When taking the path away from only playing DnD/Pathfinder, the one thing that keeps me playing the monogame is the amount of character options and variety in creation, a lot of it is admittedly superfluous.
What are some other games with as many options as ADAD/3.5E/5E?
GURPS makes all those "options" look like the simplistic twaddle they really are. It has orders of magnitude more potential complexity for creating the most utterly bespoke characters imaginable; most of which straight out of the Basic Set.
GURPS really is the whole kitchen sink isn't it?
Can you play it in a semi-class based fashion by using templates?
As far as class based games go, I think it's D¨&D 3.5e and PF 1e really. Maybe use some external supplements to spice things up like Eclipse. An anon has been shilling in the 3.5egthread and it does look pretty cool.
It's often been said by GURPS players that one of the major faults of GURPS isn't its complexity, but its presentation.
The GM section really should be the first chapter of the Basic Set. Because all the player options that are presented are very rarely representative of all the options that will actually be allowed in any single game. The GM is expected to curate which options are available to PCs in his world, set limits where needed, and create templates that represent common archetypes of characters that exist in his game.
Yeah, character creation/progression is ass. It expects a lot of prepwork from the GM to make things go smoothly.
This is one of the factors. It is also bad because unless you are playing a supers game there aren`t many options per genre/type of character you want to create. If you are playing medieval fantasy all warriors are going to have very similar character sheets, for example.
>If you are playing medieval fantasy all warriors are going to have very similar character sheets, for example.
I simply cannot comprehend how you would reach that conclusion.
You can have characters that use a wide variety of weapons at a wide variety of ranges.
You can have characters that specialize at one to three weapons, and have a host of other useful Skills (maybe related to Leadership, Navigation, Survival...). Even inside a group of Warriors, you can have a whole bunch of specialists, each capable of a bunch of specific things no one else in the group does.
>If you are playing medieval fantasy all warriors are going to have very similar character sheets, for example.
I dunno. I've ran GURPS games with all "human male fighters" and they've all been distinct enough to the satisfaction of my group. The rules from GURPS Martial Arts provides lots of cool martial techniques to play with, and has good guidelines for making custom techniques. It and GURPS Powers also provides guidelines for using the highly customizable advantage system to create even more martial abilities. I've also adapted the rules from Psychotronic Generators for crafting magic weapons and tools, so the PCs are rarely lacking for new gear to try out. Although, by that point, you might consider that a "Supers" game. Then I'll admit, every game I play with GURPS is pretty much just a "Supers" game, because the advantage system just simply offers way too many options to let go to waste.
ultimately gurps is a game about skills, everything not skill related is utterly broken and unusable, while most skills are just "roll your dice to automatically succeed because why would you buy a low skill, then the gm makes up what happens".
the only part with actual design is combat, and even it isn't that great
absolutely useless game
Filtered
>... everything not skill related is utterly broken and unusable...
What exactly is there that you consider to even be "not Skill related"? You want to roll against an Attribute? Sure, you can do that. You have an Advantage or Disadvantage that's coming into play? You can do that too.
What on earth are you even talking about?
>Can you play it in a semi-class based fashion by using templates?
There are a number of options for this, but if you really want Classes right out of the box, you can always go with "Dungeon Fantasy RPG", which is just a Class-based skinning of GURPS. You can do things the slightly harder way, and start with "GURPS" and add the "GURPS Dungeon Fantasy" books to it, but if you never expect to play other genres, going with "Dungeon Fantasy RPG" and its direct supplements is the right way to go.
I've been told about dungeon fantasy before but not that it had straight up classes.
Cool.
Thank you for the info anon.
GURPS is entirely pointless twaddle though. It always feels like an uphill struggle to extract the slightest bit of fun out of its drudgery.
If you want to tackle the challenge of adventuring for what it is, and not just play some simplistic gamist or narrativist crap that barely even manages to get the cinematics right, GURPS is the right way to go.
GURPS is a nice game but its character creation and progression are pure ass.
My GURPS homebrew with different stats, careers and specializations is much better, points are actually balanced and there's multiple paths to choose instead of just "max dex and two skills + combat reflexes".
