Grade the GURPS System

[Bayushi_seikuro]

If memory serves, many years ago the video game Fallout was meant to use GURPS as its base system. However, SJG withdrew from the agreement due to how the violence the game was.

Today Fallout is a major gaming IP with four iterations and several spinoffs to its name. And GURPs is more footnote then franchise.

While GURPS may be a foot note, I think it's managed to stay more in people's mind or peripherary than, say, Rolemaster/MERP or some other systems.

I do have an issue with using Fallout as a benchmark. You say Fallout is a major gaming IP - and it IS - however, people playing Fallout 3/4/76 are NOT playing a Fallout directly based off of GURPS. What do you think the community would say if it was announced the next Fallout is going to be isometric and be sandbox in only the loosest sense? It's not hard to guess - go look at the responses when Fallout went from isometric to FPS. Hell, probably could even look at how it went when Fallout was the replacement for Wasteland

 

[aramis erak]

You're not wrong. Since so much of GURPS' business model is centered on selling rules, I view it as a major misstep that Steven Jackson Games hasn't prioritized making it easy for GMs to find/buy/publish adventures for players to use those rules within. SJG has instead chosen to keep approximately 100% of the revenue and creative control over GURPS-oriented adventures at the cost IMO of shrinking the GURPS player base including their own market for rules.

Based upon Kromm and SJ's statements, GURPS is a net breakeven, or even a slight loss. Only a handful of sublines make a profit: Transhuman Space, Dungeon Fantasy, and several licensees - but much of that profit is for the licensees, especially since SJ has fairly strict editorial standards for its GURPS licensees. The cash cow was GURPS: Traveller... it subsidized the rest of GURPS except THS.... and DF was the next (and current) cash cow, with THS still supporting itself.

SJ, however, has noted his current creative agenda is on The Fantasy Trip, not GURPS. TFT does have a licensing program. It requires using Warehouse 23, rather than DriveThru, but it's very much modeled on the Wizards/Mongoose/Free League limited licenses. (DM's Guild, TAS, Free League Workshop, respectively.)

SJ is active in the TFT subforum on sjgames, in a way he's not been in most of the board's subforums. TFT is his baby, and he wants to see it flourish. It's simpler than GURPS, and much more suitable for 3rd party additions than GURPS... And was the game that secured his place in the Game Designers Hall of Fame. I expect GURPS is on permanent life support - the costs of keeping it available are low, but the costs of new materials are not.

Note also: SJ himself is directly the designer for OGRE, GEV, Illuminatis, Melee, Wizard, and In the Labyrinth, as well as a dozen other microgames. ITL, the module which turned Melee and Wizard into a full up RPG, was proof he was multi-talented. He's also said to be active in the conceptual and editorial directions of SJG, despite having handed off the reins for day to day operations. OGRE/GEV has had consistent sales since 1977... and several revisions since the original cardboard box. TFT has had calls for reprints since SJ left Metagaming. He couldn't afford to buy it, and it still held a stupidly high relaunch kickstarter once SJ used the Copyright Recovery Act for its intended purpose - returning rights to a unused intellectual property to its creator, even tho' it was sold to or was work for hire from the non-using owner.

TFT is one of the games I keep a copy of (in the non-SJ version, Dragons of Underearth) in my "instant RPG game" box in the car. Right next to GW's Judge Dredd, and the KAMB SDE and SGtC...

 

[Thomas Shey]

I always wanted to like TFT--even backed the new version--but always found the wiff factor in it too severe for my taste.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

That’s sort of why GURPS exists, in a roundabout kind of way. It is very common for people to only want to learn one rule set and then be reluctant to learn any others. If that ruleset is limited in scope then the games you can more easily play are also constrained. If that ruleset is expansive however then the range of games you could run are almost limitless in scope. So the aim of GURPS (and other flexible systems) was to be the one system you needed which allowed you to play any game you wanted. Obviously this is a task where it is impossible to be all things to all people, but you can potentially be all things to enough people to support your game line…

It's a good niche for something like Film Reroll (The Film Reroll Podcast – We play through your favorite movies as RPGs and totally ruin them.) where you want to "replay" through a variety of different movies, from Star Wars to Last Action to Clue, with the same group and using the same game system.

 

[sunrisekid]

My two cents... I owned several GURPS books in the old days and I really enjoyed reading them, speculating about games, wrote a few house game adventures, etc. But I could not find anyone to play; it was D&D or bust.
That said, the "Space" module is fantastic for providing ground work on how to flesh out your vision of a sci-fi game. And the "Cyberpunk" module is equally compelling; it feels very true to the novels of the day, perhaps comparable to CP2077.
On balance, it's a 7/10 game system with a comprehensive replacement for the existing popular top-tier game you might not want to play.

 

[uzirath]

I got "non-punitively banned" from the GURPS Discord by GURPS author Christopher Rice for "being a bad fit"

I'm sorry to hear this. I enjoyed our conversations on the discord! (I'm "dalin" over there.)

I wanted to mention, somewhat apropos of this thread, that I recently started running a GURPS Dungeon Fantasy game using an OSR adventure that you recommended, Cavern of the Creeping Terror, by Kormar Publishing. While the low-res maps put me off at first, it was a lot of fun to play, and dead simple to convert to GURPS on the fly. (I did zero prep.) Looking forward to a second session next weekend.

 

[Mark Craddock]

Based upon Kromm and SJ's statements, GURPS is a net breakeven, or even a slight loss. Only a handful of sublines make a profit: Transhuman Space, Dungeon Fantasy, and several licensees - but much of that profit is for the licensees, especially since SJ has fairly strict editorial standards for its GURPS licensees. The cash cow was GURPS: Traveller... it subsidized the rest of GURPS except THS.... and DF was the next (and current) cash cow, with THS still supporting itself.

