Tell me why you don't like GURPS.

[smorty11]

I've been playing about 95% GURPS for a while and I like a lot about it. Mechanics. Playability. Not having to teach my rules-averse players new things every few months. I've even been pretty active on the GURPS forums.

Now, I'm pretty new over here and I see people fluent in lots of systems. So, I want to know what the shortcomings of GURPS are. What have I been missing by being so close to the system for so long?

Conversly, is there something that is just so much better in other systems that leave GURPS behind.

[Satinavian]

GURPS is less a system and more a toolset to build a system perfect for your campaign.

That is not per se bad. But someone has to make the effort. Ideally someone who knows the GURPS rather well.

That means it is a huge hurdle for new GMs. It also means it is a huge initial time investment for a campaign that might not actually work out or run long.


Another reason would be that many other systems come with interesting settings people want to play and rules tailor made for it.


The last reason is that while GURPS can do lots of things, it often struggles to be the best option for many things. Sure, when your whole group is already familiar with GURPS, it is often easier to play it with GURPS. But what if not ? If you have a camapaign idea and look for the best fitting system because your players don't know an acceptable one well ?

[Eldan]

Too much work. I line my generic systems very simple and my crunchier systems with a world already implemented.

Ideally both.

[Glorthindel]

GURPS is less a system and more a toolset to build a system perfect for your campaign.

That is not per se bad. But someone has to make the effort. Ideally someone who knows the GURPS rather well.

That means it is a huge hurdle for new GMs. It also means it is a huge initial time investment for a campaign that might not actually work out or run long.

I've had a funny relationship with GURPS for a long time (I reckon it would be 30 years ago when I first tried it). I love, absolutely love the character creation process, but the second I actually tried to play the game, I just seemed to slam hard against wall after wall. There just seemed too much maths, too often, and you seemed to spend ages checking books and tables only to discover you've failed to achieve anything again.

However, I recently had an epiphany. I was looking to find a good Cyberpunk system (I love the setting for Shadowrun, the various attempts at the rules less so), and kept seeing comments to use GURPS. So I broke, picked up the rulebooks and braced myself for disappointment. And realised where everything had been going wrong. It was the various GM's, not the system. Its not a system that you play straight out the box, you have to take an axe to the rules and carve out the system you need from the various tools on offer. But if the DM isn't prepared and willing to do that, you risk drowning in the morass.

[SimonMoon6]

It's been about 20 years since I've opened up a GURPS book, but here's what I remember not liking:

(1) The game is very much geared towards a certain power level, and that power level is "ordinary person" or "slightly above average person". At that power level, the game works very well. But once you start to venture beyond that power level, the game breaks down in any number of ways.

I recall a PC who was very accurate with his weapon. Every attack he ever made ended up being a called shot to the brain because that's how he could maximize his damage when he's incredibly skilled with his weapon. That's fine for the occasional attack, but every attack? He had no reason to do anything else.

I recall a PC who had a lot more health than the game expected someone to have. This ended up resulting in a situation where he could never be knocked unconscious. Sure, he could be killed (in a game where resurrections were not to be expected), but he could never be defeated otherwise.

And superpowers? Don't even think about superpowers. Yes, there are rules for "Supers", but they are an incredibly poor fit to the existing ruleset. GURPS just doesn't expect people to be that powerful and so it twists itself in weird ways as it tries to accomodate superpowerful people. And even then, we're not talking crazy Silver Age DC power levels. GURPS would just implode into a black hole if it tried to represent the pre-Crisis Superman. Just normal superheroes are already taxing the system to its limits.

(2) Weird prerequisites.

Like with spells, you can't learn a useful fire spell until you learn all the worthless wimpy fire spells first. That's just weird. I seem to recall something similar with superpowers but my memories are lost in the mists of time.

(3) The skill system is not my favorite. In particular, the way that skills are based off an attribute, so that a super-genius can never really be bad at any INT-based skill they've studied even a little bit. I recall "GURPS Wild Cards" having to create a new system for dealing with language skills just to get around the weirdness of the skill system. Prior to Wild Cards, you couldn't have a genius who only barely knew a foreign language; as soon as he learned even a single word of a foreign language, he was instantly fluent in the language. This band-aid for language skills doesn't apply to any other skills though.

