GUPRS gives you a bunch of different ways to do 'magic', though like anything else in that system it tends to be down to how the GM chooses to run things.
The 'quick' method in GUPRS, assuming they are using their magic system (which is optional, even if you do want to have mages in a fantasy game throwing fireballs around) is that arcane casters us the standard magic system, where by they can learn any spell they can track down a copy of (or research themselves) but have to get 'setup' spells for it first, so you need to know how to create fire before you can learn the ranged combat version, for example.
Divine casters in that can use a different version of 'I have magical powers' where they get a fixed set of spells which they don't need to know the 'basic' version of something before they learn the 'advanced' version, but only ever have that set list of spells to hand. Almost Sorcerer vs Wizard to put it in D&D terms.
To stretch that a little, you can have arcane types limited by the 'local mana level' system in GURPS, and have divine casters working off 'local faith level'. So the cleric can still fire off a spell while standing in a mana-dead wasteland, but can't even light a candle while inside a hostile god's temple.
Those methods still use the same spell list though.
To really shift it, another approach to 'spells' in GURPS, is to give the casters special innate abilities, the same way you'd design up the the innate abilities a superhero type has, or combat robot, or cyborg, or whatever. You can use this to entirely replace the magic system, and it does give quite a different feel to things.
So if I was trying to have divine and arcane casters as very different in a GURPS game, I'd have arcane casters using the 'standard' magic system, with it's spell lists and fatigue costs and it's 'did the spell work' rolls, and get clerics to buy 'powers'.
You'd have two very different feels and mechanical differences to the approaches. Your mages would be a lot more versatile, and could drag out stuff that's very very hard to do using the 'powers' approach, on the other hand, the clerics would have less abilities, but what they had would probably be a lot more reliable, as long as they didn't break any of their faith requirements, and do some things that's hard, or impossible, to replicate using standard spells.
I've tried to explain this in a way that you don't need to know much about how GURPS works, but I'm not sure I succeeded.
Basically, yes, depending on game system, you can make things very different from each other. Especially in GURPS which was almost built around the concept of 'there is always more then one way to skin a cat'.
Divine Magic
The 'quick' method in GUPRS, assuming they are using their magic system (which is optional, even if you do want to have mages in a fantasy game throwing fireballs around) is that arcane casters us the standard magic system, where by they can learn any spell they can track down a copy of (or research themselves) but have to get 'setup' spells for it first, so you need to know how to create fire before you can learn the ranged combat version, for example.
Divine casters in that can use a different version of 'I have magical powers' where they get a fixed set of spells which they don't need to know the 'basic' version of something before they learn the 'advanced' version, but only ever have that set list of spells to hand. Almost Sorcerer vs Wizard to put it in D&D terms.
To stretch that a little, you can have arcane types limited by the 'local mana level' system in GURPS, and have divine casters working off 'local faith level'. So the cleric can still fire off a spell while standing in a mana-dead wasteland, but can't even light a candle while inside a hostile god's temple.
Those methods still use the same spell list though.
To really shift it, another approach to 'spells' in GURPS, is to give the casters special innate abilities, the same way you'd design up the the innate abilities a superhero type has, or combat robot, or cyborg, or whatever. You can use this to entirely replace the magic system, and it does give quite a different feel to things.
So if I was trying to have divine and arcane casters as very different in a GURPS game, I'd have arcane casters using the 'standard' magic system, with it's spell lists and fatigue costs and it's 'did the spell work' rolls, and get clerics to buy 'powers'.
You'd have two very different feels and mechanical differences to the approaches. Your mages would be a lot more versatile, and could drag out stuff that's very very hard to do using the 'powers' approach, on the other hand, the clerics would have less abilities, but what they had would probably be a lot more reliable, as long as they didn't break any of their faith requirements, and do some things that's hard, or impossible, to replicate using standard spells.
I've tried to explain this in a way that you don't need to know much about how GURPS works, but I'm not sure I succeeded.
Basically, yes, depending on game system, you can make things very different from each other. Especially in GURPS which was almost built around the concept of 'there is always more then one way to skin a cat'.
-- Brett