GURPS General

>non-lethally
There's other combinations in the Fairbairn book.
For exotica, maybe garrote or poisons.

I'll probably reduce it to FP loss every 4 hours. Riding in a bumpy wagon should be tiring, but not completely exhausting.

Temporary wounded disadvantage on butt.

So how do you guys handle $ in your TL3-ish games? I feel I might be a bit cheap when it comes to handing out $ to my players. After 6 sessions I believe that they've amassed a total of 2000$ divided between 6 characters, with those players with highest social rank gaining the most of it. In-game there has only passed a couple of weeks or so since we started. They've gained some gear and contacts though. It just makes me feel all warm inside when they have to make decisions on what to spend their hard earned silver on.

>Why is Overweight designed in a way that makes it purely beneficial for combat characters? The downsides really seem to be outweighed by the upsides.

They really should have added rules that you need bigger armour, which would make it a lot less tempting.

>Quick GURPSGEN question, what is the best way to take down a guard/paroling solider silently? Assume you can get close from behind via stealth, what next?

Basically do enough damage to cause instant unconsciousness, which typically requires a swung attack at the back of the neck (usually with a heavy cutting blade), a stab in the vitals with a big, sharp blade (ideally a spear or similar) or getting through the skull and any helmet worn. Then be sure that there is a second guy to grab him before he falls over and makes a noise that way or hold him up on the blade you just stabbed him with.

For non-lethal sentry disposal, you need a whole mob of guys. You need to at least cover the mouth and pin both arms to prevent the alarm being sounded. Ideally have a guy dedicated to securing the weapon too (especially if it's a firearm, which can usually make a hell of a noise with only a finger twitch) and another to apply a choke hold (in a pinch the guy covering the mouth can also apply the choke).

What's a good fantasy setting to play with GURPS?

Warhammer Fantasy. A Dungeon Fantasy world with a randomly generated map. The Edge Chronicles.

I'm about to start a fantasy campaign and I'm basically making up the setting as I go.

ASOIAF unironically. Most of your players will know of it. Depending on a couple of factors they may even think it's a good setting for a game. There's a wiki or two with loads of basic information. Have your guys play as low ranking knights, maybe of the same custom made house, and their retinues a couple of decades before Roberts Rebellion. Add some administrative elements and have them do what they can to ensure their House's survival.

So, I know this is spelled out somewhere in the book but I got people coming over for chargen and I dont have any free time left to find out.

Does it cost points to learn spells? I know it does to train up the related skills but didnt see anything in the magic section reflecting point costs.

youtube.com/watch?v=jrtZJjHLeao
Is this an AoA (Double): Throw rock with Throwing skill followed by runaround attack?

Default magic spells are just like any other hard or very hard skill.

In default magic you buy spells the same way as you buy skills.

This looks more like *teleports behind you*

Ok, so treat it as a hard skill for the purpose of learning it? Do you use IQ or Magery as the baseline? Thanks guys.

Just like learning hard skill, yes. IQ + Magery.

Awesome, now I wont look incompetent trying to explain this to my players.

If you're new to the game, have you considered abour running Ein Arris first?
Magic is a little complicated and adds too many "moving parts" so I wouldn't recommend using it for the first games. Ein Arris is a nice little adventure book in a setting with no explicit magic.

Seems more like repeated feints with both axe and rock (can you feint with a throwing weapon... it certainly seems plausible in real life) until block is low enough for the rock to get through, then a rock to the head causing stun for a second or so (lost in the camera cut) which is enough time for him to get around to the back.

Never heard of it. Unfortunately Im pretty committed to it at this point, players are excited about the concept and what theyve got planned out.

Thankfully Its a low-mid magic setting so magic shouldnt present a huge problem. Just got one of the players is going to be playing a cleric type for healing and buffs.

Damn ancient space bending vikings, why can't they be normal like everybody else?

I'm not native english speaker so I wasn't recognizing those feints as, well, Feints. Didn't specifically about it but I was wondering how gurps would model those threats and after realizing it's just a feint I'm feeling quite dumb.

Some animal allies in DF5 has discriminatory smell but they have low IQ, how do they even use it with only about 10% chance of success?

Are you taking into account the +4 from routine use?

Can I use the Akimbo perk with black powder pistols?

Sure, you can even use it with two handed melee weapons.

Unfortunately you can't, you have to specialize by one handed weapon skill.

>Use it

Most animals have low IQ but 10+ Perception. Sense rolls are based on Per, so is Tracking and even Survival.

Discriminatory Smell calls for an IQ roll to learn the smell for future identification i.e. recogmizing someone or tracking a specific individual through a high-traffic area.

