Actually playing GURPS

[Jimp]

While I'm familiar with the GURPS ruleset (3rd edition anyway) and have made a few characters with it before, I've never actually played a sessions of it.
What are people's experiences with GURPS sessions?

[Archetype-]

I've only played one character in GURPS, but it's easily my most memorable character ever. My hacker/engineer Lee Prescott, hailing from New Zealand, was an interesting character to say the least. He was your stereotypical gamer nerd, living in his mother's basement and going to work at a cybercafe.

Before I go any further, I have to explain a bit about the world. It's modern-day earth, but there are Kaiju. I'm talking about Toho Kingdom monsters. We're all just ordinary humans, not much we can do to stop these guys other than distract them while the civilians evacuate. The best weapons the military has are lasers, missiles modified to penetrate their hides, and masers.

Anywho, these aliens called Xilliens land and offer aid in exchange for Antarctica. They were about to hand over control of this monstrously huge mecha that looks a lot like Gojira (a.k.a., Godzilla) to combat the Kaiju. We'd seen this thing take down Gojira without breaking much of a sweat. Lee, with his vast gaming experience, sees this as being a bad thing. Just about every time a human faction gains an uber weapon, they use it to try to screw enemies and allies over. So, he thinks it's a good idea to stop that. He jury-rigs an EMP cannon from spare parts he has and test fires it at a radio station's antenna, corresponding with a few people online who were able to listen to said station.

The test is successful, and Lee decides it's about time to find out how the heck to disrupt it from where he is. The ceremony to hand over the mecha is in New York, so he has about half the world to cover. Thanks to a triple-six on my part, he gets the idea that hacking into NORAD is the best idea. Everything goes according to plan, and I get it. Lee doesn't cover his tracks well enough, and a SWAT team breaks in and arrests him and his parents (they tried in vain to protect him). Not long after arriving at the police station, these FBI blokes arrive and claim jurisdiction over this case. I'm transported to the airport, whimpering the whole way save for one point when I'm asked if I know how many international laws I've broken. Knowing a good bit about laws, I start to answer “Forty-seven” before the guy in the back seat with me glares at me and I whimper again.

We arrive at the airport, and the guy in the back seat with me pulls out this strange pistol and shoots the driver in the back of the head. It's some kind of energy blaster, and I immediately assume that it's a Xillien. I get ushered onto this odd vehicle and in seconds I'm taken to this underground base and kept as a prisoner along with a bunch of other scientists. As in, some-of-the-best-in-their-field scientists. Apparently, it looks like my idea makes me a large threat to these guys.

Within days, another prisoner arrives. It's one of the other party members, a highly-skilled, borderline insane Australian pilot Weston Hammond. He's flown sorties against Gojira and other Kaiju with heavy bombers and fighters and lived to tell the tale. He hatches a plan... well, not really. He's given a flare by the alien that took him prisoner. Next mealtime, I provide a distraction by excitedly jumping up and grabbing my ration of disgusting nutritious sludge and cup of water. While the Xillien looks at me, the Weston takes out the guy with the flare. He grabs the blaster the guy has and the group begins to evacuate. We encounter some light resistance, and we get out alive thanks to Weston and the alien who brought him in.

Apparently, the Xillien Controller (their leader) got assassinated by the second in command and the latter is now using Mechagojira, Gigan (a sort of cyborg Kaiju), and a warship to conquer the world. We have to high-tail back to Japan and try to muster some sort of last stand type thing. During a short break, I let it slip that I've come up with a way to disrupt the alien's control over Mechagojira. I'm taken to General Kobayashi by means of the Xillien who aided us towing me along behind her in such a way that my feet do not touch the ground. I tell Kobayashi about my device, and he asks me if I can jury-rig another one.

