What about GURPS?

[momothefiddler]

So I've been reading reviews and opinions etc. for a while now and I'm a bit puzzled by the almost-complete lack of any mention of GURPS. Not as something to be played and/or adjusted like D&D, not something to be mocked as an abject failure like Pathfinder, not something with possibly desirable fluff trammeled by other possibly desirable but mutually incompatible fluff and terrible mechanics like WoD - nothing. And that confuses me, because my experience indicates that it's rather big as TTRPGs go. I'll acknowledge that what I've played is a weak base for determining what's 'big', but I don't remember walking into a gaming store and seeing more than two or three books for any systems other than D&D, WoD, RIFTS (and that's just the magazine bullshit), and GURPS. So I guess my question is, why isn't it included in more discussions on this board?

Note that I've only ever played (or at least - nervous glance at Frank's review of nMage - I think I've played) 4th edition, so all my comments will be from that perspective. I'd appreciate commentary on previous editions; this certainly isn't "don't discuss other editions here" or anything, it's just that I have no experience outside 4th.

Some options that come to mind:

• • GURPS Is Not Actually A Game: I suppose it's arguable that GURPS is at most a game creation toolkit, not a game in itself. The lack of a default setting supports this argument, but I don't spend a lot of time playing in default settings in D&D either, so it seems a mild criticism.
  
  • Too Many Fiddly Bits: The second most common critique I've heard is that GURPS is too complex and has too many rules. This seems like a reasonable complaint, though I can only assume they're better-organized or easier for me to remember than 3.5 rules, because despite the sheer volume of rules in the GURPS Basic Set as compared to the 3.5 PHB+DMG, and my approximately-equal time spent playing both, I find the GURPS books far easier to navigate and understand. Also relevant to complexity is the time scale - I recently read a post condemning GURPS's 1-second ticks. I certainly have experienced GURPS combats as short and bloody, and I like that, but that could easily just be because I've had otherwise-good experiences with GURPS, coloring my opinion. I also like that 1-second ticks and Evaluate maneuvers give you unskilled characters attacking more slowly than skilled characters without the weird "at fifth level you can make a second attack at -5" thing that Fighters get, but that could also be a bias thing.
  
  • Dear God The Math: The foremost complaint I've heard ties into the above and is that there's too much math. While this is, largely, avoidable beyond addition and subtraction after character creation, substat calculation and skill prices seem to give people hangups. Now, I've been fortunate enough to find math fairly intuitive most of my life, so it's hard to measure the impact of that sort of thing. For myself, I'd prefer "Easy skills are 1 point at stat. Raising it costs 1 point the first level, 2 the next, and 4 thereafter. Average, Hard, and Very Hard skills are 1, 2, and 3 levels lower, respectively, for the same expenditure" to a table detailing all the relevant possibilities. Of course, I'd prefer "BAB: half level, Fort: 1/3 level, Ref: 1/3 level, Will: 2+ 1/2 level, max spell level (level+1)/2" to the wizard class table, so I'm a bad judge of what's widely usable. (As an aside, max spell level is a bit clunky that way, but so is the very existence of level 0 spells. And the spells per day list has a pretty interesting pattern that makes me think of factorials, but it'd be annoying to write as-is because it starts at level -4 and breaks pattern by giving a level 20 wizard an extra level-9 spell for some reason. The sorc gets that extra l9 too... maybe it's so they don't feel 'incomplete' at 20?)
  
  • Oh, You're At That Stage: There's the chance that GURPS is, in fact, indescribably shitty and everyone here has learned that and moved past it and I just need to have it explained to me before I do as well. I'll admit that I was hesitant to post this question because I was worried this would be the case and I'd be suddenly disillusioned in a good system, but what can be destroyed by the truth should be and all that....
  
  • Nothing Left To Discuss: It could be that, this being a board largely given over to discussing the flaws in games and modifying them, a lack of discussion of GURPS could indicate that there are no flaws and nothing to fix. I quite doubt anyone here thinks this is the case, though. Even people on the sjgames boards admit that Magic, for instance, is largely copy-pasted from 3rd edition and is clunky and mispriced.
  
  • Overestimating The Impact: Maybe GURPS isn't as big as I thought it was and the one review of a 3rd ed splat is on par with the one DitV discussion because they're both fringe cases anyway?

