GURPS Conversion Questions

[GamePhil]

Originally posted by OddHat

The optional magic rules. They are, of course, optional. Still, a 350 point Mage built under a given set of optional rules is no longer fully interchangeable with a 350 point mage built "by the book" or under other given sets of optional rules.

 

That's what I thought you meant. Optional rules do have a way of creeping in, don't they?

 

This is not an attack; I can see why they were suggested.

 

I know, I saw the smiley.

 

And you can play a perfectly good game of GURPS fantasy with only the core book as well.

 

Well, sort of. There's certainly enough there to build your own spells, which you'll probably want to have. I just prefer Legoes to Playdo.

[Seenar]

Originally posted by Toadmaster

At the risk of starting a rant fest, why do you HATE GURPS so much. I've played both and there are many similarities which always makes me curious when people have such strong reactions vs HERO or GURPS. I can understand when GURPS or HERO people say they hate games such as D&D or Vampire type games because they are so differant from HERO/GURPS but it seems odd to have such a strong reactions between GURPS and HERO (love one, hate the other).

 

Strictly curiosity not trying to stir up a hornets nest.

 

GURPS pretends to be what Hero actaully is, and gets all the limelight.

[Seenar]

Originally posted by Bartman

Well I can't speak for Seenar, but I can tell you some of the things I dislike about GURPS. Some of these may no longer be true as it has been some time since I have played.

 

1- Costs are based on difficulty/rarity rather than utility. In GURPS, each point of STR costs twice as much as the previous point. An exceptionally strong character is virtually unplayable as nearly every point will be sucked up by STR. By comparison a 30 STR character in a Hero NCM game will only have to sink 30 pts into STR allowing him to have some other skills and characteristics. This has a tendency to encourage generalists who all share a number of abilites rather than unique characters with one or two exceptional abilites.

 

2- No standardization. SImilar effects can have wildly divergent costs. A 200pt GURPS mage will be at a vastly different power level than a 200pt Psionist or Superhero. In other words there is no real universality to the system. Compare this with Hero where you can put a 75+75pt Fantasy mage, Justice Inc. mystic, and Star Hero cyborg in the same campaign and expect them to be more or less equal in effectiveness. In Hero 40pts in a fire attack is always the same 8d6. In GURPS pyrokenesis, a fireball spell and a super's fire blast all have different values for the same effect.

 

3- No unified rule system. You want to do magic? You have to buy the magic rule book. Want psionics? Than you have to buy that. The same is true for virtually everything. With Hero literally all you need is FREd. With GURPS you really can't run anything without getting the applicable rulebook.

 

Now none of these make me hate GURPS, but they do make me want to play Hero instead.

 

Ditto

[Bartman]

Originally posted by Seenar

Ditto

 

LOL. I guess I can speak for Seenar.

[OddHat]

Originally posted by Bartman

LOL. I guess I can speak for Seenar.

 

Dude! Quick! Sell his stuff!

[Just A Guy Name]

Originally posted by Bartman

2- No standardization. SImilar effects can have wildly divergent costs. A 200pt GURPS mage will be at a vastly different power level than a 200pt Psionist or Superhero. In other words there is no real universality to the system. Compare this with Hero where you can put a 75+75pt Fantasy mage, Justice Inc. mystic, and Star Hero cyborg in the same campaign and expect them to be more or less equal in effectiveness. In Hero 40pts in a fire attack is always the same 8d6. In GURPS pyrokenesis, a fireball spell and a super's fire blast all have different values for the same effect.

By "universality", do you mean adaptability? Certainly the existence and playabilty of multi-genre campaigns using GURPS is verifiable, and ought to indicate otherwise. Regarding the example of pyrokinesis, et al; if abilities have exactly the same effect, they should have the same cost. GURPS design philosophy treats the SE of each of the attacks as fundamental, resulting in different pricing for each. Whether the costs are fair, compared to each other, is another matter;)

[Bartman]

Nope I just meant standardization. I have played in multi-genre GURPS campaigns and they were always a mess. Generally a whole lot of handwaving had to be done, or the whole thing would fall apart.

