this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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GURPS
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Man, I haven't played GURPS in decades. I naturally barely remember its play tbh.
But I'm generally a crunch friendly GM, but not a crunch mandatory one. I tend to prefer crunch where it's useful, meaning in combat. Outside of combat, there's much less use for it. You don't really run into things where it makes a lot of sense unless there's a lot of quasi-random factors in the activity in the real world.
That's interesting, I was drawn to GURPS precisely because it offers so much crunch outside combat. As much as I do appreciate the granular combat mechanics, I like the unique blend of freedom and consistency offered by the skill mechanics. I've grown tired of DnD which forces the GM to either spontaneously adjudicate an action and try to stay consistent the next time the scenario comes up, or just forbid any action not specifically described RAW.
Yes, obviously, the GM is still the one to have final say, but I think it's so much easier to have RAW defaults to refer to when needed.
You know what's funny though? My home brew system is over crunchy on skills and non combat actions and because I wanted a broader way to avoid those judgement calls lol. So, I ended up going with a roll + modifier being subtracted from the base skill. That way, you can not only have difficulty modifiers per circumstances (like with called shots), but you can have opposed skill checks where whoever succeeds more comes out on top.
Like, let's say you've got two dancers trying to win a competition. One has a 90 skill, the other has 80. Roll d100, add the relevant modifier, and person 2 ends up at -20 because of the modifier, and person 1 ends up at 0 because of a bad roll. It takes the quasi-random things like a drop of sweat under a foot making someone misstep a little (the dice rolls), but factors in skill and native ability.
Way over complicated, but it has ended up lasting over thirty years, with minor adjustments here and there to the modification charts and expansions of what skills are available, skills that modify other skills, and the fact that combat actions are skill based to begin with.
But it was the only way I could figure to make magic, real world fighting, unusual skill, and superhero style powers all mesh in one system.
New players are always confused, but it only takes one session for most folks to get into it.
Serious question, how is that different from Contests? That already takes into consideration base skill, situational circumstance modifiers, random effects, and margins of success.
I'm not trying to be critical or flippant, it just sincerely sounds to me like everything you've described (skill contests, combat skills, uniting disparate genres under one system) is describing GURPS. I'm genuinely curious what the difference is, I must be missing something.
Remember when I said it had been decades since I ran GURPS? It is entirely possible that I unintentionally duplicated their system. Hell, I may have unconsciously used some of their ideas, since it was a year or so after I left the group that was running GURPS that I started building my system.
I'm looking this up as I'm typing here, and it seems the difference in resolving an encounter via dice is exactly the same as contests.
Yeah, I use different traits and skills, and the 100 scale on everything is different, along with a lot of homebrew magics and the world itself. But that mechanic is the same, and it's the core mechanic of the system.
Haha, gotta love convergent evolution