Are any of these the reason? Did I miss something? It just seems like a strange vacancy...

[Lago PARANOIA]

GURPs doesn't get much discussion because of these two implicitly held beliefs:

[*] A rule or fluff piece that no one cares about or uses is worse than not having it at all. What's more, every game will eventually reach a point where adding more to it actually makes it worse because the number of people who would enjoy the additional writing is fewer than the people who find it annoying/inconvenient/overly expensive/makes mastery clunky/etc. And you will reach this point more quickly than you think. It doesn't matter if you have Geoff Johns, Shakespeare, and Mark Twain on your writing staff. Eventually people will think that their reboot of Return to Barrier Peaks is retarded or that the campaign setting is too bloated or that the writers are neglecting popular locales and classes to chase new plot points.
This isn't something that can be adhered to 100% (because people differ on specifics even if they have the same vision) but it works as a basic principle.
[*] Different rules give different experiences and the experiences we demand are contradictory. 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. A cooking analogy might be helpful. Some people like sweet, some people like sour, some people like sweet and sour, so on. But some tastes just flat-out conflict. You can't have a dish that's both astringent and smooth. You can't have a dish that lets you enjoy the mild, cool umami blend that's also really spicy and gamey. What's more, sometimes people will want a double bacon cheeseburger for dinner and sometimes they just want edamame and tuna sashimi -- and serving both in the same meal will make them enjoy the meal less than if you just stuck to one or the other.

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.

[Dean]

When I play systems it is for 2 reasons. The first is that I know someone who wants to play some system and they lead a game of it. Later I may lead a game of my own now that I know that system. The second way is that I will purchase and read a core system book merely because I like RPG's. 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.

This has been true with every system I know and I know a lot of them. The problem with GURPS is that I've never known anyone who runs a GURPS game and when I opened the GURPS book my eyes glazed over inside of 5 minutes. If no one runs the games and the books are extremely unfriendly to beginners then the GURPS crowd is probably extremely small.

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.

[fectin]

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[tussock]

I can't start a GURPS game for trying. People just don't like the workload. d20? No trouble.


#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.

#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.

#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.

#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.

#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.

#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.

[momothefiddler]

[*] 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.

[*] 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.

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.

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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.

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.

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Thanks. I'll take a look at those.

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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....

#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.

#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.

#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.

#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.

#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.

#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.

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So what's the etiquette on splitting posts? Responding one at a time seems spammy, but this got pretty long.

[momothefiddler]

#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.

I failed to comment on the monster point, which is completely reasonable. Having premade monsters is vital to some styles of play and GURPS makes that part of the prep process, rather than just selecting them. I can see how that'd be a problem.

[Blicero]

I have never met anyone in the meatspace who knew what gurps was.

Re: Reading gurps books:
At some point, I considered trying to run a gurps game. Honestly, I could not even make i through the main book. Grokking the system seemed to require far too much work on my part as an MC, and this made me shudder to think what my usual crop of players would think of them. That was a few years ago, so I don't remember what exactly made me dislike reading the rules. But I did not find them at all engaging.

That being said, the gurps splat books I've read have been super nifty, and I've totally taken ideas from them.

[RadiantPhoenix]

http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=54384:

But I would go beyond even what AncientHistory said about book quality. It isn't that the books are individually "not bad", they are individually great. Steve Jackson brought in consultants, experts, and focus groups for these books. If there was a GURPS Asparagus, it would be written by someone who knew Asparagus backwards and forwards and not only liked Asparagus, but really cared about Asparagus and "doing it right". The irony of course, is that these people often don't know GURPS from a hole in the ground, so the presented GURPS mechanics are generally much clunkier and less lovingly crafted than the setting information. GURPS Asparagus is probably one of, if not the best Asparagus sourcebooks for Dungeons and Dragons. Or any other Asparagus related campaign you intended to run with any system.

-Username17

[Whipstitch]

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.

