Might also mention that GCS is free, and is available natively for Windows, Mac, and Linux (fully packaged so it'll run on any distribution that's new enough to have the required libraries -- generally no more than 2-4 years old). It's a vastly easier method of building characters even than a spreadsheet, plus when you're done, it'll print neatly formatted paper sheets (though I've gotten into the habit of using it during games on my laptop).
@@sagizm0ndI'm preparing a campaign to be DM, and I honestly, don't know how to build a character sheet from zero without GCS 😂 It will be my first campaign so it's ok
I know that GCS is free and cross platform, and is an excellent product. But it is worth mentioning that there is an *Official* program for creating characters: GURPS Character Assistant. It is windows only, and costs $15, but is actively supported by SJ Games, and in ongoing development. v5 was just released.
I love GURPS but its hard to describe it as A TTRPG and more of a TTRPG creation engine since the GM will always need to narrow the rules to some degree. Its a lot of fun if your willing to put a lot of working in as a GM. Made a 90s Star Trek system myself to play with my friends.
I know the Core book is all you need, but the greatest thing about GURPS is the supplements! I love the Action and Gun Fu books particularly. This way, the character is perfect for your vision. Remade The Mutant Chronicles universe using GURPS and the game was so friggin' awesome!
Ha, this is where you actually do need a spread sheet. GURPS Vehicle Builder is out there now though to make it a bit better, but I had the first edition Vehicles book when it came out and... it took forever to make anything. The second edition was much better. Then again David Pulver, who writes a lot of the more technical GURPS books, and the Vehicles books IS an engineer by trade...
A notable thing about the -1 disadvantages is that they're quirks, and quirks often are subject to a different limit than disadvantages, and often aren't necessarily 'bad', but they're not 'good', as that would be a perk if it was mostly good. Broad-Minded is not a quirk because getting along with others who are different is bad, but because it puts a stress that your character must be roleplayed with the consideration that they're broad-minded in mind, something that might not be noteworthy for other people, or even a trait they don't possess. They basically assign a minor point value to something like it bc it's a minor roleplaying expectation that the GM can call you out for not roleplaying, as to discourage seeing them as 'free points'.
exactly, it's not that the character is taking a cost, it's just a thing to keep in mind, like whilst I am an anarchist and progressive, in some settings it would be more a set of quirks or even honor since it impacts roleplay choices, in the same way making a character a jerk or bigot would also cost points since there's the commitment.
In the end a limitation is a limitation, and a clever GM can figure out how to make a character's virtuous quirk a drawback in some specific situations.
Great video, to answer your question about 35:15 "How often do you take the same characters and transport them across different settings", the "default setting" is actually something called "Infinite Worlds" where earth has discovered time travel (and dimensional travel) and are fighting a shadow war on multiple fronts against earthly and dimensional enemies. It's quite interesting.
Thats the setting I have been running a campaign for 4+ years now and yeah we travel all around. Ancient Egypt, Holy roman empire, Medieval Fantasy, world war 2, 1920's lovecraftian mansions. 1965 Bioshock-esque city of EPCOT (the disney experimental prototype city of tomorrow, with pre-recorded tapes to find and the whole shebang), Painted world of Jakub Rozalski and straight up Monster Hunter timeline where they gunned down an Anjanath with a modern gun emplacement.
21:15 The reason shots is listed as 6+1 is because of a quirk of magazine-loaded guns. You can charge the gun, which loads a bullet out of the magazine into the chamber. But the Magazine itself is limited by that first number. So to get 7 bullets into the gun, you'd have to load the magazine, charge the weapon, unload the magazine, and put the bullet into the magazine, then load it back in. This is important because if you load a fresh magazine, you're only going to have the 6 shots, but if you load it in the comfort of your own home, you can "cheat" that extra bullet out.
In fact most firearms' specs will show something similar, or state things like 14 in magazine, one in chamber. A lot of current laws state that if you are carrying in public, there needs to be two actions before you can fire. Usually this is flipping the safety and chambering a round. For revolvers, you are supposed to leace one chamber empty, and then the hand cocking action. Basically the complaint about 6+1 is just a complaint that GURPS sides with realism over playability in certain use cases, and for second by second combat that isn't a bunch of abstracted actions like other systems, that 6+1 could be very important in play. Like if you are in a fire fight, that first 7 shots could end it... but if not, and you do have a second magazine, you would then only have six shots, and hope it is over after that!
@@kuriboh635 Don't forget, Steve Jackson is in Texas. Good chance he thought it was particularly common knowledge. Being a Florida Man myself, I figured it was until recently.
My father in law had a gaming group back in the 90s they were looking for a game that had closer to real life mechanics ie- you get shot in the head you die 99% of the time -not just walk it off cause you're a levels 20 super human. They tried a bunch and settled on gurps. 30 years later my husband and I are in a campaign he is running using gurps in a high fantastic setting. And in the game play the things I love are that I can learn anything I want my character to learn. No classes or restrictions. You also have to take game play time to learn things like new spells. This makes the story very character driven and gives it a real life feal (I mean except for the learning magic part)
I know it's a very picky complaint, but I feel the need to point out that jackalopes of folklore have the horns of an antelope and not the antlers of a deer (with the distinction being that antlers are shed and regrown every year, whereas horns are permanent). To confuse matters though, many jackalope taxidermy mounts are made with deer antlers instead. Do with this information what you will! 😅
I can give a great example of where GURPS is really strong, based on my gaming group: We did the following sequence of games, all in GURPS: Wild West Zombies Fallout low-fantasy Roanoke disaster Isekai'd into a high-fantasy world with levels Modern apocalypse in NYC Sci-Fi traders Samurai-era Zombies in Japan We often start after a game completes with brainstorming WHAT we want to play and who will run it. All in one system.
One of the things we do in Session 0 for GURPS: After the End is we collaboratively destroy the world. We decide the nature of the apocalypse, the technologies that survived, the start-point of the campaign. Not many other games can give your table that kind of flexibility and mechanical support.
