I need a lethal TTRPG system for a WW2 campaign I have in mind

I need a lethal TTRPG system for a WW2 campaign I have in mind.

Well, let me give more depth. I'm looking for something that will let me run, according to one outside observer who overheard me describing my ideas:
>"...war and agression and tension and frustration"

A squad of troops, behind enemy lines. Short on everything except enemies. Running out of time.

Help me make this real, Veeky Forums.

Other urls found in this thread:

mediafire.com/folder/5yo566j0oi61s/GURPS_WW2
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

Only War?

Godlike works if you remove the supernatural elements.

>suggesting 40kids
May as well suggest Savage Worlds: Weird War 2 then. Up the damage on weapons or use the stats in the corebook (because the stuff in WW2 proper is mostly shit), use the Gritty Damage and no-rerolls-for-snake-eyes houserules, make your players count every bullet and be stingy with the bennies.
Have fun.

Deadlands. Just call "Gatling Rifles" assault rifles, "Gatling Pistols" SMGs, and "Steampunk Tanks" regular tanks.

Lethal, gritty, and realistic WW2 ?

Then you want GURPS.

I know EVERY THREAD always gets a GURPS post, but honestly, if you want a gritty, semi-realistic game about anything short of genre emulation, GURPS is good at that, save some exceptions.

A WW2 game focused on the soldiers themselves and their survival behind enemy lines? That's a perfecr fit for the system.

>A WW2 game focused on the soldiers themselves and their survival behind enemy lines? That's a perfecr fit for the system.
In fact there is an extensive line of GURPS books for WW2

mediafire.com/folder/5yo566j0oi61s/GURPS_WW2

>steampunk tanks
But wouldn't the people of the setting just know them as tanks anyway?

But GURPS is shit user

They've played Deadlands. (I have an old nostalgia-boner for that game) If I pull out the poker chips and cards, they'll get comfortable. I don't want them comfortable. Also, I'd have to tear a lot of stuff out that didn't fit the setting, and change things like weapon fire rates, damage, and carry weight.

Never been big on 40k, and no one in my group plays it either. No thank you.

I've heard good things about Savage Worlds, so I'll have to look into it. Can you tell me more about it?

>Godlike
Isn't that a superhero RPG set in WW2? Tearing out the supers would gut the system, wouldn't it?

I love my party to death, been gaming with them for years, but this crowd isn't the brightest. I may...MAY be able to pull off GURPS, if I help them every step of the way with making characters, how to roll, and very strictly monitor what they can and can't take.

Why do you call GURPS shit? I mean, I've never been particularly enamored of it myself, but I played a Star Trek GURPS game that was rather fun once, and a GURPS Supers game where I was a Mexican Accountant in post-apocalyptic St. Louis who was telekinetic and knew karate. That was years and I think 2 versions ago.

Wow great argument fagtron you sure convinced me with those hot opinions.

>tearing out the superhero elements in Godlike

Godlike is focused around gritty, lethal, action outside of the whole "each PC gets one superpower" thing. If you remove the superpowers you're left with a normal gritty WW2 game.

>Tearing out the supers would gut the system, wouldn't it?
Not as much as you'd think. It's ORE and that tends to be pretty modular. It is pretty damn lethal though, even as supers, because if you aren't some sort of invincible type guy you die like everyone else.

>Savage Worlds
Nearly all rolls explode, it's semi-related to Deadlands in that it recommends using poker chips for "bennies" or luck points the characters get and it uses cards for initiative, it's extremely good if you like combat with a battlemap. Lots of tactical options in a fight, how dark and gritty the game is often depends on how stingy you are with giving out bennies (was in a supers game with it, the GM never, ever remembered to give us any so we had to seriously think over our actions).

Basics: To do stuff you roll a skill/stat die from d4-d12 and a d6, take the higher of the two, you usually want a 4 unless you're in close combat or you're doing something hard enough for the GM to start dropping penalties on you.

>GURPS
It honestly just seems like Accountants and Autism: the Game. Personal preference here, but I don't want to be told 90% of the book is optional, or be given in-depth rules for something I can never see myself doing, ever. Just give me a solid core I can use as-is, with a few options to twiddle as I see fit. nWoD and Savage Worlds do this, while GURPS just vomits its guts onto the table and expects you to pick and choose immediately.

Plus, it's slow as ass.

>Plus, it's slow as ass.

Aside from pre-game stuff, GURPS plays way faster than World of Darkness. It's also MEANT to be modular, so complaining about the optional rules is retarded. There aren't that many optional rules in the core book, just a lot of different character building options.

