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Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

GURPS 4th Edition RPG Announced 55

Posted by simoniker from the take-me-down-to-acronym-city-again dept.
Grizzletooth writes "According to GamingReport, at the GAMA tradeshow in Las Vegas today, Steve Jackson Games announced they will release the 4th edition of the GURPS pen-and-paper role playing game. The Steve Jackson Games site has updated its official GURPS page to reflect this announcement." For those not in the know, the GURPS FAQ page explains: "GURPS is the 'Generic Universal RolePlaying System.' It starts with simple rules, and builds up to as much optional detail as you like. The basic rules system is designed to be playable in any background: fantasy or historical; past, present, or future."
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GURPS 4th Edition RPG Announced More

GURPS 4th Edition RPG Announced

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  • Fluffy Article (Score:4, Interesting)

    by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @04:46AM (#8586977) Journal
    Half the article talks about the the books appearance, leather, colors, hardback. Wheres the details in the article?

    Sean Punch, GURPS Line Editor for the past nine years, and David Pulver, a key contributor responsible for many of the core GURPS supplements, took two years to break the system down and rebuild it, guided by a decade and a half of gamer feedback. The new rules are designed to enhance the key strengths of GURPS: compatibility with all genres and flexibility for the GM. You'll still recognize it, but a lot of little things - and a few big ones! - are different.

    I guess I expected a little more details in the article about actual changes in 4, other than the mention of the need for a conversion guide from 3.

    Haven't played Gurps in over 10 years, but I remember how easy it was to switch genres game, from mid-evil to tech weapons in game, was rather impressed compared to D&D. But then I moved on to Battletech.

    Humm, Maybe its time to pick up version 4 and teach the Kids how to play .

  • Woo-hoo!!! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Lurch Kimded ( 582588 )
    I have to admit that I like GURPS its a really good system but it REALLY needed a revamp. Better layout and organisation of its rules and where and when ceratin things applied would be so cool.

    I can't wait. I bet my local game store is gonna be a happy bunny when it comes out thats for sure. ;)
    • That is the best thing about GURPS, the fact that you (or your game master) determine what rules aply when. Like a lot of realism? Use the advanced combat rules with a hex grid and miniatures. Like a quicker game with more swash and buckle? Use the simple combat rules, but add the cinematic rules. Change the rules as you see fit, add rules, or buy books to add rules if you want to get some pre-playtested rules.

      I love that GURPS supplements come in two flavors: themed world books and generic builders.

  • I might have to RPG again (Score:3, Funny)

    by Foo2rama ( 755806 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @05:57AM (#8587207) Homepage Journal
    What other system allowed for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to battle my Dwarf Mage Bruticus?
    • the obvious answer to this is Palladium's system [palladiumbooks.com]. Seeing as how they were the publishers of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle RPG as well as the Palladium Fantasy Role Playing Game. They had a fairly nice system and strove to keep rules compatible across genres, similar to GURPS. I was a huge fan of Palladium's stuff. Particularly their weapon, armor, modern weapon, and castle compendiums which made great source material for any ruleset.

      • Re:I might have to RPG again (Score:4, Insightful)

        by cpt kangarooski ( 3773 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @10:35AM (#8588171) Homepage
        Meh. Character creation under Palladium was always a gigantic PITA -- particularly when you got into working out combat skills. And then after that, you're extremely limited in what your character can do forever after.

        And of course, their HP / SDC / MDC system grew increasingly broken as they moved on into Rifts, where looking at someone funny can easily crush a tank.

        I remember how impressed I was with GURPS after having used Palladium for a few years. More when I sat in on a session of RIFTS last year and wound up having to struggle with all of the problems in the Palladium system.

        GURPS could certainly be a lot better, but it's pretty nice so far, I've got to say.

        That said, I'm not looking forward too much to 4e unless it's a very substantial improvement. That means paring things down so that combat and skill resolution are extremely easy and fast to get out of the way. The magic system could also stand to be totally redone, and GURPS needs quite a bit of work in extreme circumstances, e.g. 250pt+ characters, especially with heavy duty magic, superpowers, or cybernetics. Right now it's a bit too geared towards characters that aren't terribly far from ordinary.

