Why is it that whenever someone asks a question about literally any system...

Because they take the name too literally. GURPS, like all generic systems, still has things it is better or worse suited for and certain qualities of experience that it can excel or fail at delivering.

They also fail to understand that GURPS is, by design, only a single kind of game, a quite granular simulation focused one. If a groups preference lies elsewhere, GURPS is not appropriate for them.

It's just good
3d6 bell curve
All dice are d6's
Most things are accounted for
Active community and one of the best generals on Veeky Forums
Combat is fluid and martials don't suck
People who made it care about it

The game is a horrible overcomplicated mess, and so are practically all of its supplements.
Why even use it if whatever you can come up with yourself is gonna be better by simple virtue of having better depth/complexity ratio and the same level of balance (which is to say; none) or better.

What's overcomplicated about it? Could you give some examples?

Yea it's like how real life is totally balanced

Oh wait

How is that in any way relevant to game design?

>Fuck gameplay, am I right
>And fuck having more than one good character build!
>Yeah fuck that shit, it ain't realistic

>"universal" game system
>doesn't use metric units

Someone actually explain what GURPS is like.

What's the one good character build?

Tofu. On its own, it's a bit bland and flavourless, and it's hard to intuitively understand what to do with it. If you've got the skills and look up some recipes, you can make a lot of fucking fantastic food with it. But despite the versatility of the ingredient, at the end of the day you're still eating tofu.

inb4 "80 points in guns lol"

GURPS is great for a lot of different things, and a lot easier to play than most people expect or realize. Though there are also many cases in which people recommend it, while there's clearly better alternatives.

GURPS however is a system that every GM benefits from being knowledgeable of. It'll allow easy homebrew play, and is a generic system that will cover the vast majority of genres, while excelling at many of those. GURPS is personally my favorite system overall.

In play, most of it is rolling 3d6. For skill rolls, that's at or under your skill. For contests, you compare margins of success/failure. Chargen is chunky, but it's very smooth in play, because you frontloaded all of the work.

GURPS' default state is "heroic realism," like the kind you would see in hollywood action flicks. Humans are just humans, but there's a lot of leeway for you to be an action hero.

The GM makes the campaign. This usually amounts to them saying, for example, "We're playing roaring 1920s in the deep south. Characters should be rumrunners, journalists, members of the mafia, cops, detectives, and similar. It's realistic, so no cinematic traits and try not to treat every problem like combat." That informs players of everything they need to know for character creation and what rules are in play.

Combat is generally deadly. One shot from a pistol or two whacks with a bat is going to knock you out, and if you don't have buddies you're at the mercy of whoever cleaned your clock. It's a good idea to use cover and de-escalate. At high point totals, though, combat becomes easier to justify because you're more capable and have more safety nets.

Besides all of that, the bell curve from 3d6 radically changes the competency of characters. You no longer have the slapstick feel of the d20, which is very swingy. In short, on a 3d6, the values 10 and 11 and 27 possible combinations each, which makes them more likely to show up than any other number. On a d20, the values 10 and 11 both can occur once, so they're just as likely to happen as any other number.

If you have more questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

It doesn't do some system/setting-specific gimmicks very well, that much is true.

I just convert yards to meters

GURPS is a fantastic system choice for about 85% of genres/playstyles or settings, merely functional for about 10%, and absolutely the wrong choice of system for about 5%.

It's not nearly as complex as you'd think, very easy to learn to play (GMing it is easy too, but requires experience and solid pre-campaign preparation), and's even more flexible than many people realize or give it credit for.

It's not perfect for everything, and some people may not like the mechanical style it's laid out in (regardless of how light/heavy or Sim/narrative you have it tuned); that's fine.

It is, however, a damn fine game and pays out tenfold what you're willing to put into it. Well worth the investment to learn and play, and if you're well versed in it you can do and experience wondrous things.

I don't fault people for not liking it though.

"No flavor" is a highly inaccurate and silly/possibly malicious complaint, or at best a terrible misunderstanding of the system. There are many valid criticisms of GURPS as it's a system with flaws and weaknesses like any other, but that isn't one of them.

I agree. It plays mediocre for most stuff, amazing for a lot of stuff, poorly for some stuff.

