Name literally a single flaw

The stat system is centered around baseline humans.

The magic system defaults to quantitative, not qualitative.

There's two big ones, for science fiction and fantasy respectively.

Or a third: "objective" point buy. Who determined that being a good weightlifter is equally useful to having great social connections? There are any number of games where one is significantly more useful than the other, and so normally point values would change to be balanced according to the settings focus. GURPs, OTOH, is unbalanced by default.

>MUH BULANCE!!
>DE GURPS IS IMBA >:(
Lmao brainlet confirmed, go back to D&D.

Bloodlust
Intolerance

What is so bad about them cunt?

Its Reputation.
The few times ive brought GURPS up at my FLGS its like that one episode of Rosanne, the one with the Audit- Those who know GURPS gasp in shock, a musical sting plays in the background and there is a rumble of thunder.

I know it can be clunky for character generation- hell my old group once spent an entire DAY trying to convert 1st ed Rifts characters to GURPS. We still didn't finish.

>Or a third: "objective" point buy. Who determined that being a good weightlifter is equally useful to having great social connections? There are any number of games where one is significantly more useful than the other, and so normally point values would change to be balanced according to the settings focus. GURPs, OTOH, is unbalanced by default.

This is something mentioned in the GM's section - that they're free to adjust points as they see fit. A few settings tweak things as well - Dungeon Fantasy doesn't care about long lifespans, so they're much cheaper, etc.

Of course, no point-buy system is immune to subjectivity.

>The stat system is centered around baseline humans.

Yeah, though it isn't really a problem with IQ and DX (because those are ALWAYS a problem when they get super-high anyway), BUT, ST costs are far too high (mostly solved by the KYOS pyramid article that makes it logarithmic), and HT is quite weird (16HT = God of Health). There is a Decade/Century Scale add-on for massive things, like mecha and such.

>The magic system defaults to quantitative, not qualitative.

Bit subjective - it defaults to it, but it also does much more than most systems to present meaningfully different magic systems via Thaumatology, RPM, etc.

>it defaults to it, but it also does much more than most systems to present meaningfully different magic systems
So much this. I picked up GURPS initially because you can customize the magic a fuck ton, which was perfect for accurately recreating the magic in my setting. You have options for everything from standard D&D magic to the much crazier WoD Mage magic available. Saying that GURPS is bad because it defaults to something is a poor argument.

Boy howdy are there a ton of skills to pick from and try to remember what specific territory they cover.

>Name literally a single flaw.

Not using linear dice.

To a system suposed to be universal as fuck and where you are supossed to get things and information from real life and easily convert them/put them into the game, not using linear dice pretty much fuck with the entire thing

What you mean how 3d6 is a bell curve, which is how things tend to be distributed in real life?

>low tier bait

Steve Jackson clearly has Hidebound and Incurious at 6 or less. Probably has Incompetence (Finance) and Incompetence (Propaganda) as well.

3d6 has a distributed average weighted towards an average/mean result of 10.5

a single d20, for comparison, has no average result, and simply has a flat 5% chance to do any resulting face

do you understand?

Yes and?

>name one flaw

Its not West End Star Wars

>to the much crazier WoD Mage magic available.
Quite literally, there was a Mage - The Ascension supplement for 3e.

>a single d20, for comparison, has no average result, and simply has a flat 5% chance to do any resulting face

Thats because we care about % and not the result of the dice roll.

If something has 5% only of happening you would have to roll 1 in a 1d20 instead of rolling the other numbers (2 to 20)

The art

It's too hard to get into because of memes and layout, which means the community is small and hard to get fresh blood.

Agreeable. However the Basic Set and one of the Tech books (Low, High, or Ultra) can set you pretty straight for most campaigns, albeit requiring creative input (maps, story, plot, NPCs, etc) from the GM. Even the Basic Set can work well enough to make any setting if you're creative enough with rule interpretation and making up new rules.

For instance, if you were only using the Basic Set, you can stretch out the Firearms table to encompass many different variants. Firearms of the same ammo type and class typically deal the same damage and fire at the same range, with the only real difference between different weapons being their ammo capacity, reloading method, weight, etc.

