Math, GURPS, and its reputation for complexity

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Lancewholelot

Ah, but as an animal the cat actually has an advantage. A modern human will know of the law of gravity, but you see Rupert's cat never studied law. :)

My cat sees birds flying, and sitting on power poles, and she knows exactly what she'd do if she could fly.

[Outlaw]

Originally Posted by Lancewholelot

Ah, but as an animal the cat actually has an advantage. A modern human will know of the law of gravity, but you see Rupert's cat never studied law. :)

In many cases, ignorance truly is bliss!!

Until you leap off the window sill and realize that ignorance of the law of gravity is no excuse!!!

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by WingedKagouti

GURPS Vehicles (and Robots) was a massive contributor to the math complexity reputation.

There's a lot of truth to this. And what's particularly ironic about it is that in 3e, Vehicles was largely disconnected from much of the rest of GURPS, and was essentially its own thing.

[Opellulo]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Wut? It has the same 'interface' as every ttRPG and I can't think of anything that would qualify it as particularly complex to 'mod'.

(Oftentimes the mods are themselves complex, but that's actually normal - complex house rules are a long-standing and general meme.)

As said before GURPS presentation is kind of messy: texts blocs that coalesce useful rules together with seldom used ones, index and tables spread in various part of the manual (or even in different manuals altogether, since martial arts is more or less mandatory for any fun tactical combat engagement). Its information delivery is very '90s in style and this is a first hurdle for anybody coming from a more modern system (look at the Pathfider 2nd edition manual or at any recent cool indie like Agon or Blades in the dark... The difference is staggering).

Second the moddability in GURPS is a mess because of point costs and the HUGE numbers of manuals available. You got multiple options to create the same effects and those can become very complex very fast (something something Powers something). Even if such discussions are a huge reason for the traffic of this forum you must remember that, well... Meta-gaming and rules drill down are a fringe niche. Nobody starts a new rpg system to discuss its rules, the vast majority of players just want to be thrown into an adventure with cool characters and moments, any friction you put between them and the fantasy is going to leave a bad impression.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Opellulo

As said before GURPS presentation is kind of messy: texts blocs that coalesce useful rules together with seldom used ones, index and tables spread in various part of the manual (or even in different manuals altogether, since martial arts is more or less mandatory for any fun tactical combat engagement). Its information delivery is very '90s in style and this is a first hurdle for anybody coming from a more modern system (look at the Pathfider 2nd edition manual or at any recent cool indie like Agon or Blades in the dark... The difference is staggering).

Second the moddability in GURPS is a mess because of point costs and the HUGE numbers of manuals available. You got multiple options to create the same effects and those can become very complex very fast (something something Powers something). Even if such discussions are a huge reason for the traffic of this forum you must remember that, well... Meta-gaming and rules drill down are a fringe niche. Nobody starts a new rpg system to discuss its rules, the vast majority of players just want to be thrown into an adventure with cool characters and moments, any friction you put between them and the fantasy is going to leave a bad impression.

Ah. I disagree with your metaphors. Those are clearly the manual and the advanced-user features, respectively.

Modability in particular clearly corresponds to house-ruling, not to making complicated power builds.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Opellulo

As said before GURPS presentation is kind of messy: texts blocs that coalesce useful rules together with seldom used ones, index and tables spread in various part of the manual (or even in different manuals altogether, since martial arts is more or less mandatory for any fun tactical combat engagement). Its information delivery is very '90s in style and this is a first hurdle for anybody coming from a more modern system (look at the Pathfider 2nd edition manual or at any recent cool indie like Agon or Blades in the dark... The difference is staggering).

While Pathfinder 2 is well organised (especially compared to the previous edition), it is a very different beast to GURPS. For one, it's rules are exception-based, so it has a simple set of core rules and then a great many exceptions. As most of the those exceptions are for either classes or for spells, they can be contained to those chapters, making the rest of the game seem simple.

In the GURPS-sphere the most comparable product would be DFRPG, and it has a similar organisation, albeit over several books rather than one huge tome.

But GURPS as a whole can't be laid out like that - it doesn't have character classes, and the complexity is in what you add into the basic rules to make up your game's 'core' rules - rules that apply to everyone, because GURPS is not exception-based.

Second the moddability in GURPS is a mess because of point costs and the HUGE numbers of manuals available. You got multiple options to create the same effects and those can become very complex very fast (something something Powers something). Even if such discussions are a huge reason for the traffic of this forum you must remember that, well... Meta-gaming and rules drill down are a fringe niche. Nobody starts a new rpg system to discuss its rules, the vast majority of players just want to be thrown into an adventure with cool characters and moments, any friction you put between them and the fantasy is going to leave a bad impression.[/QUOTE]

And for the vast majority of players and characters, all of that stuff isn't necessary and isn't used. By the way, have you looked at what you 'need' to play D&D5 if you use the same criteria you're using here? You need a ton of books, because the new character rules are spread over them all (in a fairly obvious ploy to get players to buy everything). PF2 also has a ton of 'optional' material that people tend to treat as non-optional.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Opellulo

As said before GURPS presentation is kind of messy: texts blocs that coalesce useful rules together with seldom used ones, index and tables spread in various part of the manual (or even in different manuals altogether, since martial arts is more or less mandatory for any fun tactical combat engagement). Its information delivery is very '90s in style and this is a first hurdle for anybody coming from a more modern system (look at the Pathfider 2nd edition manual or at any recent cool indie like Agon or Blades in the dark... The difference is staggering).

