Where Other Games Fall Short...

GURPS just does everything well.

I run a few other gaming blogs because I have been in the hobby so long, and my leading SBRPG site is still going strong 15 years in. My sites have probably been scanned by so many AI agents that my wisdom is now part of the global consciousness from role-playing games, from now to eternity.

I was trying to discover the best version of D&D on one of my other sites, and settled on the idea that AD&D Second Edition (and the retroclone For Gold & Glory) are the best D&D you can get. Yes, this is a heavily censored edition of the game, with half-orcs, demons, devils, and assassins removed, but the rules make a few significant fixes. Also, all the cut content was restored later in the Outer Planes Appendix and the Complete guides, so it is there if you look. Also, other free games like OSRIC have all of those, and First and Second Edition are the same game, so everything ports in without needing any changes.

And For Gold & Glory is easily one of the most generous games in the OSR, and one I will happily support. The art is all public-domain works by the great masters, so this game features some of the best art in gaming today, and every piece is stunning and authentic to the period. Compared to the AD&D Second Edition POD reprints, this book beats them all. It makes me want to play a historical fantasy game based on the book's pictures. Also, while AD&D 2E is a dead game that can't be expanded or have adventures written for, FG&G is a community game that allows for all of that. The FG&G PDF is free and can be freely redistributed without profit. Only OSRIC comes as close to this game, and is another favorite of mine (even as a GURPS resource).

In the Second Edition, we get Story XP, which is more like GURPS's XP system for achievements and difficulty, which shows D&D was chasing GURPS (3rd Edition) in the 1990s, and they were. Everyone I knew quit AD&D First Edition for GURPS, so they needed to compete with the market leader. Level limits for non-human characters were raised to around 12th level, and while level limits are silly, this made them all but ignorable since few games even got to that level, and if you ever did, you ignored them anyway.

We also got the original core bard class and not the freakish hybrid of First Edition. This was a cool bard, very difficult to play since it was a half-arcane caster, and the bard's abilities were particular and of limited use. Even the combat song required 3 rounds of singing, without attacking, to get going. You had to be a great player to make a bard work; otherwise, you were just a mediocre archer with a few arcane spells. I would rather have a new player play a thief or a mage. You had no bardic inspiration nor healing spells! This was a challenging class, but great if you knew how to make it work.

We played AD&D 2E back in the 1990s, and this game got us back into AD&D, mainly because of the GURPS-like XP system and the increased XP values of monsters, easily ten times the old BX D&D game. Also, there was zero XP for gold, so the greed motivation in the game was gone, and this was more of a heroic storytelling game where Story XP doubled your monster XP if they were defeated on a quest. We read the original Forgotten Realms novels and loved those stories, and the game did a good job of being "the game of the novels."

GURPS was still the better overall game.

In GURPS, if you held a crossbow to someone's head, that was a tense moment. In AD&D 1E or 2E, if you were high enough level, you laughed it off unless DM Fiat kicked in and they called for a save or die roll, which was rare, and if you were high enough level, you made it anyways. The same was still deadly (by the rules) and required resurrection saves, but GURPS did that tense moment far better than games with bags of hit points. Resurrection in GURPS is exceedingly difficult or impossible, with the spell costing 300 FP and one try (GURPS Magic, p. 94), and it can be ruled impossible in some settings.

To bring someone back to life in GURPS, you all but need ceremonial magic and a circle of casters (GURPS Magic, p. 12). To get that 300 FP, you need a lot of casters with the skill over 15-, ten times the casting time (20 hours), there are baked-in failure rates, and you get one try. This is not a spell you can "pay the temple 500 gold to cast" and be on your way, like this was a video game and an extra life.

In 2E, resurrection requires a system shock roll, ages the caster 3 years, and has a maximum number of times equal to a character's CON score. Still, this is beginning to feel like a video game, assuming you will die multiple times, and NPC healers are there to suffer aging effects. In 5E? The cost is laughable: 1,000 gold, and you need a long rest before you can cast spells again. The subject also requires a long rest and gets a -4 on all rolls (um, we do have a disadvantage and fatigue system here in 5E) until they do.