In all honesty I’m not sure I agree when it comes to finding “genre specific games”, maybe a wild west rpg is more “specific” with it’s theming then flavoring a gurps game with wild west elements, but then again, how many wild west rpgs have you seen that allow you create a jackalope character in them? (Might be a lot, I’m not an expert) with my limited time with gurps, I find it’s nice to know that pretty much any plans or ideas I have for my game will be possible with very few drawbacks. Last time I played dnd we tried to do a cyberpunk setting, and it just didn’t work very well because mechanics like “cybernetic augmentation” do not exist in dnd and guns have never been balanced. Either the benefits of implants weren’t that great or they were broken. Because we were making stuff basically from scratch. And then we have to rectify how either we can’t have magical classes, or how magic fits into a techno-hellscape. Problems upon problems, some were fun to solve and others just left me feeling like I’m trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. In turn, the actual Cyberpunk RPG system is great at doing it’s setting but now I’ve paid for 2 whole systems just to play two different games. For a creative (with a lot of time) who wants to be able to run off without having to change systems all the time or try and modify said systems Gurps is probably my top choice. I’ve heard it said that it’s the “last game you’ll ever need” and while I definitely like taking breaks from it from time to time It’s reliable in it’s adaptability and robust creation tool kits. Make spells, make powers, i enjoy making things in gurps as much as I enjoy playing it. Once you know the basics, which ultra-lite covers, your only limit is your imagination and some of the weird wording in the books. I’ve never known a game that is so accommodating to me and my friend’s game ideas. It’s perfect if you have any interest in game design or consider yourself more of a “storyteller/world builder” then a “gamer”.
The 6+1 is how we right a real guns ammo in real life. it just means you can only hold 6 in the tube fed mag of the carbine but you get the +1 if you racked a round in the chamber and top the mag off. so it could in theory its 7 but could be 1 or any number below 6 +1 if you've fired it. Same if I had an m16 30+1 1 is the round in the chamber and 30 is the mag because unlike a revolver you aren't limited to just the mag(cylinder). Just hope this explains it in a nice concise manner.
Very relevant with anything magazine fed, since you would have to go out of your way to load the extra shot. However, if there's any rule for accidental discharge then it's an important consideration whether you have a round chambered or not. On the one hand, you have an extra round in combat and don't need to chamber it at the start. On the other, could put a bullet in your leg.
Great video :) Why GURPS? Because it's fun, of course! I was introduced to GURPS in the late 1990's, and I made characters without computers or spreadsheets. It does take a pencil with eraser and calculator, but these are pen(cil) and paper RPG games. I loved how you broke down making a character. It was a very cool illustration. Oh, and you can use your knife in combat; just use the default, DX-4, or 9, in your case. That is the point of a default in GURPS, it's the level anyone can attempt that skill without training. EDIT: I use GURPS mostly to play gritty low fantasy, or high fantasy. It plays my idea of Fantasy better than D&D (which is too superhero, video game style fantasy for my tastes). I've also taught it to D&D players, one of whom said D&D plays fantasy better. After our GURPS game, he admitted that GURPS can do great fantasy too, though it's an entirely different tone.
21:21 6+1 Shots is a small but significant difference from 7 Shots. 6 Rounds in the magazine + 1 Round in the chamber. It is more important for weapons with interchangeable magazines, as an Assault Rifle woth 20+1 Shots will only have 20 shots available if you grabed an empty rifle and a full magazine, but it is a way to clue in how the weapon works. As another example, a revolver would have Shots 6: the revolver holds 6 rounds with no 'magazine,' every round is in its own chamber.
It makes me wonder how the Fallout series would have come out if they had stuck with GURPS instead of inventing the SPECIAL system. It would have been interesting to see how they did the necessary streamlining of the system.
@@neildavis2999 Don't forget, that the first Fallout came out about two and a half decades ago. The expectations mighjt have been slightly different back then.
@@neildavis2999 There's no such 41% failure chance at all, as the closest you get is 50% at 10, 37.5% at 11, and so forth. Higher SLs just represent characters that are proficient in their task, and often can do more complex tasks without failure being a high chance. The real reason for their not using GURPS had nothing to do with the system itself, but instead how SJG wanted creative control, as to limit stuff like extreme violence. Creative differences, as they cited.
@@neildavis2999 I mean, you need high skill to take less time into consideration for shooting people who are very far away, or to do things that are hard. GURPS doesn't inherently make characters with high investment feel less useful. In fact, it makes higher-investment characters feel like they're *really* good at tasks others in their group will probably struggle with. You can see that with the example of the Tracking skill of the Jackalope in the video, which can track someone who's a week gone on a coin flip, which is an impressive feat when most anyone else would have an incredibly low chance to do so, bordering on blind luck. This is also not to mention how a shootist in a combat-heavy game will generally feel like a good shooter if he can nail shots others would need to aim to hit, especially so if they have the Gunslinger advantage. Being able to just naturally offset penalties is a huge thing in GURPS, which is why skill level above 18 is actually a good idea if your concept has your character as absurdly skilled. It should be incredibly stressed that SL 11 means without modifiers (and range modifiers start beyond 2 yards), you can shoot someond at a 62.5% likelihood of success. This drops down to 50% or lower if you have any penalty at all.
GURPS can seem daunting for a beginning group but, if you start off with a limited subset of the rules, you can have a lot of fun with very few rules. The character point system allows you to build the character you want rather than what the dice gave you and all the players start out even. You also are permitted much more frequent incremental improvements along the way (no xp to gain levels, just cp awards). Finally, if you have a gaming group that likes variety, you need only learn one set of basic rules and how to apply the expanded and optional rules you want for each game setting. Players and GMs who have a good deal of experience manipulating this toolbox of a system can make the necessary choices for NPC creation very quickly and even explore character creation more fully. I personally House-Rule it to bits as well. Lots of fun 🙂 PS. I played GURPS 1/2e, 3e and now 4e
As far as I remember, broad-mindedness (as well as some other quirks that don't sound like something bad) is a disadvantage because sticking to it may get you in trouble (and you get character points for sticking to it, so it mechanically matters). I guess they mentioned the risk of unknowingly befriending an enemy soldier for example. Also, xenophobia is a disadvantage as well, so I'd say it's more about "being average is the safest".
