What GURPS version?

[KDLadage]

I am curious... GURPS 4e has been out a while now. It is a solid game engine with a good deal of support. Wonderful authors have written great hard-cover books like Powers and Thaumatology and Martial Arts and the various Tech Books...

Despite this, the amount of published material for 4e is far and away from reaching 3e levels. Now, given that GURPS is written the way it is means that a large amount of the 3e books are at least somewhat capable of being used (some nearly intact, others with some work and tweaking); from what I have seen, this works in the reverse direction as well.

So... I would like to know the answer to three questions:

1. What version of GURPS do you use? If you do not play GURPS, but use GURPS supplements, what system and version of that system are you using?

2. What supplements written for a version of GURPS you are not playing do you use on a regular basis?

3. How difficult is it for you to fit that material into the edition or system you are playing?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by KDLadage

1. What version of GURPS do you use? If you do not play GURPS, but use GURPS supplements, what system and version of that system are you using?

2. What supplements written for a version of GURPS you are not playing do you use on a regular basis?

3. How difficult is it for you to fit that material into the edition or system you are playing?

I use GURPS 4/e.

I don't use any non-4/e supplement "regularly." I use supplements as suited to the particular campaign I'm running. For example, I'm using Alternate Earths 2 for the setting of one of my current campaigns. I used the Vorkosigan supplement as source material for my Barrayaran campaign, which I ran using Big Eyes Small Mouth.

I don't usually find intersystem conversions difficult. Compared to converting a World of Darkness supplement into DC Heroes, going between 3/e and 4/e is trivial.

Bill Stoddard

[JP42]

Originally Posted by KDLadage

So... I would like to know the answer to three questions:

1. What version of GURPS do you use? If you do not play GURPS, but use GURPS supplements, what system and version of that system are you using?

2. What supplements written for a version of GURPS you are not playing do you use on a regular basis?

3. How difficult is it for you to fit that material into the edition or system you are playing?

1. Exclusively 4th edition. I only own a handful of 3e, for sentimental reasons (Cyberpunk, Traveller, Autoduel, Vehicles).

2. I use the 3e Traveller stuff in Traveller games. I really want to use Vehicles, but am waiting (im)patiently for Vehicles for 4th edition. That will likely be the catalyst to me trying another Autoduel campaign as well.

3. Some easier than others - Vehicle conversions are pretty squishy and not necessarily terribly accurate. Other things - characters and the like, tend to vary on point values, but can be done with relative ease.

[KDLadage]

To answer my own questions:

1. I am not playing GURPS at the moment. My boys (8 and 10) are playing Dungeons and Dragons using the Rules Cyclopedia (or more accurately, the Dark Dungeons retro-clone of the Rules Cyclopedia)

2. I use a lot of information from 4e: Low Tech, Fantasy, and some ideas from Thaumatology (for non-standard magic employed by Higher and Lower powers).

3. Because GURPS is both G and U, using this information is quite simple.

===

I know others that play systems other than GURPS who use GURPS 3e and 4e books for lots of vital information in their games. So, my curiosity was piqued.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by KDLadage

1. What version of GURPS do you use? If you do not play GURPS, but use GURPS supplements, what system and version of that system are you using?

2. What supplements written for a version of GURPS you are not playing do you use on a regular basis?

3. How difficult is it for you to fit that material into the edition or system you are playing?

1. Sagatafl pre-alpha.

2. Lots. I have almost 1.5 shelf-meters of ready-access RPG material, and between 2/3 and 3/4 of that is GURPS, 3rd and 4th Edition, with most of the remainder being Ars Magica and LOTR. GURPS Vikings, Who's Who 1+2 and Low-Tech (both editions) and LTC3 are probably the most relevant, but Ärth is a broad setting. GURPS Arabian Nights is directly pertinent, and for any tomb delving, GURPS Egypt could be useful, and so forth...

3. Not difficult at all. Obviously I don't convert things like weapon stats. Instead if needed (but it rarely is, because I tend to make up my own mind) I'll just compare the stats, e.g. if I'm not sure whether a dagger or a two-handed sword should do the most damage, I'll look, and see that one does a lot more damage than the other, making it a pretty clear-cut issue. Character writeups also aren't converted directly. That can't be done, when stats like DX and IQ are trainable. But they do function as guidelines, e.g. if I want to write up a character sheet for Queen Boudica.

