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My biggest issues with ToV were only two subclasses per class (Cleric gets three) and how it didn't push the envelope a bit more. The first is a problem that I see being fixed with more material. The latter is just inclination. I'm rooting for the Kobolds. Good video, my first. I'll be sure to check out more.

The mallard is for Runequest. Dragonbane originally was a d100 system that branched out with its expert version to d20. Glorantha is a dope world you should look into as well. It's the default setting for Runequest.

About the spell descriptions being in the spell list. It's worse than that. WotC HAD figured that out. The 3.5 Player's Handbook has one sentence blurbs about what each spell does exactly like Tales of the Valiant does. This means that it's not that WotC hasn't figured out this easy thing, they had it, and intentionally decided to remove it after 3rd Edition.

Thanks for doing this. This is probably one of the better ones I've seen that actually sits down and really talks about what is in this game. As someone on the fence it's kind of neat to see what they really did and didn't do. And this is coming from Pathfinder Second type of GM.

I've bought the Monster Vault for TOV. Definitely an improvement over the Monster Manual. I'll probably be using this as my new default monster book.

Thank you for being one of the few covering ToV. I've been on board for quite a while but haven't seen many videos since its release.

Very nice overview

For the past two years I have been running a Star Trek campaign using GURPS 4th edition. It is set in the year 2262, halfway between "SNW" and "TOS". - the Music Loving Klingon

Great summary on the distinctions/improvements ToV makes on 5e 2014. Nice to have a succinct video with examples that I can pass to people instead of giving the spiel myself. Already shared the video a couple places since you posted it!

I love GURPS on paper and own all of it's 4th edition hardcover books, but I only GMed it a few session. I'm glad you provided an extensive list of its problems. All of them applied to my experience with it. The campaign ended with my players calling it the Generally Unplayable RPG System. The amount of work necessary to make a consistent and easily communicated game and setting using GURPS comes close to creating your own game completely from scratch. I would also list the disadvantages system among the drawbacks. It's much too easy to create absurd drawbacks that never come into play or disrupt the game for other players, just to gain a few additional character points.

I want 50 books on GURPS Technomancer :D

My biggest problem with GURPS is that the system doesn’t do enough to support new GMs. If you want to learn GURPS by running a game you’re just not gonna have fun. You can overcome the system with experience but there really *NEEDS* to be more prefabricated content to get people into the system.

Great video and I second your recommendation!

I love GURPS. It allowed me to play my non-magical psionic elf that D&D denied me for forty years. I have people now telling me that's flavor in D&D. I point out that my character doesn't cast spells. They cannot. It is not flavor to say they are not magic while casting spells. That's hypocrisy. This character is published in two of my copyrighted books.

22:19 This is exactly why in GURPS Action, even the technical and social character templates are given bare-minimum combat stats, and the combat characters usually have some background that gives them minimum competancy in a social or technical set of skills related to that background. That way nobody's every fully left out. A lot of people poo-poo templates, asking what the point of having Role Templates in GURPS is. This is the point. When the Action: Specialists book came out, the base template was designed to be Minimum Viable Competancy. There's so much in Action that I use in games OUTSIDE of Action because it gives so much good advice on how to build encounters and balance character roles to ensure everyone can be involved at all levels. A lot of the things that are not made clear in the Core books what you should do as a GM are made clearer in some of the other books, such as the 'How to Be a GURPS GM' series, or some of the genre splats, due to the age of GURPS 4e allowing the writers to make certain aspects clearer. I remember there being a Pyramid article that amounted to 'What rules do we wish we put in Base 4e Core', and clarifications like that, or 'Always taking penalties to give other benefits until your Effective Skill is 16/17, especially in combat' considering that a 17 is always Failure and 18 is always Critical Failurem, no matter what your skill is, was on the list.

Good video for a game with so much content.

Hero champions fan here. I’d love to see more videos on gyros or other generic systems.

I know this might sounds immature or superficial, but to me the greatest drawback of GURPS lies in its books. They are dry, uninspiring, the layout looks right out of the 80s and the rules are scattered and not clearly explained. I find it extremely frustrating. I kind of love the gaming system per se, but every time I pick up a book, I swear, I *really swear* I'd rather be reading topological algebra or advanced python or almost eveerything else. I hope they'll make a 5th edition (the chances are slim, though) that doesn't look and feel like it belongs to the twentieth century. (I'm 50, btw, so it's not just a "young guy syndrome". It's just that reading up something for a game should be enjoyable, not feel like a chore.)

I've always had a lot of love for GURPS... but it's been hard finding a group for it.

GURPS require a new edition, they should take basic set and turn these two books into a single book with most used rules/traits/spells etc with maximum of 200 pages. Then make another book that will have all other leftover info. Even with all these summary tables, GURPS is very hard to get into. Although I like it a lot and use GURPS Lite from time to time, I only use basic set to get ideas for my own rules.

Great view. I was just getting into Dragonbane and you pointed out a pile of things I hadn't noticed. It is a joy to see a game like this that's so obviously designed to be played and playtested heavily to make sure it works.

GURPS has one real rule: Just because you can do anything does not mean you should do everything. Take the two core books. Add one setting book, one tech book, and one "flavor" book. Say build a game with space and horror. I started a year ago with GURPS Lite. Now I am using a lot of the 3E Traveller books in my own gritty far-future space campaign. We were all pretty new to the game, and having character templates really helped. The biggest problem I have had as a GM with players coming from D&D-like games is getting them to play their characters' advantages and disadvantages. In fact if it's Friday it must be game night. Looking forward to more GURPS content.

