ImageMaker
Minstrel in the Gallery
A glitter in my I...
Posts: 36
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Post by ImageMaker on May 20, 2007 9:02:30 GMT -5
unfortunately, she plays World of Warcraft (an online game that typifies all the things that were wrong with hack-n-slash gaming 20 years ago), to the exclusion of pretty much everything else. I agree with you completely here. For me the fun of gaming is getting together with a room of friends and having fun. It's an entierly social event. WofW is solitary and sucks up hours of time. And beyond that, it tends to exclude others in the face-to-face world -- not to mention that it's "kill things and take their stuff" and power gaming (get bigger and better weapons and armor, do more damage, have more hit points) writ large; not much call or room for role-playing in the game, just a PC video game with internet connection.
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Post by stubedoo on Jun 5, 2007 17:45:32 GMT -5
I had some time to kill so I was reading on Wikipedia about GURPS. Turns out the similarities between D&D and GURPS are closer than I thought. Here are some examples:
"Roleplaying games of the 1970s and 1980s, such as Dungeons & Dragons, used random numbers generated by dice rolls to assign statistics to player characters. GURPS, in contrast, assigned players a specified number of points with which to build their characters. "
D&D 3.5, or at least the way we play, we get a certain number of assigned points, and we buy stats. The higher the stat the more it costs. It's not a random generation.
"GURPS' emphasis on its "generic" aspect has proven to be a successful marketing tactic, as many game series have source engines which can be retrofitted to many styles."
D&D 3.5 is based on the d20 system which is generalizable to many different game concepts.
"In principle a Game Master can balance the power of foes to the abilities of the player characters by comparing their relative point values."
We do that too.
"GURPS has a profusion of advantages and disadvantages which enable a player or Game Master to customize their characters. "
D&D 3.5 has the same thing, except they're called "feats" and "flaws".
"GURPS has a wide variety of skills intended to enable it to support any conceivable genre (such as Acrobatics and Vehicle Piloting). Each skill is tied to at least one attribute, and the character's ability in that skill is a function of their base attribute + or - a certain amount."
D&D 3.5 has exactly the same thing.
"GURPS uses six-sided dice for all game mechanics. For instance, if the damage of a weapon says "3d+2" then you'd roll three six-sided dice, add the results of each die together, and add 2 to that result. Likewise, if it said "2d-1", you'd roll only two dice and subtract 1 from the total result. For stat and skill checks, the player always rolls three six-sided dice."
D&D 3.5 uses a 20 sided dice for all game mechanics, except for rolling damage. It's not quite as complicated as the above. If I'm rolling a skill check for "climb" for instance, I get my d20 roll plus whatever strength modifiers. Tumble would be d20 plus my dex modifiers, etc. If it's an opposed check, say a "hide" vs. a "spot." I can try to hide, but if my opponent makes his "spot" (assuming he's looking) I will be spotted. Similarly would be "listen" and "move silently" etc.
"Combat in GURPS is organized in personal turns: i.e., every character gets a turn each second - a relative short period of time - and during his or her character's turn he or she may take an action, such as attack or move. After all characters have taken their action, one second has elapsed. Free actions are simple actions that can be done at any time. Characters in a party have a set initiative that is entirely based upon their Basic Speed characteristic."
D&D combat rounds are 6 seconds. I don't have the combat rules memorized (there are guys in my group who do so I rely on them), but I can do a move action and an attack in one six second round, or take two move actions, or a full withdrawal, etc. Or something like that.
"Damage from muscle-powered weapons, (clubs, swords, bows, etc.) are calculated based on the character's ST rating."
Same with D&D.
"Characters are awarded character points to improve themselves at regular intervals (usually at the end of a game session or story)."
Same.
Anyway, my point is that it looks like the similarities far outweigh the differences.
Stubedoo.
