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Basic Roleplaying: A Played It Review
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<blockquote data-quote="foolcat" data-source="post: 9048508" data-attributes="member: 7005182"><p>Oh dear… heartbreaker question. To me, GURPS is the ultimate universal RPG system there is, and has been since the 90s. The level of detail of characters is unmatched, and the mechanics always stay consistent, no matter how many optional rules (and there are <em>a lot</em>) you choose to bring in or leave out in order to achieve almost any desired level of complexity/realism. Very few other systems can pull that of. But therein also lies its crux.</p><p></p><p>It has often been said that GURPS is not a roleplaying system, it’s a simulation. It has tons of excellently written crunch, and the genre books are a must-read when you look for inspiration for developing your own setting. There’s nothing that GURPS can’t handle; and before you reinvent the wheel with some mechanic you need, someone, somewhere in some supplement has already written something that you can use, and it always fits swimmingly into the rest of it. But for me, GURPS has never been <em>fast.</em></p><p></p><p>As a GM, I found that prepping <em>anything</em> (e.g. major NPCs, vehicles, entire species, etc.) can be very slow work—plus, I have to re-familiarize myself every time I return to it, which takes me quite longer than with other RPGs for some reason (<em><em>ahem</em> tons of excellently written crunch</em>), and for the last couple occasions, I said bugger this, I’ll just use Savage Worlds (another great universal system, but with its own can of worms). Then there’s the player situation: I’ve made the experience that when casuals are among your players (i.e. people who cannot under any circumstances be bothered to read, let alone understand, the rules, not even the nifty one-page major rules & combat actions summary I’ve spent hours preparing), things can really bog down at the table. So, GURPS is a great system <em>in theory</em>.</p><p></p><p>In direct contrast to this, said casuals have next to no problem with simple percentages, and games of Call of Cthulhu for example are usually a blast (granted, CoC adventures tend to be less combat heavy in general—<em>Running</em> is the best ability to have).</p><p></p><p>I’ve said above that I’ve used RQ3 (Glorantha-less Avalon Hill RuneQuest) for worldbuilding (e.g. fantasy peoples with their own cultural backgrounds and professions, among other things) back in the 90s, and RQ was so much better suited for this than anything else that I had available at the time. Now with the new BRP book being explicitly promoted as a universal RPG, I’m thrilled to use it for a future pet project of mine. I’m comfortably familiar with BRP and have been so for decades (even longer than with GURPS), my players know it well, and there’s yet another big aspect to all of it: GURPS has been on the backburner for several years by now; that’s OK, because it isn’t SJG’s cash cow by a long shot, and it’s commendable that they still support it with small, but regular PDF-only publications. But even though all major 4E books are still available as POD for the most part, there won’t be any major new releases in the foreseeable future, let alone a new edition.</p><p></p><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWq1Rc63afE" target="_blank">Jason Durall has said in a recent YT interview</a> that they are already working on a supplement book for the new BRP, to be released this year, and that he can imagine that 10 years down the line, Chaosium might just do it again and make a new edition.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="foolcat, post: 9048508, member: 7005182"] Oh dear… heartbreaker question. To me, GURPS is the ultimate universal RPG system there is, and has been since the 90s. The level of detail of characters is unmatched, and the mechanics always stay consistent, no matter how many optional rules (and there are [I]a lot[/I]) you choose to bring in or leave out in order to achieve almost any desired level of complexity/realism. Very few other systems can pull that of. But therein also lies its crux. It has often been said that GURPS is not a roleplaying system, it’s a simulation. It has tons of excellently written crunch, and the genre books are a must-read when you look for inspiration for developing your own setting. There’s nothing that GURPS can’t handle; and before you reinvent the wheel with some mechanic you need, someone, somewhere in some supplement has already written something that you can use, and it always fits swimmingly into the rest of it. But for me, GURPS has never been [I]fast.[/I] As a GM, I found that prepping [I]anything[/I] (e.g. major NPCs, vehicles, entire species, etc.) can be very slow work—plus, I have to re-familiarize myself every time I return to it, which takes me quite longer than with other RPGs for some reason ([I][I]ahem[/I] tons of excellently written crunch[/I]), and for the last couple occasions, I said bugger this, I’ll just use Savage Worlds (another great universal system, but with its own can of worms). Then there’s the player situation: I’ve made the experience that when casuals are among your players (i.e. people who cannot under any circumstances be bothered to read, let alone understand, the rules, not even the nifty one-page major rules & combat actions summary I’ve spent hours preparing), things can really bog down at the table. So, GURPS is a great system [I]in theory[/I]. In direct contrast to this, said casuals have next to no problem with simple percentages, and games of Call of Cthulhu for example are usually a blast (granted, CoC adventures tend to be less combat heavy in general—[I]Running[/I] is the best ability to have). I’ve said above that I’ve used RQ3 (Glorantha-less Avalon Hill RuneQuest) for worldbuilding (e.g. fantasy peoples with their own cultural backgrounds and professions, among other things) back in the 90s, and RQ was so much better suited for this than anything else that I had available at the time. Now with the new BRP book being explicitly promoted as a universal RPG, I’m thrilled to use it for a future pet project of mine. I’m comfortably familiar with BRP and have been so for decades (even longer than with GURPS), my players know it well, and there’s yet another big aspect to all of it: GURPS has been on the backburner for several years by now; that’s OK, because it isn’t SJG’s cash cow by a long shot, and it’s commendable that they still support it with small, but regular PDF-only publications. But even though all major 4E books are still available as POD for the most part, there won’t be any major new releases in the foreseeable future, let alone a new edition. [URL='https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWq1Rc63afE']Jason Durall has said in a recent YT interview[/URL] that they are already working on a supplement book for the new BRP, to be released this year, and that he can imagine that 10 years down the line, Chaosium might just do it again and make a new edition. [/QUOTE]
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