  • Funny thing about RPG systems (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ReyTFox ( 676839 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @06:36AM (#8587327)
    Because different groups have different ideas of how the game should be played, the rules as written usually don't actually matter as much as one might be led to believe, scanning through all the pages of different rules and statistics and options and tables as I remember doing when I was younger. When it comes down to it, all the material, the minatures, the sourcebooks, the rulesets - all are just tools to help along the storytelling, and fun reading in between sessions.

    They do help in some aspects, I have to admit, but if you figure you can do a better job yourself, then you can easily roll your own with the guidance of a meta-system like FUDGE [fudgerpg.com]. The difference between it and something that's big by design like GURPS is mainly a matter of the fluffy pieces of detail, stuff like the exact effects of consuming a case of beer or getting hit with a radiation blast of 1000 rads or how far characters should be able to jump.

    • It's the fluff that makes it easy for newbies to pick up the system and create characters and/or worlds that will have them coming back for more, though. Those of us with years of experience can easily do without, but if you've never role-played before it is much easier to see what can be done if you're given some colourful pictures and pre-made characters to play with. After that, most people will have a concept of what they'd like to change, but it's taking that first step that needs padding, and the mo

    • Re:Funny thing about RPG systems (Score:5, Interesting)

      by imr ( 106517 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @09:29AM (#8587807)
      You can also get rid of the dice alltogether.
      The big flaw behind all rpg games is the idea that randomness is at the heart of reality and at the heart of good games.
      Not that I dislike one game of rpg with dice, it can add spice to an action, but as a model to represent reality it is flawed.
      Take that football player doing the run of his life, do you think the roll of a d20 against his capacities actually render in any way what is actually happening on the field?

      Going further, my group and I even suppressed all rules:
      We realized that the rules were basically just a way to force everybody to be coherent with the rest of the group and with the adventure.
      We immediatly realized we didnt need that, because nobody in the group wanted to take advantage over the others, but rather wanted the adventure to be really good, from a story telling point of view.
      We then realised we that we were actually creating a story alltogether and that it was what mattered. A collective creation based on improvisation, on inspiration and on a collective sense of what the setting is (if we do a cthulhu run, nobody go into machine guns).
      At this point of understanding, a gamemaster was not necessary anymore, just a scenarist who knows the grand trend of the present adventure, and tries to keep it on track, but all other players can add content whenever they feel like, it just has to please aesthetically the group. (so meta gaming discussions and rants about bad dice rolls have been replaced by vivid discussions when one tries to convince the others his last idea is actually worth keeping in the flow of the story).

      As a matter of fact, being the scenarist of the last story, a cthulhu one, i even had no scenario, just a starting (gloomy gory insane unsane) point, based on the players wishes of characters (one of them was a coroner; so i had to have a body). They didnt know that there was no scenario, but believing in it, they created it themselves pretty easily. It was amazing to watch.
      A funny exemple, a new player to the group, who actually didnt take seriously the fact that he could add content, to the question:
      "what do you see now that your in front of the house (I just described)?"
      answered, expecting to kinda make fun of the process:
      "a chinese man!"
      "what does he look like, where is he?"
      "No, non, NO, I WAS JOKING!"
      "hmm i like the idea, let's keep it"
      the others:
      "yes, a chinese man, at night, on the other side of the street" "yes, watching us from the shadows" "his face is motionless" "oh yes, but he has seen we've seen him (going into character) this guy gave me the shivers. Let's go into that house, we have to ..."
      Imagine the face ot the new player as this flowed naturally.
      And since, i later read a description of what the fungi of mi-go look like when they desguise at human, this player even managed to bring into the story the enemy. Which was neat, since my story already had strage fungis in it.
      Tell me about randomness!
      • Take that football player doing the run of his life, do you think the roll of a d20 against his capacities actually render in any way what is actually happening on the field?