I'm given a team of technicians to assist me, and I get the thing built in about twelve hours by heavily modifying an APC. The machine is tested successfully, and I'm sent out with three Griffons and a dozen Maser tanks to halt this thing. To make things a bit more difficult, Gojira's back and he's gone berserk. The crew gets my tank into position, and with a cry of “Haaaa-doooo-KEN!!” I fire the EMP cannon at Mechagojira. The small disruption created is enough for Gojira to leap in and rip Mechagojira in half. The Xillien controller is forced to commit Gigan to holding off Gojira, and Weston is taken onboard the warship along with two other party members. At this point, I call upon on of Lee's quirks and ask myself “What would Black Mage do?” My options were two-fold. I could either commence with stabbity death or unleash the biggest attack in my arsenal. I went with the former, obviously. We relocate and set up, I fire again. The effect isn't as great as I'd hoped, and he controller deploys a fighter ship to take out my little tank, which I might say doesn't look too pretty at all. I ask myself again what Black Mage would do and get the same answer, which doesn't make sense until I realize that there is something else I could do. I tell the rest of the tank's crew to run the heck away as I'm about to overload the thing. With another cry of “HAAAA-DOOOO-KEN!!” I set the thing to explode and high-tail it away from the front lines. The thing asplodes, and disables the warship, the fighter sent to destroy my little tank, and messes up Gigan to a small degree.

There's a lot more to the story than this, but my minds racing too fast right now to get it all straight. Needless to say, after this whole thing is over the Earth Defense Force is formed and I'm assigned to a team consisting of the party for tech support. I'm also part of the R&D team.

Yeah, that was a really fun game. GURPS is awesome.

-Archetype

[Amiria]

I like GURPS, but I never played it. I single-handedly bought ...

* walks to RPG book cabinet and counts *

... twelve 3rd edition Gurps books. What a waste of money ...

Character generation was fun, but quite complex with all those options. And there my experience with the system already ends.

[Shhalahr Windrider]

Character generation was fun, but quite complex with all those options. And there my experience with the system already ends.

Reminds me of how a person once stated that GURPS is really more like an RPG game system toolkit rather than a game system itself.

I haven't actually played yet, either, but I'm starting to work on some campaigns. It seems to me that the whole thing is predicated on the GM being able to lay a lot of ground work on which traits, skills, equipment, etc. are available and providing enough basic templates in order to reduce that complexity. (Fortunately, there are a number of setting sourcebooks to cut the GMs' work down for them, too.) The rule set is indeed meant to be Universal, but an individual campaign needs limits, and it's up to whoever designs the setting to provide those limits.

[Mike_G]

We played 1st edition GURPs for a while. It's ok. It's not tough to run and it's a fun enough system.

The good thing is you can pretty much make up anything. The bad thing is you can pretty much make up anything. The bonus build points from Disadvantages meant that Belkar would have about three times as many points to play with than Haley or Roy.

This led to many DM headaches as the party was full of Sadistic, Bloodthirsty, Alcoholic Pyromaniacs with body odor.

Any system that rewards you for creating a DM nightmare of a PC is trouble.

[Shhalahr Windrider]

The good thing is you can pretty much make up anything. The bad thing is you can pretty much make up anything. The bonus build points from Disadvantages meant that Belkar would have about three times as many points to play with than Haley or Roy.

Of course, he should also be pretty well crippled when those disads come into play, if he's buying them that extensively. Of course, following the recommended disadvantage limit of 50% of one's starting points does tend to make tripling one's point value rather difficult.

Any system that rewards you for creating a DM nightmare of a PC is trouble.

Hence the recommendation of a Disadvantage Cap.

Really, almost every single option presented by the books is preceded by some variation of the phrase "If your GM allows." GURPS is heavily dependent on GM arbitration. Yes, you can make anything. No, you cannot play anything. If you don't fit within the limits set by the GM, he or she is within his or her rights to forbid it. Hell, that last statemtent describes every RPG—the only thing that makes GURPS unique in that respect is that the statement is the overridding feature.

GURPS is intended to support any setting. Therefore, it must allow for any character concept. But a particular setting does not have to allow for a particular trait just because the GURPS rules allow for it.

[Titanium Dragon]

You've already gotten over one of the worst aspects of the system: the incredibly long, ardous character creation.

The game itself actually runs pretty well, assuming people aren't using weird rules (not always a valid assumption, but...). It does also suffer from being rather too lethal - it is pretty easy to die in GURPS, or to be very seriously injured. And if you die, if they can't bring you back to life, you get to go through the fun of character creation all over again! :P

[TheOOB]

if they can't bring you back to life, you get to go through the fun of character creation all over again! :P

Though really that's just a GM hand wave away, there's no reason you can't just say "ohh, the priests can ressurect someone for 100 gold, no you can't learn that spell".

In my experience(which is remarkably little and a long time again), GURPS is much like the 3e bard, it can do anything, but it really isn't good at anything either. If you have the right group and you give it some love you can make it work and be fun, but usually you are better off finding a gaming system that is made for what you have in mind.

