Is a new GURPS version in the works?
The Shadow
Hero
Eh? Fate and Cortex Prime are both pretty clearly toolboxes for creating specific games. (It's just that Fate works decently well out of the box, so one doesn't always need to devote much thought to Extras.)
Brother, you just said a mouthful! They're like night and day!
GURPS is all about intense simulation. High "realism". Fate doesn't care about that at all. It has entirely different priorities.
When GURPS' attention to detail matches what you want in a campaign, it's great - I personally think the Psionics rules are hard to beat for flavor. But, for my group, in general the system is just way too much. And we've grown very fond of Fate's narrative tools.
But I will say this, even though I don't much care for the system, GURPS supplements are a gold mine! You can nearly always get great stuff out of a GURPS book for use with any system. (I still keep returning to GURPS Space for ideas after all these years. Traveller: First In, too.)
innerdude
Legend
LOL, don't get me wrong, I'm totally fine with other people liking and playing GURPS. I've only ever played maybe a grand total of 25 sessions of it in my lifetime.
I also recognize that there's a very finely tuned, technically impressive design living under the hood. It just happens to produce a gameplay experience I want absolutely nothing to do with.
Faolyn
(she/her)
What I would like to see is guidelines for how much a advantage, disadvantage, limitation, enhancement, etc., should cost so the game wouldn't need to have a thousand different moving parts to it and thus a hundred different books--we could just figure out the point cost of an ability we want on our own.
Both GURPS and Fate, sadly, have a lot of breadth but very little depth. I love some of GURPS' settings, but really wish they got more support, or at least an updated version. Let's see Technomancer for the 2020s instead of the 1990s!
dbm
Savage!
I generally don’t come into GURPS threads and recommend Savage Worlds, but I find that Savage Worlds plays like a more streamlined GURPS with a pulp sensibility. Savage Worlds addresses pretty much the points you mention above.
Have you looked at EABA 2e at all? It basically works like that and is kind of GURPS built from even smaller components.
Willie the Duck
Hero
Well, that's the thing. Pretty much anything you like, so long as you are consistent. The point system doesn't really go a good job of adjudicating power, balance, or effectiveness excepting in the broadest, most holistic strokes (in that yes you can probably make a more effective character with 400 points than you can with 100). The complexity of how to excel at an open-ended goal/activity game is too broad and varied to capture with fixed numbers. Even if it could, there are significant value judgements that went into the (various editions of the) game that may not play out in any at-actual-table. For example, being good at combat is seen as really valuable and thus creating a generally combat-capable character can take hundreds of points, the same hundreds of points spent on IQ, DX, and skills can create an incredible polymath skill character. Another example (and inter-edition comparator) is that 3e seemed to assign points to many advantages and disadvantages based on how awesome they would be to have IRL, not how much they affect gameplay. As such, longevity/unaging cost a lot of points (and a fatal illness gave a lot) even though they likely wouldn't affect a campaign. 4e, with a different value judgement on these things, drastically reduced the point costs/payout for such things. I've heard the GURPS point system be called a 'fairness mechanism' instead of a balancing mechanism, and despite at the time thinking 'that's not really addressing my misgivings,' I've come to realize that it's a really accurate descriptor, and one of those situations where you are either okay with it, or not.
Even the 1990s GURPS tech stuff was often based on a view of technological advancement that came from the 1950s-60s, through Traveller (I suspect) and into early GURPS. Fin-stabilized, uranium-tipped tank shells and gyrojet hand weapons and such were to be the weapons of the future. Space armor was literal ports of Traveller suits (in approximately the same order). Cyberpunk/netrunning stuff was obviously from later, but there seemed to be solidly in the Neuromancer motif (perhaps deliberately, as how many people really want realistic hacking?).
Regardless, SJ has been pretty clear that they will support the existing products, but don't think the market would suddenly spring to life for GURPS if they suddenly invested heavily in it. Unfortunately 'an update of actual SJ product XYZ' is one thing that a SRD-type setup can't reasonably provide.
Faolyn
(she/her)
I don't think I know that game. My table has, however, started with SWADE which does practically everything I could possibly want. Although I still haven't quite figured out a good "feeds off fear" mechanic yet for PCs. I had an idea for a game, inspired by a review I read for Beast: the Primordial, after which I said "I like the idea, but what if it didn't suck?" And if I were to run it, it'd probably be in either SWADE or Fate.
Oh, sure. That was actually one of my issues with GURPS, back when I played it. I am not good at point-based systems when there's that many points to spend, and it was really easy for me to create an extremely mediocre character. Maybe our main GURPS GM just used too many penalties on our rolls, but even with decently high skill levels I was just not actually good at anything, even the things I was specced for. That, plus so many different rules--I was terrible in combat, for instance, because I could never remember all the little maneuvers and abilities that gave you tiny-but-important bonuses--made it annoyingly difficult to play.
It also really annoyed me that it was so much cheaper to just up my stats rather than the actual attached skills. No, I didn't want my caster to have an IQ of 20, but there was no way I'd be able to get her spells up to decent levels otherwise.
GURPS did have some very cool worlds, though. I would love an updated or re-imagined Fantasy 2 in addition to Technomancer.
dbm
Savage!
It’s another generic system- EABA. It’s pretty complete in one book but it requires even more self-build than GURPS does. It has some interesting rules. A universal table for time, distance and effect in combination with an escalating round mechanic. The first round is one second, the next is two then four then eight; that is intended to simulate how conflict tends to start as an intense burst then slow down in pace. There are quite a few world books for it, but it’s a one-man shop so rate of development is pretty slow.
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Eyes of Nine
Everything's Fine
It's not GURPS that's kept SJG solvent, it's Munchkin. And semi-regular kickstarters like the Fantasy Trip and OGRE (although iirc OGRE became something of a profit boondoggle)
There's a reason there haven't been any widely distributed GURPS physical books in years - because it's not very popular/it doesn't make financial sense to do so. (Acknowledged - some kickstarters, and some POD books have been produced, I own most of them)
My point therefore being - GURPS as it now exists is not a thriving product line financially for SJG. Nor is it a game that is part of the "RPG cultural zeitgeist" except as "isn't that the super crunchy game grognards played back in the 90's?" sense. Something pretty drastic needs to be done if SJG cares about either a) bringing it back into relevance or b) making a bunch more money on it. I'm not saying they have to or want to achieve either of those goals - but simply publishing a 5e that merely tweaks some existing rules definitely won't achieve them.
This is based on my experience with the transition from 3e to 4e as a retailer was that people looked at the 4e rules, said "meh, not enough changes I was interested in, I'll stick with 3e" and so it didn't sell. This was for a game that in 2002-3 I was selling 3-4 copies of the 3e book a year. In addition, my GURPS group decided not to shift to 4e - but it did kill our 3e game
. My experience is one micro story in a sea of stories about GURPS 4e; but I think it tends closer to representative than not.Similar Threads