I don't know if "most" people do, but at the very least a significant minority uses them at some point or another--it's just plain healthy for your game if you've got plug 'n' play shit for the DM to pull out if he's inexperienced or simply feeling overtaxed. Beyond that, an emphasis on pre-built worlds, tie-in novels and introductory campaigns help create a points of reference and you know, a fucking brand for an RPG even if you don't always use that crap all of the time. There's no shortage of snark here on the Den when it comes to shit like Dragonlance or the Forgotten Realms, but the fact of the matter is that having shared settings makes it easier for disparate gaming groups to swap stories. It's straight up good for the game if I can name drop the Zhentarim and have everyone know what I'm talking about in less time than it takes a GURPS player to talk about what tech levels and genre conceits they're using.

[rasmuswagner]

I love how sensible tactics emerge from the rules. I love what the bell curve does to the impact of modifiers.

I hate spending points on a ginormous skill list.

[codeGlaze]

Most of my gaming group know what GURPS is, but I don't know a single one willing to play it.

The only time I had a serious interest in it was when I realized the original Fallout was concepted on it... back in High School. Then a friend tried to run a PbP. We all died in the first encounter. I never really had an interest in trying it out again afterward. *shrug*

edit : So I guess it's big in name recognition ... not so much in player base.

[OgreBattle]

The "G" stands for 'Generic' so is it pronounced "Jerps"?

[Antumbra]

It's straight up good for the game if I can name drop the Zhentarim and have everyone know what I'm talking about in less time than it takes a GURPS player to talk about what tech levels and genre conceits they're using.

There are prebuilt settings for GURPS. There are quite a few in fact - though most are single-book overviews (often with smaller supplements) of the core conceit, like GURPS Cabal, Technomancer, Banestorm or Reign of Steel.

There's also a fair bit of crossover terminology, as they're all connected via the Infinite Worlds setting, which only really needs the one book it has, given that it draws from many others.

On the longer side, there's Transhuman Space, which has about 14 books of setting material.

I'd recognise most elements from those settings, such as Reich-5 or what a Banestorm is, in the same way someone who's read the Faerun books would know what the Zhentarim are (I only have a vague idea myself).

[momothefiddler]

http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=52202&view=next
some other discussion here: http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=52202&view=next

http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=54384:

So I just didn't look back far enough. Thanks, guys.

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I don't know if "most" people do, but at the very least a significant minority uses them at some point or another--it's just plain healthy for your game if you've got plug 'n' play shit for the DM to pull out if he's inexperienced or simply feeling overtaxed. Beyond that, an emphasis on pre-built worlds, tie-in novels and introductory campaigns help create a points of reference and you know, a fucking brand for an RPG even if you don't always use that crap all of the time. There's no shortage of snark here on the Den when it comes to shit like Dragonlance or the Forgotten Realms, but the fact of the matter is that having shared settings makes it easier for disparate gaming groups to swap stories. It's straight up good for the game if I can name drop the Zhentarim and have everyone know what I'm talking about in less time than it takes a GURPS player to talk about what tech levels and genre conceits they're using.

Fascinating. The closest I've ever gotten to playing in a prebuilt world was WoD, and even then chunks of the setting were handwaved or altered. Good to know.

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I love how sensible tactics emerge from the rules. I love what the bell curve does to the impact of modifiers.

Me too!

I hate spending points on a ginormous skill list.

Skill lists can get really big and not bother me as long as they're defined and defined in one place. I've had plenty of games where I don't know the skill exists until the MC calls for it. But yes, GURPS does have a large skill list and I can see how that could be overwhelming.

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Most of my gaming group know what GURPS is, but I don't know a single one willing to play it.

The only time I had a serious interest in it was when I realized the original Fallout was concepted on it... back in High School. Then a friend tried to run a PbP. We all died in the first encounter. I never really had an interest in trying it out again afterward. *shrug*

edit : So I guess it's big in name recognition ... not so much in player base.

Is the lack of interest among your group because you died in the first encounter? That is, is high lethality (without various mitigation which requires experience with the system) the (or at least a) reason not to play the system?

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The "G" stands for 'Generic' so is it pronounced "Jerps"?

Jyurps, actually. Just like how devices that emit coherent light are called lass-ears.

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There are prebuilt settings for GURPS. There are quite a few in fact

And (surprisingly, given Whipstitch's point above) I've never played any of them. Oddly, in fact, I've never read any of them except Transhuman Space. I recognize the word "Banestorm", but that's about it, so I guess I'd have trouble discussing setting conceits even within GURPS.
After reading the linked threads, though, I've developed an interest in Reign of Steel.