The only people who shit on GURPS are apparently people who never tried to actually play it, it's not a complicated system at all.

You don't even need the core to play GURPS WWII, the WWII core book has GURPS 3e lite in the back of it.

>plays faster than World of Darkness
Are we talking old or new? I already know you're talking shit if you're comparing it to nWoD, because there's no way GURPS can do everything, including a combat turn, with one roll.

>nWoD
>a single roll for a combat turn is the rule

Yeah, no, fuck off.

You dumb nigger, you don't even know how the system works.
One roll is all it takes to make an attack: the difficulty (cover, body armour etc) is factored in by lowering your dice pool, using a bigger gun, taking aim or unloading autofire increases it, and successes directly translate to damage.

You can be buttmad about opinions all you like, but don't even try to suggest you're not wrong and acting like a retard here.

So what? First of all, all the little shit you have to factor in to build your pool for your turn take a little extra time every time you do it, secondly, people take a lot more to go down in nWoD than in GURPS, It can take anywhere from 4 to 5 shots to kill a fucking regular human, while in GURPS anything from 1 to 2 HP damage might be enough to put someone out of action.

That means combat is resolved MUCH faster in a game of GURPS, which is ideal for a gritty, realistic game set in WW2.

Also speed aside, combat in nWoD is just plain shit. Cover, armor and DR are broken, dodge is objectively bad and the action economy is fucking retarded.

I'm not just pulling all of this shit out of my ass like you, by the way, I've played both systems extensively and assure you that nWoD is way more fiddly and slower than GURPS once in play.

>all of the little shit you need to build your pool
top fucking kek, you can't do basic addition/subtraction? Just do it with your dice pool, they're right there in front of you

>people take a lot more to go down
wut
The average person takes about two to three 9mm rounds and two rifle bullets before they're down and bleeding out, and that's just from an average-to-decent marksman firing at center mass. If you think it's not good enough try adding the damage rating to the end result instead of the dicepool.

>dodge
What the fuck are you talking about? I see nothing wrong with this: against an average person a -4 is going to fuck them up pretty fierce. The problem is by default you aren't fighting average people.

>hurr nWoD is shit
It has its flaws, why the fuck do you think I was suggesting Savage Worlds to begin with?

>and
Fuck, meant or. My point still stands though: a decent marksman in nWoD can waste the average person with only a few bullets.
That's assuming you don't have some kind of houserule for headshots (I have those grant 9-/8-/7-again)

You complain about GURPS being an accounting simulator, but defend something like this, when it's literally the same thing in a GURPS turn, difference is you're not picking and counting dice, you just always roll 3D6.

Dodging is shit because the action economy is shit. If you dodge you can't do anything else, not even move, I've seen players get dodge-locked way too often.

Also, I've never seen someone go down in two shots and I've played this game for months. Even if it takes "two or three" bullets to down someone, odds are you'll be missing and changing shots for a couple of turns before you actually nailed those three bullets.

I frequently see people getting one-shotted in GURPS.

nWoD doesn't have autism tables of how far up a rope a character can climb per second.

Also good for you, evidently you just have shit characters who can't shoot worth a damn or you forgot how Willpower expenditure works

Anyway, like I said, I'm not fucking suggesting he uses nWoD. I'm suggesting Savage Worlds, because it's fast, lethal and isn't spergy as shit.

Ops and Tactics is deadly as fuck. I suggest it.

Dont know if anyones suggested it but Delta Green is (in my opinion) a good system. Its fairly rules light while still covering what it needs to and you can die real easy.

The only downside is that the most recent revision is for modern era so youd have to play with weapon stats (or just rename the weapons). But besides that its probably what you want.

Should be broadly compatible with CoC/Achtung Cthulhu if you want WWII/30s era weapons.

>the most recent revision is for modern era
Delta Green has always been for the 'modern' era (where modern is defined as 199X-201X).

>nWoD doesn't have autism tables of how far up a rope a character can climb per second.
That's a bad thing. How else do I know if my dude can climb far enough up the rope to escape the fireball of a crashing helicopter?

By rolling Athletics and not being such an autist, you tool

> and realistic WW2 ?
>Then you want GURPS.

Gurps is not realistic,
detailed, yes, rules for everything...... yes, realistic, nope
gurps is more like the GTA of rpgs, not the ARMA of rpgs

Okay, but consider that blast damage decreases as you move further from the centre. What's the relation between the number of successes I got and the damage I take?

