D&D 4E I bought GURPS 4e!!!! (and returned it the next day)

[buzz]

How come no one ever starts threads about how GURPS is more flexible than V:tR? Or more flexible than Unknown Armies? Or Pendragon? Why pick on d20/D&D?

It's apples and oranges.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

How come no one ever starts threads about how GURPS is more flexible than V:tR? Or more flexible than Unknown Armies? Or Pendragon? Why pick on d20/D&D?

It's apples and oranges.

Both V:tR and Unknown Armies use their game systems to support specific settings. GURPS and d20, on the other hand, are intended to work with a multitude of settings, and thus comparisons between the two are valid.

 

[Psion]

I mean, the main attraction of GURPS is the complete freedom in creating characters. d20, on the hand, is based on shoehorning characters into distinct classes and levels. There's just too little overwork for such a conversion to work.

Complete freedom of creating characters is, as I learned the hard way playing GURPS, not always a boon. And there are benefits to having archetypes for your characters. It creates and reinforces a specific sort of play experiene and play balance, one that you have to specifically work at when you are using a "free-buy" sort of system. And GURPS has it's own shaping forces and tendencies, but the problem is that lacking a guiding structure, those forces tend to be not necessarily helpful to the play style or campaign model that the GM is trying to create (namely, it creates heavily flawed jack-of-all-trades characters.)

 

[Psion]

Both V:tR and Unknown Armies use their game systems to support specific settings. GURPS and d20, on the other hand, are intended to work with a multitude of settings, and thus comparisons between the two are valid.

I really don't think that d20 and GURPS are in the same boat.

GURPS promise is that it will adapt to fit a variety of genres and styles out of the box. IME, it does not, being better suited to the grittier and low power end of the pool (rumor has it that 4e is supposed to fix the latter, but we shall see if it does or not).

d20, OTOH, is written to run D&D style fantasy. Any shape you want to bend it is left to the third party publisher at hand. Some have done an admirable job of adapting it to their needs (M&M, which IS based on the d20 SRD, is a good example of this). Some do not.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Complete freedom of creating characters is, as I learned the hard way playing GURPS, not always a boon. And there are benefits to having archetypes for your characters. It creates and reinforces a specific sort of play experiene and play balance, one that you have to specifically work at when you are using a "free-buy" sort of system. And GURPS has it's own shaping forces and tendencies, but the problem is that lacking a guiding structure, those forces tend to be not necessarily helpful to the play style or campaign model that the GM is trying to create (namely, it creates heavily flawed jack-of-all-trades characters.)

Of course it's not always a boon - which is why I don't always GURPS (in fact, I've been playing D&D more often, though I hope for a chance to try out my brand new GURPS 4E books).

GURPS is best if the GM has a very clear idea of what sort of campaign he wants. This includes specifing which advantages and disadvantages are appropriate for the campaign, and which aren't.

And really, this is just common sense. As I'm fond of saying, theoretically you could buy Status at level 7 and become President of the United States for a mere 35 points. After all, the rules allow it. But if the GM lets a player get away with this, it's his own fault for not intervening... (and as usual, I'll leave working out the point value of the current US President as an exercise to the inclinded reader... )

D&D has lots of structure, and this saves on preparation time on part of the GM - a huge plus, and one of the reasons why I am always returning to it. But if you take the time to prepare a GURPS campaign properly, the result can be hugely rewarding - which I also know from personal experience...

 

[coyote6]

Oh, I beg to differ! d20 Modern has one little feature (flaw some would say) in its system that makes the kind of bar fights you see on TV quite possible.The nonlethal damage of d20 Modern means that characters can punch the heck out of one another for 20 or 30 rounds of combat and all they'll have to show for it is a bunch of brusing and NO hit point loss. In fact, that TV-fiction level of violence is the one thing that the nonlethal damage system DOES make possible, for all it's lack of plausiblity.

Yeah, but those TV/movie barroom brawls almost always end with the hero(es) walking away from their unconscious foes. I'm not sure d20 Modern would allow a fistfight to end with anyone unconscious . . .

PS: I definitely prefer M&M over GURPS for comic book supers. But with Steve Kenson & Sean Punch co-authoring GURPS Powers, it will be interesting to see how well GURPS 4e will do with supers.

And, of course, I prefer D&D for my D&D campaigns.

 

[Talon5]

PS: I definitely prefer M&M over GURPS for comic book supers. But with Steve Kenson & Sean Punch co-authoring GURPS Powers, it will be interesting to see how well GURPS 4e will do with supers.

Ditto- both are good authors and very smart. Should be cool. You should contact Sean for Play Test- he likes you and would if you asked (course you haven't play tested in a few years- maybe not).

And, of course, I prefer D&D for my D&D campaigns.

Dude, say it ante so- you prefer your D&D campaigns played and GMed in D&D?

 

[Wombat]

Want a really flexible system that way? Try Over The Edge

 

[buzz]

GURPS and d20, on the other hand, are intended to work with a multitude of settings, and thus comparisons between the two are valid.

d20 was never intended to work wth a multitude of settings. This is a common misconception. It has been adapted to many settings because of i's massive popularity. WotC never marketed d20 as a generic system nor claimed it could do any genre out of the box. That it has been used for many different genres by many different companies is simply a consequence of it's standing in the marketplace. E.g., "d20 is really popular. We should make a d20 supers RPG to tap into that market. Plus, we really like the core mechanics."

Ergo, it's an apples and organges comparison, and, IMHO, no different from comparing it to other RPGs which are specifically designed to do one thing, e.g., Call of Cthulhu.

You compare GURPS to other RPGs with similar goals, such as HERO or Tri-Stat dX, and it doesn't look so special anymore (though I'm certainly liking the new edition).

 

[Conaill]

d20 was never intended to work wth a multitude of settings. This is a common misconception.

Not quite true. A multitude of settings, yes that is *exactly* why WotC adopted the d20 model. A multitude of genres, no.

Ryan Dancey's analysis of the failure of TSR was in part that they had fragmented their audience too much, with different rule variants for each of the different D&D settings. He proposed d20/OGL as a common rules platform so this would not happen again for 3e. So someone playing Forgotten Realms, or Kalamar, or OA, or Eberron... they're still all playing D&D, and in principle you can use any of the feats, classes, spells etc. in any of the other settings (the only limitation being whether it fits thematically with the setting, *not* whether the rules are compatible).

So yes, d20 was intended to work across a variety of settings - all D&D settings. But it wasn't really intended to across genres (I assume they had SW and d20 Modern in mind when they first came out with d20, but then again, they wound up going with a separate rule set for those different genres.)