Grade the GURPS System

[Jahydin]

SJG did both an original "d666" mechanic and a GURPS version... which

Didn't realize there were two versions...

Looks like I have the d666 version. And now that it's out, I will leave it out so I can finally read through it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

SJ wrote them both, TFT in 77-81, and GURPS in 83-86. It's not just influence; It's a parent and child situation.

If you like. Given he also had reason to actively change things (for legal reasons) I don't think it materially changes my point.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I own more GURPS books than I do almost any other systems and regret very few of them. That said I regret so few of them because of the nerdy enthusiasm of the writers, and the system itself is pretty clunky in play (as has been mentioned to resolve an attack requires three rolls - hit, defense, damage, and then the effects of the damage). It is however (alongside Fate Core) one of my go-to generic systems where anything I'm planning on running needs to be better at what it does than both Fate and GURPS.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I own more GURPS books than I do almost any other systems and regret very few of them. That said I regret so few of them because of the nerdy enthusiasm of the writers, and the system itself is pretty clunky in play (as has been mentioned to resolve an attack requires three rolls - hit, defense, damage, and then the effects of the damage). It is however (alongside Fate Core) one of my go-to generic systems where anything I'm planning on running needs to be better at what it does than both Fate and GURPS.

Well, if multiple rolls with attacks was enough to consistently put people off, RuneQuest and its derivatives would have died years ago (since you normally use four there).

 

[Neonchameleon]

Well, if multiple rolls with attacks was enough to consistently put people off, RuneQuest and its derivatives would have died years ago (since you normally use four there).

It's a negative. It's not the only factor in play and a good group with a bad game is always better than a bad group with a good game.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's a negative. It's not the only factor in play and a good group with a bad game is always better than a bad group with a good game.

I'd say more accurately its something that represents things that may or may not be worth distinguishing with. I've played games that roll various of those together in various ways and am kind of agnostic if the extra temporal overhead is worth it, or is, at the other end, if the overhead is overstated.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I'd say more accurately its something that represents things that may or may not be worth distinguishing with. I've played games that roll various of those together in various ways and am kind of agnostic if the extra temporal overhead is worth it, or is, at the other end, if the overhead is overstated.

A lot changes based on how familiar with a system a group is. It's far easier to play a system you've taken the time to learn. And when SJG's "How do you make an attack" list has 56 steps there's a problem.

 

[Staffan]

At one point in my life, I liked GURPS in theory. It was at a time when I didn't do much active playing, and it was a pretty good game with which to build stuff (mostly characters and space ships) just for the heck of it. When GURPS 4th edition came out, I bought it to see if it was any interesting, and my immediate reaction was "Well, maybe someone could run something cool with this, but that's not me."

Some time later, I lent my books to a friend, and said friend is now running a GURPS game and... I'm not a fan. It is very much not what I like in a game. Some of my issues with it:

• Far, far too many skills. The core rules have about 200 skills (I haven't counted them, just an estimation), and that's not counting skills with mandatory specializations and/or differentiation by TL (which is relevant in the campaign we're playing, because we're students who got transplanted from the modern day to the 15th century, or at least a version of it). There are some places where you can see a bit of self-awareness regarding this, such as the Soldier skill which covers elementary aspects of other skills (like Armory (small arms) to maintain your weapons, Electronics Operations (comms) for operating radios, and Engineering (combat) for digging fox holes). But they didn't take the obvious lesson from that and go "Hey, if we need a patch skill like this to make a common soldier work without requiring them to have 50 points in different skills, maybe we should rethink our approach?"
• Too strong of a dependence on Dexterity and Intelligence. This was slightly lessened in 4e by making skills (at least physical skills) cheaper and DX/IQ more expensive, but that's just a band-aid on the wound.
• Myopia. Almost everything in the game (other than damage, which just uses hit points) focuses on minute details. The most notable culprit here is the one-second turn, but there are so many other examples. For example, when we were throwing a grenade, it took like 15 minutes to resolve: first by finding and figuring out the rules, then figuring out where the grenade hits, then how much concussive damage it does based on distance from the explosion, and then dealing with shrapnel separately.
• Over-reliance on penalties. This might be because we're playing a fairly low-power campaign (starting with 100 points and making fairly realistic characters rather than 250-point ultra-specialists), combined with the time travel aspect that throws a -7 penalty at many of our IQ-based skills (because we're using TL8 skills in a TL4 environment), but there are plenty of other aspects that just pile on ridiculous penalties. When your skills that you aren't specialized in hover around 10 to 12 even small penalties can be devastating. It feels like the game is designed around people with skills at 15+ so a -3 or -4 penalty hurts a bit but can be dealt with.

