Hello everyone. I have been reading up on a variety of topics here and taking my time absorbing the feel the site. I'm not really a super frequent forumite anywhere in particular really, but after looking over many others, I found this one to be a decent enough place and I like Pundit's work, so here I am.


I'm relatively new to GURPS, and I'd seen a few posts about it here from folks who enjoy it. I'm not really settled on an edition yet though. I have stuff from 3 and 4. I'm curious about any differences I may not have noticed yet and the opinions of those more well-versed in GURPSing.


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?


A little later, when I am not mobile and can type better, I'll add what I am looking to accomplish with the setting ideas I have and see if anyone has any pointers on which edition they might think would better accomplish what I am looking to do and maybe any pointers on how to do so with one or the other edition perhaps.


Back to work for a bit longer and thanks!

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.

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.

Personally, I preferred 3rd edition. The comprehensive approach meant that a bunch of the stuff for Supers and other genres bloated out the core rules, and those extensions were better than 3rd but were still not very good.


I find GURPS works better if you don't get too fiddly over the nitty-gritty of the points, and just eyeball or adjust things for your specific campaign and characters. I felt like 4th edition was aimed at rules lawyers and existing fans of GURPS, while 3rd edition is the one that expanded the market by bringing in new players.


Still, there are some advantages to using the currently-published edition in finding support and players.

I prefer 4th edition as it a cleaner set of GURPS rules compared to 3e. Sure there is a bunch of stuff folded into core now but since 3e it always been a chore to distill various GURPS list for one's campaign. Only 2e was usable out of the box and that was for a fantasy campaign without magic.


The secret sauce for 4e are the line of supplements represented by Dungeon Fantasy, Monster Hunters, and Action!. SJ Games distill the core books list into what you need for those genre with their usual attention to detail.


Then there is the Dungeon Fantasy RPG which stands on its own as a powered by GURPS RPG.


My one criticism of Dungeon Fantasy that is oriented towards 250 pt character in what I view as a mistaken belief that dungeon exploration requires to have character with some endurance especially compared to the 150 pt heroic level.


But the GURPS DF line has a usable supplement called GURPS DF: Henchmen that has lower power templates. The rest of the DF line is solid gold in my opinion for running fantasy campaigns with GURPS.

Quote from: jhkim on September 02, 2020, 02:54:37 PM
Personally, I preferred 3rd edition. The comprehensive approach meant that a bunch of the stuff for Supers and other genres bloated out the core rules, and those extensions were better than 3rd but were still not very good.

I was referring to GURPS Supers, the 3E worldbook, which introduced rules for super strength, defenses, and various attack powers, which were collectively very broken. GURPS 3E core had very little of that, it was mostly focused on a near-normal realistic world, with a couple short chapters with a limited spell list and a few psionic powers. The latter of which was overpowered compared to the rest of the rules.

I think 4E is objectively better system, but the presentation is terrible. It requires a lot of system mastery to filter it down.

As brief as I can make it, here's my background, the reasons why I am looking at GURPS and what I have so far, and the setting I want to build using GURPS. Maybe these things can help a little in the discussion I am requesting and prompting, and which edition would be more useful and how I can convert things if 4th is the route I decide to go with things.


My background is almost entirely D&D since Holmes, but I grow more dissatisfied with running anything beyond 2E and Planescape the older I get. It doesn't feel right for a lot of gaming ideas that I would like to explore, and there are too many moves in a direction I'm not really finding to my tastes in the current edition. The other game I've run extensively is Shadowrun (the username a hint much? ), since 1st edition through to Sixth World. I have also run quite a lot of Shadow of the Demon Lord. I don't have any experience at all with GURPS other than recently finding and reading Age of Napoleon and Steampunk prior to getting this idea stuck in my head (to be expounded upon momentarily).


I am looking at GURPS because I have read Steampunk and Age of Napoleon, and my fiancé has extensive GURPS play from 1st edition through third, and she's both mentioned she'd like to play it again and that she thinks I could use the system for my setting idea and it would fit well.


The setting that won't get out of my head is an alternate history of Earth. The timeline has several divergences, including the US failing in their bid for independence, France taking the world by storm and becoming more of a republic than a kingdom before Napoleon could step forward to become Emperor, a rift into another dimension opening up and unleashing magical horrors from legends since the dawn of Mankind to tear things up but good, and an earlier industrial Steampunk revolution. Another race has come to inhabit our world in this time, the Fair Folk (although some, dubbed Changelings, have been around for much longer than the days leading to the magical portal opening). I'm putting the timeline at roughly the year 1816 so far, as I work all this junk around in my head.


The base of operations and starting area will be New Orleans. The territory is under French rule, and I imagine it as a place where these Fee that are left behind when the portal was forcibly closed at the end of the wars against the magical invaders will find a sort of home in a world that looks upon them as poisoned flowers. The characters will be those Fee trying to make a place in a world they don't belong in. There are some court intrigues, adventures, and odd things running through my head now that I am solidifying as I work on the history, politics, and geography of this setting.


