GURPS 4th Edition Revised Announced

Sometimes the Zeitgeist has a point.

Keith Ammann said:

Sometimes the Zeitgeist has a point.

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I've always seen that meme as a way to "playfully" jab at the preferences of others. It's not as funny IMO as it appears to those presenting it.

Micah Sweet said:

I've always seen that meme as a way to "playfully" jab at the preferences of others. It's not as funny IMO as it appears to those presenting it.

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Disagree with you there, it's really funny since you fit with it so well considering your anti-zeitgeist stance.

I will say, I think the way GURPS works in chargen does kind of necessitate a very different approach to a lot of other TTRPGs- it works best if you come up with the concept and work out the details of the character first, and then sit down with the GM and make the character 1 to 1. You can't just do like D&D where you just throw the players handbook at people and they can bring something to you with no big deal, trying to run GURPS like that is a fast way to hit everyone's analysis paralysis.

If you think of it as a way to implement a concept, I think the granularity serves the game quite well. And the advantage is, in play, if somebody makes a dragon, it's more than a couple of modifiers like a D&D game, if you've given people the point budget, they really do feel, in almost every mechanic, like what they've made. When you do things like massively simplify skills, I think you lose a lot of the way to differentiate between mundane humans at a normal level, whereas they do have ways to have simplified skills for superhero-level games in the wild card system.

With the skill system, i can make 4 normal doctors feel very different in the things they're good at as medical professionals, i can make a variety of SF operators who feel very different because a lot of the soldiering skills are broken out.

Though definitely, the zeitgeist leans more toward, less character creation in general, books with very evocative art and strong playbooks to let you know what kind of characters make sense in the fiction. But GURPS is trying to be universal, so, this isn't something it can really do.

Kromm mention Power Ups 11: Roll Your Own Skills again this week, in the GURPS News update. Should arrive early next year, so likely at a similar time to the Revised book.

GobHag said:

Disagree with you there, it's really funny since you fit with it so well considering your anti-zeitgeist stance.

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I'm not surprised you feel that way. You explicitly want nothing to do with the parts of the hobby and the game that I care about the most. The difference is, I have no interest in making fun of you, or laughing at jokes others make about me.

Panzeh said:

I will say, I think the way GURPS works in chargen does kind of necessitate a very different approach to a lot of other TTRPGs- it works best if you come up with the concept and work out the details of the character first, and then sit down with the GM and make the character 1 to 1. You can't just do like D&D where you just throw the players handbook at people and they can bring something to you with no big deal, trying to run GURPS like that is a fast way to hit everyone's analysis paralysis.

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While I agree with the first half of what you say here, once you have people who are used to any free-build system, they're no more likely to have decision paralysis here than in any game with decision-based character gen. The only real problem you'll run into (and this is especially true with GURPS but it can apply to Hero and others too) is people who don't think to take certain skills their concept requires because the skill-splitting is so severe.

Panzeh said:

Though definitely, the zeitgeist leans more toward, less character creation in general, books with very evocative art and strong playbooks to let you know what kind of characters make sense in the fiction. But GURPS is trying to be universal, so, this isn't something it can really do.

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Though like a lot of free-build systems, it can really benefit from archetypes/templates.

Thomas Shey said:

While I agree with the first half of what you say here, once you have people who are used to any free-build system, they're no more likely to have decision paralysis here than in any game with decision-based character gen. The only real problem you'll run into (and this is especially true with GURPS but it can apply to Hero and others too) is people who don't think to take certain skills their concept requires because the skill-splitting is so severe.

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That's definitively a concern of mine, because I actually experienced that already in other games.
It can improve with experience with the game, but you don't start with experience and maybe your GM doesn't either.
I think my first experience with this was Shadowun 3 (which has probably a quite condensed skill list compared to GURPS). Made worse because I also didn't really realize the kind of values in skills you'd need to be effective.

It makes me wonder if you could make a 2 or 3 layer skill system. The first layer is broad skills - like firearms, engineering or medicine, while the 2nd layer is more specific like Sniper Rifles, Pistols, Lockpicking, Automotive Engineering, First Aid and Internal Medicine and the 3rd layer is even more specific, like Barret M1A2 and Desert Eagle, BMW Engines, Cardiology and Human Gynecoly
And then there are some more dials, like handing out free ranks for certain layers of certain skills, or adjusting how high or low skills get.
"Okay, this is a high-octane action campaign, everyone has basic fighting competency, so PCs treat the 3rd layer combat skills as maximum, you shouldn't need to worry about specific weapons."
"For the House MD campaign, the 3rd Layer Firearms and Melee Combat skills don't exist, the max rank for 1st Layer Firearms and Melee Combat is capped at 2 instead of 5, Medicine is at 5 for all of you, and the max rank of 3rd Layer medical skills is at 8 instead of 5 so you can become true specialist in your expertise and have a chance to find out even the more obscure stuff."

Mustrum_Ridcully said:

That's definitively a concern of mine, because I actually experienced that already in other games.
It can improve with experience with the game, but you don't start with experience and maybe your GM doesn't either.
I think my first experience with this was Shadowun 3 (which has probably a quite condensed skill list compared to GURPS). Made worse because I also didn't really realize the kind of values in skills you'd need to be effective.

It makes me wonder if you could make a 2 or 3 layer skill system. The first layer is broad skills - like firearms, engineering or medicine, while the 2nd layer is more specific like Sniper Rifles, Pistols, Lockpicking, Automotive Engineering, First Aid and Internal Medicine and the 3rd layer is even more specific, like Barret M1A2 and Desert Eagle, BMW Engines, Cardiology and Human Gynecoly
And then there are some more dials, like handing out free ranks for certain layers of certain skills, or adjusting how high or low skills get.
"Okay, this is a high-octane action campaign, everyone has basic fighting competency, so PCs treat the 3rd layer combat skills as maximum, you shouldn't need to worry about specific weapons."
"For the House MD campaign, the 3rd Layer Firearms and Melee Combat skills don't exist, the max rank for 1st Layer Firearms and Melee Combat is capped at 2 instead of 5, Medicine is at 5 for all of you, and the max rank of 3rd Layer medical skills is at 8 instead of 5 so you can become true specialist in your expertise and have a chance to find out even the more obscure stuff."

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It might be worthwhile to look up a game called Everyverse sometime; it takes a tact in its handling somewhat like that (rolling it back even farther).

Thomas Shey said:

The only real problem you'll run into (and this is especially true with GURPS but it can apply to Hero and others too) is people who don't think to take certain skills their concept requires because the skill-splitting is so severe.

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I agree it’s a challenge, however the existing solution is templates. Every current GURPS product which does anything with characters (therefore pretty much all of them) includes multiple templates showing you what stats, advantages, disadvantages, and skills to buy to fit with a character concept.

The ‘worked examples’ of Dungeon Fantasy, Action!, Monster Hunters, After the End, and Steam Punk all have entries fully focussed on characters with templates.

They are verbose and could be seen as intimidating however they do address the issue.