GURPS 5E?

[Rolando]

Originally Posted by Infornific

Except that's not how the other early generic games worked.

Basic Roleplaying began as Runequest followed by Call of Cthulu. Then came the likes of Superworld, Stormbringer/Elric, Elfquest, Ring World, etc. There was a 16 page booklet called Basic Roleplaying that was the lite version of the rules, plus the Worlds of Wonder boxed set but otherwise the system has largely functioned as the engine for numerous self contained games.

Hero System was similar. Champions was followed by Fantasy Hero, Star Hero, Justice Inc, Danger International and others but it wasn't until 1990 that a core generic rulebook came out.

...

I know but then those games weren't Universal nor Generic, hardly even after they released their entire line.

That is right there in the GURPS introduction, why GURPS is presented in the way it is.

I agree that making some genre bundles like dungeon fantasy may be a good idea, but you don't need a 5th edition to do that.

[Ashtagon]

On the one hand, we have gamer groups who want a book that enables them to play the setting they want, out of the box. On the other hand, we have game groups that like and want the existing "construction kit" approach to the GURPS core books. I think we've been arguing about angels on a pin with regard to how a 5e should be organised.

We can have both. We are in an era of PDFs and print on demand. We don't have to run wargaming analysis of likely sales in order to plan print runs and hope it wasn't a wild over-estimate and end up with warehouses full of unsold books.

Under the hood, it should all be the same system, and be 100% compatible and convertible with all other books.

On the pubic-facing side, there will be a "GURPS Construction Kit", which functions much as the current Basic Set. In addition, cut-down Genre Books, each of which focuses on just the core options for specific genres can be published. It is expected that there would be duplication of material between the Construction Kit and a Genre Book; this is fine. Each of the Genre Books and the Construction Kit under this model should be able to function as "the only book you need to play".

As a first guesstimate, I'd expect to see the following Genre Books:

* GURPS Past (G4 TL0-4, low tech weapons, plus magic)
* GURPS Present (G4 TL5-8, plus options relevant to 'modern' games)
* GURPS Future (G4 TL9-12, plus psionics)

There can then be a GURPS Magic, GURPS Spaceships, GURPS xyz-Tech, etc. books, for those groups who want to expand in various directions beyond the core book.

[Kaspar]

I have 3 suggestions, for a Gurps 4.5 update:

1) Release the core rules as an SRD. No, I do not think it will decrease sales of Core Rule books anyway. Nearly anybody who was going to buy them, has already bought them. And SRD (and the other two proposals I have) will bring lots of new people to Gurps, and the real profit will be in selling supplements to them. And the SRD website itself? Fans will make it for free, if SJG but gives the permission. Imagine a database where you can search and sort all the Skills/Advantages, etc, GMs can make curated lists for their players, and there is an integrated in-browser character creator.

2) Rewrite the Core rulebooks. Action, Martial Arts, etc, introduced a number of great additions and modifications that should be integrated in the core. The new books would still be compatible with all supplements (except for page number references no longer working, I suppose).

Split the Core into Basic and Advanced. The Advantage/Skill list Basic should be cut down is size (for example, Jumper is a complicated, rarely used Advantage that takes up a whole page, also a number of skills could be cut or combined), with the full list being in the Advanced book.
Wealth related dis/ads should be another thing relegated to advanced rules. I mean, nearly all Gurps games will be either ‘freelance adventurer-mercenaries’ who you simple give X starting cash, or military/espionage/whatever games where the PC’s just get their equipment issued to them. Tech Levels would be another thing relegated to Advanced.

The ‘Infinite Worlds’ setting should be split off as its own supplement.

3) Make a series of Gurps Lite books: Lite Fantasy, Lite Action and Lite Sci-fi for starters, maybe followed by Lite Supers, Lite Caribbean Pirates, and Lite Monster Hunters.

Lite Fantasy would be the basic rules of character creation and combat (striping out a few ‘intermediate’ rules like Hit Locations that are in Basic as an option), short list of Fantasy gear, a party of premade characters and a fantasy adventure (with side-bar advice for newbie GMs).

