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First Champions/Hero then GURPS share a problem.
They are point based systems with near-zero guidance for where you should put your points.
"The good news is that nothing is decided for you. The bad news is that nothing is decided for you." - FuzzyGeff.
In OG AD&D, the RPG I cut my teeth on, you got to make two decisions in character generation: Race and class. Even so, your choices could be limited by shitty die rolls.
Traveller, even more so. Bad stats rolls could force you into the "Other" career path.
This problem was less obvious in Champions because most people had a comic book character they were trying to recreate and a clear vision of your character concept steers you through the process.
Providing you do some reading.
Which made me realize that I'd seen this kind of break before.
A player who makes a fighter in AD&D makes a few rolls and buy some gear and they're done making their character. It's a bit more complex in later editions and Pathfinder, but the player doesn't need to do much reading to get their character done and be effective.
But a player who makes a spell caster needs to select their spells. That means they need to open the Player's Handbook and learn how the spells they've chosen work. It takes a lot more effort.
People naturally gravitate towards either position.
GURPS rewards the player who cracks open the book and spends the time reading about all the skills, advantages and disadvantages. It punishes the person that doesn't. In effect, it's a game made for the person who naturally gravitates towards being a spell caster.
It's exasperating trying to get someone who just wants to play the game through the character generation process because you're constantly poking them for decisions that they don't feel, thanks to playing other games, they shouldn't have to be making.
It leads to some resentment, during play, when they cannot do something that they feel is obvious that their character should be able to do.
It's because they're unfamiliar with the choices and ended up not seeing the skill or advantage that would provide them with the ability to do the things they clearly should be able to do. Since the GM cannot read their mind, we can't help realize their vision.
GURPS introduced templates to help with this, but they only take it so far and, too often, a player will make the template to the letter with little to no individualization.
All of this is a tall, thick wall barring entry into the hobby for a lot of people. Especially people who're not interested in the fantasy genre.
I've always thought that the design of the TSR versions of D&D were pretty ingenious because they let you adjust your level of complexity. If a new guy comes in, just hand him a fighter and tell him to roll a d20. Once he learns a bit, he might try a cleric (healing spells only) or thief. Wizard or full cleric are for the guy that really loves reading through spells. Fighters are simple, but not weak.
ReplyDeleteOne of the problems with systems with lots of choice is that to make a meaningful choice you have to be familiar with all the options. For GURPS, the only way to communicate that with players is to either build all the characters together with the GM or have the GM spend hours and hours writing a campaign document. Something like the Action or Monster Hunter series. In either case, the learning curve is more like a cliff.
Because the number of options is so high as to make learning it from scratch very difficult, and I suspect that most of current GURPS 4e fans actually learned on 3e. In that case, the update to 4e is a major improvement (because you have all your options in one place, and you don't have to worry about learning the fundamentals).
The problem persists after character creation as well. There is no way to play a simple fighter. Even melee combat is designed with the idea that players will frequently be using Deceptive Attack -- and doing the requisite math and risk calculation each turn.
Daosus
I've played several straight fighters in GURPS and I don't think we ever used a deceptive attack. I'm not even sure that was even in the 3eR Basic Set.
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