What you don't like about GURPS

[Dangerious P. Cats]

We tend to talk about all the good bits of GURPS, but do you think are some of the down sides to the system? How can they be rectified.

[Highland_Piper]

I wish there was better guide lines for creating new spells

I've thumbed through Powers and its a bit confusing (I did however just thumb through it)

No Vehicle Design Rules

No Mecha Rules

Takes forever for new releases to come out

No Adventure Modules

Thats really about it. I've been really pleased with GURPS to the extent of dropping the games I used to play. I enjoy the diversity that GURPS allows and that you can do just about ANY game system in it.

[Randover]

Realy getting it summarised here is quite a full time job.

For starters inconsistency between GURPRS in general and GURPS Magic but that is part of Thaumaturgy book.

Then GURPS are more like 10% ready material for the whole game. I realy can't imagion running good champaing or game spontaly. (Without absolutely stable group and style) I realy miss tuns of material of pre generated adventures and characters to every last bit. (Best for newbies, and one-shot quick game - that you would like to replay several times.) As this would be also a good guide how to start for GM.

Other than that its quite fine. Since I count this forum as customer service, and Character Assistant is nice supplement as well as Combat Cards.

Oh, there is one more thing. Some guides for GM how do manuever in combat with your NPCs. Since GM is pushed hard once whole group has it time to think between turns. Yes with little more preparation I could get ready, but having it as suplement would be a nice touch.

[Blood Legend]

In our group, the same 3 people are the GMs. Me, Panzer, and someone I'll call Blackdust.

We've all been GMing on our own. Our only clues on how to GM coming from each other. This has made it an entirely slow learning process as how to run a 'good' game. We play swell, the adventures are ok. But it's missing that quick and clean flare. While it still leaves a lot to be desired, Panzer does the military games, I do low power space or high power medieval, Blackdust does ...well demons seem to be a theme. I'll be the first person to say I suck at GMing but my players nod and applaud cuz lord knows they dont want one of the few GMs of our group to quit because he's kinda lacking. So I (and in my opinion the others) barely improve. We ARE improving, with each session of each game. Just, its so SLOW. Aside from maybe Panzer, I cant claim that anyone has seen a game outside of our group. I know there's no appropriate or correct way to GM, but it'd certainly help us alot to get some pre-made adventures going so we can see 'how the pros do it.'

"Gurps: GM" would be helpful. A few books like Powers and Martial Arts have whole sections for game types you can play using the books. This is awesomely helpful but when it comes to Basic, these chapters are pretty much "YOU CAN DO ANYTHING!" "Like what?" "Anything at all :D" "...o...kay. how?" "Just remember the whole book is optional, dont like a rule dont use it. Here are some advantages and skills!" "You didn't answer my question though. D:" The book does a mighty fine job explaining what you should look out for when playing, but does nothing in the way of showing us how to play.

It's hard to explain what I mean. I've reached this sort of point where Im not going to get any better until I see a successful GM do it.

[mlangsdorf]

GURPS Magic for 4th edition was a huge disappointment. There's no rhyme or reason for the spell costs or prerequisite chains.

Character creation can be too detailed. It's easy for inexperienced players to forget a minor skill or advantage, and then their character concept falls apart when their master martial artist can't do something because he forgot the right skill.

The play of the game can be fiddly and require too many rolls. A strike/judo parry/judo throw/parry/HT check for stunning exchange is 5 rolls. It can be annoying.

The high resolution, 1 second combat is really neat - until the party is separated. Then it's a huge pain. This came up in two of my recent DF Online sessions - the advance scouts got caught in a fight while in another room either 8 yards or 5 yards above the rest of the party. 2-3 players got to do stuff for 15 turns (about 3 hours of play time!) while others got to climb things. Some better rules for combat pacing would be really helpful.

[Randover]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

There's no rhyme or reason for the spell costs or prerequisite chains.

I do not agree with that. I don't like using prerequisity chains in strict meaning but I like to use them in a way of Spell ingame development ...roleplay of spell study etc. (Example a wizards of mime were trying to lear a Fireball Spell I have "guided" them as narrator through prerequsity chain.

"Student, today we learn how to light a candle. Once you master it, we will continue on something more usefull." *Teacher created a flower from fire and made it dance in his hands.*

Without prerequisity chain it would be a huge pain for me to thing about these lessons of Mana Manipulation.

Another huge plus is that Wizards are more easy to handle for GM that starts his "Magical Theory" development. A wizard that has no limits on powerful spell and has several of them is a real pain to out-maneuver. Still I am not much fond of Powers replacing Spells.

Another plus is limited number of spell player had to memorize per character.

But than Its true that the Prerequisity chain is havily over-used or better abused by rules.

[David Johansen]

I don't like the speed / range table and find it really puts off new players when they first realize that they're -4 to hit at 10 yards. Yes I know the game design reasons but the old increment and point blank system was much cleaner and easier IMO.

Super Strength is still outrageously over priced at the low end of things. And then as you move up the table it's outrageously underpriced. In any case it's a pain in the butt for a game that is perfectly set up to do it cleanly and clearly if the designers could have been bothered.

Innate Attacks should have two prices one for levels under the TL and one for levels over. No, a bunch of mushy stuff about using unusual background costs is not an acceptable patch.

Ordinary people can dodge bullets in GURPS, heck, according to GURPS Fantasy a Triceratops can dodge bullets.

All Out Attacks with missile weapons only get a +1 to hit. This is just one more little rule but without it you can get away from most of the complaints about the speed/range table and get rid of the everyone can dodge bullets as if they were a big soft pillow problem.

That said these are all pretty minor quibbles and easy enough to patch if you don't have the type of player that will accept house rules.

[LoneWolf23k]

About the only thing I dislike about GURPS is writing down skills on a character sheet. Although in my case it's because I always right the relevent attribute and relative level as well.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by David Johansen

I
All Out Attacks with missile weapons only get a +1 to hit.

It annoys me that it's _called_ "All Out Attack" with Missile weapons. Why isn't it "Braced" or Set" or something common sense-ishy descriptive.

AoA for missile weapons sounds to me like an Ahnold clone firing as he runs towards the target and pumping his gun arm so he imparts extra momentum to his bullets.

If it was "Braced" it'd be obvious that "No, you can not AoA with a sniper rifle with a 10x scope from the prone position.".

[Michael Cule]

In Fourth Edition specifically:

The rules for damage from collisions. (Multiply Mass times velocity and divide by the fudge factor you first thought of to get the number of dice or something like that.)

The rules for the effects of explosive fireballs (and I presume all other explosions). The third edition rules may not have been accurate models of reality but they were playable....