[ngilop]

I need to point out that this is not a 'what i do not like about GURPS' post, but rather, a 'after playing this is what i feel are it shortcomings".

1) GURPS plays best at a certain expected power level (like simonmoon6 stated above me) Only i think its a tad higher than 'average joe' if you go even a bit further than that, its starts to break down.

2) GURPS is a more gritty system, which can be hard for people coming in from the modern games where failure doesn't happen. I attribute failure not happening as including a 'you still succeed but take a minor penalty'


Even if you do not play GURPS id say the vast majority of their books are amazing for ideas.

[DigoDragon]

I agree that GURPS requires a big up-front cost of time to set it up the way you want. That can be a pain when you only have an outline of the campaign in your head. Don't even think about one-shots. XD

But after that it does run decently smooth.

Like with spells, you can't learn a useful fire spell until you learn all the worthless wimpy fire spells first. That's just weird. I seem to recall something similar with superpowers but my memories are lost in the mists of time.

I never liked the way GURPS uses a skill system for magic. You put a big up front investment in your IQ and Magery advantage, and then you can pretty much buy all the spells at 1 point each and have a high skill where you get cost reduction benefits. But that also means having a bunch of prerequisite spells you'll never use just to have a decent attack spell.

I wanted to see a new magic system a bit more like psionics or super powers where you build the spell and the effects and just pay for that.

[Anonymouswizard]

I wanted to see a new magic system a bit more like psionics or super powers where you build the spell and the effects and just pay for that.

I'm fairly certain 4e has that, called Sorcery or the like. Also an alternate version of psychic powers that works closer to magic with many smaller effects to purchase.

Then if course there's stuff like Path Magic (I believe it's Ritual Magic in 3e and earlier), where you buy your IQ and Magery, buy a Path as a skill, than if you want to be good at a spell you have to boy it up as a technique. But it also works because at the expected PC points values getting rid of the fairly big restrictions (IIRC they were time, reagents, and a preprepared casting space) requires a good number of CP as well.

[kyoryu]

Did you make the reddit thread?

I love GURPS, but it's not the system I use for everything.

It's heavy and fiddly. Sometimes I want that, but often I don't. As far as generic systems, these days I'm a bit more likely to reach for Savage Worlds or Fate, depending on what I'm trying to do in a game.

[Stonehead]

(full disclosure, I actually like GURPS)

Some of the rules and systems in GURPS (at least 4th edition, the one I've played) really have no excuse to be so clunky. RAW to calculate your damage with a slam attack, you need to multiply your hp by your velocity, and divide by 100. This is so clunky it has no reason to exist. People joke about tabletop rpgs needing math, but usually that's just adding/subtracting 1s and 2s, literal kindergarten stuff, not multiplication and division. There are plenty of people who can't do 13 * 7 quickly in their head. Also, because it uses the speed you moved that turn you can't just use a calculator during character creation, each slam could have a different amount of damage. And another thing, because of the math, it's basically never worth it for a humanoid to slam something. Even with incredible speed and hp, you're going to deal 1 damage maximum.

Slams are a particularly egregious example, but GURPS is full of really pointless over complicated rules like this. A successful jump roll lets you increase your "standard jump distance" by 20%. An hour of walking costs 1 fatigue with no save, regardless of your health score. Athletes get just as tired after 1 hour of walking as literal children. The if you fail a fright check, RAW you need to crack open the book, and roll on a table to determine the penalty. Most people just ignore these rules/subsystems, but if they're so bad, why do they take up so much space in the book?

[Willie the Duck]

OP, it may be helpful to link your reddit post of the same question, so people can see what you've already heard.

I actually like GURPS fairly well. It's at a level of crunch, complexity, and required investment I'm not interested in playing at this moment in my life, but it is hardly alone in that regard. It does, however, have a number of limitations.
Here is where I think the system has issues (for me):

The point build system -- yes, I know most people who promote GURPS also point to this as a key benefit. However, here's my issue: I don't know if it is actually stated, but it seems that they idea behind the points is that they are a limit keeping PCs of like limit relatively similar in capability*, gauge opponent ability, valuate the benefit of an ally group or burden of a dependent, or measure how much 'advancement' the GM is doling out to the PCs. However, to my mind the point system works very poorly in this regard. The system is imminently gameable, various options are strictly better, some abilities are more or less valuable for a player character than they are for an opponent or ally (but cost the same for both), disadvantages... well those are another ball of wax entirely. All in all, the point system just seems like it doesn't work for what I assume are the intended purposes.
*with some unavoidable issues with things like campaign specifics will sometimes make being a specialist will be better and sometimes being a polymath and don't build a combat monster if the campaign will be 90% talking and so on.