I've always seen it the exact opposite. Creation is amazing, allowing you to create anything imaginable. The actual gameplay is shite however. It's tedious and painful.
>The actual gameplay is shite however. It's tedious and painful.
Please do get specific.
Skills are fine. It's the combat that is incredibly autistic and takes forever. Every single action is an entire round. Declare. Draw. Aim. Fire. Dodge.
You avoided combat like the plague, not because it was incredibly deadly (which it was), but because it was a pain in the ass.
>... instead of just "max dex and two skills + combat reflexes"
Sincerely, why are you trying to max an Attribute and just two Skills, when you could be making a much more versatile character capable of so many other things, for a fraction of the points? You do know that there are diminishing returns as you increase the effectiveness of any given Skill Roll, right? You'd get so much more gameplay value by succeeding in so many other things for the meager cost of failing one other key thing just once or twice.
>careers
Not usually a thing in GURPS. It can be done in it, but it's by no means a default thing. The "GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Career Guide" has some Dungeon Fantasy specific examples, though.
As far as "homebrew with different stats", you can find recommendations for that in "GURPS Power-Ups 9".
>A system designed around the 3d6 bell curve operates around the 3d6 bell curve
... what are you even trying to argue here?
It's like complaining that DnD is a class-and-level system or that CoC rules aim at horror.
>... what are you even trying to argue here?
A bell curve by it's very nature means some results are vastly more likely than others, this means you can predict the results of every roll with reasonable accuracy. And that is some cowardly horse shit.
>I have no idea how GURPS works
>I am also pretty bad at probabilities
... thanks for sharing, I guess?
You need Ultra-Lite to be handled to you, or you can find it on your own, so you won't be spewing utter nonsense?
I know everything I need to about how it works. That's why I don't play it.
This applies to just about any fricking skill system and vast majority of roll under/over games, too, you dumb fricking moron. Even those without bells in their design. Did you drop out of school in 5th grade or something? Hell, this complain even affects fricking DnD - you can "predict" a greater chance of success when having higher stats. You just can't be this stupid, you fricking homosexual baiter
I wonder what sort of meltdown you would have when playing Hollow Earth Expedition (and other Ubiquity-based games), where you don't even have to roll and can use a fixed outcome that comes from your Stat-Skill-Gear combo. You know, the one where you not so much can predict the outcome, but know it ahead, so you can just push forward whenever your character should be able to simply power through the obstacle
Or Broken Compass, where there is a wildly swingy roll, but you can re-roll it without any consequences 5 times, until you get that outcome you wished for. And if that fails - just burn (or rather "burn") the coin token, which will automatically offer you a success and has 50% chance of staying with you (since it's a literal coin toss)
If you're that triggered by bell curves, you can just use a d20. It's the easiest thing to change. I let my players choose which god to cast their lot with when they start each game. Most of them opt for the stability of the 3d6. A few embrace chaos and cling to the 1d20.
>playing GURPS with a d20
I can't imagine what that would be like, supposing you keep the numbers for critical success/failure mostly the same. At high skill in normal GURPS, you have a 10% of critical success, and a 0.5% chance of critical failure. With a d20, you'd have a 30% chance of critical success, and a 15% chance of critical failure. That's just insane. Your d20 players must be constantly on a roller coaster experiencing the highest highs and the lowest lows.
It would be almost unchanged, but how would you know, if you never played it nor bothered to familiarize yourself with the rules
The problem with GURPS is that it falls apart when you introduce too many disparate parts. Supers/Sci-Fi/Western/Cyberpunk doesn't work real well.
That's why I prefer HERO.
>Supers/Sci-Fi/Western/Cyberpunk
Out of curiosity, how would you run this sort of game in HERO?
Because I'm pretty much running this in GURPS right now, and haven't run into many issues so far.
Though, I did have to do tons of tweaking to get the system into a desirable state.
>Nechronica
>Dark Heresy
>Sword World
>Goblin Slayer
>Hulks and Horrors
>Shadow of the Demon Lord
>Mechwarrior (2nd Ed is best)
That a good enough start?
