The best part about GURPS is that there isn't a game designer sitting behind the curtain telling you what your character can and cannot get. I pick a ranger. Well, I have limited choices. I am "allowed" a subclass, which only one of them will be helpful anyway, since I am optimizing my build, and I am not taking 2-weapon fighting if I am a bow specialist.
All the choices are laid out for me.
In a tiny little box.
And then, a few months down the line, you get this strange feeling that you aren't keeping up, and other players are having way more fun than you. Then you go online. And your worst fears are confirmed. Yes, in this edition, the ranger sucks again, and we will be waiting for a book that fixes them, again.
Some 5E variants get the base classes right, like Tales of the Valiant. D&D 2024 features some hilariously overpowered builds and classes, which are intended to sell the game. Even when a game like ToV nails the base classes, I'm still sitting there, getting what the game designer gives me.
Do I want my ranger to do something different? Then I need to multiclass, and I will never reach level 20 in my primary class. There are multiclass builds that are traps and doom your character to never being viable at higher levels of play. Some are horribly broken.
In GURPS, I am the game designer. I have the power. My ranger is precisely who they are. If they want to be a bard for a while, and then a mage, I pay the character point costs and do my best to reflect what my character has learned.
This does come at a cost. I can design a 300-point character who has a few hundred skills, all at 11- and "knows it all," but never really reach the power level of other 300-point characters who spend their points wisely. There is a "design maturity" in play here, not to exploit and have one 24-minus skill, so players are encouraged to spend sensibly and not cheat themselves when handling character improvement. Stick to the skill level guidelines and use those numbers as realistic values for "who is best in the world" in this campaign setting.
Also, GURPS relies on nobody taking advantage of the rules. This is entirely unlike 5E, where designers are often required to prevent players from exploiting the rules. GURPS is a more mature game where the referee and players collaborate to create stories and balanced characters that make sense within them. There are no narrative mechanics or pools; the game does not need them. The character is king in GURPS, and they also define the stories in which they participate.
In GURPS, I earn my power, and if I really want something, it means I do not get the other thing I may wish to have, either. Nobody "gives me powers for free," I pay for them. There isn't a game designer and their magic wand flying around and hitting you every level up to grant wishes.
I want that cool combat reflexes advantage to reflect my years of battlefield experience. In that case, it will come at the expense of my tracking, survival, hunting, wilderness navigation, archery, and other skills I use every day.
I need to make a choice every time. What will be more useful to me? What does my party need? Are we finding ourselves struggling to survive in the wilderness, or do we need me to perform at a higher level in combat?
Every choice is a hard one.
I am not "falling asleep until level three" and grinding XP any way I can. I am not "looking seven levels ahead" and getting bored with my current set of powers. I may have ten character points saved. What am I going to do with them? Do I really need a skill now? Do I wait for that really cool thing? Is there something else I want to learn or do?
And given enough points, my GURPS character can wipe the floor with a similarly epic 5E character any day. The power level in GURPS scales to any level, as long as you can conceptualize it. Refactor your fantasy heroes into superheroes and push them even further. Or start your characters as superheroes in a fantasy setting, just frame the powers as "fantasy superpowers," which is precisely what 5E is doing. Fire blast? That is a magic power. A mage has that. Make it a superpower and call it magic. No spell slots needed, just a FP cost. Want a new superpower? Pay the CP.
You can design your powers any way you want here. Want your ranger to have an "arcane explosive shot?" Design it as a superpower. Buy it with CP. You have it. There is no need to look for a game that does that, or wait for a third-party Kickstarter book, and spend more money.
GURPS is the superior game, especially if you're passionate about game design. You have the tools.
GURPS is also a better narrative game than the overly complex and convoluted systems that are emerging today. They are pretty, but turn out to be bookkeeping nightmares after a few sessions, and you just want your life to be simple again with a character-focused system that puts you in control.
While these "railroad advancement games" can be fun if executed correctly, they are challenging to implement, and we end up with numerous versions and flavors all competing to achieve the same goal. Wizards has been redesigning D&D for the last 25 years and still hasn't gotten it right. People have given up and gone back to the OSR. GURPS has been sitting here all along, and it remains a solid, fun, and compelling game.
With hard choices that force me to think. These are not taken away from me by a game designer who "knows better than I do."
If my ranger wants to go all social skills for the next 50 CP and get involved in kingdom intrigue, that is how the story goes, and how my character develops. In D&D, I gain XP, and my social skills remain the same, yet I somehow improve at killing things? How does that help the story? How does that reflect what my character is actually doing? Am I happier playing this court intrigue storyline with lousy social skills that will never improve, and somehow I can kill the next owlbear easier?
The game forces you to be a better killer with every level, and disincentivizes you to do the things currently happening in the storyline that you enjoy. You are not rewarded with better social skills in any way. You could consider a feat, if the game offers social feats, but that's a weak solution to the problem. And in most cases, you are waiting for the book to come out that has the social feats you want, and it is too late, having spent more money on things the game should have had when you needed them.
Be careful of these games that put your advancement on rails and take personal growth and character development away from you. That does not help the story, make you any better at playing in it, or accurately reflect your character's growth and development.
These games can hurt your storytelling because they refuse to let your characters learn and grow from it.
I want a game that allows my characters to grow in response to the events unfolding in the story, whether through combat, social interactions, exploration, science, survival, repair, medicine, or any other narrative arc in any area a story can go. I want a game that "stays out of my way" and doesn't introduce narrative pools and mechanics that can detract from what we all want to happen. I want a game that forces me to make tough choices as I progress. I like the referee to be freed up to be creative.
GURPS is the superior narrative storyteller game.
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