Rules purpose -- I've said before and will again that GURPS has a table and modifier and rule for anything and everything, but often these rules are reliable, consistent, and completely divorced from what they add to a game. Oftentimes you will spend massive amounts of time adding and subtracting modifiers (+1, -2, +3, -2, +1...) to move a character's 15 score to a 16 or 14 and... very slightly change your chance of success. At no point does it seem to be asked whether this enhances gameplay. Moving off modifiers, one thing I noticed is a rather exhaustive preoccupation lifting, carrying, and encumbrance rules. This is hardly unique to GURPS, as most trad games of the era did have such rules, but the amount of rules (and rules churn in 3e) make it seem like the designers thought it would come up more often than it often does in non-D&D/treasure hunting games. Especially when other aspects such as 'how do I do a social scenario?' or 'what does this skill in Botany actually do for me?' questions often went unanswered or came out in supplements long after the core books.

Realism -- Note also that at least some of this seems to be about making the game more 'realistic,' but by hewing to the gamist conceits of applying static +/-1s that then translate to shifts on a 3d6 bell curve, it really doesn't (so, for example, a circumstantial modifier which gives a '+1' to a person changes someone with a native 15 ability from a 92% chance to a 96%, but a person with an 8 ability from 28 to 39. Does that map to how circumstantial benefits would actually benefit people based on competence in real life? For all abilities and endeavors?).

Universality -- GURPS markets itself as universal, and certainly has supplements for all sorts of games, yet the sweet spot where the game works well (gritty, combat avoidant, skill-focused, relatively non-magical/super/psionic) is frankly pretty small. Other generics like Savage Worlds and maybe even Hero System (which is mostly just like GURPS except anti-gritty and good for superhero hijinks) have more breadth.

Disadvantages -- disadvantages work in GURPS like they do in real life -- you try to minimize how often they actually affect you. Obviously the GM has oversight ('no you can't get 100 extra points for 'terminal illness,' this is a one-off!'), but still the tactically best option is to choose a negative that either A) is unlikely to come up, or B) the consequences of invoking it are so horrific, either your character dies and you get to make a new one, or the GM just won't ever pull the trigger on it. I've heard the arguments for why this can be better than systems where you get benefits only when the disadvantage does come into play (pretty much 'those systems tend to incentivize someone who is extremely phobic towards spiders to crawl into web-filled tunnels, which isn't realistic'), but those other systems at least encourage players to engage with the adventure hooks their character build creates, which IMO is beneficial to the game at large (certainly better than the GM having a list of player weaknesses they have to try to weave into the scenarios in a fair way).

[Mordar]

For me it is simply this: Rules/systems designed for a specific game in a specific genre make the game feel better.

Sure, GURPS can simulate World of Darkness. And Marvel Super Heroes. And Deadlands. But they all just feel like GURPS (see also Worlds, Savage).

I want the intricacies, conceits and foibles of the original systems for these games...in part because I (optimistically) believe the rules were designed to enhance the feel of the game, and I want that distinctness.

To me it is part of the trappings of the games. Kind of like how organized sports teams frequently have practice uniforms...it becomes part of the ritual to put you in the right frame of mind.

On top of all of that, I came up in an era where almost every game had its own ruleset, even those from a same company (TSR, FASA, Pacesetter...as I recall, Chaosium was the primary exception), so learning a new system was never perceived as a barrier to entry.

- M

[Pex]

It's been a long time since I've played it, early 1990s. Not all that I have to say might still be applicable.

1) Your character does not improve. As you play sessions you only earn 1 to 3 points, which are only enough to improve one or two skills. You are doing the same thing at game session 30 as you did at game session 15 as you did game session 1.

2) NPC interactions only hurt you, not help you. If I save the village I cannot count on the people helping or liking me any more than when we first met until I save enough points to hopefully, eventually, buy Reputation. The Mayor will never do me a favor down the line because I'll never have enough points to buy him as a Patron. However, tick off the evil Necromancer spoiling his plans, he'll be a reoccurring Enemy. The King will never make me a Knight until and unless I buy Status no matter what I do in saving the day.

