The Beauty of GURPS

[FeiLin]

GURPS is what once upon a time in a world long past woke my interest in tabletop RPGs, and I still recall that sensation of scrolling through 4th edition lite I stumbled upon before I was even a teenager. It was the very first game of the sort, and likely the last, but I’ve never really come to fully understand what makes it so appealing to me, although I can think of a few things that I love:

• The ability to play ANYONE ANYWHERE ANYWHEN. Perhaps the first and most obvious thing to me is that anything is possible. Wanna play dystopian sci-fi? Go ahead! How about some supers? Here you go! Traditional fantasy? Of course! And the best thing is that *we* as players and GM get to decide what “traditional” even means! While I’m not hugely interested in the default setting (killing time traveling space nazis is albeit conducive to adventure and plots, but not what I’m in the mood for mostly), I do have dreams of one day create and run at least one fantasy/historical campaign, and play it through various ages (ie TLs), all the way up to TL12+ and exploring different genres etc along the way. Just thinking about letting players create heroes whose actions really do reverberate through the universe and let them experience it gives me goosebumps! GURPS makes this more possible than anything I’ve ever imagined.
• The natural connection with the real world. I skimmed through some of the newest books, and in Disasters: Hurricanes I came across the Beaufort scale. I was amazed how similar the height of the waves were to Beaufort level -5 in SM. I’ve noticed several such coincidences, which I’m starting to suspect is more than a coincidence, and a sign that GURPS has struck something deeper; it’s as if it has a natural connection to the world as we know it. Sure, that’s partially one of the benefits of having physics degrees etc among the editors, but I get the impression it’s also part of a long conscious effort of the development of GURPS as well; break the world up into atoms and put it together however you like!
• Great “meta” supporting the presentation. I can't deny that the meta of the presentation is rather in my taste. Everything from old song lyrics, quotes from famous cultural works, etc, are all really entertaining. For instance, I’ve seen in several places the formula “How Many [X]?”, which I can only hope is a nod to Life of Brian’s “How many Romans?”. Not too seldom do I learn of a new movie or decide to look into a book I’ve heard about but never gotten around to actually reading. I also noticed that sometimes it’s surprisingly fresh. Once I read a quote from a movie and it turned out that the book was published the same year. Regardless, it all makes me chuckle or smile, and simply reading GURPS makes me happy to the core.

What is the beauty of GURPS (4) to you?