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.

 

[Panzeh]

I do think the long character creation is the one real achilles' heel of GURPS but i think the effort is rewarding when you're playing with really invested players. In my opinion, character creation and advancement is the only time you really need to be worrying about points. And yeah, most works of fiction don't neatly map to an evenly-pointed party, but i think that's the basic function of the difference between TTRPGs and fiction.

My advice is to just look at the thing and implement it, and if necessary adjust the points later. There are definitely some types of advantages that have somewhat context-dependent benefit (many of them, actually) and you just have to gain some experience in the system to navigate that issue. Magical attacks through missile spells are, for example, much much worse than high-tech firearms in almost every respect as a way to kill someone, but they work out a bit better in the low-tech millieu.

The social advantages like allies, contacts, ranks, etc are definitely very nebulous and have to be really worked out between the player and GM as to how they're going to work. I think that's an important part of the process and definitely requires some experience. However, these are probably also the most important advantages a normal human can have in the system, and are, in my opinion, vital for pretty mundane-ish games.

 

[Willie the Duck]

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.
That's a great lesson from Fate, which pays you for a disadvantage or bills you for an advantage when it comes up. An doesn't even have to differentiate between the two.

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.

I think the character point system 'works best' when it is declared as being an artificial economy meaning you can't take everything and curb any other inferences as much as possible. I feel it works best for introducing a group to the system, and the inevitable min-maxxer showing where it breaks being a solid lesson that the game will only work with gentlepeople's agreement not to do so again. After that, I think character creation proceeds best with players creating genre-appropriate characters (and GM input such as 'if you are an expert at Skill X in this scenario, have a score of 15,' etc.) and ignoring it altogether.

Disadvantages in Fate and GURPS do things wildly differently, and each have their pros and cons.

• Obviously the GURPS disadvantages paying you in the same points as discussed above is a limitation. However, the big thing is that their benefit is a lump sum at character creation, and then you are incentivized (excepting that negative consequences generally mean spotlight time) to minimize how often they come up. This is realistic -- if I am epileptic or alcoholic or brontophobic, I want to do whatever I can (barring cures worse than the affliction) to make sure I never have another active episode of this problem.
• Fate disadvantages (aspects used in the compel format) set up an incentivization system where you want the disadvantage to rear its head (preferably in a situation where it just barely hinders you, of course, but you likely won't be able to engineer that). You don't get fate points if the aspect doesn't come up, and getting the fate points is why you took an aspect where the negative will come up in the first place (aside from making a nuances character, and again spotlight time). This helps create dramatic characters -- as in those that would show up in dramas (although 'dramatic' as in over-the-top is certainly possible). In a fictional narrative, if you even know about a character suffering from something, it likely means it is so it will come up.

For these reasons, I always said that GURPS was better at being a real-world person modelling system, while something like Fate does better at creating a character in a story. Mind you, various other factors (like the general task resolution systems and the like) also impact this.

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.

This reminds me of the 2e AD&D AC (with ThAC0, adding and subtracting negative numbers, and exception-based rules) vs. D&D 3e AC (with all-positives, formulaic calculation, but with multiple types of AC that might change frequently in real time) discussions. It all depends on what you think of as being complicated. GURPS does many things in consistent, formulaic ways. It also has many things with massive arrays of options (character building, enemy construction, charts and charts of modifiers) that can be seen as complicated even if each component is formulaic and straightforward.

And then, yes, various specifics like grenades or 3rd edition vehicles are just plain unnecessarily complicated subsystems. What they say about the larger system as a whole is another what-do-you-consider-important situation.

 

[Von Ether]

However, there is a market for boxed sets or trimmed down products. Dungeon Fantasy, After the End, Action, and the upcoming Mission X can fill that market.

Didn't SJG already try that? I could be wrong but my impression was that it didn't really rekindle the GURPS flame.

 

[Swanosaurus]

Disadvantages in Fate and GURPS do things wildly differently, and each have their pros and cons.

• Obviously the GURPS disadvantages paying you in the same points as discussed above is a limitation. However, the big thing is that their benefit is a lump sum at character creation, and then you are incentivized (excepting that negative consequences generally mean spotlight time) to minimize how often they come up. This is realistic -- if I am epileptic or alcoholic or brontophobic, I want to do whatever I can (barring cures worse than the affliction) to make sure I never have another active episode of this problem.
• Fate disadvantages (aspects used in the compel format) set up an incentivization system where you want the disadvantage to rear its head (preferably in a situation where it just barely hinders you, of course, but you likely won't be able to engineer that). You don't get fate points if the aspect doesn't come up, and getting the fate points is why you took an aspect where the negative will come up in the first place (aside from making a nuances character, and again spotlight time). This helps create dramatic characters -- as in those that would show up in dramas (although 'dramatic' as in over-the-top is certainly possible). In a fictional narrative, if you even know about a character suffering from something, it likely means it is so it will come up.

