Re: GURPS is becoming the only game I'll run
 

Maybe you don't have enough time for playing many of them.

Specially if you're the GM, because you need to learn different rules systems & settings in a greater degree than the players.

Money can be a factor, too, because many role playing games aren't free ;-)

Re: GURPS is becoming the only game I'll run
 

In my eyes, RPG is the pizza, the system is the means of delivery. You're gonna get pizza anyway, the question is: how?

GURPS is a great method, although I can't compare as much as the veterans around. I've played RISUS, FUDGE, MERP, Storyteller, DnD 3.5, d20 and GURPS. The only system I've ever though worth playing besides GURPS is RISUS. Oh, I've played 3d&T, which is a puke-worthy sorry excuse for a national (brazilian) RPG, which I definitely do not recommend anyone try.

I'm sure there are some good RPGs in their own niches, but as a generic rules-system, GURPS kicks behinds. It can't truly compete with dedicated, genre specific systems (never played, but hear a lot about Toon), at least not without great expertise from the GURPS-GM and players. And some particularities of each system make them ideal to portray specific settings (Call of Cthulhu and Horror games, for instance), but GURPS does pretty well there too.

It even does stuff it didn't do so well in 3e better, like supers (definite improvement).

I can't really thing of something I can't do with GURPS, and I've run some pretty weird stuff.

Re: GURPS is becoming the only game I'll run
 

Which is how I look at it. . .we are always eating pizza, but they flavor is very different depending on the toppings.

This aspect has allowed me to coax my players into playing many different campaigns. . .once they figured out that a crossbow shoots like a rifle shoots like a blaster/laser, they were much less reluctant to change campaign styles. No "aw man, I just figured out the rules" or "so now I gotta buy new books?". Nope, just create a new PC with the right skill set and we are ready to play!!

Re: GURPS is becoming the only game I'll run
 

Since I got sick of d20 (years ago) I've preferred to use GURPS for almost everything. There are a handful of exceptions:

1) World of Darkness. I've run nWoD games (Changeling and Geist, mostly) with their core system, because I've run them for players that were familiar with and happy with that system. That said, I'd happily run a GURPS coversion or even just a not-really-WoD GURPS personal horror game. There's a lot of nWoD rules bits that bug me, especially in combat, and the grittiness of GURPS is a good fit for the genre anyway.

2) Exalted. A lot of the fun of Exalted lies in the cinematic nature of stunts, which can be hard to pull off in GURPS's one-second combat scale, and in the insanely huge list of special powers, of which any given character is likely to have twenty or more. Huge powers lists tend to work poorly in GURPS. Also, a lot of Exalted is focused on absolute 'it just works' effects, especially defenses, which GURPS tends to price at infinite cost.

3) Ars Magica. GURPS could handle Ars Magica adventures pretty well, especially with the magic options in Thaumatology, but Ars Magica makes down-time, lab work, magic item crafting, and even aging more interesting than GURPS does.

Re: GURPS is becoming the only game I'll run
 

Because a lot of them are crap.

I'm a big fan of experimenting and I would never limit myself to just one game, but I can tell you that many of my forays into other games have been a waste of my time. Many of them are just bad D&D rip-offs, or half-baked ideas that never saw completion (many Indie games are like that: A neat die mechanic and little more). Some are great, but create the sort of game I'm not interested in, or create a perfectly good game, but I think another game does it better.

Like I said, I'm a fan of experimenting, but some of my players have reached the point where they don't really want to play anything other than GURPS either. The system has so much depth that they could spend years exploring it without growing bored. It has a level of detail they really appreciate (especially when it comes to guns). They like D&D, but they like GURPS DF better NO HP grinding, no levels, more flexibility in making your background matter). They like WoD, but they dislike how coarsely the combat system is designed and how baked in Morality is (they do not share my fascination with Morality, alas), and point out that GURPS actually does low-powered horror better than WoD (and doesn't have wonky/crazy/overpowered dogs and cats and ravens that insta-kill people and such), and they think GURPS does sci-fi better than basically any system out there. And they speak from experience.

So I can see where Mencelus is coming from. I think you should always be open to new ideas, but just because something is new doesn't mean it's actually better, or even worth your time.

Re: GURPS is becoming the only game I'll run
 

Learning how to do that gives me more options for finding just the right rules system for running a particular game. GURPS is a great engine, with a lot of flexibility, but there are things that other systems do better.

"The fox know many tricks. The hedgehog knows one."

Bill Stoddard

Re: GURPS is becoming the only game I'll run
 

I have found some games that were like that: Space 1889 (brilliant setting, crap rules), Godlike, In Nomine. In every case my players started complaining about the awkward rules a few sessions in, and with good reason.

But I've had entirely satisfactory results with Amber Diceless, BESM, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Call of Cthulhu, DC Heroes, FUDGE, GURPS, Mage: The Ascension, RuneQuest II, and Toon. And I haven't run Changeling: The Dreaming, but I had a great time playing in it.

Bill Stoddard

Re: GURPS is becoming the only game I'll run
 

I've had great results with Weapons of the Gods, (new) World of Darkness, Everway, and a few others, so, like I said, I would never give up experimenting.

But I question your taste on Mage: the Ascension. In my experience, it doesn't work as advertised. It doesn't, in fact, work at all.

Re: GURPS is becoming the only game I'll run
 

A "right tool for the right job" sort of thing. As much as I like GURPS, I'd never use it for Star Wars (the d6 version handles it far better), for example. While GURPS is my go-to system in most cases, there are a few system I would use instead for very specific settings (if for some reason I ever ran supers, I'd dig out by yellow box Marvel Super Heroes).

Re: GURPS is becoming the only game I'll run
 

In this, at least, we are in accord. Your reason is exactly the same as mine. I will name, for example, Toon, which to my mind is the most perfectly designed game system ever created for running a single specific genre.

Bill Stoddard