>>48335269
I've never played it myself, but I think that it possesses a massive sprawl of mechanics that slows the game down and puts people off.

>>48335481
Yeah, that's what I typically hear from people who have neither played nor read it.

But it has a hell of a lot less mechanics to read than Pathfinder, and tons of people play Pathfinder.

GURPS basically has two core books, and then the GM can include optional mechanics from other books, which are well organized so he can basically do it a book at a time.

If he wants more detailed martial arts? Theres a book he can use to expand the martial arts rules.

If he wants to let people have super powers, theres a super powers book that lets players design whatever power they want.

If he wants a certain magic system, he picks the one he wants to use.

If he wants historical weapons and armor, there's a book for that too.

From what I've gathered reading the books and talking to the people who play it, most of the time you're only gaming with a couple of books (based on what the GM is including), and therefore the mechanics aren't that sprawling.

>>48335269
The game itself is solid, but there are some materials for it that are profoundly bad. And if you include past editions you have that one vehicle rules system, which has been a punchline for decades.

Plus people can be put off by the sizeable backlog of books for it. In it's own way it's a barrier for entry, even if most players won't end up reading or thinking about 3/4 of it.

And then of course you have people annoyed with the refrain of 'play GURPS' whenever there's any discussion of systems.

>>48335945
>but there are some materials for it that are profoundly bad
Such as?

>>48335959
NTGB

I hear GURPS ultra tech is rather worthless. Supposedly a Poor selection of gadgets and crappy guns and armor.

>>48335945
>People suggest GURPS when you ask what system to play.

>It's often one of the better options to cover something that doesn't already have its own game.
>As you mention, this has nothing to do with the actual quality the game.

>>48335978
The main problem with Ultra-Tech's guns and armor is that it fails to be generic. It's all designed around a setting where lethality has far outpaced protection, so most armor is generally useless against weapons at the same tech level.

There are also some internal balance issues - for example, TL10 gauss weapons get beat out by TL9 conventional guns with certain upgrades.

Gadgets are pretty abysmal. The stats are all just arbitrary and none of it really feels solid. High-Tech's gadgets are much more satisfying and it's a shame that the sci-fi stuff feels so shallow.

That said, the book is still good as a reference point for stating your own weapons and gadgets, and has a lot of valuable discussion of technologies and how they effect society.

>>48335269
>>48335532
This is partly true, and once you actually get into the game things move much more quickly than other popular systems, largely because very little math is required by players and dice are consistent. The game's worst feature is chargen. See this: >>48334893 >>48334916 >>48335162 >>48335195 >>48335339 >>48335365

The pointbuy is incredibly bloated and unclear to new players. You know how many games have ability scores, and then a class, and then more specific skills? Well, GURPS has ability scores, and then skills. The problem arises when players are perusing through the skills to create the character they want (fine if you've got an idea/are a creative person, terrible if you're unsure of what you want to be, since there aren't "classes") and pick out some stuff, only to realize that they wasted their points by getting too specific. GURPS has a basic rule that abilities in general skills will give you a discount compared to the specific skills within the umbrella, and if new players don't realize this (they never do) the GM will lean over their shoulder like they're a retarded child and carefully explain this, or, they'll just roll with the character they made and wonder why they died so quickly.

Just my two cents on why this game isn't more popular (besides the disgusting name)

>>48336052
How does UT4e compare to 3e's UT1 and UT2?

File: GURPS NPC creation advice.png (378 KB, 1860x2203) Image search: [Google]

378 KB, 1860x2203

>>48335269

People try to make their first gurps game too complicated and it falls flat on their face. Burned they run back to their safety space.

GURPS is a system that demands a lot of system mastery, but it's the good kind of system mastery that rewards you with a better game and not fucking godmode wizards.

>>48335269
>>What's actually wrong with GURPS? Please be specific rather than just making broad generalizations.

A core mechanic that doesn't change.

GURPS is not universal as advertised - it has a specific level of mechanical crunch that makes it, like any other system, good for some things and not for others.

If your group doesn't care about how system will influence the game, it's an OK choice for "We need something", the same as anything else.

But what it's actually GOOD at is more limited than the "Hey, there's a GURPS supplement for that" crowd wants to believe.

Same as PBTApocalypse, FATE, d20, WoD and Chaosium BRP. They've all got mechanically reinforced areas they are strong and weak in.

>TL;DR, calling it Universal does not make it so.

File: gurps nazi.jpg (97 KB, 610x458) Image search: [Google]

97 KB, 610x458

Forgetting the rules, individual GURPS sourcebooks are fantastic reads; well-researched and readable, often written by an expert on the particular subject. I don't play the game but I have several GURPS books in my library for reference and inspiration.

