Help Me Understand the GURPS Design Perspective

[Parmandur]

Or more appropriately, I just don't get who this system is for.

A fairly small number of people, apparently.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Point buy is a lousy chargen mechanic, especially in such a free form and extensible system, and most especially in a social game. Not only is it less balanced, but counter-intuitively it reduces player freedom. You end up as the players gain system mastery with a bunch of specialists that can only do a limited number of things well.

As a HEROphile, I have to disagree with this...pretty much completely. I’m no lover of GURPS, but in the many times I’ve played it- including as a playtester for the odd product or two- this resembles no GURPS campaign I’ve ever seen.

To the original point, IME, GURPS shines best when used for games where grim & gritty is expected & desired. So quasi-hitorical, noir, super spy, survival horror, classic horror, hard Sci-Fi, swords & sorcery, and low/medium power Supers and the like all have a natural home in GURPS.

 

[evileeyore]

Playing GURPS is a complete waste of time if you're not using Compendium I and II, Martial Arts, Magic, and Psionics. Oh, and you should really use UltraTech I and II, and Sci-Fi as well.

Any 'fan; saying that should be ignored... in the same way you'd naturally ignore someone proclaiming that the only way to play D&D is to use books X-Z and 'anyone not using those books isn't playing 'real D&D'."

To really "get" the point of GURPS, it seems, you're supposed to embrace the crunch. Wrap it lovingly around you.

Nah. Now, don't get me wrong, there is some crunch, whole heaping boxes of it. But there are also supplements explicitly designed around excising crunch and running minimalist or narrativist.

The point of GURPS isn’t to use all the rules all the time.

It’s to use the rules that add to the style of game you’re running.

doctorbadwolf gets it.

And I have nothing I can really add to John Dallman's post, it's complete in its perfection.


I've run grim and gritty, high loose Action!, 4-Color supers, over-the-top kitchen sink Gygaxian Dungeon Fantasy, super spies, Lovercraftian horror, low-magic Conan fantasy, etc. GURPS has been my goto system since the late '80s.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

GURPS is a toolkit, not a game-ready-to-play.

This is the most important factor, and also the reason why it's such a pain to run the game. Not only are you supposed to liberally excise all of the rules that don't support your specific game style, but the GM actually needs to go through and define everything that exists in their game.

It isn't as simple as toggling a couple of switches, to say that elves exist but Klingons don't. The GM has to manually go in and create the template for what an elf looks like in their world. They essentially have to create, as though they were characters, every single type of thing that they'll need.

It's not enough to say that you want to play Giant Robots, and apply some standardized rules for that. The GM needs to go through and stat out all of the giant robots, before the players can choose between them. If you just hand the rules to the players, and ask them to create their own giant robots, then it's not going to work out.

 

[John Dallman]

It isn't as simple as toggling a couple of switches, to say that elves exist but Klingons don't. The GM has to manually go in and create the template for what an elf looks like in their world.

Or use one of several templates already published in existing settings.

They essentially have to create, as though they were characters, every single type of thing that they'll need.

Nope. It is not in any way necessary to design-with-points all the races in the world, only the ones that are liable to be PCs. Nor is it necessary to design opponents with character points: it's far quicker to just chose their attributes and abilities. If you were designing a D&D wizard as an enemy, you wouldn't roll his stats and hit dice, would you? You'd just pick them.

It is sometimes worth doing full character sheets for NPCs, if the party are likely to associate with them for a long time and get a good idea of their abilities. I've done this for exactly one NPC in my current GURPS campaign, which has run for about 180 sessions so far. She's a mathematician who doesn't go on adventures, but tries to weave the information adventurers come back with into a coherent theory of the universe.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Or use one of several templates already published in existing settings.

If you do that, then you move away from the one great strength of the system - the ability to model exactly what you want, exactly as you imagine it. The rules of the game are capable of modeling anything you can think of... as long as you go through the work of actually building that model out of the component parts provided.

 

[billd91]

As a HEROphile, I have to disagree with this...pretty much completely. I’m no lover of GURPS, but in the many times I’ve played it- including as a playtester for the odd product or two- this resembles no GURPS campaign I’ve ever seen.

To the original point, IME, GURPS shines best when used for games where grim & gritty is expected & desired. So quasi-hitorical, noir, super spy, survival horror, classic horror, hard Sci-Fi, swords & sorcery, and low/medium power Supers and the like all have a natural home in GURPS.

Yeah, point buy works for certain genres of games, particularly superhero games where the character abilities, skills, and powers are generally designed to fit a player's desires. I've played Champions, Mutants and Masterminds, Mighty Protectors (the latest point-buy version of Villains and Vigilantes) and they all work pretty well. I've played GURPS but never in a superhero setting - always more mundane and gritty. I fact, compared to the others, I'm convinced GURPS would suck as a 4-color superhero game.

GURPS is a good system for some things. It can do Thieves World style fantasy well. We played a pretty bang-up good Star Trek campaign with it. GURPS Traveller was a very good version of that game. But, for a generic universal system, it's best within a certain segment of the spectrum of RPGs.

 

[Celebrim]

As a HEROphile, I have to disagree with this...pretty much completely. I’m no lover of GURPS, but in the many times I’ve played it- including as a playtester for the odd product or two- this resembles no GURPS campaign I’ve ever seen.

Everyone has different experiences, but it's a danger so obvious that it is even called out in several places in the text as potential problems you may encounter - "Johnny One-Tricks" I think the are called in one place.

And it's a danger I've seen repeated in every single point buy system I've ever played in, including for example White Wolf's WOD system. The most successful strategies involve dumping all your points into being really good at one thing, and then using that great big hammer to treat every problem as a nail.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

To clarify: I have seen “Johnny One-Tricks” in GURPS. But I’ve seen as many in class-based and other systems as much as I have in GURPS and other point-buy systems.

Which is to say, I don’t think it’s a system issue, it’s a player/playstyle thing.

 

[billd91]

And it's a danger I've seen repeated in every single point buy system I've ever played in, including for example White Wolf's WOD system. The most successful strategies involve dumping all your points into being really good at one thing, and then using that great big hammer to treat every problem as a nail.

Successful... but at what? If a Johnny One-Trick can be successful at or dominate everything, it means the approach the campaign is probably unbalanced.