Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
What is GURPS?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Ashrem Bayle" data-source="post: 4324505" data-attributes="member: 3103"><p>How I became a GURPS fan...</p><p></p><p>A few years ago I sat down at my computer with a very ambitious goal. I was going to rewrite the D&D Player's Handbook (3.5) to better satisfy my need for more realism and detail. After about 60 pages into my outline, I realized the end result really wasn't going to be D&D anymore at all.</p><p></p><p>So I came to the conclusion that what I really wanted wasn't D&D, but another game altogether. So I started searching around. The game I was looking for had to meet certain criteria:</p><p></p><p>1. Highly customizable characters.</p><p>2. The ability to create characters that resembled real people more so than "video game" characters.</p><p>3. Lethal combat. No matter how great a warrior was, a commoner with a knife had to at least be a minor threat.</p><p>4. Combat needed to have options. "Fighters" needed as many cool tricks as "Wizards".</p><p>5. No Vancian magic system. Magic needed to be more flexible.</p><p>6. Interesting critical hits and failures.</p><p>7. Interesting combat. I wanted more options for different combat techniques.</p><p>8. And the most important thing: Players needed to be rewarded for being clever and strategic in a manner more meaningful than just "+2 to hit for flanking".</p><p></p><p>In the end, I settled on GURPS. It hit all of the above criteria and was designed with the idea that you can build everything around real-world simulation. But can it do it without dragging the game to a snail's pace?</p><p></p><p>It does, and it does it well. All the complexity is in character creation. So the good news is that you can make uber-detailed and interesting characters of any genre. The bad news is that character creation can take hours. </p><p></p><p>It's worth it to me.</p><p></p><p>So a little over a year ago I dropped my D&D 3.5 campaign in favor of GURPS. I reveled in the "simulationist" aspects of the game, and I've had a lot of fun with it.</p><p></p><p>So now I have GURPS for my "hardcore" gritty campaign and D&D4e for my high action "over the top" campaign.</p><p></p><p>And I'm very happy with both. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin :D" data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ashrem Bayle, post: 4324505, member: 3103"] How I became a GURPS fan... A few years ago I sat down at my computer with a very ambitious goal. I was going to rewrite the D&D Player's Handbook (3.5) to better satisfy my need for more realism and detail. After about 60 pages into my outline, I realized the end result really wasn't going to be D&D anymore at all. So I came to the conclusion that what I really wanted wasn't D&D, but another game altogether. So I started searching around. The game I was looking for had to meet certain criteria: 1. Highly customizable characters. 2. The ability to create characters that resembled real people more so than "video game" characters. 3. Lethal combat. No matter how great a warrior was, a commoner with a knife had to at least be a minor threat. 4. Combat needed to have options. "Fighters" needed as many cool tricks as "Wizards". 5. No Vancian magic system. Magic needed to be more flexible. 6. Interesting critical hits and failures. 7. Interesting combat. I wanted more options for different combat techniques. 8. And the most important thing: Players needed to be rewarded for being clever and strategic in a manner more meaningful than just "+2 to hit for flanking". In the end, I settled on GURPS. It hit all of the above criteria and was designed with the idea that you can build everything around real-world simulation. But can it do it without dragging the game to a snail's pace? It does, and it does it well. All the complexity is in character creation. So the good news is that you can make uber-detailed and interesting characters of any genre. The bad news is that character creation can take hours. It's worth it to me. So a little over a year ago I dropped my D&D 3.5 campaign in favor of GURPS. I reveled in the "simulationist" aspects of the game, and I've had a lot of fun with it. So now I have GURPS for my "hardcore" gritty campaign and D&D4e for my high action "over the top" campaign. And I'm very happy with both. :D [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
What is GURPS?
Top