Help Me Understand the GURPS Design Perspective

[billd91]

I'm aware its optional, I'm just... not surprised actually that it exists. It just amuses me that it outright says if you aren't "walking" they might fall off. I get what they're going for here, if they fall off an the character needs glasses apply appropriate penalties or whatever from such and such a flaw.

I supposed my incredulous surprise is more amusement that is just confirms what I know about GURPS.

For me, it more confirms what I know about certain types of gamers. If someone's playing in a late-Victorian setting and spends the effort determining that one of his character's points of style are a pair of pince nez to correct his vision, I kind of expect he might be actually wanting their quirks to come into play - like falling off very easily. GURPS is going to provide that support.

 

[uzirath]

I was initially drawn to GURPS in the early '90s after playing D&D for about a dozen years. I loved D&D-style fantasy gaming, but my players and I were chaffing at the class/level system. I'd played GURPS a few times with other GMs and thought the point-buy system with advantages, disadvantages, and skills was both elegant and powerful. I enjoyed the way you use disadvantages and quirks to build a flawed character and how you can adjust, replace, and evolve these over time to reflect character growth and change. I loved the fact that I could create pretty much any character imaginable. I recall in the early days having a blast with my players just coming up with different character concepts. It seemed magical that we could start with a cool story and then build a character out of it.

I don't know why I'm using the past tense because all of this has largely remained true to the present day. Just yesterday I had an extended conversation with a colleague who has recently gotten into GURPS about some character ideas that he was bouncing around. My children and their friends have had a blast designing all sorts of wacky characters from She-Ra to a dragon to a mermaid to a bunch of faeries armed with pixie dust.

Unlike some, though, it's not really the gritty realism that draws me to GURPS. Nor is it the potential to run so many genres. I've been mostly running D&D-style games ever since I first started gaming. (I play in lots of other genres, but as a GM I've stayed in my happy fantasy lane.) People sometimes ask why not just play D&D. I've purchased and played (extensively, sometimes) each edition), but I always turn back to GURPS. For me, ultimately, GURPS does what I'm looking for in a fantasy game better than D&D.

For my first big 15-year GURPS campaign, we totally ignored most of the advanced combat rules. Since then, most groups I've played with have wanted to use some additional options like hit locations and whatnot, but we don't let it get too bogged down. It is, however, comforting to know that there are options for just about anything that we could ever want to include. So, although I have never rolled the dice to see if someone's glasses fell off, I think it is kinda cool in a nerd-cool way that that could be an option if we were playing that sort of game.

 

[MichaelSomething]

For me, rules adjudication is about finding out what happened in the fictional state. Yet GURPS very much seems to believe that the rules should explain---in as concrete, representative terms as possible---how things happened in the fiction. And that the how should be transparent to every player.

The ethos seems to be, if you account for as many "pre-input" factors as possible, it leads to more satisfying outcomes and adjudication on the back end, because there's less volatility between GM and players about "what actually just happened inside the game world."

Would you rather deal with ludonarrative dissonance?

 

[pemerton]

Some people I've known who were into the, quite similar, HERO System in its Champions form liked it because it rewarded system mastery. They probably also enjoyed system for its own sake. In other words, they didn't only engage deeply with the system because it helped them to win the game, but also because the activity of engaging with it was one they enjoyed.

<snip>

They were into Champions because they liked the intricacy of the HERO System.

I got into Rolemaster in 1990 - so around the same time you're talking about. Before then I had played D&D and a bit of Classic Traveller.

There were three things that drew me to RM straight away, as soon as I encountered it in play: (1) the PCs had a vibrancy, in respect of their mechanical definition and what that implied about them as protagonists, that D&D simply couldn't match; (2) the resolution (combat and spell casting) actually revealed what was happening in the fiction on the way through- it wasn't just outcome states; (3) because of the first two factors, it promised a type of sophistication in the fiction that D&D seemed not to.

In the interventing 30 years I've learned of other RPGIng techniques to achieve vibrant PCs and hence sophisticated fiction that lean a bit less heavily on mechanical definition and also that pare the mechanics back while still bringing them to bear for this purpose. (The leanest model I know is Cthulhu dark, where you get a bonus die in your pool if what you're doing falls within your field of occupational expertise: occupations I've seen in play include journalist, longshoreman, legal secretary and butler, and this system achieves both (1) and (3) with nothing more than that descriptor on the PC sheet and a four-page rulebook.)

But as I posted upthread, this doesn't stop me appreciating the attraction of these "simulationist" systems, and seeing that it can extend well beyond (though can also encompass) power-gaming.

At the time, the early 90s, I recognised their approach to Champions as being different from my own. I was into Champions mostly because I liked comic book superheroes.

Have you tried Marvel Heroic RP?

 

[pemerton]

Would you rather deal with ludonarrative dissonance?

This seems something of a false dichotomy - there are many systems that avoid the (alleged) ludonarrative dissonance of 5e D&D's hit points but don't have the features of GURPS (like the extreme focus on "pre-input" factors) that @innerdude has identified.

If someone's playing in a late-Victorian setting and spends the effort determining that one of his character's points of style are a pair of pince nez to correct his vision, I kind of expect he might be actually wanting their quirks to come into play - like falling off very easily. GURPS is going to provide that support.

I think it can be cool for someone's pince-nez to fall off. But the GURPS way of handling it seems pretty unappealing to me. Rolemaster also has similar sorts of rules, and the search-and-handling burden they impose tends to outweigh the benefit they shield.

Pendragon's way of handling some related things (like weapon breakage or fumbling) is not perfect (in my view) but is already an improvement (again in my view), as it builds the resolution of these things into the bigger framework (eg on tied combat rolls, a sword breaks an opposing non-sword weapon). Prince Valiant uses a similar rule for broken lances in a joust.

With pince-nez, the resolution system could tie the falling off of the glasses to some aspect of the resolution of the physical activity that generates the risk of them falling off in the first place.

 

[Beleriphon]

With pince-nez, the resolution system could tie the falling off of the glasses to some aspect of the resolution of the physical activity that generates the risk of them falling off in the first place.

I agree there. I mostly just laughed becasue: 1) it seemed silly to have to roll whenever a character is moving faster than a brisk walk (kind of like rolling dice to see if your character can navigate that 3inch sidewalk curb safely); and 2) I realized what it was actually doing as a rule, your character is this guy.

Spoiler

And that guy doesn't run anywhere if he can help it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Oooorrrr...place your pince nez in a waistcoat pocket when your perambulations become vigorous.

 

[Beleriphon]

Oooorrrr...place your pince nez in a waistcoat pocket when your perambulations become vigorous.

I found a picture of Teddy Roosevelt wearing a pair I wanted to use, but then somebody would argue that Teddy Roosevelt most certain run at me like a madman, after calmly placing his pince-nez in his waistcoat pocket.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

i suspect Teddy just had dozens of pairs upon his person at any time in case he lost a pair, and clattered when he walked.

 

[MichaelSomething]

This seems something of a false dichotomy - there are many systems that avoid the (alleged) ludonarrative dissonance of 5e D&D's hit points but don't have the features of GURPS (like the extreme focus on "pre-input" factors) that @innerdude has identified.

Not in methodology but certainly in objective.