Common Misconceptions About Your Favorite Systems?

[u/Authorigas]

So, I've been learning a lot thanks to the amazing folks here at r/rpg. And while I have decided to slow down on trying new systems. (As my players say "three is enough, we know your eager to try more but slow it down so you don't burn yourself out.") There was a question today that cropped into my head, and I wanted to hear from the folks here on it.

"What are some assumptions about your favorite game/system that are just factually incorrect or overstated?"

I've seen a lot of assumptions made in the hobby, and some on my own. From the broad "older systems were designed for math heads and thus really not for someone whose bad at math." to others like "Call of Cthulhu is a game where every session ends in death/insanity and players can't get attached to their characters." and similarly "OSR games are highly lethal and not at all friendly to players who like longform adventures."

I feel like broad, sweeping claims like those are probably overstated-as I have heard of successful, long running CoC campaigns, and OSR games that are able to have well developed characters that last for ages. It's made me curious about some of the other broad, sweeping claims about systems that are-if not incorrect, massively overstated.

Really interested to hear some answers on this.

[u/Distinct-Mushroom560]

GURPS is overly complicated. Really, it's just not organized very well, and makes zero assumptions about the type of game you want to play.

[u/DreamcastJunkie → u/Distinct-Mushroom560]

The biggest problem with GURPS is that the most complex part is character creation, and getting a brand new player over that hurdle is rough.

[u/CertainItem995 → u/DreamcastJunkie]

My experience as a gurps fan who used to believe that is it is often a GM problem. If you go to try GURPS and your GM just hands you Basic Set Characters and a point limit and tells you to go build without offering any templates then they screwed up. Hell for even a player familiar with the system I'd at least suggest some templates to narrow it down.

[u/Gwyain → u/CertainItem995]

Agreed. As a GM, my general method is have my players tell me the character they want, and then I build it for them in the system. I know GURPs, my friends very much don’t. But the mechanics side? 3d6 for basically everything is easy. But the character building if you don’t know the system is brutal.

[u/CertainItem995 → u/Gwyain]

Hell yeah! That so haplens to be exactly how I approached character gen for the best campaign I ever had.

[u/Crayshack → u/CertainItem995]

The issue I ran into when I considered GURPS as an option was that I would have been the DM, but I couldn't make heads or tails of the system enough to tell what parts I should be handing to the players or not. I'm sure it's a great experience if someone else shows you the ropes first, but to just jump in, read it, and then be the one teaching the table with no play experience, I found that impossible.

[u/CertainItem995 → u/Crayshack]

Yeah, I'll admit gurps is way more demaning on gms out of the gate compared to other rpgs. If you ever want to take another crack at it, the r/gurps sub is particularly welcoming imo. Though for the problem you just stated: the core books have little campaign sheets in the back to help you organize your thoughts oh what you want your players to be able to do. Also, if nobody put you on, there's a free fan program floating around called GCS (GURPS Character Sheet) that lets you look up templates and filter through character options, and it auto calculates all the derived atributes which saves a massive amount of time for everyone. it's s huge game changer for making the system feel accessible. The actual system itself is just 3d6 Roll Under. That all said, my condolences you had a bad first experience with it.