this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2025
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[–] agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

GURPS has an official GM Control Sheet for you to fill out with your PCs base stats and things like Perception. This supports their recommendation in the rule books to secretly roll any check where the PC wouldn't really know if they failed. It's fantastic.

[–] dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Considering that was probably penned in the late 1980's, why isn't that standard kit for every other system?

[–] chillhelm@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

Because in my experience meta gaming like that is not an issue at 90% of all tables. And at the other 10% it's just that one guy that causes an issue about trying to meta game their character out of consequences.

RPG Rules are not laws, so they are not written for the lowest common denominator, but for a group of well meaning, socially functioning, above room temperature IQ human persons with a base level of trust.

Not every table preference has to be mentioned in the rules to be legitimate. At my table, there are no secret rolls or checks that a PC makes without a reasonably clear concept of what the consequences of success and failure are. So a list of default stats that your GM can check would be a waste of time and book keeping. If your GM likes to use mystical rolls with undefined consequences and the percussion of hidden dice to increase tension, more power to them. But to me that seems a waste of everybodies time.

[–] agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I don't know much about anything before 4e, which is my reference here. But yeah, it really should be. I jumped ship on D&D because they were just getting so lazy on mechanic content.

I think it might be more widespread than WotC, but my only experience is a distant smattering of PF2, D&D 5e, and GURPS 4e ever since. But I wouldn't be surprised if the lack of attention to detail for actually running the game is a broad problem.

We can't really put all the blame on the devs though, I think GMs who forget that it's their table, and some rulebook isn't the boss of them, make devs feel pressured to not "impose" rules and features in their sourcebooks.

Like homie, give me tools. You're not holding a knife to my throat, I can chill on the nitty gritty if I want to. But give me the nitty gritty so I can decide for myself.

I dunno, I made my choice, I think it's the best possible choice for my play philosophy. I think if more people considered my play philosophy, it would be the best possible choice for a lot of people.

[–] dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Exactly. Pragmatism wins the day. Or at least it does at my table.

I'll have to shop around for more and better tools. Thanks for reminding me that there's a wider world out there.

But give me the nitty gritty so I can decide for myself.

This resonates with me. But I also have to give an obligatory nod to Palladium Games where the nit and grit is the entire point. If you've never had the pleasure, the RIFTS character sheet makes (American) taxes look easy to file by comparison. You practically need a session zero and a session zero-zero to get started.

You really should dive into GURPS. Chris Normand has a good YouTube series in the basics, but the gist is that it's both the simplest and most intricate system out there. Basically everything is a 3d6 skill check, but there are thousands of pages dedicated to figuring out exactly what modifiers apply. The modularity is delightful, basically every rule is entirely and explicitly optional