Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="robertsconley" data-source="post: 9786196" data-attributes="member: 13383">Well technically you could build that character. But the thing with GURPS is that if you write a plain English description, you can just look up the relevant abilities (advantages, disadvantages, enhancements, limitations), and just copy and paste their description and be done with it. If you even need to go that far. For example, describing it as an arachnid implies there are some abilities that you probably want an easy reference for, so you copy and paste those. But for the foot tapping, the most you will need is just to note how far it will work between two spiders communicating. There may be some relevant advice in one of the sourcebooks, but that is only needed if you are interested in what the GURPS authors think or uncovered in their research.The point is to do something like this. And to do this, you just need to know how the relevant attribute scores work and where to find things.[ATTACH=full]420503[/ATTACH]Now where it does turn into a bit of an accounting exercise at first, is with characters. Because there, they have point-based race /species write-ups combined with some kind of job/occupation template.  But once you get a sense of what characters (NPCs) are like in your campaign setting you can dispense with that.  In the 20 years when GURPS was my main system, I have files full of reworked NPCs that I only have to tweak to make into a specific character.I found that because of the research the authors have done, things make sense, so the times where I winged it based on my knowledge of how things worked in life or in fiction, looking up the rules later backed up what I initially ruled. And sometimes highlighted some things I forgot or didn't think of as well, that I filed away for later use.Despite being a fan of GURPS I have two main criticisms, that while they don't need to muck around with the rules, they need to work on their presentation. And they are hostile to 3rd party publishers getting involved because they want tight control of their IP. Which, to be clear, has nothing to do with how they treat freelancers, which has been consistently positive over the decades.Their choices in presentation and 3PP content have led to GURPS' decline compared to other RPGs, even though they were once #4 in the market. Even their attempts, like Dungeon Fantasy, have been marred by glaring blind spots that a robust 3PP ecosystem could have headed them off from pursuing. Namely, that the presentation revolved around detailed and complex 250 pt templates with dozens of items to track.But my opinion is that complexity is not an issue of GURPS. GURPS 4e is still works fine with a level of detail and a style of play like the character below from the Orcslayer (Man to Man) adventure.[ATTACH=full]420505[/ATTACH]The real problem is that the GURPS 4e Core books are not an RPG but a toolkit to build your own RPG. Not something everybody has the time or interest in. I have no doubt that the GURPS 4e revised edition is going to be a better toolkit, but it still does not overcome the fundamental problem that GURPS has of requiring that extra step of designing your own RPG before getting your campaign started.As for me, I moved on because I wanted to share more of my stuff than SJ Games was willing to let me share, so I figured out how to do the things I did in GURPS with my own take on classic D&D.But to end this on a more positive note. If you do have the time and interest to use that GURPS toolkit, the result will be worth the effort.</blockquote>

Verification