Regarding style, the GURPS Basic Set is nothing special. As far as art goes, the Basic Set has some of the worst that I've ever seen in ANY RPG product. On the other hand, for the most part the "art" is actually relevant to whatever is being discussed, which is a big plus compared to most RPG products. As such they balance each other out. I wouldn't penalize it on account of art unless it was terrible as RPGs aren't about the art but imagination, but at the same time I would only reward it for being appropriate to the context in the book if the art was more than decent. As far as layout goes, it's clear and easy to read. Sidebars are useful and don't get in the way of the main text as they are actually SIDEbars. Some RPG products stick the "sidebars" in the middle of the page interrupting the main text in the middle of a sentence, which is VERY annoying. The BASIC set does NOT suffer from this. I'm not rewarding the Basic Set for doing this properly as the overall quality of RPGs on the market isn't so poor that doing something properly merits an award.
Style: 3 - Average
Content is the important stuff. To me a style rating of 3-5 is unimportant (other people obviously don't rate this way though), while a 1 or 2 indicates some serious flaws that detract from the content (incredibly bad art could do this, but in the most cases it will be layout problems).
The Table of Contents has the following Important points, and fits everything onto 3 pages, with a 1/6th picture on the first page. Introduction, More for GURPS, What is RolePlaying?, Quick Start, Creating a Character, Chapter 1 Basic Attributes, Chapter 2 Physical Appearance, Chapter 3 Wealth and Status, Chapter 4 Advantages, Chapter 5 Disadvantages, Chapter 6 Quirks, Chapter 7 Skills, Chapter 8 Equipment and Encumbrance, Chapter 9 Completing your Character, Chapter 10 Character Development, Chapter 11 Random Characters, Chapter 12 Success Rolls, Chapter 13 Basic Combat, Chapter 14 Advanced Combat, Chapter 15 Injuries, Illeness and Fatigue, Chapter 16 Mounted and Vehicle Combat, Chapter 17 Flight, Chapter 18 Animals, Chapter 19 Magic, Chapter 20 Psionics, Chapter 21 Game Mastering, Chapter 22 Game Worlds, Chapter 23 Writing Your Own Adventures, Charts and Tables, All in a Night's Work, Appendix, Glossary and Index. Phew. Well it IS a 256 page book and a complete system so a lot of info is to be expected.
The Introduction you might read once, the only useful information for role-players is info on some supplements for GURPS, in various genres. They say that this book is everything needed to play GURPS and everything else is optional, but sourcebooks are quite useful, and GURPS does have some of the best, so getting them is something of a necessity unless your campaign ideas are dealt with fully by GURPS Basic Set and you don't find yourself wondering if there was a bit more out there. In all it lists 44 possible GURPS supplements in Fantasy, Science Fiction, Cyberpunk, Superheroes, Time Travel, Historical, Modern Day, Horror, Spies and Mystery. There are MANY more GURPS supplements out there. Just drop by SJGames.com to check them out. Some of the supplements are VERY good, and they are essentially what makes getting the Basic Set worthwhile. On its own (I know I'm skipping ahead of myself here) the basic set is OK, but the real treasure is the supplements. So if you get this expect to be getting a variety of supplements for it. The What is Roleplaying part is annoying but fortunately takes up only half the page, the other half is on metric conversions, which is actually quite useful. The first thing they say in the Quick Start is "Read this First", good advice, it will roughly explain the mechanics to you. If you want to get a brief overview, read it. Amazon.com has a "Look Inside" feature for the basic set, so you can read the quick start there. After the first time you'll only be checking back to the introduction for metric conversions (if you prefer metric) and to get an idea on some of the supplements.
The Next part is Character Creation, which I found myself using the most. It gives some good advice on character creation and even provides a sample filled out character sheet for "Dai Blackthorne" (who is used throught the character creation process in examples). Essentially GURPS is a point based system, you have a pool of starting points (average 100) Which you use to buy abilities, and you can increase by taking disadvantages.
