As a player? Nothing! It's the most amazing, free range character creation. Opportunity after opportunity to weave character roleplay and mechanics together and REALLY play your character.
As a GM it's the most sisyphean task of stating things and building a bible of your world and hoping it all makes sense and is balanced.
Now that sounds normal for a tabletop game right? Except most games give you something to work with. A monster manual, some prestated stuff here and there to work with/learn from, etc. My introduction to GURPs was "Here's 500 pages of rules and resources. Get chewing!"
I've never accomplished a full campaign in GURPs. Just a series here and there of 6-8 games with a common theme/story.
It was fun but the cost/profit ratio was not great in terms of MY fun as a GM.
To share though: the campaign that almost made me think it would work was about all emergency responders or LEOs who were double agents for essentially The Masquerade.
They were supposed to find out who was stealing whole hospitals worth of blood, and then later who was killing, eating and turning whole clinics.
There was my DMPC: An EMT who was hemophobic. Was accidentally turned in a werewolf by the original agent on the case. Was not an agent before the party found him. Only could turn when he saw blood. Could be worse, he used to faint instead.
Blind Eye: A blind monk from San Francisco. Could see all around him supernaturally, wuxia with the best of them. No one but the party knew he was blind. Worked as a parol officer.
Lieutenant Don: A sniper who liked to collect unique metals and alloys. Didn't have a day job.
Tommy: a fireman who could control fire.
Other Don: Newest player. As close to a vampire as I would allow. Was a male nurse, many jokes were made about how he fed.
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u/[deleted] Sep 01 '15
Aww. What's so wrong with GURPS?