Held our first GURPs Warhammer session yesterday, focusing on character generation and teaching the new players how to operate in the GURPs mechanics. Overall, I consider it a success – the Warhammer setting converts readily to the GURPs system without much difficulty and the players seemed happy with their options. There was a bit of data confusion – the only prior experience most of the players had was with Pathfinder – so all the math and details was overwhelming. But GURPs is pretty straightforward, once you get past the basic math, and makes a lot of logical sense.
Of note, I had planned on converting to using a d20 random scale, instead of the default 3d6, for tests, skills, etc. However, after running a sample combat with the group, I think I am leaning towards going back to the original. d20 just feels wrong for GURPs, and feels like it overcompensates for the problems it was intended to fix. My thinking had been that with the bell curve of 3d6, the extremes become too unlikely to give much variation. However, with d20, it feels the opposite – too likely. So a +1 modifier in the game ceases to have the value that it does in traditional GURPs.
Instead, I will likely apply some other modifications (skill caps, modified contests, etc) instead, to avoid the same pitfalls.
Stay tuned for further updates.