The things I have looked at so far that are useful for realizing my ideas are all from third edition. I'm having troubles finding a way to convert them to 4th mainly because I find the 4E core books convoluted, being packed down with too much in the way of character build options at once with no clear usage direction, such as the 3e books seem to have from my reading of them. It seems like too much of a smorgasbord at once while 3E serves it up in digestible chunks, to me.


What is there in the way of 3E to 4E conversion out there? What would make conversion easier, and why is it worth doing so in the long run? I look forward to any thoughts and ideas that might help me sort this, and again, thank you.

Quote from: Dropbear on September 02, 2020, 03:55:50 PM
I am looking at GURPS because I have read Steampunk and Age of Napoleon, and my fiancé has extensive GURPS play from 1st edition through third, and she's both mentioned she'd like to play it again and that she thinks I could use the system for my setting idea and it would fit well.

GURPS is a really good tool when you want to mix and match to make something specific. I've played a lot of 3rd edition and almost as much 4th; I personally find 4th better for the mix-and-match stuff because they brought so much of the rules into the core and ironed out a whole bunch of inconsistencies in the process. This does make it a bit more difficult to digest though the cut down options like Dungeon Fantasy and so on help a great deal. Given you want to mix, I personally would recommend 4th. I have found high tech weapons (so muskets etc.) better handled in 4th, too, though the list of damage types for different calibers of ammo is always difficult to keep in my head...

QuoteThe setting that won't get out of my head is an alternate history of Earth. The timeline has several divergences ... a rift into another dimension opening up and unleashing magical horrors from legends since the dawn of Mankind to tear things up but good, and an earlier industrial Steampunk revolution. Another race has come to inhabit our world in this time, the Fair Folk (although some, dubbed Changelings, have been around for much longer than the days leading to the magical portal opening). I'm putting the timeline at roughly the year 1816 so far, as I work all this junk around in my head.

There is a series of PDFs for 4th edition focussed on Steampunk [1] [2] [3] plus one on vehicles and a pyramid issue, too, all for 4th edition. You'll want High Tech, and whilst the core books has plenty of rules for duelling with swords there is always Martial Arts if you really want to go to town.

QuoteThe base of operations and starting area will be New Orleans. The territory is under French rule, and I imagine it as a place where these Fee that are left behind when the portal was forcibly closed at the end of the wars against the magical invaders will find a sort of home in a world that looks upon them as poisoned flowers. The characters will be those Fee trying to make a place in a world they don't belong in.

I guess the key question here is how you want Fae abilities, and more broadly magic, to work in the game? GURPS has more than a half dozen different magic systems fleshed out, so there is quite a bit to choose from. You may want to use the 'powers' system for Fae abilities, and in that case I would personally suggest using a powers-based magic system for all practitioners to keep things balanced. Sorcery is a powers-based system and there are others which might be useful for deciding on Fae abilities, including Elemental Powers, Divine Favour and Psionic Powers. Totems and Nature Powers might be useful for ideas on how make the Fae powers.

Quote]What is there in the way of 3E to 4E conversion out there?

There is a core guide, and some internet searches might find instances where people have done the work already.

Quote]What would make conversion easier, and why is it worth doing so in the long run?

It's a personal decision, really. I find 4e more tightly engineered, though that is a double-edged sword as changes can have unexpected consequences elsewhere in the system. The 3e books are often more evocative and inspiring, but more susceptible to mismatches between rules in different genre books as they were largely written in isolation and so can have different assumptions baked in.

QuoteI look forward to any thoughts and ideas that might help me sort this, and again, thank you.

Good luck with your project. You don't actually need anything beyond the two core books for 4e, but you will be lacking much guidance in how to use the wide array of tools those books provide. Buying some of the supplementary books can trim down a lot of prep time for the GM.

QuoteI guess the key question here is how you want Fae abilities, and more broadly magic, to work in the game? GURPS has more than a half dozen different magic systems fleshed out, so there is quite a bit to choose from. You may want to use the %u2018powers%u2019 system for Fae abilities, and in that case I would personally suggest using a powers-based magic system for all practitioners to keep things balanced. Sorcery is a powers-based system and there are others which might be useful for deciding on Fae abilities, including Elemental Powers, Divine Favour and Psionic Powers. Totems and Nature Powers might be useful for ideas on how make the Fae powers.

I%u2019m drawing my main inspiration for magical abilities in the setting from the 3E Steampunk book so far, where the humans of the world have no ability to work magic at all. Instead, humans would have access to psychic abilities such as in Magnetism.


The Fee would have some sort of magical abilities, I am mulling each having their own individual abilities, and calling them Knacks.


I%u2019ve also acquired ShapeShifters for 3E, and I kind of like the thought of including some Acadian skin-wearing shapeshifters, or maybe some Chitimacha (natives local to the New Orleans area).


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


I%u2019ll look over what you%u2019ve presented for conversion to 4th, thank you.

Quote from: estar on September 02, 2020, 03:08:49 PM
My one criticism of Dungeon Fantasy that is oriented towards 250 pt character in what I view as a mistaken belief that dungeon exploration requires to have character with some endurance especially compared to the 150 pt heroic level.