[A Man In Black]

Build points are essentially meaningless in GURPS. People have already touched on how some things are expensive because they are powerful and some things are expensive because they are rare, weird, or hard. That's a problem, but there's another part to it.

The lack of genre also means that, with no goals or expectations for what's important to the game, the point values are essentially meaningless for evaluating how effective a character will be in your game. There's no possible way to know, before creating your campaign, what will necessarily be effective. To use one of the most extreme examples, immortality (cannot die) is one of the most expensive possible purchases in the entire game, but almost entirely meaningless in a game where the threat of death is remote or nonexistent. Even immortal longevity is inexplicably expensive; in what game are you likely to die of old age? Or even age appreciably?

There's also the implicit mundane setting. GURPS has never dealt well with the "superpowers" you can just buy off the shelf. Casting Fireball costs just as many points before and after the lifetime of Alfred Nobel. This creates a quiet pressure to make characters who rely on the mundane whenever possible. Present-day superheroes that wear body armor and use assault rifles are more effective than heroes who rely entirely on superpowers for attack and defense, and for no reason other than that off-the-shelf gear is cheap-as-free, in character building terms.

Back when I played GURPS, playing Renaissance Men was also hopelessly expensive, relative to their ability to contribute to the plot. Not only do flavor skills (like, say, playing chess) come out of the main pool of points, but the granularity of the skill system means that they cost a minimum amount. This leads to insanity like GURPS Black Ops, where all playable characters have a 650 point template chock full of miscellaneous crap. (Seriously, just look at this bullshit.) I don't know if GURPS 4e deals with jacks of all skills better than 3e did(n't), though.

[momothefiddler]

Build points are essentially meaningless in GURPS. People have already touched on how some things are expensive because they are powerful and some things are expensive because they are rare, weird, or hard. That's a problem, but there's another part to it.

The lack of genre also means that, with no goals or expectations for what's important to the game, the point values are essentially meaningless for evaluating how effective a character will be in your game. There's no possible way to know, before creating your campaign, what will necessarily be effective. To use one of the most extreme examples, immortality (cannot die) is one of the most expensive possible purchases in the entire game, but almost entirely meaningless in a game where the threat of death is remote or nonexistent. Even immortal longevity is inexplicably expensive; in what game are you likely to die of old age? Or even age appreciably?

I don't know how much it was in 3rd, but 4th edition Unaging is 15 points, which doesn't seem to bad for what is, gamewise, Immunity to Aging Effects.
More generally, though, yes. The value of a given trait changes based on the setting and the cost does not. Unkillable isn't much use in a court intrigue game and Temporal Inertia is only useful in a game with time shenanigans. Most of that falls under the same umbrella as Extra Head - some stuff is relevant to the campaign being played and some is not. It does require that the person building the character be able to tell the difference, though, which is a disadvantage.

There's also the implicit mundane setting. GURPS has never dealt well with the "superpowers" you can just buy off the shelf. Casting Fireball costs just as many points before and after the lifetime of Alfred Nobel. This creates a quiet pressure to make characters who rely on the mundane whenever possible. Present-day superheroes that wear body armor and use assault rifles are more effective than heroes who rely entirely on superpowers for attack and defense, and for no reason other than that off-the-shelf gear is cheap-as-free, in character building terms.

I think this is largely the same as the above. On a desert island, or in the far past, or in a zombie apocalypse, being able to light something on fire with a snap of your fingers is potentially useful. In the modern world where lighters exist and are cheap, not so much. The supers in Supers seem, for the most part, to be playing on a scale at which body armor and assault rifles are irrelevant. But there are superheroes who spend a large chunk of their points on money that they then use to buy gear, and those are cool too, though they're limited to a power level of the local tech level plus one or so. Batman gets basically all the body armor he needs for the opponents he tends to face. Superman wouldn't notice a few more points of DR and anyone he could kill with an assault rifle is already dead. If you wanna play a lower-powered supers game where gear doesn't get to be an equalizer, though, I think GURPS straight up fails to provide for your game. So there's another disadvantage.

