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."

Comments

Fluffy Article

[BrookHarty]

Half the article talks about the the books appearance, leather, colors, hardback. Wheres the details in the article?

Sean Punch, GURPS Line Editor for the past nine years, and David Pulver, a key contributor responsible for many of the core GURPS supplements, took two years to break the system down and rebuild it, guided by a decade and a half of gamer feedback. The new rules are designed to enhance the key strengths of GURPS: compatibility with all genres and flexibility for the GM. You'll still recognize it, but a lot of little things - and a few big ones! - are different.

I guess I expected a little more details in the article about actual changes in 4, other than the mention of the need for a conversion guide from 3.

Haven't played Gurps in over 10 years, but I remember how easy it was to switch genres game, from mid-evil to tech weapons in game, was rather impressed compared to D&D. But then I moved on to Battletech.

Humm, Maybe its time to pick up version 4 and teach the Kids how to play .

Woo-hoo!!!

[Lurch Kimded]

I have to admit that I like GURPS its a really good system but it REALLY needed a revamp. Better layout and organisation of its rules and where and when ceratin things applied would be so cool.

I can't wait. I bet my local game store is gonna be a happy bunny when it comes out thats for sure. ;)

Funny thing about RPG systems

[ReyTFox]

Because different groups have different ideas of how the game should be played, the rules as written usually don't actually matter as much as one might be led to believe, scanning through all the pages of different rules and statistics and options and tables as I remember doing when I was younger. When it comes down to it, all the material, the minatures, the sourcebooks, the rulesets - all are just tools to help along the storytelling, and fun reading in between sessions.

They do help in some aspects, I have to admit, but if you figure you can do a better job yourself, then you can easily roll your own with the guidance of a meta-system like FUDGE. The difference between it and something that's big by design like GURPS is mainly a matter of the fluffy pieces of detail, stuff like the exact effects of consuming a case of beer or getting hit with a radiation blast of 1000 rads or how far characters should be able to jump.

Re:Funny thing about RPG systems

[imr]

You can also get rid of the dice alltogether.
The big flaw behind all rpg games is the idea that randomness is at the heart of reality and at the heart of good games.
Not that I dislike one game of rpg with dice, it can add spice to an action, but as a model to represent reality it is flawed.
Take that football player doing the run of his life, do you think the roll of a d20 against his capacities actually render in any way what is actually happening on the field?

Going further, my group and I even suppressed all rules:
We realized that the rules were basically just a way to force everybody to be coherent with the rest of the group and with the adventure.
We immediatly realized we didnt need that, because nobody in the group wanted to take advantage over the others, but rather wanted the adventure to be really good, from a story telling point of view.
We then realised we that we were actually creating a story alltogether and that it was what mattered. A collective creation based on improvisation, on inspiration and on a collective sense of what the setting is (if we do a cthulhu run, nobody go into machine guns).
At this point of understanding, a gamemaster was not necessary anymore, just a scenarist who knows the grand trend of the present adventure, and tries to keep it on track, but all other players can add content whenever they feel like, it just has to please aesthetically the group. (so meta gaming discussions and rants about bad dice rolls have been replaced by vivid discussions when one tries to convince the others his last idea is actually worth keeping in the flow of the story).

As a matter of fact, being the scenarist of the last story, a cthulhu one, i even had no scenario, just a starting (gloomy gory insane unsane) point, based on the players wishes of characters (one of them was a coroner; so i had to have a body). They didnt know that there was no scenario, but believing in it, they created it themselves pretty easily. It was amazing to watch.
A funny exemple, a new player to the group, who actually didnt take seriously the fact that he could add content, to the question:
"what do you see now that your in front of the house (I just described)?"
answered, expecting to kinda make fun of the process:
"a chinese man!"
"what does he look like, where is he?"
"No, non, NO, I WAS JOKING!"
"hmm i like the idea, let's keep it"
the others:
"yes, a chinese man, at night, on the other side of the street" "yes, watching us from the shadows" "his face is motionless" "oh yes, but he has seen we've seen him (going into character) this guy gave me the shivers. Let's go into that house, we have to ..."
Imagine the face ot the new player as this flowed naturally.
And since, i later read a description of what the fungi of mi-go look like when they desguise at human, this player even managed to bring into the story the enemy. Which was neat, since my story already had strage fungis in it.
Tell me about randomness!

Applicable to computer RPG's?

[8tim8]

I don't know much about GURPS but I'm curious: is it possible to use GURPS in a computer RPG, like the AD&D rules have been used? Or is it much more geared toward paper and pencil games?

Re:Applicable to computer RPG's?

[Alliante]

The successful game Fallout was originally meant to have the GURPS mechanics, but Interplay decided on the "S.P.E.C.I.A.L." home-grown system.

I don't have a hard link to Interplay's site, but the closest Google Search that also mentions this fact is here

Turned out to be a licensing/legal dispute unfortunately, not a technical one.

Re:Applicable to computer RPG's?

[InThane]

D&D 3rd edition has 6 second rounds. No segments at all.

As far as GURPS goes, the combat system CAN get screwy if you use the "advanced" combat system - but the basic combat system works just fine, and gets the job done quite well. The main point (for me) that GURPS breaks down in is in high point-cost characters - the system just doesn't balance well at that point. I find GURPS works better as a "gritty" low-point campaign than in a high-value "supers" campaign. Champions/HERO works better in that environment.

Be interested in seeing the changes...

Re:Applicable to computer RPG's?

[mwheeler01]

You should probably take another look at GURPS. If you have a world in mind and you can't find a supplement, chances are GURPS has enough rules you can use to apply it to the world you're looking for. D20 on the other hand may have gobs and gobs of supplements but not all of the rules are nearly as high quality or go into as much depth.

Just because a game isn't OSS doesn't make it inferior or any less universal.