Broad-mindedness isn't actually a "disadvantage", it's a "quirk", like most things with a -1 point cost. The point you get for them isn't mean to represent any drawbacks so much as just reward you for putting in the effort to make the character more distinctive.
The advantages/traits system sounds like it plays into the role play really well for non-traditional characters. The disadvantage system to an extent as well, but those fall more into personality traits.
To be fair... With the mount skill being in the same place as other skills... It does mean that theoretically, you could have a 2-player team of a dragon and their rider going into battle.
At about 25:00 -- you *should* have a default skill in Knife of DX - 4 (B208, beginning of the Melee Weapons section) -- reasonably, anyone who has a knife as a tool can make an attack with it, even if they're clumsy at it. The default skill sucks, but it's not "can't attack" -- it'll be 9 with your DX 13 , which gives almost 50% chance of success. If your rifle is gone or you're out of cartridges, it's another option (though in this case, it'll be less effective than antlers or even a kick). Use of the empty rifle as a Club is another option worth writing down at default -- that'll be DX - 4 as well, but of course crushing rather than cutting or impaling like the knife. BTW, Mount skill is in the character skills section for the cases of sapient creatures that can carry another as a rider (vs. in a hand or claw, for instance). This would be most obviously applicable for dragons, centaurs, or giant eagles, all of which are intelligent in at least some of their origin mythologies, but are also clearly capable of serving as mounts (again, in at least some of their origin myths). A domestic animal trained for riding would have the Mount skill (being DX based, low IQ isn't a disadvantage), but nothing keeps a dragon, pegasus, or hieracosphinx from learning the skill (or using it at default). The Basic Set lists of Advantages and Skills also include stuff for "vehicles" or "constructs", because those are playable character types in some settings (Transhuman Space, for instance, may include android bodies with either AI or uploaded human minds, sapient vehicles or ships, etc. and one of the worked examples in the back of the Characters book is a sapient robot). At 37:00 -- why wouldn't I just buy a Fantasy specific RPG vs. GURPS basic plus Fantasy supplements (like Magic, mostly)? Because I don't know any other system with the level of granularity, skill base, classless system, and "magic as skills" that does even as well as GURPS. Fantasy Hero is close, but in my experience surely no better (Hero System is the generic system core of Champions) and with fewer premade skills and advantages/disadvantages -- even more of a Lego set, if you will.
On a separate note the guns not being balanced across time periods is pretty much how it works in reality. If I fire any metallic cartridge that isn't a 22lr or smaller at a night's armor that knight is going to most likely have a bullet in him for the foreseeable future because his armor really wasn't made with that in mind even a 72 caliber musket from his time would probably punch through. This is why from the popularization of guns till ww1 armor wasn't really an important part of the battle feild when fighting against guns and why you only wore your clothes. It wasn't really until ww1 that artillery and bomb shrapnel caused head wounds on a large enough scale to for a military to re adopt metal helmets and body armor wasn't perfected for the average soldier till Vietnam when Kevlar was found to be bullet resistant and practical in combat. It really took that long to figure out how to negate the advantage that a firearm brings to combat.
That's the idea behind GURPS. It isn't balanced like other systems. It tries to model settings and physics, first and foremost, adding any cinematic/fantasy/supernatural elements afterward. It's always bugged me that players actually want ancient armor to block lasers, or a sword to kill as effectively as a heavy machine gun. That would simply make everything homogenous and boring.
@@wichhouse ya and although I haven't played a game of gurps yet it's something I actually like. Real life isn't fair so why should every game we play be. It makes sense in a one trick poney like dnd but not everywhere.
@@kuriboh635 It also helps that you can spend points to be much, much better with swords, to the point that they're viable again. Assuming it's allowed in the genre.
Somebody did design some armour for soldiers to use in WW I. It worked pretty well in terms of stopping bullets, but it was a failure in practice--the soldiers reacted to being under fire by hitting the dirt. Normally smart. When you're in heavy armour and "the dirt" is foot-deep mud, it's a bit more problematic.
@purplelibraryguy8729 ya german lobster armor was pretty crazy from that time. The main part germans kept was the plate from the helmet for sniper protection. But it's still a fascinating attempt overall. I've thought about buying a replica set. But practical armor really wasn't achieved till around Vietnam with the advent of Kevlar for flak vests.
Small point to make towards your thoughts near the end; the biggest benefit of GURPS isn't just being able to settle any game setting with the same rule set, it's that you can mix and match different settings without any weird rules break moments. You can have a TL7 character from a magitek universe, alongside a TL3 Martial Cultivation character, a TL9 character that's a scientist in a Marvel-style supers setting, and a TL5 character that lived as a Pirate in a world just starting into steampunk stuff, and there's no issues of the rules not functioning between them - and, in fact, you can get all of them balanced to feel relevant and useful in every encounter in some way. Saying "It doesn't do any one setting really well without buying specialized modules" would be like complaining that a Trading Card Game doesn't give you a perfect deck as a starter and you need to go and get the expansions that fit your playstyle. Buying the modules or getting them online is part of the utility, because the system is designed for it in a way that things like D&D isn't. That said, You've re-ignited my desire to play GURPS, and now I need to get some 4e core set books and bully my friends and family into playing with me.