Would you use Athletics as some sort of Soak roll here?

You could do. Or you could go off the fact the corebook suggests each success equals five to ten feet climbed and do it that way (yes, that means you can climb thirty feet in a matter of seconds if pressed, but what the hell).

If you were going off the other method I'd suggest having Athletics reduce the damage from a flat 10 lethal to something more manageable. A dramatic success (five or more in a row) would reduce what you do take to bashing damage from the concussive force of the explosion rather than any shrapnel wounds.

Also, forgot to mention: in this case it'd be a Strength/Athletics check to climb like a crazy fuck as the chopper's smashing into the building/ground.

Ok.

If you don't want to know how fast your dude can climb up a rope, *you don't want realism*.

You want something fast and "gritty" and OPERATOR, but you don't actually want anything about how shit really works, if it gets in the way of your fapping to gray Kevlar.

Y'all GURPS faggots might want to take note: this is why you keep getting slapped down. Nobody here's looking for realism, they're looking for their own very specific fantasy, one the can convince themselves is real.

This.
Realism is clunky and awkward; like having to make a save to not die from shock from a bullet to the leg. Most people want to just have fun with friends, and if you want a simulation you should just play a video game.

GURPS: the Scientology of RPGs

We get it. It's modular; it can be as simple or complex as one pleases. It covers everything. And if you drank the Kool-Aid its basic mechanics are no more difficult than any other system.

But we don't want to play GURPS. And your constant shilling of it is distracting from the actual conversation. Please go back to your containment thread and leave the normal people alone, 'k?

It's really funny just how triggered some people get when you post about GURPS.

...

Its basic mechanic is roll under 3d6, you have to be deliberately obtuse to call that difficult.

And frankly its fucking pathetic that people get upset by a system that is good for X being suggested when people ask what system to use for X.

This irrational attitude is how you get people shitting on GURPS but ignoring people suggesting god damn pathfinder in a cyberpunk game suggestion thread.

I honestly don't get it. They all get super pissed that people suggest the system. Most of it comes from a poor understanding of the system too. I want to say it's that when some people suggest it they're pricks about it (this thread included after the first suggestion), but every game has that on Veeky Forums, it's more of a problem with the board than the game.

Which is funny, because I think what OP was looking for, it would do pretty well. And he seemed inclined to at least look at it, which is respectable of him.

Battlefield Earth was shit after the first half. It's like, I came here for aliens vs. humans action, what is this politics shit?

>people suggesting god damn pathfinder in a cyberpunk game suggestion thread.
When did this happen? Did this happen? I don't want to believe.

A few weeks ago, someone wanted a system for a near future sort of MGS cybperunk game.

And GURPS would be amazing for that but nope, the guy suggesting refluffing Pathfinder was not the one being criticised.

There are better choices, but Pathfinder is not one of them.

I get that you don't like it because of the way it was designed, but that's no reason to call it autistic. It's meant so that if you want something you can grab it, and if you don't you can leave it, with everything else sort of falling in place after that. Which is fine that you don't like, it's not for everyone.

But it's also not slow. The only slow thing is character creation, which could take anywhere between 30 minutes to someone who knows the rules, to Rogue Trader levels of please fuck me if you're making a character for someone who doesn't. Most actions are resolved with a single roll of 3d6, and combat actions are a based on a "1 second, 1 action" turn, so combat can move pretty quickly. I had a fight resolve in a few minutes between 6 combatants because everyone knew the rules pretty well

You are however, completely validated in your choice to not enjoy it. It's deigned for people who want that modularity, not much can be done to make you like it if you don't like that modularity.

It may sound strange, but Albedo 2nd edition is what you're looking for.
The furry and sci-fi elements are very easy to remove, it got great firefight rules, and the character creation and evolution is really nice.

GURPS would work for it, ya. But honestly, a dedicated Cyberpunk game would be better. Or even another generic system with better cyberpunk splats. GURPS I think is best in modern or historical settings, once you get into the future things get a little wonky.

And by a little I mean it gets stupid levels of weird.

GURPS' CP splat is pretty much exactly at CP2020 levels of tech (hacking the phone co. so you can get free internet, etc.). If you want more modern things than that you're on your own and might want Interface Zero 2.0 for SavWorlds.

Speaking of outdated internet, I found a couple fliers for GEnie in some of my AD&D boxes, and had a good laugh at them.

>a dedicated Cyberpunk game would be better

All the dedicated cyberpunk games I know are kinda shit.

I'll second Interface zero SW tho.