I love seein GURPS content, even if I've never played in a fulfilling campaign yet, I hope you do more builds and stuff for Gurps. I do find it interesting how you talk about 1 way of doing Magic, because GURPS has like 3 different variations of magic, even before customizing them further.

GURPS is great and I've played it for years. I have personally played medieval sword & sorcery, far future space opera, modern day superheroes and modern day hidden magic with this system. My fav was in the far future one where I played an electrokinetic gagdeteering ninja.

Chris Nomad is a YT channel that is your 3rd core book if you want to run GURPS on Foundry. And if your running GURPS online, it should be on Foundry. *Really any RPG.

Aside from the Disadvantages which is the unsung hero of GURPS, the magic system mechanic of being able to tap your hitpoints when you run out of FP is my favorite mechanic in RPGdom. You can even go down to 0 hp to power a spell if you want which could create a really memorable moment. And that's how you win any RPG.

Before this video even starts I have to say that for me GURPS was a leap of faith. While leaning to play, I got discouraged a few times and set it down. Then after a few sessions I slowly begun to see the infinite amount of tactical decisions and combinations that come up in combat and just how suspenseful that second by second combat could be. Being able to create and play an elderly character with a bad back and being compensated for that disadvantage being built into the rules without having to work something out with a suspicious GM is a breather and bakes that aspect of role play right into the game. I'm not one of those guys who is going to tell you that learning GURPS is easy, because for me it wasn't ( I've played a dozen and GMed a handful ), but it was totally worth the effort. And the only thing I use it for ( at the moment ) is Rare Magic Fantasy. But I do want to try a GI Joe game using cybernetically enhanced Joes. Code Named: Team Bronze Heart.

Awesome!!

MORE CRUNCH MORE REALISM MORE TABLE

Does your table roll for ability scores or do you point buy?

Love to see more people talking about Dragonbane. I’ve done a few videos on the subject, but have not seen a lot of channels covering it… certainly not as much as I think it merits, based upon the system and the contents of the starter. Nice review!

I own it and I totally respect the game, but I have never run it, because I have always preferred Chaosiums Basic Roleplaying system [BRP], it has all the crunch I need. But there is no denying, GURPS does have more options. Also, the GURPS settings books are some of the best out there. [I use them even with BRP]

Ogre Wrestling you say?

But as a DM I cheat with my rolls :/

One of my favorite things about Runekeeper (besides getting to help in creating a few of the runes lol) is the fact that with this class language has actaul mechanical weight. Normally its just a throwaway thing that could come up in play maybe once or twice a session. But here? No, you need to actually understand and know languages in order to get the full use of the runes. I absolutely LOVE that.

Funny comment you made about GURPS videos not doing well, it is true and it's a shame. Great overview and great to see more GURPS love being spread!

Love the flow of your videos! Would love more reviews!

Good review. I like your style. I look forward to more reviews.

Really helpful video. One note is that 02:47 the Heroic Ability of the Wolfkin can only be used once (the part that you can spend 1 further WP to gain a boon to an attack made to your prey). The keyword is further. Also this is vastly superior to the same ability that the Dwarves have and it can only be used once. I think the intention was to use in only once. It does not add at all to the whole system to be able to use 1WP to have a boon. There is not another Heroic ability even close to this if you play it "I can be spending 1 willpower to get a boon as many times as I like as long as I have willpower" oh and by the way combine this with a round Rest and BOOM By the way the video was very good and thank you for your time and effort.

Excellent video! Love the game.

I've been playing GURPS for years (since high school). It is by far my favorite game. It is the last bastion of satisfyingly crunchy detail and playable simulationism (a dying style of game) while being flexible enough to be stripped down to a fairly rules lite game for newcomers. I think its reputation as being overly complex and the fact that it predominantly exists as PDFs now are its biggest enemies. Despite this, I think that GURPS should lean into the simulationism instead of the universality; Fate, Savage Worlds, and similar games are also universal without the crunch (and with faster character creation and less math), but the characters in those games generally have a superficial "sameness" to them. The crunch and simulationism of GURPS makes possible dramatic possibilities that are often ignored or forgotten by modern gaming culture. Generally when I introduce a new player to GURPS combat, the player is blown away and they never look at the combat in other games the same way.

I see where some of the criticism is coming from, BUT I think “build” videos are helpful. Also, most of the heroic abilities ARE combat-focused. Still, can you do a “build” video about cool support or skill- based PC’s?

Thanks! Very helpful. I've been trying to wrap my head around GURPS for awhile but keep getting distracted by other projects lol

The boxed set is not a starter set- it is the core game. The core hardback came later, and consolidated the card-based treasure and improvised weapons from the box into tables in the back of the book.

LOL The "Borrower" class! Absolute legend!

Not a starter set. It's a core box set.

This sounds really fun!! Any other fun playable species in the new bestiary?

This is a fun idea I like it!

Dragonbane is an almost perfect marriage between BRP, Year Zero and D&D

Dragonbane is fantastic! I have been running a campaign and it works great. Heroes always have to realize that Death is around the corner so be careful. The level system is brilliant and so smooth. I really like magic is rare and powerful. Oh don't roll a demon (20) when casting magic......... The monster attack table is one of my favorite things! Every monster has 6 different things they can do during the combat turn! I really like this game!