TFT and GURPS - where is the line between them?

[Skarg]

I have always related to GURPS as a more advanced and detailed version of TFT that also now has tons of toolkit rules and content available for it.

TFT is also a much faster-to-learn and clearly ready-to-play system, where GURPS (especially 4e) daunts many players and can seem like a massive task to choose/design a setting and even make characters because of the huge number of options. I can run either system for a non-gamer right away as the GM, but a person can more or less learn Melee in under an hour.

I also relate to GURPS as solving many issues that eventually had TFT (after 6 or so years of heavy play) become unsatisfying to us (see below for details).

However since then, I've also seen that house rules can also make TFT work well enough for me, and occasionally I've still played TFT (even without house rules) for fun/nostalgia/curiosity.

I think the main difference is in the complexity of the character sheets (especially the potential length of the skill list) and character generation process.



Background story, if interested:

It also was our answer to having burned out playing TFT. We played TFT from 1980 to 1986, but about 1985, particularly with the first character still going from 1980 (a 46-point fighter), most of the combat seemed extremely predictable and not challenging unless excessive opponents were involved. Fine chainmail, fine greatsword, Veteran, Fencing, self-powered Stone Flesh ring. Does sweeping blows for fun, stops 10 hits per attack (if anyone ever survives long enough to attack) and has friends. Sure he could die to one powerful lightning bolt or a thrown spell or poison or something, but the interest in combat was not really there. Even for less-powerful characters, we'd done so many TFT combats that the action felt really predictable.

So we started house-ruling and then largely stopped playing and were designing new systems to make combat more interesting and unpredictable and to work more like we thought it should (defensive moves, more interesting representations of high skill level, differences between how different hand weapons and armor types work, more options for actions, more maneuvering)...

And then GURPS Man To Man appeared, and it did about 95% of what our redesign was trying to do, but elegantly, well-written, and playtested.