3) I cannot gain and keep vast wealth of treasure unless I buy Wealthy Advantage, which I'll never have enough points to buy. Bye bye loot.

Everything and anything costs points to use. Where 3E D&D suffered from "you need a feat for that" GURPS suffers from "you need to spend points for that".

[Pauly]

The biggest downside of GURPS is the buy in. It takes time to learn and master the basics and the mind set of the rules. I think it is really important for the players to understand the intent of GURPS and how that informs the rules, otherwise players will rub up against the limits of the rules and complain that it can’t do what it isn’t intended to do.

The other major disadvantage is that it’s a reality based system, so very magical, very sci-fi, very superhero etc. genres tend to break it. For example if you want to play 1930s pulp fiction type superheroes (eg The Shadow, The Phantom, original Batman, **** *ie Richard* Tracy) GURPS does a fantastic job, bit if you want to play modern Marvel type superheroes, eh not so much.

After the buy in and an appropriate setting it runs fairly smoothly. As others have said there are a LOT of rules, so if you can decide on which rules to cut out, which modifiers you are willing to hand wave out of existence you can fine tune the system to run very smoothly. Normally I advocate for strict RAW, but I find GURPS is better for editing out the stuff you don’t want to use. One thing my group has done has been to halve (or third) the number of modifiers but double (or triple) the effect of each modifier.

It’s math heavy, which is a problem for some players. If we go back to the ‘what’s 13 x 7’ from earlier in the thread, for decision making you don’t need to know the exact number, just an approximate. The situation may be 50< Not worth it; ~100 Maybe worth a try; 150> just do it already. I played in a campaign we had to abandon because one player literally could not estimate which band 13 x 7 would fall into.

It assumes there is some degree of competitiveness between the GM and the players. If you look at SJG all of their best non GURPS games are competitive not co-operative (OGRE/GEV, Car Wars, Illuminati, Munchkin). If you want a game where the GM high 5s you and gives you a backslap for defeating the big boss, GURPS may not be the system for you. No TTRPG survives a truly adversarial character killing, player hating GM, but GURPS works better when the GM isn’t holding the player’s hands. As a drawback it means the players/GM have to be more emotionally mature than other games.

[Jay R]

I like GURPS. I really do. Their approach to simulation is admirable. When they were building a table of weapon weights, they didn't base it on playability or balance. They brought in a bunch of weapons and weighed them.

GURPS is usually the second best system for the genre I'm trying to play. It's almost as good as D&D for fantasy, almost as good as Champions for super-heroes, almost as good as Flashing Blades for musketeers, almost as good as Traveler for science fiction, etc.

That's why I almost never play it. For any game I want to play, it's always one of the better systems, but never the best system.

[DigoDragon]

I'm fairly certain 4e has that, called Sorcery or the like.

I'll have to find which book that is in and read up on it.

Some of the rules and systems in GURPS (at least 4th edition, the one I've played) really have no excuse to be so clunky.

I've played 3e and there's plenty of math in there too. Possibly more clunky in certain areas if my memory is correct. I remember Vehicles being the King Pin of clunk. XD

I've been playing in the GURPS system online for several years now and what really helps alleviate some of the math is that I created a "Plug-n-Chug" spreadsheet that does most of the work. Plug in the variables, it chugs out an answer.

2) NPC interactions only hurt you, not help you. If I save the village I cannot count on the people helping or liking me any more than when we first met until I save enough points to hopefully, eventually, buy Reputation. The Mayor will never do me a favor down the line because I'll never have enough points to buy him as a Patron.

3) I cannot gain and keep vast wealth of treasure unless I buy Wealthy Advantage, which I'll never have enough points to buy. Bye bye loot.

This part I might actually put fault in the GM. I'm fairly certain that there are guidelines where you can earn free points for this kind of stuff, such as getting Favors for saving folks (they're 1-2 points for a one time use and make a great reward option) and a windfall of loot should earn you a temporary wealth bump until you spend it. The wealth advantage is more for having a steady level of that wealth as an income.

[Willie the Duck]

I've played 3e and there's plenty of math in there too. Possibly more clunky in certain areas if my memory is correct. I remember Vehicles being the King Pin of clunk.

