Returning to GURPS - 3rd Edition or 4th Edition

[lachimba]

If I was going to specifically only play 3rd edition books that I already owned then I might consider staying with 3rd.

Otherwise I'd switch over to 4th

[Anthony]

If you ever plan to get new books, 4e. If you don't (and none of your players need new books either), 3e is still a perfectly playable system.

[Isosceles]

Thanks, sounds like 4th edition is a better building block game than 3rd edition (I remember special subsystems in 3rd), but if I'm just going to run 3rd edition content, that might not matter much....

[smurf]

I found 4e to be far more streamlined, smoother and overall a better system than 3e. 3e got a bit clunky at time and 4e has straightened most things out (the magic system is a bone of contention for some but I always like GURPS magic anyway).

[hal]

Originally Posted by Isosceles

I used to GM GURPS 3rd edition back in the day. I have a metric ton of sourcebooks for 3rd edition, I collected some during my break from RPGs including the 3rd edition Compendiums which were after my time as a GM. I don't remember too much about the specifics of how the game was run.

My question is- with a roleplaying group that's probably not going to invest much effort in learning a new system themselves, certainly not at first - if I have a hankering to play Traveller or Mage the Ascension or other 3rd edtion sourcebooks that I own... would you just relearn 3rd edition, or is 4th worth the effort?

Thanks

Bang for the buck...

You've asked the question above and you've gotten specific answers from others. (read them all before responding).

GURPS 4e

Pros:
An attempt was made to streamline things. To some extent, the authors succeeded.

It is currently supported - meaning that you can purchase new material in support of 4e

Character creation structure was smoothed out (no longer does a player have to pay increasingly higher costs for higher attributes - 4e has a flat point cost regardless of whether the attribute in question is a 10, or a 12, or a 17.

Character creation software in the form of GURPS CHARACTER ASSISTANT provides help during character creation.

Cons:
You will find yourself slipping at times due to the fact that while it is mostly the GURPS you knew and used with 3e, the rules did change here and there in subtle (and not so subtle) ways.

You may find yourself not agreeing with some of the streamlining that took place. On the flip side, you may like some of the ideas in 4e and if you stick with 3e - implement some 4e based house rules (or vice versa for that matter!)

Some of the vehicle rules make you want to draw a circle on a sheet of paper and insert the following inside the circle "1) Forehead goes here 2) Repeat as necessary". For instance, a man with an M-16 can sink a river boat used in Vietnam era warfare. A squad of Musketeers can sink the HMS VICTORY with musket fire (granted - a large number of muskets, but still).

In the end, you have to decide what you want to do, and where you want to go with it. As has been noted, the one good feature of GURPS is that you should be able to take ANY source material, any genre book, and use GURPS with it. It would be passing strange if one could not convert 3e material for use with 4e (or vice versa).

Me? I use GURPS PSIONICS for 3e. I largely loathe what was done with the newer material - largely because the pricing for the powers are obscenely high (in my opinion). But that's my "opinion" - one that is not entirely shared by everyone. I LOVE what was done with GURPS MARTIAL ARTS for 4e. I feel it is one of the best supplements ever written for GURPS. I enjoy GURPS HIGH TECH to a large extent and have picked up GURPS HIGH TECH products (the Pulp Guns 1 & 2, as well as Adventure Guns). I'm sorta ok with the GURPS HORROR for 4e, but then again, I generally don't run a straight horror campaign too often.

GURPS SOCIAL ENGINEERING has a lot of stuff - and it is well written and all that - but there is one minor or Wee little problem with it...

It is a complex structure that gets very specific. It takes effort to implement smoothly. It is WORTH it, as it does for social interaction what GURPS MARTIAL ARTS does for combat.

If you want to learn the newer system, I'd say go for it. If you're worried that you might get a one off campaign and then never return to it - I'd say use 3e.

[aaron819]

4e is better and most most 3e sourcebooks are backwards compatible. The only reasons I can think of to stay with 3e are
1) you already have all the 3e stuff and don't wanna buy any new books
2) the lack of GURPS Vehicles 4e is a dealbreaker for you.

