I await the opinion of Koltar, whom I expected by now.

Quote from: Zachary The First;268290I await the opinion of Koltar, whom I expected by now.

Why? Everyone knows that it'll just be a rah... rah... biased, fanboy cheer leading post. I thought Pundit wanted a unbiased opinion?

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;268242In short, they started out well with 4e but then it went bad.

The main problem with 3e was that it'd been out so long and each worldbook added new skills and dis/advantages, and new rules. The new rules did not always work well with those in other worldbooks, so that the whole thing became an incomprehensible spaghetti mess of rules.

4e took this mess and tidied it up, streamlining things. A few needless complications were removed - like with armour, you used to have "passive defence" which added to your parry/dodge, and also "damage resistance" which subtracted from damage taken. These were basically the same thing in game terms, so they rolled them into one.

At the same time, they added a lot of detail. It can be very overwhelming. The failure to split mundane and supernatural dis/advantages is one example. How many campaigns will need the traits "Extra Head" or "Stress Atavism"? GURPS' main barrier to wider acceptance has, like many point-buy games, been its long lists of stuff for players to choose from for their characters - it means character generation takes ages.

Now the corebooks have been expanded by Powers, Martial Arts and so on. They're at great pains to ensure that their new skills, dis/advantages and rules don't contradict, they only add detail. For example, with Characters you can just hit your foe, with Campaigns you can hit him on face, eye, neck, skull, chest, vitals, abdomen/groin, arms, legs, hands and feet. Martial Arts adds joints and arteries to this.

Of course no-one can possibly memorise that many rules and that much detail. This increases character generation time, and time in play spent looking up rules.

So what I say is that 4e began the right way, but is now well on its way to becoming another 3e, with absurd amounts of detail in play. Naturally people say, "well, you don't have to use all that detail, it's just there as an option."

But we're talking about human nature here. One thing noted about the modern battlefield is that the fact that higher ranks can get words and images from the lowest level slows everything down considerably, because information invites decisions - like the Lt in Aliens with his viewscreens showing what each grunt saw.

Likewise in a game session, details invite use in play. The GM may try to speed things up by saying, "no, you cannot target arteries, just kick him in the nads or something" but of course not everyone will agree. Every enthusiastic GM or player will have just one more thing they want to include.

So it's now well on its way to being just like 3e. Well, not quite the same, no rules contradictions, but enough detail that it'll take a long time in play to sort it all out. Which comes to the same thing, really.

Excellent post, I wholly agree.

I liked plain old 3e Gurps before the Rules Compendium became a required book.  This, to me, goes down the same road as 3e went down and it takes a clean and fairly realistic game and makes it way too detailed with frankly too many options.

GURPS 4/e is much, much better than Third Edition GURPS.

First off, the TWO books complaint I have found very strange. The 3rd edition almost had to be done with THREE books: Basic , COMPENDIUM 1 and COMPENDIUM 2. So to be honest they have actually condensed the gist of 3 books into 2 books.  The other reason its a strange complaint is that most gamers are used to buying THREE core books for the most popular game system - D&D....and D&D is just doing a fantasy/Sword & Sorcery background.


The biggest changes between 4th and 3rd edition are adjusting the point buy system itself and in changing the way that psionics is done. They got rid of he damn half-points and made 1 point the minimum to increase a skill level number.
The Psionics thing threw me at first - and on my own I made it more of a skill contest using the player character's INT and other factors - then when POWERS came out a version of what I had been doing was in there. SO, for me it revealed the 'home rules' that might come up are actually natural outgrowths or assumptions of whats in there.

The books themselves are BETTER laid out than 3rd was , the art is better in some places - or at least more suggestive than literal. At times the art in 3rd edition GURPS was nice - but almost too specific.

My real test of how much its changed for the better?
One of my most consistent players since the early 1990s has told me she finds this version easier to follow and when she reads a disadvantage or skill description it actually makes sense at first read - unlike some instances with the 3rd edition. She's a very smart woman, but not a gamer grognard or anything like that. She has never GM-ed, but always enjoyed playing in RPGs over the past 20 years.

