Parmandur
Book-Friend, he/him
Or more appropriately, I just don't get who this system is for.
A fairly small number of people, apparently.
Or more appropriately, I just don't get who this system is for.
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.
Any 'fan; saying that should be ignored... in the same way you'd naturally ignore someone proclaiming that the only way to play D&D is to use books X-Z and 'anyone not using those books isn't playing 'real D&D'."Playing GURPS is a complete waste of time if you're not using Compendium I and II, Martial Arts, Magic, and Psionics. Oh, and you should really use UltraTech I and II, and Sci-Fi as well.
Nah. Now, don't get me wrong, there is some crunch, whole heaping boxes of it. But there are also supplements explicitly designed around excising crunch and running minimalist or narrativist.To really "get" the point of GURPS, it seems, you're supposed to embrace the crunch. Wrap it lovingly around you.
doctorbadwolf gets it.The point of GURPS isn’t to use all the rules all the time.
It’s to use the rules that add to the style of game you’re running.
This is the most important factor, and also the reason why it's such a pain to run the game. Not only are you supposed to liberally excise all of the rules that don't support your specific game style, but the GM actually needs to go through and define everything that exists in their game.GURPS is a toolkit, not a game-ready-to-play.
Or use one of several templates already published in existing settings.It isn't as simple as toggling a couple of switches, to say that elves exist but Klingons don't. The GM has to manually go in and create the template for what an elf looks like in their world.
Nope. It is not in any way necessary to design-with-points all the races in the world, only the ones that are liable to be PCs. Nor is it necessary to design opponents with character points: it's far quicker to just chose their attributes and abilities. If you were designing a D&D wizard as an enemy, you wouldn't roll his stats and hit dice, would you? You'd just pick them.They essentially have to create, as though they were characters, every single type of thing that they'll need.
If you do that, then you move away from the one great strength of the system - the ability to model exactly what you want, exactly as you imagine it. The rules of the game are capable of modeling anything you can think of... as long as you go through the work of actually building that model out of the component parts provided.Or use one of several templates already published in existing settings.
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.
To the original point, IME, GURPS shines best when used for games where grim & gritty is expected & desired. So quasi-hitorical, noir, super spy, survival horror, classic horror, hard Sci-Fi, swords & sorcery, and low/medium power Supers and the like all have a natural home in GURPS.
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.
And it's a danger I've seen repeated in every single point buy system I've ever played in, including for example White Wolf's WOD system. The most successful strategies involve dumping all your points into being really good at one thing, and then using that great big hammer to treat every problem as a nail.