Quote from: Koltar;532031GURPS 4/e doesn't need 'fixing'.

It never did.

You are obviously satisfied with GURPS as it is. I am not.

QuoteMost of the complaints I see about it are people whininbg about how it is marketing and that if it was prssented in a different way theior friends might play it. That mostly boils down to:  "My players have a small imagination so if doesn't look like D&D they won't try it"

But we actually tried GURPS, it's what made us grow cold on GURPS.

Regarding the "small imagination" commentary, you might be right, my imagination is not what it used to be, paying a mortgage is a spirit crusher.

QuoteThe similiar constant complaint seems to be about character creation being difficult.

It really isn't.

In this I agree, it's not complex, it's a chore and boring.

QuoteThe templates in various books or pdfs make it easier - but you don't really need them.

I didn't find templates helpful nor satisfactory. Even with templates, you have to tally how many character points you have, which is a problem, at least to me.

QuoteSo, what the complaint about character creation really translates to is: "I am used to a game book telling me what I have based on Class system. GURPS doesn't have that - I'm confused now and lost"

Thats gamers admitting they like being told what to do and they don't want to think or decide for themselves what to do.

You say that as if that was a bad thing. It's not. The most successful RPGs ever, D&D and Vampire, were like that, you had clear archetypes on which to base your character.

I'm not saying GURPS should be a class system, I just want the good parts of GURPS without the fat. Savage Worlds and BRP don't have character classes and still they don't suffer the "too many options" problem.

QuoteThe GURPS books and writers give the gamer more credit for intelligence than other games do.  I don't see that as a fault or problem.

- Ed C.

Supposing your commentary about intelligence is true, even idiots like me :rolleyes: have the right to have fun playing RPGs.

Quote from: Simlasa;532045It's a problem if you're actually trying to make some money by selling the system to people... many of whom do not want the sort of mental exercise you describe in their entertainment.

This!!!!

To this I'd add my commentary about the 30-somethings. When I was a teenager and I had a lot of free time, I could afford that luxury, now that I have children, a mortgage, and responsibilities, I cannot, nor do I want to.

And I'm not the only one.

Quote from: PaladinCA;532046Don't you get it. GURPS players are just superior to us lowly d20 shlubs. Koltar thinks so and he's openly GURPS loving. So it must be true.

No, those of us who are d20ers just aren't smart enough to be able to handle what GURPS has to offer all of us. :rolleyes:

Ironically, I think D&D3 and D&D4 suffer from the very same problem. They have gotten too complex, bloated, and convoluted. It's one of the reasons (not the main one) why the OSR is the new cool thing.

Quote from: misterguignol;532047You just don't have the IMNTELLIGENCE!

You don't have the INMTELLIGENCE to know it's spelt INMTELLIGENCE, not IMNTELLIGENCE!!!

Quote from: James Gillen;532055As a HERO fan who's starting to feel the same way about HERO System as you do GURPS, I concur.  Not so much that there is no value in a universal system - Hero Games did OK when they finally made "Champions" a universal system for all lines in 4th Edition - but in terms of the bloat.  In my review of HERO 6E on RPG.net, I said that the decoupling of "Figured" secondary stats from Primary Characteristics led to having to buy a lot of stuff - including OCV (chance to hit) and DCV (chance to not get hit) separately before skill levels and the like led to point inflation, or needing more points to get the same quality of character or less.  And even though they increased starting character points to compensate, it still adds up to more time and calculation and complicates things unnecessarily.  And if you're trying to both get new players and keep the guys who liked the last edition just fine, the last thing you want to do is complicate things unnecessarily.

JG

HERO 4th edition had more or less the same rules as HERO 5th, but the manual was slimmer, I don't know what happened. And yes, agreed.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;532089If it weren't for Munchkins, SJGames would have been out of business a long time ago.

Yes, I agree.

QuoteThe GURPS rules say not to add everything that's listed in the book to your character.    That is the lamest excuse I ever heard for crapping out on GURPS: "There's too many skills in this book.  There's too many traits.  Blah blah."  Simple answer: "Don't use them."  Even simpler answer: "You don't have enough points to spend anyway for them."  Anyway, either you want to play a detailed character, or you want to play a cardboard character.  GURPS doesn't care either way.

Don't use them? That's the problem!! If I want to run or play GURPS, I get a lot of stuff I'm not going to use, that's the problem.

Regarding the "you don't have enough points to spend", that's another problem, the more powerful the characters, the more bloated. Like D&D3.

QuoteHere we go.  Drumroll...

Tachaaaan!!!

QuoteHow would you compare GURPS 2nd Edition then with BRP and SW?

I don't know GURPS 2nd, sorry. :idunno:

QuoteWhy undo what GURPS 4th Edition has in it?  Anyway, if GURPS is chopped away so that it becomes another BRP or SW, then where do players go that want more realism/simulation?

BRP is already a competitor of GURPS for players who are into realism/simulation. Savage Worlds is not, I have to concede that.

QuoteThey'll be playing whatever rules they originally learned on.  The question is, what set of rules will they pass down to their kids?  It would kind of suck if the old farts played GURPS 4th and then passed down only BRP Cthulhu to their kids because "You kids just won't have the necessary IQ or time needed to play a system like GURPS.

In my experience, kids have a higher tolerance to crunch than adults. Adults  have a lot of responsibilities and when they game, they want to forget them and feel like kids again.