Sometimes I forget Warcraft is not all about super marines vs orcs. I remember I playes a little of Warcraft 3 when young and enjoyed it, though I was pretty bad at it. Will check there lore.
Never heard of The Edge Chronicles but I'll take a look at it too. Thanks!
Could you elaborate, I like this approach but I'm bad at coming up with something without some kind of seed.
I have to admit I'm prejudiced against ASOIAF, all I've ever heard about it is that it's gritty because violence and sex so I have this imagine in my head of some juvenile edgy novel. I'm probably wrong but I have no immediate intention of picking up the books. The best thing I've heard about it is that it's similar to HBO's Rome, which I like a lot.

Alright, first draft of the Big Lizardman is done. I ended running low on money, which makes sense, so I ended up taking Horn armor due to a combination of cheapness and my high ST making the insane weights usable.

ASOIAF is pretty good. There isn't really much sex in the books, and it's an interesting enough setting. I wouldn't really call it edgy, but it does have that kind of pseudo-realism that can get annoying if you aren't into it. However, the TV show based on it is pretty shit.

That's honestly the most reasonable reply I got for expressing my prejudice against the series. Usually it's more aggressive and bad fandom is another thing that draws me away from something. Your refreshing response alone makes me more inclined to pick the book eventually. Thanks for the heads up about the TV series.
Speaking of TV shows, what do you think about the Vikings show? No, I don't have anything against the show, it's just that I never had the time to pick it up.

Not him, but the one friend I have that’s really into it also beats off to the GoT TV show due to “muh brutal realism,” and going by his account it’s more of the same bullshit.

First season was good, second season was okay, and the third season was terrible. I didn't watch anything past that.

Are there rules for an alcoholic drinking Rubbing Alcohol in extreme desperation?

I like him, seems like a cool dude. 10/10 would adventure with

I really like that GURPS lite zombie addon, it was a great way to introduce friends to the game without drowning them in books upon books of hand picked rules (it's kinda discouraging to say "Yeah, just use the lethal gun rules from GURPS action 3" to a new player)

Are there any other similar PDF's for other genres?

Nice character, clean and straightforward. I should take note, my characters ends up so convoluted...
Back to the topic, you could save a few bucks by making your gear Crude. You can check the details in the DF Denizens Barbarians book but the gist of it is that you can scratch off 20% of any equipment but in turn it has absolutely no resell value and non-barbarians using those gets the same reaction penalty as if they had Social Stigma (Barbarian). Speaking of which, that book has an alternative template for barbarians called Savage Barbarians, which is a more combat centric template, which might fit your character better.
You're one point short. IIRC SS (Monster) gives intimidation bonus so you might reduce intimidation to [1] from [2] or reduce Stealth, your big size makes it unlikely to be very useful anyway.

I have never played GURPS before (pretty much only dnd 3.5 and 5e) and want to GM it for a group of people who have also never played it. Just give it to me straight: Do I HAVE to read the full 500+ page basic set? Also, with so many rules in play, how will I be able to effectively refer back to them? Should I skip the gurps lite book entirely if I need to read the whole basic set anyway?

Mild poisoning, so call it HT -1 to resist 1 damage with a hourly cycle and an hour onset time. Side effect of blindness if you lose more then 3/4ths your HP.

>Do I HAVE to read the full 500+ page basic set?
Nope. Read GURPS Lite.

>Also, with so many rules in play, how will I be able to effectively refer back to them?
It's easy to refer to GURPS Lite, and Basic Set is built as a reference book exactly for the purpose of referring to it in play.

>Should I skip the gurps lite book entirely if I need to read the whole basic set anyway?
GURPS Lite makes reading Basic Set much easier. Lite with the full equipment and combat chapters and hit locations is my personal bare minimum for play, which is pretty minimal.

>Have to?

No. It's a privilege and a pleasure. But seriously you can get by using the rules in lite for a long time and many games. The first big ass book is really only needed to understand some things about characters and stats in the first chapter, the rest is all about creation. If you want to run the game you can skim it.

>So many rules in play

When in doubt, 3d6 and if they roll under the stat or skill, it works. Lite pretty much works that way. The first 100 pages of the second book covers pretty much everything you will ever need.

Out of curiosity, what kind of game were you thinking about running?

Likely Star Wars to start off since that is something most of my friends are interested in. Personally only watched new movies like a week ago and don't care much for them, but should still be fun. I really want to learn the system so I can use it for other settings in the future, though.

Noted, I will probably get by with lite in the beginning and skim/refer to basic set over time.

The vast majority of the first book is taken uo by character options—scan over these, but you don’t need to read every single entry in depth let alone memorize them all any more than a D&D GM needs to memorize every single feat, skill, spell, and class feature.

You really should read as much of Campaigns as you can, though, excluding the Infinite Worlds chapter. Campaigns is the equivalent to D&D’s DMG. You should also take a look at How to Be a GURPS GM. It’s a stupidly useful book. Robin’s Laws of Good Gamemastering is also on your recommended reading list, though there’s bothing GURPS specific about that, it’s just a bunch if solid advice.

