Results 31 to 60 of 75
Thread: Why I Strongly Dislike GURPS
-
2012-11-13, 11:04 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2012
Re: Why I Strongly Dislike GURPS
My Homebrew: found here.
When you Absolutely, Positively, Gotta Drop some Huge rocks, Accept NO Substitutes
PM Me if you would like a table from my homebrew reconstructed.
Drow avatar @ myself
-
2012-11-13, 11:06 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2005
- Location
- Toronto, Canada
- Gender
Re: Why I Strongly Dislike GURPS
If you like my thoughts, you'll love my writing. Visit me at www.mishahandman.com.
-
2012-11-13, 11:30 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2007
- Location
- Tail of the Bellcurve
- Gender
Re: Why I Strongly Dislike GURPS
The problem with FATAL's randomness is that it isn't good randomness. It's like Hall knew just enough statistics when he wrote it to understand that things should follow normal curves, but not enough to grasp that things like max speech rate and average speech rate should be correlated.
Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.
Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman, 1906.
-
2012-11-13, 12:29 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2008
Re: Why I Strongly Dislike GURPS
It's more like Hall spent years reading bad fantasy, looking through pornography, skimming mythology, and accidentally coming upon a picture of a normal curve once on Wikipedia. Then, through the magic of the Dunning Kruger effect, he produced FATAL while convinced he was a genius with a broad set of skills.
Last edited by Knaight; 2012-11-13 at 12:30 PM.
I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.
I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that. -- ChubbyRain
Current Design Project: Legacy, a game of masters and apprentices for two players and a GM.
-
2012-11-13, 01:02 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2004
- Location
- Tempe, Arizona
- Gender
Re: Why I Strongly Dislike GURPS
Were you there in my Serenity games? I've seriously had longwinded arguments with players about the Sadist defect in that game. Not singular Player, plural players. Three of them... in two games.
The problem with what this leads to, of restricting specific defects or combinations of defects is that you can't stop the players from seeing that shiny defect and incorporating it into their concept on contact. Then, to enforce your GM restrictions, or to create new ones when the final character isn't appropriate anymore due to unforseen defects, you have to argue with your players over their character concept. You have to tell your player you have veto power over the one thing he undoubtedly should have absolute control over.
I think this pretty much explains my attitude... my answer is no-no and I practically ignore Alignment in D&D.
Personally, if I WERE to want to represent the idea of characters who are remarkably expert in spite of their character flaws or physical drawbacks they would either be directly related, like the character Monk's OCD directly contributing to his thorough examination of the details of a crime scene, in which case it'd be a complicated enough mechanical package that it'd need to be worked out and constructed all at once... or it'd be a case where someone learns more because they were challenged more by the same set of circumstances, in which case they might earn more xp or cp or whatever.
I do not like to see a conceptual psychic become more powerful when he lost his conceptual legs, or a conceptual wizard getting a spell to fly thanks to the points he picked up for being a racist.
-
2012-11-13, 10:11 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2012
- Location
- Brazil
- Gender
Re: Why I Strongly Dislike GURPS
There are options other than giving building points for flaws. It usually boils down to giving points for players that choose to put themselves in those conditions. That's how most modern systems do it.
-
2012-11-13, 10:56 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2008
Re: Why I Strongly Dislike GURPS
I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.
I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that. -- ChubbyRain
Current Design Project: Legacy, a game of masters and apprentices for two players and a GM.
-
2012-11-13, 11:16 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2012
- Location
- Brazil
- Gender
Re: Why I Strongly Dislike GURPS
Agreed completely.
Marvel Heroic Roleplaying uses it to encourage specific behavior, using 'triggers'. They are not necessarily bad things to do, just things you expect the character to do. Do those things, you get points. For example, Captain America has disbanding the Avengers or starting a new group of Avengers as one of his triggers. The Runaways have distrusting adults as one of their triggers. And so on so forth. It's a very cool system.
