Math, GURPS, and its reputation for complexity

[sir_pudding]

I certainly prefer it to games where everyone can just shoot forever and the way to win is pure attrition. "Enjoy" is weird here. I don't enjoy breathing, I just breathe.

[Opellulo]

IMHO the problem with GURPS is its obsession in trying to be a "physics simulator" where every phenomena should be translatable to game rules.
I get that this idea is tempting for a "generalist" system but it creates black holes of "math and other morbid considerations" that adds almost nothing to the game experience but weight much to the accounting.
A typical setting can be played with like 20 skills total and an handful of advantages/disadvantages and equipment, and yet you got those massive lists and rules explanations which less than 5% of adventures are going to use (my personal beast is the table for irreversible radiation poisoning in the base manual, no hard feeling for who wrote it but who thought it was a good idea?)

So yeah, when you add this infrastructure to an obsessive focus on point costs (which should be hidden to the players, they are something a GM use to have a rough idea about balance, nothing more) and some weird '90 choices like having fractions to calculate Speed or different values for skill difficulty and yeah, you understand why GURPS has a (well earned IMHO) reputation for being math and accounting heavy.

...also many players find weird that the good dice rolls are the LOW ones, but this usually get easier to do within the second session.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Opellulo

So yeah, when you add this infrastructure to an obsessive focus on point costs (which should be hidden to the players, they are something a GM use to have a rough idea about balance, nothing more) and some weird '90 choices like having fractions to calculate Speed or different values for skill difficulty and yeah, you understand why GURPS has a (well earned IMHO) reputation for being math and accounting heavy.

Adding up point costs for character creation is hardly unique to GURPS. You will also find it, for example, in Champions and Big Eyes Small Mouth/Silver Age Sentinels/Absolute Power and Ars Magica. It's a device for giving players more control over what their characters are like, which appeals to certain players (including me).

...also many players find weird that the good dice rolls are the LOW ones, but this usually get easier to do within the second session.

That one strikes me as evidence of parochialism on the part of people who have only played D&D and expect everything else to work the same way. I myself gave up D&D before 1980 and have played a wide variety of other games. "Roll low" is a common feature, to be found in RuneQuest/Call of Cthulhu, Champions, and classic Big Eyes Small Mouth, as well as GURPS; I've used it so often that it seems intuitively obvious to me. But on the other hand, when I use a system that calls for "roll high," it never occurred to me to take any special notice or have any reaction until I started hearing that people made an emotional issue of it.

The whole thing makes me think of a passage from Bernard Shaw that Heinlein quotes at the start of Glory Road: "He is a barbarian, and thinks the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature."

I grant that there are people who think that way; they just seem strange to me. Perhaps this is a point where I'm the "barbarian."

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Opellulo

(my personal beast is the table for irreversible radiation poisoning in the base manual, no hard feeling for who wrote it but who thought it was a good idea?)

GURPS, being 'generic' and 'universal' would have a huge hole in its core competencies if it couldn't handle a good-old post-apocalypse blasted nuclear wasteland out of the box, so it really needs rules for radiation, and the effects of acute radiation poisoning are fairly well documented in
survivalist manuals, etc., (though they tend to have somewhat out of date descriptions) so it needs to have those effects.

So yeah, when you add this infrastructure to an obsessive focus on point costs (which should be hidden to the players, they are something a GM use to have a rough idea about balance, nothing more)

That's an interesting take, but not one that's common to rpgs in general.

...also many players find weird that the good dice rolls are the LOW ones, but this usually get easier to do within the second session.

Roll low vs roll high is a matter of taste and familiarity.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Rupert

GURPS, being 'generic' and 'universal' would have a huge hole in its core competencies if it couldn't handle a good-old post-apocalypse blasted nuclear wasteland out of the box, so it really needs rules for radiation, and the effects of acute radiation poisoning are fairly well documented in survivalist manuals, etc., (though they tend to have somewhat out of date descriptions) so it needs to have those effects.