This makes a lot of sense, I never thought about it in this way - I always took it for granted that if you take a disadvantage that has any worth in terms of story, of course you'll want it to come up; trying to minimize its impact would feel like cheating to me (not saying that it IS cheating; it's just a feeling I have never questioned before).
Which also means that GURPS would need a slightly more antagonistic GM who knows your disadvantages and brings them up, at least if there is supposed to be some balance (meaning you paying one way or the other for that extra lump of CP).

So Fate is more about people who are both dramatically awesome and dramatically flawed, but ultimately come down on the awesome side; while GURPS is maybe more about, well ... people?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Just a side comment on one branch of this discussion, since I've seen it come up in other discussion:

Disadvantages that work by yielding metacurrency instead of up-front points have some virtues: they're more or less good at automatically regulating frequency since they come up as often as, well, they come up.

I've rarely seen a take on them that's good at regulating intensity, however, because in most systems they're a binary yield/not yield choice. There's nothing that says that can't be done (if your metacurrency isn't super-chunky, you can have the trigger yield different amounts), but for the most part it simply isn't done, and I think for some purposes that's a problem. My suspicion is that's because most games that do this sort of thing think in fairly broad strokes, so doing that would seem perversely finicky, but not everyone wants broad strokes.

In other respects, sometimes I think the real virtue of point build systems is sometimes missed in these discussions (and there's reasons for that): they aren't always as representative of value as they can be (because as note, value can be so campaign dependent) and sometimes a game is putting a thumb on the scale for reasons that don't seem important to some end users (not everyone is all that pumped about whether a given trait is rare in the genre involved or not), but the one thing they do do is set a finite list on character resources and set it for everyone, so if if players A and B want similar characters, either one of them can get there because there's not character gen mechanics that will allow one but not the other to do it. That doesn't mean a build system as fine gradient as GURPS or Hero is necessarily what you want, but it means even if the value comparisons to cost within the system fail, its still serving a purpose.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This makes a lot of sense, I never thought about it in this way - I always took it for granted that if you take a disadvantage that has any worth in terms of story, of course you'll want it to come up; trying to minimize its impact would feel like cheating to me (not saying that it IS cheating; it's just a feeling I have never questioned before).

There are always going to be people who, even if they somewhat care about representation, are playing from a heavily gamist posture on some level, and they'll always want the most bang for the least buck. This was why when I did work on a superhero system years ago that I think may very well have ended up being the root for probably the first significant disadvantage system in a game, I made sure there was some reason on a gamist level to take disadvantages (because superheroes are rife with them) as I thought it was quite likely few people would otherwise do it.

Which also means that GURPS would need a slightly more antagonistic GM who knows your disadvantages and brings them up, at least if there is supposed to be some balance (meaning you paying one way or the other for that extra lump of CP).

There's a reason there's usually some discussion of this in GM advice in the Hero System.

So Fate is more about people who are both dramatically awesome and dramatically flawed, but ultimately come down on the awesome side; while GURPS is maybe more about, well ... people?

I'd say at least some of the time its more about how, well, dramatic its all assumed to be. FATE and similar games are very focused on the flow of metacurrency, which produces a certain kind of experience. Its notable that GURPS (and Hero) predate that paradigm, and even versions with metacurrency don't foreground it that way.

 

[Panzeh]

In other respects, sometimes I think the real virtue of point build systems is sometimes missed in these discussions (and there's reasons for that): they aren't always as representative of value as they can be (because as note, value can be so campaign dependent) and sometimes a game is putting a thumb on the scale for reasons that don't seem important to some end users (not everyone is all that pumped about whether a given trait is rare in the genre involved or not), but the one thing they do do is set a finite list on character resources and set it for everyone, so if if players A and B want similar characters, either one of them can get there because there's not character gen mechanics that will allow one but not the other to do it. That doesn't mean a build system as fine gradient as GURPS or Hero is necessarily what you want, but it means even if the value comparisons to cost within the system fail, its still serving a purpose.

