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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Conaill" data-source="post: 2858466" data-attributes="member: 1264">Another datapoint regarding the complexity of the rule set:By now, I've played D&D for about as many years as I played GURPS before that (about 3-4 years each - started playing D&D because I moved to an area where it was hard to find a GURPS game). Looking only at the "core" rules, I would say that D&D is somewhat more complex than GURPS. However, within the Fantasy genre, D&D has far more additional variants and rules (e.g. all the Complete books etc) and complex interactions between them than GURPS has. One could argue that this means that a D&D player has more choices, but I'm not sure that argument holds up. For example, many prestige classes consist largely of a fixed package of abilities that you could buy piecemeal in GURPS as well.As for lethality of GURPS vs D&D... I've never seen so many characters die as in the various D&D games I've played in. Sure, hitpoints are much lower in GURPS, but damage is much lower as well, and one typically gets hit less often than in D&D, so comparing the absolute number of hit points is rather pointless. The main difference is that in GURPS you have a comparatively very large buffer between unconsciousness and death. The equivalent in D&D might be if your 100hp Fighter would have to be reduced to -100hp to even start making Fort saves against death! The upshot is that unconsciousness may be somewhat more common in GURPS combat, but death is actually quite a bit less common. However, when it *does* occur, the consequences are typically mich more severe than in D&D. Death is not just a setback that most reasonably well-to-do adventurers can buy they way out off. At least in the campaigns I played in, resurrection was extremely rare and required direct divine intervention. (One notable example included the entire party going on a quest lasting close to a year real-time to bring back a favorite character.) On the other hand, characters did tend to be much longer-lived as well.Mind you, of course you can play GURPS in an extremely lethal fashion. I remember some Shadowrun games we played using GURPS rules where characters were dropping like flies. Then again, that's Shadowrun for you. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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