-
2012-11-13, 11:19 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2008
Re: Why I Strongly Dislike GURPS
I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.
I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that. -- ChubbyRain
Current Design Project: Legacy, a game of masters and apprentices for two players and a GM.
-
2012-11-13, 11:27 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2011
Re: Why I Strongly Dislike GURPS
I remember waaaay back when I was a little one, my school computers had this zoo tycoon knockoff game (it might actually have been part of the series but I doubt it) with an amusing bug: You only pay your employees at a certain time every day, but hiring new employees is instant and they go to work right away. If you wait until immediately before the pay time, fire your entire staff, then quickly hire them back, you can get the same productivity without having to actually pay them anything.
I wonder... does Avengers membership work by the same mechanics?Last edited by Craft (Cheese); 2012-11-13 at 11:27 PM.
-
2012-11-13, 11:29 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2012
- Location
- Brazil
- Gender
Re: Why I Strongly Dislike GURPS
Well, there is nothing stopping you from doing it over and over. I guess heroes would simply stop joining the Avengers if that was the case, though.
Since this is Cap's 10 XP trigger, though, it can only be triggered once per story. So while you can do it how many times you want, you only get points for doing it once per story.
Hm, I'm not familiar with Shadows of Yesterday. Does it have a free version somewhere?
EDIT: It sounds awfully familiar to Lady Blackbird, btw.Last edited by ThiagoMartell; 2012-11-13 at 11:36 PM.
-
2012-11-13, 11:37 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2008
Re: Why I Strongly Dislike GURPS
There's this.
The .pdf version does cost money though, which basically comes down to convenience.Last edited by Knaight; 2012-11-13 at 11:39 PM.
I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.
I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that. -- ChubbyRain
Current Design Project: Legacy, a game of masters and apprentices for two players and a GM.
-
2012-11-14, 12:00 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2012
- Location
- Brazil
- Gender
-
2012-11-14, 09:50 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2005
- Location
- Somerville, MA
- Gender
Re: Why I Strongly Dislike GURPS
I don't much care for GURPS either, but I sort of disagree with your reasoning. If you play it out of the box, what you say is true. But it isn't meant to be played out of the box. GURPS is a framework for creating a game. The way a good GM runs it is not to use all the rules, but to choose a subset of the rules that represent the game he wants to run.
If you like what I have to say, please check out my GMing Blog where I discuss writing and roleplaying in greater depth.
-
2012-11-14, 10:08 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2008
- Location
- No, that other place
- Gender
Re: Why I Strongly Dislike GURPS
I think its actually impossible to use all of the rules at the same time - even if you accept several alternative means of producing the same affects, there are a number of rules that are mutually exclusive. Your assessment is correct though, in that the core basic rules are not intended to suit every genre and game - its universal quality comes from choosing which rules (and material) to use.
Originally Posted by Douglas Adams
-
2012-11-14, 10:56 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2009
- Location
- Boston, MA
- Gender
Re: Why I Strongly Dislike GURPS
This thread has continued a surprisingly long time without flames, even despite the early mention of FATAL. Nice.
Also, I'm now inspired to rewrite my homebrew system to replace the one-time character point bonus for taking a disadvantage, with a mechanic to give something of value when a trait is disadvantageous during play.
-
2012-11-14, 11:34 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2009
Re: Why I Strongly Dislike GURPS
Also, I'm now inspired to rewrite my homebrew system to replace the one-time character point bonus for taking a disadvantage, with a mechanic to give something of value when a trait is disadvantageous during play.
-
2012-11-14, 11:45 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2004
- Location
- Tempe, Arizona
- Gender
Re: Why I Strongly Dislike GURPS
While I do agree it is a better mechanic, I also think that formalizing it will lead to power imbalances based on how often you manage to bring up your 'thing', and that potential power imbalance will cause a game to be a contest toward exposing the characters' flaws to air as often as possible.
