I believe it's time for another GURPS game. Perhaps you agree!

I'm pawing through my 4th Edition books again and getting the gumption. Let's first give a shout-out to Rub'Rum for the Space game he ran a while ago. While it petered out in the end, it's still a good thread.

This thread is as much brainstorming and consensus building as a potential sign-up. What would you like to see in roleplaying something? What kind of stories do you go for? Themes? Characters? Do you like pure roleplaying or are you a combat kind of person? It's all good in this thread.

What is GURPS? Sounds like children's yogurt.

GURPS stands for Generic Universal RolePlaying System. It's a pretty clean set of rules that lives up to its name. I also like it because it bases much of its content on real-world folklore and literature. What's especially nice is that you the player don't need to buy any books (although you could if you want to) or even read much of GURPS Lite (although, again, you could). This frees things up for more roleplaying while still staying grounded in solid mechanics.

Roll 3 regular dice. If you roll under your skill number, you succeed. If you succeed on such a skill roll when attacking, roll again for damage. That's the core of it.

Combat is also really nice; since everything's broken up into one-second actions, you can easily sprinkle a few rounds here and there without interrupting the story. It's not like D&D where you have to devote your evening to slaying a few mooks. Speaking of mooks, this guy has a good website for combat examples: http://www.themook.net/rpg/examples/

Don't play-by-post games usually fade out?

People have lives. The same thing happens offline too. I think it'd be best to get a consensus on what people want before jumping in too fast. Basically, I'd like to get a good foundation for the following:

The setting, or at least the genre. I'm tempted to rope a couple Mafia game hosts in for ideas. But we can make this as mundane or as wacky as possible.

Not biting off more than people can chew: I'd prefer to run through a couple game examples (character creation, combat) before going into a true session. That can easily happen in this thread too. Feel free to walk through something if you want or over PM.

When people can post or meet: If we go far enough to an actual group, I'll try to check the game thread a couple times every day to update things. I'm also not opposed to running over virtual tabletop once a week. Whatever people are okay with, as long as they're willing to be consistent.

 

I think four people would be a good number to hit for a group.

 

I'm interested and might have time to join after mid-July.

 

I've never played GURPS. I could be down for this.

Can you explain a little more on what the time commitment would be?

 

I have never participated in any RPG. Very very interested.

 

I ran a GURPS campaign a year ago, where the players were CHEKA agents during the Russian Revolution. It was an interesting system but I found it fiddly and difficult to use. I had far better luck using the Cyberpunk 2020/Interlock rules for the other campaign I ran.

Not to discourage the use of GURPS of course. How do you run a campaign over a forum?

 

GURPS provides you with a very very simple basic system, simpler than D&D, then you're free to add as much fiddliness to it as you want. I've found people who complain about the complexity of GURPS are usually simply unable to auto-discipline themselves into not feeling like they must apply every toolbox in the book. Been guilty of it myself...

Running forum games requires discipline and awareness from everyone. If I were to run a forum game these days... I'd slap my own face and master live roll20.net sessions instead Well if I REALLY wanted to run on a forum I'd use a system with more abstract combat like FATE or HeroQuest 2.0. Fewer rolls, fewer combat decisions, fewer rounds. My favorite system for the past 2-3 years has been RuneQuest 6 (mostly for low magic or sword and sorcery style games where character cultures are important), but it would be bad fit for forum gaming. Plus Fate Core (or Fate Accelerated) is available for free online

 

Yeah, I'd probably go for a live chat instead of taking four weeks for a simple combat to peter out. I also still think people can play GURPS without necessarily knowing the rules and letting the GM work things out, so maybe that would let a strictly forum-based game work out.

Glad to see some interest! Let's talk about what people are interested in with regard to setting and theme. I differentiate the two because a difference in one can mean an entirely distinct genre.

Setting - Place and time, possibly even a certain demographic of people.
Theme - What "stuff" is this game exploring? It can be as concrete as a certain activity like computer hacking or as abstract as something discussed in English class ("What is airplane food, anyway?"). This is also where 1800s London differs from 1800s Steampunk London.

Maybe it's obvious to say, but we can go anywhere with this. Go ahead and throw some ideas out there!