>>48336110
This. This is very, very true. The splatbooks are good places to jump into the fluff behind something. I don't enjoy the system but fuck me, those splatbooks are good to have around.

>>48336103

This poster got it right. As for what GURPS mechanics are good for, I've always thought they are very good at emulating the nitty gritty of action movies. If you saw it in a John Woo flick you can probably recreate it faithfully in GURPS.

GURPS is also great for your typical generic fantasy adventure. Recreating the LotR characters would be a breeze.

Finally, GURPS is good at not being about combat. There's a very strong supplement called social engineering that goes into the depths of how the players should be working when they aren't trying to shoot someone to death.

>>48336103
It's best at games that will involve shooting guns, or the likelihood of that, so modern stuff, near-future sci-fi/Cyberpunk, Cthulhu shit, 1920s mobsters, etc. I've seen people bring up the Mass Combat rules as being solid and adaptable for other systems but I don't give a shit about that sort of thing.

>>48336078
>GURPS point buy is bloated and unclear to new players.
Is that a matter of presentation, or mechanics?

>>48336092
>People often screw up running GURPS their first time and then give up.
Ah. I can see people doing that.

>>48336103
Examples? What is GURPS strong and weak in? It seems to be able to handle any kind setting I can think of.

>>48336158
>>48336129
>>48336125
>>48336110
Nice.

So what is it bad at then?

>>48336244
>Is that a matter of presentation, or mechanics?
Not really either. It's more like a weird sorting game that will affect the mechanics. Even when the players know of the skill focus discount, they still fuck up and don't take advantage of it, get lost while looking for the cheaper umbrella skill, or start searching only to give up and move on. It's VERY hard to describe, but it's painful to watch.

>>48336301
>Weird sorting game
>People giving up

So it's hard to find things, you mean?

Hmm. Maybe an index, like the feats table for d&d, would help.

>>48336092
>People overcomplicate GURPS and screw up running it, then give up.
Such as trying to play with all the options turned on, you mean?

Nice NPC creation advice, that's basically how I do NPCs for almost all games.

>>48336328
>List of options of each type, broken down into category then sorted alphabetically.
>Very Brief summary of what each does, along with its point cost, and which book/page you can find it on.

Would this solve the problem?

>>48336328
There are several. Including an index of all disadvantages, one of all skills, etc.

Another problem is people looking at the index and picking things from there, and not reading how it actually works. Like "Honesty", doesn't mean you're honest and never lie, it means you have to roll when you want to go against the law.

>>48336328
No, it's more like the player has an idea (or doesn't) and then as they're trying to figure out how to make that into a GURPS character they get sucked in to the skills sections, and through a combination of trying to find what they want or assemble something good, they start picking things that make sense until they run out of points, and then say "why do I have so little points?" and you say, "well, you took points in Lockpicking even though your character is a doctor" and they say "well sometimes he gets locked out of his house and has to card his door open"

So he's not a super good doctor because the player found something quirky and fun and possibly useful, but not important and a complete waste of their limited points. There is another character in the party who has ranks in High Manual Dexterity, which means he's a much better thief/b&e guy, but he only picked that after the GM told him that he could just pick that generalized skill for cheaper than picking Lockpicking, Pick Pocket, Sleight of Hand, and Mechanic individually. Are you starting to see why this becomes super annoying?

>>48336366
The index doesn't say you have to roll to go against the law for honesty? That seems like exactly the kind of short summary I was describing.

>>48336428
>Spend all his points on random shit and runs out, never becoming competent.
Huh. My first {and only} GURPS character I ran out of points, and just kept going. I had 150 to work with. Built until I had everything I thought i wanted, (~450 pts) and then I just started cutting the shit that was unimportant that I came across a better way to accomplish. Cut it down to 145, and the character looked pretty good. Campaign of course died before getting off the ground so I never got to try it.

>High manual dexterity instead of buying a ton of skills individually, way more point efficient. Gm has to point it out.
This is a bit of an annoyance, for sure.
Is this something that would be hard to convey to players before they start building to make their lives easier?

>>48336479
The index tells you at what page to go to check how things work.

>>48336244
>It seems to be able to handle any kind setting I can think of.

It's not about setting, it's about the tone of the game. GURPS models characters using a specific set of "Hard Stats", a slew of skills from a list that the GM most likely draws up, and a vast pile of advantages and disadvantages.

Consider how you'd build a character in GURPS. You will undoubtably think about what downsides to take and what is "worth" taking as a downside. If you want them to be able to do Cool Gun Shit, you either find advantages that give them that, or ask the GM to use a supplement that allows you to do so.

You can add in skills for anything, but that's the same argument as is used for narrative games like FATE. I wouldn't run a hard and gritty modern military game with precise by the second tactics and accurate maps in FATE because FATE assumes that
>1. heroes are competent, special, and unlikely to die
>2. maps are your enemy, not your friend, and the exact details of a scene don't matter until they are called upon, at which point they should be invented.