SJ, however, has noted his current creative agenda is on The Fantasy Trip, not GURPS. TFT does have a licensing program. It requires using Warehouse 23, rather than DriveThru, but it's very much modeled on the Wizards/Mongoose/Free League limited licenses. (DM's Guild, TAS, Free League Workshop, respectively.)

SJ is active in the TFT subforum on sjgames, in a way he's not been in most of the board's subforums. TFT is his baby, and he wants to see it flourish. It's simpler than GURPS, and much more suitable for 3rd party additions than GURPS... And was the game that secured his place in the Game Designers Hall of Fame. I expect GURPS is on permanent life support - the costs of keeping it available are low, but the costs of new materials are not.

Note also: SJ himself is directly the designer for OGRE, GEV, Illuminatis, Melee, Wizard, and In the Labyrinth, as well as a dozen other microgames. ITL, the module which turned Melee and Wizard into a full up RPG, was proof he was multi-talented. He's also said to be active in the conceptual and editorial directions of SJG, despite having handed off the reins for day to day operations. OGRE/GEV has had consistent sales since 1977... and several revisions since the original cardboard box. TFT has had calls for reprints since SJ left Metagaming. He couldn't afford to buy it, and it still held a stupidly high relaunch kickstarter once SJ used the Copyright Recovery Act for its intended purpose - returning rights to a unused intellectual property to its creator, even tho' it was sold to or was work for hire from the non-using owner.

TFT is one of the games I keep a copy of (in the non-SJ version, Dragons of Underearth) in my "instant RPG game" box in the car. Right next to GW's Judge Dredd, and the KAMB SDE and SGtC...

Kromm and David Culver, IMO, are part of the problem. GURPS has had the same vision for close to 30 years and sometimes that is a bad thing. We won't ever know if it could be more than that as long as Steve is alive & Kromm is in charge of the line. Steve's focus on TFT shows us that yes he built GURPS but he was just waiting to see when TFT would become available. I mean his presence & a 3rd party license are working for TFT then they certainly could work for GURPS.

Sometimes the person who founded a company shouldn't be running it.

 

[The Shadow]

I played in a number of GURPS campaigns back in the day and had fun... but I wouldn't touch the actual rules with a ten foot pole any more. I've never seen a system more devoted to meaningless crunch - crunch that doesn't actually matter.

That, and I've come to think it's a major design mistake (a very understandable one, but still major) to give build points back for Disadvantages.

Character Advantages and Disadvantages are not symmetrical! They play different roles in the character and in the game. Most Disadvantages are about spotlight time for your character; more broadly, flaws make characters interesting.

Games like M&M 2e, Fate, and others that treat such flaws as rewarding players when they come up play out much more naturally to my mind. Instead of the GM having to make sure that a character's flaws come up enough to justify the points, the player cooperates in making sure they come up, because they only pay off when they do!

That said, GURPS supplements are consistently amazing, and often very usable with other systems! Also, I've always had a soft spot in my heart for the Psionics rules, they're extremely flavorful!

 

[Staffan]

That, and I've come to think it's a major design mistake (a very understandable one, but still major) to give build points back for Disadvantages.

Character Advantages and Disadvantages are not symmetrical! They play different roles in the character and in the game. Most Disadvantages are about spotlight time for your character; more broadly, flaws make characters interesting.

Games like M&M 2e, Fate, and others that treat such flaws as rewarding players when they come up play out much more naturally to my mind. Instead of the GM having to make sure that a character's flaws come up enough to justify the points, the player cooperates in making sure they come up, because they only pay off when they do!

I mostly agree. I think there are two kinds of disadvantages, broadly speaking: numerical and narrative. Numerical disadvantages are basically just the reverse of numerical advantages – things like weak will, lowered move, etc. I think it's fair to give points back for those. Narrative advantages would be things like phobias, curiosity, various handicaps or social issues, and it's better to give some kind of metacurrency as a "reward" when those are triggered.

 

[dbm]

Kromm and David Culver, IMO, are part of the problem. GURPS has had the same vision for close to 30 years and sometimes that is a bad thing

I think you mean David Pulver there? He hasn’t actually had any writer credits for a long time, now. Kromm is still at the helm and there is a relatively small group of regular contributors these days.

I kind of agree with your point - sometimes you need a change of vision. On the other hand, to a degree GURPS just needs to be allowed to be GURPS. It isn’t for everyone and that’s ok.

It used to be my favourite system but like many on this thread my tastes have changed over time. I’m glad it still exists for those people where it remains their favourite system.

I played in a number of GURPS campaigns back in the day and had fun... but I wouldn't touch the actual rules with a ten foot pole any more. I've never seen a system more devoted to meaningless crunch - crunch that doesn't actually matter.

That, and I've come to think it's a major design mistake (a very understandable one, but still major) to give build points back for Disadvantages.

Character Advantages and Disadvantages are not symmetrical! They play different roles in the character and in the game. Most Disadvantages are about spotlight time for your character; more broadly, flaws make characters interesting.

I agree strongly with your points here, and these are the main reasons that GURPS is no longer my primary system too.

I don’t generally like to promote other systems in these threads, however I will say that Savage Worlds gives me enough rules to make play interesting without becoming onerous.

IMO it also has a superior way of handling disadvantages (hindrances in Savage Worlds parlance) that better reflect this “spot light” thinking IMO. There are some purely mechanical hindrances (which generally work well and are interesting). Then there are role-playing linked hindrances and playing your character in line with these earned you meta currency (“bennies”) which are a key party of the Savage Worlds game system.

Savage Worlds gives me all the benefits I want from GURPS with a modern and right-weight system (for me - others will find that balance different of course).