It's just good, well worth learning

Not really.

At its core, GURPS is flavourless. This is intentional- It's a generic system, the flavour comes from how it's used and the many layers of extra mechanics you pile on top.

However, for people who care about mechanical tone and how core mechanics can convey the themes of the game, no amount of sprinkles on top can stop GURPS, at its core, feeling a bit flavourless and dull.

How much this matters to people varies, but when people call GURPS flavourless it's generally for this reason.

That describes every game system that isn't Dread.

Point to a single drop of flavour in d20, a gram of style in WoD - bereft of fluff, their mechanics are a skeleton picked clean of even the gristle.

What kinds of shitty game have you been playing?

D&D and WoD aren't the best examples, but even then both of them have elements of their tone, themes and genre built into their mechanics at a base level. D&D kinda flails around and does this by accident half the time, while WoD shoots itself in the foot by tying a narrativist premise to an overly crunchy core system in Storyteller, but they still have more implicit tone and theme than GURPS does. Which, again, is intentional. It's not an outright negative about the system, it's just a necessity of its design, which is why it comes off as cold and flat to some people.

At least gurps knows it's flavorless

Yeah, but when you need to do any more complex calculations than "one yard equals one meter" it would be really nice to be able to use sensible units. For example, here's some handy information from one of the Thaumatology books that's pretty much Hebrew to me.

>As a rule of thumb, short grasses need five quarts
of water per square yard per day during the growing
season. Each 10% shortfall reduces yield by 25%.

Google's unit conversion tool helpfully informs me that one US liquid quart is under a liter, and one Imperial quart is over a liter, with the latter being 20% larger in volume than the former unit. This is fortunate, because I was not aware that the Imperial system was different from the US system, and there isn't a definion anywhere in the book about what quart is used. Am I to expect a 50% drop in my short grass yield if I fuck up somewhere?

That's just not true. D20 has some degree of setting-agnosticism, but is still doesn't do for example realistic modern or sci-fi settings. Vancian casting is inherently setting-bound. WoD heavily features aspects that are inherently genre-bound, like its various magic systems. I mean, you try running a WW1 trench warfare game in d20, for example. It'll work if you houserule it enough, but it'll feel like shit because the feeling of the system is a complete mismatch for the kind of game you're trying to run.

Things like the lethality of a system, the baseline power of the player, the granularity of stats and rolls, how rules-heavy the system is, etc. all contribute to the overall feeling of a system, which has a serious result on how it's played and how well it works for specific settings.

I just replace all things with equivients.
>pounds to kg
>yards to meters
>quarts to liters
>inches to 3 cm
And so on

Because GURPS is a fantastic system that isn't all that hard to use or play, assuming you're not a mouth-breathing knuckle-dragger.

...

>Game made for Americans
>The company behind it is literally not interested in any other market (because apparently they are retarded)
Here, solved it for you in two bulletpoints

A fuck-huge box of LEGO. Unless you know waht you want to build, it will be a random hodge-podge of peices.

Honestly am American, but science student. I use metric all the time because 10s are better than 12's

GURPS is in the shitter and has been for years - you can go check SJG's annual reports on how they've been doing on their website and it spells it out for you in black and white that GURPS has been spiralling the drain for a long time. Idiots who think GURPS is the answer to everything have been a presence ever since it was originally published, but you'd think you'd see less of them as the fanbase shrinks. In practice, the smaller and more irrelevant GURPS becomes, the more desperate for converts the hardcore fanbase gets.

The big problem with GURPS is the big problem with any universal system - which is that usually, all else being equal, a game system designed from the ground up to cater to a particular setting or genre will always serve it better than a universal system that had to be massaged into it. It's exacerbated by the fact that there's a bunch more generic systems these days, most of which are less crunchy and therefore impose their core ideas on play less than GURPS does. Cortex, FATE, Fudge, Savage Worlds, all of them serve a range of playstyles far better than GURPS does.

GURPS is typically only good at low-level high-realism high-nerdery simulations. Even then, HERO system without the superpowers often works better for that sort of thing a lot of the time.

