Help Me Understand the GURPS Design Perspective

[lordabdul]

For a fantasy campaign, the BARE MINIMUM material they expected to be allowed to use was core + Fantasy + Magic + Psionics + Compendium I and II + Martial Arts + Swashbucklers.

That's totally bonkers and wrong... well I'm very sorry you only had bad experiences with GURPS! You may want to clear you head with a light PbtA-game or HeroQuest or something

 

[John Dallman]

Actually creating a roleplaying story or experiencing any sense of drama or stakes in the fiction is secondary to the experience of the mental satisfaction of spinning the wheels and cogs and levers of the GURPS machine, and the emotional satisfaction that the game world has the highest possible levels of "similitude" and "fictional transparency."

A Librarian. Computer programmers. System administrators. Accountants. Are you seeing the trend yet?

Except that isn't what they're doing. They're interested in the outcomes, not how they got there. They are strongly invested in the game world, but as a environment they experience via imagination, not via game mechanics.

You seem to be conflating three things, which to me are separate:

• Creating a roleplaying story or experiencing any sense of drama or stakes in the fiction
• Mental satisfaction of spinning the wheels and cogs and levers of the GURPS machine
• Emotional satisfaction that the game world has the highest possible levels of "similitude" and "fictional transparency."

The story, as experienced and modified by the players through the characters, is the mechanism for getting fun out of the time we spend playing RPGs. Satisfaction with the apparent verisimilitude of the game world contributes to that, because it means one can think clearly about the setting, and communicate clearly with the other players and the GM. The game mechanics are a means to an end, no more.

If you're determined to apply the model of GURPS players you've come up with to all GURPS players, I can't stop you. But I'm quite sure you're mistaken.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

A Librarian. Computer programmers. System administrators. Accountants. Are you seeing the trend yet?

The group that I'm currently running a GURPS game for consists of An artist, a fast-food worker, two department of corrections employees and a kindergarten teacher. The group before that was a financial advisor, a social worker, a factory worker, a retail store manager and a dockworker.

They possess varying levels of system mastery ranging from, "rules?" to, "well, actually, the eratta for page 62..."

 

[Mookus]

OP, I feel for ya, getting "stuck" in a game you're not enjoying sucks. Does seem like it has more to do with the group, though, not the system. Most of this has already been mentioned by others -- I, too, have GMed GURPS games for decades running the gamut from "super simple romp with cartoon characters" to "hyper-gritty spec forces squad using every optional rule I can cram in" and everything in between with none of the issues described, etc. -- but in particular, this...

"Actually creating a roleplaying story or experiencing any sense of drama or stakes in the fiction is secondary to the experience of the mental satisfaction of spinning the wheels and cogs and levers of the GURPS machine..."

...is completely opposite to my experience. We've always loved GURPS because you don't have to endlessly fiddle with the rules (once the group decides which they're using/ignoring) and they just sort of fade to the background so we can concentrate on the story and the people in it.

Granted, this is partly because I've played long enough to have internalized everything I need, but the players themselves need to know very little. If they want to, if the player is into it, they can just go nuts and, for example, dig up obscure rules like the pince-nez above. But the fact that rule exists does not mean it's a signifier that the game is designed to be the most fun when rolling to keep your glasses on.

GURPS to me is more additive than subtractive (guaranteed those are the wrong terms lol, sorry)... I start with a barebones skeleton and add in a rule here and there if I think they'll make this particular game more fun.

Who is GURPS "for"? I can only speak for myself, but I've stuck with it forever because I like to run a huuuuge variety of games. With GURPS I can use the same basic framework and just put together what I need for, say, "Aliens Colonial Marines," then the next month "Jem and the Holograms," then "Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh," then "Watership Down," on and on and on.

 

[pemerton]

A Librarian. Computer programmers. System administrators. Accountants. Are you seeing the trend yet?

I can certainly see the trend you're pointing to.

But (partly from intuition, partly from some of the posts in this thread) I'm going to guess that there's a second sort of approach to GURPS, in which the system detail is used mostly at character build to establish a "picture" of the character, and actual resolution leans very heavily on the GM to manage the fiction and narrate outcomes that broadly conform to those initial "pictures" plus whatever else has been established on the way through.

On this second approach the players don't really engage with the mechanics in the sort of fashion suggested by the pince-nez rules. And on this approach, for those players the play experience may not be wildly different from what it would be with Ars Magica or RQ or even perhaps a certain sort of approach to 2nd ed AD&D.

 

[Tonguez]

.

At it's core, GURPS' base resolution mechanic is simple. Roll 3d6, try to roll less than a target number. Yet this simplicity could be used to much greater effect if the players are willing to remove the high input dependencies and simply accept that the relative scale of results are to be applied as broad strokes rather than singular, narrow ranges. But the very essence of GURPS plays against the "broad strokes" approach.

