Grade the GURPS System

[Eyes of Nine]

In my opinion, this underscores the fact that GURPS isn't a game, it's a toolkit for creating games of which Dungeon Fantasy RPG (Powered By GURPS) is one example. Some people seem to be able to get away with skipping the "create a game" step and playing directly out of the GURPS rulebooks, but if I were trying to run e.g. a Mission Impossible game for new players using GURPS, the first thing I would do is pull together character creation rules: here are some skills you get automatically, here are other skills you can get optionally, here are some advantages and disadvantages, and here is your gear list with prices for everything. It will be a subset of the GURPS Basic + High Tech skills/advantages/disadvantages/gear, but it turns out that omitting stuff (that they're not allowed to have anyway) is really important to the player experience!

I've said it before and I'll say it again. What would could have kept GURPS relevant in the 21st century was opening it up for 3rd party supplements.

Too bad Steve Jackson was so mired in late-20th century thinking and was unwilling to go there. I think if he/they did, they'd still be selling 4e core HCs at a relatively brisk pace, even today.

 

[MGibster]

It's also more visible in GURPS because almost all skills are based off DX or IQ (or something that works off them, like Will or Perception). As a counterexample, Star Wars: Edge of the Empire has 33 skills, spread between Brawn (4), Agility (7), Intellect (10), Cunning (5), Willpower (3), and Presence (4). The equivalent of DX and IQ still carry a lot of weight, but nowhere near to the degree they do in GURPS.

In GURPS, it costs more to raise your IQ and Dex precisely because they're more useful that Strength or Health. In FFG's Star Wars, there's no such weight attached to stats. Raising your Willpower from 2-3 costs exactly the same as raising your Intellect from 2-3.

 

[Faolyn]

In GURPS, it costs more to raise your IQ and Dex precisely because they're more useful that Strength or Health. In FFG's Star Wars, there's no such weight attached to stats. Raising your Willpower from 2-3 costs exactly the same as raising your Intellect from 2-3.

But cheaper to raise your IQ and DX than to raise a couple of dependent skills.

 

[Staffan]

In GURPS, it costs more to raise your IQ and Dex precisely because they're more useful that Strength or Health. In FFG's Star Wars, there's no such weight attached to stats. Raising your Willpower from 2-3 costs exactly the same as raising your Intellect from 2-3.

Sure, but it still means that the "correct" thing is almost always to max out DX/IQ and spend a single point on many skills, with maybe 1-3 skills at a level above that. And in a system with 200+ skills, that's an issue. Skills plateau at 4 character points per increase, which means that if you have five or more skills under that attribute, it costs as much to increase the attribute as it does to increase the skills.

In Star Wars, stats and skills don't compete for the same resource in quite that way. At character generation you get a pool of XP with which to primarily buy stats – you can spend it on skills, but it is heavily disincentivized because once play starts, you can no longer directly increase stats with XP (and you get a bunch of skill ranks separately at start). Instead, the only way to increase them is to take the Dedication talent, which is usually found at the bottom of each talent tree. The GURPS equivalent would be to require you to spend, say, 50 XP on other things in between each attribute increase.

 

[thullgrim]

Most GURPS have some kind of attribute limit once you tech that your forced to buy skills or talents, and talents might be more problematic than the stat buying.

You could also require Unusual background for every attribute point in DX or IQ bought after character creation.

It’s a problem to be sure, but not an insurmountable one.

 

[Staffan]

Most GURPS have some kind of attribute limit once you tech that your forced to buy skills or talents, and talents might be more problematic than the stat buying.

You could also require Unusual background for every attribute point in DX or IQ bought after character creation.

It’s a problem to be sure, but not an insurmountable one.

"It's not an issue because there are possible fixes for it."
I think there's a name for that. Still, the main issue is that there are way too many skills, which means that you need to increase your stats in order to be anywhere near reasonably competent.

For example, in the campaign I'm in, we were supposed to make doctorate students, and I decided that my field of study would be biology (and botany in particular). As such, I'd need to have some outdoorsy skills as well, because you need to go to where the plants are to study them. I figured these skills would cover that with a little bit of related hobbies: Biology (optional spec: Botany), Computer Operation, Electronics Operation (Scientific), Gardening, Mathematics (Statistics), Naturalist, Navigation (Land), Observation, Stealth, Writing, Chemistry, Hiking, Climbing, First Aid. That's 14 skills just to get some baseline competency. In a more reasonable system, those could be condensed to something like Science (with some form of Botany specialization), Survival, Perception, Athletics, Medicine/First Aid.

 

[aramis erak]

In GURPS, it costs more to raise your IQ and Dex precisely because they're more useful that Strength or Health. In FFG's Star Wars, there's no such weight attached to stats. Raising your Willpower from 2-3 costs exactly the same as raising your Intellect from 2-3.

And in SW/Genesys, raising willpower has almost as much skill benefit as intelligence.

Also, there are few enough that use across different attributes is worthwhile, and the official sheets presentation makes that readily doable.

With GURPS, there's not much room, lots of needed skills, and most players barely note the points, noting often only the total, not many atts to choose from, and only occasionally does it make sense to do so.

 

[Golden Bee]

C+. Nobody runs it, but they made an Alpha Centauri book.

 

[giant.robot]

C+. Nobody runs it, but they made an Alpha Centauri book.

That book is one of my white whales. I owned the book (never used it obviously) but got rid of it in a damn-I-need-money-more-than-these-books purge. Fast forward to today and copies are just stupid expensive and SJG never released it on PDF.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I've said it before and I'll say it again. What would could have kept GURPS relevant in the 21st century was opening it up for 3rd party supplements.

Too bad Steve Jackson was so mired in late-20th century thinking and was unwilling to go there. I think if he/they did, they'd still be selling 4e core HCs at a relatively brisk pace, even today.

You're not wrong. Since so much of GURPS' business model is centered on selling rules, I view it as a major misstep that Steven Jackson Games hasn't prioritized making it easy for GMs to find/buy/publish adventures for players to use those rules within. SJG has instead chosen to keep approximately 100% of the revenue and creative control over GURPS-oriented adventures at the cost IMO of shrinking the GURPS player base including their own market for rules.