GURPS 4th Edition Revised Announced

GURPS is getting a revised 4th edition. Steve Jackson Games has quietly announced a revised version of GURPS current edition, with a focus on cleaning up wording and layout. Announced at Gamehole Con and further detailed in this thread on the Steve Jackson Games server, the revised edition will be fully compatible with all existing 4th edition GURPS material, right down to preserving page references in existing books. There will be rule changes in the form of additions that will be added via addenda, with players able to bring in those rules as they see fit to their existing 4th edition games.

GURPS stands for Generic Universal Role Playing System and is intended to be a rules system that can be used for any kind of story or genre. Steve Jackson has long-hinted that a new edition of GURPS was on the way, although it appears that they opted to keep the current edition rather than rebuild the game or make significant changes to its mechanics.

 

[Staffan]

The biggest problem is that this only works in one direction. You can make the game more complex if you want, but you can't make it simpler past a certain point. Unfortunately, that point is still too complex for most players.

If I were to remake GURPS while still keeping it somewhat GURPS-y, I'd start by paring down the skill list to like somewhere between 10 and 25 percent of the current one, and refer people to specialization rules if they want to get more gnarly than that as well as have some GMing advice on forced specialization in more focused campaigns (e.g. for most purposes a single "Medicine" or "Physician" skill is enough, but if you're doing the House MD campaign you probably want to separate out things like Diagnosis and Surgery). I'd also make skills cheaper, going back to the 2 points per +1 cap from 3e (3e and earlier capped mental skills at 2 points per +1, except Very Hard skills that capped at 4 points, and 8 points per +1 for physical skills. That sort of makes sense when you're turning a game that's essentially "gladiator arena" into an RPG because you generally don't have many skills, and having a high weapon skill is SUPER useful and thus deserves a high cost, but that's not really the typical experience anymore.)

Another thing I'd do is scrap the 1-second round and go with some undetermined "a few seconds" which is enough to do something useful.

A lot of these issues are just because it's so old. So old that we're currently living in the "near future" tech level. I'm very curious to see if tech level breakpoints get updated or not.

Heh. I remember when they announced that we were now in TL 8, before they changed the TL definitions in 4e.

I don't want to see the core game get watered down.

Personally, I don't feel that the game is nearly as complicated as it has a reputation for being. It simply takes an approach to things that is different than D&D and d20 games.

Ever thrown a grenade in GURPS?

 

[dbm]

But to me, GURPS has aged badly in one very important way: I just don't feel that trying to put a character-generation price tag on everything works.

This is one of my personal ’proud nails’ with GURPS, too. It tends to use a mix of factors to determine a point cost. ‘Real world’ complexity, game impact, and desired frequency of inclusion (e.g. Combat Reflexes is lower priced than what you might otherwise expect since it is a common trope in action focused settings) have all been discussed in terms of pricing.

Changing that on a truly universal level is basically impossible since the game impact of a trait is heavily dependent on the focus of your individual campaign. So it falls to GM guidance on adjusting things instead, which can be another barrier to getting a game up and running.

 

[Sketchpad]

I was just reminiscing about GURPS a few days ago and started looking into 4th ed. Looks like I'll wait a bit until 4.x is made and grab the core rules for that. Back in the '90s, GURPS often served as my go-to horror system. While some may not care for the complexity, I've always leaned into it. I like a crunchy system, and I particularly love GURPS' skill system. Looking forward to this.

 

[ruemere]

GURPS, the system I cannot bring myself to hate. The system that boasts incredible resources and legions of potential players who broke their teeth on optional options and page turning bits.

sigh

If I were to make a wish on fourth, nay, fifth edition, it would be something like this:

• let me have a playable party in an hour
• kill optional bits with fire (but keep options in supplements)
• make the core book under 200 pages
• limit stats and modifiers, move away from roll under to roll and add, use bounded accuracy to create genre specific power tiers

 

[Ghost2020]

GURPS, the system I cannot bring myself to hate. The system that boasts incredible resources and legions of potential players who broke their teeth on optional options and page turning bits.

sigh

If I were to make a wish on fourth edition, it would be something like this:

• let me have a playable party in an hour
• kill optional bits with fire (but keep options in supplements)
• make the core book under 200 pages
• limit stats and modifiers, move away from roll under to roll and add

Sounds like you want Modern Age.

I hear ya though, getting characters up and running quickly is an issue.