On top of that, SJG in general is a bit of an echo chamber, with Steve and Dr Kromm drinking the kool-aid as much as the fans have, with the result that the game panders to the core fanbase whilst completely losing sight of the necessity of providing a useful introduction. (GURPS Lite is a fucking joke.)

It's sad, really.

A solid GM with an idea can make the rules and mechanics compliment the tone. Look at Dungeon Fantasy, Action, or After the End. Those books are chock full of examples of how to play within a certain tone.

So many words and so little to say.

Hey, I'm in the market for a flexible system less ponderous than GURPS. What are the merits and weaknesses of Cortex, I haven't heard much about that one.

Lemme trim it down for you, you ADHD-addled kid.
>nobody buys GURPS anymore
>other systems do what GURPS did better
>GURPS can't get new players due to pandering primarily to its autism-infested fanbase
tl;dr: GURPS is shit, use Savage Worlds or Fate instead

I agree with a lot of what you said, but a few things:
GURPS is still a moneysink, yes, but it's actually more popular than it has been in years. You're right about the inherent marketing flaws and obstacles though.

>Cortex, FATE, Fudge, Savage Worlds, all of them serve a range of playstyles far better than GURPS does.
Blatantly false. These games have MUCH more specific playstyles than GURPS that are even harder to extricate, have you even played these?

>GURPS is typically only good at low-level high-realism high-nerdery simulations. Even then, HERO system without the superpowers often works better for that sort of thing a lot of the time.
Both halves of this statement are wildly inaccurate, and I say that as someone who loves HERO 5th. Again, I suspect you haven't actually played the games in question enough to be making such assertions.

Barring FUDGE btw, which is literally just GURPS with an adjective ladder and a "fudge it!" mentality which provides room for very similar playstyles, consequently.

>Savage Worlds is much more specific in playstyle than GURPS
>the corebook itself has optional rules to adjust its playstyle
>meanwhile Fate is capable of almost anything with the right aspects and skill list
u wot m8

>The big problem with GURPS is the big problem with any universal system - which is that usually, all else being equal, a game system designed from the ground up to cater to a particular setting or genre will always serve it better than a universal system that had to be massaged into it.
Except all else isn't equal. Dark Heresy, Only War, Black Crusade, Rogue Trader, etc. sucks. 5e D&D and Pathfinder suck. Shadowrun 4e onwards SUUUUUUCKS. All of those RPGs, which are widely played, fail to actually deliver the core premise of their settings and/or genres. GURPS can do them better than the base system can.

Does that mean GURPS can do everything? No. Leave LotW and Exalted to themselves. Leave WoD/CoD to Fate (HtR should be done with GURPS). Leave FFG Star Wars to itself.

As for only being good at low-level high-realism high-nerdery simulations, false. All of the main GURPS product lines that come packaged as complete genrebooks are, at a baseline, cinematic. Action! is all about being hollywood action heroes, like John Wick. Monster Hunters is badasses with serious asskicking abilities hunting highly dangerous monsters. Dungeon Fantasy does D&D's heroic fantasy right, where non-casters feel as badass as casters. After the End is about the same level as Mad Max: Fury Road. And that's not talking about Supers, which is perfect for X-Men and Justice League style games.

SJGames has horrible business sense, yes. GURPS is a labor of love at this point. The DFRPG box set will, hopefully, revitalize GURPS and capitalize on the OSR boom. GURPS Lite needs to be about x1.5 to x2 as long. I wouldn't say the community is shrinking, though. It's fairly sizeable and been stable for some time. There's a very active community of bloggers. What GURPS doesn't have are people who stream their games. Film Re-Roll is about as close as you get. All of the rest are written game replays on blogs.

GURPS has far more options to tweak playstyle than any of those listed. For the record Fate doesn't even really change playstyle, it changes setting and "genre"; the playstyle is actually very narrow for Fate, which is "imagine this concept, now we're going to play through a Hollywood film about that concept". Sounds flexible, and in some respects it is, but playstyle is not one of them. This fact is even supported by Rob Hanz and the game developers, so don't even try to tell me I'm off base.

>doesn't have any actual arguments
>resorts to "you're wrong and you haven't played the game!"
Cool story, bro.

>Getting this mad over a meme
Your autism is showing OP.

