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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kronovan" data-source="post: 9148165" data-attributes="member: 6775134">I was late to the party on GURPS, only ever buying the 4e Character and Campaign PDFs. Maybe it's because I came in so late and missed the earlier glory of the source books, but GURPS hasn't grabbed me and I've never run it.  I voted "It's alright I guess."I've only played it twice -1st session was due to the boastings of a player at our tabletop miniatures club. I was complaining about the TTRPG rules adaptation for one of our more popular miniatures games. I mentioned I'd instead been exploring running the setting with a fan-made adaptation to SWD, and that player went on and on about how GURPGS could do it so much better! He was so long winded with the details, that he sold me and I asked him to run a session for us. To put it lightly, the resulting session was a train wreck.At that point I hadn't given the rules a thorough read, so I was going in more or less blind. I can no longer remember the specific areas where the experience was so poor, just that everyone at the table, apart from the GURPS buddies the GM had invited, didn't want a follow up session. It should be noted that those buddies had built their own PCs. Some of those experienced players made comments to the tune of, you should have built your own PC and RTFM. Which was annoying for new players who didn't know the rules well enough to build a PC and who'd let the GM know they weren't familiar with the system. So one thing for sure; the GM errored in matching up players that would support a positive play experience.The 2nd session was a series of Weird War II adventures and the GM was obviously skilled and built some quality, balanced pregens. For the most part those sessions ran fine and I can see where GURPS can at least be a good set of rules for Historical Fantasy in the modern era. In contrast to my 1st experience and having since browsed the WW II PDF, it's become apparent that the GM put a lot of effort into setting the stage for those adventures. Almost everyone of the players were new to GURPGS, but most had played some medium -to- heavy crunch TTRPGs like Pathfinder 1e. The GM did a good job of teaching and facilitating the rules, which was good because there was a fair amount of crunch to digest.The biggest barrier to me mustering up the enthusiasm to run GURPS, are the skills. There's so damn many that I find myself overwhelmed looking at the length of the list, let alone reading their details. And on the subject of skills; I can't fathom why the 4e Character book's chapter on Templates doesn't discuss how to pare down the list. Maybe I'm missing something, but to me it seems logical that a discussion on templates should have some focus on genres and which of the 300+ skills wouldn't be appropriate for them. Instead it just throws some example 100 point archetypes on the pages with lots of itty bitty text around which attributes, advantages, disavantages and primary, secondary and background skills should be taken at these amount of points. Thankfully all the archetype builds are the same points value.I can't read the Character book without thoughts of "are your FREAKING kidding me, you wrote an entire book on characters and don't give concrete examples of how to shorten the skills list!" I know some of the paring down is obvious, but it isn't for all skills and that's one heckuva long list for a GM to read before they can make correct, appropriate decisions. I did have the thought that the source books might vary well present reduced skill lists, but when I finally tracked down a LGS that had a few, those I browsed didn't.  The "I guess" part of that voting choice is actually appropriate for me, because I get the feeling with the two 4e core PDFs that it's assumed I've had prior experience with the system. If I was more experienced with the rules and all my game play and attempts to read through the core PDFs were in line with my WW II experience, I'd no doubt be able to bump my vote up to "It's pretty good."</blockquote>

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