Yeah, I said it!

But seriously. He wrecked it.

Before Dr. Kromm took over, there was variety. There was creativity! The Gurps line truly was 'Universal'.


Now it's all realism, realism, realism. In the most boring and well researched way possible. Text books have more flavor.

Am I right! or am I right?

In order to facilitate reader enjoyment, the remainder of this thread will be translated from the original Klingon.

Quote from: KrakaJak;352535Yeah, I said it!

But seriously. He wrecked it.

Before Dr. Kromm took over, there was variety. There was creativity! The Gurps line truly was 'Universal'.


Now it's all realism, realism, realism. In the most boring and well researched way possible. Text books have more flavor.

Am I right! or am I right?

Only in the sense that if I take everything you say and pretend you said the opposite, you are right.

Quote from: KrakaJak;352535Yeah, I said it!

But seriously. He wrecked it.

Before Dr. Kromm took over, there was variety. There was creativity! The Gurps line truly was 'Universal'.


Now it's all realism, realism, realism. In the most boring and well researched way possible. Text books have more flavor.

Am I right! or am I right?

While I find that sometimes GURPS goes a bit far (read nitpicky) for my tastes, I also find that a firm grounding in reality makes fantasy proceeding from it richer and more believable. Going to have to see more evidence for me to agree with you (unless I'm simply missing a joke here, which is entirely within the realm of possibility).

That's OK, man.  Sean Reynolds ruined* D&D, so apparently people named Sean suck and should be thrown out of RPGs.

Wait.  Shit.  Except for Stonegiant (he knows who he is).


*=had a hand in the ruination of

We now have workable GURPS Supers rules. GURPS 4e is probably the first edition that can claim to do every action genre Hero does with a degree of competence.

Nope, not ruined at all... and still quite versatile.

Quote from: pawsplay;352538Only in the sense that if I take everything you say and pretend you said the opposite, you are right.

My sentiments exactly.

I've never found GURPS books to be as dry as people like to claim.

GURPS is better than it's ever been as far as I'm concerned.

The OP is so full of crap that even fresh targ poop couldn't cover the smell.

Sean Punch's work on 4th edition GURPS has made it a much, much, MUCH better Game.

Unlike some other games that had new editions - this one is actually a pretty easy conversion from earlier version. Hell they even made a booklet for the GMs to make conbversion easier.

Also - I've met Sean Punch and talked with him a little bit at Gen Con. He's a heck of a nice guy and prettty damn reasonable. Good sense of humor too Can't say that about every other RPG writer.


- Ed C.

Not being a GURPS man, sounds like this Punch person is playing to one of the game's strengths, viz. "realism" (I prefer "verisimilitude" or "grittiness" but that'd be splitting hairs).

I dunno, I think complaining about "realism" in GURPS is like complaining that Rifts is over-the-top, or that Star Wars is soft SF. *shrug*

Quote from: The Butcher;352579Not being a GURPS man, sounds like this Punch person is playing to one of the game's strengths, viz. "realism" (I prefer "verisimilitude" or "grittiness" but that'd be splitting hairs).

I dunno, I think complaining about "realism" in GURPS is like complaining that Rifts is over-the-top, or that Star Wars is soft SF. *shrug*

True. And also, GURPS 4e has more support for non-realistic games than any previous edition, times five, so I have no idea what the OP is on about.

GURPS weaknesses has always been adventures. SJ Games simply doesn't grok them and writes them as a mini-sourcebooks. The remaining weakness of GURPS started with 3rd edition when it ceased to be able to be readily used as a fantasy RPG thus distancing itself from a easy conversion for people used to playing AD&D.

The recent Dungeon Fantasy somewhat addresses this but still require to buy the two core books in order to use the first of the Dungeon fantasy and it still doesn't have a monster manual or a listing of magic items. In short it is not ready to run for a specific genre out of the box.

None of which are specific fault of Sean Punch but rather the attitude that always existed at SJ Games.

As for Sean himself I feel that his work with GURPS 4e has been generally good and the line catering to both the realism side of the fan base and the more gonzo side as well. From having run GURPS for over two decades 4e is by far the easiest to work of all the versions as a universal system.

Distilled into ready to run genre books (where all you need it the one book) GURPS could remain indefintiely as a second tier RPG. As it stands now I see it's fanbase steadily declining due to the fact it takes a fair amount of investment of time and money to get going with the system.

Quote from: KrakaJak;352535Before Dr. Kromm took over, there was variety. There was creativity! The Gurps line truly was 'Universal'.

Now it's all realism, realism, realism.

Yeah, those Dis/Advantages like Cursed, Extra Head, Ridiculous Luck, Homogenous, and Jumper are heaps too realistic.

Punch's main problem was having to put all that useless crap in, and being unable to trim it down, so that the core rulebooks are five hundred and seventy fucking six pages. Old Steve Jackson (US) ain't fond of brevity, just lots of italics and exclamation marks!

Quote from: KrakaJakText books have more flavor.

Well, he was a particle physicist... to be honest, it shows in the rules. cf slamming and falling rules, I can hear the model billiard balls clinking on the good doctor's table as he writes them. That and Pulver for Campaigns, great guy, but remember GURPS Vehicles? oy vey.

To me, the real issue is that they've mostly only published rulebooks since 4th ed. GURPS used to be famous for its worldbooks. Now, not so much. They listened too much to the BNGs with their desire for crunch to argue over.

I concur with the OP.

GURPS isn't remotely what it used to be.  

Which is a shame, because it used to be one of my favorite game lines.

Well, Steffan O Sullivan ruined GURPS but that was long ago.  The problem is that GURPS used to have a reasonably compact point of entry.  Now it has a mega edition without one.

The HERO 6th edition Basic book is exactly what GURPS needs.  Though I'd probably go one step farther and make it a straight fantasy book with a minimal core setting.

GURPS 4e is a better game structurally and mechanically but in terms of actually learning the game it's a real barrier.  I still have many quibbles ranging from dropping Vehicles from the core, super strength still being a craptacular mess, the attempt to cram heaps of powers into innate attack and affliction instead of separating them out.  This last one is mostly a format issue but it gives you these super dense blocks of information that require a great deal of reading to figure them out while making a character.