Re: HERO for the GURPS gamer
Overall, HERO and GURPS are my two favorite gaming systems. From a setting perspective, GURPS crushes everything out there; you have books on everything from Aztecs to Vikings to Camelot, and everything in between. Mechanically, the two play very similarly, but GURPS tends to be more 'crunchy' - HERO plays faster I think, although GURPS gives a level of realism that I think HERO frankly lacks. As somebody who frequently uses GURPS for Special Ops and Historical roleplaying, where one bullet or a sword through the gut will kill you (and you want that level of realism and tension), HERO isn't generally lethal enough - I'm very eager to get my hands on Dark Champions to see if there's some mitigation for this In GURPS you have 10-12 health on average, and a good assault rifle can do multiple d6's of damage - it doesn't take long to see where this can go. In all fairness, I've never used HERO for a realistic campaign, but that's because GURPS shines so well there, and I like the staggering versatility in combat & skills/character-building options. This is partially due to GURPS overwhelming backlibrary of books, which can be extremely focused and exhaustively well-researched, as I'm sure most people in RPGing - GURPS fans or haters - will readily concede.
On the flip side, GURPS is horrendously numbers-intensive if you want to play a superhero game, and it is this genre where HERO outclasses GURPS (and everything else out there, if I may say so) by lightyears. When you have characters in GURPS being built with 295 strength, it gets cumbersome, and the rolls also reflect that. GURPS is fantastic for skill vs. skill roleplaying; two martial artists comparing skills and roll successes (how much you made by vs. how much he made by, compared to respective skills) can get pretty numbers intensive, too - but it's more realistic. HERO doesn't really have any conventions for that level of detail, so if you're a numbers junky, GURPS wins. That's certainly not to say HERO doesn't have plenty of rules variations, because from a simply cinematic context, HERO wins with all the rules options and shear comic-book thematic content. Realism is GURPS' forte, with potential movie-level cinematic content. But for shear comic-book role-playing, GURPS is ill-equipped, unless you *really* want to focus more on the character proper than the adventure and dice. At the very least, use GURPS books for inspiration for HERO characters.
As somebody mentioned earlier, the speed-based/initiative system is radically different, and makes for a very different combat experience. In this sense, HERO wins - the speed chart is quick and easy, and players always know when they're up. I think combat is overall much more *FUN* in HERO, but that's generally because it offers a more cinematic context. If you're focused more on the character - his abilities, history, quirks, personality, etc - and the world around him, use GURPS, which has the deepest character generation and setting depth in gaming. If you're more interested in the cinematic action or high-powered roleplaying (where powers basically define the character), use HERO, which has a certain flavor that GURPS completely lacks... but the two are similar enough that neither is completely foreign to the other (3d6 basic die mechanic being first and foremost). I find the two complementary, because each excels at something different.
In addition to the speed mechanic, the strength table in HERO is awesome. The combat mechanic isn't skill-based, but uses OCV vs. DCV, still basically using a 3d6 mechanic, but instead of rolling under skill level (plus/minus a hoarde of GURPS modifiers like range, position, weather, terrain, visibility, etc etc that are useful in certain campaigns ), you just add dice to your OCV, compare it to their DCV, and boom, you're there - quick and easy. You can add more to it than that if you want, but it never reaches the shear gut-punch level of grittiness that GURPS has from the get-go; the two systems are obvious cousins - however, they do feel very different in execution. It's like GURPS starts at the top in complexity and works down, whereas HERO starts at the bottom in complexity and works up.
So if you're into superhero gaming, or highly cinematic gaming, HERO is unbeatably versatile and player-friendly, with style and power variety to burn. On the other hand, if you prefer a grittier and more realistic, 'real-world' based campaign, and skill-based system, GURPS wins, IMO.
From a mechanical perspective, I'd be surprised to find anybody who was a big fan of one, and didn't really like the other. If you have GURPS and HERO, you don't need anything else, unless you really want a specific setting flavor (Star Wars RPG, Star Trek RPG, etc, which obviously capture their specific settings better than the somewhat generic GURPS & HERO systems). Likewise, I find d20/D&D horridly simplistic, and despise all things d20 - it's like role-playing for kindergarteners.
But being a GURPS and HERO fan, that's probably not surprising