Consider wacky, over the top bullshit like you see in anime. Would you WANT to run that in GURPS? Fuck no. You don't want to plot out in advance exactly how comparatively sword-competent your characters and NPCs are, draw up perfect lists of their special moves, and all that. OTT anime is 90% ass pull and 10% planned in advance, and the system should support that. Descriptive bullshit and "I have a broad skill in sword, a broad skill in fire magic, and a character trait called Wreck Up The Place, so I create a vortex of fire by spinning" is not GURPS's strong point.

I don't know GURPS well enough to give you details of what it sucks at and is good at, to be frank. It doesn't appeal because I like my larger than life heroics, and I don't like the very detailed planning that GURPS benefits from.

>>48336488
>Index doesn't include summaries
Yeah, that doesn't help a newbie determine "is that an option I want for this character", any faster than if they skimmed the book front to back.

>>48336489
>GURPS problem is it only does a single game tone.
>That tone is characters with well defined abilities.
>It's bad for wacky over the top anime stuff.
It is? I was thinking it seemed one of the better options for a FMA or avatar the last Airbender campaign.
Probably wouldn't pick it for DBZ/BLEACH though, which is what I assume you mean.

>GURPS doesn't do poorly defined characters with abilities you pull out of your ass mid game.
Fair enough. I've never wanted to play a game like that, but I had a friend who was homebrewan something like that that he wanted to run.

>The system should support that
I think your definition of universal is a little too broad. I can't think of any system with poorly defined characters, that can also do a game with well defined characters. Do you have an example of one?

>"I have a broad skill in swords and fire magic, and a trait called "wreck up the place", so I create a vortex of fire by spinning.
I don't know if I've ever played a game like this. Maybe I'll give it a shot. Suggestions?

>I like larger than life heroics and don't like the amount of detailed planning GURPS benefits from.
Fair enough. I imagine you don't like most games.

Basically every game I can think of that I've played has all the things you complained about in GURPS, with the exception of trollbabe.

>>48336489
Further to this - core resolution mechanics matter.

Ars Magica, for instance, has a similar focus on a long list of skills and some character-defining flaws and advantages, but plays radically differently due to two things.
1. Combat plays and flows differently, with heavy Death Spirals
2. More importantly, Critical Success and Failure is a huge tide turner when the stakes are high

Further to that,
>Dice in different games mean different odds of success and failure are the norm.
Scaling based on adjustable factors like assistance and teamwork.
>Magic systems and supernatural abilities in different systems lead to very different ways of viewing "I Have Powers".
Games that require you to build powers block by block like Silver Age Sentinels feel very different to games that give you specific prescribed powers to choose from like D&D 4e feel very different to wide-open soft systems like Smallville.
>How much does this game care that I'm insane, mechanically?
How much does this system want to force me to use my character's social capability?

And all of these are things that a game can have core mechanics built around. There's enough difference that just slapping on some interesting scaling and results on "3d6 roll under a skill" won't be enough to compete with things built for it.

The perfect example of a game purpose built for its tone is Don't Rest Your Head. Literally every mechanic in that game WANTS to fuck your character to death with a knife. You could run a horror game in any flexible system with a bolt-on sanity mechanic and some supernatural powers, but it just wouldn't be able to put out the same all-consuming fear of specific situations.

>I have ranted for long enough, though, and I'm probably not getting this across very well.

>>48336575
>If some preexisting published game does exactly what you're looking for and is designed around that thing, unless that thing is something GURPS is already good at, it probably handles it better than GURPS, out of the box (though of course optional rules might bridge that gap in some cases).
That pretty much the point your trying to make?

I'm not looking for a single system and then I'll never play anything else again. I get that sometimes there will be another system better suited for it.

But often I want to run a game that has no system specifically designed for it, or the existing system is shit.

GURPS looks like it could fill that hole.

I've tried savage worlds and Mutants and Masterminds, and didn't care for them at all. Unisystem was okay but not terribly impressive, and not as flexible as id like. I have not tried fate, or marvel Heroic role playing, or hero, but would like to try them some day.

>>48336629
Oh. And brp/runequest was also not flexible enough for me to fill that gap (though I'd still play it if a friend wanted to run it).

>>48336629
Pretty much that, yes.

Marvel Heroic is a branch of Cortex, and all of Cortex has a rather odd core conceit.
>Character "stats" are rated d4 through d12, bigger is better, based on how much of an impact you can have on the plot using them.
>What those stats are can be almost anything, but all player characters should have the same set of categories

Typically, these will be a set of core things you draw on all the time, a set of character-specific "powers", and some ancillary extras that usually don't come up. Tweaking a Cortex game is often a matter of working out which subsections of the core thing your PCs will need to be variably good at, and making those your core stats.

