It's been so long since the last GURPS edition, that the present day is now in the "future" tech level

[aramis erak]

One thing that old age has taught me, is that the future seldom looks like you imagined, or hoped for.

And that there is a constant stream of 'in thirty years...' predictions. In the 70s, for instance, we were supposed to have run out of oil and be fighting wars over cropland by the 2000s. And have an Ice Age underway.

We're still in an Ice Age, and technically were in the 1970's. And the 0's, 100's, 1,000s... etc.

As for oil, per capita use is down, recoverable quantities are up (Tar Sands and Fracking), and population growth has slowed. If the trends to date had held, and the new recovery modes not been found... it was indeed a good projection... but reliant upon several others.

My dad's high school yearbook, circa 1948, predicted flying cars.

There are flying drone taxis in several Chinese cities.
Essentially, they're here, but still bleeding edge.

As always, the truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction demands a degree of logic.

There is logic in the truth, too... one just has to spot it.

 

[MGibster]

I would compare it to a poorly balanced TCG. If you have a group of friends who are all on the same page then playing the game is really fun. And as long as no one is only trying to 'win' building a deck/character is a really creative endeavor. But as soon as someone breaks that unwritten social contract, the entire thing falls apart and becomes miserable.

I don't think GURPS was ever really designed with balance in mind. One of the design goals of GURPS was to make it possible to adapt just about any fictional source to the game. If you know how how many pounds a character can lift, how fast they move, the range and intensity of their abilities, etc., etc. you can create it in GURPS (theoretically). I remember one letter written to SJG complaining of the difficulty in adapting one particular property, it might have been Babylon 5, and noting some characters were wildly more expensive than others when it came to character points. i.e. Psychics like Alfred Bester and Lyta Alexander probably take more character points to create than Captain Sheridan or Chief Garibaldi. SJG game basically just wrote, "Yeah, not every character is built with the same amount of points."

On top of that, it barely even counts as a system straight out-of-the box. If you want to have a fun game, the GM needs to put in a lot of work beforehand laying out what skills, advantages, disadvantages, tone, optional rules, etc, are appropriate for the game.

I tend to view GURPS as a toolbox. My biggest problem is I'm no longer interested in a toolbox and just want to open it up and play a game.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Re: the tech level -- yeah, we keep having to re-edit when 'the future' is. My nephew and niece are still watching Bugs Bunny cartoons that talk about the far-off era of 2000. At least the stuff on that TL 9 list are things we're attempting to emulate -- real time virtuality is sorta here; and we have something we call A.I. that can fool some of the people some of the time, etc.

My dad's high school yearbook, circa 1948, predicted flying cars.

We have those, they're called helicopters.

More seriously, I remember prototype flying cars* in Popular Mechanics in the 80s&90s. They were always depicted as readily possible, just pointless, inefficient, and of course not something you want every Tom, Dick, and Harry driving over your head every day.
*more car-like, ducted fans or whatnot

What did you find that didn’t work?

For me, in broad strokes, the issues I have with GURPS are:

• A point-based/build-a-bear system combined with a system where the genre, scale, and even central play activity are all up for grabs quickly becomes an arbitrary artificial economy (not inherently bad, it just quickly becomes of limited use to many people, yet is a central focus of the system).
• Similarly a solidly sim game system (one that assumes knowing exact speeds, weights, costs, and the capacities is going to be important) as a choice for a universal any-genre system is going to have challenges.
• A universal resolution system trying to encompass any number of central play activities combined with a solidly sim game that dislikes abstraction will either not emulate many activities well, or become a not-really universal system with a bunch of genre-specific subsystems.
• A 'realistic' combat system (honestly anything were combat is really dangerous and you don't want to be involved in it) mixes poorly with a complex character creation system where you can spend hours making a character.
• The combat system is exciting and engaging in a certain range encompassing historic/low-powered fantasy or moderate point value martial artists fighting similar opponents. Once you leave these ranges, it quickly becomes a battle of who has the more expensive/higher tech level/lower legality code equipment (not unrealistic, but not exactly exciting either).

None of these stop the game from being playable, and I've played in several GURPS campaigns over the decades. What it takes is 1) choosing a genre where the system works well, and 2) finding a group willing to work hard to make the system work.

The other issue is that GURPS is very "generous" with penalties to skills, but far less generous with bonuses. Being unfamiliar with the specific equipment you're using is a -2, for example. This can stack for being different in multiple ways – the game specifically calls out someone used to 12.7mm sniper rifles having a -6 when using a 5.56mm assault rifle (-2 each for unfamiliar caliber, unfamiliar action (bolt action vs self-loader), and grip (bipod vs hand-held)).

What I found I disliked most about the pages of bonuses and penalties (from wind to light level to relative velocity to whatever else) was this: oftentimes a good half of them were things the GM likely hadn't thought about until the skill-roll prompt.

