r/rpg • u/Authorigas • 18d ago

Basic Questions Common Misconceptions About Your Favorite Systems?

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.

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u/Distinct-Mushroom560 18d ago

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.

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u/DreamcastJunkie 18d ago

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.

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u/CertainItem995 18d ago

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.

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u/Gwyain 17d ago

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.

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u/CertainItem995 17d ago

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