GURPS: Difference between revisions

* [[Blood Bath]]: Vampires in ''GURPS Fantasy'' can only heal their injuries by bathing in blood.

* [[Blood Knight]]: The Bloodlust disadvantage often makes this a defining character trait.

* [[Cavemen vs. Astronauts Debate]]: The system is great for resolving these, although it will also create zillions of disagreements about what kinds of knives the cavemen have access to.

* [[Celibate Hero]]: The Vow of Chastity can be this or a [[Chaste Hero]], depending on what other disadvantages are taken

* [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything]]: ''GURPS'' sourcebooks are notorious for how complete they are, in many cases the setting and research in them is used by gamers using other systems because of how well written they tend to be. In something of a [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]], the third edition ''Bio-Tech'' book, published in 2002, was noted to be as up to date on it real world Biotech as some college textbooks on the issue, by a variety of professionals in the field. And in 1997 the ''Camelot'' sourcebook actually ended up on the recommended reading list for a course in Arthurian Literature at Indiana University.

* [[Dodge the Bullet]]: Sort of. You can use the Dodge defense against bullets but it doesn't strictly represent dodging. Most moving things get a Dodge stats to represent that fact that they're not perfectly predictable.

* [[Don't Sneak Up On Me Like That]]: The "Berserk" disadvantage, in addition to everything else the disadvantage entails (rabidly attacking every enemy on hand with whatever weapon is on hand), also conveys this, treating anyone trying to restrain the character, friend or enemy, as an enemy. Earlier editions nicknamed the berserker rage "the Doom of the North" for this very reason.

* [[Dueling Hackers]]: ''GURPS'' rules for deckers showed up in a ''Pyramid'' article on [[Cyberpunk]].

* [[Like Reality Unless Noted]]: ''GURPS'' tries to be realistic, and games using the default rules will be fairly gritty. But if you enable the relevant optional rules, and buy "cinematic" traits, you'll bring the game away from reality and toward the genre of your choice.

** The common term among fans is that ''GURPS'' presents a [[Acceptable Breaks From Reality|"gameable abstraction"]], the more realism you insist on the harder it is to actually play the game. Forums posts are nonetheless full of people trying to make things more realistic.

* [[Loads and Loads of Rules]]: Most of them are described as "optional" in the books. Hardly anyone really plays the game with ''only'' the mandatory rules, so to get a game started, the game master needs to make a list of the optional rules he wants to use.

* [[Long List]]: Most of the character creation "rules" are really menus of traits that characters can have. ''Enormous'' menus. There are over four hundred skills! Of course, only a few of those will be useful for a particular game, so GMs regularly make their own less-intimidating lists, perhaps in the [http://www.sjgames.com/gameaids/gurps/sorter/ trait sorter].

** The new rules were collected into the Compendia in Third Edition, and the Fourth Edition corebooks include most of these additions. They do not include the detailed rules for interconnected superpowers, or martial arts styles, or spaceship construction; but those additions are comparable in scope to the addition of a new equipment list.

* [[Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot]]: Making these characters is what the system specializes in.

* [[No Sense of Humor]]: Available as a disadvantage.

* [[Not Quite Flight]]: The Flight advantage has a lot of different ways to make it like this; also, telekinesis can be used for locomotion, and there is the Walk On Air advantage.

* [[Our Centaurs Are Different]]: Onocentaurs in 3E ''Fantasy Folk'' and two chimeras in 3E ''Technomancer'' (spider centaurs and serpent centaurs).

* [[People Jars]]: ''GURPS Bio-Tech'' has stats for this item.

* [[Perpetual Tourist]]: The "Quest for Fruit" adventure in ''GURPS Discworld Also'' states that, in accordance with the [[Theory of Narrative Causality]], the Hwondaland trading post must contain at least one white-suited Ankh-Morporkian expat, who can never return for some unspecified reason.

* [[Recycled in Space|Recycled IN SPACE]]: Any setting + ''GURPS Space'' = Any Setting IN SPACE!

** A pastime of some ''GURPS'' aficionados is grabbing two random ''GURPS'' sourcebooks and making a gameworld out of the both of them.

* [[Religious Robot]]: C-31 became a Buddhist monk.

* [[Retcon]]: The introduction of sheath rules in 4e to explain why swords were so heavy.

** A large number of those source books exist for time travel games.

* [[Vampiric Draining]]: The Vampiric Bite and more generic Leech powers.

* [[Violation of Common Sense]]: While this trope is common to tabletop RPGs in general, ''GURPS'' takes the extra step of providing an advantage called Common Sense. If the GM makes you take it (and if you're the sort of player who needs it, he really should), he'll roll your IQ when you're about to do something stupid; success means he stops you. This makes it possible to ''fail a Common Sense roll''.

* [[Walking Armory]]: The [[Trope Namer]].