Anybody here play Traveller?

[Desdinova]

i guess i never gave GURPS an even chance. back when it came out it seemed so cheesy. then again my gaming group had already modified the rules for all the games we played to the point where they were not recognizable. that way we could play whatever character we wanted in any setting.

[Dralasite]

I will always remember the bar fights at The Hole In The Wall and The Spacers Rest, it always the best way to start a new adventure. Hard to believe that almost all adventures initially took place on that map included with the box set. not to mention the occassional Sathar Invasion at the startport map

No doubt ! It was pretty funny how every city had the same layout as that map. For me, every ship we were ever on used the same map from the 1st volturnous module.

I agree, the idea of GURPS came off as pretty corny when I first saw it. But all the different world books, especially those based upon book series that I really enjoyed (uplift, for example), drew me in. And suprisingly the system was well done. Before that, the only thing I bought from Steve Jackson games was board games -Car Wars and Ogre (and Globbo, if anyone remembers that one).

[PvK]

The rules in the GURPS Basic Set are really excellent (elegant and flexible, realistic, extensible, and capable of either very simple fudgey play, or very detail-oriented rules-based play). The hand-to-hand and ancient/medieval combat rules, played on a hex-map with all the advanced rules, are the most accurate and realistic combat system of their type that I've seen, second only to the mods I've added to them.

PvK

[Desdinova]

ahhhh! Car Wars. we made the mistake of letting one friends little sister play with us. she used a stock subcompact (dont remember which one) and opened a can of whoopass on us. she had the best luck of the dice. she would make sharp (90degree) turns successfully, end up on our tail then fire minirockets and machineguns at us. we just couldnt shake her off. it was really embarassing for the 5 of us.

Yes. 5 to 1 odds and she beat us in both challanges that night.

[Dralasite]

Thats funny! I was never lucky enough to play with a subcompact or compact. In fact, I was pretty terrible at Car Wars. I always wound getting all my weapson destroyed and then ramming another car to go out in a bang. Come to think of it, the same thing happens to me in SEIV... hmmm

I didn't want go too off topic in the avatar thread (eye of splurggoth), but I think its fine to blab about palladium games here. They have one of the worst systems ever! Combat easliy Lasted 2 hours because everyone has so much armor and weapons do so little damage. It was just silly. However I did like their "Rifts" worldbooks. The mechanoids were neat too. I bought a lot of their books and used the ideas in GURPs

[Desdinova]

combat can get a little tiresome, however with the old paladium rules you could at least hit the person if you rolled high enough. Rifts took that away and now armor stops everything until it is destroyed.
I love the Rifts world though, as it combines D&D, Gamma World and a few other games into it. My preference is the technowizard. You get the best of both worlds, an understanding of technology and magic plus the ability to combine them to make things neither one alone can do.

[Kamog]

GURPS is a great system, very flexible and comprehensive. It takes a long time to create characters (let's see... I'll put 1/2 point here to get this skill, 1 point here to get this other skill... nah, instead I'll raise this stat by 1 so that I only use 1/2 point, etc) but once the characters are created, it works well. The magic system is kind of tedious, though, with the different element-based magics with all sorts of prerequites for the higher spells.

Rifts is very strange. They combined all sorts of stuff into it that isn't very well balanced. The mega-damage weapons and armor don't make much sense. The money system was weird. If you start off a game with some weapons and ammo, and you use up a few rounds, you will never earn enough money to buy new ammo! All equipment is super expensive and you will never have more than you started off with, because you never make enough money to purchase anything. If you look through the different Palladium games, they all re-use the same equipment pictures for every book. Also, when you make your characters, you get so many skills that you end up taking all sorts of useless things just to use up the points. (Let's see, I get another 3 high school skills, but I already have everything I want: oh, whatever, I'll take pottery and basket-weaving).

[Desdinova]

unfortunately no game system is perfect. except maybe the one you make for yourself. even then others might have problems with it. i reread GURPS and it is a good system. i havent kept up with it so will need to see what addons they have made. to bad there is not someway to upload a copy of myself into a computer and have it go through all the game systems and combine them into 1 system that will let you do anything.

[Dralasite]

Yeah, balance was just a joke in palladium games, especially rifts. The techno-wizard or techno-psi is a cool concept, too bad magic was so wimpy in rifts. You can make them much better in gurps

Gurps can take a long time to make characters, but only if you really want to min-max your character into some super combat machine I'm as guilty of that as the next guy, but I do find that if you have a solid character concept before you start, it cuts down on the point fiddling at the end.

[Dralasite]

Whoops, double post.

[ January 06, 2003, 22:35: Message edited by: Dralasite ]