It's been so long since the last GURPS edition, that the present day is now in the "future" tech level

[Deset Gled]

GURPS was also my personal version of the dead internet theory before the dead internet theory existed. I can't be certain, but there is a very real probability that I've see more GURPS books than I've seen people who play GURPS.

 

[MGibster]

GURPS was also my personal version of the dead internet theory before the dead internet theory existed. I can't be certain, but there is a very real probability that I've see more GURPS books than I've seen people who play GURPS.

Honestly? Me too. I'm pretty sure I've played GURPS with maybe 15-16 other people over the last 30 years. I used to be able to see more GURPS books than that at my local gaming store in 1991.

 

[Celebrim]

GURPS was also my personal version of the dead internet theory before the dead internet theory existed. I can't be certain, but there is a very real probability that I've see more GURPS books than I've seen people who play GURPS.

I tried to run a GURPS campaign once. It dampened all the excitement I had about the system, and taught me a lot about how to tell the difference between a well written system and one that plays well. I learn a ton from studying GURPS, but it produced very little gameplay.

And that's my impression of the system overall. It was much more widely read than it was played. Many GMs bought its source books as inspiration, but played their games in other systems.

 

[darjr]

I tried to run a GURPS campaign once. It dampened all the excitement I had about the system, and taught me a lot about how to tell the difference between a well written system and one that plays well. I learn a ton from studying GURPS, but it produced very little gameplay.

And that's my impression of the system overall. It was much more widely read than it was played. Many GMs bought its source books as inspiration, but played their games in other systems.

What did you find that didn’t work?

For me it was the feeling of combat, so much work for most turns to feel like whiffing. Then the first person hit was going to lose and all turns after that felt like a formality.

The occasional point twiddling and min/maxing too. I think a lot of crunchy games get that to some degree.

The bell curve of 3d6 stats and roll under fell flat to me too, eventually, and stifling.

I did love the kind of street level universality the game worked towards. Especially for Transhuman Space and Traveller.

The Tech Level chart being part of the charm.

How eerily close the 2025 entry just adds to that charm.

Though I have to think the authors were thinking of something more general than what we have now, but also it’s day one.

 

[Nikosandros]

I - sadly - haven't played a lot of GURPS, but all my experiences were very good. Once, at GenCon UK (back when it still existed), I was able to play in three different adventures, two ran by Phil Master and another by Roger Burton West. Good times.

 

[Nikosandros]

What did you find that didn’t work?

For me it was the feeling of combat, so much work for most turns to feel like whiffing. Then the first person hit was going to lose and all turns after that felt like a formality.

I find GURPS combat quite good, but it does require a certain mastery by the players. Better to start with just the basic combat and no options. Still, it has a very different feeling than most other RPGs.

The occasional point twiddling and min/maxing too. I think a lot of crunchy games get that to some degree.

This can be indeed a problem. I'll also add that the point-buy system for PCs can be very flexible, but it also has a lot of issues.

The bell curve of 3d6 stats and roll under fell flat to me too, eventually, and stifling.

The 3d6 curve is probably my favorite part of the system...

 

[Staffan]

Though I have to think the authors were thinking of something more general than what we have now, but also it’s day one.

I have vague memories of the period when I was subscribed to Pyramid around the turn of the millennium, and it had an article saying "Yeah, we're in TL 8 now" (In GURPS 3rd ed, I think 2000 was the delineation between TL 7 (then-current era) and 8 (near future)) and then going on to saying that while we're technically in TL 8, it's still super-early so we're only seeing some TL 8 things so far. I'm pretty sure that if they were still doing that kind of article, that's what they'd say about TL 9 now.

 

[darjr]

I - sadly - haven't played a lot of GURPS, but all my experiences were very good. Once, at GenCon UK (back when it still existed), I was able to play in three different adventures, two ran by Phil Master and another by Roger Burton West. Good times.

huh. I should take a lesson from when I learned to love AD&D 1e as written (or as close as one could get) by playing with a GM that really knew what he was doing and had done it for decades and had done it with some of the designers.

When I was playing and running GURPS I wasn't going to big national or world conventions. I do sometimes now, so I might get a chance.

Wonder where that would fit on the tech chart?

 

[VelvetViolet]

GURPS is definitely great research material, but the rules are too intimidating for me to consider playing.

 

[Celebrim]

What did you find that didn’t work?

Well, basically everything.

Probably the single biggest problem is that GURPS is an almost pure skill based system with the worst skill system ever designed in the history of gaming. That's the core problem. The fact that it violates every aspect of good skill system design but in particular in the context of a universal system it violates the one most important rule when designing a skill system - the broader your gameplay the broader of a range of activities each of your skills has to cover. All the complexity of the skill system is so much unneeded nonsense because it fails to understand what you are trying to do with a skill system.

Instead of good game design or instead of organic design, GURPS is guided by that idea so common until the early 90s that all problems at the table stem from a lack of realism, and so just making things realistic will fix all problems. But "realism" as GURPS defines it tends to be sort of intuitive, rather than practical. So it goes with a bell curve because intuitively everything should fit to a bell curve with the most extreme cases being rare. And that's intuitive and realistic sounding, but it's just wrong.

Ultimately all fortune mechanics are just rough percentile generators. How likely is something to happen? And 3D6 modified by some number or the other isn't an intuitive number, much less a realistic one. When it's going wrong it's not easy to see why it is going wrong or what modifiers to the roll are doing in a particular case. It obfuscates the probabilities and treats that obtuseness as realism. It's not actually simulating anything. And if it isn't simulating anything particularly well, then why should it be excused for game play that comes down to "first side that rolls a critical hit wins"?

Is that interesting?

The point buy is also impossible to balance with numbers pulled out of the air so that the ultimate totals are meaningless, and the system is too complicated to use to by the DM.

There are a lot of complex parts of the system that are interesting, like Tech Levels, and skills being of different difficulties to advance, and negative encumbrance from GULLIVER was really cool. But... all the complex interesting parts prove to be really difficult to deal with in actual play. They ended up influencing me as a designer/game master, but they weren't super useful as written.

GURPS prompted a lot of introspection from me because it called into question almost everything I'd taken for granted before that point. Why was it that all the inelegant unintuitive aspects of D&D like hit points, classes, levels, Vancian magic and AC modifying the chance to hit and not being DR - all the stuff everyone who thought they were cool mocked - worked so much better than skills, point buy, classless, mana points, and all the stuff that literally everyone in the 80's and early 90's was saying was the right way to play? So GURPS was important for me but not because it was good, but because it made me really think hard about how a game actually works at the table.