Well, I had been hoping to do a Cyberpunk game at some point. I'll look into this. Thanks.

Interface Zero is the shit, I stole a bunch of stuff from it for running a weird Savage Worlds cyberpunk mish-mash (guns converted from CP2020 and stolen from lots of modern sourcebooks, the cyberware and some gear from the sci-fi companion with modified rules for going insane when you overload on 'ware) and maybe one day I'll run it as-is.
But I wanted to do my own generic Gibson-and-Robocop type setting, so there you go.

Play Twilight 2000
Reskin/Downgrade the equipment.

There were several editions of varying complexity. The original set had nothing wrong and was both lean and straightforward. It borrows heavily from the HERO system. Much later eg 2.2 had fixed a lot of consistency problems, but had grown more complex and the consistency problems were mostly related to the modules which you wouldn't be using anyway.

The 2013 edition I haven't read yet but it's a whole new streamlined system.

>GURPS
>GURPS
>GURPS
>GURPS
Fuck off.

>Albedo
IIRC that was based on a heavily modified Twilight 2000 original box set, or similar things at the time, but if I remember skimming it, it's sort of it's own mash of things. The newer platinum edition was also a whole new streamlined system as well.

Frankly I'd stick to Twilight 2000 since it's less removed.

>Gurps is not realistic

Please dont comment on systems you've never played, user.

>lethal
>WW2
>depth

Yeah, you want GURPS. It's lethal as fuck, combat is gritty and realistic (depending on rules used) with lots of options, and one of its strongest features are the firearm rules which are based heavily on stats and figures from actual combat.

Take basic, High-Tech for equipment (it's real-world stuff dating from the 1800s to the present), I think the Tech Level should be 5-6, and grab a few WWII splats for more variety in terms of weapons and the like.

If your players are retards, you could use Lite.

Anything but GURPS

OP, what you're looking for is legitimately one of the things GURPS excells at.

Which is to say it never excelled at much.

You're always better off going with a system that was built for a setting.

It's funny you think we are the same guy.

I'm terse, I suspect he got more involved. But most of my posts are terse. Although I get wordy too sometimes.

But seriously, there are at LEAST two of us.

I know because I was just about to chime in and say "Gurps" and go do something else.

Also, Gurps IS realistic, not "roll for ballistic path on this d100 chart" like some stuff, but to a playable level, yeah. Mostly. There are actually a couple little things that you can find quickly which tip the balance the right way. One thing is melee damage might be slightly out of hand in some cases, but can be changed by altering the scaling based on stats extremely easily.

Another thing would be buying the pyramid issue with Deadly Spring and just using that for muscle powered ranged weapons (also probably too powerful out of the box.)

Still, even the off baseline assumptions are better than most games. And guns work quite well, generally. Even a typical toughguy PC might be out of a fight after getting shot a couple of times (Not necessarily killed. The kinds of HT and ST guys like that have in the 15 plus range are kind of borderline inhuman and really really hard to kill. Also when they have advantages to make it worse. Having 20's makes you fucking Marv or Manute. You just will not die.)

Nah. GURPS is very very good for high-lethality similationist games. The breadth of the system helps that. You take a devoted WWII system and it's fine so long as you're doing 'standard' WWII things, who's to say if it has rules for doing those things on a boat? What about when you get captured and have to whittle a spear from a stick? It might have rules for making a booby trap with a grenade, it might well not have it.

GURPS has limitations, mostly when you want to deviate from gritty realism into either sci-fi or high fantasy or narrative-over-crunch. This is not one of those times.

>simulation games
>breadth of the system
>excess of rules
>but what if the system doesn't have rules for it?

THIS is the problem with GURPS.

GURPS is for autistic rules lawyers.
The very second you actually have to waste time digging through it's 9000+ books to find rules for a situation because some assburger player demanded it, you're killing your game.

I suspect it was actually created on the same principal that the Guinness Book of World Records, to shut people the fuck up when they start arguing over things without answers EG situations with no official rules.

When in doubt, your GM should be able to tell you what to roll in less than 4 seconds, even if there's no rules in the book for it,
and most importantly the players should be able to live with it.

Otherwise the problem is the players, not the system.

>But seriously, there are at LEAST two of us.
Probably three. I'm helicopter explosion bloke, that one was out of curiosity, because the only WoD I have experience with is HtR, Bloodlines, and GURPS oWoD.

>posting the image
>not the PDF
Got you covered famtron.