Disadvantages aren't bad, per se, they just limit/change character choices. In times when being stubborn or narrowminded would be useful, your jackalope will struggle to do so. Likewise your Jackalope will hedge against stereotypes, even when it might be useful to fall back on them. Loner and Broadminded are interesting choices. You don't really like people but you ain't got a problem with them. You'd probably appear standoffish - Unfazable would eb a great advantage to pair with that. I don't know if restricted diet is a disadvantage in this setting, as most of the characters are already herbivores. And the disadvantage struggling also includes money that you WILL earn in game. You earn less because you are struggling. "6+1" means "6 in the magazine, plus 1 chambered" - Not a meaningless distinction at all when guns can misfire. And don't forget the +4 to +6 for having plenty of time (I.e. out of combat time) - you would roll Tracking at 19/14, not 15/10 Also I would have referred back to your HP - You did 14 damage and most people have 9-15 HP GURPS was my first game, and I used to make characters on me and I made characters on paper
OK, this will cause some screaming: D&D does NOTHING better than ANY OTHER System! OK, that's just me. Classes? Really? Levels? Really? D20? Really? No way! OK, having said that, in all honesty if you like D&D, go play it. If you don't ... there are so many genre specific systems out there that just $U￠K! Take Shadowrun as an example. A GREAT setting but among the most horrible rules ever written! => Another great reason to use GURPS is when you simply hate the genre specific rules. Additionally: I play (GM) Shadowrun in GURPS. I have my own fantasy setting which I also GM in GURPS. And maybe I'll start a SiFi world in parallel to those two... And game mastering different settings and having to jump between different rule sets is ... well a bit challenging and will take away from my storytelling ability because part of my mind needs to remember rules... Maybe you can tell, I LOVE GURPS *lol* P.S.: Thanks for making this video btw. Nicely explained!
Common GURPS character building trick: Try to get a total of DX and HT divisible by 4 during character generation (12 and 12, 13 and 11, 14 and 10, etc.) or if not, drop or raise your Basic Speed to a flat integer as 5 points to get both +1 Move and +1 Dodge is a steal while dropping from .75 or .5 Speed to the next round number down will almost never have an impact on you, but the 15 or 10 extra points is worth a lot in character generation.
I disagree with your idea that GURPS & other generic games fail to deliver on a theme. I find that they enhance role play by being more relatable. It can help make various sources of magic different mechanically giving a flavor to the world that is missing in most class / level systems. Threats are more real in GURPS than with class/level games.
There is great software for character creation. I have been playing and running GURPS since the early 90s. The advantage I find for GURPS that if I am running a game set in Fantasy on Tuesday, then Sci-Fi on Friday, and do not have to learn or remember a different rule system. Same rules, just different settings. Time and Alternate Dimension hopping is a popular setting that GURPS has, and even their fantasy world setting (Banestorm) has these dimensional rift storms that draw people in from other dimensions and/or time.
I realize that "necessary" is a relative term, especially when talking about GURPS, but the "6+1" vs. "7" for ammo capacity of the rifle actually is important, it's specifying that one of those shots is in the chamber which isn't the case for all guns. This means, among other things, if you want to practice proper gun safety you wouldn't load that one round in the chamber, meaning the capacity is only 6 unless you're actively expecting to need to shoot something very soon. And in a game like GURPS there's actually a chance that "your gun went off because you weren't practicing proper gun safety" could be a concern.
@@rommdan2716 So hey, the great thing about there being so many great TTRPGs out there is that if you don't like one of them, you can just not play it. You might not want this level of detail in your games, and that's great! I prefer simpler games myself. Many people do, however, enjoy this level of detail and GURPS is a great option for those people.
@@rommdan2716 AnotherVagabond forgot to mention that gurps is VERY modular. There are even official versions that HEAVILY compact the game. Lite is 32 pages and Ultralite is a small 1-page pamphlet. No, I am not kidding. Gurps is meant to be modular and you kinda shouldn't include LITERALLY EVERYTHING in your setting. its just like how you don't use every spice in your kitchen when cooking rice or meat. (unless your kitchen is very small)
I wonder if you'd be interested in making a character for Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying: Universal Game System. It seems to be GURPS' biggest competitor when it comes to universality, and I'm really curious about how they compare to one another.
About writing all that stuf before: Do you really want to start doing math in the middle of play? Instead of a spreadsheet one can use GCS (or GCA, but that one isn't free iirc) As for previous editions: there's a (free) conversion pdf for 3rd edition. But most of the things are compatible (I do not know about earlier editions). As for your question about why pick a genre specific book for gurps instead of a genre specific rpg: For some it might be the simmilar to those that decide to maul d&d5e to approximate playing something else. Because they know and like the style of play or explicitly don't want to pick up a new system
GURPS didn't change much over the years, it just added more. A lot more. I think the best Universal RPG I ever saw was the Hero Wars/Heroquest system from Issaries/Chaosium - the successor to Runequest that, sadly, didn't fare too well. Narrative driven systems just... don't...
> If you want to run a Genre specific game, why not use one that comes that way out of the box. Simple Answer: Because you've tried half a dozen of them, and you aren't happy with any of them out of the box, and you find yourself writing large qquantities of houserules for them or dropping them. There's something appreciable about being able to just put together the one I actually want by picking and choosing options. By the time it's Lego'ed together, I'll have my genre specific game that I want. And if I want to add in spaceships to my GURPS-based Iron Age fantasy game with a particular kind of custom magic system - it works. I've tried some of the other 'generic' options, and most left me frustrated with their limits in a way that (so far) GURPS has not. I'd like to see you do one of these for Fantasy HERO, if you're taking suggestions. Followup: I've also seen it pointed out that 'if you want a granular modern day action campaign, few systems handle it as well as GURPS'.
The only Gurps book I've ever looked at is the gurps cthulhupunk book which I found at a local used book store for like a dollar, and I didn't understand anything in it, and after the video I might, but its a cool concept and I might pick up the core book sometime now.
Yeah, Cthulhupunk was very vague about the rules. It was suppose give you a guide using Gurps Cyberworld as a backdrop. I ran several Cthulhupunk campaigns with our group to get us out of a D&D funk we had With the 4th edition, I'm used the Gurps Action Series for character creation and atmosphere. Gurps Horror for the Stress and Derange system add to fright checks. For magic, I used the Rituals/Books system, it fits well with Cthulhu-like world. Then I secretly added Psionics into the world. (In this world, Psionic powers boost ritual spells to explain how it able to reach cosmic levels. Oh and using Psionic powers attracts Mythos threats) I tweaked the Lair of the Fat Man adventure were the villain's motive was to raise up R'lyeh, as our third adventure.
