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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Keith Ammann" data-source="post: 9790601" data-attributes="member: 6804515">You can have a satisfying degree of simulationism without turning character creation into tax season or slowing the game to a crawl. As I mentioned, I enjoyed GURPS tremendously, especially GURPS 3E—but even in GURPS 3E, combat encounters required a flowchart to make them playable. I made that flowchart. Then GURPS 4E came along, and I tried to update the flowchart, and I could no longer fit it on a single page. That was when I knew I was done with GURPS.I don't think streamlining a game is "dumbing it down" (and I muted the jackhole who unsubtly implied that). It's cutting away what doesn't look like an elephant, where by "elephant" I mean "fun game." D&D didn't benefit from hit lookup tables or feat trees. Advantage and disadvantage were a game-changing innovation. So was aligning the procedures for rolling attacks, ability checks and saving throws so that they all worked the same way. The game kept its core, so it still felt like the same game, but the speed bumps were removed.What would that look like for GURPS? Size, speed and distance could be collapsed into a few less granular categories. Skills could be reduced to one or two degrees of proficiency. Combat maneuvers added between 3E and 4E could be relocated from the core rules to an optional supplement. Certain variable modifiers could be turned into a fixed ±2, à la Pathfinder 2E—or, alternatively, have players/GMs roll an extra die and use the three lowest or three highest. The point being to take situations in which a player or GM has to keep track of a whole bunch of different things and turn those assorted things into just one high-automaticity, low–cognitive load thing. None of that would alter the heart of GURPS, which is (a) spend points to build your PC, (b) 3d6 roll under, (c) genre be damned.I sincerely hope GURPS 4.1 is everything you want it to be, but I remain unconvinced that toil is inherently virtuous, so I'll be running my League of Extraordinary Gentlemen knockoff in Cypher.</blockquote>

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