GURPS 4th Edition to be Released at GenCon

[coyote6]

From various comments made by company employees, I think there won't be any printed books for TS after the upcoming Toxic Memes. But apparently, it will be possible to write books for "e23", which they plan to be an online shop similar to RPGNow - and that's apparently the destination for the current TS proposals. We will have to see how this will work out in practice.

As for WWII, BANZAI will apparently have conversion notes. It's likely that some small supplements will also be released as PDFs for e23...

(Note: It is entirely possible that I misunderstood some of the details, so don't take any of this as the last word on these issues.)

Your understanding matches my understanding of what Andrew Hackard said in the PyraMoo last night.

Seems like they plan on doing a lot with e23.

 

[tauton_ikhnos]

Looks like the same guy to me, only with the GURPS covers not being his best work.

If it is his work, he worked very hard to make it look like someone else did it. Use of light, expression of brush, all very different. Key is details: hair, belly button, way muscles are drawn (Zeleznik overdoes light & shadow to make the "cut" of the muscle).

Just doesn't seem very likely it is same artist.

 

[Xeriar]

Hopefully this will break me out of my Exalted fetish...

At least somewhat. Still damn cool.

 

[The Cardinal]

If your players buy the GURPS books and actually learn them .. minmaxing will run rampant, I fear. At least 3rd ed GURPS was prone to serious minmaxing. You're asking for it here! Well, maybe they've fixed those problems and GURPS 4e won't be about minmaxing, but I doubt it.?

I've never had any serious problems with min-maxers in GURPS. I expect believable well-rounded characters with some depth from my players - min-maxers are rarely able to deliver this.
I never fudge any rolls, avoid railroading like the plague, and allways roll out in the open - but the few true munchkins that happened to game at my table left with nothing but stacks of sheets full of dead characters

Whats wrong with that? You're aim was to get everyone have their own copy and learn the rules. If they can do it with Kazaa, why not? Do you allow your D&D players to use the SRD, or do you force everyone to buy their own official copy?

My players may use the SRD or GURPS Lite, i.e. products distributed for free by the companies which hold the respective copyrights, at their discretion.
However, not only do I not suffer thieves at my table, I also expect my players to support the companies that provide our gaming material - especially when it comes to smaller companies (i.e. anyone but WotC, WW, and maybe Palladium).

 

[buzz]

Just doesn't seem very likely it is same artist.

Then I don't get it. I mean, some of those gallery pics are GURPS book covers, and the SJG site says "covers of Basic by John Zeleznik." And I do see some similarities, albeit the gallery pics are way better.

Hopefully this all just means these are placeholder covers.

 

[tauton_ikhnos]

If it is Zeleznik, he went out of his way to make a bad painting, even down to using a different technique for hair, muscles, belly button. Anyway, moot point. I've picked my alternate cover, if it is bad

Regarding min-maxing in GURPS: our group min-maxes in everything. GURPS is neither particularly difficult nor particularly easy in this respect. D&D, Champions, GURPS, ShadowRun's 2nd edition Grimoire, TORG, you name it, we maim it . Except Paranoia: <accent=russian>"In Alpha Complex, system maims YOU!"</accent>

 

[Stone Dog]

Was anybody on these boards at the 4th edition chat on Wednesday? Sometime next week SJG is putting a faq out for that chat, but I don't want to wait that long if I don't have to.

Anyone who was there want to share some info with us?

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Have a fair # of 3rd ed. sourcebooks, as well as the core books, just sitting around on a shelf. My g/f likes the basic info contained in the sourcebooks (she's a history buff).

But, as nice & generic as it is, it really feels uber-detailed to me--a lot of detail that needs to be kept track of.

Do what I did in my GURPS Warhammer campaign - use GURPS Lite, and only use additions (such as GURPS Magic) when it becomes really neccessary.

That makes things real simple. Trust me on this.

I'm not sure if there'll be as significant of a shift from 3rd to 4th (vs. D&D's shift from 2nd to 3rd)--rather, it may more or less be more comparable to D&D's shift from 3.0 to 3.5--esp. with issue regarding 3rd ed. sourcebook capatability with the core 4th ed. stuff. Honestly, if that's the case, I'm not too sure I'm give this newer version a try at all.

Well, most GURPS supplements contain little to no rules information, and it should be fairly easy to convert the rest. The truly "crunchy" books, such as Basic, the Compendia, and Vehicles, won't be useful anymore though...

Also it seems that some very liquid elements about characters--things like wealth, contacts, possessions, reputation, etc.--seem a bit more hard-wired into character creation as well. These things seem too easy to lose & gain for a PC, esp. through roleplay (if not, then things seem a bit too static for a PC, IMHO).

Wealth that's only starting money could be purchased at half cost at character creation. Standard Wealth is also useful for things like better-earning regular jobs (yes, characters in some campaigns have those...) and Social Status.

Also, I'm not a fan of uber-detailed combats. The more a combat is stretched out by additional levels/processes/details, the slower combat feels (& doesn't help to add to the feeling of a fast-based, urgent situation at all).

That's a common misconception - the really basic combat rules (found in the Basic Combat section or GURPS Lite) aren't very detailed at all.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I'm really looking forward to this. I hope they adjust the Eidetic Memory advantage to make it more useable. My friend has a PC that has Full Eidetic Memory, but it makes mental skills far too easy to purchase IMO. I don't like the advantage in its current form.

I think we can be optimistic on this - one of the main designers of the new edition, David Pulver, can't stand the old Eidetic Memory advantage, and for his Transhuman Space books has introduced the "No Skill Bonus" limitation (for -75%).

While I can't vouch for this, I'd assume that this will be the case for 4E, too...

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Was anybody on these boards at the 4th edition chat on Wednesday? Sometime next week SJG is putting a faq out for that chat, but I don't want to wait that long if I don't have to.

Anyone who was there want to share some info with us?

A couple of things that I remember:

- ST and HT cost a flat 10 points/level, IQ and DEX 20/level.

- Hit Points are based on ST, fatigue on HT.

- Skill point progression is 1/2/4/+4 for all skills - no 1/2-point level. Whether the skill is Easy/Average/Hard determines what exact values this turns into.

- Language familiarity and Literacy for various alphabets will be handled though (fairly cheap) advantages, not skills.

And from the publishing side:

- New GURPS books will be 256 pages and full color, and released one per month. Shorter books will be released as PDFs on their "e23" website (think RPGNow).