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TriKrona
Minstrel in the Gallery
Posts: 28
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Post by TriKrona on Jun 6, 2007 9:12:57 GMT -5
GURPS and D&D are both RPGs. So, of course, they share many of the characteristics. Like dice. And numbers. But they play different. There's a large difference in the way things "feel" while playing. And there's a difference in how the mechanics support preferred play style and emulate a particular genre. It's the difference between a claw hammer and a sledge--you can use both to drive nails, but one is better suited for the purpose.
GURPS does generic/multi-genre better than D&D/D20 out of the box. Esp. the abomination that is D20 Modern. D20 gets better when you move to 3rd party products like Spycraft, which is IMNSHO one of the best RPG rule sets ever produced. GURPS can do anything you want as long as you put the work into it. While you can do the same with D&D/d20 it's more work for less reward because the systems isn't as neatly modular as GURPS. And D&D won't let you play a character like the one ImageMaker describes (which sounds to me like a Black Company/Mazalan Book of the Fallen Bridgeburner type character which would be full of awesome), not without dipping into a variety of classes and optional rule systems.
Anyway, welcome to the forums, ImageMaker! And for resurrecting this corner of them...
The once and future, Trikrona
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ImageMaker
Minstrel in the Gallery
A glitter in my I...
Posts: 36
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Post by ImageMaker on Jun 6, 2007 16:32:11 GMT -5
Well, just to show I'm not completely hidebound, I've just started playing a Star Wars d20 game, in which I play a non-Jedi Force adept who's very good with a blaster, but competent with a few force skills -- sort of like Luke Skywalker between New Hope and Empire, but without the light saber (and no piloting skill). The system isn't impossible, but I keep thinking how much more I could have done with the character concept with GURPS -- but I realized the other day that most of that is because GURPS doesn't (usually) make me start off with a character who's barely competent to tie his own shoes.
Instead of being saddled with a first level character (which Star Wars 20 says ought, usually, to be 15-16 years old, for a human), GURPS gives one 150 points (in the new 4th Edition), which is significantly more than "ordinary people" (75 points or less) and quite adequate to be professionally competent in 2-3 skill areas and significantly above average in 2-3 basic stats, if you're willing to accept a few disadvantages to stretch the points. If you work at it a bit, you can make a character that is superbly skilled in a single physical skill, or has a very broad range of mental skills at semi-professional to professional level (as, for instance, a wizard who knows dozens of spells). Or, as with my character in the GURPS campaign I've been playing, a wizard who knows a dozen or so spells in a few specialties, *and* is deadly competent with a favored weapon and pretty good with another, *and* is semi-professional in a couple more unrelated ranges of skills.
Honestly, I'm not sure where D&D originated the tradition of the physically incompetent wizard -- Gandalf, the archetypal fantasy wizard (as character, rather than as deus ex machina) was perfectly capable of slaying orcs with Orcrist, and quite competent to use his wizard's staff as, well, a stick, to strike and defend with. The original D&D rules, however, made it well nigh impossible for a wizard to survive a physical fight, with their weapon and armor limitations and extremely poor hit points, and class-based systems have tended to preserve that kind of limitation, at least for as long as I played them. Even Star Wars 20 wants me to declare a "class" for my character, for which I chose "Force Adept" -- despite the fact that, in an ordinary fight, he's far more likely to bang away with his blaster than to use his Force abilities, because the latter can vanish so suddenly with a single hit from a common weapon (hits come off Vitality first, which is the source of energy for Force manipulations), once again rendering the "wizard" less capable in a fight (unless you enter into the limitations and requirements of a Jedi) -- not to mention that most of the Force actions that are significantly useful in combat and don't involve a light saber will earn dark side points at an untenable rate...
My next step outward in this regard is that I may be joining a group playing Fantasy Hero, which I'm being told is probably closer to GURPS than D&D, and despite a long-standing reputation for complexity, packs most of it into character creation and makes actual play fairly simple. We'll see how that goes; my first meeting with the playing group is this coming Sunday afternoon.
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Post by stubedoo on Jun 6, 2007 20:56:28 GMT -5
No doubt GURPS is more universal (hence the name "universal"). I was just making the point that D&D 3.5 is WAAY better than it used to be. It still has its limitations, though, I agree.