So if you are poor, or have a really esoterit game concept in mind, GURPS is good, if you want to do heroic fantasy, magical cyberpunk, or modern gothic, you best go with D&D, shadowrun, or World of Darkness instead(and so on).

[Vespe Ratavo]

I've bought a LOT of GURPS books, all third edition (mostly because I get them at a good price at this store I go to), but I've never gotten to play. Why do I keep buying them? Fun to read. Yes, I read RPG books for fun, cause I'm weird like that. And I've kept hoping I could get a game started, but I've never been able to.

Hmm...

Maybe we should start up a game on the forums some time? Actually justify the investment?

[Zeta Kai]

Yes, I read RPG books for fun, cause I'm weird like that.

Wow, I thought I was the only one. I never did get around to running a game of Vampire: the Dark Ages...

[Baxbart]

The first system I ever really learned (Aside from a few crazy Alternity sessions when I was 11) was GURPS 3rd Ed, and it's still my favourite system for sheer versatility.

Yes, it is a GM's nightmare to catalogue all those rules and optional rules that may or may not apply to any particular situation (fortunately I have a memory for rules... not much else though) - and it is, after all, a system built to be able to handle literally ANYTHING. You should see some of the crazy stuff I've been able to build over the years.

Just remember one thing, with regards to disadvantage limits: "It's a limit, not a target." (Some of my players have a tendency to actually build their characters around disadvantages unless I specify that the game is serious in tone)

If you want realism, look to GURPS. If you want to be able to fight a horde of orcs/demons/gerbils/whatever... you're probably SOL unless your GM has given you lots of points to play with or has an extensive knowledge of the cinematic rules.

[warmachine]

As others have written, it is correct that GURPS is a system toolkit, not a game system in itself. You must have a world book for the setting you want or you can make it yourself. Making it yourself means stating which of the various traits apply and which don't. For example, Gizmos makes sense in a comic book setting but not in gritty World War II. Devising some setting specific Talents is a good idea.

Also, GURPS is munchkin's wet dream. You may think D&D players dump-statting CHA is bad but players can get points for making their PCs social cripples! A GM has to decide whether this extreme level of optimisation works in the game. In a game with lots of social interaction, such a player must hide and keep his mouth shut, thus not playing the game. In a straight dungeon crawl, other players might not like the character imbalance. If you have annoying rules abusers who argue with you in game, you might be better off with D&D, which strictly defines a lot and leaves much less to GM discretion.

Of course, it is a method actor's wet dream for the same reason or other flaws. Players get points for having a Code of Honour, for example. Therefore, think about what your players want to play.

[Epinephrine]

GURPS is a great system; I played virtually nothing but GURPS for years once we discovered it (excepting a bit of Marvel and some White Wolf games). I've played GURPS supers, Fantasy, modern, and some fun campaigns made up by us (a future fatasy world in which guns were never developed, for example).

I missed some elements of D&D, so we converted AD&D to GURPS.

The 40 point disadvantage cap is necessary, and the GM shouldn't feel bad overruling certain choices of disadvantage.

Some of my most memorable characters are GURPS based; my first was a pubmaster (retired mercenary) who had sworn he'd never pick up a blade again. My 40-something year-old, balding, overweight ex-mercenary who disliked violence (but swung his hornbeam club like a professional) was my first ever non-heroic character - something D&D doesn't tend to encourage, but he navigated social situations, knew businesses and how to run them and had plenty of options in combat, since even though in GURPS one can be very lethal, one can also very easily NOT kill by striking at limbs with a blunt weapon, for example.

I'd heartily recommend trying GURPS out.

[Tsotha-lanti]

GURPS is nice in theory, but I find that unless you have encyclopedic knowledge of the rules spread over several hundred pages of book (or books, in older editions), actually playing is even slower than freaking Rolemaster. A 10-second combat can take hours to resolve, which is just crazy.

[Yahzi]

GURPS is great.

I ran a campaign in which tI actually pulled off an identity-switch (after the unknown heroic NPC dies, they pull off his helmet to discover it was an NPC they thought was a coward). The system is realistic as heck, which makes its departures from realism all the more fantastic (one PC mage gets his hand cut off; he grabs it and sticks it back on, casts a healing spell, and rolls a critical. Well, I decided that meant it worked, and he got his hand back. Later I had an NPC bard write a song (set to guitar music) about how the PC mage got his head cut off and stuck it back on with magic).