[Witigis]

Hi,
I am a bit in the same situation as you: Right now I am planning an Old West Campaign and asked myself the same question: Should I stick with the 3rd edition (which I own almost completely) or should I use the 4th edition (which I also own almost completely).
There are many opinions, that the conversion of 3rd to 4th edition is not much work. I have to disagree with that!
While I generally like the streamlining of the character rules in 4th edition, frex (especially important in the case of an Old West campaign around 1860) the disappearance of this ridiculous differentiation in Back Powder and Gun skill, there are also many points, which I personally do not like:

1) As someone mentioned before, the rules have change in sometimes quite subtle ways, which will require a thorough study to avoid mistakes.
2) Firearm rules have changed in a way which I do not like at all. Especially when I want to add new weapons (which may not be considered necessary by many [some people may remember my modern guns compilation, which had posted on this forum quite a time ago]) to add flavor to my campaign, this causes me a lot more headache than before, as there are many inconsistencies even in the published guns (remember, I am talking of 19th century here), frex the given Range numbers or damage values. Not to mention the shotgun rules… There are also to many rules hidden in various publications (Gun Fu, Tactical Shooting, various High Tech supplements), that the streamlining has been lost again imho!
3) The bestiary is in no way directly usable, so you will need a good deal of net research (thankfully there are some sources), or a survey of again a good number of publications…
4) Template books (like the 3rd edition Rogues and Warriors), which might proof really useful, require a lot of conversion work.
5) The new rules (especially the guns, as mentioned above) have a high possibility of frustrating your players (depending on their attitude, of course), because scoring hits will be much more difficult (albeit being realistically so). This problem was really evident to me, when I played a modern Zombie apocalypse campaign with more or less "normal" people (no SWAT, Elite Force or Martial Arts Hero characters).

6) To counter this, it seems to me that GURPS simply raised the point value of the characters, which I, being a devout fan of 100-point characters, intensely dislikes.
7) While the world books of GURPS 3rd are not fully packed with rules, there are nonetheless several of them strewed over the content, which need to be looked through to decide if they need conversion or not...
All in all, now, after several weeks of trying to convert GURPS Old West to 4th edition, I now decided it not to be worth the effort, put the 4th edition back on the shelf, use 3rd edition rules as they are, and utilize the time, which I now save on the conversion, to concentrate on the setting and converting adventures.
For me, this is finally the much better solution!

Edit: I would do exactly the same with any campaign, of which I own a 3rd edition worldbook. Exceptions, where I would use the 4th edition, are my modern Zombie campaign (I have already invested to much work here) or a GURPs fantasy campaign, using the new material (but I admit, that my players and myself never considered GURPS ideal for pure fantasy roleplaying, for that, there are better systems out there…)

Greetings from Germany (and excuse my language errors),
Thomas
aka Witigis

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Witigis

6) To counter this, it seems to me that GURPS simply raised the point value of the characters, which I, being a devout fan of 100-point characters, intensely dislikes.

The point totals were upped because the Attribute costs were increased. "Standard" Characters now start at 150... unless you prefer really incompetent Characters at which 100 points are fine... or more competent Characters then 200+ is better.

[Boomerang]

I was in a similar situation about 3 years ago. I had played and GMed gurps 3rd edition for over ten years and then had a break for awhile and found a new group who didn’t know gurps.

With my new group I switched to 4th edition to run a Vietnam era game using Gurps Seals in Vietnam (3e) and High Tech (4e) and it worked pretty well as I didn’t have to do any 3e to 4e conversions. The only real hiccup I had from a rules perspective was the changes to firearms. Fourth edition is better as it resolves automatic fire more quickly but it took me a while to get used to the change. Actually I think 4e is better overall, especially for psionics which were priced too cheaply in 3e.

I wouldn’t use 4e to play the old world of darkness stuff like Vampire the Masquerade because the conversion would be time consuming. In saying that some people have already posted great conversions for that stuff on these forums which could save you a lot of time.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

The point totals were upped because the Attribute costs were increased.

FWIW, recommended point totals were increased because I converted dozens of Third Edition characters – I believe over a hundred – from my various campaigns and found that for characters equivalent in concept and capability, the average Fourth Edition point total divided by the average Third Edition point total was ~1.5 (I think it was actually 1.47 or something, but you get the idea). This reflects attribute repricing, skill repricing, self-control multipliers for disadvantages, swapping the bases of HP and FP, the new language model, the shift from leveled powers with skills to abilities built as advantages (offered only for psionics in the Basic Set, Fourth Edition, but the planned approach to all powers going forward), and a hundred other things, many of them slight tweaks (like the cost of Strong/Weak Will vs. Will).

Originally Posted by evileeyore

"Standard" Characters now start at 150... unless you prefer really incompetent Characters at which 100 points are fine... or more competent Characters then 200+ is better.

Perhaps more to the point, there's nothing special about 100 points. It isn't that Fourth Edition says that characters should be more powerful than they were in Third Edition, but that a Third Edition point is worth on average 1.5 Fourth Edition points – i.e., it's an exchange-rate issue, not power creep. For most intents and purposes, 150-point Fourth Edition characters are 100-point Third Edition characters, and very close to equally capable. The only reason to stick to 100 points is because you're superstitious about the number 100.