They negotiated the rights to a huge number of setting books over the years. If those still pertain, I'd love to see a 'Greatest Hits of Scifi' book with the Horseclans, Humanx Confederation, Witch World...nobody's seen these for ages so they might be fresh.Speaking of FATE, what does GURPS offer that FATE doesn't?
I like the idea, but I suspect most, if not all, of those licenses were for a set duration and have long since expired.They negotiated the rights to a huge number of setting books over the years. If those still pertain, I'd love to see a 'Greatest Hits of Scifi' book with the Horseclans, Humanx Confederation, Witch World...nobody's seen these for ages so they might be fresh.
If not, they've done Celtic Myth, Imperial Rome, WW2, Transhuman Space...FATE has the most material for new settings but GURPS has a huge amount of legacy material for standard ones like cyberpunk, espionage, even vampires....
Honestly - here's me being a broken record...They negotiated the rights to a huge number of setting books over the years. If those still pertain, I'd love to see a 'Greatest Hits of Scifi' book with the Horseclans, Humanx Confederation, Witch World...nobody's seen these for ages so they might be fresh.
If not, they've done Celtic Myth, Imperial Rome, WW2, Transhuman Space...FATE has the most material for new settings but GURPS has a huge amount of legacy material for standard ones like cyberpunk, espionage, even vampires....
There, there...the mean old generic universal roleplaying system can't hurt you...shhhThe problem GURPS has is that it's now too much beholden to its own design paradigm (much like D&D) to really go anywhere different without spurning its (miniscule) existing market.
The people who like GURPS are the kind of people who are married to the core system at a near-metaphysical level. Tossing out a new edition that makes broad changes negates the hard-earned system mastery that lives at the heart of GURPS fandom.
I gave away whatever GURPS material I had when I moved recently. Literally walked in to a local FLGS, dropped the books on the counter and said, "I don't want these. Feel free to take them and sell them, I don't even want store credit."
For me to ever consider buying GURPS material of any kind, they'd have to basically redesign it into something very different.
So yeah, I basically want nothing like GURPS at all . . . And to top it off, I despise "Infinite Worlds" style settings, both GURPS' version of it as well as RIFTS.
- Ditch the 3 core stats model
- Ditch roll under
- Switch to a flatter two-die bell curve instead of a three-die, or switch to a roll-and-keep system.
- Change to a 5-second combat round.
- Change the attack vs. active+passive defense paradigm.
- Consolidate skill areas
Bottom line -- People who actually want GURPS will want GURPS, and not something else. As a result, I suspect GURPS 5e when it rolls around will be closer to "GURPS 4e Expanded and Revised" than an actual edition change.
If it has I would be surprised. The only game company that would surprise me more to move into the open gaming mindset for their core system would be Palladium. SJG has always been very protective of their systems - they were looser than TSR back when TSR was around, and have always treated fansites well as far as I can recall, but publishing stuff for their games means you need to go through them directly. It would be a big deal in my eyes if they shifted corporate direction on that.Finally, an SRD and an open game license (elsewhere I've detailed my conversation with Steve Jackson when D&D's 1.0a came out and his response was a firm "no" - maybe that's changed?)
Fate and GURPS play very differently IME.Speaking of FATE, what does GURPS offer that FATE doesn't?