From: thornley@cs.umn.edu (David H. Thornley)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.advocacy
Subject: Re: HERO vs. GURPS
Date: 30 Jul 92 18:39:41 GMT
Distribution: rec
Organization: University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, CSci dept.

In article <4817@armltd.uucp> dseal@armltd.co.uk (David Seal) writes:
>In article <1992Jul28.211729.9521@news.unomaha.edu> PCHEM14@Zeus.unomaha.edu
>(FALL88) writes:
>
>>[I like Hero because it's more easily modified than GURPS.]
>
>I'm probably biased - I've played a lot of GURPS and like it, and haven't
>played Hero at all. I liked GURPS as soon as I read the rulebook, and cannot
>say the same thing about Hero at all... This may be at least partly the
>different styles in which the rulebooks are written.
>
I generally prefer reading GURPS books than Hero books, and I play Hero.
I think GURPS books are generally better written.

>However, to try to be reasonably objective: as you say, Hero can be easily
>modified - probably more easily than GURPS. The flip side of this seems to
>me to be that Hero *has* to be modified. For instance, GURPS provides you
>with lists of spells, etc.; Hero tells you how to design a spell. The latter
>is better if you *want* to design your own spells - it's just a waste of
>time if you don't want to put in that much effort.
>
If you want to play a fantasy campaign with the base Hero rules, you do
have to design everything.  If you buy Fantasy Hero, the standard FH
spell system is described, and a dozen Colleges of Magic are described
(each with 10-20 spells).  The FH Companion has another dozen, and the
FH Companion II has about two dozen, although some of them are getting
rather esoteric for game use (how many characters should use the Dragon
Magic college? - depends, I suppose, on how many are dragons).

>A lot depends on the extent to which the GM wants to hand-craft his
>campaign. If you really just want to get a campaign going without much
>system design work (as opposed to world design work), GURPS is almost
>certainly the better system. Enough of the details have been worked out in
>the published rules that you can simply say something like "we're using
>GURPS Basic, the GURPS Magic spell system and the GURPS Martial Arts
>non-cinematic rules", design characters and a world and start playing.
>
If the GM says "We're using Hero rules, the standard magic system from
FH, spell colleges from FH and FH Companion (ask about FH Companion II
before using the colleges)" that's enough to design a character and a
world from.  (Of course, the GM could use some of the Ninja Hero rules,
but IMHO they're not real suitable for fantasy.)

GURPS Magic presents the standard GURPS spell system, which is a few rules
and a whole long list of spells.  The book also sketches some other possible
systems.  Fantasy Hero presents the standard Hero spell system, which is a
batch of rules (including spell design), gives good pointers on how to modify
it, and provides spell lists.  Not having designed a FH spellcaster under
the new system, I can't tell you if the off-the-shelf FH system is as good
as the off-the-shelf GURPS system, but both will work, and the Hero system
is more amenable to both small and large tweaking.

DHT