[tetsujin28]

Re: GURPS Conversion Questions

 

Originally posted by Seenar

So, I am wondering if their is a good rule of thumb to convert from the dumb-ass GURPS system to Hero, Truly The Ultimate Gamers Toolkit?

Nice to see you're so open-minded. I usually end up doing my conversions the other way around.

[Mark Taylor]

GURPS -> HERO conversion is something I'm working on. When I've got somewhere satisfactory with it I'll post it for all to see - even GURPS haters who insult us GURPS fans then ask for help.

 

I don't favour either a pure 'mathematical' conversion method or a pure 'just use your judgement' method, but a combination. Use the mathematics to spit out some numbers, then jiggle and adjust as necessary to taste.

[Mark Taylor]

Originally posted by Bartman

Nope I just meant standardization. I have played in multi-genre GURPS campaigns and they were always a mess. Generally a whole lot of handwaving had to be done, or the whole thing would fall apart.

 

It takes a highly competent and experienced GM to pull this off without making a mess. Possibly that's a flaw with GURPS, but then HERO isn't that 'beginner friendly' either.

[Mark Taylor]

BTW, for anybody who needs a very basic understanding of GURPS to interpret materials, you can download or view GURPS Lite as a free .pdf here. At only 32 pages it shouldn't tax your brain or your time too badly. Bear in mind it is a hugely cut down version of the system, with only a tiny fraction of the skills, advantages, disadvantages etc. sampled.

[GamePhil]

Originally posted by Realms of Chaos

It takes a highly competent and experienced GM to pull this off without making a mess. Possibly that's a flaw with GURPS, but then HERO isn't that 'beginner friendly' either.

 

Actually, I'd say GURPS is quite a bit more beginner friendly than HERO. One thing that seems to appeal to new people is having a shopping list of things to buy, like "Lightning" spells and so on, rather than having to build them from scratch. It inspires the player, and even an old hand can get ideas from such a list.

 

The non-standardization thing is somewhat illusory: it certainly exists, but it's not as much of a problem as it seems if you really want to use GURPS. it would be quite possible to make GURPS more universal by simply taking one of the supplements (unfortunately, the best one for this would probably be Supers) and only using it. Don't use the magic system presented, but build all spells from scratch with Supers. And so on. Some Multipower replacement would be nice for this, though.

 

Of course, my main use for GURPS materials is to get ideas for or even convert them over into HERO, so I can use virtually everything without balance issues. It would be kind of funny to convert GURPS into GURPS, though.

[tetsujin28]

Unfortunately, GURPS Supers is one of the worst books they ever put out, even when they revised it.

[Mark Taylor]

Originally posted by GamePhil

Actually, I'd say GURPS is quite a bit more beginner friendly than HERO. One thing that seems to appeal to new people is having a shopping list of things to buy, like "Lightning" spells and so on, rather than having to build them from scratch. It inspires the player, and even an old hand can get ideas from such a list.

 

The non-standardization thing is somewhat illusory: it certainly exists, but it's not as much of a problem as it seems if you really want to use GURPS. it would be quite possible to make GURPS more universal by simply taking one of the supplements (unfortunately, the best one for this would probably be Supers) and only using it. Don't use the magic system presented, but build all spells from scratch with Supers. And so on. Some Multipower replacement would be nice for this, though.

 

Of course, my main use for GURPS materials is to get ideas for or even convert them over into HERO, so I can use virtually everything without balance issues. It would be kind of funny to convert GURPS into GURPS, though.

 

I agree that GURPS is more beginner friendly (at least for players, not so much for GMs) but the challenges of running a multi-genre game are considerable. However, that's probably true for any system, unless it's built around a specific and detailed multi-genre universe.

