Captain Anorak's
Guide to Gaming Captain Anorak's Third Rule for
Game Mechanics:
The more rules a game has, the more bad rules it will
contain
All rules must work properly. The more rules you put into a
game, the greater the chance that there will be some rules that
don't work properly, and that a number of rules will interact
in an unforeseen way to produce an undesirable effect.
Some games, like GURPS, try to have rules for everything. When
a game has so many rules, the chances are that some of them will
cause bad effects.
There are several glaring examples in GURPS of rules that
have been badly thought out: a character with high Intelligence
putting the minimum number of points into a language skill gains
a speaking ability greater than that of an average native speaker;
you can take a disadvantage (giving you character points back)
which can be used to give your character advantages, like Gigantism
(which gives you bonuses in some situations) or Dependent (which
can be used to create a character with useful skills to help you);
you can take the Delusion disadvantage for a large number of points,
even when it would practically be of no disadvantage, or even
advantageous (such as believing that the earth is flat in a society
where not to believe so is heresy).