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.

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.

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).

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

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...

-Tir:)

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/