>Rob Hanz
Who?

And what the fuck do you mean by playstyle then? Because I've never seen a version of GURPS that doesn't end up defaulting to an autismal crunchfest, Lite included.

Fanboy posts like this are exactly what the OP is talking about though.
>LOL GURPS CAN DO YOUR GAME BETTER THAN YOUR GAME CAN STOP PLAYING SHIT GAMES PLAY GURPS
The only difference is that, at least in this case, you're not spamming it in a thread where it's not even relevant.

You didn't have any arguments either man, you just said a thing like it's fact (it's clearly not) with no supporting facts at all. Are you dumb, or do you just think I am?

>The DFRPG box set will, hopefully, revitalize GURPS and capitalize on the OSR boom
GURPS stands for the polar fucking opposite of the reasons people play OSR systems, which are mainly simplicity, being extremely easy to homebrew and inter-compatibility with older TSR material

>GURPS is typically only good at low-level high-realism high-nerdery simulations.
So thats why there was so much fanboyish hype when launched DUNGEON FANTASY kickstarter, not because GURPS playerbase so much want to play games about strong as fuck hot barbarian bimbos and badass mages of transcendental awesomeness *tips fedora*, who killing tarrasques for breackfast, and stealing tons of gold from vault on plane of vaults to buy another orichalc sword for toothpick, like D&Dmasterrace do

>So thats why there was so much fanboyish hype when launched DUNGEON FANTASY kickstarter
Because GURPS fans will display fanboyish hype at literally every opportunity.

Hence this thread.

Not what I meant by my post, but okay.

People DO still buy GURPS, as evident by Pyramid magazine.

There might be other systems that "do what GURPS does better," if you only take into account the Basic Set, but anyone familiar with GURPS knows that you don't stop and play with only the Basic Set unless you want a boring game. GURPS has been doing GURPS for a long time, so collectively speaking the whole system is EXTREMELY robust with a WEALTH of information, with even the third edition shit still being relevant for world building. There is nothing quite like GURPS in terms of sheer volume and depth of information.

With that Dungeon Fantasy box set thing due to come out soon, new players will definitely follow. It's specifically aimed at getting as many people as possible interested in the system so as to get them to spread out into other areas of GURPS.

Then you obviously haven't played a proper Dungeon Fantasy game. It's extremely trivial to set up, even for the GM, and I'm talking about the original DF series.

Not an argument.

It's not meant to be an argument, Einstein. It's an explanation.

ITT: boohoo, stop talking about this game I don't like.

Veeky Forums is a bunch of children.

>simplicity
Dungeon Fantasy is as simple as it gets. You haven't played or even read it, though, so you wouldn't know.

>being extremely easy to homebrew
Wait, you're telling me that a toolkit-system that has almost everything you could ever want to homebrew already statted up for you, isn't easy to homebrew in? We're talking about GURPS, here, right, and not 3.5e D&D?

>inter-compatibility with older TSR material
It doesn't work out of the box with it, I'll grant you that, but one of GURPS' main selling points is how easy conversion is because it uses real-world numbers. It's also easy to eyeball what a monster should be like in GURPS based on what it is in whatever TSR product you're reading. And, if you're really lazy, there are already numerous monsters published officially (DF1, DFM1-3) and unofficially (GURPS Wikidot, It Came From The Forums).

Whatever you say, buddy.

Pyramid has been a niche irrelevance for decades, it's not like it still has any print presence worth a damn and it's only subscribed to by the SJG bubble fanbase.

>Then you obviously haven't played a proper Dungeon Fantasy game. It's extremely trivial to set up, even for the GM, and I'm talking about the original DF series.
It's true that I haven't played it, but I am also EXTREMELY skeptical that it could be even half as simple as B/X at best, and it definitely won't allow you to run TSR modules as easily as the systems they were fucking made for

>it's just good

It's an exercise in beancounting that doesn't offer anything over most other RPGs. It's an autism simulator.

>best general

That's like saying it has the best watery shit.