When using the books themselves I find the color coding of the sections makes it pretty easy to find things quickly - Once I got used to it.

The core mechanic is STILL pretty much the same : roll three six-sided vs. a target number, get under that number and you succeed. A three is always a critical success. An eighteen is always a critical failure.  They didn't change that stuff.

As for some of the other complaints that people have said? They just seem nitpicky or too "inside baseball". As in more along the lines of someone saying they would've written it differently if they were the writer.

As to the weird impression that anyone NEEDS all 4 or 5 Fourth edition GURPS books that are out right now  - that just strikes me as kind of strange. Several of those books are useful - but they're not required to play the game. Its all about choices, not "you MUST have every hardback book we produce" . (un;ike some other game publishers)

For Example: When it came out in August of 2004 I was running that TRAVELLER universe game.  Did I NEED a copy of GURPS: MAGIC at that time? No , not really - I bought it just in case I might need it for a potential campaign 4 or 5 years down the road.


SOME of the criticisms of the current version of GURPS I think are coming from an unrealistic pint of view. Steve Jackson Games , from what I've been able to figure out is a smaller or at least much modest sized company than WotC. Expecting them to crank out 1 to 2 hardback books a month (like WotC does)  is very unrealistic.  Also , one of their major freelancers/staff people I believe had an illness in his family a few years ago or family situation that delayed or almost wiped out 1 or 2 hardback books. That made the company scramble and have to adjust their release schedule.

The funny thing is they have started to catch up to where they wanted to be with pdfs and POD books. The thing is I don't ted to buy those - or I'd have even more GUIRPS product on hand at my house here. THE POD boks I have bought at GenCon and ORIGINS at times.


- Ed C.

Quote from: Balbinus;268306Excellent post, I wholly agree.

I liked plain old 3e Gurps before the Rules Compendium became a required book.  This, to me, goes down the same road as 3e went down and it takes a clean and fairly realistic game and makes it way too detailed with frankly too many options.

I think that GURPS 4th Advantages being extended to cover what HERO does with their system is a win. The advantages are a lot cleaner than Compendium I. You can ignore if you like but it is there if you need it. Way better than the haphazard systems that existed before.

The worst change in 4th is somehow they lost the feel of a complete RPG. 3rd Edition (preconpendium) didn't have this issue. While 1st and 2nd GURPS had rules for any genres, you could tell that core rules were oriented towards attracting fantasy gamers from D&D. 1st/2nd GURPS + Magic was a nice complete RPG for a good price that ablely replaced your D&D game.

I don't get people saying "but GURPS 3E needed the 2 compendia!" From my recollection of 3E, that was only the case towards the latter end of the line's lifespan; early GURPS 3E supplements could be happily run with just the basic set.

Exactly. We're talking about the change from 3e to 4e. That means from late 3e to now 4e.

3e began as a complete game in and of itself; it then added detail and rules, so that more and more books were needed to play. Or more precisely, if you used a more recent worldbook you'd have to use other recent books, too. And many of them might contradict each-other. It became a mess.

4e began as a complete game in and of itself, and has now added detail and rules. So...

With 3e they focused on producing worldbooks. Now with 4e they're focusing on producing rulebooks. Unfortunately, rules don't grab people's imaginations much, or those they do don't play.

Quote from: Warthur;268330I don't get people saying "but GURPS 3E needed the 2 compendia!" From my recollection of 3E, that was only the case towards the latter end of the line's lifespan; early GURPS 3E supplements could be happily run with just the basic set.

That was my recollection as well.

Really, it would be nice if they'd left more advantages for Powers or put the couple from Powers in the core.

If I could make one divison in the Advantages chapter it would be all the mundane, fixed cost, stuff in a separate section from all the hugely flexible super powered stuff.

