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Narrative
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Generic Universal Role Playing System
In 1986, Steve Jackson Games released the first edition of the GURPS Basic Set, a Universal System they had been developing in response to Hero Games Champions: The Super Roleplaying Game (the orignal Point Buy game), although the system has roots in Jackson's Melee, Wizard, and The Fantasy Trip for Metagaming. The name comes from Steve Jackson's description of what he wanted, and was used as an in-house code for the project. However, when the time came to release the product, they had not been able to come up with a better name for it.
As a generic system, GURPS has no inherent story or background (except arguably, for the Infinite Worlds/Centrum/Homeline cross-genre games), although several settings have been developed by Steve Jackson Games. See the GURPS Settings page for details. The latest of these, tied into the fourth edition release, is Infinite Worlds, where two groups are fighting a strange war between Alternate Universes. More recently, Dungeon Fantasy (what it says on the tin), Tales of the Solar Patrol and Action. GURPS is also the system used by the Hellboy, Lensman,, Vorkosigan Saga and Discworld roleplaying games (which are slightly more developed worldbooks compared to say, Tredroy or Conan).
GURPS has been criticized as being very math heavy and overly complex compared to other systems like d20. These are only fair criticisms if one uses all of the optional rules; basic character creation and basic gameplay require no mathematics more advanced than simple addition. (It's been claimed that the amount of number crunching needed to create all the possible statistics for a vehicle or Humongous Mecha can be intimidating, but this refers to vehicle design system for a previous version of GURPS. The current system uses a streamlined system for designing spacecraft and Mecha. As yet there is no vehicle design system for anything else - instead, there are generic vehicle stats that you can customize.) Some G Ms, however, may find that dropping the need for stats where no stats are needed is a liberating experience; a generic group of Mooks need only their brawling and weapons skills, and what they had in their pockets. However, a lot of game masters are attracted to GURPS precisely because it has rules to manage things that their other game systems can't handle. So, while GURPS does not need to be particularly complex, it is sometimes played that way. If you do not want a complex game, remember rule number one: 'if a rule results in a situation of no fun; drop the rule'.
For those curious about where GURPS fits in the taxonomies of game mechanics, GURPS is point-based and skill-based rather than level- and class-based. All tasks are resolved by rolling three six-sided dice, creating a bell-curve of probability instead of a flat line of equal chance. Success is awarded if the total of the die roll is equal to or less than the target number. Each combat turn represents one second, which is a point of contention among people who argue the merits of roleplaying systems. If you want to do anything in combat that's more complex than moving and attacking, GURPS will require you to describe your tactics in terms of several successive one-second-long maneuvers, and then go through several rounds of combat before you discover what the results are. It can kind of interrupt the flow if you want to play an Exalted-style game full of elaborate stunts. Those sorts of games are better if you don't use the combat rules at all! (There are also fan-made supplements for playing Exalted using the GURPS Fourth Edition ruleset, which have optional rules to simulate the elaborate stunts Exalted is known for). Since GURPS' various optional rules are all independent of one another, your characters' skills and advantages will work the same way even without any rules to govern combat situations; so you can just say what you're doing and roll for it, without any thought to whose turn it is, and get sensible results.
GURPS has been described as a "simulationist" system, because it includes lots of rules that tell you what's happening in the gameworld without much affecting the outcome of the relevant event. For example, when an attacker succeeds at his roll to hit, the defender always gets to choose how to defend, and makes the appropriate defense roll (unless it was a critical hit, or a suprise). The defense could be handled as penalties applied to the attack roll, and the odds of dealing damage would be the same—but in that case, should your opponent avoid taking damage, you wouldn't know if it was because you missed entirely, or nearly-hit but the defender dodged, or hit too soft to do any damage. This is helpful to game masters narrating the combat, because it tells them exactly what to narrate, but it does take longer.
Perhaps the best feature of GURPS is the huge number of Sourcebooks that have been written for it. Pick any genre or topic, and you will probably find at least one GURPS book covering it (though possibly out of print). Though you really only need a free copy of GURPS Lite, which acts as a kernel for the system. This has also been a point of criticism for the game. For a system that is supposed to be "universal" (that is, capable of handling any genre of gaming), most GURPS supplements and sourcebooks contain "additional rules" that must be used if you really want to play GURPS in that genre; however, GM's should remember that no rule 'must' be used. Thus, GURPS is sometimes compared unfavorably with the Hero System, a universal gaming system whose sourcebooks and supplements rarely, if ever, have to add new rules to the Core Set in order to be used—though the Hero System is a great deal more complex than GURPS. For the fourth edition of GURPS, this is less of a problem; all of the information necessary for character creation is in the Basic Set, so you only need the sourcebooks if you want detailed information on different kinds of gun, highly specialized superpowers, magic spells, and the details of a particular setting. Consequently, the Basic Set can now stop bullets.
Many of the supplements are useful enough that people using other Game Systems will buy them as references; this was, in fact, part of the original mission statement for the the game, and the reason the "U" stands for "Universal". The opposite is also true; with a little work, most game worlds can be converted to GURPS, usually with an increase in utility and flexibility. The intention was that, by building the game around "real world" units of measurement instead of "rounds" and "hexes", it would be easier for people using other systems to make use of the information in the supplements. Of course "real world" in this context means the USA; pounds, feet, yards as originally developed in the UK (international editions, however, are metricated). GURPS Traveller subjects the previously-metric Third Imperium to this Americanitis (though the original was also American) on the grounds of "fitting in with existing products". Some 3rd edition products would randomly throw in some metric units anyway, because trying to use two unit systems at the same time always works ; the 4th edition seems to have averted this.
Much has been said lately as to how GURPS permits you to play a Psychic Blueberry Muffin if you wish to; rather think how it allows you to create that swashbuckling wizard with a chainmail vest you always wanted. Or a non-stupid Barbarian. Or a car that's smarter than its driver. Or...
Tropes Associated with the GURPS system:Being a Universal System rather than a genre game, all tropes are associated with GURPS. These are a few of the more obvious ones.
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