of Dice and Dragons » GURPS

Session #4 – Fight in the woods

Scot Newbury — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 04:02:07 +0000

This past weekend we enjoyed our fourth session playing GURPS – our second with a live campaign running and we picked up where we had left off, in the woods behind the inn we had just littered with bodies.

Once in the woods we managed to recover a bit from our wounds, find ourselves a place to hole up to gain a tactical advantage and waited on the group of villagers, who happened to be possessed, to approach. As they got closer we formalized a plan which would involve my Battle Mage snuffing out their torch thereby allowing those who were better in combat to wade in and eliminate our opponents – at least that was the plan.

The torch snuff went well, the warrior types waded in but what became the top discussion point of the night was how, after last week’s beating, my Battle Mage managed to not only hold his own but to in effect drive off the leader of the pursuing party. Yes, you read that right a mage caused the leader to leave the battle field but not with magic – with his staff. It seemed a bit out of place for that to occur to us but looking back on it my mage has the ability to do d6+2 points of damage with his staff not much by d20 standards but with 3 hits would kill a mage of equal power level in GURPS.

I think GURPS is beginning to grow on me. I like the active defense system, armor is used for damage reduction and the pace of combat is a lot faster than what I’m use to from my d20 days – all welcome and a bit refreshing. I also like the fact that as a spellcaster I’m only limited by my spell list and fatigue, which is recovered reasonably fast, so there is a lot more flexibility which is something that’s always good.

Are you a GURPS player? I’d love to hear your stories and comments.

May your dice roll well.

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Let the Fireballs Fly

Scot Newbury — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 16:10:32 +0000

So after a couple of sessions dealing with character generation we finally started up our GURPS campaign and it felt good to be back playing again.

For those that read my last post (Our first night of GURPS) you may recall that I was considering changing my character, a Battle Mage, out but after consideration I decided to stick with him as I thought it would be a good idea ot get some game time in and understand a bit more about the system before I make a major change.

The session was a bit slow going when we first started which tends to happen with any new campaign especially with a new system, and new characters. We also swamped out Game Masters this time around as well so we had some adjustments to make there as well – nothing serious just a different style. An interesting side note, our current GM was the only one at the table without a laptop proving that you can indeed game without one.

On the whole it was an enjoyable evening and it helped me get a better feel of the game. I do feel that some areas like the active defenses instead of a static defense were initially difficult to work into the flow of the game but once we got comfortable playing (our group as been D&D and d20 for 10+ years) seemed second nature. The magic system was also a nice change, no more prep work just select the spell and cast – as long as you still have the ability to (stinking fatigue points). I did managee to shoot off a fireball or two during the session, interesting mechanic, roll vs. the spell skill to cast and then roll to hit – nothing is automatic.

While I’m not a convert at this point I will say that I’m willing to give GURPS some more time as I think once you master the rules you need to understand the game can be quite enjoyable.

May your dice roll well!

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Our first night of GURPS

Scot Newbury — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 16:32:35 +0000

So this past Friday we took the plunge and moved onto GURPS. In the comments for my last post, On to GURPS, Brian said the following:

Keep in mind that playing GURPS is like eating a cow: you never want to down the whole thing at once, and there will almost certainly be bits you never have any interest in consuming. Don’t try to cram the whole thing into your head, ever. Just learn what you need, and move from there.

At the time I agreed with him based on what I had read in the rulebooks but after spending a few hours with my group working up characters I can truly understand where he is coming from.

To build a character you need to understand a fair amount of the system and we did spend a lot of time discussing different options, skills and how things work so that we could begin to make character decisions. During the course of the night I settled into a template character, the Battle Wizard, and started to scope out a character background that would work with the choices I was making regarding the advantages and disadvantages given to me. I do have to say that after working my way through that template I’ve begun to better understand the system and I’m looking forward to a session where we get to some role-playing and roll-playing.

Of course, after going through the Battle Wizard I’m now starting to as that question, “What would happen if I did . . . .” So it looks like I may rework the character a bit, keeping the same concept and role within the group but with my own stamp on the base character.

For those that know GURPS here’s the parameters I’m allowed:

Character points – 200
Disadvantages – no more that 75 points total, no single mental disadvantage worth more than 15
Tech Level is set to 3
Work from Basic Characters, Fantasy and Banestorm

I’ll post the character when I get the next version done.

May your dice roll well.

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