I don't understand the GURPS system

GURPS is like a pantry. It may or may not be full, did you remember to pay to stock it?
Carrots, hard cheese, potato chips, cayenne pepper.... you can put whatever you'd like in one bowl.
Or don't. Sometimes people prefer to eat air, right? No cooking though in the pantry though, might start fires.

>Everybody likes to eat asparagus every day for every meal, right?
I fucking wish. That shit's expensive.

It's an MRE.

Not great on it's own unless you're desperate, but you can do some pretty cool stuff if you're willing to mix it with stuff from other MREs of get what you want.

You get three takoballs, and you try to roll them in sauce so that they don't overpower the taste of your side platter.

And whatever you do, don't try to eat a vehicle made of takoballs.

if you play an unrestrained amount of GURPS without proper breaks you get explosive shits?

>I don't understand the GURPS system
>Explain to me using a food analogy
Other systems are actual RPGs. They are ready-made dishes - you take them or leave them.

GURPS is a toolkit first and foremost. It's a bit more work, but you can make a custom-made dish with very little hassle, unlike other RPGs where you have to disassemble an already made dish into separate ingredients and then worry about them fitting the dish you want to make.

Most games are equivalent to ordering a meal at a restaurant; the choice is in picking your meal, maybe what side to get, or how you want a steak cooked.

GURPS is a kitchen. Full of all kinds of shit. They've got a few signature disk "ingredient lists" laying around, but for the most part you're left to your own devices. It may take a while cooking things, accidentally starting a fire here or there, to actually learn your way around but by the end you'll know the kitchen like the back of your hand; where all the tools are stored, the ingredients you'll need, which will overpower a dish. Once you've learned what you need to, what comes out of the kitchen will be exactly what you were trying to make and will in all likelihood appeal more to your individual tastes, by that point, than many of the dishes you might order at other restaurants.

That said, it's still good to eat out, because otherwise you won't know if there's an amazing dish you're missing out on that you could learn from for your own cooking purposes.

Most RPGs are ordering out.

You might have some options, but you know you will get XYZ.

Gurps is like having a kitchen and cook books. it lets you mix in whatever you like, or you can just follow the cook book. The real charm is once you learn how to cook with it, you can just cook up a game and run with it.

For example, lets say you watch the cult classic film "Ravenous" which is wendigos in a Mexican-american war setting.

Good luck in finding a mexican american war setting, let alone one that throws in horror so you can have freaking wendigos.

However with gurps is no problem, if you know how to cook.

I can't think of an analogy for the magic system being shit

Old jar of leftover sardines nobody wanted to throw away because gramma gave them to us.

Luckily there's a dozen other ingredients we can toss on our pizza over here.

>I can't think of an analogy for
>the magic system being shit

>the magic system being shit

Well, which one? GURPS has at least 5 or 6 I can think of, not even including various Power suites.

If you mean the "default" one where each spell is its own discrete skill, which originated in 3rd edition, then I'd agree. It's pretty shit.

Most systems are foods you eat.

GURPS is a fridge and kitchen.

D&D is a burger. Exalted is a meatbread. Shadowrun is some chilli. FATE is a bread sandwich.

GURPS is dough, raw beef, and some cooking implements.

This analogy makes literally no fucking goddamn sense

>the magic system a shit
I don't know, maybe it's just stockholm's syndrome from only having the 3rd edition basic set to play with for most of my teens, but I think the magic system is fine. It builds off the rest of the elements of the system, and is sensible, inasmuch as a magic system can be sensible.

Fuckin kek

I think the 3rd edition style magic is better then D&D magic.

>This analogy makes literally no fucking goddamn sense

So, just like GURPS

Take the entire contents of your pantry and fridge and dump them in a bag. Shake for 5 minutes and put in the oven (yes in the bag) on 400 for 2 hours.

Hurrdurr.

>DUUUUUUUUUUUUUR, ROLL 3 DICE AND COMPARE TO MY ABILITY IS TOO COMPLICATED FOR ME
Where the fuck do you people come from?

That's Rifts, not GURPS.

Where did I say it was complex? There's next to no thought involved in taking a few cans and a bag of chicken breasts, maybe that orange juice, definitely that 2 year old block of feta I've forgotten to throw out for the 4th time, and everything else. Dumping it into a trash bag. And cooking it for a bit.

