I never really warmed up to GURPS. It never really lived up to its name (Generic Universal Roleplaying System), IMHO.
I say that because I wound up in a gaming group in Austin (Hi Alan, if you're reading this!) that also happened to playtest some of the GURPS 3rd Edition stuff. We did it often enough that I wound ujp buying the 3Ed basic book, Compendium 1, and Martial Arts.
And, despite its claim to generic universality, certain mechanics changed from setting to setting, like the telekinesis rules, meaning that PCs within the same system needed conversions to interact with each other.
Note-this is NOT a knock on the underlying system itself. I never had a problem playing the game...until we tried cross-genre roleplaying.
By way of comparison, a point spent in HERO was pretty much equivalent across the RPG genres, which made cross-genre gaming much easier. Its also the one system I enjoy more than any other...bookkeeping chores aside.
IMHO, D20 does a better job with cross-genre roleplay than GURPS does (though not as well as HERO). So does the D20 variant game, Mutants & Masterminds.
The rules bloat of D20 is probably due more to the various 3rd party products, rather than WOTC's core products alone...which, given GURPS' penchant for rules variations with each setting, makes the rules bloat question pretty much a wash between it and D20.
I can only hope for true fans of the game that GURPS 4th is an improvement, at least in rules consistency, if not in the physical quality of the books. (My GURPS 3rd books are still quite serviceable, thank you very much.)
I say that because I wound up in a gaming group in Austin (Hi Alan, if you're reading this!) that also happened to playtest some of the GURPS 3rd Edition stuff. We did it often enough that I wound ujp buying the 3Ed basic book, Compendium 1, and Martial Arts.
And, despite its claim to generic universality, certain mechanics changed from setting to setting, like the telekinesis rules, meaning that PCs within the same system needed conversions to interact with each other.
Note-this is NOT a knock on the underlying system itself. I never had a problem playing the game...until we tried cross-genre roleplaying.
By way of comparison, a point spent in HERO was pretty much equivalent across the RPG genres, which made cross-genre gaming much easier. Its also the one system I enjoy more than any other...bookkeeping chores aside.
IMHO, D20 does a better job with cross-genre roleplay than GURPS does (though not as well as HERO). So does the D20 variant game, Mutants & Masterminds.
The rules bloat of D20 is probably due more to the various 3rd party products, rather than WOTC's core products alone...which, given GURPS' penchant for rules variations with each setting, makes the rules bloat question pretty much a wash between it and D20.
I can only hope for true fans of the game that GURPS 4th is an improvement, at least in rules consistency, if not in the physical quality of the books. (My GURPS 3rd books are still quite serviceable, thank you very much.)
