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GURPS 4th Edition RPG Announced
Grizzletooth writes "According to GamingReport, at the GAMA tradeshow in Las Vegas today, Steve Jackson Games announced they will release the 4th edition of the GURPS pen-and-paper role playing game. The Steve Jackson Games site has updated its official GURPS page to reflect this announcement." For those not in the know, the GURPS FAQ page explains: "GURPS is the 'Generic Universal RolePlaying System.' It starts with simple rules, and builds up to as much optional detail as you like. The basic rules system is designed to be playable in any background: fantasy or historical; past, present, or future."
the obvious answer to this is Palladium's system. Seeing as how they were the publishers of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle RPG as well as the Palladium Fantasy Role Playing Game. They had a fairly nice system and strove to keep rules compatible across genres, similar to GURPS. I was a huge fan of Palladium's stuff. Particularly their weapon, armor, modern weapon, and castle compendiums which made great source material for any ruleset.
The Test to any system is can you "realistically" convert superheroes to the system. We had an interesting experiment to see if Gurps could be used to convert Marvel and D.C. characters for battle. Who would win:
Superman versus the Hulk.
Converting this to Gurps was interesting. Using the comic meeting of the two as the base we had to include the disadvantages. In a quick battle Superman wins with his intelligence, but the NOTHING can stop the savage Hulk. The disadvantages included in the Gurps Supers helped big time.
Batman versus Daredevil
The Batman wins. He plays dirty. Discovers that Daredevil is a one trick pony. But the setting was a big x factor. Don't run into the devil in Hell's kitchen.
They are already working on it, and focusing very much on the impact of disads, including social ones.
Here's the skinny: http://www.gurpsonline.com/
The first 2 settings are Old West and Transhuman Space. If you haven't seen the Transhuman Space stuff it is phenomenal, and the best of the GURPS line in terms of depth and quality.
An online version of GURPS, aka GURPS Online is in development. The first settings will be the Wild West and a semi-near future setting known as Transhuman Space.
> is it possible to use GURPS in a computer RPG, like the AD&D rules have been used?
It lends itself even better, especially for combat-oriented games. GURPS combat rounds are one second each as opposed to D&D's minute rounds and vaguely defined "segments"(*) (are those even in third edition?). Bioware had to scale it down by a factor of 10 to get something approaching real time combat. In GURPS, if you fire off an automatic weapon, it has rules for modelling each individual bullet (but most GM's use the simpler variant). For a real amusing "roll a whole pile of dice" game mechanic, take a look at the shrapnel damage rules from the "GURPS High-Tech" sourcebook. GURPS has rules for weapon reach and models it at a 1 meter hex scale (or is it 1 yard?), including whether the weapon is in the right or left hand.
GURPS can mire you in so much mechanics if you follow it to the letter, that most GM's at some point do end up fudging things. Oddly, where GURPS doesn't have a lot of separate mechanics is in character stats: there's only four of them: strength, dexterity, intelligence, and health. Advantages, Disadvantages, and Quirks all make up for it, they are THE most fun in creating characters. In fact, I got to requiring any character in my D&D games to pick a balance of advantages and disadvantages from the GURPS sourcebooks, plus five quirks.
* - Not that I have a problem with D&D's system: for all of the derision aimed at D&D for being "hack and slash", it actually has one of the most abstract combat systems of any RPG, especially if you consider HP as experience and "heroic luck" instead of just being able to soak up damage, and require a DM to actually narrate combat rounds a little.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
GURPS combat rounds are one second each as opposed to D&D's minute rounds and vaguely defined "segments"(*) (are those even in third edition?).
Wrong.
d20/third edition (and 2nd edition's "Combat and Tacitcs" has 6-second rounds and no segments. Everyone is assumed to be doing six seconds of activity each round, and initiative is just used to determine who gets "done" first.
AND d20's a hell of a lot more "Universal" than GURPS. With a little bit of looking, you can find every RPG setting as a d20 version--and if you can't find it, you can make your own thanks to the Open Gaming License.
GURPS, despite is so-called "universality", is about as far from OSS as gaming gets. It's an odd inversion in RPGdom, wherein the 800lbs industry gorilla (Wizards of the Coast, a division of Hasbro) is the most "open source" of the RPG system-makers.
(Of course, the "third party" companies like Mongoose or Sword Sorcery Studios are even more "Open Source", but they write games, not systems for games.)
You might like it. No details on the changes for 4e yet but for 3e:
1. You will need a to have enough strength to handle the emcumberence of plate to make it worth it. The guy in chain or lighter will be able to outrun the guy in plate if they have the same base speed. You also get vision and skill penalties if you wear the full helm with just eye slits.
2. Axes have higher damage than swords, staves have a better parry and flails are hard to defend against. Swords are a good general weapon but some of the others can be better for some combat styles.
Steve Jackson Games changed direction in 1991 (I think) when they were raided by the US Secret Service. Before that they'd basically made small wargames and strategy games. I think their cash cow was "Car Wars", but they also had success with Ogre, Raid on Iran, and Illuminati.
After the SS raid, they seemed to derive their primary income from GURPS. And starting in about 2000, they began supplementing that with gag card games like "chez geek", "munchkin", and "ninja burger".
Frankly, the pre-SS SJG was a lot cooler.
One important thing to note is that Stephan O'Sullivan, author of FUDGE, was (is?) an author and prolific contributor for GURPS and it's supplements. I can see advantages and disadvantages for both. GURPS can be easy for limiting power gamers, but can enable them at higher point levels. The same is true for FUDGE but it takes more effort on the GM's part to define rules, like magic systems and psionics and super powers are only briefly outlined in FUDGE.
IMHO off the shelf GURPS is better but with work and a good GM, FUDGE can really out shine it.
Pretty widgets? What pretty widgets?