Chapter 1 is where the real meat starts. It goes over basic attributes, it provides a good overview and is easy to understand. You shouldn't need more than 1 read through to understand GURPS' attribute system. Good stuff, it even has a section on average scores for children. A neat little touch I haven't seen elsewhere.
Chapter 2 is on character appearance. Unlike most systems I've come across, appearance is considered either an advantage or a disadvantage. You have to pay in character points if you want to look good, and if you want extra points you can chose to look bad. While it's good to keep everyone from playing good looking characters, it's also prone to having a lot of ugly characters in a combat oriented campaign. Again I'll get ahead of myself, but this is an example of how the disadvantage system in GURPS can be broken depending on the type of campaign being run. This is up to Mature GMs and Players to solve. I won't fault GURPS for making Munchkining easy, but it is really nice for GMs to have a system that makes it hard. With some careful tweaking you can make a considerably more powerful character with the same number of character points, which supposedly makes the system balanced. Ideally all 100 point characters should be equal, but it's not the case. An efficiently made 100 point character can be just as powerful as a quickly made 150 point character. GURPS is a very power-gamer/min-maxer friendly system. This can be both good and bad. It's good for players who have strict GMs, it's bad for GMs who assume average characters (ones which are basically just made up and haven't been tuned). What type of GM or Player you are will have a lot to do with whether you'll like this system or not. (Oh yeah, it's also Rules Lawyer friendly).
Chapter 3, wealth and Status. Again, you have to pay for your status. You can't just be a prince, if you want to be one, you have to pay for it in character points. This is great in RP heavy games, but low status becomes a nice dumping ground in high-combat games. Wealth you also pay for in points. Average wealth is 0 points, while poor people get less money, and rich people get more. This not only affects starting weatlh, but GURPS also assumes a job and salary. This might be relevant in some campaigns and completely pointless in others. Again, depending on the campaign, low wealth can be a dumping ground for points if the character has been designed to be self sufficient - on the other hand high wealth can be used to gain a lot of material advantages. This system is nice as it lets you accessorize your character as you would like. In games like D&D you have limited starting wealth. It's a nice mechanic for responsible players, but it is munchkin prone like I said.
Chapter 4 Advantages is how you make your character special, a hero. High stats are ok, but it's the advantages that really flesh out your character. You can either go the RP route and pick the advantages that make your character complete (if you follow the character design before creation route) or if you're familiar with the campaign you can pick the advantages that will be the most useful. This isn't munchkining, as you are paying for something you'll use as opposed to
Chapter 5 Disadvantages. Here is where you get extra character points to spend on advantages and skills, it can be a great RP tool but it is also munchkin heaven. By picking advantages that aren't detrimental in the campaign the character can be designed to be quite powerful while at the same time not having any drawbacks that manifest themselves in play. Again, it's great for roleplaying as it adds an extra element in the game - the players have to work to avoid situations in which their disadvantages come into play, or they can calmly walk into situations in which they do come into play just for fun.
Chapter 6 Quirks. This chapter is essentially "5 free points for saying what your character is like" In a positive light it rewards players for adding some depth to their character. I could leave it at that, but. Munchkin heaven. 5 points for no discernable gameplay disadvantage, and as a bonus it lets them get away with it by giving them a guide to roleplay by. The nice thing for other members of the gaming group is that the Munchkin will actually be doing some RP, even if it's limited. Roleplayers could do without this, as it is essentially formalized role-play elements. Aside from the page on "What is RolePlaying?" this is the most useless part of the book. Fortunately it is also one of the shortest, and completely optional.