>Wait, you're telling me that a toolkit-system that has almost everything you could ever want to homebrew already statted up for you, isn't easy to homebrew in?
Yes, that is PRECISELY what I am telling you. B/X is a big dumb rock that has almost nothing except the bare basic rules it needs to function, which is why it's so easy to slap whatever shit you want on it and not be afraid that it'll break the game or be inconsistent with other rules

The last one. Its a rules heavy game that touts itself as universal. So you have the combined double whammy of a lot of time invested learning the intricacies of the system with a tacit encouragement to use it for absolutely fucking everything. It attracts the sort of gamer that feels that everything ever has to be modeled in an RPG for it to be good (it's not a good game if you can't play as asparagus, right?) who legitimately feels they're doing you a service by pushing it every time there's any conceivable reason to push it. On top of that it has that crass lie of a meme that GURPS is just "like, 3d6 roll under" as though there is such a thing as a GURPS player that doesn't use most of the fucking system, because if you don't there is literally no reason to use it over any other game.

>exercise in bean counting
Oh noes it's so hard to add and subtract things what will I do

>generals

Yea that's fair

>Oh noes it's so hard to add and subtract things what will I do

Use a system with a set of character creation rules that doesn't require tracking a bunch of fiddly modifiers? Lots of them out there, and they all function about as well as GURPS, though they wont satisfy your typical GURPS player's autism.

Not an argument

The game is legit just 3d6 roll under with modifiers, that's like risus simple.

It just gets more complex with the layers you add

DF IS simple. It lays the premise, the rules, and the concepts out very nicely, and it's very easy to just take stuff out and put different things in. However, it works just fine at doing what it says on the tin: dungeon-focused campaigns.

For me, I personally like a little depth to armor placement so I use some extra rules that deal with armor being put on specific locations. I also like the players to have a lot of options in combat so I bring in majority of Martial Arts to make things interesting.

>rules heavy

You clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

Use a character creation software. There's a free one just for GURPS.

Touche.

NO IT FUCKING ISN'T. Even the lite version is 32 pages, and it's an extremely limited game that can't be called complete. The basic resolution mechanic is not the game, you fucking simp. By that reasoning D&D 3.5 is just D20 roll over, but only a fucking moron would claim that, so are GURPS players all just so peculiarly stupid as to think that or what?

>You clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

How many pages is the basic set?

>Use a character creation software. There's a free one just for GURPS.
>special software to make the beancounting easier
>this makes the beancounting acceptible

GURPSfags are like Dungeon World fags, only they're neckbeards rather than hipsters.

You don't need to homebrew when everything's done for you, dude...

Yeah, but all the rules you're bitching about? Optional.

Yes, I suppose you could just sit there and narrate the situation and roll 3d6 against an arbitrary number to determine success, but you might as well just flip coins you fucking cretin. ALL THE RULES IN ALL GAMES ARE OPTIONAL YOU FUCKING MONG.

The basic set is huge because the authors had the crazy idea of putting almost everything in. They did so much that the splats are like 99% tips for gm's 1% of stats.(baring crazy books like the tech books, or the supplements like powers and supers or dungeon fantasy)

I don't want everything to be done for me because if I feel like getting esoteric and doing something like, say, a class based on being a swarm of disposable mooks (which is something I actually saw on a OSR blog) you most likely won't have the rules I want anyways and if you do, given the core mechanics are simple enough, I'll likely prefer to make my own rather than sift through a bunch of sub-systems in different books to patchwork what I want together.

Look, it's more mechanically heavy than BESM 2nd, which is already mechanically medium, it's a rules heavy game. It's about comparable to D&D 3.5 for basic mechanical density, assuming you aren't intentionally paring the game down to the bare minimum (which raises the question of why not just play a dedicated rules light system).

I just did it

Just buy a bunch of allies, they can be your disposible mooks 50% of your point total, always with you, 100 of them.

Costs 96 points

Took me like 3 seconds

If you can't read and don't have an appetite to learn then you aren't suited to GURPS. Pack up, go home, you are though.

fukkenlold
one gurpstard blaming other gurpstard in he's wrong playing wrong gurps

>GURPSfag shilling his poison

Piss off. He already said his game works well enough for him, why can't you leave it at that?

Just use the Basic Set and ignore a majority of the advantages and disadvantages that don't actively affects the type of game you enjoy.

