GURPS Essential core books

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by trooper6

But all of those are cinematic abstractions, and I prefer the gritty detail.

Not everything in Exploits are cinematic abstractions (and eventually, you have to abstract something. Electronics Repair skills should not go into the details of soldering what to what, for example). BAD is, yes, but let's look at the rest.


The Action genre often involves: Getting a mission, getting more information on the mission, getting to the target, scouting the target, infiltrating the target, doing what you came to do (steal something, hack something, destroy something, murder someone, rescue someone, etc), dealing with whatever unexpected troubles arise, and getting the hell out. The book, first of all, breaks those steps down, and second of all, discusses the skills associated with those steps, suggests additional tactics that might work, and detailed modifiers for those skills. The book further goes into problems that might detract from the drama and how to avoid those.

That's actually the majority of the book, and it's one of the reasons so many of us recommend it, not because we like the awesome awesomeness of the awesome combat rules (though we do), but because it breaks down those sorts of missions, and those sorts of missions are fantastically common in games like Shadowrun, Spycraft and Traveller, to name a few games that I often see people running look-alikes in GURPS.

The rest is the aforementioned awesome combat stuff. I'm not sure what you mean by "gritty detail," but the chase rules are probably the most detailed chase rules you'll ever get in GURPS. The combat rules do, indeed, start with abstract simplifications (this is actually another reason many of us recommend the book It makes GURPS much more accessible precisely because it shows you how to discard some of that gritty detail), but you can ignore those and go straight to flashy combat and stealthy combat, both of which add (rather than remove) detail, as do the sections on Using your Head and Banter and... well, you get the idea.

Whether you're running detailed tactical combat with military precision and low-key characters, or you're running loosey-goosey "Let's kick in the door and shoot some people," I think action has something to offer, provided you're focusing on the kind of tech-heavy game full of competent agents that Action caters to.