I'm a scrub, the only TTRPG I'm familliar with is D&D...

I'm a scrub, the only TTRPG I'm familliar with is D&D. I've seen a lot of good things about GURPS so I'll keep it simple: what exactly is it about GURPS that makes it better than D&D? In other words, how would you convince a D&D player that GURPS is the superior option?

A lot of the appeal, for many people, is that GURPS just *isn't* D&D. There is a not insignificant portion of the Veeky Forums community that believes that anything is preferable to D&D and are rather violent in voicing their opinions.

That aside, GURPS does have some stuff to recommend it. It has rules for basically everything or can be easily made to do anything it doesn't already have rules for. It is very modular, very adaptable, very approachable. However, this means that GURPS doesn't really excel at anything. It's decent at everything but has no specialty where it is always the best option. A fine system if you value that flexibility and open-endedness.

As for convincing someone to play GURPS, just ask nicely for them to try it out. Maybe they like it. Should be that easy with your friends.

GURPS doesn't have a class system, so you can make any weird character you want with any sort of powers you want, but you've got to okay everything with the GM instead of just following the character building rules and just running the character on game day. Everything you can think of can be built in GURPS, though some powers like stopping time everywhere or controlling a large amount of an element cost so many points that you couldn't afford them even in a high point campaign.

Abilities aren't necessarily priced based on their usefulness, but rather based on it's rarity. Combat Reflexes is 15 points and does so many things that unless your character has never fought before, it is almost required to make a decent character.

I wouldn't say GURPS is better, though I would say it's better at running anything that isn't Sword&Board High fantasy.

If the people you're trying to convince are playing 3.5 or Pathfinder, give up, find other players.

Mortality is independent from levels

Power is relative

Everyone can die, to realistic attempts at murder

If you want to use GURPS to "play D&D", you can check Dungeon Fantasy. It came out rather recently and has everything in it to run well, something approaching D&D's kind of fantasy. It doesn't have a setting though, IIRC.

Which is great, because rules agnostically, you can often just use a published setting

I've run Eberron campaigns in GURPS for ten years

Well, in GURPS you can build, for 100 points, a character that can headshot enemies from 100 meters effortlessly. 100 points is pretty low, too, it's definitely above average but not. With 250 points I can make a character who can headshot enemies across the atlantic ocean.

I've run a couple campaigns in GURPS, one in post-apocalypse where the characters did some edgy shit. I don't recommend the system. It's got a decent core to it, and some good ideas, but the chargen is broken and honestly most of the rules aren't that interesting.

...

>that faggot who never stops screeching about the thing he doesn't like

>Bloodlust and Callous
>Traits that encourage That Guy to do his thing and say "this is what my character would do", and he's rewarded for taking them
Who thought this was a good idea?

Oh, and Uncongenial. And there's a Loner trait too. What the fuck?

Welcome to GURPS: Where being edgy gets you more character points.

Unbalanced completely.

I will never die for 100 points.

But who cares! Ever single person will spend 100 points differently! The variance in the points is the best part.

I would typically use gurps for medium to high gritty campaigns. Pulp action to Swat simulations. Things begin to break down when you get to superhero/high fantasy. They still work, but need like 6 books to be truly fun.

The reason I fucking DESPISE GURPS is because it’s “mathematics and calculus, the game”. All these fucking dice modifiers from all these different sources is fucking annoying me to shit. I can’t handle that much information at once god fucking damn

I play gurps as my main game and I have never used calculus.

I can do basically all the stuff in my head.

What game have you been playing user?

found the retard

>having character flaws is bad.

The GM could just tell the player to fuck off.

It isn't better, it's a generic system that isn't really meant to run anything particularly well. Find a system suited to the style of game you want to play.

Then you have to learn a bunch of systems and deal with the individual problems for each one.

If gurps can do anything the other system can (it can), then you really have no point in going out and learning another system.

>100 points character
>spends 80 of them on a single skill
Haha no. You would get laughed out of my table if you tried to pass this joke as your character.

Nothing makes GURPS better.

GURPS is a meme system, basically. The reason for this is basically the same reason as why most multi-purpose tools are shit.

If you have a specific purpose, you can specialize. You can channel your effort towards making yourself good at that thing. If you have a purpose of "Be as general as possible", then you're a worthless tool. Sure, you might be functional enough to do a few jobs, but you won't be able to really hold up for long or be very good at it.

Specialtyfags please go.

My system can do anything yours can do. Many times even better. Without having to learn new systems each genre shift.

There's a splatbook specifically for running just about any genre imaginable though, so your argument doesn't hold water. GURPS is meant to be customized to the specific purpose you want.

I dislike GURPS because even amongst generic systems, it feels unfocused.

And I _like_ most generic systems. I like Savage Worlds and I like FATE/Accelerated, I like RISUS, I even kinda like about half of Strike!. I dislike GURPS (and Mini6) because they don't have any mechanics that drive the game in a direction I enjoy, while at the same time they DO have a large amount of fiddly bits instead of giving you the freedom to just make your own shit like the more freeform generic systems do (i.e. basically just making up all your shit in RISUS).

You got memed. GURPS is maybe the worst game that anyone actually plays. I only say maybe because it's possible that nobody actually plays GURPS.

>The GM could just tell the player to fuck off.
>You would get laughed out of my table if you tried to pass this joke as your character.
So the system is bad, and you admit that it's bad, but it's okay because GM fiat can forbid any opting use of the rules? How is this different from 3.pf or Synnibarr or anything?

