Been looking to get into GURPS but was wondering whether to go for 3rd or 4th edition.

My preference would be to go for whichever has the simplest core - let the heart of the system be the absolute basics, and have all the genre-specific stuff be stuff shepherded in on a case-by-case basis from supplements. I'm not likely to use it for a cross-genre campaign so it doesn't particularly matter to me if there's scaling problems between supplement books, but at the same time Basic Set + GURPS (Genre) should ideally cover most of the stuff I'd want to do with a particular genre and not include much stuff that quite clearly falls outside (genre), with a minimum of excess crunch.

At the moment, it seems to me that 3E plus the earlier 3E supplements seems the way to go. The inclusions of the two Compendia as core seems to have coincided with a shift to high-crunch in both the core rules and the supplement line, whilst 4E seems to include a bunch of stuff in its core rules which I would tend to prefer to delegate to genre-specific supplements. Would that be a fair assessment, or am I steering in the wrong direction?

For bonus points, what are the best GURPS supplements? In particular I am interested in those which manage to encapsulate the genre or setting they describe without having to incorporate heaps of extra crunch. (FWIW, I am not interested in GURPS Traveller except as background material because I'm happy enough with MongTrav's system, if that changes things.)

Personally I would go with GURPS 4th edition and one of the PDFs lines (Action, Monster Hunter, or Dungeon Fantasy). I feel overall 4th edition is a lot cleaner than 3rd edition.

Since you are concerned about crunch then start with GURPS 4e Lite, get the GURPS 4e Core books and only add in those elements you want to use. The same advice applies to 3rd edition.

It really boils down to what kind of campaign you are going to run. What genre will it be. That will allow me (and others) to recommend specifically what to get in GURPS.

If it is Fantasy then I recommend for 4e, Core, Magic, and Low Tech. Possibly Martial Arts if you want more combat crunch as well as Thamautology for magic options. Or take a look at the Ritual Path Magic PDF for a low key magic system.

If you want D&D style fantasy with 250 pt character go with the Dungeon Fantasy Line, if you want a more realistic fantasy go with Banestorm. A lot of Banestorm is the setting but there are templates and options that are applicable to most fantasy campaigns.

For 3e Fantasy, I recommend Core, Magic,  Bestiary, Fantasy Bestiary, Magic Items (I, II, & III) and Fantasy Folk,


As for the 3rd edition Compendium what they did was consolidate disparate rule systems and additions into two books. GURPS was always crunchy just as it was always lite. It depends on what you pick to use in your campaign.

Quote from: estar;823284As for the 3rd edition Compendium what they did was consolidate disparate rule systems and additions into two books. GURPS was always crunchy just as it was always lite. It depends on what you pick to use in your campaign.

Exactly how "core" were these additions though? It sounds like a lot of those rule systems came from the various supplement lines and I don't want a whole bunch of genre-specific stuff cluttering up the core.

The 4E core is too cluttered up with genre specific stuff IMHO.

Running a game requires more work on picking and choosing what NOT to include than any previous version.

That said, the actual 4E character building rules and some of the mechanics are a lot smoother:

1) The flat point cost for stats means not worrying about having to change point costs after play begins.

2) No more half points!!  

3) The language rules are so much better. Regardless of IQ level they still require some investment to master.

If SJ were to put out more focused genre books that included core play rules along with specific genre info then I would buy them. No need to wade through autofire rules in the combat chapter, or filter out extraneous ads/disads & skills  for a fantasy game.

Quote from: Warthur;823285Exactly how "core" were these additions though? It sounds like a lot of those rule systems came from the various supplement lines and I don't want a whole bunch of genre-specific stuff cluttering up the core.

The core 4e set is not cluttered. It's consistent. GURPS is designed as a toolkit. You take the core (roll 3d6 under a TN, based on Skill) and go from there.

Each "genre" book then shows you how to take the rules and customize them to a genre and/or introduces some new rules or options for those genres.

Estar makes sound suggestions. Start with lite, then go to the core set. Then, start grabbing supplements to tune up your game the way you want it to run.

The "ready to run" series as Estar mentioned are very good! If you want to run a high-fantasy dungeon crawling wilderness exploring class-like throwback, Dungeon Fantasy will tickle those buttons. There are now some 15+ supplements for that alone. You get PILES of advice, ideas, templates and the like to run such a game. Toss in the several issues of Pyramid focused on DF, and I think there's more pages than you could reasonably burn during a night's rest in the wedge-locked empty room on level 4.

