When we were kids my brother and I remembered the beta test of GURPS. When the first rules came out and the paper and ink on the books came off on your hands. We had a few dodgy printings back then, and I don't know if it was the print run or that was more widespread. There is this quote from the legendary Steve Jackson at the beginning of the 4th edition book:
I think the best games are those that are simple, clear and easy to read, and I’ve tried hard to make GURPS “friendly.” One important influence was Hero Games’ Champions, for the flexibility of its character-creation system. Another was Flying Buffalo’s Tunnels & Trolls, for its appeal to solitaire gamers. Finally, M.A.R. Barker’s Empire of the Petal Throne remains noteworthy, even after decades of competition and imitation, for the detail and richness of its alien game world.
Of these, I know Champions and Tunnels and Trolls the best, and they remain two of my favorite games. I never knew that solitaire play was an inspiration for GURPS, and that seems slightly interesting to me. I have the computerized character creation tool, and I do a lot of solo play these days, so it should "click" and work for me, right?
We owned the base GURPS 3rd edition book and while it was an interesting idea, other games had our imagination and this was during our big AD&D 2e run.
I originally bought into this game due to solo play, but the game sat on the shelf for a few months as I tried out other games and GURPS 4th ended up in a box. Well, it is out again for reasons I am not entirely sure of.
Maybe I feel I want something more out of my Pathfinder Aquilae game. My first run with a cleric surviving in the cold winter north was amazing. But it did not feel 100% there. The skills felt good and the combat was just okay, sort of that whiff-whiff-hit back and forth typical d20 stuff. I felt like everything should feel great. My character design choices should matter.
I need more control.
I need a point-buy system that lets me dig in.
Dungeon Fantasy
And then there is Dungeon Fantasy, a "Powered by GURPS" game that strips down and focuses the GURPS game on dungeon crawling. The entire game and its resources are also GURPS resources, so they are all great source material for fantasy games. There is a ton of support for this over at Warehouse 23, a flood of extra content in PDF form all focused on this game and also GURPS compatible.
One of the things which kept me from getting into Dungeon Fantasy was the high-point builds, like 250 points to start and while the characters were capable, they felt a bit too complicated to learn the system with. I would have rather liked a 50-100 point build, and then start off with low-level heroes and work your way up, choosing powers and skills. For a solo game, I could handle a 250-point character, but I feel it would be a slower go than a lower power level start.
Also, if I were playing a party of characters, handling four 250-point characters myself would feel like a huge challenge to keep everything straight, and yes, this is from an experienced Pathfinder 1e player. Combat is very deadly and crunchy and has death spirals where if you take damage first, you are likely to keep taking damage, and down you go.
Another thing Dungeon Fantasy does is limit certain powers and abilities to certain classes. They want to keep you in your "class design" instead of picking powers from here and there, like picking up bloodlust or rage as a bard. If you play straight GURPS, pick what you want, do what you want, and some players prefer that to the "guided builds" here.
It is a great, focused game, with very templated builds, and less choice paralysis than the main game.
Sourcebooks
The GURPS sourcebooks are fun. They are just fun to read and collect, and there is this strange parallel universe where there is a GURPS Everything and any remotely action-oriented profession can be adventured in by a party of specialists. In this parallel world, anything that can have special rules and an adventure component is fair game, such as my fictional:
GURPS Forest Service has the players parachuting into hot zones to stop forest fires and stop bank robbers who crash-landed in the middle of a national park.
GURPS Street Sports has roleplaying rules for skateboarding, BMX biking, and rollerblading; and your team of street-smart heroes takes on missions for a secret organization trying to stop a gang of international computer hacking criminals.
GURPS Spelunkers has your team of cave-crawling specialists crawling through newly discovered ancient caves opening up under magical ley intersections all over the world and fighting the ancient lizard race awakening and trying to reclaim the world.
You get this strange "adventurer ready for action" feeling to a character that puts you right in "action mode" when you use GURPS to simulate a profession. International bank robbers could be the enemies of GURPS Dentistry, and your oral hygiene specialist could be called upon for a secret mission.
NOTE: If a sourcebook has templates, it is a good sourcebook, and creating characters appropriate to that setting will be a breeze. I consider the books with templates to be the "GURPS 4.5" over the main game where it is more just of a "pick from anything" style system. Dungeon Fantasy is one of those games and designed around that concept.
Not to mention any movie or TV series that could be GURPS: _____ and instantly just work.
The Mindset
This is GURPS. Does it make sense? No. Can you get all silly and cocky playing that team of macho and cool forest rangers as they dispatch the bad guy with the tagline, "Only you..."
Yes.
Could you do this in Savage Worlds or any other slightly easier-to-use generic system? Yes. Would it be GURPS?
No.
GURPS requires that normal suspension of disbelief when you play any role-playing game, but it has an extra secret layer to it. There is a second suspension of disbelief requiring you to believe playing GURPS is the coolest thing ever. Trust me, when we did that we had a stupid amount of fun.
Recalling an obscure rule or pulling up a random fact from two shelves full of GURPS sourcebooks is equivalent to a Rocky Horror Picture Show moment of singing along with the lyrics and knowing the next line before it comes up. My brother and I used to do that, and the act of playing GURPS became more fun than what was happening in the game itself.
And our characters had that same swagger we did.
Still Fun
I am sure a lot of people say this game is the worst thing ever, just like Palladium. I saw early reviews of this and the one that stuck with me was someone saying that they could make a science character and have them feel every bit as important and useful to the plot as a pure combat character. Back in the days when rolling a d20 meant your character was likely killing something, and your characters were rated on the "monster deaths per hour" scale, this was a huge thing.
You could build a skill-focused character, and have challenging skill-focused actions determine the outcome of an adventure? Yes. You flash forward to games like Star Wars d20, and the constant "if my character is non-combat my character is uninteresting" feeling that game had, and the constant hating on pilot, technical, and skill-based characters - and finding ways to shoehorn their abilities into combat, and you begin to see the legacy that D&D has on our hobby.
A game where combat is deadly and meant to be avoided? Sounds old-school to me. But with the added bonus the entire game is built around dozens of interesting non-combat skills and activities? With complete and detailed character design? Wow, this must be one of those cool new games on DriveThru that everyone is talking about!
No, it is GURPS, and it always has been. There were doing all this in the 80s and providing the skill-based alternative to D&D that used six-sided dice and, yeah, that ancient 40-year-old TI calculator I have lying around here that still works.
One of the best suggestions I can give is just to stick to the simple, basic combat system and the basic characters book. You don't need too much else, and instead of buying supplements and never using them, just make it all up yourself and have fun.
Either that or go with Dungeon Fantasy and ignore GURPS entirely.
And if you want, add complexity as you go.
No comments:
Post a Comment