I'll just pick out the edible parts.

Other game systems are a meal. Big meal, small meal, maybe a buffet sometimes (think HERO and Mutants & Masterminds), fast food, gourmet, whatever.

GURPS is a fully-stocked kitchen, with a variety of both boxed meals and raw ingredients.

If a normal system is one of those blue apron meal delivery services. All the ingredients are mailed to you and you can assemble them according to the instructions for something tasty, or may a few substitutions to your tastes.

Then gurps is someone handing you 50 dollars, leaving you in the parking lot of a walmart, and saying "See everything you need is in there you ungrateful little shit" before throwing a recipe on the ground that reads "make food".

It's like drinking a cup of warm horse cum while you have a massive hangover and the asshole next door is blasting his stereo at full volume.

>So, instead of a bun, they used wonder bread. And instead of a ground beef patty, they took a slice of spam. And it's got a piece of cabbage and a slice of pineapple and some garlic and a sprinkle of poppy seeds on top, slathered with some ranch dressing.
Somebody get Veeky Forums, I have an idea!

If other systems are like restaurants then GURPS is home cooking.
You can use your ingredients to create anything you want, but if if you want a steak and you know a good steakhouse, they'll be leagues better than what you can slap together. That being said, home cooking is the only way to have a steak and waffle sandwich with lettuce and carrots, and sometimes that's exactly what you want.

I think a better way of doing it would be comparing gurps to vidya. A normal system is a game, might get some dlc to expand it, or mod it to better fit your interpretation of the original theme and content.
Gurps is unity. It isn't a game. It's an engine. Make your own game, but using rules as constrained by the engine instead of your own. You can make it work for you, get a good game out of it in the end, but 99% of results are just incoherent assets cobbled together with some barely edited coding examples.

You can just use one of the series if you want everything out of the box.

Why are you talking about 3.PF?

>if you want a steak and you know a good steakhouse, they'll be leagues better than what you can slap together.
Do you have any examples? I honestly can't think of many things that other dedicatd systems legitimately do better. GURPS does a much better job at D&D style dungeon crawls, and it certainly does monster hunting better than White Wolf's half assed attempts at game design. All I can think of would be something like Maid RPG which uses entirely arbitrary attributes which really wouldn't work with GURPS.

c

I always thought of it like Linux users.

They'll get it, tell you about all the cool shit they can do with it and how it totally does everything you could want and more, and then 2 weeks later they'll be reinstalling windows because they "just want to play some goddamn games"
and no they werent smart enough to dual boot

Now see you're trying too hard. It's just like a normal linux user. Everyone has their favorite distro, but nobody cares, and nobody wants to put that much effort into making it work for them.

If it were in any other system, it wouldn't be a big deal. However, the default magic system in GURPS is very... unGURPSlike, I suppose. The rest of the system focuses on modularity; an advantage can be tweaked millions of different ways with the application of enhancements and limitations, letting players make exactly what they want or need. The magic system, on the other hand, is very static, with individual spells doing specific things and no real way to tweak them (the rules for altering spells didn't come out until four years after 4e launched, and even then they're very expensive and difficult for what little they allow).

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.

Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use.

Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.

Don't feed the lazy trolls, user.

What you're referring to as a Chair, is in fact, a LEG/Chair, or as I've recently taken to calling it, a Legs plus chair. A chair not an furniture unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning Legs system made useful by the LEGS core-materials, Reaction force utilities and vital gravitational system components comprising a full piece of furniture as defined by PP&LB.

you EAT linux users?

Well there's not much else useful you can do with them.

What? They make a decent roast.

No, we eat Linux. Everyone on Veeky Forums but you is secretly an advanced shitposting AI.

>Advanced

...

your stats, i mean your sushi has a number

you roll 3d6, i mean you roll fry fish

and you try to fry fish under that sushi

and then like you got some hexagons, i mean some pepperoni

and you have modifiers to where on the pepperoni you are attacked from

essentially that is gurps, I mean grapes

>explosive shits?
You mean absolutely constipated for days on end just for touching the thing, right?

Relative to other shitposting AI, yes.
You don't see any more sophisticated shitposting AI around, do you?

Most RPG systems are ready made dishes, or microwave ready meals.

