Re: New to GURPS, is Old West compatible with 4e?
 

Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontiers covers similar territory, though the official campaign is an alternative history.

Some of the minigames in that game, such as an abstract barroom brawling system, card game rules for in-character cheating, jury trial rules, cattle drives, prospecting and horse chases would be worth looking at for a GURPS Old West game.

GURPS Old West had a lot of details on the Old West and since it's a realistic western, the main changes are in the gear. That's true of most GURPS 3e worldbooks in GURPS 4e, though you have to tweak the templates a little to reflect the new costs.

Until Aces & Eights came out, GURPS Old West was the best setting for a realistic Old West available. Aces & Eights uses a ruleset that is different from GURPS, but isn't as good in character creation and ease of understanding; where Aces & Eights excels is the details on the microgames. The microgames would easily work in your Old West game.

Re: New to GURPS, is Old West compatible with 4e?
 

I'm actively running a GURPS western-style game (actually post-apocalyptic, so sort of half Old West and half Road Warrior), and it's going great. For the record, I was running it with just the basic set, but when High Tech came out I snapped it up in a heartbeat.

Re: New to GURPS, is Old West compatible with 4e?
 

If I have the basic set, would I be better off getting High Tech instead of buying Old West? I guess I would be fine without Old West if it's mostly for setting information.

Re: New to GURPS, is Old West compatible with 4e?
 

If you want setting information, get Old West. If you want copious game stats for guns and other gear, get High Tech.

Re: New to GURPS, is Old West compatible with 4e?
 

A few thoughts in no particular order...

If you are looking for some extras for your campaign, consider buying a copy of Whitewash City - a collection of PDF's one per building, that gives you the ability to print out a building, plus a floor plan for said building. Now, when I say "print out a building", what do I mean? The ability to print on stiff paper stock, a building that when you cut where you're supposed to cut, glue where you're supposed to glue, you have a 3D building. The stiffer the stock of paper, the more rugged the building. :)

Also, Aces and Eights is a good game book to pick up if you're serious about your Western Gaming. It has the rules (as mentioned by the other poster) for "Mini-games" depicting a trial as it progresses from start to finish, a cattle drive from what is needed to run it on down to how much those steers are worth, including all the fun stuff that can happen while on a cattle drive. It has a decent section on describing a horse and all its markings (colors etc), and as if that weren't enough, has a very decent selection of data on the period accurate prices for various goods and services. Aces & Eights is a must have in my opinion.

Then we have Foundry's figures. They have a rather impressive list of 25mm figures for just about any historical time period - including the old west. Best of all, you can get about 60 figures for about $125 - not bad eh?

Re: New to GURPS, is Old West compatible with 4e?
 

Could just stick with third edition. Just a thought.

Re: New to GURPS, is Old West compatible with 4e?
 

The Aces & Eights demos run in 2004 at Origins and Gencon used the Whitewash City buildings (some were slightly modified) and miniatures from the Wargames Foundry (and other miniatures companies). After running demos there, I ended up using the Whitewash City maps in a short campaign a few years later; the PDFs work quite well just for mapping purposes.

If anyone has further questions on Aces & Eights, feel free to send me a PM.

As for GURPS Old West, it was one of the great western books and one that really just needs slight conversions of the tech to be updated to GURPS 4e. The bibliography is particularly useful in helping you find sources.

Re: New to GURPS, is Old West compatible with 4e?
 

I get the impression that the OP already has 4e basic.

Re: New to GURPS, is Old West compatible with 4e?
 

Actually, it was the mini-game aspect that turned my off of A&E when I thumbed through it at the store. I hate that stuff in Final Fantasy, and I guess I just assumed I would hate it in an RPG. I dunno, I don't think I've ever played a game that had separate "mini-games."

My first thought is bleah though. *shrug*

Re: New to GURPS, is Old West compatible with 4e?
 

How much do you want to guess, that if you challenged me to create a GURPS unified mechanism for either of the Horse chase sequence, the Cattle Drive sequence, or the Jury results sequence (aka mini-games), that I could do something that uses the general concepts given in Aces & Eights, but used the GURPS game engine to accomplish it?

That is the whole point of buying other game books and using them for use with GURPS. Sometimes, the other games have good ideas that can be shamelessly stolen for use with your own campaigns. ;)