Chapter 7 Skills. Exactly what they sound like, you pay points to be better at certain skills, some skills are harder than others and therefore require more points. They provide the main modifier to whatever you want to do that would require a success check. Advantages and Disadvantages will modify this. It's a good system and nice to see that they chose to consider weapon use a skill, instead of doing the Weapon Proficiency and Non-Weapon Proficiency/Skills system in D&D. It allows for a completely Non-Combat oriented character. Skills are another area that can be used by munchkins, but can't be exploited like disadvantages. At least they have to pay for what they get. Astute players will, however, realize that it's much more efficient to put the points into increasing the relevant ability scores (DX and IQ) than to spend points increasing the ability. Especially for characters that have a lot of skills. GMs are recomended to impose maximum ability scores in the first chapter, a very good idea. Otherwise DX 15 and 16 combat characters will be very common, and IQ 15 and 16 magic characters just the same. A score of 17 becomes prohibitively expensive in a 100 point game, but 15 and 16 are quite worthwhile in combination with a bunch of skills that are only paid 1 point for (especially easy skills that provide a bonus to the check). The skill cost is realistic in terms of difficulty to learn a skill but it isn't the most balanced. If realism is important to you (and it is certainly realistic to be able to plan your life out to get the most bang for the buck) then it's a great system, if game balance is important to you, the scalable skill syste presented in Big Eyes, Small Mouth and Tri-Stat dX are MUCH better.
Chapter 8, Equipment and Encumbrance focuses mainly on combat related equipment. It explains the damage system for Melee weapons and and describes the protection afforded by armor. Normal every-day equipment is mentioned in the side bars. Actual equipment is presented in the back of the book starting on page 206. It isn't convenient for reading the first time through, but is convenient for repeated use, as it is with the other tables in the back of the book (unfortunately it isn't the very back, as the Appendix for the revision, which includes more advantages, disadvantages, skills, spells and psionics, and the adventure are after it, which makes it harder to find than actually being in the back).
Chapter 9 Completing Your Character and Chapter 10 Character Development are basically about putting the finishing touches on your character. Not much regarding game mechanics here and it is actually transferable to other game systems as well. Good stuff considering it is "Generic".
Chapter 11 Random Characters is for GMs and Lazy players who want to roll up a quick character. Handy, considering GURPS doesn't have a separate way of dealing with NPCs and Monsters. They are all created the same way as the characters.
Chapter 12 Success Rolls explains the basic game mechanics, covering difficulty modifiers for a variety of tasks. It also has a full page fright check table providing a whole amount of disadvantages acquired by the character for failing a will roll and being scared. Excellent stuff for a Horror campaign, and should be portable to other game systems with some minor rule tweaking. As I like horror games like Call of Cthulhu and Ravenloft, I like that table. For fans of other game systems it's likely to be a waste of space. Of course no matter what genre you play, it's unlikely that you'll use everything in this book, so something will be a waste no matter what. That's the downside of having a generic system. The upside is you don't have to learn a new rules mechanic if you want to try something new, and for that you just have to read the unused portion of the text.
Chapter 13 "Basic" Combat. This goes to show how differing the opinions on basic combat can be. It would be considered advanced for a rules-light system, but is on par with D&D 3rd Edition/D20 and slightly more complicated than basic AD&D. It's a good chapter that provides a nice amount of options for combat without being bogged down by rules.
Chapter 14 Advanced Combat. Yes this is advanced. If you play combat heavy games it will appeal to you, or if you like tactical comba with miniatures and maps. D&D3.5 carries with it this level of complexity. I don't care for it, but I know some people like it. If the entire combat system was like this I'd penalize GURPS for it, but the Basic Combat system is fine for my liking, so GURPS definitely does what it set out to do by providing a variety of options to different players, even if this option isn't genre specific.
Chapter 15 Injuries, Illness and Fatigue. This chapter is great for people who liked chapter 14, it provides good mechanics for people who like realistic gaming. I prefer to discard it as I find too many mechanics get in the way of enjoyable gaming, but everybody is different and I know a lot of people will like this chapter.
Chapter 16 Mounted and Vehicle Combat. Self explanatory, more advanced rules but I don't know why this came after Chapter 15 instead of 14. Maybe so that Chapter 17 wouldn't seem out of place following injuries? The illustration of people riding giant bunnies is hilarious!
Chapter 17 Flight. Again, self explanatory, it seems to be quite combat oriented, so I don't understand why Injuries, Illness and Fatigue doesn't follow it instead of preceding 16.