I agree.  First time I ran DF with the templated characters, they ran roughshod over everything in my dungeon.
It's a very high powered game.   Templates equivalent to 6th level AD&D characters or so?
And I didn't like the attitude in the books that anyone who would play it was a munchkin.  Dungeon delving is serious biz. ;-)
I'll note one spell left out was "resurrection".

Anyway, I've played both 3rd and 4th.  And I like 4th.. but as others have noted some prior experience is very helpful.There are some very good videos on youtube on running the game.

Quote from: Dropbear on September 02, 2020, 05:20:09 PM
Is Faerie for 3e a good buy?

Sorry, it's not a book I picked up so can't advise on that one.

Quote from: Pat on September 02, 2020, 03:21:10 PMI think 4E is objectively better system, but the presentation is terrible. It requires a lot of system mastery to filter it down.

How would you have reorganized the presentation, out of curiosity?  Not that I expect you to have had a full edit job in mind, but maybe you could highlight some of the worse judgement calls, in your opinion.

To Pat:

I agree that 3rd edition Supers was very broken, but to my mind, presentation and rulebook usability are an objective part of the rules; not an extra. Requiring a lot of system mastery can makes a system objectively worse, even if the mathematical point balance is theoretically better.

I have played 4th edition and had fun, but I do not think it is overall an improvement on design. 3rd edition is more concisely and clearly written, and I think it works better both as an introduction to a new player and as a quick reference. 4th edition does have more options in the bloated core rules, and has better point balance (mostly for Supers and other powers), but I feel those are outweighed by the other problems.

EDITED TO ADD: I am getting a bunch of errors in the new editor, frustratingly.

EDITED TO ADD FURTHER: I turned off the WYSIWYG editor option in my account profile, which seems to have been the main source of the problem.

I also had a stack of errors, especially whilst attempting to use quotes.


Posting from Safari on iPad OS.

There are at least two older threads here discussing Grurps and why X edition works for Y functions better than Z would.
Unfortunately the search function seems to not quite be working.
Basically each edition has done something different with how the rules are formatted, presented, and exactly what is even in each. One might be more of a toolkit, the next might be more focused, and as others have noted above theres been some rules tweaks even.

I've seen lots of errors too, mostly involving whitespace. The new boards eat the spaces between about half my paragraphs. Trying jhkim's suggestion to kill the WYSWYG editor (edit: seems to work).

Quote from: Dropbear on September 02, 2020, 03:55:50 PM
The setting that won't get out of my head is an alternate history of Earth. The timeline has several divergences, including the US failing in their bid for independence, France taking the world by storm and becoming more of a republic than a kingdom before Napoleon could step forward to become Emperor, a rift into another dimension opening up and unleashing magical horrors from legends since the dawn of Mankind to tear things up but good, and an earlier industrial Steampunk revolution. Another race has come to inhabit our world in this time, the Fair Folk (although some, dubbed Changelings, have been around for much longer than the days leading to the magical portal opening). I'm putting the timeline at roughly the year 1816 so far, as I work all this junk around in my head.

The base of operations and starting area will be New Orleans. The territory is under French rule, and I imagine it as a place where these Fee that are left behind when the portal was forcibly closed at the end of the wars against the magical invaders will find a sort of home in a world that looks upon them as poisoned flowers. The characters will be those Fee trying to make a place in a world they don't belong in. There are some court intrigues, adventures, and odd things running through my head now that I am solidifying as I work on the history, politics, and geography of this setting.

Sounds fun.

Quote from: dbm on September 02, 2020, 05:02:13 PM
I have found high tech weapons (so muskets etc.) better handled in 4th, too, though the list of damage types for different calibers of ammo is always difficult to keep in my head...

Agreed, but you can just ignore most of that. Decide on what makes sense for each gun, and don't let the PCs shop for different types of ammo.

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.

I haven't spent a lot of time with it, but it's one of the more highly regarded books in 3E, so it's probably worth nabbing for inspiration at least. Also, you might want to look at GURPS Castle Falkenstein, which is a conversion of the classic R. Talsorian RPG. The focus is on Europe, and I don't know whether the GURPS conversion is a good one, but the setting is a wondrous, steampunk 19th century with fae and intrigue, so it intersects with yours in a lot of ways. Not to mention, it's one of the handful most highly regarded settings in the history of RPGs.

Remember that Warehouse 23 has these all as cheap PDFs, and if you want a print copy, SJG knocked the MSRP of many of the later 3E titles (including Faerie) down to $9.95, so you might be able to find it at that price point.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on September 02, 2020, 06:05:14 PM
How would you have reorganized the presentation, out of curiosity?  Not that I expect you to have had a full edit job in mind, but maybe you could highlight some of the worse judgement calls, in your opinion.

It's not any specific details, it's how they chose to include everything in one book (in two volumes). That makes it a good reference once you're familiar with the system and know how the parts interact and which you want to use, but that's a hell of a lot of stuff to wade through for someone new or only casually familiar with the system, and understanding how the various options interact and lead to very different play experiences requires an advanced degree of knowledge. The barrier to entry is very high. 3E was more constrained, and allows you to pick up the pieces more gradually and organically. That's why I recommend starting with GURPS Lite, and then adding as desired.