        Actually, yes, I do. Looks like a pretty clear natural-20 to me... But then, I'm one of those "nothing is impossible, it may just be very, very unlikely"-guys... You know? Those people actually enjoying Quantum Physics, because its modelled that way?

        That said, I do not think dice are necessary for rpging, just because they would repr
      • First of all, not all RPG systems are random. Look at Theatrix or Amber... no dice, no cards, nothing.

        Although randomness is not necessary, it is very useful for simulation. Let's say your character is in a gunfight. Most of the time, there will be no guarantee that you'll hit or miss. To simulate that, people roll dice. This lends authenticity to the battle. It adds danger because you are rarely certain to win, and it adds hope because you are rarely certain to lose. This increases tension and char
        • Of course, remember that when D&D started the emphasis was role playing GAME not ROLE PLAYING game. The game was to see how long your character survived and how powerful it got while pretty much just going on dungeon crawls, killing monsters, and collecting treasure (like Nethack -- an yes, I realize hack, nethack, rogue, etc. were based on D&D, that is my point, they are based on the original concept of D&D).

          For the game aspect to work, you had to stick to the rules, accept the random die rol
      • > You can also get rid of the dice alltogether.

        You could but, IMO, that would in most cases detract from the game.

        > The big flaw behind all rpg games is the idea that randomness is at the heart of reality and at the heart of good games.
        > Not that I dislike one game of rpg with dice, it can add spice to an action, but as a model to represent reality it is flawed.

        This is a Role Playing Game, we're talking about, designing nuclear reactor!
        You don't need realism (how realistic is frying orcs with
    • Back in the day when I played a lot of RPGs (paper/pencil/dice ones), our core group of players got so fed up with the basic flaw of most systems -- the easy to manage ones weren't realistic and the realistic ones were unmanageable.

      We had a big Traveler campaign going and we all were dedicated to the story and characters (in other words, we weren't munchkins or rule's min-maxers) so we decided on a basic system:

      1) we would keep the characters and settings were were using
      2) as in an action movie franchise,
      • I would mod you up if I had points.

        Our system was pretty close (though not identical) to what you described.

        1) "Realism" does not matter but internal consistency does (otherwise it kills your suspension of disbelief and ruins what could have been an otherwise good story).

        2) The mechanics need to be simple enough not to be distracting (so we could concentrate on the story) but consistent enough to be dependable (so the players could approximate their chances of success in each action). That's why I did u
    • One important thing to note is that Stephan O'Sullivan, author of FUDGE, was (is?) an author and prolific contributor for GURPS and it's supplements. I can see advantages and disadvantages for both. GURPS can be easy for limiting power gamers, but can enable them at higher point levels. The same is true for FUDGE but it takes more effort on the GM's part to define rules, like magic systems and psionics and super powers are only briefly outlined in FUDGE.

      IMHO off the shelf GURPS is better but with work a

  • Applicable to computer RPG's? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 8tim8 ( 623968 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @09:27AM (#8587796) Journal
    I don't know much about GURPS but I'm curious: is it possible to use GURPS in a computer RPG, like the AD&D rules have been used? Or is it much more geared toward paper and pencil games?
    • i doubt it, for for one major reason: there are entire classes of advantages and disadvantages which simply won't translate. how does the computer reward you for playing someone who's deluded into thinking that s/he is really zeus? (he he, that was a *fun* character) how do you handle the mental and social advantages / disadvantages / skills? for example, you're a historian from the future and you're doing some field research back in your favorite era. like the absent minded academic you are, you forgot to
      • They are already working on it, and focusing very much on the impact of disads, including social ones.

        Here's the skinny: http://www.gurpsonline.com/
        The first 2 settings are Old West and Transhuman Space. If you haven't seen the Transhuman Space stuff it is phenomenal, and the best of the GURPS line in terms of depth and quality.