When I have time I work on generating characters for different genres, so I can have a batch to pull from whenever I need. Mostly for one shots or short campaigns.

 

[ruemere]

Sounds like you want Modern Age.

I hear ya though, getting characters up and running quickly is an issue.

When I have time I work on generating characters for different genres, so I can have a batch to pull from whenever I need. Mostly for one shots or short campaigns.

GURPS is like a big box of LEGO bricks, while modern systems (like Cypher) provide ready-to-use assembled models, a few spare items and information how to mix and match.

Your character pool should not be needed.

Also, roll under systems break too easily.

 

[MGibster]

But to me, GURPS has aged badly in one very important way: I just don't feel that trying to put a character-generation price tag on everything works. Paying a military rank with permanent character currency makes so sense in terms of what you do (or don't do) with it at the gaming table.

Generally speaking, GURPS puts a positive value on traits that expands your characters ability to affect the world while giving a negative value to traits that limits your character. It makes perfect sense for a captain in the United States Army to have a higher point cost than a sergeant because rank has its privileges. For example, depending on the rules of engagement, a captain might be able to authorize an artillery strike on an enemy position while a sergeant might have to ask HQ and wait for an officer there to say yay or nay. As the commander of a Constitution Class starship, Captain Kirk has quite a lot of power at his disposal and that warrants some point spending I think. Of course Kirk would have some disadvantages like Code of Honor or Duty that limit his range of actions.

GURPS was designed to be generic. It's right there in the name. You're supposed to be able to take any character from any other game or work of fiction and adapt it to GURPS by using their point system. But if you do it this way then you might notice characters in the same work of fiction have wildly different points cost. I remember reading a letter to SJG about adapting Babylon 5 to GURPS with lamentations the psychic characters were worth way more than a lot of the other characters. SJG's response was something along the lines of, "Every character isn't built with the same number of points."

 

[innerdude]

Also, roll under systems break too easily.

I'm on record in these forums as being a fairly vociferous naysayer around GURPS generally, with the "roll under" component being one of my major complaints.

I've read several places online that you somewhat easily port GURPS to a "roll over" system simply by inverting the base "skill bonus" paradigm on the character sheet. Instead of representing your skills on the character sheet as the number to "roll under", change it to an additive bonus to the 3d6 roll, with a static target number of 21.

If you want to do less math, you can go a step further by resetting the starting character attribute values to 0 instead of 10, and then just set attribute values as a static bonus (+1, +2, etc.) against a target number of 11.

If I were to ever play GURPS again, I think I'd pretty much insist on doing it as a roll over variant.

 

[Ghost2020]

GURPS is like a big box of LEGO bricks, while modern systems (like Cypher) provide ready-to-use assembled models, a few spare items and information how to mix and match.

Your character pool should not be needed.

Also, roll under systems break too easily.

How dare you good sir! (gasps in shock)
My character pool is a delight and has been the foundation for pick up and convention games. (Exasperated huff)

Seriously though Modern Age is 3d6 roll high + add bonuses, and it has settings for pulp, gritty, and cinematic. Unfortunately, it has levels. (yuck)

 

[Swanosaurus]

GURPS was designed to be generic. It's right there in the name. You're supposed to be able to take any character from any other game or work of fiction and adapt it to GURPS by using their point system. But if you do it this way then you might notice characters in the same work of fiction have wildly different points cost. I remember reading a letter to SJG about adapting Babylon 5 to GURPS with lamentations the psychic characters were worth way more than a lot of the other characters. SJG's response was something along the lines of, "Every character isn't built with the same number of points."

Yes, but that's exactly the problem: The price tags can't really take into account that one and the same dis/-advantage can be of radically different value depending on your campaign, setting, even the current scenario ... so the idea that all 175-point characters should be able to apply roughly the same amount of influence to the world is jut an illusion. Depending on you campaign frame, they will be wildly different. So you can't just pick a character out of a military sf campaign and put him in a scoundrels on space campaign and expect him to be comparable to the others. Which is okay, but it defeats the crossover argument.

I'm not against having big lists of all kinds of dis-/advantages and suggestions of how to use them in play; that's great about GURPS. But putting a fixed price tag on everything is just pseudo-objectivity. Either the price tag is campaign-dependent and each settig needs its own list, which is not necessarily compatible with the others in terms of point costs, or you go the Fate route where you pay/are paid when something comes up in play.