Why isn't GURPS as popular as the D20 system and games

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Mark Skarr

The only GURPS book I've seen on a shelf in years (not counting consignment) has been GURPS Zombies at my FLGS. They have one, lonely, copy of it, and no other GURPS books.

For what it's worth, once the printing of Citadel at Nordvorn and Hall of Judgment is complete over in Latvia, the excess copies - some 300+ of them - will be offered into distribution and to retail stores (plus, of course, direct sales if you missed the Kickstarters).

But if you watch the space around my stuff, steering game stores my way (or the way of Studio2, my distributor) would help put physical GURPSy product on shelves, hopefully alongside copies of the DFRPG box set reprint!

[ak_aramis]

Someone upthread claimed that universal systems need highly detailed and long skill lists...

The relative success of Savage Worlds with a skill list under 30 skills.
And under 50 disads. It has around 80 advantages, but a lot of those are "X & Improved X" pairs; each such pair is really 1 advantage with two levels, Puts the list lower at around 60 discrete advantages.

GURPS 3R Basic has about 80 advantages, with around half having multiple levels. It has around 90 disadvantages, again, most having multiple levels. And I'm estimating about 150 skills, not counting tech level nor parenthesized cluster breakouts.

Savage Worlds has done several other things differently. Low granularity, broad skills without breakouts, a universal default rule...
.... and a very inexpensive corebook. The Explorer's Edition was $9.95... and still is, in combined print and PDF, direct from PEG.
Plus, the electronic allows one to turn off various layers.
(It's still hard to read on my Kindle...)

[Apollonian]

Originally Posted by ak_aramis

Someone upthread claimed that universal systems need highly detailed and long skill lists...

The relative success of Savage Worlds with a skill list under 30 skills.
And under 50 disads. It has around 80 advantages, but a lot of those are "X & Improved X" pairs; each such pair is really 1 advantage with two levels, Puts the list lower at around 60 discrete advantages.

GURPS 3R Basic has about 80 advantages, with around half having multiple levels. It has around 90 disadvantages, again, most having multiple levels. And I'm estimating about 150 skills, not counting tech level nor parenthesized cluster breakouts.

Savage Worlds has done several other things differently. Low granularity, broad skills without breakouts, a universal default rule...
.... and a very inexpensive corebook. The Explorer's Edition was $9.95... and still is, in combined print and PDF, direct from PEG.
Plus, the electronic allows one to turn off various layers.
(It's still hard to read on my Kindle...)

For further comparison, based on a quick look at Basic, GURPS 4 has 15 Attributes & Secondary Attributes, 260 Advantages, 219 Disadvantages, and 275 skills. (I counted the entries on the trait lists in the back.)

Savage Worlds is a very good for a particular sort of gameplay - fast and furious, as they put it. I've played it in that mode, quite successfully. I'm not sure how well it does as you veer away from that gameplay mode, which is why I've used GURPS for other things.

GURPS lacks focus. I think that's what hurts it in this comparison. You can do anything with all the rules and traits available, but it takes a lot of work compared to just picking up, e.g., D&D for classic dungeon crawling, Savage Worlds for pulpy action, Call of Cthulhu for horror, or Fate for story-driven whatevers. But, as many, many people have said, GURPS is a toolkit more than an out of the box game. I think a serious problem with it is that the instruction manual for the toolkit is both a bit sparse and a bit skewed toward a certain style of gameplay - one that likes a lot of numbers on the character sheet and a verisimilitude born out of lots of details.

I would like to see "instruction manuals" that presented GURPS' capability for playing with less detail and in different modes. Based on the posters here on the SJG forums, I don't think I'll see them. We're a self-selecting population, and many of the RPGers who prefer lighter character sheets and broader strokes have found that neither GURPS as talked about online nor the GURPS community online is a good fit for that. On the other hand, the forum's usual response to a problem with a game seems to be to add another rule or three, or refer someone to one of the many, many supplements (full of more rules) on Warehouse 23.

I think GURPS is a really good system with a lot of fat layered on it. Sometimes I like the fat; sometimes I get so frustrated trying to figure out which particular trait applies to an in-play situation that I toss the whole things and grab a simpler system that functions just as well in-play. I just wish that second system was also GURPS.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Apollonian

I would like to see "instruction manuals" that presented GURPS' capability for playing with less detail and in different modes.