    • GURPS Online (Score:3, Informative)

      by DaRat ( 678130 ) *
      An online version of GURPS, aka GURPS Online [sjgames.com] is in development. The first settings will be the Wild West and a semi-near future setting known as Transhuman Space.
    • Well, I believe it can be done. But you got to work your booty off coming up with flexible algorithms(sp?) to work with each of your examples. It would be hard work but I believe it can be done.

      A GURPS computer games was in the works once upon a time. The deal fell through during developement. But the result was a little know game called Fallout. ;)
      That game borrowed a few concepts from GURPS... OK alot of concepts from GURPS.

    • The successful game Fallout was originally meant to have the GURPS mechanics, but Interplay decided on the "S.P.E.C.I.A.L." home-grown system.

      I don't have a hard link to Interplay's site, but the closest Google Search that also mentions this fact is here [playonlan.com]

      Turned out to be a licensing/legal dispute unfortunately, not a technical one.

      • aparently sj games didn't like the direction fallout was going and pulled out.
        • More specifically, SJ objected to the intro sequence where some guy (in a scene eerily reminiscent of a famous photo from Viet Nam) shoots a prisoner in the head, then waves a "hi, mom!" wave to the camera watching him.

          Considering the global level of violence in the game, I think he overreacted. That's just my opinion, though, and he (and anybody else that wants to) is welcome to disagree.
    • > is it possible to use GURPS in a computer RPG, like the AD&D rules have been used?

      It lends itself even better, especially for combat-oriented games. GURPS combat rounds are one second each as opposed to D&D's minute rounds and vaguely defined "segments"(*) (are those even in third edition?). Bioware had to scale it down by a factor of 10 to get something approaching real time combat. In GURPS, if you fire off an automatic weapon, it has rules for modelling each individual bullet (but most
      • GURPS combat rounds are one second each as opposed to D&D's minute rounds and vaguely defined "segments"(*) (are those even in third edition?).

        Wrong.

        d20/third edition (and 2nd edition's "Combat and Tacitcs" has 6-second rounds and no segments. Everyone is assumed to be doing six seconds of activity each round, and initiative is just used to determine who gets "done" first.

        AND d20's a hell of a lot more "Universal" than GURPS. With a little bit of looking, you can find every RPG setting as a d20 ve
        • AND d20's a hell of a lot more "Universal" than GURPS. With a little bit of looking, you can find every RPG setting as a d20 version--and if you can't find it, you can make your own thanks to the Open Gaming License.
          You can do that with gurps, too. Hasbro just suckered a bunch of geeks who don't feel comfy releasing writing without some sort of license attached to it. In other words, they sold you what you already had the right to do. Besides, if it were 'open', you'd be able to republish core content. You
          • You can do that with gurps, too.

            No, you can't. Read the entire sentance.

            If I wanted to write a GURPS supplement, it wouldn't go anywhere if Steve Jackson Games didn't feel it was worth publishing themselves. No licensing, no Open Gaming--no nothing.

            You CAN do that with D&D. Go to http://www.theFGA.com/ or http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/ or even http://www.wizards.com/d20/ to learn how.

            Judging by some of your appalling and embarrasing opinions...

            There is, last time I checked, one histor
            • If I wanted to write a GURPS supplement, it wouldn't go anywhere if Steve Jackson Games didn't feel it was worth publishing themselves. No licensing, no Open Gaming--no nothing.
               Of course you could. There were third party supplements back in the seventies for DnD that weren't licensed. You'd have to ensure you didn't infringe on their copyrights at all, but you could do it.


              There is, last time I checked, one historical document outside of the Gospels--and it either does not contradict or supports the Gos
              • Of course you could. There were third party supplements back in the seventies for DnD that weren't licensed. You'd have to ensure you didn't infringe on their copyrights at all, but you could do it.

                "don't infringe on their copyrights" can mean a heck of a lot more than "don't copy their text word-for-word." A few good cases can be made that an RPG is a "character" and thus deserving of copyright protection as-it-is.