The only problem with GURPS is that it's too realistic. This means two things; one, the DM has to come up with the flavor of the world (since real-life flavor isn't all that game-worthy), and two, dumb players will die a lot. Givein them 300 points to build their character will help some; at that level, a PC can fence two or three bad guys at a time and still expect to win. If the baddies can only come at him a few at a time, he might even be able to beat a couple dozen.

I'm running a D&D campaign right now, but for very specific reasons, like I want to run a world in which the players can be hit by a freight train and walk away from it, and high-level fighters can wade into an entire regiment of ordinary soldiers and kill them all single-handedly.

[Crow T. Robot]

I have far too many GURPS books and I have only played a few games, Though that is going to change soon. I have a supers campaign that is just waiting until I finish up the Eberron game I have been running for the past while.

Granted death is very easy to come by and even supers are going to bleed. Which is kind of the point of the setting I am aiming for so it works out in this case.

There are resurection spells but they have long spell prerequistes to get to them. A short cut is Power Investiture which lets the GM cherry pick devine spells assosiated with what ever god is being worshipped.

It is also the system for crazy crossovers. Unseen University Wizard, a WoD vampire and Ironman join forces to fight Cthulhu. All this from looking at the books I have.

[DigoDragon]

I've played and run GURPS 3e and 4e games. I like the flexibility of the system that you can create nearly anything based on a point system. I always have a disadvantage cap set between 35-40 points as well for character creation.

The only downside is that the GURPS rule system is a bit math heavy with combat. Yes it can be really complicated, but I find that with my group we've managed to simplify the rules a bit to keep it quick paced. Once the rules are workable then everything else should fall into place.

[Klaz Eidron]

GURPS is so fun! A memorable campaign was when my group was just playing their favourite pop culture characters in a time-travelling campaign.

Only in GURPS can exist a party composed of Indiana Jones, Batman, Corto Maltese and Don Quixote.

[random11]

My personal favorite system since I prefer realism over epic style, and point based systems over class based ones.

However, the game requires house rules to close possible exploits and fill missing gaps (the gaps can also be filled by buying extra books).
I personally didn't like the magic system, so I made a different options. The simplicity of the rules fits perfectly if you enjoy fitting your own style into the game.

One more point, the realism is very good in historical or fantasy, but may become a burden in present or futuristic settings.

[Rhuadin]

I have mixed feelings about GURPS. On one hand, like the versatility and realism, which is always something that struck me as missing from D&D. On the other hand, I dislike the fact that the entire game is basically DM fiat, which makes railroading and other annoying things the default if your DM sucks. It takes a really really good DM to run a good GURPS game, but only a mediocre DM to run a good D&D game -- but I'd rather have the former than the latter.

Of course, I only have mediocre DMs at the moment, so D&D it is!

[valadil]

I've played in a handful of GURPs games. It's not my favorite system, but I do keep coming back to it. The quality of any GURPs game depends on the GM. Like, even more than other RPGs. Theres too much material out there and you need a GM who will find and use appropriate rules while discarding the rest.

GURPs can handle any setting and excels at none - I like to compare it to the Java programming language. GURPs is great for any setting that doesn't have a game system, but if I want fantasy I'll play D&D and if I want cyberpunk I'll go with Shadowrun. What GURPs does do that nothing else will is let you mix settings. I once played in a game where players made any character they wanted and they were all brought together in spite of their vastly different backgrounds. The system held together pretty nicely.

Playing GURPs is easy enough. Roll 3d6. Rolling under your skill level is success. Character creation is hard though, especially if you're making your own powers and abilities. I'm of the opinion that for simplicity's sake RPGs should not involve fractions. GURPs fails at this. I also don't like that there are several ways to achieve a single ability and their cost always varies. It rewards munchkins a little too much in my opinion.

[Coplantor]

All i've done with GURPS (4th ed) was helping two friends creat their characters and prepare myself to GM. Those characters are sooooooooo unbalanced, they have like, three skills each. Both of them have computer programming and hacking, one of them have pistol and the other one katana and drive. I have to talk to those guys because their characters are quite usless, specially if you consider the stats, the first one has good stats considering that he is a gunslinger/hacker: ST 8 DX 13 HT 7 IQ 18, the other one is a katana wielding hacker with nanobots in his body with ST 7 DX 15 HT 7 IQ 15. The guy with the katana has a damage of 1d -1.

