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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."
It's the fluff that makes it easy for newbies to pick up the system and create characters and/or worlds that will have them coming back for more, though. Those of us with years of experience can easily do without, but if you've never role-played before it is much easier to see what can be done if you're given some colourful pictures and pre-made characters to play with. After that, most people will have a concept of what they'd like to change, but it's taking that first step that needs padding, and the more people hooked on RPG:s the better IMHO. And even after yonks of systems, I still find it interesting to read other designer's thoughts and ideas.
i doubt it, for for one major reason: there are entire classes of advantages and disadvantages which simply won't translate. how does the computer reward you for playing someone who's deluded into thinking that s/he is really zeus? (he he, that was a *fun* character) how do you handle the mental and social advantages / disadvantages / skills? for example, you're a historian from the future and you're doing some field research back in your favorite era. like the absent minded academic you are, you forgot to bring the right power converter to let your time machine work using the existing power supply, so you end up stranded with only one-way communications (if that!) to the future. translating this scenario into something that a computer could handle would be a daunting task (this is, of course, a fairly common occurance in the gurps universe[s] -- 50-100 points unusual background, -10 absent minded, etc.) how do you handle things like phobias, addictions, delusions, and so on?
Meh. Character creation under Palladium was always a gigantic PITA -- particularly when you got into working out combat skills. And then after that, you're extremely limited in what your character can do forever after.
And of course, their HP / SDC / MDC system grew increasingly broken as they moved on into Rifts, where looking at someone funny can easily crush a tank.
I remember how impressed I was with GURPS after having used Palladium for a few years. More when I sat in on a session of RIFTS last year and wound up having to struggle with all of the problems in the Palladium system.
GURPS could certainly be a lot better, but it's pretty nice so far, I've got to say.
That said, I'm not looking forward too much to 4e unless it's a very substantial improvement. That means paring things down so that combat and skill resolution are extremely easy and fast to get out of the way. The magic system could also stand to be totally redone, and GURPS needs quite a bit of work in extreme circumstances, e.g. 250pt+ characters, especially with heavy duty magic, superpowers, or cybernetics. Right now it's a bit too geared towards characters that aren't terribly far from ordinary.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
The system you may or may not like, but most of the World Books are works of genius; most are also designed that the background and creative material are sharpely separated from the GURPS underpinnings, allowing for easy adaptation to other game systems.
Of course, it's the flexibility inherant in the GURPS system that allows them to put out a Conan fantasy game, a Time Travelling book, a 'Robots Took Over The Earth' book, and a book about Bunnies, all on the same shelf.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
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.
You can do that with gurps, too. Hasbro just suckered a bunch of geeks who don't feel comfy releasing writing without some sort of license attached to it. In other words, they sold you what you already had the right to do. Besides, if it were 'open', you'd be able to republish core content. You couldn't do that the last time I cared about DnD -- which was shortly before they inanely added 'point five' to their revision system. I mean, why the hell does it matter if your Role Playing Game is open source or not?
The sourcebooks for gurps are often history lessons bound up in guise of roleplaying books -- that's what makes them so worthwhile, not the fact that they codify a system of dice rolling.
Judging by some of your appalling and embarrasing opinions, you could use a history lesson, so maybe you should switch from D20 -- mostly crazy fantasy worlds written by intellectually inbred children of Robert E. Howard and J.R.R. Tolkien -- to GURPS, where things are a little more grounded in fact, when possible.
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.
They got raided due to a GURPS supplement, so I have trouble believing that.
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".
And Frag, and Spooks, and Knightmare Chess, and a new edition of Car Wars, and others. Not to mention prior things like Ogre Miniatures and Illuminati: New World Order. Last year Munchkin accounted for over 30% of their sales, so it's hardly just "supplementing" GURPS.