There has been a move toward this, with Dungeon Fantasy and Monster Hunters and so on, but I think these things obscure the fact that GURPS doesn't NEED to be heavily configured in order to use it. People often talk about GURPS being a toolkit, and that's true, but it's also a ready-to-play game. A GM can announce a game, describe it in the simplest of terms, and let players make characters. No, they're not being led by the hand through character-generation, but so long as everyone at the table has a good idea of what game they're trying to play, they can select the correct traits and rules to use.

More "instruction manuals" for "different modes" just increases the feeling that GURPS has to be pre-chewed for you to use it. It doesn't, really. It can be intimidating, but it's still usable without being pre-packaged.

[Andrew Hackard]

Here's the quick and dirty answer: GURPS isn't as popular as D&D because GURPS wasn't first.

Now, are there other factors? Sure. I think the people posting to this forum grossly underestimate how imposing GURPS is to new players because, by and large, you're familiar with the system through long exposure. Being able to post things like "GURPS really isn't complex once you wade through the dozens of advantages, disads, and skills" proves that. D&D 3.x had a decently large learning curve, too, but it benefited from an installed player base and a ruleset that didn't have to simulate four-color supers, gritty noir action, and high fantasy with nigh-immortal demigods and world-shaking spells all starting from the same premises. GURPS lays out all its cards right from the start and then leaves it up to the GM to tell players what they can and can't use.

Does that mean I think D&D is better? No. I think it's a different enough game that trying to compare its merits to GURPS' is a fool's errand. And I don't think the relative merits of the two games have much, if anything, to do with their respective sales.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Andrew Hackard

Now, are there other factors? Sure. I think the people posting to this forum grossly underestimate how imposing GURPS is to new players because, by and large, you're familiar with the system through long exposure. Being able to post things like "GURPS really isn't complex once you wade through the dozens of advantages, disads, and skills" proves that. D&D 3.x had a decently large learning curve, too, but it benefited from an installed player base and a ruleset that didn't have to simulate four-color supers, gritty noir action, and high fantasy with nigh-immortal demigods and world-shaking spells all starting from the same premises.

In my experience of teaching new players, D&D 3.0 had a massive learning curve, easily as much as GURPS, especially as characters built without extensive rules-savvy were useless next to optimized builds using rules from multiple splatbooks. D&D 5e is a lot more accessible to new players, as well as to people who are getting back into RPGs as adults. I think that's good design and they seem to be having a lot of success with it.

[Apollonian]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

It can be intimidating, but it's still usable without being pre-packaged.

So is a cow.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Apollonian

So is a cow.

I like cows.

[Andrew Hackard]

Originally Posted by Apollonian

So is a cow.

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

I like cows.

Keep it on topic, please.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Icelander

In my experience of teaching new players, D&D 3.0 had a massive learning curve, easily as much as GURPS, especially as characters built without extensive rules-savvy were useless next to optimized builds using rules from multiple splatbooks. D&D 5e is a lot more accessible to new players, as well as to people who are getting back into RPGs as adults. I think that's good design and they seem to be having a lot of success with it.

At first level? While I suppose this is true after a bit of play, most 1st level 3.0, 3.5, Pathfinder, OSR, and 5e characters are "roll a few dice, pick a class, write a few things down, and start play."

This is also true of The Fantasy Trip, for what it's worth. And the d6 WEG Star Wars system. Fate Accelerated can be a bit weighty, but they did a nice job in streamlining it.

Will your 3.X character be optimized for whatever 20th level build you want to achieve? No . . . but it's first level, and you can start play VERY fast.

GURPS out of the Basic Set doesn't feel that way. There's no "quick start" version such as those that appear in (say) Pointless Looting and Slaying or (even better) Five Easy Pieces. And there's still the matter of GM-player interaction: "Can I take a blaster rifle?" "No, it's a fantasy game." "But it's in the book!"

I exaggerate. Hyperbole. Ad absurdum. Even so: I can (and have) taken a complete newb and handed them Dragon Heresy or 5e and we're playing in minutes. I once had fifteen (!) players generate d6 Star Wars characters in less than an hour, and we were playing in full fine style right after that.

GURPS isn't like that out of the box, and I say this as, I think, one of the louder proponents of the game.