What we love about GURPS

[Kesendeja]

No matter the game I've run it's never stuck to it's initial genre, so these days I tend to not even try that hard. But for the most part my group knows what to expect and they enjoy the ride.

The paranormal investigation game is going to rise in stakes and throw in political thriller and action, (and if they fail, post apycalypse).

GURPS lets me do this better than ANY other system I've ever run across.

I initially picked up the alternate timelines book for 3rd on a whim and loved it, and just started picking up source books for the information. Then came the 4th edition Basic set. A friend ran a game that imploded after session two, he was very adversarial GM, but that's another story. But I loved the customization. I got the pdfs. My husband was a little wary of the grin on my face, it rarely boded well for his characters. I anouced we were switching the shadowrun based game over to GURPS because I could do the conversions myself and I've never looked back.

I don't have to wrestle with shoehorning in a setting into a system it wasn't designed for and hoping for some semblance of fairness and functionality.

And honestly the community is far more accepting of trying ideas that are unconventional, and will give honest and well thought out help and opitions.

[ericthered]

I love the hit location system. It really helps with immersion and suspense of disbelief.

I love the number of combat paradigms. Ultra-tech power armor plays differently from Super powers, which is different from Long-range High Tech, which is different from historical TL2, which is different from DF, which is different from Monster Hunters.

I love the number of noncombat paradigms, and how they use the same underpinnings as the combat system.

I love that Gurps has multiple magic systems. This provides some serious depth and yet more paradigms to play with.

I love the GURPS's relationship with history. It draws heavily on the past, takes its research seriously, and lets me run games in history and still have a full ruleset and experience.

I love that the system can stat anything I ask it to, and it can do it without abstracting all the detail away.

[Donny Brook]

Verisimilitude - GURPS starts with a fundamental basis in the real world, and provides tools for simulating that (falling, lifting, jumping, healing, tricking, persuading...).

Verisimilitude is what makes GURPS capable of delivering its other claims: Generic and Universal which I also value highly.

[safisher]

--My fav is flexibility. Whatever I can dream up, I can do it. Vietnam War special forces, yes. Merchants of Venice trading in the Levant. Done. Wizards and orcs in a dungeon, indeed it can. Superheroes throwing tanks, again, yes. It can do it all and be tuned to the exact dimensions you want to emphasize.
--It's also dead simple. Roll to hit, roll to defend, and roll damage if you hit. It gives both attacker and defender a roll, which I like. Rolls to save versus death, too. Players like to roll, and this system provides that opportunity.
--Verisimilitude. As Donny Brook said, it hinges on the believable and understandable. House cats don't (usually) kill hardy peasants in GURPS, much less rugged adventurers. Magical systems can be studied, but are not entirely predictable (as they should be). Guns and swords are deadly no matter your HT, but not insta-kills. Armor helps, but does not make you invulnerable either. There's just so many good design choices in GURPS it plays so smoothly you rarely get unbelievable results that break the group's suspension of disbelief.

[Dalin]

What first drew me to GURPS was the character design system.

I remember a new player who wanted to join our long-term D&D campaign in college. They had never played before and loved the deep story that had developed in our game. When I asked them what they wanted to play, they said "a diplomat." I nodded and then asked some more questions to figure out if they meant a "fighter diplomat" or a "thief diplomat" or a "wizard diplomat." Ugh.

When I jumped into GURPS, I loved the fact that I didn't have to worry about fitting every concept into a character "class." A stableboy with a secret magical talent? Cool. A princess with retainers and relationships at court? No problem. A faerie dragon illusionist? Sure thing. And this was just sticking with D&D-adjacent fantasy. When you add in all the other potential genres, it is truly remarkable.

Skip forward three decades and that's still fundamentally what I love about GURPS. I can pass out some pre-generated characters to a bunch of folks who have never played before and they can jump right in, laughing about interesting quirks or disadvantages. Last week I ran a game with a brand new player and she read over the character and said, "This is totally ME!" with a big grin (something about the combination of curious, impulsive, and charitable).

[Mr_Sandman]

When I first encountered GURPS at my university RPG club in 1989, the thing that made me fall in love with it was the long list of specific, detailed skills. It allowed me to make a character that fit exactly with the background story I had in mind. I had always preferred skill-based systems I had used before to class and level, but GURPS allowed for so much more fine distinctions between skills than any system I had come across until then.

What I love about GMing GURPS is that it lets me tweak and adjust the system to fit exactly what I have in mind for the genre and setting I want to run. It's great for world-builders and wanna-be system designers, who don't want to have to develop and play-test all their own house-rules, because the many alternatives that GURPS provides are all well-curated by professional staff, and tested over decades of use.

In general, I like that GURPS is more specific and concrete than most other games I've played, which can often be vague or abstract about what exactly is happening in the fictional world, as it relates to the game play. I find it easier to relate the fiction more directly to the mechanics of the game, without a lot of hand-waving.

Also, GURPS just fits with the way my mind works. To me, the rules just seem very rational. The usual outcomes feel plausible, and the way the game gets to them is understandable.

[sgtcallistan]

Flexibility above all: have made so many games up in my head, then easily translated them to stats and figures with the basic set.

Have even converted much of the stuff written for the Babylon 5 game to GURPS and it wasn't difficult.

I have good players, who don't require stats for everything, and our loose play style works well with GURPS.