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Thanks for the review! I don’t own the original books so I figure I will still buy Tyranny — it might come handy as a first campaign to run for my kid and his friends. It’s going to be their first big campaign after a couple of one-shots, so the railroading aspect might actually be a plus when...

Sure, at which point you can apply hefty penalties to the flashback mechanics rolls, or whatever you're using to model Batman's ability to be super prepared and have awesome gadgets at the ready. With those penalties, the player would probably fail the roll, and you have Bat-juice dripping out...

My understanding from your post was that the whole concept of Batman as a character in a world where he might fight Superman was putting too much work on the GM's shoulders to make it work. Apologies if I didn't understand that correctly, but then maybe that means I didn't understand your point...

I'd like to think I would be able to pull it off as a GM. But if I couldn't, again, that would be premise rejection, not a game system problem. "In this game/world, Batman is really just a human, and no amount of training or gadgetry will make him able to face Superman. Since Chad is playing...

Sounds more like rejecting the premise than rejecting the system to me. The story always comes first, and the mechanics are only there to support that and add a little randomness and fun. If, in terms of narrative, you want Batman to be able to dodge/block/whatever Superman's punch, you come up...

I came to GURPS on the tail end of 3e, and I found it quite kludgy indeed. I didn't play much with it, but I enjoyed the sourcebooks a lot for use with other systems. I only came to like (and actually use) GURPS when they released 4e which I would say was a very welcome clean-up and improvement...

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...

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...

I agree with the general sentiment that D&D (or most flavours of D20/OSR games for that matter) would not be very good at playing a grim and gritty campaign like Enemy Within (or any adventure set in a likewise gritty world). Maybe you're very good at tinkering with D&D rules to adapt power...

What happens is that bad things happens. Similarly, bad things happen when using a narrative system with a GM who doesn't understand dramatic tension and letting player characters shine (it can lead to extreme railroading, or a "me vs. the players" syndrome). And other bad things happen if the...

It is easy to go down the slope of "use more, not less" indeed, by virtue of there having lots of books on sale, and by virtue of people getting easily carried away. However, the GURPS community (as evidenced by people on this thread) and the text of those books (if you ever read the...

That's totally bonkers and wrong... well I'm very sorry you only had bad experiences with GURPS! You may want to clear you head with a light PbtA-game or HeroQuest or something :D

Absolutely not. Again, if that's the case, your GM is doing GURPS completely wrong, and no wonder you seem to feel so angry about this... which, by the way, you shouldn't internalize, and instead communicate to the GM that you're unhappy with that aspect of the game. If the GM isn't changing...

Yeah, sorry to hear about that happening to your group, it's definitely one of the sucky aspects of being the GM, when the game doesn't go well and you don't know what to do and you somehow feel responsible. It's really why every game book in the world tells you about discussing the game...

I wouldn't say "hate" but yes, I buy PDFs for checking out games, or for material that I only need to use at home while preparing an upcoming session. For anything that needs to be used in play at the table, I definitely get the physical book, and use the PDF only as a backup if a second players...

Thanks for the write-up! Very interesting. I tend to play a lot of horror games (CoC, DG, etc.) and over the years I've indeed come to realize that they are very different from the main types of RPGs. As you said, they have a different "power arc". In most RPGs, you character gets better, and...

@John Dallman is completely right, and I think this "GURPS is a toolbox" thing is way too often overlooked. People say that GURPS is crunchy, and they're mostly right, but that's not totally correct either: I know people who run GURPS with just the super basics (either GURPS Lite or GURPS...

I think this is very common throughout the world. My 2 home countries, Canada and France, also have dental care and eye care depending vastly on private/employer-provided insurance coverage (to varying degrees between the 2 countries but still quite different from other types of health...

It's the height of the hobby, yes, but a lot of it ends up happening online, it seems (I'd be curious to know if anybody tried to estimate how much online vs offline games are played... it's probably tricky). Anyway, I think depending on your area there might be different media that gamers...