Lite Action is ‘mundane humans shooting guns’. Indiana Jones, military operations, cops vs criminals, etc. Skills/Advantages/Equipment for mundane 20th century humans. Also an adventure or two.

Lite Sci-fi: Same as above, but with futuristic gear and a few premade alien templates. Also 1 page Spaceship combat rules.

[Purple Snit]

Not to be difficult, but in 20+ years of playing, I have never had players worry about all the minutiae that seem to vex others, and I've run cinematic and realistic, supers, horror, gods, space, and fantay campaigns.
Maybe we need a thread about what GURPS does well and how it enables us to play a huge number of genres with one set of rules? Obviously it's good, or none of us would be here debating it. The likelihood of a rewrite is vanishingly small, so what can we say that's positive about what we have, instead of wishing for the moon?

[nudj]

Originally Posted by Kaspar

I have 3 suggestions, for a Gurps 4.5 update:

1) Release the core rules as an SRD. No, I do not think it will decrease sales of Core Rule books anyway. Nearly anybody who was going to buy them, has already bought them. And SRD (and the other two proposals I have) will bring lots of new people to Gurps, and the real profit will be in selling supplements to them. And the SRD website itself? Fans will make it for free, if SJG but gives the permission. Imagine a database where you can search and sort all the Skills/Advantages, etc, GMs can make curated lists for their players, and there is an integrated in-browser character creator.

2) Rewrite the Core rulebooks. Action, Martial Arts, etc, introduced a number of great additions and modifications that should be integrated in the core. The new books would still be compatible with all supplements (except for page number references no longer working, I suppose).

Split the Core into Basic and Advanced. The Advantage/Skill list Basic should be cut down is size (for example, Jumper is a complicated, rarely used Advantage that takes up a whole page, also a number of skills could be cut or combined), with the full list being in the Advanced book.
Wealth related dis/ads should be another thing relegated to advanced rules. I mean, nearly all Gurps games will be either ‘freelance adventurer-mercenaries’ who you simple give X starting cash, or military/espionage/whatever games where the PC’s just get their equipment issued to them. Tech Levels would be another thing relegated to Advanced.

The ‘Infinite Worlds’ setting should be split off as its own supplement.

3) Make a series of Gurps Lite books: Lite Fantasy, Lite Action and Lite Sci-fi for starters, maybe followed by Lite Supers, Lite Caribbean Pirates, and Lite Monster Hunters.

Lite Fantasy would be the basic rules of character creation and combat (striping out a few ‘intermediate’ rules like Hit Locations that are in Basic as an option), short list of Fantasy gear, a party of premade characters and a fantasy adventure (with side-bar advice for newbie GMs).

Lite Action is ‘mundane humans shooting guns’. Indiana Jones, military operations, cops vs criminals, etc. Skills/Advantages/Equipment for mundane 20th century humans. Also an adventure or two.

Lite Sci-fi: Same as above, but with futuristic gear and a few premade alien templates. Also 1 page Spaceship combat rules.

I love the idea of a Lite Series by TL or Genre.

[Curmudgeon]

The first thing that should happen for a 5th Edition is to review the 4th Edition and see what changes worked and which were less helpful and then to fix the less helpful/didn’t work parts. The second thing is to look at potential changes to the content and the third item on the agenda is to consider a wish list of changes in presentation (in this instance, specifically, what would be nice in an electronic format if we had a theoretical champagne budget rather than our real beer budget).

First thing out of the gate is proper, full indexing. Whether it’s broken out as a separate item or remains as a specific enhancement, I should be able to look in the index and find some reference telling me what page to find hooves on, rather than having to remember that it’s an enhancement. Off the top of my head, I would think under Strikers for Extra Limbs, but I vaguely recall that it might be under Enhanced Move. Having to remember where it is slows me down and I’m a veteran of GURPS. Imagine if I’m a newcomer and want to create a character with hooves.