>The very second you actually have to waste time digging through it's 9000+ books to find rules for a situation
I'm gonna stop you right there and correct you, it's fine to not understand how a system works but please don't then act like an authority on it.

First thing a GM does when running a GURPS game is decide which books are going to be used. 90% of campaigns work fine with just the basic book. High Tech is good for anything set in the last 200 years too. That's two books, one of which most GMs will know the contents of already and the other is almost entirely for sourcing equipment.

If you want to run a light and fast game, GURPS Lite is significantly thinner than any DnD core book and is perfectly capable of running the vast majority of settings. Ultra-Lite is a single page and is also very capable.

GURPS is a toolbox, you decide which tools you're using for the job. If you want a campaign like you're spelling out here, you'd use Lite and sacrifice a little granularity for a smoother flow. OP probably wants Basic and High-Tech. If he does this and reads them (or at least the former) beforehand, the only times he'll need to look at anything more than the GM screen will be for incredibly specific scenarios, like players being caught in a burning room, or a heavy object landing on someone.

What you're proposing as 'better' is that there are no rules for these things and the GM simply improvs. You get an arbitrary ruling that's then expected to be used in any future example. Firstly, if that's what you want, then you can do it in GURPS - it's modular - but more importantly, making a call in the moment about these sorts of things does not make for balanced or consistant rules. That is a failing of a system.

TL;DR - GURPS is as complex and granular as you make it, quit being a retard.

>only experience is with oWoD Hunter and GURPS VtM
Oh, you poor soul. nHunter is legitimately one of the best lines in nWoD.

>Doesn’t Eat or Drink [10]
Fuck, it's so close to perfection.

And yet GURPS Lite still has that fucking autistic climbing table in it.

That's what OP asked for

What part of

M
O
D
U
L
A
R

is difficult to understand?

>taking him literally
>not being the retard

Just having to dig through the core books for specific rules is a pain in the ass, not to mention the specific rules for each specific setting book.

If I *ever* have to look up the rules for Grappling again and getting anything done at all, I'm just going to strangle my player instead, it's easier and takes less time. There are so many if's, but's, specific modifiers, specific ability modifiers, and exceptions that make it anightmare unless you're exceptionally well versed in the system.

>hey, if you don't like what's in the core rules feel free to rip it out!
Pretty sure I said why this approach is fucking garbage already. Oh wait, I did!

> I don't want to be told 90% of the book is optional, or be given in-depth rules for something I can never see myself doing, ever. Just give me a solid core I can use as-is, with a few options to twiddle as I see fit.

>demands balanced & consistent rules
>hates arbitrary rulings that's then expected to be used in any future

Man I do not want to be in your gaming group.
TTRPGs are not for you.
Neither is GURPS either come to think of it

> act like an authority on it
Let me put it this way, my forever-GM has all of 3rd and grew up playing it.

Don't use the official climbing rules!? Gasp. But what happened to
> NO ARBITRARY GM RULINGS

That's why the guy I bought oHunter off sold it to me for 3 NZD. Apparently, he and his group read through it, and they all laughed at him for having bought it.

You dont have to be exceptionally well-versed to know the basics of how grappling works at all.

And shit, if you've got a player who's specc'd into grappling and nobody knows the rules yet, just get a cheat sheet for it.

Don't get me wrong, oHunter has great fluff and a great feel to it, and the concept is one I can get behind, but it's pretty badly implemented rules-wise.

I would kill for Onyx Path to do a Hunter Translation Guide or Hunter20 in 2019, but I doubt it's gonna happen considering how utterly shit everything they're doing these days has gotten.

... or you could just play a system that has grappling rules which aren't a disaster.
Just what a shame there's no Asparagus book for OtherRPG to go with it.

You reached too far and burned yourself my man.

GURPS isn't for autistic rules lawyers more than it's for GMs who know exactly what they want and what they want to do. I can tell people what to roll in less than 4 seconds, and the players haven't complained because I prepared what I wanted before hand.

GURPS is only good when you have a DM who is good.

Mostly because climbing speed can be important in a game where you have a basic move of like five or six feet because of how the turns are structured.

Movement is pretty important in combat. You can get rid of it if you want though if you don't care too much.

Cheat sheet it. It's honestly important. And the grappling rules are not that complex.

>Please dont comment on systems you've never played, user.
Gurps is lethal, and also detailed, this doenst exactly mean realistic.

>to twiddle as I see fit

So to add and remove. You couldn't even get through two sentences without a contradiction.

