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A couple of recommendations: The meat and taters are under the Content Stuff menu. GURPS players, check out what's at The GURPS Diner. (The house special is GULLIVER, an easy rules expansion for creating and playing odd-sized creatures.) To see the lunch, dinner, wine, and kids' menus all at once, peek at the site map. (Oh, and here are secret menu items for niche diners: all kinds of articles related to game design, plus a secret stash of d20 hooch.) Take your time; the busboy will be along shortly to clear you a place.
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The GURPS Diner
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The GURPS Diner became part of the Games Diner around 2005. Most of that old content has been reworked into this new site (but see GULLIVER rules expansion for GURPS for links to the old GULLIVER for 3e).
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Comments
Hello and congrats!
Hi,
I stumbled on this webpage searching for ideas to help me decide if I should switch from GURPS to Burning Wheel (another RPG by the Mouse Guard's author).
I really like new ideas behind the BW, but in terms of the rules coherency and clarity and source materials - GURPS is still the best for me. And I like many ideas here to make GURPS games better.
So I think I will stick to GURPS and try to implement the "big picture" ideas from these new systems, like:
- deciding when to roll - kudos for your article on that
- duel of wits - that's a mini-game that should be doable within GURPS and I think it would bring a lot of fun to games
- Beliefs, Traits and Instincts - I think of requiring the players to have 2-3 Perks committed to Beliefs and incresing the amount of Perks to 6, so that they may have 3 other for Traits, Instincts and GURPS Perks
- Test-based skill advancement - I wonder how it would turn out in play, lots of bookkeeping
- Artha (reward points for players, not sure what their name in Mouse Guard is) - I think it might bring more fun by players having such points to boost the tests they find important, instead of giving more character points for good role-playing
Anyway, I'm glad to have found your website!
Combining GURPS with other systems
Hello hello! The ideal would be to take all you like from GURPS and combine it with all you like from Burning Wheel (or even other systems). It's not so hard to do when the parts to be combined don't overlap closely but rather cover very different areas - say, GURPS' simulation crunchiness + BW's ideas on heroic dice rolling and test-based skill advancement. Fortunately for you, Ben Finney's written two articles on just those topics.
On the duel of wits topics, you've probably seen other games offer detailed sub-systems for such things. I'm not sure about BW... I think Riddle of Steel has something... and I know I've seen versions elsewhere. GURPS scores on nice simplicity here, with its easy Contests, but I know some players enjoy more detailed systems, similar to combat rules. I've never developed any such thing myself in detail; are there any specific ideas or goals you have in mind?
Beliefs etc: I agree, encouraging players to flesh out PCs with these is a great thing. A few beliefs or motivations are much more important than a few Quirks related to clothing preferences, pet phrases, etc. But wouldn't beliefs, too, generally be Quirks (or if powerful, Delusions etc.) and not Perks?
Thanks for writing, and please mine the site for anything interesting you can find!
Combining GURPs and other systems
Hi tbone,
my posting frequency more less conveys my approach to gaming - quite casual :)
The article on heroic dice rolling is good, but it misses on point that is important IMHO. The moment when a players receives a boon (in BW's case - "Artha") for roleplaying (e.g. based on said Beliefs) and how this boon can be used to boost his chances in a roll. In GURPS, character points are the boon, but granting them has little potential for a story. Give a player something which he can use only when rolling (which assumes a conflict, challenge or risk) and you create opportunities for these elements in your story. That's why I like the underlying mechanic of BW - it revolves around Artha (the boon), Beliefs and Instincts (roleplaying ways to get the boon) and the test-based advancement.
Now, I'd rather keep Beliefs and Instincts as cheap Perks, but reward role-playing them with a said boon (a bonus to a roll). BW has three levels of Artha - the more your roleplaying sets you back, the more powerful boon you receive.
I like social conflict subsystems because - in a casual group - it helps everyone in shaping interesting and often funny dialogues. It's like a brainstorming tool to help you generate ideas. And since it gets similarly detailed as combat, it shifts the emphasis of the game. Now interesting conflicts that require players to plan their approach and make decisions can be found in social situations - not only in combat. Focus on combat in most systems can get boring.
Regarding developing such a thing, I'd be happiest if I could see a relatively direct port of BW's 'duel of wits' to GURPS. The scripting mechanic there, where you choose your next rhetorical action without knowing what action your opponent chooses, leads to many funny dialogues. I think this subsystem is available for free from the Burning Wheel page, if anyone's interested.
Regarding combat, there is a nice amalgam of combat rules from BW and the Riddle of Steel... unfortunately I cannot find it at the moment.
PS. I'm sorry, but I couldn't get paragraphs to work... <p> tags are there in my html :-/ Using Firefox.
Moved comment
Thanks for the thoughtful comment! I'm moving my reply to the MERC page, where the discussion fits nicely. Please jump here.
Sorry about the paragraph troubles. I edited the allowable HTML tags to include <p>, so perhaps you won't have the trouble now... in fact, perhaps now your comment is showing up with more paragraphs than you actually wanted? That's my fault in configuration; sorry again! I hope the problem is now permanently fixed for future posts.
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