Alphabetization, of skills particularly, just doesn’t work. The earlier editions up to 3rd Edition, Revised had it right. Breaking them down into broad categories with no more than three or four pages of text makes it a lot easier to find the appropriate skill, especially if you don’t know how the skill is broken down in GURPS. You’ll be a long time finding sword when it’s broken down into Broadsword, Fencing, Shortsword, and Two-Handed Sword and it isn’t much easier when they’re all lumped together as Melee Weapons.

For Advantages and Disadvantages, break the section about Exotic, Supernatural and Mundane away from Types of Advantages. Merge Advantages and Disadvantages into a single list initially, then break it down into eight sublists, as follows: Realistic Mundane Advantages; Realistic Mundane Disadvantages; Cinematic Mundane Advantages; Cinematic Mundane Disadvantages; Exotic Advantages; Exotic Disadvantages; Supernatural Advantages; and Supernatural Disadvantages. Head the Mundane, Exotic and Supernatural sections with the text broken out from Types of Advantages for the respective category. Within each category, it would be helpful to gather the lists together by type, i.e. Physical, Mental and Social.

Just prior to 4th Edition, I said that GURPS would have been closer to the Hero System if Hero Games hadn't gotten there first. 4th Edition has moved somewhat closer to that direction and that's not entirely a bad thing but there is a caveat with that. The thing that I detested about the Hero System that led me to abandon it for GURPS was the way it didn't pull together for disadvantages in particular. In GURPS if I put One-Eye down on the character sheet, I'm done. Unlike the Hero System, I don't have to decide exactly how limiting I think having One Eye is, I don't have to think about how often it's going to act to limit what my character can do and I don't bl--dy well have to remember that I need to add No Depth Perception to the character sheet as well to represent the real limitation of my already chosen Physical Limitation. Similarly, I am spared the advice for Psychological Limitation: fear of Canada Geese, very common, irrational for a character primarily based in Juarez, Mexico: If he lives in Juarez and draws points for a phobia of Canada Geese as if they were very common, then reality be demned, sir, you can't walk around Juarez without tripping over Canada Geese.

As with Advantages and Disadvantages, combine Perks and Quirks into one chapter but divide the chapter into two sections: one for Perks; and one for Quirks.

However, don’t do away with alphabetic order entirely. Within each category or sublist, alphabetic order is still a sensible method of organization.

Break Techniques out of the Skills chapter and give it its own chapter. Definitely bring back the Techniques for Acrobatics from Roleplayer/Compendium I. Organize Techniques by category, using the same categories as Skills and for each technique indicate whether it applies to all Skills in that category or only some particular skills within the category.

A few niggling items do need to be addressed.

It comes up every few years on the forum, so make it explicit in the text of the Skill: Climbing is specifically mountain climbing, not tree climbing and bonuses and penalties proceed from that basis.

Templates are a means for the GM to quickly create NPCs that pretty much get a character that does a reasonable job of fulfilling a role. They replaced Random Characters from earlier editions. They are NOT meant to strait-jacket PCs (player characters). They provide a basis to start creating a character that would have a similar role, but player characters are considered scratch-built individuals from all the Attributes, Advantages, Disadvantages, Perks, Quirks, Skills and Techniques available to the players. If the player doesn’t think a particular item on a template should be part of his character or should have a different value, he is free to change it without reference to anyone from SJG (Steve Jackson Games). The only other person who has to approve is the GM, and he isn’t approving a change to the Template as presented, he’s approving a PC as welcome within the campaign/game/adventure that he is running.

Combat, Tactical Combat and Special Combat Situations are a bit awkward. I preferred the older Basic Combat (combat without hex maps and miniatures) and Advanced Combat (combat using hex maps and miniatures) but also felt that there was a lot of repetition that could have been cut down to “here are the changes from the same item in Basic Combat.” Most Special Combat Situations belong in Basic Combat. Mounted Combat should probably be a section within Basic Combat, with some items more appropriately found in Advanced Combat as opposed the older separate chapter for Mounted Combat.