It's not DnD, for the simple fact that is different you will get something out of it. Maybe it open your eyes to look for more games or maybe it taunts you into trying to play your old game in different ways.

>what exactly is it about GURPS that makes it better than D&D?
GURPS is my favorite system, but just saying "better" is wrong. Character creation in GURPS is a combination of excitement and a grind. GMing is simultaneously the easiest and hardest thing.

There are big hurdles to GURPS, but it is absolutely not a "jack of all trades, master of none," game like retarded people say. It's the pinnacle of modular systems, and so all blame of failure goes on who was running it. Many "good" GMs are secretly shitty and GURPS really exposes those guys.

The rules specifically say that GURPS is meant to be able to handle many different types of characters for many different types of games. Therefore, """"GM Fiat"""" exists because players need to know what is allowed in the GM's game.

No that's a stupid judgement to make.

Just like D&D the gm is free to ban characters that go against the party balance or theme and ban them. If your gm lets anything through you've only got him to blame.

Plus 80 points in guns isn't that much more than a small boost. Considering I could make an entirely unavoidable death attack for less, it actually isn't that good.

>It doesn't have a setting though
why make a specific setting 1) for a GENERIC system
2) when Eberron exists

m8, GURPS has a shitload of settings books. Just because it's generic doesn't mean it can't propose settings. But yeah they probably expect people who get into DF to just use D&D settings.

>how would you convince a D&D player that GURPS is the superior option?

By proposing a gurps game that IS NOT d&d:

>hey user would you like to play an old west campaign?
>how about an investigative campaign mid 70's
>space-horror?
>1930 superheroes?
>cliffhanger adventure noir 1920s?
>swashbucklers pirates?
>etc..

I never understood the "GURPS requires a PhD in mathematics" meme but it's certainly true that keeping track of all the modifiers and stuff is rather annoying.

for that matter, which version of GURPS should i look at if i wanted to give it a try?

4e is the best right now.

I'd say the benefit of GURPS is baked in combat options independent of character build. Take two characters, give them the same stats and equipment, and put them in the hands of two different player s, and they'll do very different things. Risky all-out attacks on vulnerable hit locations. Shoulder-tackling people against walls to stun them long enough to slide a blade between their ribs. Dirty fighters kneeing people in groins and headbutting peoples faces. There's so many different ways to play the same character due to a flexible and in depth combat system that the flexible chargen is just gravy on top of that.

GURPS lists what different skill levels equate to. The book says that a skill level of 18 raw is starting to get into "trained old grandmaster superdude" and anything beyond that is unrealistic and system-warping. But you can still buy higher than 18 because the system is flexible and maybe you want to run a campaign where impossibly hypercompetent skill users run around. In any normal tacticool shootbangs game with realism in mind, the GM would set a skill cap, and the game expects him to.

Editions don't change as radically as D&D editions. They're a steady refinement.

Everyone runs 4e. 3e material is practically identical so if you want to run something that requires 3e-only books then you can pretty much run it with the 4e core rules as-is.

Yes, GURPS expects "by RAW" to have the GM very involved in character creation, no "use that stat array and whatever class from the core book and this and that".
Shit the book practically yells at you to give your players templates so that those that don't know the system well have an easier time with chargen, and those that do know the system and want to make their character on their own can know what'd be expected from characters they'd come up with.

The core mechanics themselves are very nicely designed, and the game itself is a blast to play. Get the Dungeon Fantasy set and you should be good for an out of the box experience. D&D's has its merits, but the rules are holdovers from the 70's that no longer make sense in context.

Every time I think about GURPS combat I get incredibly angry at SJ for pulling the GURPS license from Black Isle a few months before Fallout's release.

Do you think Tim Cain cried when he found out? I bet he did.

Although the popularity of Fallout's GURPS-inspired perk system led to that HORRIBLE feat garbage in 3.PF, so fuck you Tim you literal faggot.

I can still brag my favorite game worked as inspiration to fallout.

We don't know what actually happened. I tried researching it a few years back, and there was all sorts of contradicting info. I've seen everything from the common SG pulling the license because of violence to SG not even being aware that the license was pulled from the Black Isle side and caught completely off guard. The latter apparently because not everyone wanted to deal with the hassle of having to license the property when they could just make their own.
So unless Steve Jackson himself, or someone from Black Isle comes forward and tells us exactly what happened, we'll never know.

the reason I switched from D&D to GURPs is that now my characters feel like actual people rather than RACE&CLASS, also after you learn the system the world is your oyster when it comes to running things that aren't just fantasy

in terms of mechanics GURPs just clicks for me, everything feels designed rather than thrown together (see D&Ds challenge rating system)

but don't just switch because some fat nerds on a llama trading forum, if you're satisfied with D&D then just stick with that

this is my favorite thing about GURPs actually, I've hoarded troves of old books and still pull from them without the hassle of trying to run a 1e module with 5e

>Hey, Fred! You know that shitty multi-tool you got with those bits you can add other tools onto? There's another one over here for like $5!

This. It's definitely the system for people who have a character idea and want to make exactly that idea come to life.

It's more like having a tool box full of tools and a basic instruction Manuel.

The sourcebooks are like construction videos that show you how to use those tools in interesting ways.

>how would you convince a D&D player that GURPS is the superior option?
You don't.

>construction Manuel