                At the very least, Steve Jackson could take me to court--and no distributor in the indust
        • You should probably take another look at GURPS. If you have a world in mind and you can't find a supplement, chances are GURPS has enough rules you can use to apply it to the world you're looking for. D20 on the other hand may have gobs and gobs of supplements but not all of the rules are nearly as high quality or go into as much depth.

          Just because a game isn't OSS doesn't make it inferior or any less universal.
      • D&D 3rd edition has 6 second rounds. No segments at all.

        As far as GURPS goes, the combat system CAN get screwy if you use the "advanced" combat system - but the basic combat system works just fine, and gets the job done quite well. The main point (for me) that GURPS breaks down in is in high point-cost characters - the system just doesn't balance well at that point. I find GURPS works better as a "gritty" low-point campaign than in a high-value "supers" campaign. Champions/HERO works better in that

  • About time! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've been waiting for SJG to get off their butts and put out d20 GURPS.

  • Superman versus the Hulk (Score:3, Informative)

    by EastCoastLA ( 129478 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @10:17AM (#8588037) Journal
    The Test to any system is can you "realistically" convert superheroes to the system. We had an interesting experiment to see if Gurps could be used to convert Marvel and D.C. characters for battle. Who would win:

    Superman versus the Hulk.
    Converting this to Gurps was interesting. Using the comic meeting of the two as the base we had to include the disadvantages. In a quick battle Superman wins with his intelligence, but the NOTHING can stop the savage Hulk. The disadvantages included in the Gurps Supers helped big time.

    Batman versus Daredevil
    The Batman wins. He plays dirty. Discovers that Daredevil is a one trick pony. But the setting was a big x factor. Don't run into the devil in Hell's kitchen.

  • Ah GURPS (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SuiteSisterMary ( 123932 ) <slebrunNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @10:36AM (#8588185) Journal

    The system you may or may not like, but most of the World Books are works of genius; most are also designed that the background and creative material are sharpely separated from the GURPS underpinnings, allowing for easy adaptation to other game systems.

    Of course, it's the flexibility inherant in the GURPS system that allows them to put out a Conan fantasy game, a Time Travelling book, a 'Robots Took Over The Earth' book, and a book about Bunnies, all on the same shelf.

  • I've never taken a close look at GURPS. I wonder if it fixes my two major pet peeves about fantasy combat in every system I've ever seen:
    1. The net benefits of full plate mail outweigh all other armor configurations. That's pure nonsense, but the rules make it so "middle" armors like chainmail (which should be the most useful armor for a fighter) are only for people who can't afford full plate.
    2. The net benefits of the "longsword" outweigh all other weapons. Staves and axes, in particular, which should be fan
    • You might like it. No details on the changes for 4e yet but for 3e:

      1. You will need a to have enough strength to handle the emcumberence of plate to make it worth it. The guy in chain or lighter will be able to outrun the guy in plate if they have the same base speed. You also get vision and skill penalties if you wear the full helm with just eye slits.

      2. Axes have higher damage than swords, staves have a better parry and flails are hard to defend against. Swords are a good general weapon but some of the
    • The net benefits of full plate mail outweigh all other armor configurations. That's pure nonsense, but the rules make it so "middle" armors like chainmail (which should be the most useful armor for a fighter) are only for people who can't afford full plate.

      IMHO, this isn't true anymore in 3/3.5E D&D. It might well outweigh all other armor configurations for a mounted fighter, or one who is both non-dexterous and doesn't particularly care about his mobility, but in the general case, it doesn't.

  • Steve Jackson Games: A company still not recovered (Score:4, Informative)

    by ArmorFiend ( 151674 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @12:39PM (#8589301) Homepage Journal
    Steve Jackson Games changed direction in 1991 (I think) when they were raided by the US Secret Service. Before that they'd basically made small wargames and strategy games. I think their cash cow was "Car Wars", but they also had success with Ogre, Raid on Iran, and Illuminati.

    After the SS raid, they seemed to derive their primary income from GURPS. And starting in about 2000, they began supplementing that with gag card games like "chez geek", "munchkin", and "ninja burger".

