Thoughts on GURPS: Get a GRIPS!

As part of my quest to engage more with roleplaying games (a quest this blog forms a part of), I’ve decided to start reading the core rule books of other systems I’ve never played before. I may not get a chance to actually play them, especially not for a decent period of time, but I can familiarize myself with their philosophy and their mechanics. Get a good feel of how the game runs. And then offer my thoughts as a way of figuring out what I like and what fits into my Fiction Life.

With that, here are my first impressions of GURPS 4th Ed. on pure read through, no play tests.

The introduction was written in an informal tone I didn’t quite like, and it became apparent in Mr. Jackson’s ramblings that there’s somewhat of an inferiority complex afoot. There were numerous mentions of other gaming systems and a few outright comparisons of GURPS to other systems, the conclusions of which often did not put GURPS confidently at the front of the pack, but put it somewhere in the middle in an off-putting conciliatory manner, no less. It seemed to be screaming “I’m a nice person if you just get to know me.” Here are some excerpts, all emphasis and quotation marks original:

“GURPS is one set of rules … comprehensive enough … There are worldbooks and supplements that “fine-tune” the generic system … But they are still compatible.”

“I’ve tried hard to make GURPS “friendly””

“I’ve tried to make GURPS as fast-moving as possible … It’s up to you to decide whether I succeeded.”

“When GURPS was launched, we dreamed of its becoming the “standard” roleplaying system. … There will never be a single standard . . . but GURPS is one of the standards, and that’s fine.”

“We have never tried to drive others out of the market, or even to force them to conform to us.”

- Jackson

“... making Fourth Edition comprehensive in a way that few other RPGs are… We believe that’s a big win, and we think you will agree!”

- Punch

Meta. None of that seems terrible, it just didn’t make me want to play the game. It felt like I'd be disappointed, like I'm sure many people feel scrolling through endless profiles on dating websites. I dunno, is that I think? Never tried it...

I wasn’t sure of how to understand the cross-compatibility of GURPS with other systems, as described by Jackson. Apparently, if the other adventure is written in “plain English and simple numbers” you can port the other system to GURPS. I figured the same would have been true of any gaming system… lots of people mock-up conversions, crossovers, and homebrews to greater or lesser extent and with varying degrees of success. But nothing in the way Jackson explains this cross-compatibility made me think GURPS crossovers would be any more successful. I suppose I’ll have to try it to find out for sure.

In the section entitled “What Is Roleplaying”, the writers here have taken an honest stab at it, but the theme of an informal, colloquial tone is already apparent and detracting from what could be a great hook for newbies. (The mini-glossary panel is out of place on this page, as well.)

Disclaimer: My criticisms for this section are based on my subjective opinion of how roleplaying games work. For example, referring to the Game Master first, before any other title, as a “referee” was a poor choice. What better way that to engender the understanding that the PCs should squabble about who-knows-what until reigned in by the judge Game Master? The Game Master isn’t a referee at all, but rather a facilitator. If there’s going to be any squabbling, confrontation, or disagreement on the rules of the game, or how the campaign is progressing, it should be decided by everyone around the table to ensure that everyone’s needs are being met, or at least attempting to achieve that goal, and the GM should facilitate that discussion. In that way, the GM should reserve their own judgement in favour of helping the PCs have the best, funnest, most fulfilling time at the table possible.

The use of the male pronoun is to be expected, but still disappointing. You’d think we’d have come into a new understanding of how these words make certain groups feel like “others” or outsiders. But even the simple idea of including women into the gaming fold being better for everyone should prevail, no? Let’s get real.

Then it goes on to say the GM determines the background, by which I assume they mean the campaign setting, or perhaps the genre. Fair enough. But once again, I’d be more into describing a consensus on what setting the PCs want, and their participation in the setting’s creation, rather than unilateral creativity. Furthermore, despite a number of other references to the participation of the PCs in creating the story, the wording of the next section is irksome to me:

“The players then describe what they are going to do to meet the challenge. The GM describes the results of these actions…”

First, it seems like too much focus on problem solving and combat as the essence of a roleplaying game session. It makes me think of the cliche dungeon crawl where the adventure is nothing but room after room of enemies and booby-traps, looking for the treasure at the end. I consider that to be bland as. Second, it leaves so much of the descriptive flavour to the GM. It seems as though the GM is doing everything, and the players are nominally called on to declare an action during the scene. I mean, I shouldn’t take it too literally… people can run their games however they want, but I’m trying to interpret the wording as an instruction - looking at the book from the lens of one with no prior knowledge. The writers do go on to inculcate the PCs role in creating the story, but the wording earlier on, and the instruction on the flow of the game session, do not match up.

