Quote from: Dropbear on September 02, 2020, 05:20:09 PM

Is Faerie for 3e a good buy? Looking to pick it up soon, as I feel it will add to the thought process.

It is. It's one of their best supplements, very well written and researched.

It also gives lots of advice on how to use the fae in your campaigns, how to run faerie campaigns and what "type" of faeries a GM could use, ranging from the more traditional folkloric type to modern medieval fantasy fae.

Whether 3e or 4e is best for a particular group depends on which genre rules you need.  The main difference is that the 4e basic set incorporated all the supers advantages into the basic set.  In 3e, they were in the supers world book and then later incorporated into the compendium I optional rules volume. So if you need them for your game 4e is better because they are better integrated into the rules (included with all other advantages and in the index).  If you don't need them, 3e is better because the basic set is substantially smaller (530 pages vs 270 pages).   I like gurps for modern non super powered games so I prefer 3e.  In fact, gurps: lite for ww2 is actually a pretty good rule set for things modern and its only 32 pages.  You would have to add a splat book like high tech for the equipment stats though.   You can check it out for free here:
http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/ww2/img/ww2lite.pdf

The 4th edition of GURPS is the Best option


- Ed C.

Quote from: Dropbear on September 02, 2020, 01:42:35 PM
The main difference I have noticed so far is that the point costs for character creation are different. The separation of information pertaining to various genres seems more cohesive for 3rd, with a core book that is more basic than 4th. The system behind both editions seems like in play it would pretty much run the same?

I like the changes made with Strength and Health, etc. in 4e, so I bought GURPS 4e and all the books for it. I've kept all the 3e sourcebooks as well. I don't use the 3e rules. I have maybe 2 or 3 PDF sourcebooks for 4e. The rest of GURPS is on my bookshelves.

 I prefer 4th edition for all my GURPS needs.  I also agree about dungeon fantasy for one reason, my players have played a couple of genre games for GURPS, and with 250pt starting characters, if I make an encounter a fairly serious challenge, they really have to understand all the character options and fight smart or they get killed.  If I have what looks on paper a moderate challenge, it tends to be a roll over by the party.  I reset their game, and had all the players make characters from the henchman supplement to dungeon fantasy, or if they wanted to use a template from the hardcover fantasy book with the same list of advantages from DF.  This has been a much easier transition for them to "grow" into their characters.  150 pt fantasy characters are plenty competent to handle not being too squishy, but 250 pt is a hard one to quantify as to say, dungeons and dragons level.  Casters seem to fall right around the level of a 6-8th level character, but an optimized warrior type....can skew a bit high, and the guys who are handy with the steel can do some serious damage in GURPS. 

Quote from: Pat on September 02, 2020, 02:28:56 PM
You nailed it pretty well. 3E was the comprehensive edition when it was released, but then the game expanded via more than a hundred worldbooks. The new rules eventually had to be collected into two addenda, the Compendiums, which were considered core for all new worldbooks (so they didn't have to waste pages repeating those rules). It got a little ungainly towards the end, especially since some of the rules expansions were poorly thought out. Supers stands out as a particularly bad example, though it was hobbled by some decision in the core rules that made scaling difficult.

4E brought everything back together under one hood, and cleaned things up. Your sense that character creation costs are different comes from the fixes they made to scaling, which enables the game to work more smoothly over a wider range of character points. Unfortunately, 4E went all in focusing on the gearhead end of the market. The two core books are comprehensive, but not newbie friendly, throwing everything at them at once, and overwhelming them with options. Where they get tricky is all the optional rules, how they interact to create different play experiences, and the insane profusion of character creation options.

But it's worth remembering that, stripped of all the options fetishism, the GURPS core rules are pretty simple. Building a game off GURPS Lite, and then adding what you want later, is a good approach. Though it's worth noting that the 3E version of GURPS Lite is more playable out of the box than the 4E version.

I find 4e to be a cleaner, better version of 3e. 3e is great and all, but all the changes I can think of were positive IMO. There are still some minor issues (Intelligence is too cheap, for example, and there are too many skills) but overall I find 4e to be a great game.

Also, 4e has "bang" skills (is that the name?), which is something I definitely need.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on September 07, 2020, 02:03:08 PM

Quote from: Pat on September 02, 2020, 02:28:56 PM
You nailed it pretty well. 3E was the comprehensive edition when it was released, but then the game expanded via more than a hundred worldbooks. The new rules eventually had to be collected into two addenda, the Compendiums, which were considered core for all new worldbooks (so they didn't have to waste pages repeating those rules). It got a little ungainly towards the end, especially since some of the rules expansions were poorly thought out. Supers stands out as a particularly bad example, though it was hobbled by some decision in the core rules that made scaling difficult.

4E brought everything back together under one hood, and cleaned things up. Your sense that character creation costs are different comes from the fixes they made to scaling, which enables the game to work more smoothly over a wider range of character points. Unfortunately, 4E went all in focusing on the gearhead end of the market. The two core books are comprehensive, but not newbie friendly, throwing everything at them at once, and overwhelming them with options. Where they get tricky is all the optional rules, how they interact to create different play experiences, and the insane profusion of character creation options.

But it's worth remembering that, stripped of all the options fetishism, the GURPS core rules are pretty simple. Building a game off GURPS Lite, and then adding what you want later, is a good approach. Though it's worth noting that the 3E version of GURPS Lite is more playable out of the box than the 4E version.

I find 4e to be a cleaner, better version of 3e. 3e is great and all, but all the changes I can think of were positive IMO. There are still some minor issues (Intelligence is too cheap, for example, and there are too many skills) but overall I find 4e to be a great game.

Also, 4e has "bang" skills (is that the name?), which is something I definitely need.

Pat raises a good point about the books not being n00b friendly. 

You MUST build baseline 'classes' and races [TEMPLATES] and offer them to the players.  Explain that they don't have to be locked into a class, but a 'fighter' will have these skills, a rogue these, and your average citizen will have all these skills.

Go see Dr. Kromm's post here

I HEARTILY recommend you either:

   
• Sit down one-on-one with your players have them discuss what they want their character to do, and you build the character minus a pool of 'free' points to finish it.  (and then you do it with templates to save time)
• Offer them the templates from above - I recommend either index cards or booklets, and remind them that they can mix-and-match.  Grab the first Dungeon Fantasy to see high-power templates, but they'll give you some good ideas.

Bang! Skills - love it; I tend to like a shorter skill list - so having Science! vs. Biology AND Geology AND ad infinum... it's the ONLY way I'll do a Black Ops campaign.

It partly depends on tone and amount of 'handwavyness' you want.