The Scale of GURPS

[@DavidSmith-eb3pt]

I was a player in a GURPS 3e game with 4 other players. We got in a brawl with 4 dire wolves at the beginning of one of our sessions. It took almost 3 hours. It was the last time we played GURPS. I never considered scale. Im going to give it another look

[@CastleArchon]

Glad to hear it!

[@slaapliedje]

Much like most RPG systems, you definitely want to introduce the rules as you go. Like the first session probably should skip damage multipliers, and keep the combat to 'attack skill > defense > damage resistance > damage. When I first started playing, I'd read the rules like a year before (had to wrap up the D&D game and then convince the players to play GURPS) and forgot most of the rules. But this does simplify things a lot. Introduce hit locations and multipliers after people are more used to it. We've been playing 4e/DFRPG and I threw an ettin against the 4 players. Within the first round, the ettin knocked one PC down to negative hitpoints and he went down like a chunk of meat... and then the wizard tossed his fireball, and the knight took a hefty swing and got a critical hit. Ettin was out in one turn... The group of giant spiders they fought on the next session took about 3 hours, but that's because there were a lot of them in different areas... I don't think they even killed them all either...

[@aqrxv]

For dungeon adventurers in GURPS I usually ran it with a party of three players each with one character, plus another GM-controlled ally NPC, with their typical opposition being 1-2 major monsters e.g a dragon or vampire or whatever, or about 5-6 lesser foes like orcs, goblins, or whatever.. This is about the same level I'd use in a TFT solo adventure (where one person has to run everything). That didn't really bog down, even using advanced combat and a hexgrid and miniatures, which is what I did. In contrast, when I was running old school OSR games (AD&D 1st or Basic D&D rules), I'd be fairly comfortable engaging a party of 5-6 PCs with a group of 20-30 orcs, kobolds or whatever. Of course, I was very familiar with both GURPS and D&D. I didn't use miniatures for those, just theatre of the mind, though sometimes placed figures on a chess board or something for marching order. TFT in non-solo adventures I was comfortable with a party of 3-5 PCs vs. about 5-8 opponents, a bit more than GURPS, played on a hex grid with counters. With TFT I rarely exceeded that not because the game couldn't handle it but because TFT rules (no defenses like in GURPS, weaker armor) make outnumbering the enemy much more powerful. But I feel TFT is about 1/2 as complex as GURPS and OSR D&D at levels 1-6 about 1/4 as complex, but this rises dramatically with 3e or later with higher level characters, map-based play, and much more complex feat and power builds, and the much more resilient monsters. Traveller scaling I felt was about the same as OSR D&D in terms of difficulty, I want dropped a group of 40 NPCs against the party with eight players, it took 3 hours to play, on a grid, took 3 hours but was fun for all.

[@CastleArchon]

@@aqrxv thanks for the detailed explanation! You certainly have a lot of experience. The reason I went back into this dive of groups is because I wanted to try to take things from it over to tft, which you may have seen in a previous video. The verdict is I think I'm going to leave things the way they are and let gurps be gurps and let the fantasy trip be the fantasy trip.

[@slaapliedje]

This is an idea I've floated around, but currently only have 4 players, so haven't really needed to do this. But to scale up more players, and keep the action flowing. Use the combat cards. There are cards you can order from Warehouse23, they have all of the combat maneuvers on them. You have the players pick their maneuvers / targets. Give them X amount of time for them all to decide. Then you have them place whichever card they're going to use down, then go clockwise for their turns. They should have declared their targets before calculating everything out. This would give the fast paced 1 second per turn feeling they were going for, and not really allow changes until the next turn. This means that if PC 1 was able to shoot and take down an opponent on their phase, and PC3 was shooting at that same one, then either the shot flies over their lifeless body, or they could shoot them while they're on the ground (which of course gives them bonuses or penalties if they're behind cover now). I feel this would definitely hype up tension in battles too. Everyone sitting around the table and trying to decide what they want to do on their turn slows down any kind of game. Pathfinder 2e is a perfect example of this, since each character has three different actions they can do, it isn't always so simple / quick to go through them.

[@SeekersHollow]

Great point, couldn’t agree more. At 2-3 characters it’s brilliant fun and the details make the experience so rich and rewarding. At 4-5 it bogs down immediately. I’ve only been playing DFRPG, which of course is a bit more streamlined, but I still feel the same way.

[@CastleArchon]

I have really believed that if people were introduced to the game with this in mind it would retain a lot more players.

[@fpassow1]

Awesome! I didn't know people were still playing Starlet Battles. I played back in the late 80's but hadn't heard of it since then.

[@CastleArchon]

Yes they do, although I think a lot of people have moved to Federation Commander, which is the same game from Stephen V. Cole, just reimagined and streamlined. You can get it here... warehouse23.com/search?q=federation&options%5Bprefix%5D=last

[@Coriandr]

I once ran a game for 8 characters. That was so tedious. Some people weren't even playing when other were active. And yes they do Warhammer Epic, but now it called Legiones Imperialis and it's set in times of Horus Heresy.

[@slaapliedje]

I was playing for a long time (before Covid hit) a cyberpunk game that grew from 4 to 6 players. It never really bogged down during combat. Ha, it was bogging down a bit when they were sitting for a few sessions trying to plot how to kidnap a girl from a hospital...

[@hrothgarrannulfr1972]

Thank you. Good video. Good topic. Does GURPS have rules to handle larger scale battles?

[@CastleArchon]

It has rules for Mass battles. It does have suggestions for larger battles, and you can even use the basic combat system which would improve things a little bit.

[@slaapliedje]

A friend and I have long discussed doing a 'Hamburger Hill' scenario. We'd just create some templates for characters, soldier, radio, medic, etc. Then try to take a hill with dugouts for machine guns and other infantry. We haven't done it yet, but there for sure are a lot of rules for burst fire and the range / speed / modifier would get memorized fairly quickly in such an event... But otherwise, yes, this would be a large scale battle...