Vehicles in GURPS 3e, in and of themselves, were... okay. In many ways they played a little too like just bigger persons or animals, just with acceleration on top of max speed and similar. The Gurps 3e Vehicle book, otoh, was absolutely an extreme exercise in rigor-searching-for-purpose. I can't imagine whose game benefits from there being cramped, normal, or spacious crew station rules for their horse-drawn carriage; nor different boat rules for standard hull, catamaran, and trimaran. And so on. I get that an absolute gear head might enjoy (or nitpick any inconsistency in) being able to take a car's weight/approximate streamlining and amount of power to which its' drivetrain is rated (powered by a power plant measured in wattage) and be able to determine acceleration, max speed, and fuel usage. That'd be a fun thing to do (once). Having to do ground-pressure calculations to determine how much speed reduction a half-tracked vehicle has in soft, muddy ground as compared to a wheeled vehicle, on the other hand, it just doesn't have a lot of game applicability for something that requires spreadsheet-level attention to detail (and realistically would change every time your occupants change weight). Especially once you get into the sci-fi stuff where it is all speculation anyways (also: GURPS future-weapon rules seem copied mostly from Traveller and seem quite wedded to the same 'what was 30 years out in 1950' framing. Gyrojet guns were to be all the rage, shaped charge and depleted-uranium-tipped shells rule physical weapons, energy weapons were going to be fed by space-age power cells with ridiculous energy-density, etc.).

[KorvinStarmast]

Everything and anything costs points to use. Where 3E D&D suffered from "you need a feat for that" GURPS suffers from "you need to spend points for that".

Not familiar with that system, but is this a 'spend game currency' kind of thing? (In Pirates and Dragons, for example, you can spend dubloons to vary the outcome of an encounter).

Why I don't like GURPS (Well, it's not really a dislike thing)
The early adapter in our gaming group, mid 80's, had picked up GURPS and told us all about it. We all had an interest in playing. (Runequest's GM had been suddenly deployed on a fast attack submarine and we had no idea when he'd be back).
Then he, the guy who had GURPS, moved. (A set of orders arrived that were, in his words, "too good to pass up" so rather than stay in Virgnina he went to Mississippi.
We never got to play.
*arrrrrrrrgh*
(Heck, within the next two years we all moved, that old Navy thing).

[kyoryu]

The Gurps 3e Vehicle book, otoh, was absolutely an extreme exercise in rigor-searching-for-purpose.

This is a significant issue with GURPS in general. While it's almost all optional, the game as a whole tends to dive into ridiculous levels of detail on things, often at the expense of playability. Vehicles 3e for sure exemplifies this, notoriously so.

[kyoryu]

Another issue with GURPS (especially in 3e, maybe this is better in 4e) is that with modern/future weapons large weapon dice pools end up being very consistent. Practically speaking, it ends up being that most hits are either absorbed or result in a splat.

You can argue realism (which is what GURPS argues for everything as a default), but I don't know that it's that great for playability.

[Pex]

This part I might actually put fault in the GM. I'm fairly certain that there are guidelines where you can earn free points for this kind of stuff, such as getting Favors for saving folks (they're 1-2 points for a one time use and make a great reward option) and a windfall of loot should earn you a temporary wealth bump until you spend it. The wealth advantage is more for having a steady level of that wealth as an income.

It's possible the rules changed since I last played, but at the time this was the specific rule. In the example adventure of the book, you help one NPC and hurt another. You never gain the help of the NPC you help unless you buy him as a Patron. The NPC you hurt the DM can use like the Enemy Disadvantage, but you gain no points for it. You can't even gain the other NPC as a Patron and this NPC as an Enemy at the same time. As for wealth, the game says the GM should have you lose the wealth such as being stolen or need to spend taxes or some reason why you can't keep it unless you buy Wealthy, and it goes worse for you if you have Poverty Disadvantage.

[Algeh]

GURPS is the system I've played the most and "think" in, inasmuch as if I get an idea for a campaign I'd like to run it's my first guess for what system to use for it. However, I haven't had a chance to run anything in it since shortly after college, because it is a very hard system to find other people running games in around here or to convince people to try if they're not familiar with it.