Yeah, that's i think a pretty good explanation for points, in my opinion- it gives both the players and GM the liberty to really get custom while also kinda keeping with the sort of basic TTRPG dictum of everyone starting at roughly the same place. There's part of me that kinda wants to try something where I don't keep the points all the same but you'd have to have a really special set of players for that, or a very short-term game with pregens.

It's a challenge that comes with the game as it is, whereas most TTRPGs have in their books groups of iconic-type characters you can just flip through and find something you like in, but it's rewarding to a lot of people and in some types of campaigns to really be able to build your own bear.

And yeah if you just straightforwardly built, say, the main cast of Star Trek the Next Generation, most of the characters would be roughly in a bracket of points level and then Data would be a massive outlier at a zillion points. I don't think it's that big a deal in the context of a show because they can just not write Data solving all the problems and having all the adventures, even though that might be optimal, but i wouldn't let someone make Data, at least as he is in the show, in a TTRPG party with the same theme.

 

[dbm]

A huge amount of work has been done to create templates for many major genres or types of games. There are still decision to be made but it is a lot more manageable IMO. And there is GM guidance on how to make more templates to support your campaign concept, too.

A lot of work has been put into making GURPS more accessible, but it’s never going to be as mainstream as something like D&D. It’s key strengths are that it can be anything you want it to be, and a strong interlock between systems which makes inference and extrapolation at the table easier. But that also means you need to make a lot of decisions as either the GM or a player before getting down to the table. It’s a system that supports a certain kind of audience who like that level of meta decision making. But those people are a small part of the overall RPG community.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, that's i think a pretty good explanation for points, in my opinion- it gives both the players and GM the liberty to really get custom while also kinda keeping with the sort of basic TTRPG dictum of everyone starting at roughly the same place. There's part of me that kinda wants to try something where I don't keep the points all the same but you'd have to have a really special set of players for that, or a very short-term game with pregens.

Mutants and Masterminds has had it as an effective option (in terms of just allowing people to do character modelling and ignore the points) for a while, but I'm unsold it would go over well with most people; you can already have situations where people feel overshadowed, and knowing that it may have happened by someone simply brute forcing it would not, I think, make the situation better. You'd need to have a group that has a great degree of mutual support beyond what I think is routine in gaming groups.

It's a challenge that comes with the game as it is, whereas most TTRPGs have in their books groups of iconic-type characters you can just flip through and find something you like in, but it's rewarding to a lot of people and in some types of campaigns to really be able to build your own bear.

Ironically, where it can come up is often in people who really want to drill down to the specifics of their character; because detail in character creation only really matters to people who really focused on detail in character.

And yeah if you just straightforwardly built, say, the main cast of Star Trek the Next Generation, most of the characters would be roughly in a bracket of points level and then Data would be a massive outlier at a zillion points. I don't think it's that big a deal in the context of a show because they can just not write Data solving all the problems and having all the adventures, even though that might be optimal, but i wouldn't let someone make Data, at least as he is in the show, in a TTRPG party with the same theme.

Well, on its simplest level, it doesn't matter as much in a show because the people presenting the characters are all the same person(s) writing all of them, so there's little likelihood for overshadowing to slip in in a way they care about. It can have some problems with the viewers, but that's not the same..

 

[VHawkwinter]

[Edit: a lot of people said similar things. I hadn't read subsequent pages yet. My apologies for any redundancy].

I have great sentimental attachment to GURPS, but let's be frank: The system is outdated.

Agreed.

The Zeitgeist has moved past its level of crunch.

It has, and it's highly unfortunate.

Do for GURPS what D&D 5E did for v3.5. Streamline it.

I sincerely hope they don't, and come up with a different way to innovate (like an app that automates the cross referencing, and perhaps even has the option to automate running various mechanics). Lots of people are fine with the mushy incompleteness of 5e, I am not. After trying to make myself like it for 2 years and failing, 5e lives in a box at the bottom of my closet, as the worst game I own that I haven't sold off or given away. At this point GURPS is the only game system I've enjoyed that is still actively publishing new material in English. I hope they don't ruin it.

There will always be a market for a universal RPG system, but the market for this universal RPG system moved on to other things 10 years ago. Minor revisions won't cut it.

I think I the existing GURPS playerbase is people like myself who do not enjoy this trend of dumbed down RPGs for the lowest common denominator, Choosing simplicity over good gameplay. And I doubt SJG is going to pay to roll out a ton of marketing to try to appeal to kids to replace us all.

GURPS definitely could use more than a small revision, but I hope they don't jump on the bandwagon of gutting the game into a bland imitation of itself that seems to have be the trend of the last ~dozenish years.