>Shadow of the Demon Lord
That's a good one, and the facet that you progress after certain breakpoints by choosing a new class (paths?) really feels very D&D 3.5eish, at least for me, since I love the idea of prestige classes and multi-classing.
It's a far, far better implementation that PF1e's attempt at modelling every possible combination as a prebaked, railroaded archetype.
I will praise PF1e in that you can "multiclass" archetypes, kind of like substitution levels in 3.5e (which they basically are).
Anyhow, SotD sounds really fricking cool on paper, and pretty simple too.
Here's hoping I ever get the chance to use it.
Most of the games from the 80s and 90s.
oWoD, Shadowrun, Talislanta, Marvel Superheroes.
Traveller is older but the lifepath generation and various ways to go about it end up with all sorts of interesting variety.
You seem more like you mean character builds though.
Any game that isn't class-based will automatically have more options than any class-based system, while also simultaneously being far more concise and intuitive in its rules.
How’d you work that out?
NTA
but by playing classless and semi classless games I've come to the same conclusion.
>semi classless
I'm a ttrpg newbie (I'm still stuck in the D&D well for noe, 3.5e is my favorite). What are some semi-classless systems? Sounds like something I'd enjoy.
Don't know if anyone has defined the term before, but I was mostly thinking about Genesys and Barbarians of Lemuria. The first has careers, but those merely reduce the cost of improving a certain set of skills. The characters otherwise all have the same options, going by the vanilla rules.
BoL also has careers but this time they work as skills. There are some notable bonus mechanics for alchemists, priests, mages etc. but otherwise I'd say it's classles. I'm just sure some autist would have sperged out over the rules containing the word career.
>The first has careers, but those merely reduce the cost of improving a certain set of skills. The characters otherwise all have the same options, going by the vanilla rules.
I like that quite a bit.
Means that your character has a focus built into the mechanics but he is not disallowed from dabbing outside of that.
Yeah, I'm going to give that one a read. Thank you anon.
>irrelevant options
>characters without character or particularly distinct and thematic abilities
>just "imagine"
Restrictions foster creativity. Restrictios like class.
>Restrictions like class
So you agree.
on second read, yeah
I just happen to value the consequences of having classes more than the downsides
I think classes work well when they're custom-tailored by the GM to fit the setting, and are flexible enough to encompass all the different types of characters that should be able to exist within the world. We're just all jaded by the way D&D does it.
Yeah but how am I supposed to make a chef character and make him feel unique without a special feat that let's me create a number of dishes during a long rest equal to 4 + my proficiency bonus?
Are you fricking moronic?
Any skill based system.
The difference being that the options are less curated and thus less obvious/distinct compared to class.
I mean you could look at open systems that allow you to do basically anything you want.
Or systems that aren't class based were you can mostly build out your character to almost anything (within limits of the game). While not technically unlimited you have many thousands of mechanical options in such systems for making the character unique. And that is not even getting into the creativity on the role playing side of things.
Literally ANY fricking game, you dumb fricking moron.
But if you need specifics, then from the very fricking top of my head
>d100
Basic, CoC (particularly pre-7ed), WFRP, Ars Magica (for all the casters memorizing billion spells like morons they are)
>d6
GURPS, Twilight 2000 2.2ed, OVA
>custom
Ubiquity, FFG
Hell, even something so basic as FATE has more options due to the way how char-gen is done and how improving character is handled
And I'm intentionally skipping here d20 games, but if we really insist, then there are games made by Moebius for their 2d20 system.
homosexual, did you even bother to search on your own, or just came here to be spoon-fed?
This is pretty free on what you exactly want to be
> the amount of character options and variety in creation
You enjoy this useless bloat? You better keep out from TTRPGs with real options.
give Fabula Ultima a try
gameplay mechanics are built from the systems of Ryuutama
the game was designed with multiclassing in mind (you automatically start with 2-3 classes) so you can choose from among the numerous class options and find your own synergies
magic items have simple rules to build and flavor custom items to your heart's content
I don't get it, you you classless or not? WFRP is d100 and you can roll a soldier, a wizard or a beggar, nun or ratcatcher