I'd call this a bit of an organisational faux pas. I'd almost penalize it except I don't use the options anyway so it doesn't matter to me. It shouldn't be a big deal for those who do use it either, it just isn't fluid.
Chapter 18 Animals. This is as close as you're going to get to a section on monsters. It's only 6 pages long, almost not worth being in there. This illustrates one of the failings GURPS has for being GENERIC. If your generic game involves dealing with other people or humanoids it's fine. If it is a fantasy game that involves killing monsters the GM has to do a LOT of extra work. It has 14 real world animals, that covers a nice basis of what you would need in a real world campaign. 3 Fantasy Creatures just isn't enough. For 1 or 2 beginning adventures it would be ok, anything more and it would start to get boring seeing the same monsters over and over again. This is why D&D has a Monster Manual. Animals is just enough to get you by. If you want to play a generic real world campaign it's OK. At least you don't have to make a guard dog or horse from scratch. The 3 monsters provided are almost insulting, and should have been left out in favor of some more animals, or monsters that could be used in a relatively real world campaign like a Sasquatch, Vampire or Werewolf.
Chapter 19 Magic and Chapter 20 Psionics. I only read through these chapters a couple times. There wasn't enough extra material to make a fantasy campaign to my liking, so GURPS was essentially useful for Modern Day real-world campaigns for me. The system was decent but there wasn't much distinction between Magic and Psionics. As far as I'm concerned Magic is a general term for something supernatural that can't be explained and Psionics falls into that definition nicely. I think it was just there for people who wanted Psi powers instead of Magic powers. They could have just as well been together with Psi or Magic qualifiers. Which is also why I'm commenting on them together. Aside from this unecessary split the system was quite good. The Spells and Psionic powers work like skills essentially, they're based on pre-requisites, so you can't get a higher power until you have a similar lower powered one. Spells and Psionics can be made more or less powerful depending on how much you spend on them. Both Magic and Psionics essentially draw on "Mana" in the form of fatigue, so HT becomes an important stat for Mages and Psionicists. While it's common for Psionicists to require high HT it isn't for Mages. An interesting twist. An extra fatigue advantage can be purchased for people who want to play low HT Mages/Psionicists who can still use their powers a lot. I might have used the system more if there'd been more useful info for a Fantasy setting. As it was there was only useful info for a Historical campaign with magic or psionics thrown in. Not my cup of tea. Of course everyone's mileage migh vary. If you want to run a Shadowrun type campaign without cybertech it would work fine. If you want cybertech you're going to have to make the rules yourself - or buy one of the good supplements, such as CthulhuPunk, CyberPunk, or GURPS Shadowrun. The thing with GURPS is it has portable core rules, but for different settings you still need to get source material. Unless you can make it yourself, in which case you could also make your own RPG that works exactly the way you want it to instead of having to deal with everything the way GURPS works.
Chapter 21 Game Mastering. This Chapter is quite short, and it's a pity because it's also quite good. The advice is system non-specific for the most part and can be used in almost any game. Unfortunately there isn't much here that you haven't read somewhere else in a different RPG. If this is your first RPG then while the advice is good, there isn't much of it and you'll be learning a decent bit by trial and error. The sidebar on Dealing with the Players will be of particular use. The part that leaves a bad taste in my mouth is the section on Awarding Character points. While most RPGs advocate fun, this part advocates Winning vs Losing. It suggests subratcting character points for a failure of the mission. It isn't subracted from the characters total but is held against the next adventure, which makes a success rather anticlimactic as you essentially don't earn anything for succeeding. At most an in game RP penalty should be applied. Failure might result in making an enemy or losing a friend, but abstract character point loss shouldn't be applied. It's of course up to the GM, but I think that's particularly bad advice, especially for inexperienced players and GMs. Experienced players won't care, but it can be rather crushing for a new player to not advance at all. Depending on the player they may or may not prefer diying (their character, not suicide of course - before some overprotective parent gets the wrong idea reading this).
