Need help fighting the dreaded MinMaxer.

[trooper6]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

The latter is very much a D&D-ism. Since D&D, especially in later iterations, is such a closed and well-defined system, the assumption is that any book-legal character should work. In fact, there was even a drive by either TSR or WotC at one point (perhaps at several points) that people should be able to pick up from one campaign and drop into another, no problem. It was meant to be standardized.

So I can see where people used to D&D (and many D&Ders seem to assume that all RPGs are really just shadows of D&D and have a very hard time grasping that things can be different, in my experience), but, in my opinion, this cannot work in GURPS.

It is indeed very much a D&D-ism. But I think it is rooted in more than just standardization. I think it is rooted in D&D's marketing strategy. D&D produces a lot of splat books aimed at the player. A lot. So many books aimed at the player. All these books are canon. The player buys all these books and there is this assumption (encouraged by Wizards) that they should be allowed to use them in character creation. There is a way in which the very market model disempowers DMs from saying no to "legal" characters crafted by players made using their expensive splat books.

In all my time playing D&D, it never occurred to the DMs or they didn't feel like they were able to make any character creation restrictions other than: starting level and some alignment restrictions. The only splatbooks I recall not being allowed was The Book of Vile Darkness when evil characters were restricted, and there was one combat splatbook that was widely understood to be overpowered and imbalanced. Oh and I want to say that even alignment restrictions were not standard. Way too often there would be parties with Good Paladins and Evil Assassins that were supposed to work together somehow. But I saw players get really angry and resentful if the DM tried to assert any authority over their character creation process...I mean, they spend hundreds of dollars on splatbooks, they deserved to be able to use them.

GURPS, on the other hand, seems to sell more to GMs than it does to players. So the sense of entitlement that comes from being marketed directly to doesn't seem to permeate GURPS players.