QuoteI'd like to know though how many kids (age 16-20) are playing HarnMaster.

I'm curious too.

Quote from: Claudius;532253Ironically, I think D&D3 and D&D4 suffer from the very same problem. They have gotten too complex, bloated, and convoluted. It's one of the reasons (not the main one) why the OSR is the new cool thing.

Definitely but I think it's a combination that you have already hit on. The games have gotten more complex overall and the fanbase is aging. We just don't have the inclination or time to be involved in games that require 30 minutes or an hour to make a character. Or have hours to create cool new world whole cloth.

Then you have something like OSRIC which mostly has medium complexity which hits the 3e itch and because EVERYBODY and their uncle played one version or another sometime it's easy to just wing or use with old boxed stuff you might have or that Greyhawk book sitting on the shelf.

I am only saying this not because I dislike GURPS but the opposite, I like the game and want it to be much more.

Quote from: Géza Echs;532102Worked great for Transhuman Space, I thought.

I would go further, even.

Quote from: Claudius;532255You don't have the INMTELLIGENCE to know it's spelt INMTELLIGENCE, not IMNTELLIGENCE!!!

I was actually hoping someone would catch that.

I was with you for a while Claudius, but now it just sounds like you don't like point buy games anyway, so I'm not sure I see the point.

Seems like you should just play something else.

GURPS 3e was a solidish core, and a good system.  It's weaknesses were largely just from a lack of broadness in the core (lack of SF support), and a technique of trying to "balance" magic and psi by just making them hideously complicated nested point sinks.

I thought once that what 3e needed was just more of those common options that were once in the compendiums and genre books to be included in the core, but what I think it actually needed was just a clean-up, and a broader, but still modular and accessible base.

3e was a good game.  4e could be a good game, but it's buried beneath a bunch of shit that doesn't need to be in the corebook, and it makes navigating the damn thing a colossal chore.  

Simplifying skill buying would also clean up a lot of the math involved, and make it a much more straightforward process.  All that shit with half-points and division and calculating from a bunch of disparate stat bases needs to go.  Also, fucking percentage modifiers are an AWFUL idea, and make chargen in 4e feel like fucking HERO.  

What it needs to do is go back to the 3e level of depth, just with wider coverage.  Let me play low fantasy, modern thrillers and action, and Firefly-type SF, all in one corebook.  Those kinds of low-powered genres are where GURPS strengths have always been, so focus on those and giving me the tools for those in the corebook, and leave all the 37 damage types and superpowers and percentile point mods to other "advanced" level sourcebooks.

Quote from: Claudius;532259Regarding the "you don't have enough points to spend", that's another problem, the more powerful the characters, the more bloated. Like D&D3.

Your GURPS character starts with few points.  I can't help you if you're giving all the players huge amount of points in order for them to buy up the entire chapter on skills.  

Common sense tells you what skills to pick for the particular world setting.  And if you pick a "wrong" skill (say if during play, you wish you had bought a different skill instead), you can always learn that other skill.  You're supposed to be role-playing your character the way she/he is anyway.  Not maxing out every point spent on the most optimum skills and advantages possible.  Otherwise, you're only playing the game for the dice rolls, and you get pissy if you can't roll your way.

Quote from: J Arcane;5322653e was a good game.  4e could be a good game

I looked that the e4udpate that shows what was changed from GURPS 3rd to 4th edition.  I like that the result charts and other die roll charts in 4th were simplified so finding results is quicker.  I like that GURPS 4th got rid of the Physical Hard and Mental Hard modifiers for skills, for example, and changed them to DEX Hard and IQ Hard (since player sheets don't have a "Physical/Mental" attribute or meaning on them).  Just little things like that help speed up what a player needs to compare his/her 3d6 to.

For an RPG that has only 4 attributes in it, basically.  It's interesting how well the game system simulates everything.  Last night I was reading through SPI's Universe.  So many attributes.  So much squaring of numbers (attributes even) during combat rolls.  No wonder I didn't play the game as much as I had wanted to.  I think I only used the world Generation system from that game.  Every player needed a calculator for Universe.  Maybe because calculators were still new, the game designers thought "let's use these!"    I still don't know if Universe simulated things well or not.

Quote from: Claudius;532261I would go further, even.

You mean in terms of having more than just the generalized rules throughout, then an appended focused version of GURPS Lite in the back of the book? I'd agree - I think that would be even better than what THS had (which, again, I thought was fantastic).

I wonder if the base of role-players has just shrunk too small for a generic system to have a big market.  

One of the great things about a system like Gurps when I was at Uni was that if I had an premise for a modern day or sci-fi campaign, I could just use Gurps.

But if they're aren't enough gamers out there who want to try something other than D&D, then these systems will struggle.

Quote from: Dog Quixote;532771I wonder if the base of role-players has just shrunk too small for a generic system to have a big market.  

One of the great things about a system like Gurps when I was at Uni was that if I had an premise for a modern day or sci-fi campaign, I could just use Gurps.

But if they're aren't enough gamers out there who want to try something other than D&D, then these systems will struggle.

This.

I, and most of the other people complaining about marketing and the need for more entry-level products are basically complaining about one core thing- we cannot find enough people to play gurps with us. And that means we'll buy less gurps books because we don't get to use them. And this means less gurps for everyone.

And we often truly love the system. Despite every complaint I've ever written about SJGs, I think gurps is positively brilliant.