RPGs day seven: GURPS
May. 26th, 2020 09:28 amVia James Nicoll, my first ten tabletop RPGs in ten days, in the order in which I encountered them. Day seven: GURPS.
GURPS wants to simulate everything, and I mean everything. Break it all down to character points spent and 3d6. I believe all the GURPS games I ever came close to being involved in have been some variety of fantasy, but I know there was at least one ongoing Space game at Tech while I was there, and there are GURPS sourcebooks covering just about any genre and setting you can imagine.
It will not surprise you to hear that I don't get on well with GURPS. I've played in several campaigns, and my sense during each has been that I spend half my time fighting against the system to do what I want to do. I know there are people who love it to death, who tell amazing stories using it, who can wield the system like a scalpel to carve a pitch-perfect and appropriate simulation. They aren't me.
This doesn't stop me from owning a couple of the sourcebooks, though. When they're not descending into number-crunching, they tend to be wonderfully deep dives on their subject matter.
GURPS wants to simulate everything, and I mean everything. Break it all down to character points spent and 3d6. I believe all the GURPS games I ever came close to being involved in have been some variety of fantasy, but I know there was at least one ongoing Space game at Tech while I was there, and there are GURPS sourcebooks covering just about any genre and setting you can imagine.
It will not surprise you to hear that I don't get on well with GURPS. I've played in several campaigns, and my sense during each has been that I spend half my time fighting against the system to do what I want to do. I know there are people who love it to death, who tell amazing stories using it, who can wield the system like a scalpel to carve a pitch-perfect and appropriate simulation. They aren't me.
This doesn't stop me from owning a couple of the sourcebooks, though. When they're not descending into number-crunching, they tend to be wonderfully deep dives on their subject matter.