An Ode to GURPS

An Ode to GURPS

I’ve been quite negative towards some of the recent GURPS releases, so let me talk about something positive – why I love GURPS.

I come from a D&D background, 3.0/3.5 specifically, and I played that system a lot. Even back in the day, I was dissatisfied with the system, but I kept playing because I loved the non-mechanical components – settings, races, creatures, and all that - and because I didn’t know anything better, of course. The system felt very restrictive. You have to be this powerful and have this much gold by this level. You have to be this level to have a chance against a monster of this Challenge Rating. You only get this many feats on this level, and so on. If you removed some part of the system, everything else toppled like dominoes.

D&D had (and still has) a large community, which is both a boon and a bane. Sure, it was easy to find players, but at the same time, the community, just like the system itself, felt very restricting. You have to allow these books. You have to allow this build. You have to allow these races. No, you have to let me play the character that I made even before reading the premise of your game. If you didn’t give in to these demands, you’d get branded “that autistic no-fun-allowing DM,” and those players would just find someone else, as there was always an ample supply of DMs. In a way, in D&D, the DM played a tertiary role, the players played the secondary role, and the books played the primary role.

GURPS is significantly different. GURPS doesn’t have classes. GURPS doesn’t have levels. While D&D, at least the modern editions (I still consider 3e modern), can work as games, and I can even see the appeal of a gamist system, but they simply fail at displaying a believable world. A D&D world that uses D&D as a system just makes no sense to me. Levels, Challenge Ratings, the almost mandatory number of encounters per day and per level make it feel like a video game with a world that scales with the power level of your character, trying to make it feel that you are overcoming challenges when in truth this is just a façade. People say that immersion is the most important thing about a roleplaying game, but I just couldn’t for the life of me find this immersion in D&D.

GURPS, being a skill-based system that is simulationist by default, actually can produce believable worlds that feel real. There are no arbitrary limitations, such as classes, levels, challenge rating, “adventuring days,” action surges – your character just gets thrown into the game world, and the world doesn’t bend backwards to make sure you feel challenged and experience a great story that the GM has in mind.

In GURPS, you achieve immersion even before the game begins. The system makes you think about who your character is and not about what he can do. In D&D, most players just pick a race/class combination with some cool class features, and call it a day. In GURPS, you first inspect all the background information the GM gave you. Even if you want to, for example, play a dwarf hexblade, the system makes you think. Why did your character become a hexblade? How did he do it? What purpose does hexblade’s abilities serve in the character’s life? What does he even do for a living? Hexblade is not an occupation! Where’s your mentor who taught you this art? Can you still contact him? How come a dwarf decided to become a hexblade when his society is averse to arcane magic? How did his clan react to his decision? Why is your character a dwarf when the game is set in a human nation far away from dwarven holds? If you manage to answer these questions, you get a believable character and not just a character sheet. If you do not manage to answer these questions, then maybe this character concept just doesn’t work for this particular game? That’s absolutely fine too.

The same can be said about the GM – worldbuilding and preparing for the game in D&D felt more akin to being in a level editor for a video game. “Oh, and then they fight these ten zombies, and in the next room there are demons and troglodytes that guard a chest with a longsword +1.” In GURPS, you have to think why does this dungeon exist? Why are these ten zombies there? Who animated them and why? If this dungeon has been sealed for many years, why haven’t the zombies decayed into skeletons? Why are the troglodytes tolerating the presence of zombies in the next room? Where did they get that longsword +1 and why aren’t they using it? What the hell are the demons doing there aside from being there just to pose a challenge? By answering all these questions, you not only make a believable world, but you also get immersed in it yourself.

Some people enjoy both of these processes and find them rewarding. Some don’t. GURPS, due to having a good mechanical depth, actually can work as a “gamist” system too, and a pretty good one at that. If you want to do a simple senseless dungeon crawl, it is great at that too!

I’ve seen some people say that it’s impossible to roleplay or have a good story in a simulationist game, but I struggle to understand this criticism. I find the opposite to be true – a believable game world, where your characters have actual agency because actions have believable consequences make this much easier. The stories basically write themselves, emerging from the actions of the player characters and reactions of the world. I believe that such emerging narrative is the best kind of narrative. These consequences are all backed by the game mechanics, and not GM fiat. You play GURPS, not “Cops and robbers.” Player agency is important, and you can’t have agency if your choices are not meaningful. Mechanics (“crunch”) make choices meaningful.

GURPS is an amazingly robust system. As I said, by default it leans towards simulationism, but you can vary the degree of crunch that you want in your game. Removing a rule or adding a rule doesn’t make the system implode – it was designed with this in mind. This has a side effect – every GURPS game is different and you simply cannot glean anything about the game if your GM tells you “We’re playing GURPS tonight.” Devising a ruleset out of this flexible toolbox and creating a world takes a lot of effort and time, which is intimidating to many. Getting started with a GURPS game is much more difficult than in D&D, but once you do get started, the game flows so easily. You really can’t appreciate it enough if you haven’t experienced it yourself. Running a GURPS game feels like a breeze, while running a D&D game feels like a chore to me.

With all GURPS games being different, tailored to specific games and worlds the GMs have in mind, the GM returns to playing the primary role, the players become secondary, and the books actually become tertiary. The GM gatekeeps his group, and the players have to adapt to the GM’s requirements, not the other way around. This makes it harder to find a game, but once you do, you probably have a stable gaming group for the rest of your life. I believe that there are many more GURPS groups than the internet may lead you to believe. When a GURPS group forms, it basically loses the need to interact with the rest of the community. GURPS community seems to be very segregated in this way.

This barrier of entry for the GMs also means that GURPS, in my opinion, isn’t a very good system for one-shots. It rewards the GM working intensely on his game world, and it may not be worth the effort for a single game.

GURPS allows you to have the exact experience you want. It does it so well, that it actually may ruin other games for you. When I read books for other systems, I don’t really get excited to try the system out, I just think how much better these concepts would work in GURPS. I find it one of the greatest advantages of GURPS – every book you read can be a GURPS book for you. If you are able to divorce the system from the setting, like I did with D&D, you open your mind to an endless library of content that probably works even better in GURPS.

Yes, GURPS takes a lot of effort, but everything good in this world does. While other systems rely on premade content made by the publisher, GURPS relies on the GM to make his own content. I do get lambasted for being creatively bankrupt for adapting D&D stuff, doing it wrong, and I’ve been told many times to “just use Dungeon Fantasy.” GURPS Dungeon Fantasy does not provide the experience I want, especially since I don’t even play dungeon-delving-focused games. I divorced the setting from the game. I genuinely enjoy D&D, but not as a system, and I genuinely love what I’m doing. It may seem like a waste of time to most, but it’s a hobby for me – something I do for fun when I have free time. GURPS is something you get invested in for life.

GURPS does have a bad reputation, but all the crunch, complexity, high barrier of entry, effort it takes to get a game off the ground – it all feels like upsides to me, not downsides. If adding two numbers together and being able to read these days is “autism,” having standards is “gatekeeping,” and playing in a believable world where players have agency is “wrong way to get entertained,” then I don’t want to be right. I love GURPS, I love what I’m doing, it’s my life’s passion, and I’m not apologizing for it.