GURPS Fantasy

**pawsplay** · 10-22-2007, 09:50 PM

I have very fond memories of my 1st and 3rd edition fantasy campaigns. There were some quirks I had to iron out, but actually, most of those have been addressed by the new edition. One of my best campaigns was a banestorm dropping a section of Disneyland into Yrth. It only halted when my mother overheard a rape and kidnapping plot by one of the dark elves, and banned me from RPGs...

**Holocron** · 10-23-2007, 12:49 AM

Geez, thats pretty messed up. Everyone knows darkelves don't want anything to do with non-elvish women, and then they wouldn't do anything like that to a fellow elf. The whole plot is absurd!

Ok, geek factor aside I ran into a case where my mom didn't want to play a RPG, Vampire the Masquerade specifically because one of my friends gave it to me for Christmas, and she looked through it a little. She didn't really like the subject matter, and made me give it back and didn't want me to play it. A little later we were able to think for ourselves and realized it wasn't really about the kind of stuff she thought it was.

**pawsplay** · 10-25-2007, 09:03 AM

Originally Posted by Holocron

Geez, thats pretty messed up. Everyone knows darkelves don't want anything to do with non-elvish women, and then they wouldn't do anything like that to a fellow elf. The whole plot is absurd!

Uh, ok. Personally, I like to have a little depth in my characters, but if you want all dark elves to act like cardboard cutouts that is ok by me. The involved characters had their reasons, that is about all I have to say about that.

**Holocron** · 10-26-2007, 12:40 AM

Hahaha! You responded so seriously, I was partly kidding there.

I think a more significant issue than depth of darkelves personality is the subject matter. Call me a pansy, but most of our gaming was pretty much in the PG-13 realm. We had one guy carrying out some stuff similar to your dark elves, but he was acting alone and specifically playing a character as evil as possible. Even then we glossed over the details, he was sort of like "oh and by the way I do 'that', because it would be evil."

I'm surprised that in hindsight you haven't concluded that the main topic of the adventure probably wasn't appropriate.

**pawsplay** · 10-26-2007, 07:56 PM

Originally Posted by Holocron

Hahaha! You responded so seriously, I was partly kidding there.

I think a more significant issue than depth of darkelves personality is the subject matter. Call me a pansy, but most of our gaming was pretty much in the PG-13 realm. We had one guy carrying out some stuff similar to your dark elves, but he was acting alone and specifically playing a character as evil as possible. Even then we glossed over the details, he was sort of like "oh and by the way I do 'that', because it would be evil."

I'm surprised that in hindsight you haven't concluded that the main topic of the adventure probably wasn't appropriate.

Inappropriate why? It's nothing but prime time cop drama material. And it was just one of several events involved in the destabilization of the impromptu governing body.

**Holocron** · 10-27-2007, 01:07 AM

Oh sorry, it was sounding like it was the primary mission objective of the players. If it was in there to highlight how evil the player's enemies are, then game on.

**pawsplay** · 10-28-2007, 05:10 PM

If you're using GURPS Magic and/or GURP Banestorm, you don't need GURPS Fantasy. It might be handy, but it's not necessary. If you do have GURPS Fantasy, you also have more value, since it can be used as inspiration for dozens of campaigns, and includes a sample campaign as a bonus.

**michael** · 08-28-2009, 11:21 AM

Originally Posted by pawsplay

I have very fond memories of my 1st and 3rd edition fantasy campaigns. There were some quirks I had to iron out, but actually, most of those have been addressed by the new edition. One of my best campaigns was a banestorm dropping a section of Disneyland into Yrth. It only halted when my mother overheard a rape and kidnapping plot by one of the dark elves, and banned me from RPGs...

I laughed my butt off when I ready that.

**Bearfoot_Adam** · 08-30-2009, 12:54 AM

Am looking at starting a GURPS fantasy in the next couple weeks. So I'll let you know. Otherwise I'm kind of excited.

**Dark** · 08-30-2009, 07:39 AM

Hummm somuds promising.

**Eryiedes** · 11-14-2009, 08:46 PM

I converted many Dragonlance adventures for GURPS in the passed.
Even the Drow series and Against the Giants and had no player complaints.
The action wasn't different....just a heck of a lot faster....and fatigue is a bigger killer than ballista wielding giant.
Mind you the new GURPS - Dungeon Fantasy is pretty much their equivalent of the D20 D&D experience but when I had done my conversions, it was not available....(By a decade).
The latest D20 D&D 4E stuff is actually probably better played in D20...
Tactical mapping considerations aside...4E D&D encounters have been reduced to carefully balanced formula events that don't translate very well into GURPS due to discrepancies with hit points between the gaming systems...and the difference in the importance placed on defences between the two systems.
As long as you enjoy the "cinematic" flare...D&D should pose no problem to run in GURPS and will most likely play quite well "as is"...but high realism will require a great deal of toning down of the severity and occurance of encounters in even the lowest level of modules if there is to be any hope of the majority of hereos surviving to a second adventure.....these sort of games tend to chew up a LOT of NPC's.

