
Originally Posted by
MortonStromgal
Has what? Last I checked GURPS doesn't let you pick primary and secondary attributes. Or pick I want to be an Order of Hermes and then spend your points where you like with guidelines.
GURPS 4e does allow you to adjust secondary attributes (Will, Speed, Move, etc.) based on the primary stats (ST, DX, IQ, HT).
I'm not sure how what you described differs from templates. Templates are just packages of advantages, disadvantages (when it makes sense), skills, and average stats. If you want to be in "Order of Hermes", the GM sets up a template for the Order of Hermes, as well as guidelines for what to spend points in (e.g. no Computers/TL 11). Templates allow GMs to customize their world, and players to build characters quickly without drinking from the firehose of options.
That said, if you *do* have your own world, and SJ Games or some fan site doesn't have a supplement that might help, making your own templates can be daunting. I'm daunted, at least. I'd love to give GURPS a spin if only for nostalgia's sake, but a serious campaign would need at least as many templates as characters, if not two or three times as many. I'd probably give the players GURPS Lite and a list of approved advantages, disadvantages, and skills from the main book, plus some basic templates. (I'd also have to forbid one or two advantages in GURPS Lite, like Jumper ...)
3d6 roll under is one of the things I'm not so much a fan of anymore; roll-over makes math at the table simpler.
As for resource management, you could simply use a character's level in the Wealth advantage instead of tracking dollars and cents (or silvers and coppers).
I agree that simpler systems like PDQ, FATE, Wushu, and Risus end up being more malleable, but I have a soft spot in my withered black heart for GURPS the way others fondly remember D&D (whatever version they started with).
"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
- Charles Babbage (1791 - 1871)
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