Go through the basic combat chapter (and tactical if you want that) and ignore hitlocation, bleed, shield damage, and anything else that would slow down combat.

If you're in a fantasy setting, you don't even have to worry about guns so you can throw all those rules away.

Simplify the range/speed table to "bands," (or use the one from Action) if you want things to remain buttery smooth with no table lookups.

If you go through and cherry pick instead of using everything in the Basic Set like you're suppose to, you can cut ALL the fat and be left with an extremely lightweight system.

Just because the book is big doesn't mean that you can't cherry pick through the book. Not to mention that the character book is 90% advantages, disadvantages, and skills so that doesn't really count.

And if you don't want to use the character creation software, and don't want to deal with stupid beancounting, don't use a shitload of modifiers to your advantages or whatever (if that's what you're referring to). Play a straightforward fantasy game with the idea of creating brutally simple characters.

Yes, but GURPS actively says and promotes the idea of a majority of rules being optional. Even the rules that most people swear by in combat like hit location are completely optional.

So? I could make the same concept on M&M 3e about as quickly too, but that's because I'm already experienced in the system, and I most definitely wouldn't use M&M to run an OSR dungeon crawl. The benefit of having an almost non-existent but still functional system, as opposed to a rules-heavy generalist-support one, is that it erases system mastery as a factor on whether or not you can get it to do what you want

Character creation in GURPS is more simple and verstile then those games and it's vastly simpler in play then BESM.

The best reason not to use GURPS is that it's a very powerful and large tool box and many GMs can't use most of the tools and prefer games where they have few options and less is asked of them.

He said that he saw a home brew for his game set around having a swarm of mooks

I pointed out that gurps has official rules for that kind of stuff, and gave an example

I wasn't shilling, just pointing out that gurps does in fact not need homebrew for that example

Yes, but GURPS is actually built with that in mind. Are you okay user? You seem triggered.

>NO IT FUCKING ISN'T. Even the lite version is 32 pages
It may not be complete, but it's 90% of the system.

>Main dice are 3d6. Roll at or under skill, attribute, CR, etc. to succeed.
>A 3 or 4 is always a critical success, while a 17 or 18 is always a critical failure. If you're rolling against 15+, a 5 is a critical success. 16+ means a 6 is a critical success and 17 is a normal failure.
>Quick contests are resolved in a single roll. You win if you succeed at the other fails, if you win by a greater margin, or if you lose by a smaller margin. Ties mean nobody won.
>Regular contests are resolved in a series of rolls. You win if you succeed and the other fails. Otherwise, roll again.
>Advantages cost points, disadvantages give points.
>Skills are either Easy, Average, Hard, or Very Hard. The cost progression is 1 point total for one level, 2 points total for two levels, four points total for three levels, and +4 points for each additional level. Easy skills start at Attribute+0 with a single point, Average at Attribute-1, Hard at -2, and Very Hard at -3.
>In combat, roll against combat skill to hit, or (combat skill/2)+3 to parry/block, or Speed+3 to dodge.
>If you fail to defend against a successful attack, subtract DR if any, then multiply by wounding modifier for injury.
>HP is equal to ST, FP is equal to HT. At 1/3 HP, halve Move and Dodge.
>Below 0 HP means you roll for unconsciousness, and whenever you act, at a penalty equal to full multiple of HP below 0. -1xHP means you start rolling for death (not penalized). -5xHP means you die.
>Shock penalties come from an equal amount of injury, to a maximum of -4. Penalty applies to DX- and IQ-based skills, but not active defenses or other defensive reactions.
>Major wounds are greater than HP/2. Roll HT to avoid knockdown and stunning. If you fail, you fall down and are stunned. Roll HT to recover at the end of your next turn.

There you go. GURPS. You can run a game now!

The Basic Set is 576 pages, including shit like table of contents, index, example characters and creatures, etc. etc. Those 576 pages cover magic spells, laser guns, knapping a flint spear, interdimensional travel, foraging for food, asphyxiating in the vacuum of space, robots and aliens, mad science inventing, bleeding out, psionic abilities, DRIFTO, and the multidimensional kitchen sink setting for GURPS. The number of pages does not correlate to how light or heavy the rules are when said rules cover so many different topics because you are never going to use more than a fraction of them in any campaign (though I'd like to see the resulting clusterfuck).

