GURPS, 3rd Edition (Revised) by Steve Jackson

[james_davis_nicoll]

GURPS, 3rd Edition (Revised) by Steve Jackson

In which we examine TFT's (sufficiently different to avoid lawsuit) offspring, the Generic Universal Roleplaying System.

Comments

[patrick_morris_miller]

The index is notable because it exists at all, and because it is, as far as I could tell, correct. Neither of these facts should be notable and yet … they are.

If you want to watch my blood pressure spike, ask me about the indexes in Traveller 5.10.

[james_davis_nicoll]

The very example I had in mind.

[(Anonymous)]

One thing I loved about GURPS was that SJGames had a BBS (Bulletin Board System) back in the early '90s, before the World Wide Web had even been invented. I could download errata for printed books and also playtest versions of upcoming books.

I can't get anyone to play GURPS with me these days, but as noted, my stack of sourcebooks is still frequently useful for other games. GURPS Traveller Far Trader is perhaps the one I've used the most- for how common it is that a Traveller campaign consists of the owner/operators of a tramp freighter, the Traveller sourcebooks I've read are pretty bad on the actual economics and practice of that business and lifestyle. GURPS Traveller Far Trader was co-written by a PhD student in economics, and it does a great job of explaining how international trade works today, could be expected to work in the future, and how tiny tramp freighters can make a living picking up the scraps from giant freight ships, either the Panamax container ships of today or the 50,000 ton freighters of Traveller.

--
Nathan H.

[patrick_morris_miller]

One day when I was in college I decided to finally pay the long distance charges (and figure out how to get my hand rolled terminal program to make a long distance call from the campus system) and try out SJG' bulletin board.

The day I picked was immediately after the Secret Service raided them...

[dsrtao]

How do you feel about remote game sessions in these days of adulting and pandemics?

(I don't have a current remote GURPS game, but I might be interested in putting one together.)

[(Anonymous)]

I tried remote play with my regular group back early in the pandemic and it just wasn't working for me. I can't stay focused on a TTRPG when I'm not physically in the room with people, my mind wanders and I lose track of what's happening. So I wish your game the very best, but I can say including me in it would not work out well.

--
Nathan H.

[roseembolism]

GURPS was the first game where the breakpoints between attributes and skills were so convoluted that I needed an early spreadsheet to make a character.

For example, I wanted to make a Grimjack style fighter detective, so I originally gave him a decent Intelligence. But then I realized that the Int-based detecting skills I wanted to give him were few enough that it made more sense to buy Int down and use part of the savings to increase the skills. But if I bought Int down too much, I'd hit the breakpoint of the skills, and their cost would increase.

And the thing is, one really really wanted to be as point efficient as possible, because there were so few characte points, and whew disadvantages were so bad....

[patrick_morris_miller]

I never gurped in anger, but it seemed to me that the way to cheese a character was to pick either DX or IQ, buy it at a near superhuman level, then put half a point into lots and lots of skills using that attribute. (To maximize your bang/buck ratio, try to steer clear of skills that default relative to each other.)

[jreynolds197]

That's how you get the best bang for your buck.

So you get a genius-level physician who's spent a couple of months actually studying the subject. Be afraid, be very afraid....

[viktor_haag]

I've yet to be convinced that GURPS as TFT-offspring actually improves on TFT. I mean there's certainly a mountain of more support for GURPS and many of their setting books are wonderful, but the lighter touch of TFT seems to appeal much more strongly to me these days than the mechanical-completeness approach of GURPS.

(Pie-eyed idle dream -- I kinda wish all those awesome setting books were re-written in TFT terms...)

[jreynolds197]

Long-time player of GURPS 3E (my first copy of the book was bought in 1988). Tried to get my friends to go to 4th Ed, but they were unenthusiastic.

Way back in the day, we went all-in on the "buy -40 points of disadvantages. Then you get more points for awesome stuff!" After several decades playing that way, and a bit of thought, I realized that one ten point disadvantage was enough to affect every waking moment of the character (sleeping moment too, if you counted Insomnia and its ilk of disadvantages). Which would be enough to put a person with maxed out disadvantages at risk of the psych ward of a hospital.

Still play the game, although we've dropped most of the more cumbersome 'advanced combat' rules.

[james_davis_nicoll]

I went through a similar process with limits in Champions. These days, if I played Champions, I'd rather abilities that worked over abilities with lots of raw power. Unless I was playing Kid Apocalypse, where the point is power without control.

[(Anonymous)]

It occurs to me just now that I am oddly bimodal as regards to rules "crunch". My two favorite game systems are GURPS (which tries its best to have a written rule for literally every possible thing imaginable) and the Black Tea Society, a local LARP where the GM hands you a single-page character sheet, lets you read it for fifteen minutes, then the GM collects the sheets back up and shreds them, and you play for six hours with no rules whatsoever beyond some OOC safety rules. ("No harmful or sexualized touching without permission, don't exit the game area without telling a GM, the game pauses if someone appears to need medical attention.")

So max crunch or no crunch, but I have little love for any quantity of crunch in the middle. I do play other games of course, but mostly because my friends want to play them and I like spending time with my friends.

--
Nathan H.

[(Anonymous)]

I was a fan of TFT, did quite a bit of early playtesting and feedback on GURPS, and wrote the first draft of 1st edition of GURPS Magic. I have quite a few fond memories as well as some frustrating ones.

Understanding the probability curve of 3d6 was very useful to knowing how skills and abilites work and what to expect:

A +4 increase or modifier that takes you from modified skill 8 to 12 drops the fail chance from 74 percent to 26 percent.

A +4 increase or modifier that takes you from modified skill 12 to 16 drops the fail chance from 26 percent to 1.85 percent. 8-)

(It also drops the critical fail chance from 1.85 percent to 0.46 percent.)

17 was always a fail and 18 was always a crit fail so once you hit 16 the only reason to try for higher is to countaract bad modifiers or to get special bonuses for skills at certain levels (like the skill 20 reaction bonuses for Diplomacy and Fast Talk, and the casting cost and time reductions for spells.)

W. Dow Rieder
Riderius

[viktor_haag]

My gut feels happier with the "easier or harder means a different number of dice to roll!" approach of TFT rather than the "add or subtract to a static number of dice" approach of GURPS. But I do not know if math will back up my gut. I think my gut feels happier when it doesn't need to add or subtract, and certainly when it doesn't have to add or subtract more than once. 8D

[patrick_morris_miller]

"2D and hope for boxcars" works fine for me; roll under systems don't seem as right - high numbers are good, right?

(I can count to 99 on my fingers, so a little arithmetic doesn't throw me. Worst case, the referee will say what buttons to click in the VTT.)

The only dice pool system I've played is Eldritch Horror, where the more dice you get to roll, the better. There's systems that do the opposite; I don't think I could handle that.

[alexxkay]

[...] if the character is designed as poor, they will remain poor until that drawback is paid over via character points no matter how much money comes their way. Every wonder why Peter Parker could never catch a break, financially? Because he was designed poor.

And the reverse. Which perhaps explains how Ozymandias could give away all his money, yet easily make a new fortune: Designed Rich.

[scott_sanford]

It's happened to Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne, too.

Off topic, but I'm reminded of admiring how the old Marvel SHRPG handled wealth. Characters had a Resources stat that worked basically like all the others. Made your Strength roll? Great, you can lift that. Made your Resources roll? Great, you can afford that.