All these D&D comparisons has me wondering, “how many pages does core D&D (PHB, DMG, and MM) take up?”

MM shouldn't be included since GURPS lacks a "monster manual" so to speak, but 5e PHB + DMG comes out to 613 pages based on my scans. MM is 354 pages by itself for a total of 967, although then you need to include all of the GURPS monster books, like Creatures of the Night and Dungeon Fantasy Monsters.

Where the fuck is my grimwyrd fix you fuckers?! Bastard barely posted anything on the blog today

Why? For fairness' sake? GURPS presents you with a DIY approach to monsters, the published bestiaries are merely a collection of examples, because of this I consider GURPS' 'Monster Manual' to be included in the Basic Set. Of course, that means you have to make your own monsters, so the reduced pagecount kinda makes up for that fact.

OK, I'm coming from D&D5 looking for a new system to try. I know nothing about GURPS. Where can I start? Where can I get the pdfs?

Buy them retard

Or continue observing the OP until you see it.

I can't buy from where I live, and shipping costs too much. I also won't buy something that I don't even know if I'm gonna like it.

Then you shall never play the game or continue searching the OP until you find 'it', a specific something that is present in the OP

Failed your Observation roll, try again.

Hint: The OP image is not a .jpg

Roll for observation

But if you're completely new, just download GURPS lite and take a look, it's completely free

O fuck I'm dumb. Thanks, guys

No problem, and it’s just our version of hazing the newbies. Glad to have you aboard.

A-anyone?

An user from here is making a fantasy add-on for lite, not sure how their progress is going. Apart from that I don't know of any others.

Just one reccomendation: don't use EVERY RULE ALL AT ONCE.
Each book, even the core, present a set of moddable rules, to use only if needed. You can have a quick and dirty combat, or a more detailed one. You can use the basic "roll vs defense" combat or the one that asks which of your arms is holding the shield. You can use one of the SEVERAL magic systems, the psionics or other paranormal rules (toned down? enhanced?), but do not try to use all of them at once.
Otherwise, you'll end up with a Psichic biomech conan riding a giant talking bunny combatting an unlimited-mana demonologist using aid from your Flower friends from the MLP: Friendship is Magic dimension.

I'm looking for a system more flexible, without class restrictions nor ultra focused in combat. I'd like to not use any roleplaying rules, I think Charisma in D&D is ultra dumb.
I'm looking for exploration, survival gear, fantasy monsters and simple combat options. Which books should I look into?

Don't fall for the trap of using what GURPS called "blasters" for SW blasters. They're electron beams, which are neither mechanically nor fluffily similar. Use scaled down plasma guns, which are exactly what blasters are, and they actually feel very similar, and can be used at any scale, since they're explosive (which blasters definitely are).

Check out the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Boxed Set. It's essentially it's own release, with parts of the basic set and parts of the Dungeon Fantasy Supplements. It's designed for running traditional hack and slash fantasy. You don't need the basic set for the books.

GURPS Lite is enough, Caravan to Eins Arris is a nice one-shot adventure, but easy to expand to a short campaign.
Once you get confortable with the rules (that, as previously mentioned consists of 'roll 3d6 vs skill') you may want to peruse the core book, which explains how to solve specific situations and shows how some systems work.
Later you may want to get your hands into the Dungeon Dwelling pdf, where you can get premade magic weapons, more obscure spells and such.
The main idea is "Start with lite and move upwards as soon as it feels too small."

True dat.
However, in my opinion, it was just SJGames trying -too late- to cover the dissappointed DnD 3.5 to 4ed, offering a bundle of Fantasy RPG books.
It gives the impression that everything needed was there, when the advantage of GURPS consists of its moddability ant the main confidence that the DM and the players will be able to design systems on their own to cover tricky situations. That's the GURPS I like.

How would I give a race limited access to higher TL as an advantage? For example, if the setting baseline is 4, how do I give a race TL 4+2?

I need some help to figure complexity for Mages as Cyberdecks.
I started with (IQ+HT)/4, but this give average person complexity 5, which is little high, as i planned to add a way to boost it with talismans, crystal balls and Ouja boards.
Magery is not very applicable stat because of threshold limited magic.

High TL +2 [+10]

rapid piercing blow to lung so no scream

or swing mightily and take off head

Would I still need to pay for TL 6, even if it's only a limited TL (4+2)?

Weight IS purely beneficial for combat characters.

TL 4+2 is TL 6 with TL 4 aesthetics/culture/ect. You aren't limited in what you can get, however.

So you'd have to pay the full price for high TL, unless you limit it more then that to something like "High TL (Biotech and Materials Only) -40%"

>I'd like to not use any roleplaying rules, I think Charisma in D&D is ultra dumb.

