Session #4 – Fight in the woods
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.
I just discovered the blog via RPG Tips, and what do I find? A call for GURPS players. GURPS being the system that I’ve sworn by for the past, oh I don’t know, 18 years or so, I guess I qualify. 8)
(Admittedly, I’m stuck on 3rd edition and never quite warmed to the 4th, so what I have to say may or may not be applicable to you. Caveat Emptor.)
The reason why I love GURPS is twofold: it’s got a solid core but is wonderfully open-ended. Actually, that “but” should probably be an “and”; it’s the core mechanic itself which allows the openness.
GURPS is like a really good physics engine in a computer game. You can build any kind of game around it, and it’ll work the same way every time. The flipside is that it’ll work the same way every time! In a setting where the laws of physics need tweaking, the engine itself needs to be tweaked, and that’s not always easy. GURPS isn’t the ideal system for supers or mecha, for instance.
But it excels at fantasy. Admittedly, it probably won’t be the D&D kind of fantasy where wizards are puny but cast blistering magic and warriors can absorb dozens of blows. It’s more like, you know, real life, where a dagger in the ribs REALLY HURTS (but defending against a three-foot sword with the same dagger is probably not a good idea).
Okay, okay. I’ll stop ranting now. Keep up the good gaming!
Nice site man, picked up some nuggets here…just can’t wait for Cataclysm, I saw a rumor that it’s going to be coming out Nov 2010, though with Blizzard you can never tell :/
Hello. Fantastic job, if I wasn’t so busy with my school work I read your full site. Thanks!