>>48336643
BRP rather shows its age. I'm not going to say that newer game == better game, but there have been some damn good game creation ideas that are more recent than the 80s/90s games. Streamlining, for one thing (compare attacking in original old world of darkness, to attacking in bluebook godmachine nWoD. Two rolls each from attacker and defender, vs one roll from attacker, to resolve one regular attack.)

>>48336428
>well sometimes he gets locked out of his house and has to card his door open
This is why defaults exist.

GURPS is a game that requires a large amount of GM oversight in character creation. If you don't like having to audit your players' sheets to make sure they haven't fucked up/tried to slip some cheese past you, you won't like GURPS.

You should be beating your players about the head with templates anyway. I don't know if there's actually a doctor template.

>>48336428
>newbie making MtG deck, knows to keep it to 36 nonland cards
>starts choosing a bunch of cards he's excited to play with
>stops immediately once he reaches 36 cards, doesn't consider cutting anything
>"Why isn't my four-color deck made entirely of CMC 6+ fatties viable? This game is stupid."

>>48336343

>nice NPC creation advice

Thank you. It was something I put together for gurps general to help newbies understand fast GM:ing in GURPS.

I suspect this is the sort of NPC-creation most veteran GM:s regardless of system ends up moving towards.

>>48337025
>starts choosing a bunch of cards he's excited to play with
Isn't that sort of thing called a Timmy card?

>>48337042

New players are all, to some extent, Timmies. They're usually drawn in by some specific card or combination of cards, before they're exposed to the other aspects of the game that draw them to be a Johnny or Spike, or continue to congeal into a proper Timmy.

That's arguably the case for all games.

>>48336866

There's definitely a doctor template, as I was looking at it just long enough ago that I can't remember where I found it... but it might be in Transhuman Space or something, and have a few setting-specific elements.

>>48339008
Bio-Tech.

>>48339064

Ah, thanks. Bio-Tech's practically a THS book fluff-wise, so I guess that's why it mixed up in my head.

>>48335978
>>48336052

It's not terrible, but it's a clear cut below the quality of most of the other catalog supplements. Read Low Tech, High Tech, and then Ultra Tech and the difference is obvious.

>>48336080

It's kind of a cattle call of inventions from THS, UT1, UT2, and other settings.

>>48335269

Character creation is too complicated. Mechanics to simplify it have come out since but they're in PDFs like DF, MH, and AtE, so they're not really core enough that people use them.

The other big problem is that it's an RPG creation toolkit rather than an RPG. GMs tend to dive into GURPS head first and use all the options-- even the contradictory ones. The more simulationist an RPG gets, the more it gets bogged down. For D&D players used to turning everything on, the discipline of being selective and sticking to the basics is alien. So you get games that are way too bogged down.

Finally, the game is hugely front-loaded. Not just character creation, but world-building too. A game that CAN do anything won't do anything without preparation and planning. A GM who tries to wing it with GURPS will find his game falling apart.

GURPS is a fantastic game system for running exactly what you want. If you know what you want, plan it out, and configure it, then you have the best RPG system bar none. But if you don't know what you want or can't be bothered to do the prep work in advance, then it's the least forgiving system there is.

>>48340578
>>>48335269 (OP)
>Character creation is too complicated. Mechanics to simplify it have come out since but they're in PDFs like DF, MH, and AtE, so they're not really core enough that people use them.

Templates are kind of setting specific though.

>The other big problem is that it's an RPG creation toolkit rather than an RPG. GMs tend to dive into GURPS head first and use all the options-- even the contradictory ones.
That would be a bad idea, yes.

>GURPS is a fantastic game system for running exactly what you want. If you know what you want, plan it out, and configure it, then you have the best RPG system bar none. But if you don't know what you want or can't be bothered to do the prep work in advance, then it's the least forgiving system there is.
>You have to choose what kind of game you want to run and make sure you pick the options to support it.
That seems reasonable for a game that can do more than one thing. Good luck running a gritty noir detective game using pathfinder, for instance.

>>48340578
>A GM who tries to wing it with GURPS will find his game falling apart.

Not any more than the DM who tries to wing 3.5 and lets in all the third-party splats. Any game with options will break down without a vision that reigns in the choices of the options.

>>48341224
There's a difference between Lloyd of character options designed for the same game, and options not designed to use together.

>1 player build an ancient hunter gatherer human.
>Another builds a spetsnaz.
>Another an unkillable superhero

These options may not play well together.

>>48341224
The 3.5 game with all third party splats will break because some of those splats are shit, not because there's too many options

>>48341303
Sounds like a fine I-SWAT squad.