What is GURPS?

[Dannyalcatraz]

While both HERO and GURPS are essentially toolbox RPGs, and the math is almost entirely front loaded on both of them.

There are, however, certain differences which make all the difference to me (Mr. I-love-HERO-and-hate-GURPS):

GURPS has a huge number of well researched, written and playtested supplements that are useful as sourcebooks even if you don't play GURPS. However, those supplements are not neccessarily balanced with the Core rules or with other supplements- they're designed to model a particular focused setting or campaign style. For instance, the Core rules for psionics are not as flashy and are more expensive than in some of the sci-fi or superheroic supplements. Where a Core PC may spend a host of build points to telekinetically lift a bowling ball, a supers Teke could spend the same amount of build points and toss a motorcycle.

In contrast, in HERO, supplements are just designed to be consistent within the game, reality being merely nodded to. But in this system, points are points are points. Barring a DM tweak, psionic powers cost the same for a FRP campaign as they do in a sci-fi or superheroic game. The difference between campaigns is basically in how many freebie points the PCs can start off with- a 50 pt Energy blast power is going to be essentially the same power regardless of campaign.

To me, that meant that GURPS didn't live up to the "Universal" in its name, and it bugged me in each GURPS campaign or playtest I was involved with. Whereas I can easily take a creature or NPC from any HERO supplement and run it as is- changing only its flavor text- for GURPS I had to make sure it was made under a set of compatible rules, or else it could either overpower or utterly underwhelm the party. GURPS simply lacked what I called "internal cross-consistency."

Caveat- I haven't played the latest edition, and Jurgen has assured me that the current version of GURPS is a LOT more internally cross-consistent.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

While both HERO and GURPS are essentially toolbox RPGs, and the math is almost entirely front loaded on both of them.

There are, however, certain differences which make all the difference to me (Mr. I-love-HERO-and-hate-GURPS):

GURPS has a huge number of well researched, written and playtested supplements that are useful as sourcebooks even if you don't play GURPS. However, those supplements are not neccessarily balanced with the Core rules or with other supplements- they're designed to model a particular focused setting or campaign style. For instance, the Core rules for psionics are not as flashy and are more expensive than in some of the sci-fi or superheroic supplements. Where a Core PC may spend a host of build points to telekinetically lift a bowling ball, a supers Teke could spend the same amount of build points and toss a motorcycle.

That used to be a problem for the 3rd edition - which originally started out with a ruleset for people close to the human norm, but over the course of the 15 years (!) of its existence accumulated all sorts of additional rules in various supplements that often contradicted each other.

The 4th edition has much tighter editorial control over the line (as opposed to individual books - individual books were almost always excellent, but how well they worked with the rest of the line varied), and you are unlikely to find any such glaring contradictions in it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

See! See! I told you Jurgen would assure you that the new version is better!

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

There are also hundreds of setting books, all compatible. Some combinations are a bit strange, but the options are nearly boundless. It's also quite exploitable. There should be free introduction rules called gurps lite.
http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/Lite/

As a matter of fact, there's a great way to randomly generate the theme of a campaign: find a list of GURPS sourcebooks, assign numbers to each of them, and roll three times. Your game is based on those three sourcebooks.

There used to be a webpage that did this for you automatically... but I can't remember the URL and pretty much any GURPS link is going to include the search terms "game", "random", and "sourcebook". Someone who's search-fu is stronger than mine might be able to pin it down.

Now, you can do this based just on the names of the sourcebooks, but it works much, much better if you actually have them all on your bookshelf... and can read through them and find ways to make them work together.

Only time it's ever failed me was when I rolled Biotech, Horror... and Bunnies & Barrows. I very well could have played such a game, but I decided that I really would rather not to.

3d6 rolls for most everything means that most results will be average. This is less "swingy" than D&D's flat d20 rolls, where you are just as likely to roll a 1, a 20, or a 10. This is good in theory if you want most results to be in the mid-range. Just optimize your character to be really good at their specific skills, and you will practically always succeed even at difficult tasks.

