What are your favorite GURPS resources?
I am starting a GURPS campaign universe and going into study mode. Any helpful suggestions would be appreciated!
...my favorites are Illuminati and Bunnies&Burrows. Haven't yet played B&B yet though, but it is a treat to read. And Illuminati book is mostly fluff, very little game mechanics (well, mechanics are controlled by Them anyway so the less players know, the better).
Traveller of course, timetravel is great and horror/cthulhupunk/cliffhanger
Compendium I & II, Martial Arts, Supers and Swashbucklers* saw the most use in my G.U.R.P.S. career. Without knowing more about your campaign, I can not offer suggestions to which ones might be of the most use to you.
*All third edition
Well, I've just completed my GURPS 4E collection and recommend pretty much all of the books - though I can't say much for Powers because I haven't really used it. I don't want to play Fantasy/Banestorm but I still like the books. They're all a great read.
4E Traveller is magnificent (IMHO) and we had a brief campaign a while back using it - I hope we pick it up again. All of the old Traveller stuff is good too if you don't mind converting. I would love to play an Infinite Worlds campaign. Hopefully we will after our current D&D campaign runs out - oh, that's right, I guess we're doing GURPS Firefly first :)
Basically everything from 3E that hasn't been replaced is still worth having. Depends on what your intended campaign includes but I just love Reign of Steel, China, Bunnies & Burrows, Mars, and a host of other stuff. Black Ops (I think that's the X-Files/Dark*Matter sort of one) is fun stuff though I've never played with it.
Wow. GURPS truly is Generic and Universal isn't it? ;)
M
I would be very interested to hear how 4th plays. I played 3rd for a long time and then converted to Hero. While I feel Hero is more flexible, I think G.U.R.P.S. does 'gritty' better. I may pick up 4th if I ever have the urge to do something 'gritty'.
TBH I never played 3E (just bought and read the excellent books) so I can't compare the two. I thought it played pretty well. We all pitched in and helped the GM with the rules and they weren't too bad at all. Character creation, as always in GURPS, is a chore. The character creation software is a big help, though (and it's cheap too).
M
See, creating characters is one of my favorite aspects of the game. I can see that point buys are intimidating to people who do not already have a clear concept in mind. However, for me, I have a concept. I need a system versatile enough to handle my wacky ideas.
Oh, I enjoy character creation too. It's just nice to have something to automagically keep track of everything for you - though GCA4 does hiccup from time to time. :)
M
GURPS Celtic Myth, Swashbucklers, Age of Napoleon, Places of Mystery and Illuminati
Found these were both great reads and a source of ideas
Favorite resources ?
4th edition, besides the base two, would be Powers and the GCA, fully patched up and updated. (Just don't toggle those variant packs on ...)
Everything else is gravy. For getting good atmosphere/genre stuff, the old 3E genre books work just as well as the 4e ones (excepting details in game mechanics), with heavy use seen previously with Martial Arts (although 4e's MA book finally came out), Cliffhangers, Horror, Timeline, Cthulhupunk, Places of Mystery, Voodoo, Cabal, the Tech books (especially Low, High and Bio) and of course other game systems' material. Especially valuable for '1930s' type games are the Call of Cthulhu materials by Chaosium, as thier prices tend to be both more accurate and wider ranging.
...with heavy use seen previously with Martial Arts...
Ah yes...I still fondly remember the fits of giggles anytime someone used 'Power Blow'.
I played the heck out of GURPS Autoduel and GURPS Conan. Unfortunately those didn't carry over to 3rd edition (much less 4th). If you can find them used they are way cool books even just to read.
GURPS Horror and Atomic Horror are pretty gnarly, too.
The core mechanics don't change too much from edition to edition that conversion is very hard.
I think I ran a campaign of Autoduel ‘back in the day’.
I think I ran a campaign of Autoduel ‘back in the day’.
I loved mixing Autoduel with Horror and ending up with Amatuer Night of the Living Dead.
I never tried that…but then I have never been a fan of horror in my RPGs. You always have the players that do not take it serious enough and/or the GM who tries to tell you how your frightened characters should act. I guess I prefer to play a hero as opposed to a victim.
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Horror is a knack. Both the dm and the character have to be into it.
I've scared (and been scared) s+~#less playing Cyberpunk before, cos the rules are so damn deadly.
You just have to ask people beforehand q's like "do you want these characters to survive long like D&D characters? Cos I'm thinking about just wasting the hell out of the lot of you..."
The ‘deadlier’ a system, the more I see it as a tactical simulation and less like a role playing game. But that is just the naratavist in me speaking.
You guys have noticed that about halfway through the zombie movies the heroes always load up on weaponry and start plowing through masses of zombies ,right? Well, after you do the initial "Surprise this isn't wholly an Autoduel game" scene you let the players load up into their cars or whatever and start mauling over the teeming hordes of zombies. Such fun! >:)