 

[Thomas Shey]

A lot changes based on how familiar with a system a group is. It's far easier to play a system you've taken the time to learn. And when SJG's "How do you make an attack" list has 56 steps there's a problem.

That may be, but I'll note a number of those steps are either frequently irrelevant or become second nature. People used to make horrified noises about the Aftermath combat flow chart, but in practice it usually added up to "this comes up 10% of attacks" or "you're applying basic things about just resolving the roll in the first place". I don't think anyone would ever claim a crunchy system doesn't have some degree of learning curve; the question is, is the stuff mostly relevant easy to remember and does it bring something to the situation you feel is worthwhile?

 

[Thomas Shey]

At one point in my life, I liked GURPS in theory. It was at a time when I didn't do much active playing, and it was a pretty good game with which to build stuff (mostly characters and space ships) just for the heck of it. When GURPS 4th edition came out, I bought it to see if it was any interesting, and my immediate reaction was "Well, maybe someone could run something cool with this, but that's not me."

Some time later, I lent my books to a friend, and said friend is now running a GURPS game and... I'm not a fan. It is very much not what I like in a game. Some of my issues with it:

• Far, far too many skills. The core rules have about 200 skills (I haven't counted them, just an estimation), and that's not counting skills with mandatory specializations and/or differentiation by TL (which is relevant in the campaign we're playing, because we're students who got transplanted from the modern day to the 15th century, or at least a version of it). There are some places where you can see a bit of self-awareness regarding this, such as the Soldier skill which covers elementary aspects of other skills (like Armory (small arms) to maintain your weapons, Electronics Operations (comms) for operating radios, and Engineering (combat) for digging fox holes). But they didn't take the obvious lesson from that and go "Hey, if we need a patch skill like this to make a common soldier work without requiring them to have 50 points in different skills, maybe we should rethink our approach?"

Yeah, while this didn't bother me as much as the 1 second rounds, its probably the most extreme case of skill splitting I've ever hit in a game. I sometimes think some other games go too far in the other direction (even for action-adventure campaigns, I'm a bit bothered when there's no difference between Driving a car and a motorcycle), but as has been sometimes pointed out, not only does a large number of skills require a large number of points to properly cover some backgrounds, its always at the risk of leaving something out you might need but didn't think of. The Hero System arguably goes too far in this regard, but GURPS is significantly worse.

• Too strong of a dependence on Dexterity and Intelligence. This was slightly lessened in 4e by making skills (at least physical skills) cheaper and DX/IQ more expensive, but that's just a band-aid on the wound.

Well, that's a problem with almost all games with strong contribution to skills from attributes. Its just more visible in GURPS because of the fact everything has progressive rather than linear costs (something I like in principal, but...)

• Myopia. Almost everything in the game (other than damage, which just uses hit points) focuses on minute details. The most notable culprit here is the one-second turn, but there are so many other examples. For example, when we were throwing a grenade, it took like 15 minutes to resolve: first by finding and figuring out the rules, then figuring out where the grenade hits, then how much concussive damage it does based on distance from the explosion, and then dealing with shrapnel separately.

Well, that's the sort of thing that is only really a problem because you don't do it enough. Aftermath did something pretty similar there, but the guy who used home-made concussion grenades after a couple times got it down to the point it wasn't usually time consuming unless there were a bunch of different targets at vastly different distances from the grenade; same (to a lesser degree) with Hero Explosions. The usual problem is when you have this sort of mechanic that only comes up occasionally, because every time it comes up everyone will likely have forgotten from the last time. It is, however, an intrinsic problem with specific mechanics with game systems that care about the details though; so it comes down to, again, whether the details matter to you (they don't to a lot of people).

• • Over-reliance on penalties. This might be because we're playing a fairly low-power campaign (starting with 100 points and making fairly realistic characters rather than 250-point ultra-specialists), combined with the time travel aspect that throws a -7 penalty at many of our IQ-based skills (because we're using TL8 skills in a TL4 environment), but there are plenty of other aspects that just pile on ridiculous penalties. When your skills that you aren't specialized in hover around 10 to 12 even small penalties can be devastating. It feels like the game is designed around people with skills at 15+ so a -3 or -4 penalty hurts a bit but can be dealt with.

The downside of 3D6 systems is that you have to either make it hard to get high base rolls, decide that high base skills can succeed very regularly, or decide high base rolls are necessary. Your situation is bound to make the tendency to work off penalties more than a mix of bonuses and penalties more visible, though.