Is a 5th Edition coming soon? [Answer: NO, it isn't!]

[philreed]

Originally Posted by Tuvonic

Okay. I'm asking 1 month early. Will gurps be revitalized with an updated 5e in 2017?

No. There are no plans for such a thing.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by philreed

No. There are no plans for such a thing.

I don't think it's coming any time soon either. But 4th edition wasn't exactly known to be in the works up until it was finished, so public knowledge isn't always that accurate.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Tuvonic

Okay. I'm asking 1 month early. Will gurps be revitalized with an updated 5e in 2017?

I don't have specific inside information, but I'm willing to bet that we're still not going to see a full-blown 5e for at least another five to ten years, if ever. The DFRPG has very informally been described as "GURPS 4.5." That is, it's 4th edition, but with a few tweaks. If it goes over well, we'll probably see more products based on 4e, even if they're only 99% rather than 100% compatible. If not, I imagine there's still not a strong case to be made in support of a 5th edition. There's probably not enough worth changing, and not enough people who would really want or need a new edition.

[GM Joe]

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

I don't have specific inside information, but I'm willing to bet that we're still not going to see a full-blown 5e for at least another five to ten years, if ever. The DFRPG has very informally been described as "GURPS 4.5." That is, it's 4th edition, but with a few tweaks. If it goes over well, we'll probably see more products based on 4e, even if they're only 99% rather than 100% compatible. If not, I imagine there's still not a strong case to be made in support of a 5th edition. There's probably not enough worth changing, and not enough people who would really want or need a new edition.

I agree. The only reasonable path to a new edition of the Basic Set would be if DFRPG becomes massively popular, and the follow-ons become massively popular, then maybe producing a Basic Set that reflects the rule changes in those products would make sense.

Maybe.

[kmunoz]

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

I imagine there's still not a strong case to be made in support of a 5th edition. There's probably not enough worth changing, and not enough people who would really want or need a new edition.

Yeah there really isn't. 4E isn't broken in any appreciable way and the industry is as far moved on from GURPS-style gaming as it was when 4E was new, so it's not like there's additional drift that "requires" some horrific hybrid monster like D&D 4E was.

The only thing I'd ever want to see is a consolidation, integrating the most important rules expansions and addenda back into the main books (for example, the Create advantage from Powers, and a good chunk of the Social Engineering stuff). But that would be another Compendium-style book and SJG is most definitely not moving in that direction. It's moving in more or less the exact opposite direction.

[PK]

Originally Posted by Tuvonic

Okay. I'm asking 1 month early. Will gurps be revitalized with an updated 5e in 2017?

No. Ask again in 2022. (I was going to say 2020 if asked in January, but this whole "one month early" thing has messed up the time continuum so now you need to give it two extra years to settle out.)

[lachimba]

Originally Posted by PK

No. Ask again in 2022. (I was going to say 2020 if asked in January, but this whole "one month early" thing has messed up the time continuum so now you need to give it two extra years to settle out.)

Still not so far away. I wonder if the forums will make it till then though.

[Thrasher92]

Originally Posted by Kromm

An unequivocal "no." We haven't even thought about a "Fourth Edition Revised," much less a Fifth Edition. If people are still playing pen-and-paper RPGs in 2017, ask again then. ;)

Well, it's 2017... Any new answer now?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Thrasher92

Well, it's 2017... Any new answer now?

Purely as an outside observer and fan, a new edition doesn't seem to be needed.

The current trend in the business seems to be towards GURPS 4e as a game engine that can be customised for specific settings, like the Discworld Roleplaying Game or the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game. The latter apparently has some rules tweaks that have been referred to as a lightly revised 4e, but we won't see how significant those are until it is published. SJG has also mentioned the possibility of doing other packaged customised versions of GURPS, but has not announced any plans.

Meanwhile, the fanbase continues to buy incremental supplements in PDF and develop writers to create them, plus Pyramid articles. This gives SJG a fairly low-cost way of developing the game, matched with its fairly low sales. The fanbase's play is spread over a very wide range of genres and settings, and wouldn't respond well to GURPS becoming more tightly focussed, in my opinion. However, that tight focus would be necessary for a new edition to be publishable at a reasonable cost.

Sometime in the past decade, Kromm said that the most likely cause of a new edition would be some new publishing technology. The idea of something computerised that lets you add rules modules and fold them into a single reference cleanly is quite attractive, but it would not be simple to implement, and SJG isn't in the publishing software development business. So until someone else invents something applicable, this probably won't go anywhere.

[philreed]

Originally Posted by Thrasher92

Well, it's 2017... Any new answer now?

There are no plans for a fifth edition.