Steve Jackson Games posted “A Line Editor’s Intro to GURPS” recently on their Daily Illuminator blog. This is basically a presentation and elevator pitch for GURPS, written by Sean “Dr. Kromm” Punch, who has been GURPS’ line editor for what feels like forever (and he does the job very well).

This intro is pretty straightforward and honest about the game, such as GURPS being, “in practice” for “tinkerers and rules-hackers”. What caught my eye was this paragraph, under “What makes GURPS awesome?”:

All complexity aside, GURPS consistently falls back on a few broad game mechanics. Once you learn these, you can understand the specialized subsystems in obscure supplements. If you don’t want those, well, you can wing it using just the basics and not be too far from the “official” approach.

This echoes what I wrote on my article about Crunch in Roleplaying Games, where I argue that there are three types of crunch: system crunch, silo crunch, and option crunch. I mention that GURPS is a good example of the last one, and Dr. Kromm seems to agree: you can either add the optional crunch on, say, gun mods and sniper rules, or you can just wing it at the table and say the player should roll at +3 for that one time they shoot a sniper rifle. You may be off by one or two points compared to the “official optional rules”, but “winging it” or “using GURPS sourcebook XYZ” and up being functionally equivalent. The main difference is that the GURPS sourcebook is researched and playtested, while your “winging it” is just based on vibe and your GMing experience. Both are equally valid but serve different purposes.