Lago PARANOIA wrote:[*] A game should only have just as much material needed to adhere to its design space and no more. More material makes the game harder to understand, makes books more expensive and time-consuming to make, and makes it harder for people to agree on a vision. This isn't something that can be adhered to 100% (because people have differing visions) but it works as a basic principle. A rule or fluff piece that no one cares about or uses is worse than not having it at all.
This is a completely valid stance and I can see how it could be used to argue that smaller, more streamlined games are better than larger, clunkier ones, but I feel that'd disqualify D&D 3.5 as well, considering the number of things forbidden per game is so high as to make it more common that people will say what's
allowed. Even within the core books, there are plenty of games that won't use the Extra Head advantage, but at least it's clearly marked as not generally available and only takes up 1/3 of a page, compared to the 3.5 Monk, which takes 3 1/4 pages and pretends to be a viable character option. Let me know if this is an unfair comparison, but otherwise while the complaint is valid (I've certainly never played a game where Extra Head was used) it doesn't warrant never even discussing the system.
Lago PARANOIA wrote:[*] Different rules give different experiences. Whether GURPs likes it or not, it has a 'feel' to it that makes it just as distinct and narrow as Dungeons and Dragons or Exalted. Here's a really simple one: time units are exhaustively tracked and granular in the game. That by itself makes it wholly incompatible with a Burning Wheel game like Mouse Guard or Torchbearer in which time is narratively tracked. If you want a game where players stick to generalized COA and the pacing of the game is tied to player input rather than some in-universe clock then you can't use GURPs.
GURPS definitely has a feel as dictated by its mechanics, and I've had arguments myself with people who disagree. But it's certainly amenable to different
settings. I'd love if the Earthdawn and Shadowrun settings used the same basic mechanics, for one, and I'm often in the mood for varying settings while still wanting a game that feels crunchy. The idea that it can be used for any game anyone ever wants is silly, but the idea that it's flexible enough to run many different games without requiring everyone to learn a new system for each is totally a reasonable one.
Lago PARANOIA wrote:Now, GURPs has other problems associated with the engine such as a completely busted skill point system but the first two make discussion of the game beyond its status as a curiosity pretty much a non-starter. You could discuss GURPs as its own distinct rule set (with the universality gimmick as just some embarrassing vestige of the rules) like it was Hackmaster or Golden Sky Stories but few adherents seem to want to view it in that light.
I don't even know what you mean by this. It is, by nature, its own distinct rule set. I'd think you meant viewing it solely within its default setting, but there
isn't one, so unless you mean you could discuss it as a ruleset that lends itself to many but not all games (which seems totally valid, as even rulesets that only run one game are worth talking about), I'll need explanation here.
deanruel87 wrote:My circuitous answer to your question is I don't talk about GURPS here or with any RPG nerd I know because I think it is extreme niche, and in the RPG world that's saying something.
Hm. I didn't think it was that niche. Of course most of my GURPS games are on the sjgames forums (I mostly play PbP games due to lack of in-person gaming groups) so that's a sampling bias, but even on other sites, GURPS games seem to be third, after D&D etc. and WoD. Maybe that's confirmation bias, but they seem more common than any one other. [NOTE: tussock also says it's not that big, so I guess those are just biases as mentioned.] I'd offer to invite you to the next thing I run, but I've never yet run a game and you probably don't want to be subjected to my debut.
deanruel87 wrote:If the book is able to maintain my attention I will learn how it works and may run games of it at a later date. [...] when I opened the GURPS book my eyes glazed over inside of 5 minutes.
Do you know why this is? They were as interesting to me as other books, possibly more so, and I still read through GURPS Thaumatology fairly regularly, but I'm certainly not representative. If you don't mind elaborating on this, I'm curious.
Thanks. I'll take a look at those.
tussock wrote:I can't start a GURPS game for trying. People just don't like the workload. d20? No trouble.
Is it
actually less workload, though, or is there some reason it feels that way? D20 chargen is a daunting prospect for me, even without the need to look through a bunch of books that aren't named coherently for rules that aren't sorted in any reasonable fashion. It's at least better than WoD, where even the
chapter names require a Decipher Script roll, but....
tussock wrote:#NotAGame. Well, .... It doesn't have many monster books, let us say. And the breadth of possible characters means someone needs to build a world and genre for them to make sense in before anyone even starts. Let's just say it's a lot of work upfront, for everyone.
Do most people use prebuilt worlds for D&D? I've certainly used the prebuilt genre, but all the games I've played were either generic and defined per narrative imperative, or custom-made. I only know about Sigil, for instance, because of reviews here.
tussock wrote:#FiddlyBits. Yes, you're biased. The fiddly bits do actually work in 4th, the resolution mechanics resolve the things they are supposed to resolve and the tiny little tactical modifiers change the odds about how you expect them to. It's vastly better than 4e D&D in that way. But it is very fiddly in part because every +1 actually works.
So I'm biased if I think it's not fiddly, but you're saying the fiddly bits do their jobs? Whether they're worth the effort is, I suppose, a separate question.
tussock wrote:#TheMath. No. It could be better, but it's fine. 3rd got a pretty stupid with math here and there, but 4th is suitable for a game. It's not really any more complex than d20, you just use lookup tables more often.
So not as big an issue as people I've encountered have made it out to be.
tussock wrote:#ThatStage. The problem, over time, is that people learn what works and use it. Some of what works is sensible real-world tactics that make the PCs seek cover, aim now and then, don't bring a knife to a gun fight, buy some fucking body armour, have a little legal immunity and licences to do what they're doing, and so on. That's good.
Other bits that work are stupid point tricks that give you mind control or invisibility or invulnerability or other unexpected forms of totally bypassing the entire set of reasonable challenges in the game surprisingly cheaply. That's bad.
This results in ... well, you have to stop using a bunch of stuff because it's far too good, and then you look for things that aren't quite the only good thing left (for variety) and accidentally find that most of them are totally useless and the rest are another thing to add to the ban list. Because the points just don't work.
I've never encountered the problems you've mentioned, outside of stupidly (often illegally) high stats. Given your examples, though, that's probably because all my games have either prohibited those exotic sorts of things entirely or assumed people would have them. So I've never had to compare their point costs. Thanks for the info there, though.
tussock wrote:#Zzzz. Point-buy games in general have that flaw. Even d20-style feats and skills and items and spells occasionally result in infinite power chains that you have to not use (or rewrite the setting to cope with). But there's ever so many more combinations to find which do that in full point-buy. Constantly surprising things that bypass the entire game engine.
I significantly prefer point-buy games to level-based games, and point-buy games with non-point-buy chargen (lookin at you WoD) make me sad. But I can see how it makes it easier to obtain power chains, yeah.... Is there a way to avoid that, short of keeping the total number of options small enough to combinatorics-crunch it all? Because a system with four options is not one I want, but point-buy is nice and being able to get better at swordmakin without getting better at swordswingin is a big deal for me.
tussock wrote:#Impact. If you want more reviews here, do one yourself. Seriously, you may well be the best person for the job. And no, GURPS is not generally "big" in any way. 4th didn't really sell well for them, thus the drop to print-on-demand support for it.
Huh. I might do that, then. Good idea. I guess it was probably just chance that I happened to encounter a group that played GURPS early on in my gaming career, if it's not that big.
So what's the etiquette on splitting posts? Responding one at a time seems spammy, but this got pretty long.