>hates

Arbitrary rulings are strictly inferior to rulings which have been designed as part of a system, looked over by an editor and playtested, all other things being equal. That is what I said, do you disagree with that, and if so why are you playing TTRPGs and not just freeforming on a naturo forum?

That being said, GURPS is a system designed around the philosophy of being modular. The rules can be changed, simplified or made more complex. Not just that but there are a wealth of alternate systems you can use for shit. So while GURPS removes the need for arbitrary in-the-moment rulings, it's also one of the best systems to handle them.

>aren't a disaster

Nigger what

GURPS has some of the most versatile grappling in any generic system. The grappling is one of its better features.

>or you could just play a system that has grappling rules which aren't a disaster.
Name one.

Sorry, couldn't un-see it.

>climbing speed can be important in a game where you have a basic move speed
And yet Savage Worlds does it far better without getting into the 'tism zone (half your Climbing/Athletics die)

>what is the difference between minor houserules and ripping out something that was apparently so important it had to be in the lite quickstart rules
GURPSfags.

It's lethal, detailed and realistic.

The modifiers for range, the skill levels and percentages and the weapon stats are all based on figures that come out of police institutions, firing ranges, military statistic gathering etc etc, there are entire books devoted to making shooting reflect modern techniques and operating procedure as much as possible. GURPS has flaws, but its realism really isn't one.

>This entire discussion

>You are literally unable to comprehend that a system can have interchangeable elements to match a game's requirements

Are you into Pathfinder, by any chance?

It's pretty robust. I'll give you that. However, there is a cheat sheet that covers all of unarmed combat maneuvers. Here.

>And yet Savage Worlds does it far better

Not really, it just does it differently.

I have them roll climbing, which the book suggests I can do. So I don't see why it's a huge deal.

You sure showed me. I guess my argument is now invalid because you posted a meme.

>watching KLK
>reading this thread
This entire board will be covered by a single roleplaying game!

Don't even joke, that system's even worse than GURPS

Funnily enough, KLK is a perfect example of shit that GURPS can't do.

All I'm saying ITT is that for gritty, lethal, realistic, industrial-age combat, GURPS is a superb system. Shit like high-level superhero settings or space opera I would never use it for.

>longtime GURPS DM
>try supers game
>mfw

Holy shit I never want to do that again. It was a fucking nightmare.

GURPS reacts extremely badly to things like impenetrable shields.

You want bad? Try GURPS Lensman. 1000-point characters, please no.

>Name one.
You should know a few after just a few years of GM'ing. The fact you don't is hilarious because you've been putting up with GURPS for so long you know nothing else and have it's shitty rules burned into memory.

Tax code is less needlessly complex.

Personally I prefer systems which are less "game-y". As few situational +/- X roll modifiers as possible, or otherwise simplified.On the whole, one of the better I played was probably the Omnibus edition of Ironclaw, but it's hardly relevant to a WW2 game.

>1000-point characters
Do you hate yourself?

And right now vehicles. I mean fuck. If you want vehicles to be important in your game, avoid GURPS for now.

Possibly ever because we will never get vehicles with the neat vehicle generation tools they promised

>the filename
why

...

>Tax code is less needlessly complex.

You really love baseless hyperbole don't you. All of unarmed combat can be summed up in a one page flow chart.
Like that this guy posted.

I'm not the guy you're really arguing with. I get that you don't like GURPS, honestly if you prefer the type of systems you do I wouldn't expect you to like GURPS.

But it's not needlessly complex or anything else because of that.

I want to like GURPS, really badly. I like the basic 3d6 mechanic. I like how stats work. I dig modularity.

What keeps me from actually enjoying it is that it is honestly just way too complex, and none of that complexity has any actual depth. There are a million fiddly little rules for things that there don't need to be rules for, a million long encyclopedic books that all reference other books, and no presentable coherent game. If you want to play GURPS, you have to build the game yourself, because nothing is playable as presented.

It would be nice if there was some kind of introductory level GURPS setting, assembled from the simpler modular elements and ready to play. Dungeon Fantasy could have easily been that, but instead it went down some weird road where all the characters are 250 point builds and their statblocks are huge bricks of text.

If there was a GURPS setting where you made 50 point adventurers, handwaved a lot of the unnecessary bullshit, streamlined the combat mechanics, and included a very basic premade setting, I would be all over that. It would be great because then it could actually showcase GURPS modularity; just plug in and play with whatever other things you want without having to build the entire thing.

I've thought about trying to make something like that, but I've always been dissuaded by the existence of other RPGs that already do that, and my general lack of mastery of GURPS.