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

[Thomas Shey]

Striven perhaps, but I am not sure it has succeeded. It is certainly detailed, with its 1-second turns and hundreds of skills, but that's not the same thing even if many gamers get those confused. Is it really "realistic" with 9 different Guns skills, multiplied by TL? Do you really need Electronics Operation (Media) as a separate skill from Photography? Does Falconry need to be a skill? Do you need to make the distinction between Filch (taking things that are out in the open without being noticed), Pickpocket (taking things on someone's person without being noticed), and Sleight of Hand? Do you really need to specialize Philosophy by the particular type of philosophy (so Philosophy (Confucianism) is different from Philosophy (Stoicism))?

it depends to some extent on what part of "reality" you care about. Are nine gun skills needed? Maybe not, but one doesn't cut it if you're trying to represent the real distinctions in people (in my shooting days I was approaching an expert with handguns, competent with shotguns, and you probably didn't want me using a rifle; I also would have made a terrible mess with anything with any sort of fully automatic capability). "Need" is another question. Games with high orders of lumping (say, Savage Worlds) function perfectly well. They aren't particularly realistic however (this shows even more strongly with vehicle skills). The question turns on whether realism in that particular fashion is worth the overhead.

(This ignores the question of whether all the splitting/defaulting in GURPS is the proper way to represent the relationship of the different skills involved, which is going to vary widely depending on the degree of knowledge one has about the subject as hand).

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is what broke my players' minds. One of them was looking at a master skill list and, with a great deal of incredulity, "There's a #%#*&# dropping skill? There's a skill for dropping things!" Dropping is of course the skill of dropping heavy objects at a target while you're flying.

Bombardiering is a real skill. You can question if it comes up enough to justify its existence in a game, but that's not a question GURPS really cares about.

 

[Parmandur]

I've always enjoyed GURPS books as reference material, and the 4E default setting is really neat. Never felt like playing, though.

 

[Staffan]

it depends to some extent on what part of "reality" you care about. Are nine gun skills needed? Maybe not, but one doesn't cut it if you're trying to represent the real distinctions in people (in my shooting days I was approaching an expert with handguns, competent with shotguns, and you probably didn't want me using a rifle; I also would have made a terrible mess with anything with any sort of fully automatic capability).

The thing is that GURPS double-dips on this, because of familiarity penalties. Let's say you have Guns (rifles)/TL 8, and you've been trained on an M4A1 (5.56mm automatic rifle), and for some reason you need to use a Remington double-barreled shotgun. So you default Guns (shotgun) to Guns (rifle)-2, and that's fair, right? Well, no. Because in addition to defaulting your skill, you will take an additional -9 penalty because of different grip, caliber, and action (-2 each), as well as -3 for using a TL5 weapon with a TL8 skill. So is -11 really an adequate penalty for using an old-fashioned shotgun instead of the weapon you're used to?

 

[Thomas Shey]

The thing is that GURPS double-dips on this, because of familiarity penalties. Let's say you have Guns (rifles)/TL 8, and you've been trained on an M4A1 (5.56mm automatic rifle), and for some reason you need to use a Remington double-barreled shotgun. So you default Guns (shotgun) to Guns (rifle)-2, and that's fair, right? Well, no. Because in addition to defaulting your skill, you will take an additional -9 penalty because of different grip, caliber, and action (-2 each), as well as -3 for using a TL5 weapon with a TL8 skill. So is -11 really an adequate penalty for using an old-fashioned shotgun instead of the weapon you're used to?

No, but there's not a lot of middle-ground out there; most games swing waaaay the other way, and if you care about realism at all, that's no better. GURPS overdoing it is on-brand, but that's a developed trait; they didn't have most of those other modifiers years ago.

 

[Staffan]

No, but there's not a lot of middle-ground out there; most games swing waaaay the other way, and if you care about realism at all, that's no better. GURPS overdoing it is on-brand, but that's a developed trait; they didn't have most of those other modifiers years ago.

Savage Worlds has an optional rule if you want to split up things a bit more where some skills require a specialization, so you'd have something like Science (Chemistry) or Academics (Law), and using the skill outside that specialty carries a -2 penalty (which is pretty hefty in SW). You can expand one of those skills to an additional specialty for the same cost as increasing a skill by a step. If you like more granularity, that seems like a decent compromise.

 

[Panzeh]

One thing to note about gun skills in GURPS is that most gun based small arms default to each other in a very friendly way- it's usually best to just crank one gun skill up as high as you want and then let the others be -2 from that. Though i generally don't play with familiarity(i think it's a bit much myself).

The tough part of GURPS is that while one of the big selling points is being able to implement virtually anything in it, it's best to do something contemporary with guns as the combat item because everything outside contemporary normal humans gets more and more complicated and has more rules to know. If I want to make a great shooter, get to gun skill 18 and just shoot, you'll benefit a lot with modern firearms. If I want to make the quintessential fantasy fencer, skill 18 with a sword is just the start of it- there's so many rules to know to be able to hurt people that way.

As has been said before, though, if you prefer something that lets you get into things faster, that's entirely valid, i just find GURPS to be rewarding to push through.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Savage Worlds has an optional rule if you want to split up things a bit more where some skills require a specialization, so you'd have something like Science (Chemistry) or Academics (Law), and using the skill outside that specialty carries a -2 penalty (which is pretty hefty in SW). You can expand one of those skills to an additional specialty for the same cost as increasing a skill by a step. If you like more granularity, that seems like a decent compromise.

But even that rule is largely limited by the scope of how dice resolutions work in SW, and you're thrown to your own resources deciding where the split can land. Are they going to lump together rifles and shotguns? If they do, they won't represent someone like me very well.

This doesn't mean you can just split until the end of time, but the urge to progressively do is not completely mysterious, just impractical.

 

[Thomas Shey]

One thing to note about gun skills in GURPS is that most gun based small arms default to each other in a very friendly way- it's usually best to just crank one gun skill up as high as you want and then let the others be -2 from that. Though i generally don't play with familiarity(i think it's a bit much myself).

They're not always as friendly in other ways, though. Rather than having defaulting for some related skills (and I get why this can be a bottomless well) you end up defaulting to something else, then defaulting from that, but by that time the penalty may be so large its largely pointless.

The tough part of GURPS is that while one of the big selling points is being able to implement virtually anything in it, it's best to do something contemporary with guns as the combat item because everything outside contemporary normal humans gets more and more complicated and has more rules to know. If I want to make a great shooter, get to gun skill 18 and just shoot, you'll benefit a lot with modern firearms. If I want to make the quintessential fantasy fencer, skill 18 with a sword is just the start of it- there's so many rules to know to be able to hurt people that way.

I could launch into the problems with the 1 second rounds again, but I'll leave it for another time.

 

[Nikosandros]

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

I haven't. I like the 3d6 curve... but not for D&D. It's d20 or it's not D&D to me.