There's a high bar to entry in terms of needing to spend several hours wrapping your brain around how character creation works that makes it difficult to get people to just give it a try for the afternoon to see how it goes. This wasn't a problem in middle school or high school, when it was the dominant system among TTRPG players at my particular school, and it was only somewhat a problem in college, when we all lived in the dorms and had a lot of downtime in the same place, but getting actual adults to come over to my house and spend hours doing worksheets, even pretty interesting worksheets, so they can play a game the next time we can get 4-6 people's schedules to align has been a dealbreaker.

I definitely agree with the people who are saying that it's part of the GM's role is to figure out which parts of the rules they're using, too. Because I played so much GURPS early on in my gaming years, I didn't realize how unusual this was until I dealt with some other systems and their assumptions, but GURPS definitely is a large, diverse recipe book from which the GM will be planning their dinner party rather than a menu of options that are all available at all times. If your goal is to run an actual campaign in which things advance in some kind of coherent way toward some kind of goal, you absolutely have to work with your players to get everyone on the same page about what kinds of PCs make sense to bring to that campaign. I have run GURPS campaigns in which one of the PCs was an intellectual property attorney, and I played in GURPS campaigns in which we were all space mercenaries, and both of these campaigns worked in GURPS but used very different part of the rulebook to support what was going on.

The 3rd edition Magic rules also were built on a vision of magic in which magic is an intellectual pursuit and simpler spells with similar results help you learn more about the underlying systems involved and you gradually can learn more complicated related skills with those as a prerequisite, like if mathematics could set people on fire. Complicated, interesting spells that you wanted to have would have really long chains of prerequisite spells you needed to learn first. This is not a right or wrong way to think about magic, but it does lead to powerful magicians all knowing a lot of the same common prerequisite skills, rather than everyone having a grab-bag spell book focused solely on the spells they actually planned to use a lot. Building characters in this system throughout middle and high school made me very well prepared to figure out how to get the classes I needed for my major in college, but it doesn't work well for settings where magic is less "scientific" since it implies a certain approach to how/why magic works. (It also makes for cluttered character sheets full of spells you don't use much if you're building high point value magic using characters.)

[Pex]

Way back when there was a parody of GURPS magic called the Cheese Wiz where a magic user character focused on cheese spells. There were spells like Seek Cheese, Move Cheese, lots of spells that did nothing unless there was cheese around. Eventually you get useful spells like Transform Into Cheese which could be used on others as an attack.

[Kurald Galain]

From memory, the hideously complicated character generation. This skill costs three points but that skill costs five for no apparent reason, and everything defaults to some similar skill -2 or some seemingly unrelated thing -4 or some mixture thereof. Four attribute scores that all work differently from one another, and a hidden fifth (charisma) that is implemented via backgrounds instead, again for no apparent reason.

And the outcome of this is underwhelming, because of the system's overall low power level. Sure, Aberrant is complicated but it gives you some rather flashy and impressive powersets as a result, and GURPS just doesn't. Even combat becomes this complex slog with counter-rolls and guessing whether you should parry or dodge a particular enemy, and overall slow resolution for decidedly un-flashy outcomes.

I mean, 3E is obviously not stellar in that either, but at least you know that every feat costs exactly one feat slot, and every skill one skill point, and its resolution mechanic is clearly faster.

They have great setting books, I'll give them that. I highly recommend GURPS Time Travel to anybody who doesn't play GURPS.

[vasilidor]

I do not like the basic mechanic it uses to resolve whether or not you succeed in a thing.
Roll dice and see if it is lower than a score on your character sheet.
I genuinely despise that.
I can have fun playing games that use it, but any fun would be entirely unrelated to the game mechanics.

[Luccan]

I do not like the basic mechanic it uses to resolve whether or not you succeed in a thing.
Roll dice and see if it is lower than a score on your character sheet.
I genuinely despise that.
I can have fun playing games that use it, but any fun would be entirely unrelated to the game mechanics.

Haven't played GURPS, but while I actually like this resolution mechanic well enough, I find it becomes finicky if you do anything vs another character, whether it be a friendly card game or combat. Because then this relatively simple resolution mechanic where you always know your chance to succeed has to be flipped on its head or the game all but declares the person with a higher score the winner

[vasilidor]

Haven't played GURPS, but while I actually like this resolution mechanic well enough, I find it becomes finicky if you do anything vs another character, whether it be a friendly card game or combat. Because then this relatively simple resolution mechanic where you always know your chance to succeed has to be flipped on its head or the game all but declares the person with a higher score the winner

This is a large problem I have with games that use this or similar mechanics.
Not the entire problem, but a large problem.

