What is your Opinion of GURPS?

[Psion]

Gurps rewards characters who take role-playing disadvantages with power gaming advantages. AD&D never did something like that.

Actually, it did. See: 1e UA barbarian and cavalier.


But yeah. I don't like GURPS. While almost a model of point base systems, it's almost a case study of their downfalls. A few things that make me avoid the system like the plague:

- Disads are a point farm in GURPS. To be fair, they are a point farm in HERO too, but hero, being originally written to emulate superheroes in, it sort of made sense for. But for GURPS, the benefits of picking up disads could not be easily ignored and it made the characters very bizarre.
- Chargen is tedious, as was already mentioned. Sure you can do anything, but would you want to? It's easy to make characters who focus only on important skills and put 1/2 point in everything else. I found that running GURPS, the GM has to do a lot more handholding than many other systems.
- Too few attributes, attributes too influential, leads to many character being "Jacks of All trades dextrous" or "Jacks of all trades intellectual."

 

[VirgilCaine]

Save your nickels. Might be an improvement.

I said in the first post I didn't intend to buy anything.
But, thanks.

For instance, if you stutter, you can be a better sword fighter. Obviously, this is not a problem with all players, but most will be tempted to twink out their characters a bit.

While Gurps can be realistic, it also does a very poor portrayal of characters. You only get 4 stats, of which 2 are massively important in modern games (IQ and DX). But in any event, thanks to the point buying nature of Gurps, most characters have scores very similar to each other.

And this is purely subjective, but just about everyone who works at SJG is a jerk.

I read somewhere once that a person had never met so many halitosis-cursed, acne-faced, etc. etc. adventurers in his life.

With respect, you know this last bit...how?

 

[RFisher]

I like GURPS a lot. I played it exclusively for a few years starting about 1991.

The thing I like best about GURPS is that the rules don't get in my way when creating worlds. (Or, at least, they get in my way less than most other systems.)

GURPS is biased towards verisimilitude more than most roleplaying systems.

GURPS has very good, well researched supplements. Most of them tend to be creamy rather than crunchy.

The things I didn't like about GURPS:

1. Only four stats. (Arguably, only two.) This isn't a bad thing alone, but the way the skills & defaults system works on top of it makes it a bad thing.

2. Super cripple. Even at the "standard" 100 point + 45 points of disads, characters are often a bit heavy on disads for my taste, as players try to make sure they get every one of those allowed 45 points while taking disads that won't really be disads. (I was one of the worst offenders myself.)

Last GURPS game I ran, I banned disads. Well, actually, you could take 'em, they just didn't give you points.

3. I didn't like the way it always seemed you were playing on or past the extreme of the 3d6 bell-curve. More recently, I've come to think that maybe that was more because I didn't properly understand the system than a flaw in the game.

4. I don't care for the "critical" results rules.

Oh, and I like it better than Hero. I've played Hero. I like Hero. I just like GURPS better.

I can't wait to get a look at 4e. I know that at least one of my concerns has been addressed in the new edition.

Hope that helps.

 

[Kanegrundar]

I've ran a couple GURPS games in the past. While I liked the system for trying to be a truly generic system, it just didn't work for me. As several have stated earlier, it is extremely easy to munch out a character, character creation is not fun in the least, the system is completely unintuitive, and combat is honestly a bore (although it is highly detailed). Too many times I had players that tried to be everything and ended up being nothing. That said, there are some excellent sourcebooks out there that can easily be converted to other systems (D20 especially). Overall though, GURPS is a flop in my mind. YMMV, of course, but I'll be sticking with D20 for my gaming needs for a while.

Kane

 

[Umbran]

And this is purely subjective, but just about everyone who works at SJG is a jerk.

Hm. From what I've heard, Mr. Jackson himself is a nice enough guy...


As for GURPS... It functions. It gets the job done. Others have already mentioned that character generation is a pain. If you use all the combat options, combat is burdensome. If you don't use all the combat options, you're missing out on what makes the system different. The disad system rewards people for being creative in finding disads that won't get in their way. The supplements are, as other have noted, excellent source material even if you don'tplay GURPS.

All in all, I think GURPS suffers from trying to be all things to all people. In the end, it does some things well enough, but ends up with little flavor of it's own. GURPS is the system I turn to when Ive got a mini-campaign idea for which no other rule-set I have on hand will work properly.

 

[d4]

Last GURPS game I ran, I banned disads. Well, actually, you could take 'em, they just didn't give you points.

if i ever ran GURPS again, that's what i would do too. (in fact, i believe it's mentioned as an "official" variant rule in the first Compendium.) i don't like feeling obliged to take disads when i honestly can't think of 40 points' worth that fit my character background.

and to give a different perspective than some of the other posters, i actually really *enjoyed* making characters in GURPS. i didn't find it a pain or a bore in the least. but i'm an inveterate tinkerer, and i could spend a week or two working on a new character for a game.

 

[craftyrat]

if i ever ran GURPS again, that's what i would do too. (in fact, i believe it's mentioned as an "official" variant rule in the first Compendium.) i don't like feeling obliged to take disads when i honestly can't think of 40 points' worth that fit my character background.

When I ran GURPS games - which I did for many years - I also didn't give players points for disadvantages. I just said that I thought everyone should have a disadvantage or two, but they weren't worth any extra points. I also used a lot of pre-generated characters, to save my players from char creation (I had a lot of non-munchkinites who didn't like digging through rule books). GURPS does have some flaws that are hard for a new GM to spot, and each campaign I ran had a different set of house rules (some things are overpowered in a futuristic campaign, but fine in medieval, etc.).

craftyrat

 

[VirgilCaine]

Okay, so the consensus is: no points for disads. Got it.

GURPS does have some flaws that are hard for a new GM to spot,

A little detail here, please?

Thanks for the mountains of feedback, people. I'll look over the rules a little more.

One thing I am thinking about adding--a "Charisma" score, with the deifnition a la D&D. Anyone done that?

 

[Mort]

Okay, so the consensus is: no points for disads. Got it.



A little detail here, please?

Thanks for the mountains of feedback, people. I'll look over the rules a little more.

One thing I am thinking about adding--a "Charisma" score, with the deifnition a la D&D. Anyone done that?

You better see how that affects the point buy first - you can buy good looks in GURPS (of course that then makes you a worse shot or a worse negotiator because you have less points to spend but hey)

On the other note:
One thing I remember bugging me is that the books are well written enough that they seem more intuitive than they really are. I remember reading through the rulebook and nodding, thinking how easily everything flowed and expecting it to translate to the game – It didn’t.

When we finally generated characters and settled down – the rules just seemed really complex and hard to grasp in actual play. Once you get over the hump (assuming you have the patience) the rules come together – but it’s nowhere near as easy as the books make it appear.

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

The suppliaments books are some of the best in the market. They are researched well and whereas they do not go into deep discussions of history, they do very well from a 'Gamer's Perspective,' so to speak.

My problem with the game is that for a 'generic' system I did not think it really did a great job for all the different genres. 'Supers' for example, was an abomination. Whereas 'Horror' was pretty good. I am not sure that many people played Fantasy because, well, D&D was so much easier.

So whereas I would give GURPS a thumbs up, overall, I think that it is because of the world books that come with it moreso than the game itself.