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.

From DouglasCole on the GURPS forums:

Since the GURPS Fourth Edition Revised monkey is out of the sack:

Zero. It won't be years. Most of the work is already done.

1. By far the biggest differences are major changes to physical layout and design. I'm not sure what SJ leaked at Gamehole Con, so I'm not going to go into detail here beyond saying, "The thing will be easier to use and read." It will not look the same, despite #3 below.

2. It is definitively not GURPS Fifth Edition, or even a GURPS Third Edition to GURPS Fourth Edition-level change! It is a GURPS Third Edition to GURPS Third Edition Revised-level change. It will not make edition-level changes to point costs, modifiers, prices, weights, etc. All rules changes will be additions, in clearly marked addenda "chapters," so that people can easily decide what to retcon into Fourth Edition campaigns.

3. Top priority is to preserve page references so that whether you use the Basic Set, Fourth Edition or Basic Set Fourth Edition Revised, an internal "p. 00" or external "p. B00" points you to the same rule. This brooks little to no rewriting outside of the addenda mentioned in #2.

4. Inasmuch as there is some rewriting, as in #3, it will be to remedy some particularly offensive or unclear passages. Not to change rules!

5+. And other minor stuff while we're at it. The above will inevitably change the size, shape, and location of art and quote boxes, so expect art and quotes to change, too. We'll update the credits to reflect additional material in the addenda, and the creatives who created the revised book. I'm sure there are 100 things like that.

#3 is the single most important element in living up to the promise of compatibility. There are literally millions of page references in 21 years of supplements and articles, not to mention community discussions. Invalidating them would mean a huge slap in the face. But #1 is the main reason to do the thing. So, it isn't a conflict . . . it's a visual upgrade that doesn't insult customers, while still providing both enhanced readability AND some extra "best of" addenda.

I can say without shilling or exaggerating that it is far, far more than a new printing. It just isn't a full edition. There are things between the two. A revision is one of those things. If all a reader cares about is the rules . . . well, there will be lots of addenda, but no, not a full revision. However, lots of readers care about readability, sensitivity, design aesthetics, being aware that it's 21 years later, etc. even if not a single rule changes.

Well, that's it for my needless leaks to follow SJ's leaks, but the takeaways:

• Better, more readable layout with different art and quotes.
• Mostly less controversial words, excepting indefinite pronouns (for economic reasons).
• More than 25 pages of "best of" rules skimmed from 21 years of system growth.
• Incidental glitch cleanup (e.g., mistaken "damage" for "injury," or "than" for "that").
• Promise of NO rules or page-reference changes to maintain total compatibility.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

This is explicitly disallowed:

I sold my 3e book, so can't verify. And "explicitly not allowed" doesn't really matter in ttrpgs anyway. All rules are guidelines.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I sold my 3e book, so can't verify. And "explicitly not allowed" doesn't really matter in ttrpgs anyway. All rules are guidelines.

But if the rules don't matter when you don't want them to, then why place any value on what's in the book versus what isn't? We can always stipulate that you can change the rules whenever you want (and I think we should), but if that's the argument, then there's no point in talking about the published rules at all.

 

[Nikosandros]

I sold my 3e book, so can't verify. And "explicitly not allowed" doesn't really matter in ttrpgs anyway. All rules are guidelines.

Of course, and I've always been an inveterate house-ruler. But since we are discussing GURPS and not everyone reading might be familiar with the rules I thought it might be useful to point it out. I might have been less assertive, though.

 

[Nikosandros]

I sold my 3e book, so can't verify.

My quote is from 4e, but in 3e the statement is almost the same:

Negating Disadvantages. GMs should never allow players to take a disadvantage (or a quirk) that is negated by an advantage! For instance, no one may take both Hard of Hearing and Acute Hearing.

 

[MGibster]

I have to ask: is there a driving need to always follow the cultural zeitgeist? And by this I mean that I think SJG is doing the right thing with this revision, as opposed to a new edition as you suggest. Small updates, mostly to visuals and some language is all that they should do IMO.

Remember way back in 1994 when MC Hammer dropped the MC from his name in favor of going by Hammer only? This was Hammer's attempt to maintain relevancy as gangsta rap dominated hip hop. But it's tough to be hard and gangsta when you had a Saturday morning cartoon and the previous year your video for Addams Family Values was in heavy rotation on MTV. Audiences looked at the new Hammer and couldn't help but laugh. Here's the thing, MC Hammer was talented and gangsta rap didn't dominate forever. It's entirely possible MC Hammer might have been able to pivot and remain somewhat relevant had he just stuck closer to who he was. (This has been story time with MGibster.)

No, there's no driving need to always follow the cultural zeitgeist. Not everything taps into whatever is currently trending and that's okay. Either it weathers the storm on its own or it fades into obscurity.

 

[VHawkwinter]

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.

I like the idea of getting compensated based on their frequency and severity - but I have never encountered a metacurrency I liked, and I am not sure it's possible. I don't know if there's any way to comp for disadvantages when they come up that's not an OOC spendable metacurrency, but I suspect I would like that approach much more if I encountered one.

 

[dbm]

Re the zeitgeist. GURPS is fairly unusual in that SJG is solely owned by Steve Jackson and it has Munchkin which keeps the lights on. So GURPS doesn’t have to keep the company afloat and hence it doesn’t have to chase sales the way some other flagship games need to.

It’s a double-edged sword however. For example, Kromm would like to create a ‘GURPS Medium’ somewhere between GURPS Light and the ‘full’ GURPS Basic. But he keeps getting told ‘no’ on that.

 

[corwyn77]

Also, will they finally do a 4th ed Bestiary? (sorry, just had to)

We have one; The Nordlondr bestiary. Chock full of D&D-like monsters and a bunch of unique ones from Norse Mythology.

 

[Jahydin]

I just want them to put this absolute work of art back in:

Now that I think about it, for 5E, they can just use the 3E Revised art with the updated 4E rules and I'd be happy.

 

[dbm]

And "explicitly not allowed" doesn't really matter in ttrpgs anyway.

It is relevant, however, when someone pulls out an anecdote showing the game is ‘broken’ but that anecdote didn’t actually follow the rules.