For me, rules adjudication is about finding out what happened in the fictional state. Yet GURPS very much seems to believe that the rules should explain---in as concrete, representative terms as possible---how things happened in the fiction. And that the how should be transparent to every player.

To really "get" the point of GURPS, it seems, you're supposed to embrace the crunch. Wrap it lovingly around you. Because if you actually don't want that level of crunch, why did you choose GURPS in the first place? If you're going to just kind-of, sort-of eyeball stuff and make off-the-cuff adjudications, wouldn't it be better to go with a system that's designed to do that?

You’re own explanations here seem to very much hit the nail on the head (with appropriate modifiers to target size, hammer velocity and carpentry skill). The glory of GURPS was very much its toolbox approach to creating chartacters and settings and figuring out how things interact for vissimilitude sake. Its the Tasty crunch that help to create its worlds, But which can also bog things down into confusion if the gm allows too much to be used.

Most recently I’ve taken to playing Fate Accelerate which is all about the narrative and using the mechanics of aspects and to create the story rather than to design the setting

 

[aramis erak]

GURPS was originally aiming to be a detailed simulation; 1 point represented (IIRC) 250 hours of study/training in a feature.

The fundamental design elements are, at least by the 1E designers notes, were the low attribute count, high melee realism, buy the cause (rather than the effect), skill difficulties varied by difficulty of learning the skill in the setting, bell curve, and boardgamable combat.

Somewhere along the line after 1E and before 3E, the variability of skill difficulty by setting went the way of the dodo...

The buy the cause element isn't called out in the designers notes directly, but the correspondence to specific training times is, and when psionics were added in G:Horror, you bought the power, then the skill or skills to use it. Likewise, the magic system is a lot of fiddlingly narrow spells with lots of prerequisites.

Point buy is a lousy chargen mechanic, especially in such a free form and extensible system, and most especially in a social game. Not only is it less balanced, but counter-intuitively it reduces player freedom. You end up as the players gain system mastery with a bunch of specialists that can only do a limited number of things well.

As a HEROphile, I have to disagree with this...pretty much completely. I’m no lover of GURPS, but in the many times I’ve played it- including as a playtester for the odd product or two- this resembles no GURPS campaign I’ve ever seen.

I've seen it happen a fair number of times. Usually with players new to point buy and used to niche protections.

Point buy is a lousy chargen mechanic,

Like Danny, I fully disagree with this

especially in such a free form and extensible system, and most especially in a social game.

I disagree on both counts here. point buy is about the only sane way to let players create the types of characters they want in a system with as many options as GURPS has.

I also disagree that GURPS is all that free form, but that's just another quibble

\You end up as the players gain system mastery with a bunch of specialists that can only do a limited number of things well.

I find exactly the opposite to be true... it's the novices who build specialists... catch them storywise a couple times with the wrong character having to do something, and it gets a very different player reaction next set of Char Gen.

GURPS is less fit for turning players loose autonomously to do CGen than Hero, in part because it doesn't have the GM and group generate the limits first. Hero makes that a core element of the campaign: Defining the limits. There's even a nifty form for it.

Many hero fans (including myself) like hero for doing things more sanely than GURPS. It is buy the effect, which makes the balance actually happen, it calls out in the rules where optimizations are easily done, it uses campaign limits to help establish feel, and it fully endorses the concept that PC's ARE better than normals.

 

[aramis erak]

That's totally bonkers and wrong... well I'm very sorry you only had bad experiences with GURPS! You may want to clear you head with a light PbtA-game or HeroQuest or something

It's also been my experience with many players... and not a few GMs...

GURPS is very good at encouraging "use more, not less" just by the nature of the "book for everything" sales strategy.

 

[lordabdul]

GURPS is very good at encouraging "use more, not less" just by the nature of the "book for everything" sales strategy.

It is easy to go down the slope of "use more, not less" indeed, by virtue of there having lots of books on sale, and by virtue of people getting easily carried away. However, the GURPS community (as evidenced by people on this thread) and the text of those books (if you ever read the introduction) is actually not too bad at warning people against this. But yes, I'm totally willing to believe that not many people hear those warnings, and are sadly going down the slope.

 

[aramis erak]

It is easy to go down the slope of "use more, not less" indeed, by virtue of there having lots of books on sale, and by virtue of people getting easily carried away. However, the GURPS community (as evidenced by people on this thread) and the text of those books (if you ever read the introduction) is actually not too bad at warning people against this. But yes, I'm totally willing to believe that not many people hear those warnings, and are sadly going down the slope.

The culture of the GURPS players on SJG isn't very good at keeping things narrow, either.

And, for 1E, at least, the core wasn't good for much besides medieval to modern mundane settings. you needed the supplements to get the supernatural/sci-fi working well.