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GURPS is a generic role-playing system. It gives a basic frame work which can be inplemented into any genre.

First experiences:

First impressions were great. Nice rules, many possibilities, greate add on books. We were in heaven. After the first session of testing the problems came.

Bad stuff

The basic creation consists of spending points for attributes, advantages and disadvantages (to get plus points) and skills.

Characteristics

Without being too picky I must say four (FOUR) attributes are not enough to determine an character (strength, intellgent, dexterity, health).

Ads and disads

Since you buy EVERYTHING for the character you pay for everything. It is no problem at the beginning, but during the play your ads and disads may change. When your character gets a new friend you are supposed to pay for it(, yet you won't get a points for enemies). Naturally it is not terrible fault but an annoying administration.

Skills

Nearly all skills are based STR and DEX. The more you skill points you spend on a skill the better is the modifier on your attribute (DEX-3, DEX-2,DEX-1, DEX-0, DEX+1, etc.) Also skills are divided by difficulty, some are easier to learn than other.

During the game we had serious problems with it. Those with high attribute were most of the time superior to those who spent many points into skills (i.e. a character with high dexterity is generaly better at karate than one who put huge amount of points into his karate skills). We did not liked that. Professionalism is superiour the raw talent, (but yes, the best of the best have both....)

Combat

Combat has many good ideas. There were few points which I disliked: the damage is stopped to easily (we used a 1.5 multiplier to make things realistic, even then some further tinkering was necessary).

Magic

The idea is great: you need prerequisites for "higher level" spells. Examle: create fire for fire fireball. What destroys the good idea is the amount(and often idiotic) prerequisites you need.

Psionic

The best part and one of the shortest part of the book, it ine of the best psionic system I encountered.

Artwork

Well, we found it .... annoying. It does not give any atmosphere to the player. Hmm, maybe that is generic?

Conclusion

Newbies may pick it up. It is a good for a while, and it has a lot of information on playing and rules. Also good for building rules for other systems or own RPGs. Yet, experienced players have no reason to buy it (except for the world books), the system is plain and average.

Style: 2 (Needs Work)
Substance: 2 (Sparse)