    Frankly, the pre-SS SJG was a lot cooler.
    • Steve Jackson Games changed direction in 1991 (I think) when they were raided by the US Secret Service. Before that they'd basically made small wargames and strategy games. I think their cash cow was "Car Wars", but they also had success with Ogre, Raid on Iran, and Illuminati.

      They got raided due to a GURPS supplement, so I have trouble believing that.

      After the SS raid, they seemed to derive their primary income from GURPS. And starting in about 2000, they began supplementing that with gag card games l
    • SJG was raided by the secret service for their cyberpunk book (still bleeding edge at that point) because it had rules for hacking into computers. They've been a profitable company practically every year since then except for last year due to some reorganization of their supply chain (non recurring expenses). They continue to win Origin awards for their games and are usually the second or third company ordered from by any hobby store to fill up their RP shelves. The "gag" card game Munchkin has won two O
      • There's a difference between being a well-selling game, and being a good game. Of course is subjective, however, munchkin's idea of strategy is "roll as high as you can". That to me is not a very interesting game. For the scale of the game (number of players, game components, etc), I prefer a more thinking game like pre-bastardization Jyhad / Vampire(the Eternal Struggle).

        Obviously many people like GURPS, however, I wish it did not take up so much of their attention. This only started happening to ann
        • I believe you're missing the point of Munchkin. It is meant to be a parody of DnD, the D20 version of Munchkin is essentially the same as D&D but the classes have ridiculous bonuses and the magic items are intended to be funny, like a two handed sword that actually has two hands on the pommel that can wield two more weapons.
  • For those not in the know, GURPS is a great platform for building your own pen and paper RPG. Especially fun is crafting your character's personality from a huge list of positive and negative traits - nothing quite like playing a one-eyed kleptomaniac midget with a high IQ
    • yeah, the disadvantages in GURPS can be a whole lot more fun than any other part of the game. we were playing a semi-serious/semi-silly campaign that went completely to hell when I gave the players too much free-reign on what they could do with their characters... basically, someone took skills in kung-fu, and a delusion that they were a chicken... a sense of honor, and the ability to ride horseback (in a modern, urban setting).. so basically we had a kung-fu chickenman (he even set it up so he bought a "c
      • Oh, I have had the same exact problem with players at times. Especially theater majors. One guy played a sex pervert gargoyle that liked to fly above people and come in their hair like a monkey. It sounded kinda funny at first, and in character for a gargoyle, but it got... out of hand. I don't even want to think about it. Really tested my skills as a game master. I told him his character caught a gargoyle venereal disease, Stone Rot. Things crumbled into sand and gravel. It was the only thing I cou
  • I wanted something like GURPS for years for assorted modern-day and SF campaigns. Unfortunately, Steve Jackson games refused to issue the metric version of GURPS in English, and I flat out refuse to run a science fiction game in old-fashioned units. Feet and inches and hogsheads are OK in pseudo-mediaeval games like D&D, for flavor, but I don't want to be working out storage capacities of starships in cubic feet or laser energy in ergs.

    Then WotC released d20 under an open license, and now I can get Cal
    • Dude, it's called a calculator. Try one sometime. Just do all of the vehicle design rules and such in their neanderthal units of measurment, then convert cf - m3. how tough is that? Shit, they even have nice "round" approximations for the various metric equivilents in the basic book to satisfy people just like you.
    • So because you don't want to bother doing the conversions from crappy to metric once (that's right, you can just write it down!) and altering your gameplay rules slightly for that, you'd rather take a vastly inferior system with a half-broken core mechanic? Hmmmmmmmm.
      • you'd rather take a vastly inferior system with a half-broken core mechanic?

        That's really, at best, a matter of opinion. There've been a hundred different RPG systems over the years and there's yet to be one that did everything better than all the others in the opinion of everyone. At the risk of being tackled and beaten by suggesting as much on /., in that way, the situation is much like operating systems.

        For some people, having to do various conversions on most of the numbers in a book is a big de

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