#RPGaDAY2023 Day 24: “COMPLEX / SIMPLE RPG you play”

Erm… GURPS.

GURPS is simple. The core rules of the game are summarised across a two-page spread in the Basic Set and everything else is detail.

It’s a 3D6, roll low, skill-based game which can handle any genre, world, character type, or idea you want to bring to the table. Standard D6 are all you need, alongside paper and a pencil. You can get this basic distillation for free in GURPS Lite.

GURPS can also be highly complex. That said, it doesn’t have to be complex. Just because the game contains details to cover just about any skill, power, advantage, disadvantage, spell, psi ability, weapon, armour type, and equipment you might want in every world imaginable… well, you don’t need to use it all.

Detail and complexity are not synonymous. Yes, GURPS can give you a hyper-realistic simulation of combat with hexed-based skirmish wargame rules in detail. But, no, you don’t have to play this way. At the core, you can just roll 3d6 in an opposed roll and resolve a fight that way. If you want.

Some of us like our games with more detail and don’t mind playing with more rules. Others like a “rules lite” approach with the hand waving the details away. Both are valid ways to play RPGs. The thing is that I only need one set of rules to play either way.

I am playing with GURPS today. I’ve been playing with it more than ever over the past few weeks, working through the history of the game as I’ve experimented with earlier editions. I play GURPS and I enjoy playing it.

Game on!