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

[uzirath]

I just finished running a GURPS Monster Hunters campaign for my group. It was my first time running an extended Monster Hunters scenario. We had a blast: uncovering the secret of a lost cult, a gunfight with mafia thugs in a seedy motel, magic rituals in a diner parking lot, hobnobbing with an elderly wizard at his Philadelphia mansion, high speed chase with demonic horses on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, trying to keep a PC's niece alive despite her terrible instincts, rescuing kidnapped teenager from a sadistic psychopath, hacking into a security system, and an epic conclusion involving hails of bullets, explosives, wraiths, human sacrifice, a magic two-handed sword, and the ancient gold mask of a forgotten god.

The GURPS system may not be to all tastes, but I've never had trouble using it to tell rollicking stories with all the laughter, tension, and joy that I'd hope to see around an RPG table.

 

[aramis erak]

Striven perhaps, but I am not sure it has succeeded.

Your rifle example is proof they failed.
Train on an M-16, and that .50 isn't going to be nearly as hard for you as for the guy unskilled in either.
The best shooters on the M-16, CAR-15 or modern M4 assault rifles get offered the chance to try out for sniper... most don't have much issue transferring their skill to the accurized bolt action sniper rifles... they do have to bone up to hit at sniping ranges... but they'd never have been able to hit those ranges with an M16 or M4 in any case.

GURPS gives a strong illusion of realism, but the 1 second combat rounds, the issues with unrealistic attribute totals being acceptable, almost demanded, and the skill defaulting resulting in insanely high penalties...

 

[Staffan]

Your rifle example is proof they failed.
Train on an M-16, and that .50 isn't going to be nearly as hard for you as for the guy unskilled in either.
The best shooters on the M-16, CAR-15 or modern M4 assault rifles get offered the chance to try out for sniper... most don't have much issue transferring their skill to the accurized bolt action sniper rifles... they do have to bone up to hit at sniping ranges... but they'd never have been able to hit those ranges with an M16 or M4 in any case.

To be fair, familiarity penalties are pretty easy to lose: 8 hours of practice and you're considered familiar with the new thing. But I think in the case of guns in particular, it's a bit excessive to stack multiple familiarity penalties – a single -2 (or maybe even reduce it to -1) penalty would suffice.

GURPS gives a strong illusion of realism, but the 1 second combat rounds, the issues with unrealistic attribute totals being acceptable, almost demanded, and the skill defaulting resulting in insanely high penalties...

Right. It's one of my go-to examples for why a high level of detail does not necessarily mean a rule is realistic. That and the D&D 3e rules for how much stuff you can buy in town.

 

[haakon1]

TL 8 in the old version included fusion power and robots. We're certainly not there yet.

Our world has factory robots, robot surgery, delivery robots, (mostly) self-driving cars, and Aibos. We’re halfway there on robots.

 

[Argyle King]

Your rifle example is proof they failed.
Train on an M-16, and that .50 isn't going to be nearly as hard for you as for the guy unskilled in either.
The best shooters on the M-16, CAR-15 or modern M4 assault rifles get offered the chance to try out for sniper... most don't have much issue transferring their skill to the accurized bolt action sniper rifles... they do have to bone up to hit at sniping ranges... but they'd never have been able to hit those ranges with an M16 or M4 in any case.

GURPS gives a strong illusion of realism, but the 1 second combat rounds, the issues with unrealistic attribute totals being acceptable, almost demanded, and the skill defaulting resulting in insanely high penalties...

Anecdotally, I've found that using the Barrett does require different (but related) skills compared to the typical uses of an m4.

I would agree that some of the same techniques translate. The system does too, and that is why some skills can default off of other skills. In the case of comparing using a m4 vs a bolt-action rifle, the only obstacle is a familiarity penalty (assuming you're using those,) and that goes away after spending a little bit of time with the weapon.

Depending on which ranges you are talking about, I may or may not agree that an m-16 can hit sniper ranges. Anecdotally, there was a point in time when I could reliably hit targets about the size of soup can at 500m.

Yes, obviously, the Barrett can hit longer ranges due to being engineered to hit longer ranges. However, at those distances, hitting something is typically more about being able to do math and having an accurate-ish understanding of how big things like a head, window, and vehicle are on average.

There likely are cases that are not adequately covered by the Basic Set. Though, that is where modular design comes in. If you're playing a game in which extra levels of detail are needed for extreme long-range shooting, there are optional books available for that (in the same way that there are optional books for Supers, Magic, and a variety of other things).

 

[Autumnal]

When working on Adventure 1e playtesting and development, I learned from the developer’s side how hard it is to keep rules from inflating like the universe did in its first fraction of a second whenever we got to a subject knew a lot about. But then it’d have the same consequence every time: that subject became harder and slower to use, and in a game aiming for an overall fairly brisk pace of play, that’s no good. We didn’t catch all of those, but most of them.

If I were in charge of a new edition of GURPS, I’d be sticking someone with the task of combing through the accretions and consolidating them with a burden of justification. Which would probably be at one year’s work all by itself.

 

[Thomas Shey]

When working on Adventure 1e playtesting and development, I learned from the developer’s side how hard it is to keep rules from inflating like the universe did in its first fraction of a second whenever we got to a subject knew a lot about. But then it’d have the same consequence every time: that subject became harder and slower to use, and in a game aiming for an overall fairly brisk pace of play, that’s no good. We didn’t catch all of those, but most of them.

Yeah, the best and worst thing to have in RPG design is a designer who is knowledgeable about a subject. Best because they probably won't have rules that are telling you counterfactuals (at least outside whatever counterfactuals the genre and setting demands), worst because they will likely get extremely fussy about specifics in areas where either it doesn't matter in game play, or where the overhead on it is too high for the benefit.

If I were in charge of a new edition of GURPS, I’d be sticking someone with the task of combing through the accretions and consolidating them with a burden of justification. Which would probably be at one year’s work all by itself.

I'd think at least.

 

[Argyle King]

I don't think it would take very long to pair down GURPS.

Once you know what kind of game you want to run, it's pretty easy to cut things.

Does my game include guns?
If no, I don't need any of those rules.

...magic
...psionics
...etc

There is a valid argument to be made for speeding up character creation and making it simpler. Worked examples of how to do that can be seen in Dungeon Fantasy, After the End, Monster Hunters, and Douglas Cole's products.

You could (and I do) take it further than that with some simple houserules to establish how points can be spent and by having pre-made templates.

I wouldn't toss Basic Set and a pile of points at someone any more than I would expect a D&D player to make a 20th level character without guidelines.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't think it would take very long to pair down GURPS.

Once you know what kind of game you want to run, it's pretty easy to cut things.

Does my game include guns?
If no, I don't need any of those rules.

...magic
...psionics
...etc

The problem is that's rarely the kind of issue someone has with GURPS (or any heavy rules system). If you're not using magic, the magic rules being there are just pages in the book; they're easy to collectively ignore because they're encapsulated. The problem is when you're using guns, but the totality of the gun rules seem excessive, and worse, its not clear which ones are load-bearing. The latter requires at least a fair knowledge of the rules.

I wouldn't toss Basic Set and a pile of points at someone any more than I would expect a D&D player to make a 20th level character without guidelines.

Though to be fair, you'll at least get most of your surprises right up front, and likely advancement won't drop a whole lot of new ones on you. That's true of most non-zero-to-hero games.

 

[Senior_WotC_Janitor]

another Dark Age.

There was never any "Dark Age."