 

As for non-standardization with point costs, this is rooted in GURPS's assumption of a particular level of commonality of certain abilities in the game worlds in which they are likely to appear. In game worlds where they are more or less common, point costs need to be adjusted. The experienced GURPS GM can usually achieve this by applying a set multiplier to the point costs of every ability in the affected class, or by the use of the deliberately ill-defined 'unusual background' advantage, which exists for precisely that purpose.

 

Somebody else in this thread argued that abilities should be priced by their effectiveness, not by rarity. In reality though, effectiveness is affected by rarity. Somebody who had high powered magic (especially mind affecting magic) in the real world, for example, could probably end up ruling the world, assuming they had the intelligence and subtlety to use it most effectively. It is valid to take rarity into account. The problem is, GURPS makes some assumptions about rarity that just don't hold true for every game world.

 

If every ability could really be measured by a number of dice of 'damage', ability pricing would be easy and infallible. Unfortunately that's not the case. In a world where (for example) mind affecting abilities are so rare hardly anybody possesses any adequate defence against them, their prices would be totally out of proportion with mere 'damage dealing' abilities, even in HERO system.

[GamePhil]

Originally posted by Realms of Chaos

Somebody else in this thread argued that abilities should be priced by their effectiveness, not by rarity. In reality though, effectiveness is affected by rarity.

 

Effectiveness can be affected by rarity, true, although GURPS goes too far in saying that rarity must always cost extra. In a game world in which rarity is an advantage, in HERO I'd charge a Perk or apply an Advantage on the Power (or Skill, for that matter), in the same way Unusual Background works in GURPS.

[Ron]

Many of the perceived problems with GURPS are from the fact that GURPS sells itself as a generic system, which it is not. At least, not in the way that HERO is generic. GURPS is rather a modular system. Need magic? Take GURPS Magic. Different one? Allright, experiment GURPS Voodoo. Theres little effort of making costs standardized along all supplements.

 

I was a great supporter of GURPS in the past and I still think it is a good game. However, as supplements got released, GURPS became increasely difficult to play, due to the lack of standardization and the option for exhaustive listing everything. Compared to HERO, GURPS' advantage/disadvantage lists are huge. Instead of giving guidelines to the GM price specific mental or physical advantages/disadvantages, they tried to list every single one. There was a point that I gave up this insanity. I still think that GURPS do stats better than HERO, which I think has too many. But that's it. I don't see any other compeling advantage of GURPS.

[OddHat]

Originally posted by Ron

I still think that GURPS do stats better than HERO, which I think has too many. But that's it. I don't see any other compeling advantage of GURPS.

 

I see one; well designed specific settings. GURPS world books almost always do a very good job of describing worlds and campaigns in great detail, and carefully develop logical alternatives for those settings. Look at GURPS Voodoo; you have a clear and well conceived world history, a bunch of alternative campaign ideas, a very flexible magic system, and a few well written examples of play.

 

IMO Hero System: Champions certainly trumps GURPS Supers if you don't want to end up doing a lot of hand waving to keep characters alive or to get just the effect you're looking for, but GURPS Wildcards and IST and their companion books are well done; both make for good sources to adapt to Hero System.

[tetsujin28]

Originally posted by Seenar

GURPS pretends to be what Hero actaully is, and gets all the limelight.

Oh, please. This is just silly.

[Sketchpad]

Originally posted by tetsujin28

Unfortunately, GURPS Supers is one of the worst books they ever put out, even when they revised it.

 

I agree 100% ... which is too bad because love the GURPS system (especially the Horror genre book)

[Kintara]

Well, I have used the GURPS Supers rules, and it worked passably. That doesn't mean that I think it is good. I'm mostly bringing it up to say that it is playable, at least in the right game. Of course the game I played it in was a gritty one during the Cold War, where desperate Americans and Russians turned people into supers at the expense of the poor person's sanity and freedom. In fact, I'd say it was rather Cthulhuesque.