Monday, November 15, 2010

GURPS, 4th Edition, and Playtesting for Goodman Games



Friday and Saturday I traveled to Erie to take part in the convention, or more accurately, days of gaming.  Rob and I went up together on Friday to play a game of GURPS.  In the description it said it was an introduction to GURPS to players who hadn't tried the system.  Since it was the only game running that night and a rare opportunity that Rob and I get to play together (instead of one of us being a GM) we went.  We weren't about to let our 20 years of playing GURPS get in the way.
 
We were the only ones to show for the games.  The GM was Jim I guy I'd met during the other days of gaming in Erie.  We fessed up at the beginning that we weren't newbs and told him we'd been playing since the 2nd edition of GURPS.  His response was "I hope this doesn't suck then."  "Not to worry," I said.  "We're here to roll dice and have fun.  And I hope Rob does something embarrassing so I can blog about it."  He didn't.  Jim brought us in each two GURPS books to have!  The remarkable part is I didn't have either of them, I got Rogues and the other was Monsters.  So thank you Jim.

The game itself was a simple play by number adventure that had been in the books as an example for years.  Rob and entered a house started stealing things.  That is until we ran into Max the sleeping guard with the large scimitar.  We ended up killing him which cost us reward points in the end.  It was a short night, but I got some other goodies also.  I found random hit location dice, trap dice and random dungeon dice. 

Saturday I rushed to Erie to get to the Swords & Wizardry game at 9am.  I skipped breakfast because I was running late.  I got there and the GM never showed.  Determined not to let that spoil my day I hooked up with a 4th edition game at the next table.  I played a swordmage, I think.  It was fun just to play.  I'm still not a fan of the 4th edition, but the GM did a great job and the other two guys in the party were good.  I planned on playing a Savage World, Hellfrost game, but the 4th edition ran over an hour and the Hellfrost filled up. 

Once that game was done I was starved so I thought I'd go find something to eat.  Then I saw Rob setting up for one of his games.  He told me to join because they were going to play the Goodman game retro game now instead of at 7pm.  I wanted to play that so I starved more.  We had a full table for this one.  Al from Beyond the Black Gate joined us.  I won't go into too many details about the game because I am sure Rob will give full details of it.  My impression of the game...it was a mixed bag for me.  There were some things I liked and some I didn't care for.  Since I am not sure how many details I can give I won't say too much, but we had a great time.  Started out with 10 guys and ran out with 3.

The good thing about running the game early is I got to go home at 7pm instead of 12am.  So I could finally eat.  I hope your weekends went well and the gaming was as good as mine. 

7 comments:

  1. Sorry, could you speak up? I'm still deaf for another 1d4 days...

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  2. Here is a playtest review that Joseph Goodman was fine with as far as details go.

    http://cyclopeatron.blogspot.com/2010/10/dungeon-crawl-classics-rpg-playtest-and.html

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  3. Is this a big con or something? I didn't know about it, and I could have made that trip. Glad you guys had fun, though!

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  4. I love the take-away gifts you got from the GURPS game. Good stuff!

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  5. Sounds like you had a good time, except for the "being starved".

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  6. Where did you get those wonderful dice and how can we find them for our very own?

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  7. Matt: You can get those dice from Flying Buffalo. They have Monster dice and Pizza dice which is pretty funny.

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