[Gollum]

1- I use GURPS 4th edition.
There was some little things that bothered me in the third edition (like Passive Defense and the attribute costs - which lead to problems as soon as you used racial templates).

2- Since I am often playing Call of Cthulu adventures, I regularly use Cthulhupunk.
I also use a lot of Chaosium books, of course.

3- It is very easy to do the conversion. Skills don't have to be changed, for instance (except the point cost, of course - but it is not important for NPC).
Likewise, Chaosium books are very easy to convert.

"The GURPS system breaks everything down into plain English and simple numbers. Distances are given in feet and miles, rather than arbitrary units; times are given in seconds. That also makes it easy to translate. If you see an interesting supplement for another game, go right ahead and get it. You can use it as a sourcebook for GURPS." Steve Jackson is perfectly right, here.

[ericthered]

1. 4e. its what was current when I showed up, and as far as I can tell, its an improvement, not a "oh no lets make a new system to get people to buy books!"

2. Alternate Worlds. Aliens.

3. Its fluff and ideas. I can build whatever I can imagine. I need help with the imagining. Its often as much work to understand what 4e stats actually mean as to convert 3e stats over.

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Its often as much work to understand what 4e stats actually mean as to convert 3e stats over.

Yes! I thing that the hardest thing to get with GURPS 4th edition is precisely that: what do stats exactly mean.

In the third edition, IQ 16 was described as a mere "Genius". With the fourth edition, it is much more than that. It becomes an heroic character who knows about all skills with a quite good level (10 to 12 in all mental skills with default). Attribute scores above 14 are now described as amazing, because they really are... Likewise, a huge amount of work has been work to describe better the different skill levels meaning.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by KDLadage

1. What version of GURPS do you use? If you do not play GURPS, but use GURPS supplements, what system and version of that system are you using?

4e, with a moderate selection of books beyond Basic.

Originally Posted by KDLadage

2. What supplements written for a version of GURPS you are not playing do you use on a regular basis?

Pretty much all of Transhuman Space. Alas, the game-mechanical info Changing Times is both incomplete and somewhat dubious (e.g. 3 mini-missiles weighting 0.8 lbs while in 3e that was the weight of one missile; rifles with MinST 10 instead of 10†; non-faithful mechanics conversions for some ammo types etc.). And Ultra-Tech is technically not applicable to THS without lots and lots of fiddling, so I check up on the 3e books regularly.

Originally Posted by KDLadage

3. How difficult is it for you to fit that material into the edition or system you are playing?

The fluff is easy; the equipment is slightly annoying, and requires checking with the GM on seemingly canonical things due to ambiguities listed above (it would be easier if I were GMing, I guess); the character traits seem okayish, particularly the appearance of Modular Abilities made some things clearer; I still think infomorphs are overpriced, since their innate abilities aren't very far ahead of the stuff that anyone can do with equipment (e.g. Possession vs. Teleoperation; owned bodies vs. rented bodies).

[simply Nathan]

Originally Posted by KDLadage

1. What version of GURPS do you use? If you do not play GURPS, but use GURPS supplements, what system and version of that system are you using?

4e Basic, Thaumatology, and Magic.

Originally Posted by KDLadage

2. What supplements written for a version of GURPS you are not playing do you use on a regular basis?

3e for Bestiary, Fantasy Bestiary, Martial Arts, Low-Tech, and Fantasy because that's what we have. (Fantasy for 3e is Banestorm in 4e, but it feels a lot more generic in the old version. Fantasy for 4e is not very useful to us because the worked world example isn't generic enough.)

Fantasy II (Madlands) is a terrible, terrible setting but unlike my GURPS GM I think it can be pillaged for interesting monster ideas.

Originally Posted by KDLadage

3. How difficult is it for you to fit that material into the edition or system you are playing?

No difficulty at all. Ignoring PD in the old versions of the Bestiaries mostly works out. I've also got some conversions of AD&D 1st and 3rd Edition Monstrous Manuals to do stuff with.