To be fair, there's probably a simpler way to handle radiation poisoning. Heck, just having exposure slowly deal tox damage (possibly with special requirements to fix it rather than it regenerating on its own) and maybe tossing on some Symptoms at appropriate points would probably work fine for most games where radiation is a threat characters will need to deal with. That seems more in line with how GURPS handles bleeding, for example (where it's just HP loss over time, rather than a separate system that is based on the effects of Class I-IV hemorrhages).

[Witchking]

Eh I am an old Star Fleet Battles player.

GURPS is not that complex.

One thing SFB did that I wish GURPS had done is an 'outline' systems for their Rules.

Movement rules are in Section C.
Seeking Weapons Section D.
Direct Fire Weapons Section F.
Empires and Ships Section R.

Then the subsections are numbered.

It makes referencing, citing and looking up easier.

mumbles accountants that wanna be lawyers... /mumbles

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Opellulo

(my personal beast is the table for irreversible radiation poisoning in the base manual, no hard feeling for who wrote it but who thought it was a good idea?)

.

The first Gurps rules for radiation were probably those in Gurps Space 1e (which won awards) so "who" was likely Steve Jackson.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I certainly prefer it to games where everyone can just shoot forever and the way to win is pure attrition. "Enjoy" is weird here. I don't enjoy breathing, I just breathe.

Do you find many games where you win by the enemy running out of ammo?

Like, even when the enemy does run out of ammo within the scope of engagement, I'm hard put to think of games where that causes defeat rather than changing their ability to deal out attrition...

[Outlaw]

GURPS should only be as complex as the GMs and players want it to be.

As a GM if you don't want to go through complicated radiation poisoning rules, then don't. Just decide the effect and apply it. Such an event can't be a total surprise so just prepare before hand. Note that I'm not harping on the person that brought this up, just using it as an example.

IF you're letting first time players build their own characters without assistance (which is a bad idea and the result of many lost players IMO), prepare a list of available ads/disads, skills, and spells before hand. I remember a post somewhere where a GM just told the players to buy the rules and build characters for a fantasy game. The result of that is goofy things like brachiating humans with DR3 and gills. A better idea for first time players is to do a one shot game with pre-prepared characters so they can get an idea of the game before trying to decide how to build a character.

Aside from skill bonuses, nearly all math can be precalculated. If you don't want to worry about the rest, don't. If you don't like turn order going by speed and then by dexterity and then by random roll, just roll initiative like D&D. Don't like a d6 number of turns of do nothing maneuvers rolled separately for each surprised character, then just MAKE SOMETHING UP.

You can literally ignore 3/4+ of the combat rules and still portray a dramatic and exciting fight. All you really need are 3 or 4 maneuvers along with attack, defense, and damage rolls. Don't like 1/3 HP, knockdown, stunning, shock, posture, etc then simply IGNORE THEM.

Just look at Critical Role. Geez, Mercer is so easy on those guys. I only watched the first 30 or so episodes from the first campaign but I don't recall them ever specifically collecting fired arrows, disabling the rod of go nowhere (or whatever it's called) and collecting the rope, deciding a marching order until AFTER Mercer places them on the table or almost everything that I would require the players to tell me. For God's sake they cast FLY on a bear and a 700 pound Goliath Barbarian surrounded by 4 friendlies in a 6' tall tunnel can swing a flaming war hammer full strength no problem!!!

They do almost everything wrong IMO. In fact IMO the only thing they do right is HAVE A GREAT TIME. And that is the ONLY THING THAT MATTERS.

--Outlaw

P.S.
Also, how can you tie a rope to a smooth steel rod magically suspended in mid air and not have the rope slip off? Even setting the rod horizontally, there is no way that rope is going to stay in place with people fast roping down. Quantum fluctuations alone would send the rope slipping off one end.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Outlaw

For God's sake they cast FLY on a bear and a 700 pound Goliath Barbarian surrounded by 4 friendlies in a 6' tall tunnel can swing a flaming war hammer full strength

Pretty sure both of these are pure rules as written for the game they are playing. Making up a bunch of punitive rulings isn't the standard expectation or anything...