Just to give you a heads-up, GURPS does by default use a lot of rules for social stuff. Like half the traits affect socialising and there are a lot of social skills and a whole supplement called Social Engineering which is pretty rules-heavy.

Fortunately, all of that stuff can be removed without affecting the core, but any published templates will need to have the relevant traits stripped out, you will probably want a smaller disadvantage cap or to do away with them entirely.

I wouldn't say "lots of rules". It has reaction rolls for first impressions and a few other things, but the skills are much "softer" than DnD skills, and you have to actually roleplay to get results. You can't just say "I roll diplomacy to get them to do X". Fast-talk just determined whether your lie is believed, not whether or actually helps you, etc, etc. Not to mention it's *way* looser than systems that have "social attacks", like Fate, Storyteller, etc.

What's a good amount of extra points to give your players to "round out" their characters? Pick up fun, fluffy advantages, let them round out their skill set with some skills not normally part of their purview, from hobbies or a few classes they took in college, or whatever After they spend their 150-250 points on being a hyperfocused murdermachine, or whatever their niche of choice is, how many should I tack on, to spend on stuff outside that purview? To let the knight errant have a secret passion for knitting and be a bit of a ladies man(and be really good at it), or whatever? Maybe 50 or 75?

>Why is Overweight designed in a way that makes it purely beneficial for combat characters?

Because BMI is pretty shitty, so all that additional muscle mass will end you marked as a fat fatty fat who needs to be exterminated in a hurry.

Zero. If I can fit purely flavor skills and an advantage into an 80-point character, they can manage with 250. Also, if they made ultra-efficient killing machines with the other 250 points, what makes you think they’ll do anything different with the extra? Tell them to make well-rounded characters with what they have.

Points are points. A 250-point character with 50 points extra in background traits is still a 300-point character. Being really good at seduction and bluffing is important for adventuring as well, so I don’t really see a divide between “points for adventuring” and “points for being a person.”

Lastly, holy shit 50 points is a TON. What’re they going to have, Hobby Skill (Knitting) at IQ+12? If you absolutely HAVE to give them more points, I cannot see needing more than half a dozen, maybe a dozen at most.

If you want to make sure that your players' characters are balanced, you have a few options.
1) You can mandate a small template that says, "you need one point in extra curricular activities, one point in a hobby, and one point in a job, and one contact, contact group, ally, dependant, enemy, or patron." Or whatever you want for them to be "rounded."
2) You can cordone points off into buckets if you want to make sure that players have bits from everything "50 points in attributes and secondary characteristics, 50 points in supernatural abilities, 20 points in combat, 15 points in social abilities, and 5 points in background skills." Pyramid #3/65 Alt GURPS III has an article called bucket of points with a longer discussion on the idea.

I always considered points from quirks to be ring-fenced for background detail. So, five points.

...

Is there a GURPS lite magic system?

My friends and I are coming from D&D, and want to try out a fantasy game. I know the dungeon fantasy box set exists, but my friends refuse to go through 2-3 100+ page books

Is there a light system somewhere?

"Maybe." There are some simpler systems, there are some systems that have less rules, there are some abstract systems where the gm can adjudicate on the fly.

Aside: the basic magic system is pretty simple when you only look at its rules; it's only a huge book because of tons and tons of spells.

Describe what you would like out of a lite magic system and someone might be able to help you better.

Alright

I would either like something a little more freeform, where you just need magic skills to cast spells, and you combine nouns and verbs or something like that

Either that or a simple "learn spell, cast it with a skill" system with mp

>And you combine nouns and verbs or something like that
Syntactic Magic: Verbs and Nouns. GURPS 4e Tjhaumatology p.184

How to make bloodborne combo weapons?

Give some examples of what that is exactly? For those of us that haven't played Bloodborne but might know how to implement it in the mechanics.

NAYRT, but the tl;dr is that trick weapons are one weapon that changes into a different weapon. Usually this is via an attack, because Bloodborne is somewhat fast-paced and combo-focused.

Some examples:
>Longsword that, when sheathed, acts as a greatsword
>Cane-sword that extends into a sharp whip
>Hand-axe that extends into a polearm
Here's a video showcase if that's confusing, I guess:
youtube.com/watch?v=z26W0_KPAVs

I suspect that the best way to handle them would just be Alternate Advantages.

The simplest one is probably the Discworld magic system.

Those seem more like ridiculously cinematic gear than advantages to me. Similar to the 'silly weapons' from Martial Arts p. 223.

>Similar to the 'silly weapons' from Martial Arts p. 223.
One of those - the whip blade - basically is the beast cutter from Bloodborne (likely inspired by the one from Brotherhood of the Wolf).

The new Pyramid is out and looks baller. Considering I was using Action 4: Specialists as a base for my cyberpunk game, this issue has a lot for me. I'll have to wait till my payday, though.