Dice Of Doom: GURPS Review

trooper6 · 08-31-2011, 07:32 PM

Regarding the idea that one needs an expert to help one learn GURPS...I suppose I might count as expert now...but in 1988 I wasn't. I was a 16 year old high school kid and no one I new played GURPS at all. I'd never seen it in action. I just saw the shiny, shiny books in the gaming store...especially the GURPS Prisoner book...and thought..."This looks cool!"

So I bought it, read it, taught myself how to play and GM with nothing but the Basic set...no other supplements. And ran a Fantasy game (with no magic). And it was fine.

Sometimes I think the difficulty of GURPS (and many other games) is overstated. Maybe the problem is not that GURPS or D&D or Vampire or whatever is difficult...maybe the problem is that as we get older we get a bit more set in our ways and less willing to put in the time and effort that we would regularly put into games when we were in high school or college.

I mean back in the day the groups I was in would regularly play all sorts of random things...many games which were not well written or organized. I still value variety...for example the sort of variety the Dice of Doom folks are doing. But so often I meet groups that will only play one game ever (that game usually being D&D).

I remember sitting at this 3.5 game and the players rejected playing Trinity because they thought it was too difficult...and this was the group that had basically memorized 8 bazillion 3.5 books...in all their quirky complicatedness. They could tell me that I definitely wanted by Rogue to take the Master Thrower Prestige Class to maximize damage, and then take this obscure magic item and then one obscure Feat from this one other book. And then argue about AoO and all these really, really complex and not always well explained exceptions and unclear things. But that wasn't too difficult. Then they went to 4e...which involves a lot of data tracking. But also not too complicated. But Vampire was too complicated? GURPS was too complicated? I think a lot of this, as I said in the comments of the original review, has a lot to do with the sort of paradigm you have normalized, a certain amount of inertia...and...well...for my D&D players...it is a certain other thing. For the D&D group I was in, there was power in having memorized 8 bazillion splat books and being able to game the system in really arcane ways. There was power in knowing obscure lore details about Forgotten Realms and having read the books and so on. The minute you switch to a new system, you lose that power and everyone is equalized as a beginner again. I think that is not attractive to all people.

08-31-2011, 07:32 PM	#17
trooper6 Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Medford, MA	Re: Dice Of Doom: GURPS Review Regarding the idea that one needs an expert to help one learn GURPS...I suppose I might count as expert now...but in 1988 I wasn't. I was a 16 year old high school kid and no one I new played GURPS at all. I'd never seen it in action. I just saw the shiny, shiny books in the gaming store...especially the GURPS Prisoner book...and thought..."This looks cool!" So I bought it, read it, taught myself how to play and GM with nothing but the Basic set...no other supplements. And ran a Fantasy game (with no magic). And it was fine. Sometimes I think the difficulty of GURPS (and many other games) is overstated. Maybe the problem is not that GURPS or D&D or Vampire or whatever is difficult...maybe the problem is that as we get older we get a bit more set in our ways and less willing to put in the time and effort that we would regularly put into games when we were in high school or college. I mean back in the day the groups I was in would regularly play all sorts of random things...many games which were not well written or organized. I still value variety...for example the sort of variety the Dice of Doom folks are doing. But so often I meet groups that will only play one game ever (that game usually being D&D). I remember sitting at this 3.5 game and the players rejected playing Trinity because they thought it was too difficult...and this was the group that had basically memorized 8 bazillion 3.5 books...in all their quirky complicatedness. They could tell me that I definitely wanted by Rogue to take the Master Thrower Prestige Class to maximize damage, and then take this obscure magic item and then one obscure Feat from this one other book. And then argue about AoO and all these really, really complex and not always well explained exceptions and unclear things. But that wasn't too difficult. Then they went to 4e...which involves a lot of data tracking. But also not too complicated. But Vampire was too complicated? GURPS was too complicated? I think a lot of this, as I said in the comments of the original review, has a lot to do with the sort of paradigm you have normalized, a certain amount of inertia...and...well...for my D&D players...it is a certain other thing. For the D&D group I was in, there was power in having memorized 8 bazillion splat books and being able to game the system in really arcane ways. There was power in knowing obscure lore details about Forgotten Realms and having read the books and so on. The minute you switch to a new system, you lose that power and everyone is equalized as a beginner again. I think that is not attractive to all people. Last edited by trooper6; 08-31-2011 at 07:41 PM.