Make A Roll

FuzzyGeff is something of a math geek and his knowledge of statistics has colored how I do gaming once I learned a bit of statistics myself.

Because of things like the critical failure's default of 18 should result in a mean rounds between failures almost ten times worse than a rifle that is KNOWN to be unreliable.

That same critical failure would mean half the air wing of every aircraft carrier would be in the drink every cruise.

Many commercial aircraft would become lost and need constant guidance to find the airport and it would become insane to fly at night because of the darkness penalties.

There are a myriad of things that require a bit of knowledge, but no actual skill to perform and, if there's no stress, a person just does.

It's that stress part that can, often, be missed when a GM says, "make a roll."

Too many people look at the rules and see more places to make a roll than another rule-set and declare the new game bad because you CAN make more rolls...

But it is, and has always been, the decision of the DM or GM to call for a roll in any given situation.

If they suddenly start calling for more rolls when you change from D&D to GURPS it might mean they want you to work harder for it and D&D didn't have the mechanism to force you.

Twilight: 2000 has no mechanism for making the character respond to something creepy and frightful.  GURPS does.  So when in the catacombs under Częstochowa, I can call for a Fright Check and impose a reaction on the character.  T2K is a pure honor system to act afraid that I've seen fail over and over.

So GURPS has more rolls than T2K because of having rules to handle the frightened.

Which brings us to "GURPS sucks!"

Did the GM call for a roll under a rule that the game you prefer doesn't have that caused you to conform to the character you created?

The fright check from the T2K module "The Black Madonna" ticked off a couple of people who had played at my table under the OG T2K rules.  It thrilled others.

YMMV.

But, if we're going to overgeneralize, then I would say that the real reason that some people hate GURPS and cannot stand that other people enjoy it is because they are lazy.

They don't wanna work to make the character.  They don't want to put in the effort to learn how to assemble the character they want and, having failed to so, blame the game.

Then they don't want to be exposed to many die rolls, because a die roll is chance and chance is something they cannot control and without that control they may fail and without being able to declare, "I win!" they don't want to play. 

Contrast this to the person who did read the rules and learned to make the character they wanted.  They're never complaining about the rules.  They're an example of being satisfied by a successful application of labor.  Mike Rowe would understand the feeling.

The epiphany of realizing the complainers never learned to make the character they want to play comes from noticing that I have converted so many character from other games JUST to learn the rules.  I.  Have.  Never.  Failed.

GURPS has never failed to be able to accommodate a character from a different game.

Traveller, Twilight: 2000, AD&D 2e, Champions, Shadowrun, etc.

4th edition of GURPS is better at it than 3rd edition revised, but even 3eR never actually failed.

Not that the haters ever read this far.