[nagora]

Played it once or twice. Overly complex and has a point-based character generation system, which is something I really dispise.

Had that authentic "my character is just a list of numbers" feel of mid 80's systems, and a hit-location system so that you can waste playing time in order to pretend your combat system is realistic.

[Jayabalard]

Reminds me of how a person once stated that GURPS is really more like an RPG game system toolkit rather than a game system itself.

Yup. For the most part, you should think of GURPS as a framework for building an RPG. Sure, there are lots of rules, but they're just suggestions; use as many or as few as you want to get to the system that you want to play, and only use as many as you need to get the level of realism that you want.

If you try to just use it out of the box as if it were a complete and polished RPG, you're most likely going to be disappointed and overwhelmed by the number/complexity of rules, especially once you start using lots of sidebars and mixing in multiple genres.

GURPS sourcebooks can be quite useful, even if you're not going to be playing GURPS itself; the genre and place books can be pretty useful no matter what system you're playing in.

for example:
One of the posters here wanted to play a D&D game set in china, and used GURPS china as a resource.

GURPS Time traveler is a great dissection of the different types of time/dimensional travel. It sets you up with all of the questions and possible answers for them. Can you take stuff with you or do you arrive naked like in the terminator, or is time travel only spiritual/psychic like in Quantum leap? Can you communicate with your "present day" directly or does the future monitor the past like in Millennium or are you limited to time capsules and delay mail? Can you travel both backwards and forwards in time, or is it limited to only one way? Is the past mutable or fixed? If mutable, do paradoxes cause new time lines (new universes) while leaving the original as it was or is there only a single timeline? etc.

[Shhalahr Windrider]

On the other hand, I dislike the fact that the entire game is basically DM fiat, which makes railroading and other annoying things the default if your DM sucks.

No, no, no. GM fiat and Railroading are two very different things. The latter only necessarily follows if the system's reliance on the former goes to the GM's head. Saying, "I have to fill in the gaps on this rule" doesn't mean I will say, "No, you can't open that door at all because you have to go down the corridor."

[The Glyphstone]

Since there's so many GURPS characters frequenting this, one question: Is it really possible, under standard GURPS rules, to have your character die during character generation? Someone told me that once as an example of why GURPS was a "bad system", and I've always wondered if it was true, or true in the way that Candle of Invocation cheese makes D&D a "bad system".

[Shhalahr Windrider]

Uh… nooooo…

Unless maybe you're making a vampire character or something like that.

[Fhaolan]

Since there's so many GURPS characters frequenting this, one question: Is it really possible, under standard GURPS rules, to have your character die during character generation? Someone told me that once as an example of why GURPS was a "bad system", and I've always wondered if it was true, or true in the way that Candle of Invocation cheese makes D&D a "bad system".

No. I have seen RPG systems like that... such as Traveller, which is famous for it's life-path generator and was the basis from which later RPGs with life-paths drew from, such as Cyberpunk, and the Central Casting series. However, GURPS doesn't have that... unless... I have a vague memory of a GURPS conversion Traveller book. Maybe that had it?

[mostlyharmful]

Since there's so many GURPS characters frequenting this, one question: Is it really possible, under standard GURPS rules, to have your character die during character generation? Someone told me that once as an example of why GURPS was a "bad system", and I've always wondered if it was true, or true in the way that Candle of Invocation cheese makes D&D a "bad system".

Well I suppose you could combine a Mana-dependant race or template or flaw or whatever with a Mana-Sink one, dependant on the world setting that might kill your character automatically but it's really really obvious that that build is trying to self immolate.

Personally I don't think its such a big detraction that a system built to be good at representing anything you care to think of can be used to create internal contridictions, its not got a label on the back of the books that says "Idiot Proof" after all.

[Another_Poet]

Well, even if it is possible to do in GURPS, it's possible in most other RPGs too.

Let's say you're making a D&D character. You assign your lowest roll, a 6, to his constitution score. Then you choose a race with a -4 to CON and a template with a -2 to CON. You are dead.

In Shadowrun, just keep adding cyberware until your Essence reaches 0. You are dead. It's actually pretty easy to do - most of my characters who used cybergear at all reduced their essence all the way to .5 or so.

ap