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.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I have great sentimental attachment to GURPS, but let's be frank: The system is outdated. The Zeitgeist has moved past its level of crunch. If SJG is going to do anything with it, it's time for a fifth edition. Do for GURPS what D&D 5E did for v3.5. Streamline it. Edit out the problematic bits. Make it easier to start playing GURPS than it is to play, say, the Cypher System. 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.

Both Steve Jackson and I were at Gamehole Con this weekend. I wish I'd had the opportunity to say this to him directly.

I'll say the same thing about this I've said when people suggest it about the Hero System; trying to move into the niche Savage Worlds has thoroughly colonized is not liable to be a net benefit. Heavy crunch systems definitely have lost a lot of their market, but tossing away much of what you have left to compete with parts of the market others have been staking out for more than a decade now is not clearly any kind of winner, and could easily end up losing more than it gains.

 

[Weiley31]

A revised edition so soon? 4th edition only came out 21 years ago!

Sometimes ya gotta rush things.

 

[Von Ether]

Ah, the memories. Flight 13 was a classic horror module.

Also lots of fun with the PCs in our modern paranormal game:

• A time-marooned veritech pilot
• A psionic eco terrorist
• An Indiana Jones carrying a ton of charms
• A retired cop

 

[Von Ether]

A revised edition so soon? 4th edition only came out 21 years ago!

Say you don't know gamers without saying you know gamers! I'll get gaming value out of that wizard mini I painted in 8th grade until they pry it out of my cold, arthritic hands!

True story; I knew a dude, as a player, push the GM to run Forgotten Realms so he could bring egg crates of AD&D FR stuff hoping it could be used ... somehow?

 

[MGibster]

I have great sentimental attachment to GURPS, but let's be frank: The system is outdated. The Zeitgeist has moved past its level of crunch. If SJG is going to do anything with it, it's time for a fifth edition.

This is pretty much how I feel about GURPS. I have a lot of great memories of it, I still have the warm fuzzies for Steve Jackson Games, and it's great at what it does, but what it does isn't as popular as it was thirty-five years ago. Who knows? Maybe in a few years games like GURPS will become all the rage?

Edit out the problematic bits. Make it easier to start playing GURPS than it is to play, say, the Cypher System. 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.

SJG already made their decision in regards to how they were going to handle GURPS. While it's not dead, it's heyday is long past, and SJG long ago allocated their resources into more profitable lines of business. I think SJG is savvy enough to know what they have and how to best market it. If you change it too much in an effort to appeal to a wider market you risk alienating your fans without attracting new players. Of course you run the risk of your market share dwindling to the point where production doesn't make any economic sense.

How compatible are 3rd and 4th edition material? I will admit that I read all the fluff for a bunch of the books (especially Aliens, Alternate Earths 1&2, and some of the licensed ones) without knowing the actual ruleset.

One of the great things about GURPS is you can use it to convert other versions of GURPS.

Sometimes ya gotta rush things.

GURPS 2nd edition came out a year after the 1st. 3rd edition came out two years after 2nd.

 

[stonehead]

Man, I know it has its flaws, but I love GURPS.

What's so great about it is that you can make the game as deep and complex as you want. You can build a simple character with good stats, and maybe a basic advantage like damage reduction or flight. Or you could build an incredibly complicated character whose flight comes from a reserve of energy and has to recharge after an hour. And that energy can come from the power of the sun, so it doesn't recharge while you're underground, or its cloudy out. And that energy could be able to be focused into a beam that's incredibly strong, but uses so much energy that your flight turns off. And that beam can be customized such that it's range depends on the amount of daylight you're in.

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. Mr Vanilla McGoodStats can choose not to interact with hit locations, but he still has to keep track of damage taken within the past turn because it applies a penalty to his attack rolls, and how far he moved on his last turn, because that gives him a bonus against ranged attacks, and his facing direction, because that determines whether he gets to defend against attacks or not. When he takes damage, he needs to compare that against his strength to see if he gets knocked back or not, but only if the damage is crushing or cutting; but if it's crushing, only the damage that is blocked by armor counts towards knockback.

The simplest GURPS character is still much more complicated than the average 5E character.

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.

 

[Autumnal]

I'll say the same thing about this I've said when people suggest it about the Hero System; trying to move into the niche Savage Worlds has thoroughly colonized is not liable to be a net benefit. Heavy crunch systems definitely have lost a lot of their market, but tossing away much of what you have left to compete with parts of the market others have been staking out for more than a decade now is not clearly any kind of winner, and could easily end up losing more than it gains.

Yup. A lot of would-be gaming pundits taken it as given that 1) a huge fraction of roleplaying books are made by soulless hacks just cranking them out and 2) they themselves can very reliably identify the books that way. Neither is true. One of my think lost game buyers consciously recognize it, but they do pretty reliably respond to genuine enthusiasm. Efforts at cashing in without much engagement can work for a while, or not, but they really don’t last. And Steve Jackson Games has a history of thinking more about the long term than, well, just about anyone else in the business.

 

[Argyle King]

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.

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.

 

[Swanosaurus]

I still have love left for GURPS, which seemed the hottest thing eve back in 3e days (they even published a German edition, and I bought everything they translated), but I must confess that it would need an actual new and significantly different edition to get me back into the fold. I like 3d6 roll under resolution because of how modifiers affect the curve in a non-linear way; I like the freedom; I like how a lot of stuff in combat is handled (defense, armour). It all makes a lot of sense.

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.

I'm not saying that GURPS should be like Fate, but I'd only buy into a new edition if it found a way to incorporate that kind of elegance and functionality.

Still, it would be cool if this would be followed by a revival of the cool GURPS supplements of old.