Quote from: Nobilis;268298Why? Everyone knows that it'll just be a rah... rah... biased, fanboy cheer leading post. I thought Pundit wanted a unbiased opinion?

Because being a fan of a game completely invalidates your opinion right?
 
 
My Synopsis:
 
I've not had Gurps 4e for the years and years it's been out. I just picked it up late last year. I also have yet to actually play 4e, so keep this in mind when reading.
 
Gurps is a slight improvement over Gurps 3e, in almost every way. The Corebooks feel more robust, it has an included setting, it's well put together (color coding, no more margin sidebars, better art etc.).
 
It is however, more or less, the same old ruleset. Stats, Skills, Adds/Disads, Equipment. All the same rules, a few tweaks here and there.
 
The expansion books, while not as varied, are definitely the last word you'll need on a given subject. The Martial Arts book for, for example, has a very well done complete history of fighting through the ages. It lists hundreds of well researched entries on different martial arts through the ages (I was especially impressed with their write up on Pro-Wrestling as a fighting style, it was damn near dead on about it's effectiveness). You would not EVER need to buy another book about hand to hand fighting. All of the hardbacks are that detailed and expansive.
 
Basically Gurps 4e = Gurps 3e in play. The Gurps 4e books are head and shoulders above their 3e counterparts. So, yes Gurps 4e is the better version, but there is not much value in "upgrading" from 3e.

Quote from: KrakaJak;268467Because being a fan of a game completely invalidates your opinion right?

Quite, personally I was looking forward to Koltar's post to this thread, and I wasn't disappointed.  There's nothing wrong with someone having an informed opinion and it's not as if he hides the fact he's also a fan.

Is GURPS 4th an improvement over GURPS 3rd? Hell yes. The rules are much better. Much better. For example?

-Now hit points depend on strength, whereas fatigue points depend on health. That makes a lot of sense, since it models big critters much better.

-Passive defense is gone, except with shields.

-DX and IQ are more expensive than ST and HT, as it should be.

Wherein is GURPS 4th not an improvement? Well, first of all, the art. I liked the art in GURPS 3rd more, at least that's me. Besides, GURPS 4th feels kind of overbloated, with so many skills, advantages, disadvantages, etc. Sometimes, deciding which parts to use and which parts to ignore feels like you were working instead of planning a game. Other than that, it's just better than 3rd edition.

In defense of the art, well, other than Magic which might contend with High Fantasy for bad art in a few places.  I agree with the direction and objective if not always the execution.  There are some nice pieces in there.  There are even some nice Poser pieces in there.

Anyhow, I like the idea of realistic, grounded, well lit, clear art for GURPS.  It's a great fit.  It sets the game apart from all the dark gothic angsty splatter art that infests the shelves these days.

Quote from: RPGPundit;268153So, GURPS 4e has been out for a long time now; and I just remembered something I was meaning to ask the more serious GURPS fans out there for a while now.  Now that everyone has had (more than ample) time to look at all the nooks and crannies of 4e, in the final analysis, is it better than 3e?

Is there some specific things that 4e does worse?

RPGPundit

I can't say if it's better then 3rd edition but I had the two core books for 4th edition and I have to say, the way it is laid out and the way things are described I found it hard to understand and I got rid of the books shortly after getting them.

I like games where the rules are clear and concise.  If they aren't clear I am just going to get rid of them and recover some of my money.  I don't have time to waste trying to understand a poorly laid out and written game.

Quote from: Nobilis;268298Why? Everyone knows that it'll just be a rah... rah... biased, fanboy cheer leading post. I thought Pundit wanted a unbiased opinion?

I used to be a massive 3e fanboy.

I am not a massive 4e fanboy.  

4e went totally overboard on the complexity in an attempt to cater to it's hardest core system monkey fans, and to top it off, axed the quality sourcebook line that was it's chief selling point to more casual players.

It is not the GURPS I knew and loved that could be so easily stripped down to a 32 page document, but a new HERO-esque GURPS designed for an audience that is most definitely not me.