Easiest House Rule in the world. Use a d20.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

See! See! I told you Jurgen would assure you that the new version is better!

Well, it is.

Frankly, considering the D&D Edition Wars (and similar phenomena in other games going through multiple editions), it's astonishing just how large the majority of GURPS players is that considers GURPS 4E to be a better game, despite a number of rather significant changes. The only "major" criticism I can think of is that some people would have preferred it that the skills would be separated into different skill categories, instead of listed alphabetically - and in the larger scheme of things, that's not a huge issue.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Well, it seems to me that the change between GURPS 4Ed from its predecessors was not so much a change in mechanics- as we see in the current D&D switchover- as a MASSIVE housecleaning that really tightened the system up.

 

[jdrakeh]

Well, it seems to me that the change between GURPS 4Ed from its predecessors was not so much a change in mechanics- as we see in the current D&D switchover- as a MASSIVE housecleaning that really tightened the system up.

I think that's a fair assessment. My experience with GURPS 4e has been considerably more pleasant than experiences with past editions of GURPS (of course, I have yet to run a 4e game).

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

There used to be a webpage that did this for you automatically... but I can't remember the URL and pretty much any GURPS link is going to include the search terms "game", "random", and "sourcebook". Someone who's search-fu is stronger than mine might be able to pin it down.

Here it is...

Only time it's ever failed me was when I rolled Biotech, Horror... and Bunnies & Barrows. I very well could have played such a game, but I decided that I really would rather not to.

But who wouldn't want to play a game in which genetically modified rabbits infiltrate a rabbit warren which have been secretly changed to be

- carnivorous (eating other rabbits they can catch in a dark corner of the warren)
- rapidly reproducing (they are emitting pheromones that make them irresistible to female rabbits - who subsequently go through an accelerated pregnancy after which the newborn burst from the womb) and
- rapidly growing (shedding the outer layer of their skin - including their fur - during each growth spurt)?

There's only one thing the surviving normal rabbits can do - infiltrate the nearby biotech lab that spawned them and find the poison tailored to those carnivores, before they spread out all over the world and threaten rabbitkind!

 

[Choranzanus]

- GURPS has a solid grounding in realism, so tactics that would work in real life will work well in it as well. If you are in a gunfight, use good cover and strategic positions. If your tech level is medieval, wear armor if you plan to get into swordfights. The side with the better tactics will usually have a huge advantage.

Yes, realism. GURPS is an ultimate simulationist system; everything must be realistic even magic, psionics, force fields, blasters...nevermind that default genre is medieval fantasy.
This kind of schizophreny shows up more often and as a result GURPS does modern day campaigns reasonably well and everything else poorly. GURPS realism is illusory, even if it was desirable in the first place.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Yes, realism. GURPS is an ultimate simulationist system; everything must be realistic even magic, psionics, force fields, blasters...nevermind that default genre is medieval fantasy.
This kind of schizophreny shows up more often and as a result GURPS does modern day campaigns reasonably well and everything else poorly. GURPS realism is illusory, even if it was desirable in the first place.

I have run GURPS for medieval fantasy campaigns (Warhammer Fantasy and Eberron), and I must strongly disagree - it works excellently for this genre as well. After all, it's easier to add fantastic elements to a game based on realism than it is to achieve realism for a game that was never intended to be realistic in the first place (*cough* d20 *cough).

No, magic, psionics, force fields etc. aren't realistic - but thanks to the way GURPS does things, you can always compare them to realistic weapons, armor, etc, and in a setting that uses both, you can figure out the best tactics combining the two. That's one of the cool things about GURPS - it allows the world-builder to ask the question: "What if?", and then figure out the consequences of his initial setting assumptions.

The new edition of Ultra-Tech is a very good example of this - it features both advanced but relatively "realistic" technology that is likely to be developed in the future, and implausible "supertech" for those with wilder campaign assumptions. You can pick and chose which technology you want to use, and the book has plenty of advice about the consequences of doing so.


(Oh, and I find it somewhat ironic that I often end up defending GURPS here on ENWorld... and D&D on the Steve Jackson Games forums.)