to run a fantasy campaign (minus an elaborate magic spell list or monsters or setting). And apart from some rules/balance/organization tweaks, the rules are mostly the same and nearly interchangeable in all editions 1e through 3e, and mostly for 4e too. 3e makes good refinements and adds more magic/psionics to the basic set (which I tended to ignore or replace), but it doesn't go and intermix all the skills and ads/disads from every setting into the list. The GM's job in making a usable player guide to making a character is largely to hack out most of what's in the 4e Basic Set so players can grasp what's available.

QuoteIn my view they missed the fucking point with the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy. Everybody I knew who played GURPS in Eastern Ohio and Western PA, did it because it was grittier, more hard core alternative to D&D that oh by the way lets you make the exact character you want to play. And did it in a well designed set of rules that made sense.

What we didn't look to do was play 250 point Fantasy Superheroes which GURPS Dungeon Fantasy does. And I don't know what D&D campaign Sean Punch played but until you reached higher levels, there were numerous times you had to cut and run or make sure you stealth around. As well as be smart and setup ambushes where you can. We didn't grind through room after room during a course of a session.

But setting it at the 250 points it makes everything that much more complex. And on top of it the monsters are scaled to boot so it winds up in the same point my 100 to 150 pt GURPS Majestic Wilderlands campaigns were at.

Yes, I think you're exactly right. GURPS is really fun and manageable with low-point-total characters. I can handle a lot of complexity, but I'd rather not deal with all the stuff in the DF RPG class templates, especially when learning a new character, let alone a new system. I'd much rather play Orcslayer with 80-point Man to Man or GURPS 3e/4e characters than I Smell A Rat with hundreds-of-points characters, and full GURPS with 100-point characters seems easier/simpler to play to me than DF RPG with 250 point characters.