GURPS, Anyone got any experience? Options

[FuelDrop]

Hi all.

I'm planning to start up a fantasy game, but after Shadowrun's fantastic level-free gaming I am having trouble going back to the levels, hitpoints and arbitrary randomness of D&D and D20 in general.

I'm considering GURPS as an alternative, along with HARP (I seem to remember Rolemaster being cripplingly complicated, but I was just a kid when I last tried that game so I'm not certain my memory is accurate).

Anyone who's a bit more experienced with these systems want to chip in with their strengths and weaknesses? thanks in advance.

[Tanegar]

This is relevant to my interests, in that I would also like to know more about GURPS. I ran a short relief campaign from my Shadowrun game, using the HERO System, but unfortunately it was too short to really get to grips with the system. I can tell you character creation in HERO is pretty math-intensive, so if you have any math-phobic players you may want to stay away.

[Erik Baird]

I've only played GURPS (3e) as part of a Traveller campaign, but I thought it was a pretty decent system. Combat is reminiscent of Shadowrun's; it's usually quick and brutal, and combat is run in one-second increments. I liked the skill system, and I'm pretty certain the edge/flaw system in SR was borrowed from GURPS. It's been longer than ten years since I got to play with that system, and they've had an edition change since (although I've only heard good about that).

[Thanee]

GURPS (and HERO) are both fairly complex systems. They both work well. Both have a literal ton of material available.

If you want something simpler, SAVAGE WORLDS could also be an alternative.

Bye
Thanee

[Tiralee]

Apart from 2nd Edition, I cut my teeth on GURPS - Math intensive is a nice way to put it.
There were a bunch of rather useful programs that I used to use to minmax the living hell out of the odd things we made, but I had to run them on a Win 3.1 system:) If I had a 3.5 inch drive, I'd upload one or two:)

Combat was very fast and if you played it right, you'd need god-level threats to slow them down due to some of the wilder abilities you could "afford" with the advantages/disadvantages. And this was after "Badass" was tossed to the side as unworkable 12-year old puerile wish fulfillment.

But it was hysterically funny to have a shy, nervous student-teacher of a semi-aquatic species rip through armoured speeecemerinees due to the "primitive"/absurdly-strong trait combo.

...All she wanted was a well-behaved class and to catch the eye of that handsome hunter by the bay... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

-Tir:)

[Tzeentch]

The basics of GURPS are extraordinarily simple. In fact, the core rules are so tight that authors rarely have to create any new mechanics of any sort.

I HIGHLY recommend you read GURPS Lite first though. First, because it's free. Second, because those really are the distilled mechanics of the game.

http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/lite/