Chapter 22 Provides a nice overview of tech levels, which is the mechanic which GURPS uses to deal with different technologies in different genres. Quite elegant actually, and up to TL 9 (near future) it appears quite accurate (moreso than Traveller), beyond TL9 it's hard to predict what technology will be like, so anything is fine as long as the progression is linear. It also has a brief discussion of terrain, laws, living, jobs and economics. Unlike D&D for which the profession (and income) is adventuring, GURPS assumes that you might have a job in the normal sense. Unfortunately it doesn't go into much detail about it. They have a paragraph on Religion and Politics saying they vary from game world to game world. In other words, useless info. The information in the chapter is good, like the GMing chapter, but there just isn't enough of it. Normally GURPS solves lacking areas in the Basic Set with supplements, but there is no GMing supplement. There are much better supplements for Game Masters for other systems, and this lack of GM supplements is what would make me reccomend that new GMs not get GURPS. For experienced GMs it will be based on whether they like the system.
Chapter 23 Writing Your Own Adventures: Good advice, and it's better than none, but again it's so short as to be of little use. Good adventures are hard to write under any circumstances, and a sparse guide doesn't help. The best way to learn is to buy some adventures and copy some of the elements. Unfortunately adventures isn't something GURPS has a lot of. Some are available online, but while there are many GURPS sourcebooks, there aren't many adventures available. Pyramid magazine sometimes has adventures, but you will basically have to rely on the internet for GURPS adventures. Fortunately they're free so this isn't too big of a deal. On the down side free means no quality control so you might be using bad adventures as your examples. This could happen with published adventures as well but it isn't as common.
Charts and Tables Starting page 201 - This is where the players will be flipping too most, along with the Magic/Psionics section if being used and the Advantages, Disadvantages and Skills sections. (Both the regular and the Appendix, more on that later). The charts are good, mostly consisting of equipment. They will be useful to people who are familiar with the equipment either through real life research or from other games. People unfamiliar with the equipment will be left scratching their heads on the less obvious stuff. If everything was explained elsewhere and the charts were a supplement this would be forgivable, but it isn't. And the Basic Set is supposed to be standalone.
All in a Night'S Work. 4 Sample FANTASY character sheets are provided before this choose your own adventure type adventure. The Adventure is also Fantasy but provides provisions for a Modern setting. For a Generic system it's surprising that they only provide Fantasy sample characters. Would it have been hard to have a couple fantasy and a couple modern characters? Maybe a regular fantasy character like a Rogue/Warrior (considering the adventure type) and a Mage/Wizard and a regular modern character (maybe a Vigilante) and a Psionicist type character. Instead there are 4 Fantasy characters, which are just variations of the Rogue/Warrior character types. Bummer. The Adventure reads like some of the games like Trolltooth Pass from SJ Games. It really is a Chose your own adventure rather than the real thing, and there isn't that much choice, it's more you do either this or this. Want to do something that wasn't provided as an example? Too bad. It's fun, no doubt about it, but this isn't what RPGs are about. It's a "Solo Adventure", but RPGs aren't supposed to be solo. At least one GM and one Player. That's why they have the Game Mastering chapter. I'm sorry if I seem to be on a rant, but it really sucks by RPG standards. Just goes to show what level of adventures are produced by SJ Games. They have great sourcebooks, but nothing worth speaking of for adventures. They should have left it out and saved some space. Even if it cost the same it would have been better. Nothing is better than something of crap quality.
The Appendix. Basically extra Advantages, Disadvantages and Skills tacked on to the end. Instead of integrating the revisions into the rest of the book (wouldn't have been that hard) Steve Jackson decided to leave everything the same and just add it on. He might as well have just continued selling 3rd Edition and provided the revision in a separate document, maybe selling it for $5 or something like that.