GURPS does a better job of creating a profound, realistic, and dramatic game. Death still means something here. Part of me feels like the fantasy genre has been ruined by the D&D-isms and assumptions baked into it, and that going back to GURPS is the only way to clean my palette of the video-game-inspired mechanics in today's fantasy games.

If we don't push back against these D&D tropes, the entire hobby will become a mobile game where we will be expected to buy currency, boosts, characters, items, and stamina for real money.

All that great art in For Gold & Glory that I have been posting in this article? That is more GURPS than AD&D. I love the game and its art, but to me, this feels like GURPS art because of the weight and realism of these pieces. They come from an era before the concept of "role-playing" gaming existed, and they are all-time historical greats. For Gold & Glory is worth checking out (for free), just for the art and inspiration it brings to fantasy.

It comes down to a question of why you play the fantasy genre.

For me, I like the grim reality that GURPS brings to the table, and everything becomes a serious, weighty decision. Healing isn't free, and death is all but final. GURPS is like a hardcore game where you get one life, and you live with your decisions, good or bad. If your character gets a bad rep, that sticks with them, and they will feel the repercussions of that for the entire campaign.

In D&D, especially 1E and 2E, I can still ignore much of the danger and its consequences. In 5E, it ignores all the threats, and there are no consequences. The new "rule zero" in D&D 2024 is "everybody wins," and I immediately check out, that is not why I play role-playing games.

Would I rather play a thief in AD&D or GURPS? This one is easy, and GURPS is a clear win. While thieves in AD&D are simply a weak martial class with a collection of skills plus backstab, thieves in GURPS are real people. In GURPS, I am dealing with disadvantages and reputation, and the campaign world matters all of a sudden. In AD&D, thieves "just are" some sort of "class choice" on the "choose your class" screen in a video game, and they sort of exist in the nether. If my GURPS thief blows a kleptomaniac roll and goes for that shiny necklace, fails, and the town guards show up - that is a real problem.

Death is real, so I need to have the skills to escape, since fighting and killing guards will lead to worse consequences, or I can surrender and deal with some time in a cell, maybe some manual labor for a few months, or being sent out on a dangrous mission that is all but certain death (but finding a way to succeed and pay my debt to society in the process with a smile and smirk on my face). Hey, GURPS referees can have fun with the whole "prison time" thing as well, and give thieves some creative ways to pay off that debt by taking on dangerous missions for the constables.

A highly skilled thief is also an asset when a town has monster troubles, and this is a resource that innovative mayors can make secret use of. Even if the mayor is embroiled in inter-faction politics, those missions could get very interesting as the thief is sent after political enemies to gather (or plant) dirt, steal from, or otherwise weaken the mayor's political foes. All of this is done under the table, of course, and the thief can walk free for a few favors.

Or, I could have the skills to talk my way out of the whole mess. None of the above ever happens.

But back in AD&D, I will just hide in the shadows or climb a wall to escape the guards. I never needed to make a self-control roll or suffer a bad reputation, so there is no societal cost for choosing to be a thief. Death is no big deal, especially in 5E. Thieves just sort of "are there" in D&D, with few interesting things driving them or painting how others see them.

If I take the same above logic and apply it to a bard, mage, fighter, cleric, druid, or any other fantasy role, then you can begin to see why GURPS just does fantasy better. My characters are part of the world, required by the rules to interact with it, and for the world to interact with me. With great, creative refereeing, even these "failure states" that would kill characters or imprison them in D&D-style games are easily turned into new plots and adventures in GURPS. Yes, blowing my self-control roll put me here, but it does not mean instant death or rolling up a new character unless my choices are horrible.

Where other games fall short, GURPS delivers.