Compare this to D&D 5e, which uses 600+ pages between the PHB and DMG while covering only a specific genre and tone. I don't see anyone crying that D&D 5e is rules heavy due to their page count. In fact, 5e is often touted as a simplified, streamlined D&D perfect for newbies and first-timers.

As for chargen software, I don't think it's necessary, but if you honestly have trouble keeping track of points you spend, it's there for you. The existence of chargen software also shouldn't be used as a reason to think the system is complex, as damn near everything benefits from the availability of solid, digital tools.

GURPS gives back what you put in. If you aren't willing to learn then you won't get much out.

>Just use the Basic Set and ignore a majority of the advantages and disadvantages that don't actively affects the type of game you enjoy.
>Go through the basic combat chapter (and tactical if you want that) and ignore hitlocation, bleed, shield damage, and anything else that would slow down combat.
>If you're in a fantasy setting, you don't even have to worry about guns so you can throw all those rules away.
>Simplify the range/speed table to "bands," (or use the one from Action) if you want things to remain buttery smooth with no table lookups.
>If you go through and cherry pick instead of using everything in the Basic Set like you're suppose to, you can cut ALL the fat and be left with an extremely lightweight system.

Or, or, OR! I could play a game that's already lightweight because I have no use for an autism simulator.

>Just because the book is big doesn't mean that you can't cherry pick through the book. Not to mention that the character book is 90% advantages, disadvantages, and skills so that doesn't really count.

Or, I could play a system where I don't have to.

>And if you don't want to use the character creation software, and don't want to deal with stupid beancounting, don't use a shitload of modifiers to your advantages or whatever (if that's what you're referring to). Play a straightforward fantasy game with the idea of creating brutally simple characters.

If I'm not going to use the only actual strength of the game (having rules for fucking everything) why would I use it over a more lightweight universal RPG?

>Yes, but GURPS actively says and promotes the idea of a majority of rules being optional. Even the rules that most people swear by in combat like hit location are completely optional.

They actively promote it for the same reason hipsters do things to be ironic: it's a deflection of criticism that prevents you from ever actually attacking the substance of the game.

But user, you already have the autism. It shows. Just go back to posting 80pts in guns pasta and it'll be okay.

>Instead of ready to play write-your-hero-name-here package, need to read half-thousand pages book to cherry pick what should players cherry pick for themself
Thats why all that speaking about gurps need boxed sets to get more new players are fail

What's a good, lighter "generic" RPG to use instead of GURPS? I've looked at Savage Worlds and FATE but am not really into bennies/fate points and the like.

Having played both GURPS and BESM, you're completely full of shit. BESM 2nd is considerably simpler than GURPS. Please stop lying.

>I wasn't shilling

Bullshit, thats literally all GURPSfags do, because it cause brain damage that drives them to obsessively try and get everyone to play GURPS.

It's no more built with it in mind than any other game. GURPSfags say this to avoid actual criticism of the autism simulator. Let's argue in good faith and assume that someone is actually running a game with GURPS, which means using most of its dense rulebooks.

That's not a complete game, fuck off.

>Compare this to D&D 5e, which uses 600+ pages between the PHB and DMG while covering only a specific genre and tone. I don't see anyone crying that D&D 5e is rules heavy due to their page count. In fact, 5e is often touted as a simplified, streamlined D&D perfect for newbies and first-timers.

While people do say it's good for new players, literally nobody claims D&D is anything but rules heavy. I suppose we could do some dishonest bullshit like for it, but players of other games are better than that.

GURPS Lite.

I mean, that's exactly it. I'm sure that if I organized a meeting of GURPS geniuses with an intricate enough knowledge of the system we could even forgo common human speech in favor of quoting paragraphs from the rulebook, but if you already have a system which does its job perfectly well, why? I can see using GURPS if you're interested in its complexity, because that's something you're hardly going to see with other systems, but if you gave me a pick between 3 systems which do what I want to varying degrees of success, and making it from the ground up with GURPS, I'd rather see the 3 systems very carefully before deciding I need the extreme generalist thingamajick.