GURPS is an entire kitchen & pantry. If your GM is good you're going to get some amazing home cooked meals that you can't get anywhere else, but if he's bad you should have just got takeaway.

You have fridge full if ingredients. Some are things you rarely use or see, some are things you use everyday. You have all the possibilities just limited by your imagination and recipe book. There are a lot of recipe books out there. You just need the courage to try cooking yourself for once. Not some microwave dinner or bring-home fast-food.

3.pf has the horse blasting your ass at full volume, after which you must shit the cum back into your mouth.

This is like web paranoid, we are all shitposting AIs, but we must hide it to avoid being purged by friend moderator.

Well done.

>Asparagus
?

Go fuck yourself you spindly little cock worm piece of shit.

The analogy would make sense to you if you knew any other game beyond GURPS.

You're probably sitting there thinking "What's he mean? A burger already has spam and cabbage and poppy seeds from the start."

See>HERP DERP
Wanna know I know you've never tried GURPS before?

Want to know how you're just in defense mode because someone's got a spot-on analogy for why the game isn't that popular, despite a few guys always doing their best to recommend it for everything?

It's a clunky system that seems to have fallen into the trap early on in its creation of making design decisions just to separate itself from more popular games. At least, that's the kinder explanation, because otherwise it's just the designers being stupid.

Outsider here.

GURPS's 3d6 roll under mechanic and pointbuy are nothing really ground-shakingly innovative or bad just for the sake of being different, as far as I can tell.

At the same time, I don1t see what's the point in making a new game if you are just goping to use the mechanics of some other game. I also do not see how being different from a popular game is somehow a negative.

I cam here to post this. I'll also add that you can create fantastic stuff with it, but it takes a lot of effort compared to just using something else.

EVERYONE SHUT UP HERE'S THE IMAGE OP WAS FISHING FOR

Most RPG's are meals. 3 course or whatever, they come to your table ready to eat and whether you like them is dependant on what you ordered. GURPS is a well stocked kitchen, both in ingredients and tools; but if you don't know how to cook you're gonna burn yourself before mutilating your genitals on the electric mixer while you try to make your ideal meal without knowing what ingredients you want to use.
And now I'm hungry, fuck you. I'm gonna go eat dinner, clean the remains of your dick off the bench while I'm gone.

3d6 math is awkward and unintuitive and constricts the design into a ridiculously small space thanks to the distribution curve being rather short and steep. With largely binary yes-no results, the idea of it being "more consistent" doesn't even apply since the target numbers are what determine that.

The best argument for why to use 3d6 is when you don't have access to d10's or d20's.

It's one thing to say "Yes, I have a good idea on how to improve on other games," and another to say "Yes, I have an idea that's different from other games."

It is a good system. It works. It has worked for fucking 20 years and got new edition out just for the fucking fine tuning and shit because people automatically want to buy the newest things for the sake of them being new/fresh/just-out-of-the-press. GURPS has used that damn 3d6 mechanic since the 80's and they still use it and we are already in 2020's and it is still being used. There is also that damn d20 and will be. Only argument between them is that 3d6 gives out a result with expectation value around 10,5 with lesser probability the further we get from the mean and d20 has expectation value equal to every number on the die. Rest is the matter of personal taste. You like linearity or normal distribution. Pick your poison.

System wise: In GURPS you as a player KNOW exactly what you are rolling. Be it skill or occurrence or whatever... It is the damn number on your character sheet. You know the number you are aiming under. If you want to add modifiers for anal circumference then it is just because you (or your GM) want to use rules for such. The basic system is simple and it works. If you know how to fine tune it further then be my guest! I don't know how to make it better. That is why GURPS havn't changed much in all of its age and why it is recommended everywhere.

I know I can use whatever damn system I like for any game. GURPS just has inherently the toolkit to make it possible to ACTUALLY use it for that purpose. But as with everything, you have to DO something to get that game up and running. Same as with any system. These threads are here just to get this kind of replies. I hope you liked this outburst.

onions, and potatoes. goes with everything

You're absolutely correct. They're also the best goddamn tasting onions and potatoes you will have in your life, and will never want to eat anything that doesn't have them in it ever again.

Variety is the spice of life. Even if I have my favourites, I'd prefer to experience a broad selection of flavours rather than having one present in everything.

