Back in the late 70's Steve Jackson (the American one) wrote Melee and Wizard as part of The Fantasy Trip (TFT) system which included several excellent solo adventures. Later came an expansion called Advanced Melee and Advanced Wizard. These titles were all published by Metagaming which shortly after the Advanced versions were printed went out-of-business. Mr. Jackson hung on to his idea for a logical realistic role-playing game with fairly simple, understandable mechanics. Forming his own company, Steve Jackson Games, he was unable to secure the rights to his TFT, but started development of a new system that carried over as many of his old concepts as seemed practical. According to gamer legend, the development team called this project GURPS, the Great Unnamed Role-Playing System, and the acronym would eventually stick as the Generic Universal Role-Playing System (GURPS), a name which more closely reflected Mr. Jackson's design goals.
GURPS was several years in the making and before the final product was released Steve Jackson Games tested their idea with Man To Man, which is the Fantasy Combat system from GURPS, just like it says on the cover. Man To Man was sold (for about a year) as an arena combat system, but contains a lot of what would eventually appear as the GURPS Basic Set 1st Edition and remain the core rules to this day (GURPS Basic Set, 4th Edition). Like TFT, GURPS uses 3d6, roll low for most checks - to hit, to save, to succeed. The basic attributes are Strength, IQ and Dexterity and Man To Man adds health where the old TFT used Str for health as well as physical prowess. Man To Man focuses on combat in a medieval fantasy technology level, but full blown GURPS is Generic and has stats for all kinds of weapons including science fiction, far future technology.
Man To Man introduces the GURPS point-buy system of character generation. The point-buy system does away with character classes and allows a player to design any type of character with just about any mix of combat abilities, magic and talents/skills. Man To Man also introduces the system of point-bought advantages and skills that will be a staple of GURPS through all its editions. The list is short in Man To Man, but what is there is suitably focused on combat. GURPS takes personality development a step further with additional advantages and skills and adds disadvantages and quirks.
GURPS is a lot of things I like. It largely succeeds in being Generic, especially within the confines of human character limitations. GURPS says the developers tested the mechanics which means real world data went into the development. The system has rules for super powers, but obviously they are beyond the ability of humans to "test". Fantasy magic is also similarly "theoretical" by necessity. In the fantasy setting, which is my main gaming interest, GURPS works well and that's really all I can recall ever using it for. The search for realism in gaming was at its height when GURPS was being developed and this shows in both the game's design and verbiage. Another stated goal of the system is to be universal and to that end GURPS uses real world measurements such as seconds of time, pounds of weight and miles per hour of speed. It does this so that a referee can easily translate any source-book or adventure module from GURPS to other systems or from other systems to GURPS.
Weapons cause one (or more) of three types of damage, crushing, cutting or impaling. Damage is a combination of how the weapon is used, swinging or thrusting and the type of damage it does. Armor makes one harder to hit and reduces damage taken. Shields block damage and are definitely worth taking. Man To Man covers a few basic fantasy races and some "monster" types, but even with GURPS a full fantasy bestiary is only supplied in a separate volume. There are mechanics for improving the PC with experience. Encumbrance rules are again practicle and based on real world effects - it slows you down and increases fatigue. The movement system and combat options make Man To Man and GURPS one of the most tactical of RPG systems. With the exception of a magic system (which really didn't appear until the Fantasy supplement for GURPS 1st Edition), Man To Man has all the components of a full blown fantasy RPG.
GURPS, unlike Man To Man, assumes no default setting and offers the referee a flexible set of tools and rule options, to design their personal game, picking and choosing rules to suit the individual setting. More so even than White Box, it demands the referee use their own imagination to create a setting, or buy a setting source-book - Steve Jackson Games has printed lots of them over the years. Making the game your own is a must either way because many rules are presented as options. I love systems that encourage a do-it-yourself approach to gaming, give the referee control of their world and allow for running either a simple or complex game depending on preference and GURPS does all this quite well. Like a lot of systems that rely on point-buy and offer a lot of character customization, GURPS is prone to min-maxing and power-gaming. As long as munchkins are kept in check, I find the game very fun, but for each referee a lot of explaining needs to occur upfront regarding what rule choices are made.
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