[Pex]

Details are vague due to distance of memory, but I remember a player who took offense of having to pay an Advantage tax on being an archer. He had to pay for Quickdraw or something like that. With Quickdraw he could fire his bow every round. Because he didn't have it on purpose in protest, with every round of combat being 1 second, first round was taking the arrow out of the quiver, second round was string the arrow, third round was fire, so he was only able to attack every three rounds doing nothing else.

I know I wasn't happy playing a spellcaster. To cast a fire attack, it was only and always 1d6 damage. If I wanted to do more damage I have to spend the round doing nothing. For each round I did nothing I could add 1d6, so every two rounds I could attack for 2d6 damage, every three rounds for 3d6 damage. The combat would be over before I get to cast my big boom spell. Considering this was in college where I also played 2E D&D and I was casting 5d6 Fireballs and Lightning Bolts that increased by 1d6 per caster level at the same 3rd level spell slot, I was very underwhelmed by GURPS magic. Even Magic Missile increasing damage every other level to max 5 missiles for the same 1st level spell slot was more impactful.

[kyoryu]

Details are vague due to distance of memory, but I remember a player who took offense of having to pay an Advantage tax on being an archer. He had to pay for Quickdraw or something like that. With Quickdraw he could fire his bow every round. Because he didn't have it on purpose in protest, with every round of combat being 1 second, first round was taking the arrow out of the quiver, second round was string the arrow, third round was fire, so he was only able to attack every three rounds doing nothing else.

I know I wasn't happy playing a spellcaster. To cast a fire attack, it was only and always 1d6 damage. If I wanted to do more damage I have to spend the round doing nothing. For each round I did nothing I could add 1d6, so every two rounds I could attack for 2d6 damage, every three rounds for 3d6 damage. The combat would be over before I get to cast my big boom spell. Considering this was in college where I also played 2E D&D and I was casting 5d6 Fireballs and Lightning Bolts that increased by 1d6 per caster level at the same 3rd level spell slot, I was very underwhelmed by GURPS magic. Even Magic Missile increasing damage every other level to max 5 missiles for the same 1st level spell slot was more impactful.

IIRC Quickdraw is a skill not an Advantage, so is much cheaper.

But, yeah, there's lots of "wait a turn to prepare for your next turn" kind of stuff.

[Stonehead]

It's been a long time since I've played it, early 1990s. Not all that I have to say might still be applicable.

1) Your character does not improve. As you play sessions you only earn 1 to 3 points, which are only enough to improve one or two skills. You are doing the same thing at game session 30 as you did at game session 15 as you did game session 1.

2) NPC interactions only hurt you, not help you. If I save the village I cannot count on the people helping or liking me any more than when we first met until I save enough points to hopefully, eventually, buy Reputation. The Mayor will never do me a favor down the line because I'll never have enough points to buy him as a Patron. However, tick off the evil Necromancer spoiling his plans, he'll be a reoccurring Enemy. The King will never make me a Knight until and unless I buy Status no matter what I do in saving the day.

3) I cannot gain and keep vast wealth of treasure unless I buy Wealthy Advantage, which I'll never have enough points to buy. Bye bye loot.

Everything and anything costs points to use. Where 3E D&D suffered from "you need a feat for that" GURPS suffers from "you need to spend points for that".

Progression is definitely slower than DnD, where you double in strength roughly once every 6 sessions, but 1-3 points/session seems really low. The GM is supposed to hand out points for "good roleplaying" (whatever that means), as well as points as rewards upon completing adventures. The GM is even encouraged to hand out advantages instead of points if it makes sense in-universe (ie, wealth you loot a lot of treasure, or reputation when save a town). Without adventure rewards, you run into the problems you list.

Now, there are still plenty of issues with it, RAW they don't let you buy-off a lot of disadvantages from in-universe actions to try to stop people from gaming the system. The rules are poorly laid out, so I'm sure a lot of people just don't hand out rewards for in-universe actions. And progression is still a lot slower than DnD. Still, the book does advise the DM to give out rewards in a way that mitigates 2 and 3, and to a much lesser extent 1.