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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 775316" data-attributes="member: 4937">On paper, it is a beautiful system.In practice it has alot of serious problems, most of which have already been mentioned.It doesn't scale well.   No system scales perfectly (D20 for example), but GURPS becomes problamatic much sooner.It is just good enough to provoke an infinite barrage of house rules, yet it has never been extensively revised.  No attempt has ever been made to slow down the rules bloat and trim the fat; instead, it offers up a buffet of rules for everyone.  The result is as horribly inelegant as 1st Ed. D&D at its worst, and is no where as simple of a system.   I found I was spending dozens of hours rewriting and compiling rules.  Equally as bad is the sourcebook nature of GURPS means that 'core' rules for your campaign can be scattered  across an obscene amount of material.  If you are the type that is borrowing feats/classes/rules from 20 third party publications for D20, then you have some idea of the problem.   For an example of a rules set that takes into account most of the problems that will eventually annoy you with GURPS, look up GULLIVER on a search engine.  There you have a fix to most of the worst problems, but the ammount of time required to convert over to such a system entirely is prohibitive, plus you are left with a volumous tome of rule changes.  It's an old system and its really in need of a house cleaning in the same way D&D was before 3rd edition.It takes a bit more effort to game master well.  All that extra detail puts a have burden on the GM, who is forced to rely more heavily on extemporaneous decisions and plots.  In effect, this reduces the utility of having such a detailed realistic system in the first place, because you have practically gone back to a system of GM fiat.  The game system is at its best in modern settings, but there it runs up against two big problems.  The harsh reality of the lethality of modern weapons, and the tedium of dice rolling/resolution when a party is shooting two or three or more rounds/bursts per second.  Despite this, It would definately be my prefered system for say 16th to 21st century play, and would probably be my prefered system for most classic sci-fi settings.  It makes for a decent Horror setting, which D&D struggles to achieve IMO.  It could make for a decent fantasy setting under the right circumstances, but if you are going tradiational 'hack and slash' you are almost certainly better off with D20.I like GURPS.  There are alot of problems I have with D20 that GURPS doesn't have.  But there are also alot of problems GURPS has that D20 doesn't.</blockquote>

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