Gurps Vehicles ETA?

[memorax]

I'm just curious what is the status of Gurps Vehicles for Fourth Edition

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by memorax

I'm just curious what is the status of Gurps Vehicles for Fourth Edition

In progress.

Kromm posts stuff like

http://dr-kromm.livejournal.com/174235.html

regarding it on his livejournal periodically.

[memorax]

Thanks. I'm hoping we will see it for 2015 or 2016.

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by memorax

Thanks. I'm hoping we will see it for 2015 or 2016.

Indeed. The fellowship of the vehicle shall remain faithful in their hope until the promised day.

If you haven't seen this thread

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=131586

It might be helpful.

[weby]

The whole thing of when it will be publishes is quite simple, well, within about a year due to imprecise date for the GURPS books. So if someone has the exact dates for the things we can narrow it down more.

Third edition vehicles publication:
(The numbers below are based on copyright dates found in my books, no actual reliable sources were consulted)

Basic set third edition was published in 1986
Vehicles was published in 1996
Basic set fourth edition was published in 2004.

Thus the publication of GURPS vehicles happened 56% though the life of third edition.

Fourth edition vehicles publication:
(This one is harder as the sources are even more obscure than copyright dates, as we are going into the future)

Basic set fourth edition was published in 2004.
Basic set fifth edition will be published in 2029**
Thus applying same 56% rule we get a publishing of vehicles in the year of 2018.

There can be no other logical option for publishing year.

** The most reliable way to know the next release date is based on the 4 years after the year the old version has become obsolete due to wrong prediction of tech level change effects on technology.
Third edition estimated that TL 8 would start in the year 2000 and would include things like laser rifles. Thus SJG had to release fourth edition in 2004 and move the laser rifles to further tech levels and change TL8 to beging 20 years earlier.
Fourth edition predicts TL change in 2025, so about 4 years later they will have to release a new edition of GURPS and shift the beginning of TL 9 to something else and to contain something different.
[/tongue in cheek]

[Mailanka]

Ahahaha. Vehicles.

I am one of the faithful members of the cult, though I must admit at times my faith is tried.

If you've got a campaign that really needs Vehicles (I have a few), then you should probably put them aside for now. But how much you really need vehicles is up for debate, as you have several options to hold you over.

Use what's already there

The core book has all kinds of vehicles. All of the tech books similarly feature a variety of vehicles. I believe Fantasy has a few more, and there's a pyramid article with "hot rides" (Pyramid #3-40) for all your hot-rod needs, and naturally, the Spaceships series is chock full of spaceships.

Need a tank? There's a T-72 in High Tech. Need a viking ship? The Drakkar in GURPS Fantasy. Star Wars-style speeder? The Grav Bike in Ultra-Tech. More Star Wars? Check out the Empire-Class Dreadnought (SS3), the Starhawk- and Typhoon-class deep space fighters (SS4) and there's more. Need Star Trek? Look at the Intrepid-Class Cruiser (SS3). Need a TARDIS? Look at the Operator-Class Reality Police Cruiser (SS7). There's a ton more out there, if you know where to look.

So there's plenty to cover your needs, especially if you're willing to compromise a little.

Work them out on your own

If it's a real-world vehicle, then most of the stats are known. You just look them up on wikipedia. ST/HP is derived from the mass in lbs. Move is derived from the vehicle's top speed, and acceleration is derived from its 0-to-60. DR comes from its Rolled Homogenous Armor equivalent, and so on. You just look at the real-world stats and compare them to various tables found strewn throughout the core books and existing vehicles and pretty soon you have a "good enough" statline.

Spaceships!

GURPS Spaceships is... well, it has flaws, but most of its problems come from its abstractions, but those abstractions make it pretty easy to use. I find it difficult to balance the transition from human-scale to spaceship-scale, and in settings where you regularly have interactions between the two scales (say, aerospace fighters) things might stop making sense, at least they do in my experience, but if that's not important, or you don't need your ships EXACTLY so, then the SS series is quite good.

