(TFT) TFT: GURPS Glaring Errors

["Dave Seagraves" <dseagraves@austin.rr.com>]

Dave Kohr writes . . .

>I'm curious, where are the glaring errors?
>I thought GURPS was one of the best playtested systems in existence.
>It has gone through 3 major versions of the basic rules, and 2 versions of
>many of the more popular worldbooks. A few of the worldbooks may be
>broken, but that doesn't affect any of the others. It seems to me that
>GURPS can be criticized for complexity, but not for lack of playtesting.

   There is at least one good example of a great lack of playtesting and
proofreading in their lineup: GURPS Traveller.  IMO, the space combat
section really needs an overhaul, but the really bad part is the book's
equipment section.  There are so many errors in this chapter that -- in my
own mind -- it cast real doubts about the accuracy of the information in the
rest of the book.  I truly felt that I needed to go through the entire book
and verify every little detail before being able to suspend disbelief and
play the game.
   Too much trouble.  Instead, I simply stopped GMing GURPS, and completely
ceased buying GURPS books.
   There are other examples as well . . .  Supers comes to mind (although I
heard the second edition was a great improvement, and Ultra-Tech had some
real problems -- even in the second edition!  (Although GURPS Ultra-Tech 2
is a very good book with very few errors.  Some they get right; but on some
they really blow it.)  General advice: Never buy the first edition of any
GURPS book, unless it /really/ pushes all of your interest buttons.  Wait
until the second edition or later comes out.  Then (hopefully) most of the
problems have been worked out in the book's post-mortum by SJG and in
post-playtesting by people who bought the first edition.  This really helps
sort out the broken books from the good ones.
   (On rec.games.frp.gurps one person responded to that with, "If no one
buys the first edition, then there will never be a second."  My rebuttal to
that was, "If the first editions suck then there will no longer be /first/
editions of /anything/.")
   And that's saying nothing about SJG's turtle-like slowness in answering
rule questions.  I'm still chewing neutronium over that one, but that's
another story.
   Sorry to get slightly off topic.  TFT is great!  TFT is wonderful!
Everyone play TFT!

Dave Seagraves
Seagraves Design Bureau   Austin, TX   dseagraves@austin.rr.com   1 (512)
255-2760
Never buy music ever again.  .mp3 Rules!


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