Can somebody Explain Gurps?

[AuraSeer]

One significant thing to note about GURPS is that it tries to be very realistic, no matter what setting you're in. Where D&D uses rules that are fast and simple, GURPS prefers increasing accuracy even if that makes the rules more complex.

I like the example of shooting a ranged weapon at a moving target. In D&D, this is folded into the Dexterity modifier to AC. Hitting a fast dragon in a top-speed power dive is no more difficult than hitting that same dragon standing still. All you need to do is modify for range.

In GURPS it involves a table lookup. You will first have modified your attack chances for the target's size and the range to it, which is easy enough. Then you're supposed to check the table for range, plus the target's speed relative to your own, and cross-reference that with the size of the target or the body location you're aiming at. The result gives a third modifier, which is probably different for every attack roll; if you move and attack you'll have a different modifier than if you stand still. (If your GM is anal enough, this stuff may even involve the use of trigonometry. I've seen games run that way at cons, and some people really get off on it.)

There's nothing wrong with either approach, but which you prefer will depend on your play style. I ran GURPS for a few years, until I found that over time I was continually removing rules and simplifying the system to make it fast enough for my group. Eventually we decided that there was no point in using a very "realistic" system if realism wasn't important to us, and we switched to playing other games.

 

[jmucchiello]

Does gurps suffer from the problem of the Hero system in that the tool kits allow for the contraction of almost anything, but tend to bog the game down with the tool kits.

Aside from being point-buy systems and employing 3d6 for resolution, there is very little similarity between GURPS and Hero.

What I found when playing hero, was that while the game mechanics of a laser and an eye beam may be structuraly the same, when I have to create hardware items by adding laser emission with the physical object limitation, I sort of lost the feel of scifi. It ultimately turned me off on the system because I was just never able to immerse myself in the world and play, and kept focusing on how everything went together.

GURPS (at least before 4e) doesn't have a meta-system for creating powers like Hero does. In fact, what has always turned me away from GURPS was that it contained hundreds of little systems for doing hundreds of different things. Supers bought bolts of flame differently than wizards who bought it differently than the guy carrying a flamethrower. 4e supposedly unifies this process without going to the extreme of Hero (energy blast).

IOW, in GURPS, every special effect (Hero term) has its own ruleset. All genres using the special effect share the same rules for it but electricity does not act like fire does not act like cold.

I'm hoping Gurps is generic, but when they hand over a scifi setting such as traveller I'm not worrying about adding a life support power to my starship so the crew doesn't suffocate. Instead I can add a life support module purchased at Harries Used Star Parts, that may be a little on the shady side, but hey, we're leaving as soon as it's installed anyway. And things which make scifi intersting, such as ship contruction, have rules that make a little sense to an engineer. Instead of just adding powers until I'm moderatly happy with the result or can't afford any more.

Okay, the ship creation rules in GURPS are notorious for requiring advanced engineering degrees to understand. GURPS favors absolute realism over hand-waving. And thus the vehicle rules stem from real world machines (cars, tanks, aircraft, F-14s) and scale upward into the scifi machines. At times it's slavish devotion to realism can make for difficult and hard to grasp subsystems.

But, the rules to GURPS do not have a Harries Used Star Parts in them any more than there's a WhizBang's Used Wands in D&D.

 

[Voadam]

Even if you don't go with GURPS you might want to check out their GURPS traveller cardstock ship deck plans as props. Their dungeon counter and map stuff is great so I would expect the same from their ship maps.

 

[qstor]

The Traveller books are generally well received as well like Far Trader and First In. I'm a fan of the Scout class and liked the realistic planetary generation in First In.

I've played and DM'd GURPS a few times but I've always found that AD&D/3.x ws more popular so I ended up playing that more. But I'm a fan of the realistic combat, thats something D&D/D20 Modern doesn't have. If you plan on running a lot of combat you might make sure one of the PC's is a medic.

Mike

 

[WizarDru]

One significant thing to note about GURPS is that it tries to be very realistic, no matter what setting you're in. Where D&D uses rules that are fast and simple, GURPS prefers increasing accuracy even if that makes the rules more complex.

I like the example of shooting a ranged weapon at a moving target. In D&D, this is folded into the Dexterity modifier to AC. Hitting a fast dragon in a top-speed power dive is no more difficult than hitting that same dragon standing still. All you need to do is modify for range.

Your example is out-of-date. Size, speed and range all use the same simple table, now. It's all simple addition and subtraction, based on the situation, and it's not much different that the standard d20 calculations. Check the GURPS lite PDF for details. I'd say it's on a par with d20 ranged combat, frankly, except that GURPS encourages slower ranged combat. The biggest difference is that those numbers are precomputed into d20 via the AC penalties for size, and all penalties/bonuses are 100% on all the time. That's great for speed, but some folks don't enjoy the lack of verisimilitude such a system is prone to.

For example, some of my players are fencers....the D&D rules (or lack thereof) concerning parrying and some of the simplified combat options bother them. GURPS supports such options in a much better capacity, IMHO...but often at the sacrifice of simplicity.

The claim that GURPS used dozens of different rules systems for each advantage and skill is stretching things somewhat, but it's not wrong. The 4th edition was meant to address that very problem. However, I should point out that all of the rules in the various rulebooks were never meant to be compatabile, just adhere to a baseline. GURPS Japan, GURPS Aztec and GURPS Russia were never meant to be completely interchangeable with GURPS Voodoo, GURPS Celtic Myth and GURPS Lensman. But as I said, it's an overstatemnt to say there was no internal consistency...many disadvantages gave fairly simple rules to follow them, and some had no direct mechanic...because one wasn't needed. If you're color blind, then there's no roll to make...you're just color blind. If you're ansomic, you don't roll to see if you suddenly gained a sense of smell or taste. The real disconnects happened between supplements.