I personally find the layout of the GURPS 4e books to be rather readily usable (Classic Vehicles, not so much, particularly with those blasted sidebars), although I will admit to finding the Gaming Ballistics books to be a bit more accessible (largely because of all the links to other parts of the document, so that when I'm looking at the rules for Kiss the Wall in Fantastic Dungeon Grappling I can just click on the blue text for Takedown to see the base rules for that to compare to how Kiss the Wall differs, for example). But perhaps it's not as usable for those with different mental quirks than my own.

Originally Posted by Opellulo

Second the moddability in GURPS is a mess because of point costs and the HUGE numbers of manuals available.

Arguably the main thing I do with GURPS is mod it, and I can tell you right now that it is far more readily-moddable than DnD, at least 3.5e (and what I went through of 4e). For what amount to Techniques (that is, various ways of using skills to accomplish things that aren't already in the books), in addition to an existing Technique Design System (in Martial Arts), there are quite a few examples of how difficult certain things are (which also means that a lot of things I would want to mod DnD to allow for, GURPS already has rules for), by which I can gauge the difficulty of whatever I'm adding in to give it an appropriate modifier. For novel Advantages, I can typically use a combination of Basic Set, Power Ups 4: Enhancements, and Power Ups 8: Limitations to work out something similar enough to give me a fair base price (sometimes I need to check other books, like Powers for some more information on a given Enhancement/Limitation, but a lot of the time the relevant Power Up has a page reference, so it's not too difficult to track down). For completely novel things, like my design system for powered armor, I can just work out the basics of how it would theoretically work in real life, then readily translate that into GURPS terms (for that, I just worked out the stats for a theoretical suit of powered armor made of living human bones and muscle - basically, something with bone and muscle mass equal to that of a typical human would grant +20 lb to Basic Lift - then adjusted weight for how the strength of the material actually being used compared to living bones and muscle). Basically, all the existing examples - and GURPS having a better grounding in realism than many other games - makes houserules a lot easier to work out. But that's all for me; obviously, I can't speak to others' experiences.

Of course, modding is pretty advanced for most systems, and I think primarily appeals to gearheads anyway.

[tbone]

Originally Posted by Outlaw

...about 30 lbs of dice...

When the weight of your dice collection exceeds Basic Lift... that's commitment.

Speaking of weight:

Encumbrance is a killer for me b/c I hate it, but I can't not use it!! It's an OCD thing I guess.

Encumbrance is a good example of something that's not hard to simplify for a more crunch-light play style. You could combine None and Light encumbrance into None, and combine Medium and Heavy into Medium (perhaps with 0.5 as the Move modifier). (I'd leave Extra-Heavy as a third "way too heavy" level that few characters would ever hit anyway, but even that could be put on the chopping block.) The result would be on par with simple games that just have "unencumbered" and "encumbered" as levels.

I guess that's part of why I've never found GURPS "complex": dropping stuff from a detailed system to create a lighter system has always felt like an easy task. (It's going the other way that's hard.)

(But... perception is what matters, and I suppose a whole lot gamers just don't take that view...)

[WingedKagouti]

Originally Posted by tbone

I guess that's part of why I've never found GURPS "complex": dropping stuff from a detailed system to create a lighter system has always felt like an easy task. (It's going the other way that's hard.)

(But... perception is what matters, and I suppose a whole lot gamers just don't take that view...)

I'd posit that for a lot of (potential) players, it feels easier to start with a light set of core rules and then add clearly labelled optional rules on top. Most of GURPS Basic presents itself as if it's core to the experience, which is naturally going to be a turn-off for anyone with that mindset.

It's the difference between "We're using the core rules + x, y & z" and "We're using the core rules except x, y, & z".

Maybe rebranding GURPS Lite as GURPS Core and GURPS Basic as GURPS Expanded could help perception.

[RGTraynor]

Originally Posted by Opellulo

Unfortunately here we are: struck in a game that's not even for the 1% but for the 0.001%

Ultimately? I'm okay with that. There ought to be room in the RPG market for games that aren't common denominator pap. The answer to "But other games are more X!" isn't to transform GURPS into one of those games. It's to encourage people to play the games which suit their needs and preferences. (Heck, want a simpler game with cleaner lines and easier math? SJ Games publishes one: TFT.) We've got a niche game here. We're going to continue to be a niche game. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Now yes: I'm one of the folks who've always believed that SJG dropped the ball badly when it came to presentation. The first section of the Characters book of 4th edition needed to be GURPS Lite, with a 32-pt header in flaming red letters, "This is all you need to run a fun game! All the rest are OPTIONAL RULES -- they enhance the game, but they're not essential!" But that ship's sailed; no mending it now.