As you could probably tell I wasn't too thrilled with this product. Part of this has to do with the purpose of it to be a GENERIC UNIVERSAL RolePlaying System. It's generic to be sure, and the ruleset is universal, but it doesn't work well that way. Part of the problem is the claim that the Basic Set is all you need to play. Again this is true, but it isn't in the "Generic Universal" sense. The GURPS Basic Set was great for playing a modern day campaign, and also worked for a historic campaign, although I find D&D does the job just as well. If you want to play fantasy then you have to do a lot of work or buy a supplement, or you could just play D&D. If you want to play Historical + Magic and/or Psionics then it works. If you want to play Modern Day + Magic and/or Psionics then it works too. And it's suited best to this. It works very well as a modern day setting, and the Magic/Psi system integrates quite well with it. That's fine. What about Horror? If you're familiar with it from something else, then the Fright Table makes it work well, but on it's own without background material or source material I don't see it working. Science Fiction? Huh, what? That's right, except for the odd reference here or there, there is nothing for sci-fi. The best that could be done is something slighly in the future, but not by much. And certainly no space travel (whether just interplanetary or interstellar). Generic? What? It would require some work to make a campaign on Jules Verne's works. Well, the system has one thing going for it, it's realistic for sure.
Does the GURPS Basic Set do what it set out to do? No. Not at all. And that's why it's getting a rating of 2 in substance. But, and this is an important but. While it is mediocre as a standalone supplement it has some redeeming features that I mentioned earlier. Supplements. There are hundreds of great GURPS Sourcebooks out there. If you want a ruleset that is compatible with a lot of sourcebooks out there, then the Basic Set is a good start. But you have to expect to spend a fair bit more money.
If you want something that the Basic Set sets out to do. Well, you can check out GURPS Lite available for free to be downloaded from SJGames.com. It doesn't do anything better than GURPS Basic Set does, but it is free. The standard GURPS Lite is for Discworld, a fantasy setting, which also works standalone without the basic set due to having the GURPS Lite rules included in it. There is also GURPS Lite for Transhuman Space, which is a Near-Future Hard-Sci-Fi setting - I haven't got it but I hear it is very good and plan to check it out. If you want to try Sci-Fi, then that version of GURPS Lite might be better. The Transhuman Space Hardcover, like GURPS Discworld will also work standalone, so you can get that and skip the basic set. GURPS WWII Lite is the same thing. WWII is also a setting which GURPS works very well for, but again the WWII sourcebook includes GURPS Lite, so the basic set is unnecessary. In fact, if you go to SJGames.com, and go to the GURPS section you will see a "Powered by GURPS" mini banner on the right. Click on it. It will lead you to several sourcebooks, which are likely to be of the same high quality as most standard GURPS Sourcebooks. You'll get something good out of it and won't need to buy the Basic Set.
Something else to check out is the Fuzion system. I've never used it myself, but it is quite a bit smaller, and I think free. My brother doesn't like it, but he like GURPS and I don't as much.
I also recomend Tri-Stat dX. It's available as a free download from RPGNow.com Just set up an account with them (you don't need to give out credit card info) and you can download it, among other free downloads such as the Action System RPG and Ars Magica 4th Edition.
Is GURPS a bad system? Not for most types of games, and it is portable to a variety of genres. Is the GURPS Basic Set a bad book? Only if you intend to use it as a standalone product. If you intend to get a bunch of supplements that make the GURPS system truly portable then it's probably worth it, but there are other systems worth checking out first, which also happen to be free. Tri-Stat dX offers a greater level of customization than the GURPS Basic Set, but it is less complex and only takes up 96 pages instead of 256. There aren't many non-Anime Tri-Stat supplements out there right now, but it certainly makes a better standalone system than the GURPS Basic Set, and like I said, lets you do way more despite having less space. The D20 System is also for the most part available for free. Various D20 SRDs are available for download, including Wizards.com. You will have to buy a core product such as D20 Modern, Call of Cthulhu D20, D&D Players Handbook 3rd Edition or v3.5, Arcana Unearthed and Star Wars RPG and possibly some others. D20 Future is also on the way. There is a very quickly growing selection of D20 supplements, which are for the most part of the same quality as GURPS supplements. The down side is if you're not interested in D&D or AU type fantasy, Lovecraftian Horror or Star Wars, and D20 Modern can't really be recomended, then you've got a sourcebook that is a large waste of space except for the rules. The GURPS Basic Set is too, but it's only 256 pages instead of 320. Pick your poison.
