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. ;)

I might have to RPG again

[Foo2rama]

What other system allowed for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to battle my Dwarf Mage Bruticus?

Re:I might have to RPG again

[fireduck]

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.

Re:I might have to RPG again

[cpt kangarooski]

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.

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

[Cychwyn]

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.

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!

Re:Funny thing about RPG systems

[mwheeler01]

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.

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?

[blackcoot]

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?

Re:Applicable to computer RPG's?

[mudpyr8]

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.

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?

[scrytch]

> 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.

Re:Applicable to computer RPG's?

[Planesdragon]

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.)

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?

[j_d]

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.

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.

About time!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been waiting for SJG to get off their butts and put out d20 GURPS.

Superman versus the Hulk

[EastCoastLA]

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.

Ah GURPS

[SuiteSisterMary]

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.

GURPS Online

[DaRat]

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.

Re:But does it...

[TroubleMagnet]

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: A company still not recovered

[ArmorFiend]

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.

Re:Steve Jackson Games: A company still not recove

[Ondo]

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.