You can apply this same logic to the melee weapons table or the muscle-powered range table, or any weapons table where you can pick up on a pattern.

The supplements definitely do help get a starting point, though. For example, with the Basic Set, After the End, and the Tech books, you can run a pretty robust post-apocalypse game full of all kind of low, high, and ultra-tech gear. You really only need the Basic Set and After the End supplements to get started in the setting (at least in the tone of the rules), though.

>Lite and one of the Tech books (Low, High, or Ultra) can set you pretty straight for most campaigns,
FTFY

Lite *can* carry you a little bit. But you really want the Basic Set. There's missing rules, tidbits, and options in Lite that make the Basic Set worth a lot as a tool for building setting-appropriate characters and rule sets.

Lite's fucking butchered, dude. No deceptive attacks or feints, no steps or retreats, no rate of fire rules or explanation for how shotguns work, etc.

Surprisingly, it does include rules for quick/regular contests, unlike characters.

Does the game have rules for social stuff in it's various books? Things from stuff like being a convincing orator to leading organizations or whatever else.

Yep. Nicknamed social Fu.

The Basic Set has the basics scattered around and Social Engineering has some more advanced stuff.

There's an entire pdf supplement on boardroom shenanigans.

One second combat rounds.

I can see how it'd be easier to get the simulationist realism they're going for with one second rounds, but goddamn does it make playing online a pain in the ass when it takes three fucking rounds to reload your average pistol.

If there were a version of GURPS where the combat round was at least three seconds I'd be on it like Spencer for Hire.

The Action series has longer combat round rules, I believe.

You could just make turns longer, but be aware that this means people who know the system are going to rape your games.

Literally name a single risk it takes.

The supplement in question is what said. Social Engineering. It's pretty good, not only for mechanical rules but for ideas of a mostly social campaign.

Also, as 3-dubs-user said the Basic Set has some basics spread throughout the book, but concentrated in Campaigns' chapter on Success Rolls and Game Mastering.

Just make the turns longer.

Having a lot of options in the Basic Set. As well as using addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Pretty risky seeing as so many idiots hold onto the "GURPS is hard" meme and scare potential players.

>Name literally a single flaw.
No dice pools. Literally less one factor to work with.

- number of dices
- dificulty
- type of dice
- color of the dices

So much to work with, but it choses to be limited.

Dice pools are just a different way to meet the same end. More of a preference than something objectively better. Unless you got something to substantiate your claims.

No, the supplement I mentioned was Boardroom and Curia.

I'm not familiar. Gonna have to check that one out!

GURPS uses rigorous math. A dice pool with fluctuating pool size, variable difficulties/die types/special things happening with different colored dies is an absolute trainwreck of math to keep track of, especially when GURPS uses a bell curve to map real-world distributions.

If i remember right, you have to make another roll for damage in GURPS, and even another one to see the area of the attack.

>an absolute trainwreck of math to keep track of
>can tell everything with one roll
??

anyway, i'm not saying you should use all 4 elements, unless you're the Avatar. Just that by using more than one you can get more information instead of resorting to other methods.

Oh, yeah, and dice pools are way more game-y than GURPS' 3d6 roll under. It really hampers verisimilitude.

You don't have to roll for an attack's area. Area Effects are static, and those with damage divided by distance go by the damage roll.

What's so bad about rolling damage, anyway?

Probabilities and statistics, chances of things occurring. I also don't see why you would want to bundle up everything into a single roll. Having things be determined by separate rolls provides more buffer from luck, good or bad.

>You don't have to roll for an attack's area
If i remember well there is a part on GURPS talking about attacking areas. You don't HAVE to use it, of course, but it's one interesting thing left out depending on how much realism you want.

>What's so bad about rolling damage
It's one more roll. If you already know if you hit/how good you hit, why roll again for damage? the 'roll for damage' might as well just roll for a place to hit, which increases base damage.

>why you would want to bundle up everything into a single roll
you would have to roll everything anyway. Why not put it in a single roll?

