From: thornley@milli.cs.umn.edu (David H. Thornley)
Subject: Re: Burn, GURPS, BURN!
Organization: University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, CSci dept.
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 20:45:07 GMT

What the heck, let's keep the system flames burning.  This has been moved
to the proper newsgroup, BTW.
In article <1993Jan21.174827.10057@news.vanderbilt.edu> talbert@athena.cas.vanderbilt.edu (Robert Talbert) writes:
>In article <2266@blue.cis.pitt.edu> seawasp@vm2.cis.pitt.edu (Sea Wasp) writes:
>
>>	So, you ADMIT that GURPS fails the test for universality.
>>I've PLAYED GURPS, and its design is inherently biased towards/away
>>from particular things. It's made to be, as its proponents often point
>>out with glee, "realistic". That means that it can't do Superheroes
>>as well as a straight SH game, nor any other truly heroic genre.
>
>Well, no superhero game is going to accomodate a sci-fi campaign, or a spy
>campaign, or really anything else besides the genre for which it was created.
>GURPS was created to work in *any* genre equally well. And from my roleplaying
>experience, GURPS and otherwise, it does. The rules in the Basic Set have no
>context for which they are to be applied, eg. the Hero "system", so you can 
>paint the mechanics any particular color you wish. 
>
This is my day for answering references to the Hero system, aren't you lucky?
GURPS does not handle Comics Code superhero campaigns, toon campaigns, or
any other non-realistic genres very well.  If you don't like these genres,
that's cool, but it does mean your experience is incomplete.  The fact is
that GURPS does some things very well, and other things less well.

Further, the Basic Set rules do have context.  The magic rules apply only
in campaigns with magic.  The psi rules apply only in campaigns with psi.
If you want superpowers, you have to write your own or buy GURPS Supers.
The Hero system, by way of contrast, provides you with a set of powers rules,
that can be used for magic or psi or superpowers or gadgets or whatever.

>>	Moreover, making certain kinds of characters which, in PLAY,
>>would be perfectly balanced, can't be done with the same number of points.
>>The Strength sink is a prime example...
>>	GURPS is the BASIC of gaming; it CAN do anything, and has provisions
>>to do so, but it can't do ANYTHING as WELL as a specific game designed for
>>the genre.
>
>The rule systems for a given game do not *do* anything. The action and the 
>modifications are done by the GM and the players. Nobody plays the rules for
>a RPG verbatim; GURPS merely minimizes the work the GM would be doing with 
>any game he/she bought. 
>  In practice, I must say that GURPS rulebooks far exceed the quality of 
>genre-specific games, for the simple reason -- which has already been stated --
>that all the *rules* rules are in the Basic Set, freeing up the worldbook to
>accomodate rules additions and alterations as well as provide a substantial
>amount of background and "atmosphere" material. The only genres of gaming in 
>which I do not prefer GURPS are Paranoia and Teenagers from Outer Space, and
>SJG even has something like these in Toon!
>
Do you play toon games?  Four-color comics games?  Games where one base
rule is that the heroes never die for irrelevant reasons?  These are
more difficult in GURPS than in other systems.

Further, all the *rules* rules aren't in the Basic Set.  If you want to
run a magic-heavy campaign, you have to buy GURPS Magic.  If you want to
run a psi-heavy campaign, you buy GURPS Psionics.  If you want to run a
supers or martial arts campaign...you get my point.  Of course, some of
the GURPS supplements have very few rules, and this is what I like about
them, but the number of actual rules in a GURPS supplement is larger than
the number in (say) Fantasy Hero or Cyber Hero.

>>	Problem is people who can get, say, an 18 INT (not difficult in
>>a fairly powerful campaign) and then can do EVERYTHING AT ONCE. Hell,
>>their DEFAULT skills are as good as someone who was taught the subject.
>>Even if they have no experience in the field.
>
>It is hard to get an 18 in *any* attribute in GURPS. You have to spend a
>*hell* of a lot of points, or take some god-awful disadvantage. And yes, 
>this is realistic -- 18 on the bell curve for 3d6 would correspond to about
>the upper 2% or something like that. People who are *that* smart (using IN
>for an example) generally *can* do lots of things, that or have serious 
>disadvantages (Stephen Hawking, for example). And generally experience in 
>the field of the particular skill is required to obtain the skill. GM's 
>can earmark character points; for example if a player spends a whole adven-
>ture trying to survive in the jungle, the GM can say "OK, you can only spend
>these character points you got on Jungle Survival skill." It's not like,
>*poof* you're a nuclear physicist or anything.
>
So one person in fifty (or, if you're assuming a 3D6 distribution, one in
216) can be expected to have the abilities of IQ 18?  Have you looked at
what somebody like that can do just on defaults alone?  If that person spends
10 points on 20 skills?  Granted, the 18 looks real difficult in a 100-
point campaign, but what about a 150-point campaign?  Should the guy with
the 18 IQ be allowed to take three college courses and become a first-rate
nuclear physicist?


>>	No, the inventors assumed that the average GURPS player would want
>>to  play certain kinds of characters. Consider the fact that in a high-tech
>>campaign, it is virtually suicide (pointwise) to make a physically strong
>>character. This indicates that the designers expected high-tech players
>>to avoid anyone with physical prowess greater than, say, the average couch
>>potato (e) .
>
>In GURPS, in *any* genre, the point costs for attributes are the same! Creating
>Arnold Schwarzenegger will be *difficult*! It's supposed to be that way. Just
>like creating somebody who is *really good* at anything is difficult (in real
>life or in GURPS). 
>
Which means you're ruling out characters that don't upset game balance.
It's hard to be really good at anything in GURPS, which means that the
players that are really good at something will be really good at something
that's important to the campaign.  It's hard to be really good at archery,
whether the character is in a Robin Hood campaign or a Lensman campaign.
This isn't necessarily a bug, but it doesn't strike me as a major advantage.


DHT

Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.advocacy