You mentioned Gandalf, though. (And I'm going to really geek out here). Gandalf is more than just a wizard. He's a Maia, which is basically a demigod (and, incidentally, the same race as Sauron), who was sent by the Valar to help save Middle-Earth. So as a Maia, and an epic high level wizard, dispatching of a few low level orcs wouldn't be much of a problem.
Stubedoo
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ImageMaker
Minstrel in the Gallery
A glitter in my I...
Posts: 36
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Post by ImageMaker on Jun 9, 2007 10:21:25 GMT -5
Well, yes, we all know that -- but in the original tale in which he appears (The Hobbit, or There and Back Again), in its original form (as told in a series of letters to Christopher in the 1930s), I doubt even J.R.R. knew that about him -- he was just a powerful wizard who, for some reason, was taking an interest in hobbits and helping out a band of dwarves. Don't forget, the original version of The Hobbit didn't even include mention of the One Ring...
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Post by stubedoo on Jun 10, 2007 23:33:03 GMT -5
Well, yes, we all know that -- but in the original tale in which he appears (The Hobbit, or There and Back Again), in its original form (as told in a series of letters to Christopher in the 1930s), I doubt even J.R.R. knew that about him -- he was just a powerful wizard who, for some reason, was taking an interest in hobbits and helping out a band of dwarves. Don't forget, the original version of The Hobbit didn't even include mention of the One Ring... "We all know that" LOL! Yes, we are geeks, hear us roar!
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Post by stubedoo on Jun 11, 2007 0:12:14 GMT -5
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ImageMaker
Minstrel in the Gallery
A glitter in my I...
Posts: 36
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Post by ImageMaker on Jun 13, 2007 15:05:05 GMT -5
"We all know that" LOL! Yes, we are geeks, hear us roar! Heh. Dare I admit that, unlike many LOTR geeks, I actually enjoyed all three of the Peter Jackson movies (despite the mass of details that were -- had to be! -- left out), and look forward with bated breath to the live-action The Hobbit supposedly in work? I suppose it's somewhat significant that the 40th anniversary of my first reading of The Hobbit is rapidly approaching -- I bought it from Weekly Reader Book Club (anyone remember the Weekly Reader from 1960s-1970s grade school?) in about 1968-70 time frame, at the kings-ransom cost of, as I recall, a dollar and a quarter (it was a good bit fatter than most of the 75-95 cent paperbacks books I owned then). Even then, though, it was the version with the One Ring included, though there was an appendix in my copy explaining how and why it had been left out of the original version (Bilbo himself hadn't added it to the Red Book until many decades after the original tale was written down, during the short time he remained in Rivendell before going across the sea to the West with the last of the elves). I didn't read the rest of the LOTR, though, until I was a sophomore in high school, around 1974 -- Tolkien was gone by then, though I didn't know that until about 1976...
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ImageMaker
Minstrel in the Gallery
A glitter in my I...
Posts: 36
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Post by ImageMaker on Jun 13, 2007 15:18:01 GMT -5
BTW, I was a Real Man and played D&D for 2-3 years before the first edition of the Dungeon Master's Guide came out -- I remember when the Monster Manual hit the street (and still own a copy that is missing illustrations for many of the monsters listed), and many of us puzzled long and hard how to fit so many creatures into a game previously dominated by ghouls, gelatinous cubes, giant centipedes (the ones that would paralyze anything but an Elf), orcs, and with gnolls (with a full *two dice*!) at the top of the usual dungeon food chain.
But as the article said, Real Men can have "hardened, violent adventures" in any game system -- be it Tunnels and Trolls, Top Secret, Boot Hill, original AD&D, GURPS, Burning Wheel, or even World of Darkness. And if you can kick ass with a staff, who needs a sword?
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Post by Shutter Girl on Jun 13, 2007 21:37:59 GMT -5
And if you can kick ass with a staff, who needs a sword? Good point, ImageMaker.... ;-)
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