Back when I played GURPS, playing Renaissance Men was also hopelessly expensive, relative to their ability to contribute to the plot. Not only do flavor skills (like, say, playing chess) come out of the main pool of points, but the granularity of the skill system means that they cost a minimum amount. This leads to insanity like GURPS Black Ops, where all playable characters have a 650 point template chock full of miscellaneous crap. (Seriously, just look at this bullshit.) I don't know if GURPS 4e deals with jacks of all skills better than 3e did(n't), though.

Holy fuck what is that shit? In 4th, a huge chunk of that is covered by intra-skill defaults and way more could be handled with a wildcard skill or two. Languages as skills is gone, as it deserves to be, because it's shit. And unless Area Knowledge is wildly different between editions, why does he have Area Knowledge(Earth)-20?? This guy has spent the same amount of time learning the names of actual Nigerian princes as he has practicing keeping psychics out of his head, and that baffles me.

That aside, GURPS has a lot of skills. And GURPS characters are probably gonna have a lot of skills. To the point where 4th editions line editor made a post I have bookmarked that I reference with every character I make outlining basic competency for action heroes that treats nine skills as essential and strongly suggests seven more. But with the price jump and diminishing returns between being reasonably competent and being the unequalled master, it's not hard to reach "comfortably trained" in a whole new skill for the same cost it takes the specialist to raise his skill one level, and it can be worth it if your character uses four points to take Physics from 6 to 11 instead of raising Guns(Pistol) from 19 to 20 - though of course that depends on the ratio of physics dilemmas to average gunfight range encountered by that character. My point is, I think, that a Renaissance Man is entirely possible in 4th, providing you're playing a game where someone else can't just repeatedly solve it with their shtick, whether that's shooting it or magicking it or whatever. In a 150 point game, IQ 12 and DX 12 will cost you 80 points, and then you can buy 20 different skills at 9-12 for reasonably consistent results, leaving you plenty to, for instance, get a Guns skill at 18 for 20 points (this gives you the other Guns skills at 16, for the most part) and spend 30 points on whatever else, like perhaps Combat Reflexes. In a calm, quiet space out of combat (given proper tools), you can use your Engineer(Small Arms)-10 and Armoury(Small Arms)-11 to modify a gun for a specific purpose, because you'll get the non-adventuring-conditions +4 and be rolling against 14 and 15 - completely reasonable skill levels, especially considering you spent a point on each of them. I'm rambling, but my point is it seems reasonable to do past a certain point level.

As far as flavor skills go, it's not unreasonable to drop 2-4 points on flavor, but I've also been in more than one game where the character creation rules had something like "...and 10 points in flavor skills", which is, of course, up to the MC to judge what's immediately apparent as useful and what's not, but your Renaissance Man above can put 2 points in Hobby Skill(Juggling) to have it at 13, 2 points in Games(Chess) for 13, 1 point in Heraldry for 11, 1 point in Occultism for 11, and 4 points in Musical Instrument(Saxophone) for 12. I haven't noticed any problems with my general tendency to give my characters a few points in Expert Skill(Political Science) or Musical Instrument(Violin) or Speed-Reading or whatever.

tl;dr I think that problem is significantly remedied in 4th or I significantly underestimate the presence of that problem in 4th.

[Username17]

AncientHistory and I did an OSSR for GURPS Cyberpunk, and I think that's the only GURPS product that has gotten a full review on this site.

-Username17

[Aharon]

I played in a GURPS group that lasted for about 10 months (8 or 9 sessions). We only had access to the basic rulebook. I was the only one who cared to learn most rules, we had changing DMs and they mostly just used ability checks for everything.

So basically, we used it as rules light to allow for the concept we had in mind (playing in Tad Williams Otherland) - we had a cowboy, a 14th century knight, a time traveller from 2400, and some other guys in the same group.

It allowed for a combination of those concepts, and would even have allowed for this combination if we had sticked closer to the rules.

[momothefiddler]

AncientHistory and I did an OSSR for GURPS Cyberpunk, and I think that's the only GURPS product that has gotten a full review on this site.

-Username17

Yep! That's what I was referencing when I mentioned:

• Overestimating The Impact: Maybe GURPS isn't as big as I thought it was and the one review of a 3rd ed splat is on par with the one DitV discussion because they're both fringe cases anyway?