Injuries, Illness and Fatigue are generally fine as they are.

Gamemastering should at least come before Creating Templates, if not before Basic Combat, thereby creating a cleaner break between those things the player needs and items more helpful for the GM.

The Game Worlds chapter could at least be retitled as Campaign Creation or Campaign Management and should probably be rewritten with that focus. Infinite Worlds could either be dropped to allow for more detail on Campaign Creation or rewritten as a walk through of the decision-making process for what to include/exclude from a campaign, what topics the GM needs to have at least some answers for in a campaign (e.g., what languages are spoken, is magic possible, do psionics exist, are there super-powers, what Techniques, Skills, Advantages, Disadvantages, Perks and Quirks are off-limits to PCs, etc.), and what is the campaign’s background like.

Monsters and Animals is adequate as a base for creating additional beings.

Technology and Artifacts is mostly okay as is, though Damage to Objects should probably be moved to either Combat or Injuries, Illness and Fatigue.

Technology Levels with the superscience and alternate technology path notations are sufficiently useful as is that it wouldn’t break my heart if they weren’t changed. That said, there is an appeal to the idea of a tech tree construction for innovative technology. The existing four fields would do as individual trees a la Civilization. I am less sanguinary that this is doable as settling exactly what prerequisite techs are necessary to a particular piece of technology and revising the Inventing rules to take cognizance of the tech tree seem likely to generate more heat than light on edge cases.

Sidebars are preferable to boxed text and a single picture as cover art is preferable to multiple smaller pictures. I still have an affection for different characters in bubbles (or hexagons, if I must) as the cover art for a single volume Basic Set or the Character volume of a multi-volume set.

(1 of 2)

[Curmudgeon]

Now for the fun stuff, what would be nice if there was a champagne budget? I was a “dead wood” edition guy and while I appreciate the space PDF GURPS has freed up on my bookcases, I have a desktop computer and no laptop, so it currently chains my location for gaming, though I may move my GURPS collection to my e-reader as a means of making my games more mobile. That said, the PDFs are searchable within themselves, though not easily across different PDFs (for me).

Among the items I would like to see in an AEF (Advanced Electronic Format) for GURPS are the following:

I have Adobe Maker, so the ability to create an edited version of GURPS for a particular campaign by deleting any Advantages, Disadvantages, Perks and Skills that I’m disallowing would be nice as I could then compact what would be on my theoretical future laptop to just those things that pertain to that campaign (and if it’s fully searchable, I no longer need a separate index). Another nice feature would be the Basic Set cover art with only the GURPS logo and either embedded or insertable titles for Erratta and House Rules, which could then be printed and used as cover inserts for the appropriate binders. Granted the Erratta one might not be needed if the PDFs are kept up to date, but the Spell Prerequisites thread showed that’s not always the case.

A separate editable character creation program like Character Builder, Character Assistant or Character Sheet is fine (as long as it’s easily editable to add new items as they appear in subsequent books). With such an electronic aid, the return of half-point skills which Steve Jackson called necessary when he created GURPS and which Kromm has said was not specifically overcome in 4th Edition, is made feasible for those who don’t care to keep track of half-points in their head.

A nice addition would be the ability to print index card-sized (3” x 5”) notes for players about their characters. For example, one card for each skill listed on that player’s character sheet, giving the gist of the text about that skill and any skill modifiers that the PC, not the player, would be aware of. That would free me as GM from having to explain, possibly repeatedly, what the skill does. Instead, I can usually just tell the player once, “It’s on your cards.”