It's like, if Oracle doesn't get bonus XP for any mission where her watchtower isn't invaded and her paraplegia doesn't put her at risk, then she'll have less interest in watchtower security, since she's rewarded when it's bad.
I just feel like this sort of skinner box rewards system will cause people to perform in really predictable ways. "Oh, it's the start of the story? Captain America reforms the Avengers, Spider-Man's crypt keeper aunt has another heart attack, Wolverine gets on a motorcycle and rides away like a badass loner (on his way to the six other teams he's on) and Hank Pym beats his wife." and any story where they miss a trigger will feel like lost opportunity.
It seems like the reward for behaving like a character you like is, well, behaving like the character you like.
Personally, I liked Mutants and Masterminds' Defects system best of any I've read, since the rewards for being penalized by your shortcomings and character are non-permanent tokens that could be cashed in for stuff like rerolls, not for advancement. Most importantly, it didn't have a long list of defined and detailed defects with the implication you should take a double handful. It gives one or two examples appropriate to the genre and says, 'ya know, if you want...'
-
2012-11-14, 11:48 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2008
Re: Why I Strongly Dislike GURPS
That's up to the GM to enforce. As GM, I would recognize that constantly assembling and disassembling the Avengers isn't just a simple binary switch. That's gonna have major consequences (like, you know, characters seeing Cap as utterly wishy-washy and lots of people getting miffed)...and I'd also have to see something far more than Cap just saying "You're assembled"/"You're disbanded" to hand out the XP. That, and the per-rules limitation that you're only supposed to trigger the 10XP point once per Act.
Now, back to the original topic. I feel like GURPS' particular style is constraining for me. That there's lots of dramatic story dynamics that I want to watch play out, but the rules just tend to get in the way, as in "we have to resolve this, and then we can get there".
To slant quote from The Matrix... "Stop trying to play the game and play the game!" (At least for me.)
Burning Wheel's skill list is pretty much the upper limit of crunch detail I'm okay with, and that game only pulls it off (for me) by abstracting difficulties into a dramatic scale instead of a quasi-realistic scale.
-
2012-11-14, 01:45 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2007
- Location
- Tail of the Bellcurve
- Gender
Re: Why I Strongly Dislike GURPS
That is also plausible. Although since he essentially used multiple iterations of the central limit theorem to generate character attributes, I'm fairly sure he actually has had some contact with normal distributions.
As I said, the majorly stupid part of FATAL character generation isn't that it uses insane dice rolling to approximate a normal curve, it's that all the sub-attributes are independent. It's like building a person by sampling a height, then independently sampling a weight, intelligence, etc, from the general population.
Another stupid thing is that although these things are probably approximately normal in distribution, they won't all have the same mean and variance, which IIRC the generation method he uses does. Or rather they can, but you'd have to use insane troll units to scale them right.
(edit: assuming I'm remembering how FATAL works correctly, you either roll against your oh-so-carefully normalized stats or get a bonus based on how large that role was, right? In which case your probability of success or probability of getting a bonus isn't normally distributed anyway. Your probability of rolling under your attribute (or any other numbers) is P(X <= x), so your probability of 'success' is Bernoulli(P(X <= x)). Thanks to the Probability Integral Transform P(X <= x) is approximately distributed as a random number between 0 and 1. You can approximate this pretty well by rolling d100 or d1000 and dividing by 100 or 1000, respectively. So all that work to get normally distributed abilities makes squat difference in terms of actually playing the game.)
tl:dr. Hall never did a 400 level probability course.Last edited by warty goblin; 2012-11-14 at 02:00 PM.
Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.
Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman, 1906.
-
2012-11-14, 10:16 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2012
- Location
- Brazil
- Gender
Re: Why I Strongly Dislike GURPS
That doesn't really apply to Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, since you're not supposed to stick to a character and advancement is all but optional.
Which is the same system MHR uses.
Also, there are alternate rules to use hero points for advancement. I thought it was the default on 3rd edition, but I could be wrong,.
Which is also what MHR does (and also Shadow of Yesterday), except it gives you more options if you don't want to invent something.