I just want to mention that many of the rules you spent time articulating are not required or even inherently expected. Hit locations are optional and thus armoring specific body parts is optional as an example. Also doing the same thing two different ways is fine, for example innate attack vs Horns vs building a hyper complex affliction to achieve stab with headbutt are all fine ways to do something if not the optimal. I think people get into gurps with a lot of assumptions that cause them to over do it. In dnd it's fine to grab 5 books off the shelf and scatter them across the table because the implications of each book are very limited and curated. With gurps you really need to approach everything with a mindset of does this make it better or worse and only take the parts you absolutely need. Start with ultra light and only include what you really need to make the game feel how you want it to.
GURPS? Cool C.O.W.Boys of Moo Mesa? Even cooler. Some generic system options: Action! System Hero System (is kinda the Marvel of GURPS if GURPS where DC) Interlock Fuzion (due to Fuzion being a cross of the other 2)
I never much cared for GURPS, it always felt like a system by and for engineers who don't entirely understand how to think in other than concrete terms. One thing GURPS is definitely bad at: abnormal scale. Particularly, any character far outside of human averages. Think fairies or giants; the rigidly "realistic" baseline metrics of the system fall apart for such concepts. The Fudge system was in part motivated by author Steffan O'Sullivan's frustration with GURPS's inability to do his favorite genre, Bunnies & Burrows. Which of course is a polite nudge for a "Lets make up a Fudge character" video 😉
Yeah, the much longer version of this video went into the idea the GURPS has good "theoretical game design." Everything works fine, as long as you don't start bringing people into the equation.
@@zigmenthotep I really loved the video, but I have to say, I've played decades of GURPS with several different groups of people and it's always been a blast. I simply don't understand this idea that GURPS is a fun exercise until you try to play it or teach it or w/e. Anyway, still love the content. Keep it up!
I'm a college drop-out who is terrible at math. I've played and run GURPS games since the 1990s. I really don't like this stereotype that it's only good on paper. No hard feelings, though.
@@wichhouse It's odd to me, too. If you want giants to fight each other, they'll do fine. If you want giants to fight normal people, it can cause issues, sure, but only because giants will hit really, really hard. I've been playing GURPS for a while now, and never come across these issues, despite playing in some examples where people would think GURPS would break down, like one where my friend played a statue with telekinesis, whose arms were hunting him down, while I played a teleporting assassin, and my friend played someone who could grab items from other worlds, and another friend was a stand user, and another friend was an eldritch monster with high levels of terror. Sure, it wasn't balanced, but it was fun. Who gives a shit if my possession character can beat the Eldritch abomination, or if my teleport character can jump around the table like it's nobody's business if it's fun?
35:20 GURPS Basic Set, Fourth Edition, Campaigns Book (The "Dungeon Master Guide" for GURPS, as it were), Chapter 20 (The chapter numbers span between the Players Book and the Campaign Book, treating them as a single book for cross-referencing): Infinite Worlds. The default campaign setting is that ALL worlds coexist in a multiverse, and travel between them may be possible, depending on how much handwavium and/or unobtanium the Gamemaster wants to use. If the GM wants the game completely isolated from the multiverse, they simply define the game's universe as closed off to multiversal travel.
It's always a good idea for a GM (or author of a setting) to provide templates to streamline the character creation process. Also worth noting, there are many optional rules, so the complexity of the system -- and character creation -- can be further streamlined. For example, both hit locations and damage types are optional.
GURPS setting books are generally well researched and referenced, if you want a game in a very specific place and would like a book about legal codes of historical China or a game where everyone is a goblin in edwardian London.
The good part of generic system is that if you have an idea for a game, you have a system for it. The bad part: generic games tend to be "broader" than "deeper" as they have to touch lots of possible gaming setting. Another possible bad thing is that being generic means even the parts offered tend to be kind of vanilla, unless the game has lots of options for each part (like more gritty combat, or more cartoonish combat, low magic vs dark and dangerous sorcery, etc).
Awesome thing about GURPS is the huge amount of additional rulebooks. For pretty much any setting/tech level, there is a book to help you make a world with it
There are options to change games from realistic to cinematic to silly (naked armor, wildcard skills, etc.). You simply plug and play. Your game will still "feel" like a GURPS game, but it can be as silly or realistic (to a point) as you want.
GURPS does have some mechanical tuning you can do to make it fit your setting better, but in print it doesn't explain how to do that very well. Ultimately it has what I call a Boots-on-the-Ground prejudice. Namely if you imagine a picture of your character, the less of their boots that are on the ground generally the harder it is for GURPS to model that experience because of it's bias to realism.
Gun dork here: "X+1" is a meaningful distinction, e.g. it has a capacity of X in the magazine, plus the one in the chamber. For various reasons depending on the firearm, one may or may not want to carry a weapon with a round in the chamber, and for other types of firearms, it doesn't apply (or would be inverted, e.g. revolvers, which only have a cylinder of whatever capacity, and to carry "empty" as was not uncommon for safety reasons, it would become X-1). Example: A rifle with X+1 rounds is fired until empty, then reloaded. Once reloaded and racked, it would only have X rounds, unless someone took the time to load it, feed one round into the chamber, then remove the magazine and added another round back into it/add one more round into the tube with a deliberate, separate action.
Huh. Being extremely unfamiliar with GURPS (I only knew its name & that it was supposedly complicated), this seems a lot like Mutants and Masterminds 3e. A system that I love. Maybe I should give this a go
GURPS is definitely a universal system, and one of its biggest flaws as you mentioned, is if you want to run a genre specific game, why not play that genre specific game. The point you made that it handles universe setting and time specific settings well is something I noticed with GURPS as well. Great video overall!
Typically if I GURPSify a game it's a good setting with clunky mechanics, which is unfortunately endemic in the hobby. Another reason why not to play that specific game is not having to pay another $100 in core books, for any game ever again.
Also, dnd and pathfinder have unrealistic, highly abstracted combat systems. A 1 minute round?! Most real fights are over in 10 seconds. Pathfinder is not much better with it’s 6 second round. GURPS leans heavily towards realism, which is why it is so complex. One roll attack resolution is lame. It’s clear that the producer of this video didn’t actually play the game
@shiney stars dnd used to have one minute rounds, but 6 seconds still makes my point. GURPS is still a way less abstract system and models fantasy combat loads better than dnd and pathfinder. Anyone saying anything else hasn’t played it. Now, if you want to say that dnd et al are Funner to play, I say good for you. Detailed combat isn’t for everyone, and a streamlined combat system might be more appealing to many. But to say that GURPS doesn’t model medieval fantasy combat as well as dnd, like the author of the video did, is flat out wrong and shows he hasn’t played the system.