There are outside resources that I would like to see either brought in or a similar GURPS version of. I still swear by Reffing the Disadvantages from Adventurers Club for Hero Games, finding it a well-written explanation of how particular Disadvantages offer role-playing opportunities a make a PC more interesting, and almost all of it is easily ported to GURPS with name changes being about the only necessity (e.g. Enemy for Hunted, Dependent for DNPC). Dream Park from R. Talsorian Games had excellent advice on constructing an adventure (the hook, beats, climax, and denouement) that should be required reading for all GMs. Robin’s Laws of Good Gamemastering is another GM resource that should be required reading as it goes into how to troubleshoot a written adventure to keep the plot on point.

There are some changes to the game itself that I would like to see. I liked the idea of making Perception HT-based rather than IQ-based as well as changing missile weapon skills to Perception-based rather than DX-based. As also suggested, I like the idea of making melee weapon skills Move x 2 or even Speed x 2 rounded down-based skills while keeping ranged weapon skills, such as Knife Throwing as DX-based. A further suggestion would be to drop ranged weapons as skills separate from the related melee skill and instead allow the melee weapon to be used as a ranged weapon by the simple expedient of floating the skill from Move x 2 to DX. Possibly, there needs to be some thought on the skill’s price if using it as a ranged weapon isn’t normal within a given culture.

Greater emphasis is probably needed on the idea present in some combat skills that required specialization. It often got glossed over and was a source of confusion of this forum about Guns in 3rd Edition, but skills that require specialization aren’t the same thing as skills with optional specializations. Botany, with an optional specialization of Fungi, is still at its root the Botany skill. That was explicitly not true of mandatory specializations. Guns (pistol), Guns (rifle), and Guns (autofire) were not part of an overall Guns skill, they were three separate, distinct skills that had very good defaults between them.

Combat skills probably deserve a rethink to sort through which weapons can be employed by more than one skill, which weapons share the same skill usage, and which weapons are better represented by techniques that buy off differences between different weapons. For example, the no longer extant Black Powder Weapons skill might be better replaced with a technique that lets a user of smokeless propellant Guns deal with the smoke black powder produced, or a technique to enable someone who uses a flintlock to buy off the penalty for using a wheellock.

Major changes would include allowing the printing of double-sided Maneuver cards with a silhouette on one side and the actual maneuver on the other side. Then instead of it being announced to the entire table what maneuver is chosen, each PC and NPC (possibly by whole group) places a Maneuver card silhouette-side up in front of the player or GM. The actual maneuver is only revealed if the character uses it to actually accomplish something on his turn, for example, Attack, Defense, completion of a Long Action or using a Wait to interrupt another character. Otherwise, the silhouette leaves the Maneuver speculative. A prone character with a rifle might by silhouette be doing an Aim, a Wait or an Attack this turn but until the card is turned over to reveal what the character is actually doing, nobody else at the table can be certain which Maneuver the character has chosen, restoring the usefulness of Body Language rolls and Perception rolls modified by range to their original state.

With Attribute normalization, it might make sense to bring back escalating costs for increased Attributes. It might be worthwhile to revisit what higher Attributes represent if GURPS. 20 represents the natural peak of human ability, but should that be before or after things like Extra Effort and Hyper-Strength are applied. As Hysterical Strength/Berserker Strength, it seems that 20 might reasonably represent those conditions when in effect, with the normal ST a human character could tap being lower. The valuation of ST as TL makes ST less relevant induces the thought that ST might either be abandoned altogether as an Attribute in higher tech games or the range narrowed to perhaps be 8 to 12. Although I’m not aware of any complaints, requiring double costs for Attributes when they exceed 20 or after Character Creation should discourage casual, improve-the-stat-not-the-skill character development particularly with an increased variety of underlying bases (speed/Move, Perception) for skills.