-
2012-11-14, 10:37 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2012
Re: Why I Strongly Dislike GURPS
My Homebrew: found here.
When you Absolutely, Positively, Gotta Drop some Huge rocks, Accept NO Substitutes
PM Me if you would like a table from my homebrew reconstructed.
Drow avatar @ myself
-
2012-11-14, 10:41 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2011
- Location
- Minnesota
- Gender
Re: Why I Strongly Dislike GURPS
Avatar of George the Dragon Slayer, from the upcoming Indivisible!
My Steam profile
Warriors and Wuxia, Callos_DeTerran's ToB setting
-
2012-11-14, 10:42 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2007
- Gender
-
2012-11-14, 11:00 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2012
- Location
- Brazil
- Gender
-
2012-11-15, 04:14 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2012
- Location
- *Redacted*
Re: Why I Strongly Dislike GURPS
I personally think GURPS is brilliant. There is so much there that it opens the game to a whole world of crazy possibilities that are fun to play with. I also love how complex of a character you can make. They have so much layer to them, it just makes the whole experiences of getting into their head and actually playing THEM so much more rewarding. And the roleplaying of personality in GURPS is enforced, which is good as a GM to stop players from attempting something not on their character sheet. However, it is a game you need to know the rules to play, so all players should at least be versed in the basics of combat before playing. Also players should acquaint themselves with their character traits before any playing begins.
Personally, I have a computer based GURPS character generator. It has all content and it allows for the building of the characters to be very quick. However, descriptions of each and every advantage and disadvantage still have to be looked up. It mostly just keeps track of advantage points and does a lot of the simple math for you. Helps to make the stat crunching less arduous and character building shorter.
Agreements. While I will admit that a lot of planning, number crunching, and time that goes into the start of a GURPS campaign, playing the game is incredibly simple. Being a player is almost effortless. Being a GM however can be a nightmare sometimes, because you really have to pay attention to the details of each character and are the one who really has to kept the number strait in your head. You really have to KNOW the rules.
Personally, I tend to make up opponent's stats off the top of my head instead of plan them. I know the ball park stats for what counts as incompetent, competent, or skilled in everything, so I can just make things up from there. But like I said, I KNOW the rules.Last edited by BootStrapTommy; 2012-11-15 at 04:22 AM.
Please take everything I say with a grain of salt. Unless we're arguing about alignment. In which case, you're wrong.
Former EMPIRE2! Player: Imperator of the Nihoni Dominion
Former EMPIRE3! Player: Suzerain of the Phœnīx Estates
Former EMPIRE4! Player: Margrave of the Margraviate of Rhune
My Awesome Campaign Setting
-
2012-11-15, 07:25 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2007
Re: Why I Strongly Dislike GURPS
I had two problems with Gurps maybe even three,
1) Was told by the dm to design a 100pt character with 40pt disadvantages and up to 5 quirks... okay asked was told I couldn't select martial artist advantage and then turned up for the game with everyone else to discover the dm had designed a 200pt character for one of the players to run that totally ignored everything he said making it virtually impossible for any of us to demonstrate what we could do, we even had a Sherlock Holmes style character in a fantasy game with the same restrictions as I thought we all had and the dm did everything to hinder the fact he was messing up the game because we weren't interested in what he wanted to run.
2) I created a Zhodani psion with dwarfism and made use of the secret disadvantage along with eidetic memory so he really wasn't any use in a firefight but was great as an engineer in retrospect I really wish i hadn't bothered with the psionics as they really weren't worth the trouble!
3) I ran a game using the 4th edition version and tried a game loosely based on an episode of Sol Bianca, my mistake was to try and creat the characters myself as the players really didn't like that I tried to insure they had the skills to cover two or so roles which didn't necessarily needed them to have high skill levels as I prefer to run fun games over railroads but no chance and I admit i should have just let them design their own characters but their chief complaint was that these were 100pt characters in a Gurps Traveller game whose core setting book mentioned about them being 150pts, however if Gurps was really the universal game it claimed to be that shouldn't be a problem.
