What is GURPS?

[WizarDru]

GURPS was my game of choice for nearly 16 years. After AD&D became tedious and the 2nd edition went further away from what I wanted, I became almost exclusively a GURPS DM. Though I still played other systems (AD&D and HERO mostly), everything I ran was GURPS.

Where GURPS excels is in character creation and options. You really could create a vast variety of characters who didn't adhere to any archetype. In the same system, I created a 1920s beat cop for a Cthulu game, a superhero, a mecha pilot and of course a fantasy swordsman. Many of these were done before there were appropriate sourcebooks. The system's extensibility was excellent. The combat was gritty and realistic, the core mechanics fairly simple and easy to explain.

Of course, the third edition (I've never played 4e GURPS) ran into some problems at times. You needed to tweak certain rules to match your playstyle. Fantasy was suitably lethal, but superheroes overly so; the players in my supers game were far more afraid of a bunch of lunatics bearing machine guns than the main team of supervillians. From a player perspective, the pace of character advancement in GURPS is positively GLACIAL. In a 10 year game I ran, the players went from 100 pt. characters to (iirc) 275 pt. characters. And while they were much more powerful, the change was much closer to moving from 1st to say 10th in D&D...at MOST. GURPS characters simply don't advance that far from their baseline; they become more competent and have more options, but they are never more than a few steps from death.

I used to think that Prep time for GURPS was a good deal of work. Then I ran a high-level game under 3e. Changed my perspective a good deal. Even so, when I saw 3e, I knew that they'd taken what I liked most about GURPS and thrown it into D&D. Since then, the only system I've used has been M&M for superheroes. GURPS brought me a lot of joy, but D&D does more of what I want out of a game.

 

[Kichwas]

The system in GURPS Magic is pretty much a huge list of "standard spells" (about 700-800 or so). It works well enough for many fantasy campaigns, but it doesn't really go into much detail about fiddling around with the base assumptions of the spell system. You'll need the upcoming GURPS Thaumatology for that.

My biggest complaint about GURPS for fantasy has always been a too pre-defined magic system. 4E was a bit better than the past attempts with some of the on the fly casting options, but still not open enough for me to define a system as would fit a setting I might conceive.

I'll have to flip through Thaumatology when it hits retail, and see if my concerns are addressed.

 

[Sanzuo]

Hmm....

My group had an interesting run-in with GURPS.

Our regular GM bought the 4e core book and after making the rounds we all decided that the game was really in-depth. It may have been because it had been a completely new rules set, but we found it very complex and over the heads of some of the players who were pretty casual and had pretty much only played D&D before.

The novelty of it was still cool and we ran a few scenarios and even had a mini-campaign which turned out to be one of the most memorable science-fiction campaigns for me ever.

Still it seems the GM got burnt out on the system because of the complexity and we found it not very intuitive at all. I find that strange considering how amazingly popular GURPS really is and I often wonder what we were doing wrong. I have considered picking up the book again and giving it a serious read.

Probably nothing will come of it. I already had my only recently beginning Dark Heresy game put on indefinite hold on the count of D&D 4e hype. I'm hoping the DM will pick up the D&D torch sometime soon so I can run with my Dark Heresy game some more.

So yea, GURPS might stay shelfed for a while, which is too bad. I actually see a lot of potential in the system.

 

[Sanzuo]

Where GURPS excels is in character creation and options. You really could create a vast variety of characters who didn't adhere to any archetype. In the same system, I created a 1920s beat cop for a Cthulu game, a superhero, a mecha pilot and of course a fantasy swordsman. Many of these were done before there were appropriate sourcebooks. The system's extensibility was excellent. The combat was gritty and realistic, the core mechanics fairly simple and easy to explain.

Actually this a thousand times over.

One complaint I have about a given system is restrictions placed on you based on a decision you made in the beginning of the game (IE: Classes!). I've accepted D&D for what it is; a tactical combat game with role playing elements. And since then I've enjoyed it a lot more.

But I still long for a good system where you can make "just a guy" and his skills and abilities develop based on where fate takes him in his adventuring career. The idea seems, I dunno, more "adventurous" to me.

 

[pawsplay]

You, sir, are not by any stretch of the imagination a "green player". Neither was I when I picked up the book and learned it on my own.

Once you have a certain level of mastery over multiple RPG systems, you get to bypass a whole heap of hurdles that afflict newcomers. Yes, to an experienced gamer, Hero really isn't that bad. It's still a lot harder for someone new to the hobby (or a casual participant) to pick up than, say D&D.

Well, I was thirteen years old and I learned it without a GM. Whatever you want to make of that.

 

[LoneWolf23]

Note: Most of the prep work for GURPS is only relevant for player characters. After all, character points are an accounting device for player characters only, so there's no reason to calculate them for NPCs.

Here, for example, is a Generic Guard:

ST 11, DX 10, IQ 10, HT 11
Skills: Broadsword-12, Shield-12
Weapons: Broadsword, 1d+2 cut
Armor: Leather Armor, DR 2, Medium Shield
Defenses: Dodge 10, Parry 11, Block 11

I just made those stats up, which really didn't take up a lot of time.

Heck, someone here made a random monster generator. Here's an exemple:

What on earth is this? Seems like a scaly creature looking similar to a octopus with a small maw!
...it that has the following stats:

Tall (SM +1)
Hp: 16 / HT: 12
Basic Speed: 4.50
Move: 8
Attacks: 1 / Damage: 2d6+1 pi
Offensive Skill (to hit): 11

 

[Metus]

I'm planning on trying out either GURPS or HERO; the beginning of this thread sold me on HERO over GURPS, but now I'm not so sure. You guys need to make up your mind!

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

You guys are just nuts. In GURPS, an average person can inflict maximum sword damage to an average unarmored man and they would still live.

Hit him in the vitals, do triple damage, and if you are doing maximum damage that will drop the average person to -20 HP, which gives him a 75% chance of dying. Doesn't sound too unreasonable to me.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I have doubts. D&D doesn't lend itself well to minmaxing (at least compared to GURPS).

Not with the three Core Rules, maybe... but I'm sure that people who bought a lot of D&D supplements could give you some pointers.

Minmaxing is very detrimental to games, because it creates player imbalance and causes wrongly priced abilities or more obscure and interesting abilities to be overlooked.

There used to be such problems, yes - but 4E is much more streamlined and improved in that regard.

I am a strong believer in class based systems, largely due to my experience with GURPS. In GURPS character creation yuo have essentialy two classes: DX types and IQ types.

With the repricing and redefinition of attribute costs, this is no longer the case in 4E. Indeed, "ST types" is now a rather viable concept for medieval-tech campaigns, and it is no longer as affordable to purchase really high DX and/or IQ. Add to that talents and the vast variety of advantages, and characters will look very much different from each other.

Niche protection is unheard of. In the end you have classes whether you wanted them or not.

In my campaigns, the characters had no problems finding niches.

And that was just character creation which is the strongest (by far) part of GURPS. The rest of rules is neither inspired nor good.

They work well enough, in my experience.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Still it seems the GM got burnt out on the system because of the complexity and we found it not very intuitive at all. I find that strange considering how amazingly popular GURPS really is and I often wonder what we were doing wrong. I have considered picking up the book again and giving it a serious read.

The biggest mistake one can make when starting out with GURPS is trying to use all of it at once. I should know - I made the same mistake.

It's often a good idea to start with GURPS Lite, plus whatever advantages and disadvantages you consider to be relevant for the campaign (suggestion: buy the electronic version of GURPS Basic Set 1: Characters from e23, and copy and paste everything you need into a separate document, complete with the racial templates for your campaign). That will make everything much more manageable.