My first exposure to GURPS was a few years ago, when an acquaintance left his GURPS Basic Rulebook with me in exchange for my having lent him some of my anime videos. I wish to stress that the fact that the jerk moved out of the country with my videos in no way clouded my opinion. I read through the book, having had quite a bit of experience with the big RPGs of the time (D&D, Battletech, Shadowrun, and Cyberpunk) and was immediately struck by a thought: "What on earth am I, as a player, supposed to do with this thing?"

Here's the deal. According to GURPS, the player is expected to use its generic rules to make a character that can be applied to specific applications. It gives skills, weapons, magic, and special perks and flaws, and all of that is fine. However, it doesn't give a frame of reference for any of it. In its quest to be generic, it gives the player nothing that can be used. If you want to play a character that has no special ties whatsoever to whatever world your gamemaster has come up with, you're in luck!

But never fear! GURPS, in its benevolence, has enough sourcebooks to create a small black hole on your bookshelf if you put them all together. And for a mere Latin American country's worth of money, you too can own them!

Maybe I'm just wacky here, but perhaps if a person wants to play a fantasy game they'll go out on a limb and buy a fantasy RPG. That way they get rules that are designed to work with a specific world rather than rules that were changed to conform with many worlds.

The true weakness of the game, as a gamemaster, is the godawful number of sourcebooks, not to mention the flood of tiny rules in the basic book itself. Any attempt to keep track of what your players are doing will be utterly shattered when player 1 is using a gun from sourcebook #34, player 2 is casting spells from sourcebook #152, player 3 says he wants to use a skill from sourcebook #72... It would take a Vulcan to keep track of the huge range of rules, tweaks, and stats.

Even much simpler games such as D&D have times when the game has to be stopped for the DM to check on a rule. The only playable alternative is to limit which sourcebooks the players can draw their stuff from, which then undermines the whole generic concept. You may as well have all bought an expensive mainbook from some more focused series, at that point.

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