GURPS-Share your thoughts

[The Cardinal]

GURPS3e was my standard system for more than 12 years - and GURPS 4e is even better. I've used GURPS for everything from ultra-dark grim 'n gritty 30 Years War campaigns to 800 pts. Transhuman Space games - and it always worked great.

GURPS 4e - buy it, play it, GM it, never regret it!

...and the new and shiny GURPS4e Banestorm gives you a really wonderful and original fantasy RPG setting

 

[trancejeremy]

a) Apparently not much.

To answer b), it's like a migraine headache. There may be more painful and unpleasant game systems to run, but I haven't found one.

 

[Conaill]

it's like a migraine headache. There may be more painful and unpleasant game systems to run, but I haven't found one.

Heh - that almost sums up my experience when switching to D&D from GURPS. (Edit: although in my case, it was *playing*, nor *running* the game.)

Love GURPS, but haven't had a chance to try 4e yet.

Regarding combat in GURPS, there are a couple issue playing a role: (1) yes, not much happens in a GURPS round compared to D&D round. However, this also means rounds go *much* faster, which keeps people more engaged in the ongoing combat. In higher-level D&D, a round for a single PC may take 10-15 minutes to resolve, during which time some of the other players may be wandering off to make themselves a sandwich, browsing through comic books, or playing a videogame in another room . (2) On the other hand, a single attack in GURPS may involve several rounds of aiming (if ranged), or concenetration (if a complicated spell). And at the very least it will tend to take two dice rolls (attack and defense) instead of the (usual) single attack roll in D&D. This means you do tend to get less "accomplished" in terms of #attacks in GURPS per minute of playing time. At higher point values, combat does tend to speed up somewhat because people spend less time needing to aim, and they may be able to pull of spells with fewer rounds of concentration. (3) On the third hand... D&D combat gets a lot more complex to run and adjudicate at higher levels. So the average group of gamers may spend a lot more of their time looking up rules, calculating bonuses, etc.

In the end, # attacks per minute of gaming doesn't tell you squat about how enjoyable the game (or even the combat) is, of course. For me, I love the flexibility of GURPS combat much more than the heaps and heaps of special feats and rules of D&D. And a combat system without defense rolls makes as much sense to me as one without attack rolls... "What do you mean, I just have to stand there and take it! Can't I try to jump aside, or parry his attack with my sword?"

 

[d20Dwarf]

Re: GURPS China - egads that's an expensive supplement (at Amazon)! And it's crap? Gee, what a great way to spend $100. Not to mention another option down in my search for good mythic China supps.

Well, you might want to try e23.

http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=SJG82-0107

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Systems with short rounds are just ... annoying. I've tried to run several in the past, and things are just TOO ... SLOW ...

I want to TRY GURPS in a serious way, but the slow rounds would probably annoy me to no end.

--fje

 

[VirgilCaine]

Regarding combat in GURPS, there are a couple issue playing a role: (1) yes, not much happens in a GURPS round compared to D&D round. However, this also means rounds go *much* faster, which keeps people more engaged in the ongoing combat.

Aha! I was right!

 

[The_Universe]

GURPS supplements are excellent compendiums of related source information, and often contain great adventure ideas. I have about a half dozen that I use regularly.

On the other hand, the GURPS rules make me want to die. I loathe them with every fibre of my being. They're inconveniently and inconsistently granular, and I would NEVER play in a GURPS game.

That being said, I know that there are people enamored of the system, so it must have some good points. Whatever they are, they don't appeal to me (which does not mean they're not there).

So, in conclusion, I would encourage you to put money in Steve Jackson's pocket, but you can go straight to the supplements and skip the core rules.

 

[Aus_Snow]

you might want to try e23.

Indeed, you have a point there. Thanks.

What do you think of GURPS China, by the way? Any good at all?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

My Hat of GURPS know a limit

Originally Posted by Wombat
I love GURPS supplements; I am annoyed with the system.

Amen!

I fell into a RPG group that also happened to be a GURPS playtest group. That meant we played GURPS a lot for 4 years.

For an RPG that claims to be a Generic Universal Role Playing System, I found it to be lacking in the first 2 categories. Too often, the supplements (which were usually very well thought out) ALTERED the base rules. For example, the Psionics system in the base rules was underpowered to the extent that it was ramped up in almost any supplement that used Psi, like GURPS Supers, etc. After 4 years, I have a small folder of GURPS PCs that are completely incompatible with each other.

HERO, my favorite sytem, can be an excercise in die rolling, but it DOES succeed in being able to handle any genre I've thrown at it so far, and crossing or mixing genres is no problem whatsoever.

D20, my third favorite, has its warts too, but I'd run it before GURPS.

My second is the D20 variant known as Mutants and Masterminds- the flexibility of HERO with the reduced mathematics of D20. While I haven't done so myself, I have heard that many use M&M like HERO or GURPS- as a system in which a good GM can model any campaign.

ON THE OTHER HAND- I have found many of the supplements worth buying. The guys who write them often do a good job of researching their material and making the end results internally consistent. I ALWAYS keep my eyes open for sales of GURPS game material in hopes of finding a good price on something I can use for background material. Occasionally, I'll even buy the GURPS version of another game or a particular f/sf setting with which I'm familiar, like GURPS Traveller, if only for use as background material.

 

[wingsandsword]

I'll agree with the chorus here:

GURPS Suppliments: Great source material, great references, great stuff on genres often not covered much by other RPG's. You rarely go wrong picking up the GURPS sourcebook on a subject you are interested in.

GURPS rules: Blech, overcomplicated, bland, and tedious. Character creation takes hours, and the learning curve is daunting to say the least. Rules for things that might actually come up in games like vehicles, magic, psionics, or space travel get overwhelmingly complex (as it was pointed out to me, you have to perform calculus to determine the hit points of a vehicle, since it requires calculating the exact surface area of the entire vehicle to derive its HP).

I've known two GMs who actually run GURPS and tried it out, and apparently there are two different ways to actually make GURPS playable (each one did one):
1. Become an absolute expert on the system, preferably backed up with computer programs to calculate a lot of things, have a big library of GURPS books you can quickly access, and know them by heart.
2. Discard most of the rules, use just the free "GURPS Lite" simplified rules, and use it for rules-light roleplaying-heavy games.

Honestly, d20 in some ways became what GURPS tried to be, a universal multi-genre system. There isn't one single "d20" book for all genres, but it's a system that just about every gamer is at least passingly familiar with, and it's been adapted to virtually every genre and setting out there (either officially or unofficially). GURPS strength is in the suppliments, not the rules.