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.

 

[dbm]

If they number the additional pages with Roman numerals there might be an actual page XX…

 

[Paragon Lost]

Revision should have happened ten years ago. What needs to happen now is a new edition. I'll probably snag it, no I know I'll snag it. I'll just end sighing most likely as I read through and then glance at my GURPS 2e Box sets and the early "unrevised" 3e books that I still use. I collected most of the 4e material but didn't care for it, as others have said the writing changed and it was a slog.

Currently if anyone around where I live wanted to play GURPS, I'd pull out my 2e/early 3e GURPS Thieves' World based campaign that I ran from 1987' to 2000 and run a short campaign to give folks a feel of a fun system.

 

[Oryzarius]

"There will be rule changes in the form of additions that will be added via addenda...."

Who's responsible for that travesty of a sentence?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

"There will be rule changes in the form of additions that will be added via addenda...."

Who's responsible for that travesty of a sentence?

 

[Ghost2020]

There are at least nine GURPS bestiaries currently available…

Sure but most are for 3rd ed....

Creatures of the Night
Fantasy Bestiary
Bestiary
Space Bestiary
Horror 2nd ed - sizeable bestiary
Blood Types (ehhh....mostly templates - not ready to play)
Supporting Cast - NPCs but depending on the campaign could be a bestiary

4th Ed
Dungeon Fantasy Monsters

Oh yeah and the Gaming Ballistic material, but that's 3rd party. SJ Games never made a "traditional" bestiary for 4th ed like they did for 3rd.

 

[Sossij]

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.

 

[dbm]

There are five Dungeon Fantasy bestiaries, another two for the DFRPG, and four for Nordlund. There are six mini-bestiaries for sci-fi / weird monsters too.

 

[dbm]

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.

Fairly compatible. One of the main changes was how HP are calculated, but you can easily convert it.

 

[Ghost2020]

There are five Dungeon Fantasy bestiaries, another two for the DFRPG, and four for Nordlund. There are six mini-bestiaries for sci-fi / weird monsters too.

Oh yeah! I forgot about those small PDFs and POD books. Did they ever compile those into a single supplement?

 

[dbm]

No formal printed versions but they are pretty simple to compile and get printed for personal use.