As you can tell I'm not a fan of having to have higher point characters simply because they can't see it really isn't necessary, I won't go into how some of the Gurps games I played in often involved dmpc's of much higher points than the rest of the others playing altogether because the dm wanted to show how great his campaign idea was ignoring that this was supposed to be a game everybody could enjoy.
And whilst I have been guilty at least with that Traveller game I tried to run, I've run games where I've rewarded them for surprising me or coming up with good ideas and thats not something I've seen in the Gurps games I've played in!
-
2012-11-15, 08:25 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2008
- Location
- No, that other place
- Gender
Re: Why I Strongly Dislike GURPS
Okay, I understand you've had trouble with this game in the past, but none of these are limited or even encouraged by GURPS - and entirely the fault of poor GMing. Here, let me illustrate with D&D:
1) Was told by the dm to design a 5th level character with up to one flaw... I was told I couldn't select any ToB classes. I then turned up for the game with everyone else to discover the dm had designed a 10th level character for one of the players to run that totally ignored everything he said (it was a swordsage) making it virtually impossible for any of us to demonstrate what we could do, we even had a Sherlock Holmes style character in a fantasy game with the same restrictions as I thought we all had and the dm did everything to hinder the fact he was messing up the game because we weren't interested in what he wanted to run - basically he was railroading at the expense of my entire character concept.
2) I created a Zhodani psion with dwarfism he really wasn't any use in a firefight but was great as an engineer, in retrospect I really wish i hadn't bothered with the psionics as they really weren't worth the trouble! The whole Power Point Reserve system just doesn't work well imo.
3) I ran a game using the 4th edition version and tried a game loosely based on an episode of Sol Bianca, my mistake was to try and create the characters myself as the players really didn't like that I tried to ensure they had the skills to cover two or so roles by having all of them multi-classed. I should have just let them design their own characters but their chief complaint was that these were 5th level characters in a setting that mentioned them normally starting at 9th level, however as D&D allows 5th level that shouldn't have been a problem.
None of these complaints are system dependant, I'd say all of them are rooted in DM vs Player discord, other than the psionics (but in gurps there are so many different systems you could use - its not hard to just ask the DM to use a different one, which I guess does make it fall back into a DM vs Player communication issue).Originally Posted by Douglas Adams
-
2012-11-15, 12:17 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2004
- Location
- Tempe, Arizona
- Gender
Re: Why I Strongly Dislike GURPS
I haven't played Marvel Heroic, but you described it as a "10 xp trigger". Excuse me for assuming 10 xp had anything to do with advancement, I must have been crazy.
Anyway, it wasn't so much a criticism of a game I've never played in a 'why I snoodle doodle GURPS' thread, I was just trying to show what bothered me about GURPS in terms of Superheroes, which was what people were talking about most recently.
It was just an illustration of what I believe will be the behaviour ofplayershumans when presented with a rewards system; a rewards system which builds up points towards big rewards, combining conditioned responses with variable rewards. People will compulsively activate because they almost cannot help but build up towards that shiny reward and delight in taking steps toward it. This is why I don't like the alternative disadvantage system of having bonus xp based on the interval of inconvenience these defects provide.
This is why I think defects are fundamentally not salvageable as a part of a basic ruleset. Just cut it out, it's a tumor.
-
2012-11-15, 03:16 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2011
- Location
- Minnesota
- Gender
Re: Why I Strongly Dislike GURPS
Yeah, and we should totally cut out xp and skill advancement, because just being with your friends and roleplaying should be its own reward and putting the goal of character gain just causes nothing but trouble!
Seriously though, if you take that idea to its logical conclusion, that's where you end up.Avatar of George the Dragon Slayer, from the upcoming Indivisible!
My Steam profile
Warriors and Wuxia, Callos_DeTerran's ToB setting