If you thought this was bad, make a character for Rifts. It's a post apocalyptic, interdimensional setting that has many of the same issues as GURPS. The video will be four hours long, but it'll put things into perspective.
I agree jscythe. Palladium started off with separate systems for each RPG. Then they made the original games retroactively compatible with newer "Megaverse" RPGs. Fantasy players still prefer the original system.
GURPS Character Sheet is a FOS program written in Java that has exporting options for Foundry and Fantasy Grounds, and works extremely well and is supported by the open source community and endorsed by Steve Jackson Games as well. If you use it, it dramatically speeds up the character creation process as everything in the Basic Set and a number of common supplements is included, as well as editing options to fine tune abilities. By the way the 6+1 rounds for ammunition is the magazine capacity plus one in the chamber. When you reload a magazine, it would only reload the 6, not the plus 1. But in the case of a tube fed lever action rifle, you would be able to ready the full 7 in 21 seconds. GURPS plays faster than D&D in terms of rounds of action. Spell casting takes second to cast at a reasonable level. Aiming a gun takes 2 seconds to do it right, one to brace, one to aim, which gives you the ACC bonus plus 1 for being braced. So many times, "rounds" consist of just going around the table with a lot of prep seconds. With everyone sitting around the table in initiative (speed) order, you just move around the table. When you do roll dice, you roll your attack, damage, and random location all at once using different colored dice. Which speeds up the game a lot. And as a GM, you can run the game more tactically like that, or you can run it more cinematic. Every "rule" in GURPS is a plug and play module for the GM. You can use Ammunition rules, or in the case of the more Cinematic Wild West C.O.W. Boys of Moo Mesa, the GM probably can safely ignore encumbrance, ammunition, and hit locations... and probably other stuff not conducive to the theme. That is what GURPS is designed to do... have a pile of rules you can ignore to have fun.
Man’s does not understand magazine +1 in the chamber max Ex AR15 has a 30 rnd magazine and 1extra bullet in the chamber so 31 total but as you use said weapon you would only be able to load one mag into the gun So if you run dry you could load only 30 but if you shot 15 rounds and reloaded then after the mew mag is in then you would have 31 again
I have been playing gurps since the 90's, moved from AD&D over to gurps, and yes the initial sessions were a bit brutal with many crippling injuries dismemberments and such things, but once we realized that you can't play gurps like AD&D things got a lot better and none of us ever wanted to go back. We play mostly fantasy and I would disagree that gurps doesn't do d&d or AD&D well, I adapted Forgotten realms, Dark Sun and spelljammer to gurps and it was actually more fun in gurps, especially for the people playing spellcasters. However Gurps requires a lot more work for the GM than most other systems I've played, so it's not very suitable for a quick one-shot game, but if you are going to be running a long campaign and are willing to do the work, nothing beats Gurps in my opinion. Good video, it's nice to see people looking into gurps with an open mind, far too many people base their opinion on things they heard or one or two play sessions with a GM that's new to gurps, and that won't give you a good feel for the system.
Great video that captures the feeling of playing GURPS. I played and GM'd for several years. The universality was handy for keeping the same system but switching campaigns to totally different settings. But so so crunchy. Would you consider doing a video like this for another generic system like Genesys (or similarly, the Star Wars RPG by Fantasy Flight)? I've found Genesys tries to be good at making *any* setting, whereas GURPS tries to run *every* setting at once.
It's funny how you mention how GURPS is not good with fantasy, since it seems to me that it does better fantasy than all the versions of D&D. Even high fantasy, and much better than D&D 5e. D&D is so restrictive, repetitive, and linear, as well as with an emphasis on RESTRICTIVE both by the game and its community at large (5e and OSR alike).
To show my age, I got a copy of GURPS because after bonding with my fellow youth group members, and at the behest of my mother, I decided that the Devils Game was at the heart of my migraine headaches and ridded myself of the evil. (Consequently, my migrai...STRESS HEADACHES from hiding D&D playing vanished.) However, I was still a gamer and a storyteller, and got a Second Edition copy of GURPS which -- along with 4-5 sourcebooks -- has remained on my shelf if only as reference material. I never could get my D&D buddies to play any GURPS with me though. The current D&D debacle is possibly going to let my table at least consider it. Maybe. LOL
I was not expecting a Cowboys of Moo Masa video... or I would have watched it sooner! 😂🙌 🐮 Edit: side note I just found out that the Internet Archive has season 1 to stream! 🤯 22:04 - I think this would be (0.3 * $20)/6 because I think a full "load" is 6x bullets and the 7th is one in the chamber
Nobody expects the Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa! I'm just going off the book, they don't even mention what the 6+1 means, so I must assume they're counting that as a full load.
Tech level in GURPS got more variable. They figured out technology does not progress in neat Age of Empires eras. In setting books they could describe a sci fi setting as TL 8 with TL 10 biotechnology. Or TL 6+1 to describe fantastic steamtech effectiveły doing stuff ahead of the times. This was often necessary with speculative fiction outside the realm of real life history. Or in settings where one area of superscience is advanced ahead of the curve.
GURPS is like 80% of my favorite ideal RPG system combined with 920% of things I have no want or use for. I make characters for it just using notebook paper or even index cards, never used a spreadsheet. Sometimes Notepad?
GURPs does fantasy *incredibly well*, I'm staggered that you came to the conclusion it couldn't. I specificalyl sought out GURPs for my fantasy campaign because it simply brought options to the table other fantasy systems just *don't*. Why not just play a genre specific RPG? Because it *still can't do* what GURPS can do. It's not the same thing at all.
exactly, I have yet to find a fantasy system that treats my rogue as a person with a body, when I fall out of a window trying to escape with loot because the guards saw me, my legs are gonna take it in their legs, and I'm most likely not going to sleep that off but need bandages, pultices or a specialized magic healer, I also can make custom interesting skills like ranged pseudo magic pick pocketing, putting a lot into using 1 type of dagger for special crits only when I have my gear without it being a magic item anyone can sell for a quick fortune, or even rules light stuff like spending my "level up" all on resisting temperature before we go to mountains.