Peace & Light

**trechriron** · 11-15-2009, 02:38 AM

There is a Dungeon Fantasy series for GURPS 4e. It's fantastic and really captures the D&D feel. There are now 7 supplements!

Another nifty series for a fantasy game is the Power-Ups series.

Thaumatology has great ideas for creating custom magic systems/styles and I highly recommend it for customizing out your world's magic.

Powers is a fantastic book that many of us consider the "3rd core book". This can help you stat out cool special abilities and powers you find in your D&D creatures and classes.

Also, when starting up a GURPS campaign, strongly consider filling out the campaign sheet. Thoroughly! Let the players know what kind of templates, advantages, disadvantages, skills, etc. you will allow/disallow. Makes character creation go a little faster and helps you get characters you will allow in play.

Happy GURPSing!

**Omegaman** · 01-06-2010, 02:52 PM

I have been running a fantasy game for several months now for my D&D group. At stopping points we break and then do several weeks of 3.5. Then we come back and keep going with the GURPS campaign. It has been a great time. My players pretty much all like and know D&D so they tend to play GURPS the same way. So our combats are often about running into the thick of it and hacking away at folks.

This is normally very dangerous in GURPS, but since I have seen what style my players enjoy, I have built the adventures around that. There is not a LOT of NPC targeting the vitals and such. I don't strictly worry about the no defense from behind, just because my players are not used to facing rules and they don't really like it when it catches them by surprise.

As we play, we introduce new rules, such as "deceptive attacks" and "extra effort", bit by bit as they players begin looking for new ways to use the rules.

Most of the PCs are not very 3 dimensional, not a lot of non-immediately useful skills, again a holdover from D&D I believe. The players are having a lot of fun though, and they are picking up a new game system and I am having a blast running a game where the PCs don't have 60hp. As our combat gets more deadly, they are getting a bit more cautious, and as they get into more in depth non combat encounters, they are starting to respect the "other" skills that are there.

I find that GURPS works excellent for fantasy. If you want lots of over the top battles which simulate D&D, just let them buy off HP damage with FT points. "it's only a scrape, or a fleshwound".

The best part of the game is that everyone's limit on character creation was, "something you would enjoy playing". So we have WOW warlocks, viking shaman, and psychic mercenaries, Elemental wizards and Stone cold medusai (pun intended) along with a telekinetic, living artifact weapon that possesses an inert body.

It's been a blast putting it together.

The thing I noticed about D&D going to GURPS. None of my players selected, Status, Wealth, Contacts, Allies, Dependents, or Rank. These are all the intangibles that are very GURPS but I don't think they are ready for that yet. Those abilities just look like point soaks to them. Of course, we started with 100pts so they didn't get to build supermen. They are up to about 160 or so now and climbing quickly. 2-5 CP per session.

Final note. GURPS is great for fantasy.

**trechriron** · 01-06-2010, 05:24 PM

Also, the new Treasure Tables supplement is out for Dungeon Fantasy. The new format for Pyramid is outstanding, I highly recommend them.

I hear that Low Tech and 3 PDFs supporting Low Tech are in Kromm's (Sean Punch) hands in edit. I can't wait, these should be excellent books!

**Holocron** · 01-07-2010, 06:55 AM

Sounds like you're having an awesome time Omegaman! I have very fond memories of my gurps fantasy campaign, and a lot of the things you speak about are some of the things I love about the system. The intangibles; rank, status, charisma... and the non-combat skillls and especially the lethality of the combat system... very nice. I used to have D&D fanatics try to tell me that D&D has everything that GURPS has, but your story just confirms for me that it doesn't.

The thing I like most about GURPS, is that you can make any kind of character you want. You're not limited by such unrealistic and restrictive things as "classes".

2-5 pts per session feels like a lot. I remember we would get 3-5 for full length adventures, that sometimes took as many as 5 sessions to finish... but, we were introduced to RPGs by a very pt stingy GM, so its what we were used to. As a GM, I personally like the pt awards every session, but in smaller amounts.

Glad its been an awesome game for you so far.