GURPS Basic Set: Characters

fast delivery, satisfied with the product.

I first heard about the Generic Universal Role Playing System (GURPS) back in 2005. At the time, I was already playing Dungeons & Dragons as well as d20 Modern, so despite the endorsements this system received, I pretty much mentally brushed it aside.Fast forward to 2007. I somehow start thinking about GURPS again, and manage to take a look at the Characters book with a more objective frame of mind. I suddenly become *very* intrigued, even joining the Steve Jackson Games forum to see what Game Masters/players were churning out. This time, I was impressed, but still not ready to try another pencil and paper roleplaying game.And then it was early 2009. I hear about GURPS from another set of gamers, and once again returned to the forum. After quite a bit of reading, I was sold, and so ordered both main books on Amazon.I was happy I did.---GURPS, unlike most pencil and paper roleplaying games out there, does not truly have it's own "setting". While it's true there is a potential for campaigns with the included information on Infinite Worlds, the actual mechanics of the system do not assume the user is going to solely play action, fantasy, horror, romance, science-fiction or whichever genre(s) they prefer.No, GURPS truly is Generic. This can both be a positive and a negative. The former, because the included variety does cater to whatever you wish to play, and the latter, because it takes effort from everyone involved to actually *use* the correct combination of game mechanics within to reach the desired effect. It really helps to have a campaign idea in mind before opening either book.Also, GURPS uses the point-buy method of character generation (much like Mutants & Masterminds, New World of Darkness, Shadowrun, etc), rather than level-based (d20 Modern, Dungeons & Dragons, Spycraft, etc). This can be a little disorienting for those that are beginners to RPGs in general, but quickly makes up for that shortcoming with amazing on-the-fly versatility: you can conceivably play a 500 point character that is superscience inventor, yet a terrible combatant and a 100 point character that is a legendary swordsman, but not fully grown yet.It should be noted that this system starts off at a fairly "realistic" level of mortality: a 9mm bullet to the head probably will kill the average man, knives do more damage to the neck and suffering a crippled leg will mean the character in question may spend months recovering. I greatly enjoyed this, not only because it means *where* you attack is as important as what you use, but also because I don't have to work my way backwards from a larger-than-life set of rules.And yet, with the myriad of Advantages (traits that benefit the character), Skills, and optional rules, you can indeed play a John McClane type character that rides fireballs on a daily basis. Is this perfect? Not entirely. There is a point where the granularity in choice can both hinder and fail to represent certain characters, such as high tier superheroes (think Superman, Green Lantern or Phoenix). The Powers and Supers supplements go a fair way towards mitigating this concern, but I still would use GURPS for mostly street level superheroes.Combat is very engaging. The inclusion of hit locations (Head, Neck, Vitals, Arms, etc) means that a highly skilled character (Skill 16+) can end a fight quickly if their opponent can't adequately defend themselves or that even an amateur (Skill 9-11) has a chance at winning. Skills truly do matter here, as there is no automatic assumption of combat experience without them.Social skills are numerous (Diplomacy, Intimidation, Fast-Talk, Sex Appeal, Streetwise among others) and there are quite a few ways to both boost them and penalize them (Charisma, attractiveness, Disturbing Voice, Odious Personal Habits, etc). With enough skill, you can con someone out of their clothes (though this is usually very cinematic!) or find out where the local crime lord hides.One more thing that I have to say, and it's about the GURPS community: i've seen campaigns ranging from Redwall to A Song of Fire And Ice to the Civil War to Pulp Heroes to Sliders to modern day military to the near future and even Star Wars. It's just that adaptable.Ultimately, if you're willing to invest some creative energy into the system, you will be pleasantly surprised. Just don't tackle everything all at once ;-).

Those of you who don't know about the basic concepts of GURPS should go to the marvelous review that somebody wrote for the 3rd edition basic set.I'm a game master with 25 years of experience who turned to GURPS about 7 years ago because the game systems I was using didn't support cross-genre play very well. I loved the 3rd edition in spite of its problems, which could be daunting at times. The biggest problems were that the stat generation system encouraged "gaming" the system, there were an awful lot of little loopholes in the skills that the players could exploit, the psionics system was overpowered, and the game system had kind of sprawled over the years. I've got a good group of players and we worked around the problems but kept encountering new ones as we delved further into the world of GURPS.Enter 4th edition! It solves the gaminess of the stat generation system with such a simple rule I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of it. The loopholes in the skills have mostly been resolved (I haven't finished checking them over yet) and the Psionics system has been dumped in favor of a different simpler system that still seems to get the job done. This book sticks with the character generation system so I can't address the rules sprawl issue yet.I had concerns about spending so much for a single book (I've only gotten Characters so far but I'll be buying Campaigns as soon as the budget allows) but one of the little secrets is that you really aren't buying a single book. The Characters book includes all of the rules from the following 3rd edition books: Basic Set, Compendium I, Martial Arts, Supers, and Psionics. No more digging through multiple books! Furthermore you are saving a lot of money by buying a single book at $23.00 on Amazon vs. buying 5 books at $12.00 each! I also need to congratulate the editors on doing a MUCH better job of organizing the material in this book than the 3rd edition. The use of language is only slightly clearer than in the last version but it is still greatly appreciated.Another thing that was greatly appreciated was the hardcover format, I'm hard on my roleplaying books and was about to buy another copy of the 3rd edition book when I saw the fourth edition come out. The improved artwork and use of color was also nice.The sole caveat that I offer is to the GM's who are thinking of converting to 4th edition. I've run a few games and it runs very smoothly but this game system has the potential to be even MORE complicated than the last version. You need to think very carefully about how detailed you want your campaign to be and then STICK WITH IT! The players may well complain bitterly about not being allowed to use all of the little extras that are now available but the game can bog down quickly if you use everything that this system offers. My group of players were pretty insistent until we ran a game with all of the options and it took 10 times longer to generate characters and to resolve a fight scene than normal and it didn't change the results at all.My sole complaint is that the index is good instead of being GREAT like it was in 3rd edition. Of course it used to take several tries to find the right index in 3rd edition because there were always several books to choose from...Final note, I HIGHLY recommend getting GURPS Character Assistant, it is does a much better job of remembering all the little ins and outs of the character generation rules and does a much better job of formating the character sheet and... best of all... no more messy handwriting!

Even though I'm not happy with the condition that characters and campaigns arrived in bought 'new' they look used and was not in plastic wrap or anything. However I'm still keeping them as I want to own physical copies of both books