I love Gurps, But I've always found the "universal generic" system connection superficial. Steve Jackson said he was inspired by the Hero System for Gurps. Hero is a real generic system where the player must build all aspects of the characters from scratch. Advantages disadvantages, powers, spells etc etc, Nothing in hero is made in advance for the player (If you want because supplement exist). Gurps is only universal for the genre. The rest is generated by the rules. Gurps is cool but Hero System is the godfather ;) Sorry for my english. Not my first language.
I agree that the biggest hurtle for GURPS is that it requires a lot of work up front to get the game to feel like a very specific genre. (and I am guessing you know this but were just covering the "out of the box" experience. ) Dungeon Fantasy, Action and Hunters book are nice examples of how SJG will put together a "how to" manual for GURPS, basically telling you , "OK here's what you need to focus on and here is what to ignore in the basic rules" as well as some more focused templates and GMing advice/reminders of how to handle a given situation that will pop up in the genre.
The biggest mistake in this video is that GURPS is not a role playing game. Asking why buy a fantasy based supplement is missing the point. GURPS is a system for the GM (or module maker) to add and remove components to at will and even per playgroup. The GM decides what the role playing GAME is, GURPS just gives a language to code it in. Even if you only play in the same setting, you may play at different crunch levels. You can add more crunch over time as your group gets more familiar with it, you may remove or even just tweak any parts you don't like. That is the value GURPS provides. Not as a game on its own, but as a standardized gateway to all possible worlds and levels of play you may want to dabble in. GURPS is not a tailored experience, because YOU are the tailor, my friend.
I really like the final ponderations in the video. Don't whish to "spoil" it here (if the concept of spoiling applies) but yes. A number of great authors explore specifically that element in their settings, and GURPS does this well. Wild West itself has a degree of this too, of course, even without using time-travel or abductions by Priest Kings to Planet Gor, or Mars, or what have you. Cowboys are not always dealing with other cowboys, there is another (tricky to talk about these days but still essential) element of this setting. That asks for Technologic Level considerations. Technology is a hierarchical thing. Arguably it is THE ONE AND ONLY hierarchical thing that applies when we consider different cultures. A rifle is different from a bow in a sense that does not (fairly) applies to the legal system, moral notions, or paintings and clothes of the society that makes rifles when compared to the society that makes this or that bow and arrows. Is nice to have a RPG system able to capture that specific element of reality and give it a fair translation into storytelling.
I disagree I think gurps could do dnd better then dnd .. cause you could creat a more diverse and feel good leveling system while keeping balance. Not to mention their is so many other things you could add like ex: perhaps you get a disadvantage while on an adventure bc the other cut your eye. At that time maybe you character thought of a cool move and created (learn) whirlwind cutting down not only the orge but his ally's also .
I never actually played it, but I had the book and a few supplements. Made lots of characters and settings. The concepts (particularly that list of examples of Technological Level) really helped shape my understanding of fiction and fictional settings.
"Broad-minded" appears to be a disadvantage because it's the minor form of "Xenophilia", which has you being very friendly with wild animals, monsters, aliens, and other things which are dangerous, so you basically get an extra point for being willing to hang around in sketchy taverns and the like.
Why does Broadmind (or many other disadvantages) give you points? Because they restrict the way in which you can RP the character. If you don't roleplay your disadvantages, the GM can not award earned character points (GURPS version of XP) after that session, or can give extra if you role-played well. Also, if all you use are d6 (because Evil Stevie worked on the idea that players could raid all the monopoly games and such in the house for dice instead of buying fancy ones), dropping the '6' is a great way to save *thousands* of characters per book, saving space and typesetting effort. Get over it.
I feel like the other huge strength of GURPS is its attempt at realism. I feel like this was either glossed over or completely ignored in this review, and it was the primary reason I ditched AD&D in the early 90s, and have stuck with GURPS ever since for all my games. Yeah, it's a lot of work to make characters, but it's also a thrill to have a player's archer shoot an arrow through an adversary's helmet visor from horseback as a result of die rolls and skill/terrain/speed modifiers, and not just as vague narrative flavor from a natural 20 roll. I love GURPS because it makes sense to me on a granular level, and I appreciate all the meticulous detail. Check out GURPS Vehicles for a closer look at how granular this amazing system can get (and yeah, yeah, they need a 4th edition of Vehicles already) Good overall review though! Subscribing!
Of note, there is on their page a way to sort out for the GM trim down what they want the players to have access to. Basically a simpler 'spreadsheet'. You really have two choices when designing a universal game. Either you have a Basic set that covers all the rules... or you would need to repeat the rules in each book, and have books for each genre. Gary Gygax's 'Dangerous Journeys' was an attempt at doing the second. D20 Modern seems to have also gone that route. The problem is that there will always be new rules that each genre will need to create as a sword swinging game doesn't necessarily translate well with a gun-slinging one. GURPS was designed around being able to take 3rd party stuff and convert easily, since it uses core logic in it. This is why you can design pretty much anything with it, even silly stuff! But it is definitely like having a lego set without a manual.
One advantage of GURPS is that being generic you don't have to learn a whole new game system to play in a different setting. The base rules are the same but you may need to learn a few setting specific rules. If you play in a group that does shorter games and switches genres a lot that can be a big plus. As always, your mileage may vary.
Zzzz. I fell asleep 25% into this video. I love Gurps, dont get me wrong, but the reason I never pay it is because it requires way to much GM babysitting. It's just a mess. I prefer games with settings, perhaps classes, and definitely a lot of structure.
30:30 I agreee, gurps is my favorite game and it has a steep learning curve if you just learn it alone. The first two or three tries on running gurps games were pretty janky, but now that I got used to it, I can make anything that dont have an absurd amount of points in a few minutes, and it's not too hard for a new player to get the hang of the game if there are other's helping. Of course not everyone wants to have to learn so much of the game before it gets easy, but for me, its totally worth it.