But it's good to know that there aren't others that I missed; thanks.

---

I played in a GURPS group that lasted for about 10 months (8 or 9 sessions). We only had access to the basic rulebook. I was the only one who cared to learn most rules, we had changing DMs and they mostly just used ability checks for everything.

So basically, we used it as rules light to allow for the concept we had in mind (playing in Tad Williams Otherland) - we had a cowboy, a 14th century knight, a time traveller from 2400, and some other guys in the same group.

It allowed for a combination of those concepts, and would even have allowed for this combination if we had sticked closer to the rules.

I am having a hard time even imagining GURPS with mostly just ability checks. How did that work? Was it meaningfully different from any other system with mostly just ability checks? Was it meaningfully different from RISUS?

[silva]

So I guess my question is, why isn't it included in more discussions on this board?

Because its not among the board members favorite games. That position is filled by D&D3 in first place, with Shadowrun and WoD in a distant second.

Each board has its preferences. Gurps is big in RPGnet, for example, and huge in brazilian boards.

[Mask_De_H]

Nobody really talks about GURPS because it's not worth the effort to grok or mock for a lot of people. It's a solid 3d6 bell curve system with a lot of fiddly bullshit that, as has been mentioned earlier, has no absolute meaning attached to it. So you have the setting and splat books, which are loosely related and don't create stylistic cohesion.

In trying to be everything, GURPS is nothing. At least HERO and FATE tell you what kind of genre they're supposed to emulate. They have a brand identity. RIFTS' setting and gameplay is predicated on being a weird technomagical kitchen sink. GURPS is just a very intricate, decently crafted series of dials.

[silva]

I dont agree with those saying Gurps has no flavour. It has a innate realism, naturalism and sobriety that gives it a strong mundane, scientific, flavour to me, which fits in realistic/contemporary/historic/sci-fi settings and themes well, in my opinion. In fact, the Cyberpunk and Transhuman Space games I played did run well.

One thing no one mentioned were the Gurps supplements. "It is known" (as the khaleesi girls would talk) that they are great sources and references in the industry, even used by groups with different games/sytems.

[Hey_I_Can_Chan]

The skills issue in GURPS is even bigger than this. Many skills, although they exist, have no guidelines as to their use. While there's a skill for cooking, for instance, it says, "A successful skill roll allows you to prepare a pleasing meal." And that's all. That's fine, actually, because the skill is fucking Cooking and who gives a shit, but most noncombat skills are like this (e.g. "A successful Prospecting roll lets you locate minerals, judge good or from a small sample..., and find water..."; "Roll against [Research] to find a useful piece of data in an appropriate place of research"), so unless you scour the book for the skills with actual associated rules (e.g. Panhandling, Merchant), the game involves a lot of bullshitting the GM that some random skill you have applies in some random situation and bullshit how much time it would take to perform such a skill and bullshit the materials needed to perform the skill and bullshit the difficulty of using the skill for the proposed purpose.

For all its ability to build characters from any genre, once those characters are built what they really know, can do, and how they can do it involves a lot of GM calls.

As a detailed character-building engine, GURPS is pretty awesome. As a for-reals playable low-combat game in which noncombat skills are supposed to many solve problems because combat's fucking deadly, it falls well short of expectations because it's up to the GM to determine what many of the skills do by the goddam skills' names.

[Mistborn]

One thing no one mentioned were the Gurps supplements. "It is known" (as the khaleesi girls would talk) that they are great sources and references in the industry, even used by groups with different games/sytems.

Threadly reminder that silva is a ignorant twatshitter.

http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=54384:

But I would go beyond even what AncientHistory said about book quality. It isn't that the books are individually "not bad", they are individually great. Steve Jackson brought in consultants, experts, and focus groups for these books. If there was a GURPS Asparagus, it would be written by someone who knew Asparagus backwards and forwards and not only liked Asparagus, but really cared about Asparagus and "doing it right". The irony of course, is that these people often don't know GURPS from a hole in the ground, so the presented GURPS mechanics are generally much clunkier and less lovingly crafted than the setting information. GURPS Asparagus is probably one of, if not the best Asparagus sourcebooks for Dungeons and Dragons. Or any other Asparagus related campaign you intended to run with any system.

-Username17