Help Me Understand the GURPS Design Perspective

[Neonchameleon]

And I don't know if it's the system (GURPS 3e), the campaign (a supers setting riffed directly from Brandon Sanderson's Reckoners novels), the GM's handling of the "plot" (is there a plot? None of the characters know a damn thing about anything, so we're mostly wandering aimlessly) . . . but the whole thing is falling way beyond flat for me, and is coming nigh unto full-on cratering.

Truthfully it's probably a combination of all of the above (in addition to disliking GURPS and the plot being non-existent, supers is my least favorite speculative fiction genre by a country mile). But we're now 9 or 10 sessions in to the campaign. And I've played two other GURPS 3e campaigns that lasted about as long as this one.

So while my experience with GURPS probably barely crosses the "total newbie" threshold, I can say without any hesitation, after 30+ sessions of GURPS, I just don't get it.

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

Two things no one has mentioned. Firstly that GURPS Supers is just a bad combination. GURPS is full of gritty detail, and that just does not mesh with most superhero settings at all. And second that GURPS source books tend to be among the best researched and written for their setting/game style of any RPG source books I've read. I'd recommend them even for people who don't play GURPS.

As for who it's for - it's for the same sort of person who likes D&D 3.X (or to a lesser extent Pathfinder) but wants a gritty and realistic rather than a larger than life super-heroic game relying on Holywood Physics and Holywood Action Movie Damage. You have an extremely detailed character, fleshed out in a whole lot of ways from their skills (and there are a lot of skills) to their advantages to their spells to their equipment. Every physical factor is taken account of in a highly process-mapped game that takes you through the phases of physical combat in second by second increments.

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.

This is less of a problem for GURPS than it is for a lot of other systems due to the escalating costs for higher levels. I'm far more used to GURPS producing hyper-versatile PCs than one trick ponies.

Have you tried Marvel Heroic RP?

On that note have you seen the Sentinels Comics RPG? It's as close to a streamlined Marvel Heroic 2e as there is ever going to be.

 

[Celebrim]

This is less of a problem for GURPS than it is for a lot of other systems due to the escalating costs for higher levels. I'm far more used to GURPS producing hyper-versatile PCs than one trick ponies.

The escalating costs roughly match the escalating gains in marginal utility often precisely because GURPS uses a bell curve that makes each step further from the norm more and more profitable. For example, having an active defense gets increasingly good the closer you can get that active defense to succeed on a 16. Similar things are true about damage resistance. Each point of damage resistance is a little bit better in practice than the one before it, as it raises the possibility that you'll be effectively immune to any attack which would be fair to unleash on the party as a whole or at the least, that if you are subjected to such attacks, it won't be long before the more balanced characters are all dead. As a spell-caster, it's much better to have one or two really good spells that you can cast for free and at a good effect than a wide variety that will fatigue you. The game, as with many point buy games, is balanced around the assumption that role-play concerns will push PC's into making 'realistic' well-rounded characters that can do a lot of things with average or above average skill.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Mookus]

GURPS Supers is just a bad combination. GURPS is full of gritty detail, and that just does not mesh with most superhero settings at all.

I do hear GURPS isn't good at Supers-- a lot -- so I imagine I'm missing something, somewhere, since I've never had any issues. But in addition to being full of gritty detail, it's also full of cinematic, over-the-top options that make it easy to run games even more gonzo than the typical four-color supers world.

To me, that's the GURPS Design Perspective -- "a game 85% as good for all genres as specific games are for their one, single genre."

 

[lordabdul]

This is less of a problem for GURPS than it is for a lot of other systems due to the escalating costs for higher levels. I'm far more used to GURPS producing hyper-versatile PCs than one trick ponies.

Yeah, 2 common types of characters I see in GURPS are either super versatile PCs that aren't expert at much, or the munchkin cliche of a super specialized/expert character that always has the same flaws like Addiction or Nightmares or whatever because the player wanted extra points (as opposed to actually wanting a character with those flaws for roleplaying purposes).

And second that GURPS source books tend to be among the best researched and written for their setting/game style of any RPG source books I've read. I'd recommend them even for people who don't play GURPS.

That's one of the the biggest strengths of GURPS. As far as I understand, a good chunk of GURPS books are actually selling to people who don't use GURPS at all. The reason the "How to be a GURPS GM" book recommends all kinds of genre/style sourcebooks is because they're very very good at deconstructing the tropes of whatever genre you're interested in. They have extensive bibliographies and references, drop a whole bunch of cool ideas throughout every page, and explain a few game design principles that help get the result you want at the table... the bits that are GURPS-specific are often split between re-visiting the core book traits and rules to highlight which ones can be helpful for the given genre/style, and some new rules that complement or replace the core ones (but we're talking about a small chunk of the book... again, these books are often generic enough to appeal to non-GURPS GMs).... although, like I said before, these past 10 years I've seen other games release similar sourcebooks (like, say, FATE) where, before, GURPS was pretty much the only one doing that.

 

[Neonchameleon]

The escalating costs roughly match the escalating gains in marginal utility often precisely because GURPS uses a bell curve that makes each step further from the norm more and more profitable. For example, having an active defense gets increasingly good the closer you can get that active defense to succeed on a 16. Similar things are true about damage resistance.

The big thing with GURPS though, and particularly with 3e, is just how effective Dex and Int were to drop skill points into. (Health wasn't bad either). High Dex, High Int, and half a point in a huge range of skills went a pretty long way towards flexibility for a low cost.

 

[lordabdul]

how effective Dex and Int were to drop skill points into.

Yeah, 4e fixed a bit of it, but it's still stupid how Dex and Int are dominating everything else (which is why they cost double compared to the rest). I generally prevent players from making characters with more than 14 in any stat, at least when playing "gritty" campaigns.

As for GURPS with superheroes, it just doesn't feel right to me. I prefer using lighter/freeform rules for that... although I guess if I was doing a "street-level" supes game like, say, a Watchmen or Daredevil thing, it might work for me.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I do hear GURPS isn't good at Supers-- a lot -- so I imagine I'm missing something, somewhere, since I've never had any issues. But in addition to being full of gritty detail, it's also full of cinematic, over-the-top options that make it easy to run games even more gonzo than the typical four-color supers world.

Not in my experience - there are just too many details involved, and GURPS emphasis on physics even with the cinematic rules means that it's never anywhere near as free-wheeling as e.g. Marvel Heroic Roleplaying or the Sentinels Comics RPG. It's not about the options so much as the theming and the consequences.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Celebrim]

That said, it had some of the best "settings" that I recall; I still have the... what is it... Car Wars settings books.

I always loved Car Wars in theory, but looking back on it now I realize it was part of an era that I refer to as "paper software", in that the game rules were aiming for such a high level of detail that it was really trying to use the players brain like a computer to run the game on. I can't really imagine playing the game now, given that if you wanted to do that sort of thing, it would probably be more fun to play on an actual computer, and if I was going to play it today I'd probably find myself writing software tools so that I could push a button and have the software tell me what the next board state should be.