I love GURPS to death, but by god, creating a character from scratch by hand is a gigantic pain in the ass. Still, if you (and your players) don't get intimidated by the system, I cannot recommend it enough to anyone that enjoys crunchy RPGs. It is a lot easier to play than it looks like, it does almost anything, and it does it *surprisingly well*. Most people think that GURPS is only good because it can do everything decently well, but is never as good at anything as a system specifically made for that genre, but I disagree. I think that the general GURPS mechanics, while annoying to learn at first, are generally very good themselves*. Certainly above average when it comes to RPGs. Also, "It Does That" is the definitely the perfect slogan for GURPS. *if you like crunchy games. While the GURPS mechanics can be simplified a lot, it doesn't work very well if you want a purely narrative, rules-light system.
First time I played GURPS was when we were playing as time travel agents where we were tasked with tracking time traveling rogues and stopping them before they changed history. I literally checked out history books in the library so that our group could have an edge on the enemy. Literally helped save the emancipation proclamation because I had looked up that the document was kept in the back of a office that belonged to his friend and not in the white house.
I am in 13:32 and just realized that AI advancements along this and the next decade will probably make possible to have a proper computer game based on GURPS. As a viable commercial product, not just concept exploration for snobs. Some 3D adventure-RPG/God Simulator, with a open world main story that can be played by characters build with anything between 90 and 9.000 GURPS points. Flexible enough to provide meaningful challenges for any character. And fit any levels of technology, magic, and what have you.
This is excellent! I might send new players here to give them a quick rundown before I tell them to build their PC, with the added note that they wont need to do the math since GCS handles that. Your analysis at the end is very fair too, in a vacuum, the one thing GURPS does better is any genre mashup, world hopping and time travel, otherwise you would rather use a genre-specific game for a specific-genre campaign. But there is one more case to be made for using GURPS even then: If your group switch campaigns often you will not need to learn a new system to play the next setting. I would also like to add that while GURPS has many rules, you will not be using more than a small fraction of them. GURPS has very consistent rules, with a simple core and very little that is arbitrary, making the game easy to learn.
I really appreciate videos like this. I am newish, played a little dnd, but I wanted to make my own campaign with a simple rule set and honestly Gurps seems to fit the bill nicely. from the roots, very simple mechanics that leaves the game open to real roleplay and story telling like what I want. So getting a great breakdown like this from a vet is great. also I have tried GCS and its great, but also seeing this breakdown helps out as well. Edit: I wanted to put this here at the end after finishing watching the whole video, and seeing your thoughts on the game itself. It definitely seems very daunting at first but I like the basic mechanic of the success role, along with a few other things. I want to make a game that is very basic in nature but has a cool story and I couldnt really find a system that would cater to what I wanted, until gurps. It covers tons of time ranges which is something I actually wanted.
Jackalopes did exist in the old west... kinda. Apparently what some people thought were rabbits with antlers were actually rabbits with a rare virus that cause strange growths on their heads. When you look it up though, you may wish you hadn't. At least, I wish I hadn't. Looks pretty creepy and gross.
The argument of creating a new character, you learn as you go, but you can mix match basically anything, and the rules are always the same. It is much harder to create a new character for a system liek D&D where each class has its own table of feats and spells and once you go you locked.
That "bite only" example on Striking ST is an interpretation of the "Accissibility" universal modifier, as in "it only applies [in situation]" with guidelines for how infrequently it should be applicable to qualify (-20% is "about half the time", so if your Striking ST applied to attacks you could reasonably be expected to use about half the time like ranged weapons or melee weapons or something, it'd be a much smaller modifier than for the extremely limited use of only a single unarmed attack at -60%)
As for your parting comments... You aren't taking the same Character from genre to genre (or not often), but are taking //the same rules//. You might play D&D one campaign, then Warhammer Fantasy, then Call of Cthulhu, then Dune, then Vampire, then Fallout, then Macho Women With Guns, then... And, well, that's a lot of different rulessets to learn (not to mention buy). But all those genres run just fine under GURPS. Yes, even D&D, or should I say "murder hobo dungeon delving kitchen sink high fantasy".
Right around 29:00 you begin on "and this is bad". That's what your GM is for. You don't make GURPS characters in a vacuum. Your GM should be there to guide you towards the Attributes, Ads/Disads, Skills, and other abilities that will make the Character you're envisioning. Also, with 4e Templates (like the Archer you exampled) and Lenses (like the Elf Racial Lens) became a very big "new" thing. Templates and Lens give you all the options (or most of them, depends on how the GM is doing chargen), so a GM who doesn' want to have "babysit" evry Player through chargen can just present the Players with all the Lenses and Templates they can chose from, which is how most newby Gms and Players are advised to do thigns. If the GM and Players are GURPS experienced, then "freeform" can be fine, (I think freeform is always fine, but I still offer Templates and Lenses to my group as a "use these as examples at the very least".)
I feel like the idea of a "universal" system may simply have had more appeal once upon a time. These days we live in an era where it's easy to access vast quantities of TTRPGs thanks to the magic of the internet. Any concept you can think of probably has an RPG made specifically for it, even if it's just some small indie project. But I can see it being a much bigger deal when your options are limited by the realities of print publications and physical retail. Maybe someone who was there can give more insight: Am I on the right track or am I completely off the mark with this speculation?
Actually you CAN still use your knife in combat, as one of its defaults is DX-4. So DX 13, -4 = 9. On a 9 or less, you can hit with a knife. Not worth it when you have antlers.
GURPS is not my favorite universal Role Playing system (I vastly prefer HERO, since it's less fiddly in many situations), but I think one of the big advantages of a universal system over a specialized system is that It Just Works™ for the setting that you want to run. Sci-fi is a place where this especially becomes useful, because compared to Fantasy, or in this case, Wild West, where the genre conventions are defined in part by historical periods (or the zeitgeist understanding of those historical periods), Sci-fi is a lot more open-ended, so it's a lot less likely that you can find a game that fits, the way that for any high fantasy setting D&D works well enough.
