[Gollum]

For me, there is a difference between “detailed” and “realistic”.

Some games are not as detailed as GURPS, for instance, but are still “realistic”. Call of Cthulhu, for instance – especially the 7th edition. Pathfinder, to the contrary, can be very detailed, but is not realistic for all that.

I believe that a game is “realistic” as soon as it gives you the feeling that things could have happened like that in reality. And a game is unrealistic if you consider that things couldn’t happen like that in reality …

GURPS (as long as you try to play a realistic campaign) really gives me the feeling that things could happen like that: the strongest most often wins, a bullet in the head can kill even the most experienced warrior … While D&D-like games give the opposite feeling: a warrior can withstand dozens of battle axe wounds or a hundred-yard fall without the least penalty to his fighting abilities …

Note that I don’t discredit Pathfinder and D&D-like games, here. They are not designed to be realistic. They authors wanted them to be heroic.

Of course, no game is totally realistic, unless being overly complex. A game is not a reality simulator; it is just a game, that is, something designed to be fun.

And another problem is that we don’t all have the same point of view about reality. Are superpowers real? No. Nobody won’t debate it. But what about intuition, empathy … and luck? We all have our own beliefs about those things.

Likewise, how many bullets in the chest can withstand a man without dying? During the war of Algeria, a friend of mines’ father was hit by 17 MAT 49 PM bullets (9mm parabellum). And he still survived. Players of a roleplaying game would surely have found that totally unrealistic.

That is what I love, with GURPS rules. Things are usually very “realistic” (things will happen as you can expect them to happen) but, sometimes, something totally surprising occurs. Thanks to the critical success and failure system, and thanks to the damage system.

To me, GURPS is more than realistic (contrary to Call of Cthulhu). It is like life: predictable but still very surprising.