Personally, I'm a huge fan of gurps, but it relies so heavily on everyone at the table trying their best to make it work that I can't really recommend it. It really was designed on the assumption that if someone makes an over-powered character (which is stupidly easy) the GM will just tell them to change it, and the player will cooperate. On top of that, it barely even counts as a system straight out-of-the box. If you want to have a fun game, the GM needs to put in a lot of work beforehand laying out what skills, advantages, disadvantages, tone, optional rules, etc, are appropriate for the game.

I would compare it to a poorly balanced TCG. If you have a group of friends who are all on the same page then playing the game is really fun. And as long as no one is only trying to 'win' building a deck/character is a really creative endeavor. But as soon as someone breaks that unwritten social contract, the entire thing falls apart and becomes miserable.

Agreed. I think it is a very good 'this group's fourth TTRPG to explore' system. When everyone knows each other, understands how a new system can have pitfalls, and are all in agreement on making the system work (not just not trying to game it for advantage, actively keep it on the rails, etc.), it can be a whole lot of fun.

 

[Willie the Duck]

I don't think GURPS was ever really designed with balance in mind.

Supposedly Steve Jackson himself thought of it as a system to incentivize certain choices. I guess Combat Reflexes is price-optimized to get a lot of people to take it, because SJ thought it the kind of thing an action-adventure hero should have. Likewise, the whole 'getting higher skill numbers becomes progressively harder (while having diminishing returns)' setup is selectively incentivizing moderate investment.

Overall, though, it can't. How can you balance a scale when the metric by which you measure success (what is the central play loop, and how do you define success?) is deliberately left undefined? The cost-benefit analysis is stymied at step 1: costs are defined, but benefits are not.

 

[darjr]

My FLGS has the GURPS 4e core book on the shelf. I didn’t realize. I bought so many GURPS books from them.

 

[Argyle King]

GURPS 4th is still my favorite system.

There are gameplay styles that I haven't yet found better systems for.

It certainly has flaws, but I've learned how to fix the most egregious ones without much effort.

 

[CleverNickName]

The 3d6 curve is probably my favorite part of the system...

Have you ever used the optional 3d6 variant in the 5E DMG?

 

[Staffan]

I don't think GURPS was ever really designed with balance in mind.

My impression is that GURPS was originally designed for something like fantasy gladiatorial combat. That's why the four stats are what they are: Strength (determines damage and encumbrance), Dexterity (speed and accuracy), Health (hit points*, survivability, and resistance to injury), and Intelligence (mostly useful for mages), and why they used to be costed the same**. There's a good amount of things in previous editions that seems scaled for this, such as Toughness costing 10 points for a natural DR of 1 (which matters little in a modern game where weapons often do 3d to 5d of damage, but matters a lot when damage is about 1d for melee attacks). Wealth is an advantage because it gives you better weapons and armor. Turns are a second long because when the focus is on two dudes duking it out in melee things can be happening really fast. Melee weapons have Swing (high) and Thrust (low) damage, with post-armor modifiers for cutting and impaling weapons so you can either have things like maces and hammers that do Swing + high number but crushing damage, axes doing Swing + low number doing cutting damage, or spears and daggers doing thrust damage but impaling, thereby making different weapons better in different situations, with swords being versatile but expensive as heck.
The rest of the system kind of got bolted onto this melee combat engine, which is why you have things like Will being based on IQ with modifiers for advantages, and the same going for most social stuff.

* 4e makes hit points a function of Strength and Fatigue of Health. Previous editions had those reversed.
** Pre-4e had all four stats use the same table for costs, with accelerating costs for higher stats. 4e recognizes the higher value of DX and IQ and charges a flat 20 points per step for those, and 10 points per step for ST and HT.

 

[nevin]

Kinda on the spot. Doesn’t mean the AI is any good.

Because its not real AI. its data modeling.

 

[dbm]

My impression is that GURPS was originally designed for something like fantasy gladiatorial combat.

Your impression is correct!

SJ’s previous game was The Fantasy Trip, a dedicated fantasy RPG with just three stats (Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence). That system built off two arena combat games he had already created - Melee and Wizard. Melee originally just had ST and DX as stats. You can get Melee for free if you want to see the very beginnings of the system.

After SJ left Metagame Concepts he tried to buy the rights to TFT but the split was not amicable and his old boss would not sell at any reasonable price. So SJ created GURPS as a next evolution of the system, adding in Health as a stat, and changing the rules quite significantly. The first publication for GURPS (before the core books, even) was Man-to-Man, another fantasy combat focussed game.

SJ was later able to reclaim the rights to Melee, Wizard and Into the Labyrinth through a provision in US law and that resulted in him re-issuing the game via Kickstarter. Both systems are currently supported by SJG and a select group of third-parties.