>Why not put it in a single roll?
>Having things be determined by separate rolls provides more buffer from luck, good or bad.
I'm not saying you can't read, but it feels that way.

>It's one more roll.
Oh no, another roll. The horror. I don't get this "rolling = bad" meme. Are your games really that slow that taking two seconds to roll and determine damage is two seconds too long?

And in GURPS, you don't know that your hit was good unless it was a critical hit. It's entirely possible the other person defended. And, again, splitting up rolls means luck's effect on combat is reduced.

Rolling for a place to hit doesn't increase base damage, either. It can change the wounding modifier, and you might actually end up dealing less damage depending on your weapon of choice. For instance, a .45 pistol would be doing less damage hitting arms or legs than it would hitting the torso.

>Having things be determined by separate rolls provides more buffer from luck, good or bad
"have things be determined by more dices provides more buffer from luck, good or bad"

>Oh no, another roll. The horror
when there are 5+ players fighting 5+ NPCs, yes.

>Rolling for a place to hit doesn't increase base damage, either
My point is not how it works on GURPS, but how it could work since you're going to roll again anyway. You're getting less information with two rolls than i'm getting with one.

>"have things be determined by more dices provides more buffer from luck, good or bad"
A single roll resolution means luck has a greater impact because you don't roll as often, thus meaning that lucky rolls hit harder. Understand?

>when there are 5+ players fighting 5+ NPCs, yes
I don't have this problem, personally. Most NPCs the players fight won't stay in the fight past one or two hits, using fodder rules from Dungeon Fantasy.

>You're getting less information with two rolls than i'm getting with one.
It doesn't matter the amount of information you could get from a single roll. GURPS dissects information into its component pieces, because it deals with more information overall than other systems. This means that you're losing resolution when you wrap rolls up into a single roll. As an example, there are many factors that go into an attack; the attacker's skill and modifiers to that skill (which would artificially increase their damage were you to base it purely on the skill roll), the defense of the opponent (which can mean you hitting a shield or cloak instead of the target), the mode of attack of the weapon they're using, the damage bonus that weapon gives, the damage resistance that subtracts from the attack's basic damage, the wounding modifier of the mode of attack being used, and the additional wounding modifiers that can replace in the event of random hit locations or targeting specific locations, and that's just off the top of my head.

That's the style GURPS uses. Using a single roll to determine damage would go against the desing philosophy of the system, because you're losing the realistic possibility of a good hit being too shallow or better than you'd expect.

It's kind of difficult to get new players to play it.

No, it's fine with people who never played RPGs.
Complete ass to teach to 3.PF fags, though.

The magic rules in basic set and magic are hot garbage.

If you're not running dungeon fantasy or monster hunters it's a ton of work to design a campaign.

The TDMs are scattered throughout multiple sources in paragraph text and not collected into handy tables/spreadsheets/whatever.

>when one player edits the 'GURPS' on another's character sheet to say 'DURPS'

>No "Powers"
>No book with a decent magic system.
You missed a few there.

I mean. If you're running a historical or hard scifi game maybe.

A shortage of Bestiaries/adversary codices, adventures, and settings.

Vehicles when.

It's not GURPS: Lite

Second, the magic booket is a dumpsterfire. Their ultra technology booket is weird and suffer from loss than Stellan edition.

Low technology is the Best Thing ever.

Um... there are entire lines for it? There is even fucking Alpha Centauri game (the very fucking reason why we have Alpha Centauri threads on Veeky Forums) and you talk about lack of settings.

That's why you should be using Sorcery and/or Ritual Path Magic, that are not only superior mechanically, but also MUCH more interesting as a magic style.
Or go directly for Chinese Elemental Magic, but that's a niche I love for the sole reason my homebrew is wuxia.

There's enough to develop competent powers in the Basic Set for a low-to-mid powered campaign..

>Every campaign must use Powers or magic or "a few books"
user, no.
Shit my highest in running games was 3 and two of them were booklets. (AtE)

>not playing the '[n] random GURPS books' campaign

GIVE ME THIS PICTURE user.
I'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR IT FOR AGES. ALL I FIND IS SUBPAR LISTS AND PDFS.
GIVE ME THIS "3D100" GURPS BOOKS PICTURE. PLEASE.