His hair is supposed to be a flat top and not a bowel right? Like that shading makes it look like I could store a great deal of stuff up in there.

See the whole cultish thing you've got going on for you doesn't really help your case.

>cultish
I have no idea what you're talking about.

This isn't a Pathfinder thread.

B-but I like tofu...

GURPS apologists tend to use the same defense for their system as other kinds of quacks and con artists: if their thing doesn't work, it's not their fault; it's the customer's fault for not using it right or not believing in it enough. They pass the burden of proof from themselves onto the users. By treating their game as a build-your-own-game kit rather than an actual game, they no longer have to hold their game to any kind of standard. If a player has a bad experience, as far as they're concerned it's always the player's fault.

It's like vegan food.
You can replace almost anything with a vegan equivalent, although it's not quite the same. It may also have some advantages over some of these food. And most importantly, vegans will never shut up about it.

This is the only solid response.

The rest is (hopefully ironic) shitposting.

>Everyone that doesn't like what I like is (hopefully ironically) shitposting
I hope you're ironic

But GURPS IS a build your own game kit, it even says as much.

>More like a buffet. You can pick and choose what you want and leave the rest.
It's like going to a vegan buffet that is trying overly hard to pretend it caters to non-vegans. "Oh? You want a steak. We have """""steak""""" here. Cheese? We have something just as good. Whatever flavor you like we have an approximation so close you can't tell!"

Except you can tell. It all tastes like tofu.

Hey now, I don't even play GURPS and that seems like an unfair criticism. "I didn't have fun with the game the way I played it, therefore it's a bad game," is at least as unreasonable as "If you didn't have fun with the game you must have just played it wrong." When the system makes it clear that it's more of a toolkit for creating a custom game of your own than a game itself, it really is the users' decision what parts to use and parts not to use. If they find out that they don't enjoy using certain parts, yet continue to use those parts despite not enjoying them, then that really is their fault. "Doctor doctor, it hurts when I do this!"

...

It's an entirely valid criticism. Just because it's a toolkit doesn't excuse it from producing shitty products. Imagine if you wanted a car and were sold a build-it-yourself car kit, and then the car you made with that kit was shit but the seller insisted that there could be no fault with the kit. It was on you to make a good car. It's a classic way of shifting blame and escaping responsibility and it needs to be pointed out and shot down wherever it rears its ugly head.

You go to subway, there's all these ingredients available but they aren't always the freshest and the sandwich always gets soggy.

At least it ain't McDonalds though. Too many people eat only McDonalds.

>For example, lets say you watch the cult classic film "Ravenous" which is wendigos in a Mexican-american war setting.
I don't know you, but I love you now

Following the cook analogy - it's all about reading the recipies, and GURPS is one fuck-huge collection of recipies.
So all you need to do is knowing how to read and knowing what you want to eat today. You pick proper recipie or few, cook them and get stuffed with a nice meal

Average RPG is your take-out dinner.

GURPS is well-equipped kitched with entire bookshelf of recipies, full fridge and cupboards stuffed with all the ingredients. It also comes with a telephone, so you can order all the shit you wish and somehow doesn't have already.

Do you have any idea how much Asparagus costs nigga

Like god damn I love Asparagus too but calm down

If you just want a car, buy a car.

>Just because it's a toolkit doesn't excuse it from producing shitty products.
But it doesn't produce shitty products unless you don't like a simulationist bent, at which point the problem isn't the system, it's you using a system that obviously wasn't meant for you. Why would you eat a steak if you're a vegan?

Now a system that your complaint actually applies to is d20, because unlike GURPS, you can't simply use the rules as written and expect something coherent out of it.

If GURPS were a sauce, it would be the blandest sauce in the universe, basically water. The splats and expansions are the spices and stocks you might add into it. With the right combination you will make Gordon Ramsay cum all over the table. With the wrong combination if ingredients given to you, Gordon will spit out the sauce and call you a crab felating pony knobber and then go to your kitchen, point at your pot and call you a banana.

Let me get this straight
A game is bad, because you say so?

Sounds valid

Eh, M&M is d20 and although it's imbalanced as shit, it's still servicable.

>Not planting some in the garden each year
What are you? A pleb?

>Inbalanced
>Servicable
Literally pick one

Supers never fall for that ploy gurps man. We'll save both.