Mind you, I don't have any desire to leave d20 for GURPS. I left it for d20, and have no desire to return....but it's nice to know it's still there. I ran a 10 year Fantasy game, 8 year Supers game, 4 year Anime game (before the term was mainstream), a cross-time game, a Cthulu game, a 4 year Japan game and several others in GURPS. Like d20, it's a fairly modular system that allows you to use more or less detail, as you desire. Or at least, it did. I'm not that up on 4e, so take what I say with the proverbial grain of salt.

 

[AuraSeer]

Your example is out-of-date. Size, speed and range all use the same simple table, now.

Point taken; it's been quite a while since I used the GURPS rules. But you're still stuck looking up numbers on a table every time you make an attack, which was the point of my example anyway.

 

[TerraDave]

Even if you are not planning on using GURPS, get the GURPS Traveller book, it will make the T20 book much more useful.

The GURPS sourcebooks are models of how to write material that is usefull in game, without being rules heavy or that tied to GURPS mechanics.

Classic examples of usefull "fluff", especially pertinent now that the fluff/crunch wars seem to be raging again (or maybe they just never stop).

 

[TerraDave]

first double post, whoopi

 

[Insight]

Even if you never intend to play GURPS as a rule system, SJG puts out some of the BEST setting supplements out there. Let's say for example you want to run a military style game in d20 Modern. I would suggest grabbing GURPS Special Ops, which has lots of military information, not all of which is devoted to special ops themselves. Or let's say you are running a fantasy game based on ancient China. I would suggest grabbing GURPS China and/or GURPS Martial Arts, both of which have lots of setting related info you might find useful and inspiring.

Bottom line - the setting books are far more useful than you might think. If you're not planning to use the GURPS system, skip the 20pp of rules and use the rest of it.

 

[J_D]

I'm going to caveat this by saying up front that I do not have 4th Ed. GURPS and am going only on 3rd Ed. I think it was the original rather than revised 3rd Ed because the latest copyright in the book is 1993 and another poster said that 3rd Ed. Revised came out in '94.

That said, I like the idea of GURPS and like the realism and attention to detail it provides, but there's one thing that ruins the whole thing for me as a game — the skill system. Well, not the entire skill system; much of it is great. Each skill is considered a mental or physical skill (which means it works off of either the IQ or DEX attributes), which has a rough D&D3 analog in basing each skill off of an attribute although D&D does it better by using any of the six attributes. Each skill has a difficulty rating which means some skills are harder to learn than others, which is in the same general category of D&D3's class skills vs. cross class skills except that GURPS does this better and with more detail. Each skill also defaults to either an attribute or another skill which results in a whole set of tree-like hierarchies for skills, and this again is in the same general category of D&D3's "Use Untrained" feature except that GURPS does it better and with more detail.

To be more precise, the fist-clenching and teeth-grinding problem for me is how skills are bought for the character. There is no "absolute scale" of skill that starts at 0 and works its way up, as does every other RPG with skills I have seen (note: I haven't seen every game system ever published, so this is not a claim of absolute uniqueness for GURPS). Your skill level is purchased relative to the attribute the skill is based on. Let's take an average mental skill as an example. If you spend one character point to purchase a skill, you don't get 1 skill points or anything like that; you get a skill level of IQ-1. If you spend two character points you don't get two skill points, you get a skill level of IQ. Four character points will get you a skill level of IQ+1, Six skill points get you a skill level of IQ+2, and so on. In effect, there is no such things as "skill points" or "skill ranks" or whatever term you want to use at all. Character points are used to purchase a skill level relative to the attribute the skill is based on.

I can't stand this kind of system. It is a significant irritant that I can't get past, a mechanic I consider to be drooling idiocy. To me, the only acceptable kind of skill system is one that has skill points in and of itself, having their own absolute scale that start at 0 skill or no skill and go up from there. Not having "skill points" in and of themselves is unacceptable to me in any skill system. I don't object to the general idea of what they were trying to accomplish with this system. I think it's a good idea for the basic attribute to affect the end chance of success, and D&D3 did this far better by applying the attribute modifier to the "absolute" number of skill ranks to get the net skill modifier. I don't even object in principle to higher skill levels costing character points on a greater than linear curve; this could still have been implemented with a system of absolute skill points. I just really, really, really dislike — nay, despise — the idea that there are no absolute "skill points" or "skill ranks" per se.

It's too bad, too, because other than that GURPS is a great system. I generally like more detail and verisimilitude and enjoy some number-crunching, and many things in D&D are a little too abstract for my tastes. If it weren't for this skill purchasing system I'd probably rather play GURPS than D&D. But GURPS is a skill-based system — there are no classes or levels and nearly everything is done by skill rolls — so this insurmountable problem I have strikes to the very heart and core of the game. I find a number of faults with D&D3, but those faults are all relatively peripheral and don't affect the core of the system itself the way this problem in GURPS skills does. This in combination with my preferred fantasy world (Forgotten Realms) is why D&D3 is currently my game of preference.

Even though I do not play GURPS, I still have a large collection of GURPS sourcebooks. I'll second TerraDave and Insight in saying that GURPS puts out some of the best sourcebooks in gaming. Even if you don't play the game or like the mechanics, the sourcebooks are full of information and ideas that can be used in other games. Steve Jackson Games has gotten a good chunk of my gaming money over the years thanks to their sourcebooks! Hopefully this will continue with GURPS 4th!

I don't expect that this core skill purchase mechanic has changed in GURPS 4th, but if it has someone please let me know. That alone would be enough for me to re-evaluate the system.