D&D 4E I bought GURPS 4e!!!! (and returned it the next day)

[dead]

You were so busy laughing that I guess you forgot that "rules bloat" is one of the most common and oldest complaints people tend to have about GURPS.

Anyway, if you're finished laughing, you can probably get some information on the subject by googling "GURPS rules bloat".

Yeah, GURPS can get ridiculous with the rules but you don't have to use it all. I mean, when I played it, I just used the 3d6 skill check and that's it! You see, the 3rd Edition was divided into Basic Rules and Advanced Rules. I just played Basic. Do they divide the book up in 4E?

And it's strange, even with all the detailed rules (in the Advanced section), the mentality of Power-Gaming and Combat-Gaming doesn't seem strong with GURPS. The emphasis for me anyway -- when I played GURPS 3rd Edition -- was on Characters and Roleplaying.

 

[haiiro]

The emphasis for me anyway -- when I played GURPS 3rd Edition -- was on Characters and Roleplaying.

That has always been my favorite part of GURPS: the character generation system is very nearly without peer, and at the end of it you have a great handle on your PC.

The rest of the rules have always felt a bit clunky with me, but I was a lot younger when I played it -- maybe I just lacked the patience, I don't know.

 

[Dancer]

You were so busy laughing that I guess you forgot that "rules bloat" is one of the most common and oldest complaints people tend to have about GURPS.

Anyway, if you're finished laughing, you can probably get some information on the subject by googling "GURPS rules bloat".

Actually, I don't need to google. I've been running Gurps for about 7-8 years. I ran DnD for about 10-12 years before that. I'm fairly familiar with the complexities of both systems. In all that time, I've never had a player say to me that the system has too many rules. I've introduced 30+ people to the Gurps system without problem. Maybe I got lucky and found really, really intelligent people. Or maybe, just maybe, the system is not at all complex, once you spend more than one day with it.

LOL, still laughing, cause well, it's still funny.

 

[VirgilCaine]

It's actually very cool. It's called "Infinite Worlds" and basically involves multi-dimensional travel. So you got yer elf, yer steampunk scientist, yer private eye, yer robot...all in one setting. Very GURPS.

Sounds like a blurb for RIFTS I read in an issue of G.I. Joe in the early 90's.

 

[Talon5]

Played GURPs for a decade or so and had a few problems witht he rules but nothing serious. A buddy brought both 4e books over yesterday and I flipped through them and we talked about the rules and what they changed that he had noticed.

So far I like what I am hearing.

d20 is getting over played at our table and I was thinking of reaching back towards GURPs to just get a change of venue.

Will need to get in touch with the GURPs line editor to find out how common the binding problem is thou.

 

[FoxWander]

You were so busy laughing that I guess you forgot that "rules bloat" is one of the most common and oldest complaints people tend to have about GURPS.

Anyway, if you're finished laughing, you can probably get some information on the subject by googling "GURPS rules bloat".

Ok, here goes...

Your search - "GURPS rules bloat" - did not match any documents.

Try it yourself.

A search for GURPS "rules bloat" finds three pages.

A search for just the words GURPS rules bloat, yields 63 pages. But, and heres the part, a search for the words D&D rules bloat yields 337 results!!

On a more serious note- It's sad to here about the bad binding. I wonder if there's a way to see if a books gonna fall apart before you by it?

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I understand GURPS 4E has its own setting. How exactly does the Generic Universal Roleplaying System end up with a setting? That's what the world books are for.

As far as I know, it is basically one chapter in the "campaign" book - and all the sample characters are from it. But since it is a setting involving many, many worlds, the sample characters are quite diverse and serve well to showcase the character creation system. These characters include:

- A swashbuckler and royal guardsman from the court of French Mars;

- An elven world traveller;

- An academic researcher of the occult straight out of Call of Cthulhu;

- A combat robot who just happens to be a Buddhist monk;

- A martial artist on the run from cross-time-travelling Triads;

- A vampiric banker, and

- A teleporting thief.

Of course, with GURPS, you can create much, much weirder characters, like those seen in Transhuman Space - how many systems allow you to play artificial intelligences that can switch bodies and be restored from backup?

That's what I love about GURPS - pretty much any character concept is not only possible, but easily done. In d20, a character's powers center on his attributes, skills, attack bonuses, saving throws, and supernatural powers. But what if a character's assets include massive wealth, or high status? What if his physiology deviates highly from the human norm?

While it is possible to model all this with d20, it would take a lot of work, and possibly lots of supplements. In GURPS, all you need is the single book on character creation...

Don't get me wrong, I like playing D&D as much as the next guy, but it's not a good fit for every genre. And that's where GURPS comes in.

 

[Aristotle]

rules bloat has long been an issue some folks have had with GURPS

rules bloat is an issue some folks are starting to have with D&D.

Although the original poster wasn't comparing D&D and GURPS, so I'm not sure why its come up. He said he was going to go to D20 Modern, which uses the same basic rule base as D&D, but is not D&D (and is, at this point, very far away from having enough products on the market to really say it suffers from rules bloat).

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

LOL, "rules bloat!" LMAO......With the million of suppliments and prestige classes out for DnD (most of them with some new feat or ability), you're saying that GURPS (with a lot of the rules being optional) has rules bloat. LOL, and I thought I was done laughing after reading the responses to Morrus's rant.

Live and laugh I guess

I think they meant core rules. If you just use the core rules, there's not too much "rules bloat" in 3e or Modern.

A search for just the words GURPS rules bloat, yields 63 pages. But, and heres the part, a search for the words D&D rules bloat yields 337 results!!

This isn't surprising, considering how DnD is the more popular system. (No offense to GURPS fans.)

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Sounds like a blurb for RIFTS I read in an issue of G.I. Joe in the early 90's.

Oh, I expect it to be better than RIFTS by far. IIRC the chapter in GURPS 4E: Campaigns was written by David Pulver, who is one of the best writers in the industry.

But the full setting book will be written by Ken Hite, Author of the Suppressed Transmissions column in Pyramid Magazines, GURPS Horror, Nightmares of Mine, and too many other cool stuff to mention, as well as the guy who was called "a freaking lunatic" by no less than John Tynes (of Delta Green fame).

Trust me, this setting will be insanely brilliant.