It has the advantage of allowing you to build more down-to-earth vehicles as well with "Alternate Vehicles" in Pyramid #3-34. If you build a tank with it, you'll see why I find the Spaceship system a little bleh, but for statting up, say, a battleship or a nuclear submarine, it'll do the job alright.

Aww, Fudge It

You don't really need vehicles in most settings. Like a typical World of Darkness setting typically features characters who drive "I dunno, a car?" You roll drive, you get there. If you're in a car chase, you just roll competing drive rolls, and if your car goes faster, "I dunno, get +2 to your drive rolls."

Too much focus on vehicles in the wrong settings can draw attention away from what really matters. Is your swashbuckling game really about detailed ship-sailing? It might be! But if it isn't, then don't worry about the ship. Likewise, is the Action game you're running more the Fast and Furious or more the Expendables? In the first case, Vehicles would indeed be darn nice... but in the latter case, Vehicles is unimportant.

That's how I've been surviving, anyway, that and rocking myself back and forth while whimpering.

[Humabout]

Faithful and eager as I am, I can't help but think VDS 4e is in the same boat as fusion power - it's always X years away. I have come to generally console myself with spaceships, but like mailanka said, it doesnt always fit the bill. Fudging it is also a great way too. I will likely fall in the middle when i finally buckle down and start blasting away at ships for my scifi thing. Spaceships to get in the ballpark, then fudge in details and not worry about consequences.

[Kromm]

Here's a 100% honest, no-punches-pulled update on GURPS Vehicle Design:

• Forget whatever you might have heard about prior playtests, final drafts, and edits.
  
  
• The project remains with the author, David Pulver, who is in the process of creating the final draft.
  
  
• The main delay stems from the fact that David is a freelance developer – not staff – and gets paid when the book is published and starts to earn royalties. Since he has to earn a living in the interim, he must prioritize paying work on other, shorter-term projects.
  
  
• The secondary delay stems from the fact that David has identified some design issues that he would prefer not to address unilaterally. To that end, he is working with a private test group, who are volunteers and thus done when they are done.
  
  
• Once the final draft arrives here – and we have no ETA – it will have to go through the processes of review, editing, layout, and so on. For a project of this length and complexity, I would estimate a time measured in seasons in the best-case scenario.
  
  
• The SJ Games-side processes will not be expedited. This is for economic reasons: The staff hours required to rush GURPS Vehicle Design could produce shorter releases that represent many times its dollar value.
  
  
• Rumors of hastening the process through crowdfunding are just that – rumors. For a variety of reasons, SJ Games cannot justify the planning and management efforts, or the legal diligence, required to make that work for a single GURPS book.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Once the final draft arrives here – and we have no ETA – it will have to go through the processes of review, editing, layout, and so on. For a project of this length and complexity, I would estimate a time measured in seasons in the best-case scenario.

This is key for me. Joking aside, I understand how creative processes work: They are done when they are done. We could not, for example, tell RPK to join in on the process to "halve the time." We might be able to speed the process a bit by giving Pulver more money, but only in the sense that he could afford to give it more priority (and niche of a niche of a niche, plus an actively hated book by some segments, I doubt there's much money to really just start tossing it at Mr. Pulver). And even if Mr. Pulver had 100% of this time available to focus on this book... it'll be done when it's done. It's an unbounded problem: We don't know how tricky this stuff is, or how much polish it needs, or whether he needs to wad up whole pages and start over.

When you have the final, edited draft, then it becomes a more bounded problem. Then we're waiting on art. Then you're doing layout. Then you're checking over the pdf. These are also creative, but several magnitudes smaller than the work of creating a book like this.

So, as far as I'm concerned, it's vaporware until I hear the sorts of finalizing news that you hear a month or so before something hits e23 as a PDF. I don't mean this as a dismissal, it's just how it goes. It could be out in a few months or ten years. I believe it'll come out, but I certainly would bet a campaign premise on "when."

(Also, given the many problems that have come out of Spaceships, as good a series as that is, I would rather David Pulver took his time)

[ericthered]

It is, however, comforting and good to know its being worked on.