I don't like how ST doesn't follow a linear scale in terms of damage, or how things are priced on exotic-ness instead of usefulness. In addition, I don't like how piercing minus (pi-) is a thing, it only makes guns more confusing than they need to be. Lastly, building vehicles as creatures is the dumbest thing ever, though it isn't worse in 4e than it was in 3e, what a pile of crap that was.

I get that. But the shitty magic is bundled in my basic set. And the option to not use a shitty mechanic doesn't make it not shitty. Just like the ability to not take the trap options in Pathfinder doesn't make up for the fact that they exist.

>it isn't worse in 4e than it was in 3e, what a pile of crap that was.
Reeeee.
3e vehicles was one of the best books ever written.
I can't wait for 4e vehicles. It's coming out this year for sure.

Well, I'm with you on that, and it's the very reason I didn't run games with magic for a... well, I think it was actually a decade. 9 years for sure, maybe 10.
Then friend of mine finally convinced me to try RPM, as she really wanted to pull a witch character, and it was a big no-no due to requiring magic. Turns out it has nothing to do with magic from BS, and I was always sure that if BS had shit-tier magic rules, then the expansion of magic rules must be just as bad.

Never been more wrong with the hobby-related stuff.

But yeah, Basic Set's magic is trash. Doesn't make other flavours of magic any less amazing, even without the unfair comparison with BS

I don't have such an image. d100 is woefully small, anyway. It should be a d400.

Speaking of:
Are there any alternative "spells as powers" systems if I'm not happy with the core mechanics surrounding sorcery?

Don't even joke. I spent money on that.

Real money!

I still have it, as a reminder of my hubris.

What's wrong with non-linear damage progression? I mean I understand it requires to check the box, rather than remembering the formula, but you only need that information when making a character, so it's not like all that problematic.

And the pi- is useful for using hollow-point rounds that decrease the penetration value, but it blast a nice hole in your unarmored body. That's the only reason that rule exists and it's pretty nifty if you are using, say, revolver with a speed-loader or carry a spare mag, so you can switch to hollow points when you realise your enemies don't carry ballistic vests.

And granted, vehicles were always shit. They were shit in 3e, and 4e barely helped to remove most glaring issues

Sorcery's the only one official systems that does it. What's wrong with it?
You could just build powers as well, powers and call it magic.

But it's so good user.

Um... Supers? No, seriously, Supers and flipping through Power-Ups.

You can also always try Dungeon Fantasy, which greatly simplifies rules for spells.
And if the spell is damage-related, create it as Innate Attack instead.

There's a couple strats as a GM:
1 Go full ritual. Anyone can do it, the universe is one big vending machine and doing the right thing gets the exact result you want.
2 Use the powers book and just make pyromancy create and control fire, with attacks as innate attacks.
3 Make up everything as you go. (IE my strat). Right now, my players spend earned character points as "Spell Points". Whenever they see or decide to make a spell, they make a challenge based on the difficulty of the spell and spend an amount of points inversely proportionate to how well they know how the spell works (being consumed pass or fail). If they succeed, they add it to their character sheet.

I'm not a fan of the:
>1FP
>all spells quick fire in 2s
>you buy your spells with CP

The last one is the least gripey of my gripes.

I like RPMs
>Channeling of Mana.
>Sacrificial Mana.
>Path based improvement system.

I don't much care for the growth curve, or the rules for building spells.

Elaborate?

How does this make a good alternative magic system?

What exactly does supers add to the table above what I can do with powers?

>2. That's gonna be the option for at-will powers, but I'd like to have Mana channeling and sacrificial Mana as options as well.

Check forums.sjgames.com to make sure there isn't already a thread with an answer to your question, or ask your question there if you don't get one here.

I never said it's better or anything like that. Supers and Power-Ups can be simply easily used interchangably, while Supers provide a LOT of options for magic-themed Supers without actually giving them spells.

I'll have to check it out. Thanks.

It's brainlet D&D players, each move they do is also bundled with "try not to soil myself"