I very much enjoy the comparison of the milieu of the roleplaying games as a piece of fiction to that of other more common forms of fiction like reading. It describes the latter as passive, but the former as active. I feel similarly. I think they could have emphasized this even more, not saying that it was active only, but both active and passive at the same time, coalescent and shifting back and forth constantly. You activate and develop your character, but you also watch the other PCs undergo the same process.

I also very much appreciated the goal of roleplaying as laid out in this section, which, in their words, is not “winning” but character development. I feel like that’s a common misconception with certain players. However, it was quickly ruined when the judgement of roleplaying success or accuracy was declared to be under the purview of the GM alone, and that “gaining” in ability was solely based on this judgement.

I like the idea of agreeing to differing power levels of the PCs. It doesn’t mention how that should be handled by the GM, so I assume that each character will get equal enjoyment out of the campaign, despite being at different power levels, but I found it interesting to encourage structures like “leaders” or “sidekicks” within the PC group.

I like, at the very least, the options for character creating process either starting with “shopping” for abilities as inspiration, or by writing out the character biography first. I especially like the inclusion of the questions for writing this biography. While I’m clearly in the story-first camp, I appreciate the diversity of approaches included in the book.

Harsh words the writers have of “weak, stupid, boring clods”. The panel on page 11 suggests that randomly choosing character attributes may produce a character that’s unsavoury and undesirable, and “why would you want to become one, even for a minute, in a game?” They even say “You avoid people like that in real life.”

WOW. Super harsh. Even for a minute in a game? Like that's some kind of ultimate sin? That's fucking high class, man.

I can think of a few famous characters from literature and film who are rich and compelling characters that aren’t superheroes by any means, but are in fact the marginalized of society, the seemingly weak and dependent, ugly and stupid sometimes, the not-much-to-speak-ofs. These characters figure in stories that are designed to challenge those very views of unworthiness, and that’s what makes them so great, so moving. The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Elephant Man, Neemo, Willow, Patrick from Spongebob Squarepants, Pi, Ron Weasley, Aesop’s the Tortoise... heck, even Frodo and Samwise aren’t much to speak of, except for their loyalty, and perseverance. And that’s just a list off the top of my head. I know there are many more out there. I don’t get why the writers have this affinity for character development but not for characters that really embody the literary device.

How can this be? There’s a certain pathos with those characters. Character’s aren’t just strength and agility and swords and guns, or even wit and intellect. There’s always an element of humanity underlying all of that skillful veneer, traits common to us all, that really make a character compelling. (See my post on the Angel’s Cocktail for more on this sense of humanity.) And it’s rarely measured in die rolls or the size of one’s longspear. They’re simply ideals inside us, positive character traits, and our convictions. Poor show from GURPS on that one.

Unfortunately from here, getting into the mechanics beyond the philosophy, it’s hard to review GURPS on its own terms since its so drastically similar to HERO System. There wouldn’t be much to say on the mechanical side of things… every system has its upsides and downsides. They seem to go tradesies on complexity. For example, HERO has about 2.5 pages of rules just for Strength in the Characteristics section, including the Strength table, and another three for the rest of the Characteristics, while GURPS only has 3.5 all together. On the other hand, HERO has moved away from figured characteristics for simplicity sake, and has a simpler "+1d6 Strength damage per 5-point increment of STR" system, while GURPS has a pretty complex table including a bunch of -1s and +2s in order to get the granularity they’re looking for.

And some of the transitions are WHACK. A STR score of 17 or 18 yields a Thrust damage of 1d6+2. That’s a damage range of 3-8. Increasing your STR score to 19 yields a Thrust damage of 2d6-1. The extra d6 is nice, but now your damage range is 1-11. It shouldn’t be possible to do less damage with more strength. I realize that’s not a common occurrence statistically, because you’d have to roll snakes eyes, but it’s statistically as likely as rolling two 2s, two 3s, two 4s, two 5s or two 6s, about 2.8% of the time. The averages and means make sense: 1d6+2 has a median damage of 5.5, and the same probability to roll 3 as it is 8. Adding another die changes this. With 2d6-1 your median damage is 6, and your average damage is 6. So the jump from 18 to 19 STR only yields a +0.5 increase in average damage, whereas the jump from 16 to 17 yielded a full +1 increase in average damage.

Anyways…

I could go on, but maybe that’s enough for right now. Stay tuned for a more indepth look at GRUPS in future posts. Maybe I’ll actually go some play testing with my group.