What is your Opinion of GURPS?

[tauton_ikhnos]

Just my opinions as longtime GURPSite and DNDite:

1. Character creation is roughly as time consuming as 3rd edition D&D. Expect to either wing a lot, or spend a lot of time on it. Our group spends about half an hour on either system, but we also have a lot of experience with each - our characters are already mostly prebuilt in our heads before we put pen to paper. Playing a spellcaster will take 1 million times as long, same as D&D, although at least there's only two books of spells out there, instead of 80% of supplements having spells to skim through for munch.

2. Characters who are not well designed will get shafted, same as D&D. Pick a specialty and focus on it, but don't entirely neglect other areas, and you should be fine. Again, same as D&D, but with point expenditure instead of stacking bonuses . If this is first time, I suggest allowing rebuilds later on, when players comfortable with system.

3. Combat involves 2-3 rolls per attack: attack roll, defense roll, damage roll. Much of the rest will seem familiar to you, because D&D 3e cribbed the Move + Attack, 5 ft step (in GURPS it is 1 yard step), free actions, from GURPS . That will get me thwapped, I'm sure, but it is true. One difference is AoOs do not exist in GURPS - instead, you have actions that allow or prevent active defenses. Not having active defenses can suck .

Although some have posted that GURPS combat can be tedious, I disagree. It is exactly as tedious/exciting as D&D, except that D&D combats tend to last longer and have more last second upsets. GURPS combats tend to end fast and bloodily. Much depends on GM.

4. GURPS gets gritty right. It gets cinematic so wrong it's not funny. Really. GURPS Supers is an excercise in dying innocents and collateral damage. GURPS high flying martial arts is an exercise in broken bones and choke outs. But if you want gritty, it works really well.

5. Like D&D, GURPS claims to be balanced. Like D&D, this is a lie. All true balance exists in one place only: the GM.

 

[Dirigible]

I can't tell it from butter.

 

[tetsujin28]

I don't think that GURPS is difficult at all, nor is character creation more tricky. But there is a new edition coming out soon, so save your money. And it looks like it'll fix a lot of the problems the game had.

 

[Doc_Klueless]

(Non-adventuring wizards could be quite unhealthy and thus be limited in spellcasting, but that's okay.)

Also, the better the character knows some spells (is it Recover Strength/Fatigue? Can't remember the name of the spell), the quicker the character recovers from casting spells. Works well for the mad wizard who never leaves his tower but is a master mage.

I also seem to recall (though I could be mistaken, it's been about 5 years since I last played GURPS) that high spell scores also cut down on casting costs, but I might be confusing systems there.

What I liked about GURPS magic was that the better you knew a spell, the quicker you could cast it and the less "ritual" was required. For example, a mage with a high Fireball spell score could whip out 1d6 fireballs ALL DAY LONG at the drop of a hat.

What I didn't like about GURPS magic is that each spell is a skill and Mental Hard to boot.

 

[Doc_Klueless]

Thankfully, that will also be fixed in 4E - Fatigue will be based on the Health attribute (while hit points will be based on Strength - since Strength also usually represents bulk). You can also buy up your Fatigue pool with character points...

This I like and hadn't heard about. Hm, I might be running GURPS again (via the internet).

 

[Doc_Klueless]

Some of my opinions of GURPS are a bit different than (what seems to be) the majority posted so far. Some of my opinions parrot others, but here goes:

I found character generation to be a lot of fun. As did my then-wife. Back when we played it exclusively, she used to sit on the couch and make character after character just because. So, as far as character generation goes, you might find it to be a real hoot.

There is an optional rule in GURPS where players get 145 points to build a character. Disadvantages don't count for points. This keeps the point-tweaker players in check fairly well when it comes to getting one-legged blind albino characters.

GURPS combat is extremely modular. The more options you add, the slower it runs, of course. GURPS Basic Combat is still fun. What might turn you off, though, is the one-second combat rounds. I didn't care much for that myself. GURPS combat can be cinimatic, but it requires that you turn a lot of those options on and, consequently, slow down game play a bit until you get used to those options. Towards the end of my GURPS run, I could run a fully twinked out combat as quickly as I can in D&D. It just took some practice before I hit that spot.

My all time favorite character came from GURPS. Took my screen-name from him. A Captain/Doctor in a GURPS:Twilight 2000 game who had the Clueless disadvantage. That disadvantage MADE the character. Of course, I could have played him that way without the disad. But I selected a disad, so I played the disad.

For those of you reading this thread and want the link, here's the link to GURPS Lite

 

[Havoc]

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

Subjective and "jerky"

 

[ichabod]

As a GURPS GM and accomplished min/maxer, I would not say it is easy to min/max in GURPS. Sure, it's not hard to find some disadvantages that don't affect your character's strengths, but min/maxing is as much (if not more) about where you don't spend your points as where you get your extra points from. I've seen would be min/maxers make characters who were brutal at one thing, but fell to pieces in a real life situation. There's a reason why idiot savants don't rule the world. But the reverse is also a problem, as it is very easy to make a character that sucks just because you don't understand the system. I'm not saying it's a bad system, it just takes a bit of familiarity with the system to avoid some of the problems.

I've only skimmed CORPS, so I can't really comment on it's relative worth; but where my dealings with SJG have always left me with a bad taste in my mouth, I have always found Greg Porter to be a stand up guy.

 

[tauton_ikhnos]

CORPS is one of best supplements for GURPS ever .

Seriously, CORPS is lighter than full-options GURPS, but heavier than GURPS Lite. The two systems achieve many of same goals in different ways. I prefer GURPS method, but that's strictly opinion - both are pretty equable.

As for more cinematic stuff: CORPS does this better than GURPS, yes, but still does not do as well as D20 Modern. And magic in CORPS is pretty much kludged. So for cinematics, prefer not to use either. BESM, D20 Modern, Floating Vagabond, Champion... there are plenty of cinematic game systems to choose from that are not CORPS or GURPS.

 

[WayneLigon]

What do you think of GURPS?

I have downloaded the GURPS Lite .pdf a while ago, and I think GURPS might be a better fit for my ideas about games than D20M is.
?

Sticking with GURPS lite might not be a bad idea for the first little while, to see if you like the system. GURPS is kinda like Rolemaster in that you can make it very simple or hellishly complex, depending on how many of the rules you use.

The sourcebooks are wonderful, even if you don't play the game.

Character generation is a snap, even easier than D&D in some respects, as long as you don't go over board on skill selections. GURPS Character Assistant or the software tool from SJG lets you do a character in a few minutes.