Not necessary, but useful, are GM and player tips, possibly as an updateable ancillary booklet. Sample tips might be, using index cards to record rolls made by a player for a particular PC which would then be consulted and used up when the GM requires Secret Rolls (the character shouldn’t be aware that he failed at some endeavor, such as spotting the leopard about to pounce on him from ambush above). Another might be the use of images of who/what is encountered that can be left face-up on the table for extended encounters or flashed (with guidance on just how long the flash should last and whether the GM should draw attention to the fact that he is flashing a card) for encounters that involve brief glimpses before battle is joined, leaving identification up to the PCs. Possibly giving each player a custom background write-up of the campaign, telling what animals (and monsters, if appropriate) he knows about and what he knows about them, the history as the PC knows it and the PC’s head map (i.e., where places are in his mind, with home at the center of the map, locations getting fuzzier towards the edges and maybe mountains that form a two- or three-mile wide barrier taking up enormous space on the map because “it takes four days to cross, and that’s if you’re using the good pass at X, if the snows start…”).

Some things shouldn’t change. Steve Jackson mentioned in one of his original Designer’s Notes articles for The Fantasy Trip in The Space Gamer that he knew he had a good game when the rules were clear enough to allow solo play without a referee and not having any ambiguity about how the rules applied in any given encounter. I’ve always felt that he carried that concept of clarity in rules writing over to GURPS, and keeping on top of Errata only reinforced the notion.

Finally, although there are good reasons why SJG isn’t going to do any such thing, I’d really like it mentioned that the rules are written in plain-meaning American English, meaning that if you look in Merriam-Webster, not the Oxford English Dictionary, and regularly find yourself using the 3rd or subsequent meanings of words to make a point that will gain your character an advantage you are making a torturous argument and the GM is allowed to dopeslap you (once per offence) with impunity. I know that one isn’t going to happen but some days I really, really wish it was a rule. Well, that and being able to reach through the monitor to administer it. 😊 (2 of 2)

[Curmudgeon]

Not necessarily as part of Basic Set for 5th Edition, but at some point, some spells from GURPS Grimoire need to be reviewed and the more problematic ones rewritten or removed entirely. I am specifically thinking of Earth to Stone (Earth to Metal in Grimoire) which allowed the caster to make plugs of pure gold for example. A change restricting the metal to ore form, or just an unspecifiable rock, would be a helpful edit that removes the ability to upset campaign economics.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

N I am specifically thinking of Earth to Stone (Earth to Metal in Grimoire) which allowed the caster to make plugs of pure gold for example.

Nowhere in the current text in 4e Magic does it even suggest you can turn stone into gold. It says only simple metals such as bronze or iron.

I suppose 5e could change "simple" to "base" and make it clear that "precious" or "noble" metals are out of the question

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Nowhere in the current text in 4e Magic does it even suggest you can turn stone into gold. It says only simple metals such as bronze or iron.

I suppose 5e could change "simple" to "base" and make it clear that "precious" or "noble" metals are out of the question

It came up in a thread on this forum where a mage created a plug, IIRC of some metal. The current version of Earth to Stone, rolled the separate spell regarding metal from Grimoire into it. My initial reaction in that thread was that you couldn't create metal using that spell but it was pointed out to me that you could use the spell to make metal rather than rock, for an increased fatigue cost.

The thread eventually included a discussion about using it to break the economy just using the increased yield that having metal vs. ore would entail.

Simple is a particularly poor word choice as one of the example metals, bronze, is an alloy which does not occur in nature of two pure metals, copper and tin. Simple in that case doesn't rule out precious metals. Perhaps a better edit to avert the possibility is substituting common for simple, which might obviate some non-precious but uncommon metals, such as tin, thus preventing a mage from easily supplying the necessary materials to equip an entire village with bronze implements.

On reflection, and clearer recollection, the primary issue is less with creating gold by the cubic yard and more with creating 100% yield iron by the cubic yard. As mentioned in the thread, it changes the mining economy in drastic ways, especially if mages aren't evenly distributed throughout the world.

There's also the prospect of the GMing headache, "I know the bronze armor the villagers are wearing had the tin component of the bronze provided by a mage who conjured the tin up with an Earth to Stone spell (technically Earth to Metal, but still). Now the PC mage wants to cast dispel on the armor. What should happen to the bronze? Does it just become copper, copper with gaps caused by the loss of tin, some kind of copper/clay combination? I so don't need this!"