IMHO 4e is far superior to 3rd. It's cleaned up, organized and the result of all the previous years worth of play-testing. It has multiple authors (very savvy ones I might add) who coordinated the new edition. Steve Jackson is awesome, but having multiple and coordinated perspectives I think made the books more concise.

P.S. You don't need all the fiddly bits. Just use what you want. There's already a rule for everything. Just pick and choose, focus on the setting and adventure and run with it.

P.S.S. If you hit the SJG forums, don't be distracted by the GURPS wankers who clutter up the discussion there. You will see a bunch of "fix this" or "what if we changed STR to Muscle and reversed gravity" and various pixel-bitching system tweaking whinging that makes a regular gamer go cross-eyed. GURPS is Lego for many geeks and frankly its a tragedy to GURPS. The basic game plays just fine, works as written and does NOT need any damn tweeking.

P.S.S.S. If you run a campaign take a few moments to fill out the campaign worksheet for your players. Use templates!! There is PDF that goes through the process, it's not as hard as it looks at first. Don't just hand the players the book, toss out some point totals and ask them to go wild. That always ends in tragedy. Even better, collect concepts, create a mostly finished character, discuss with your players to "tweek" it out, then go from there. As they get more comfortable, let them use XP to add new stuff or increase things.

If you handle GURPS like a boss, and have some time to invest in customization, it really is a great game.

For the system, go 4th and don't look back.

The core book handles most things from fantasy to sci-fi to at least street level supers with its selection of Advantages and Disadvantages. And they have a handy symbol chart so that you can tell at a glance which ones are suitable for the genre and tone you're going for.

It has levels of complexity. 3e presents its combat system as a whole, whereas 4e presents it in 3 different sections. One is the basic combat -- everything you need to get the job done. The others are additional rules and options you can add in if you want something more complicated/tactical.

I honestly wouldn't suggest any additional rules books up front. Powers is a great book, yes, but unless you're jumping right into higher-powered than street level supers, it's not actually necessary. The core is extremely versatile right out of the gate -- far more so than 3e.

As for setting books, use pretty much whatever you like from either edition. Most of the information from such books isn't rules-related anyway. And where there are rules things, such as stat blocks, they're almost always similar enough that you don't even have to do a conversion to use them(though there is a PDF guide on how to do so if you want).

Once you're more familiar with the system in the core, assess your needs and add books accordingly.

If you want more options with little to no rules additions, Magic and Martial Arts will give you more spells and combat tricks and stuff. Magic has no new rules that I can recall, and Martial Arts only has a couple small rules additions related to combat styles early in the book.

If you want higher powered stuff, or you want another way to model various kinds of special abilities(magic, chi, etc.) than already in the core book, or you just like to tinker, try Powers. It's a pretty intuitive system that builds on the Advantage/Disadvantage system in the core book to model various power sets. Extra rules are there, but not overwhelming.

If you really like to tinker, and you really love magic, then Thaumatology is a good choice. From what I recall, it provides a few worked-out new magic systems that you can use as an alternative to the spell-based magic presented in the core. The it also provides guidelines on making your own alternate magic systems. A very useful book when spell-based magic just isn't doing it for you(the same can be said of Powers, too).

There was a good thread on this fairly recently:
http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=31398

Personally I would go with 4e. It is more consistent and smooth compared to 3e. You get all the good bits of the system in the two 4e core books; getting all that takes multiple genre books in 3e and then you probably have a bunch of other stuff you will never read.

The 'best' supplement depends on what you want to do with GURPS. What are you likely to play first?

I'm going to expand on estar's comment, both GURPS Lite 3e and 4e are available as free downloads from Steve Jackson Games. I'd download both and try them both out as a start.

Third is a game you can choose to add to with supplements.

Fourth is a book of options, you'll spend 95% of your time building the laundry list of what you are NOT going to use in creating your own game from the pieces.

Quote from: trechriron;823299If you handle GURPS like a boss, and have some time to invest in customization, it really is a great game.

The Ephors reply, "If."

Quote from: CRKrueger;823323The Ephors reply, "If."

Yeah. You really need to be a BOSS. Don't get handled by GURPS! :-)

Quote from: trechriron;823356Don't get handled by GURPS! :-)

If you're open-minded, you could experiment with that. But if you feel dirty and regret it afterwards, don't say you weren't warned.

I strongly urge starting with GURPS Lite, especially if you're not a crunch fan.

For my part, I use 4th edition ... mostly.  My firm belief is that earlier edition of the Basic Set were fundamentally a fantasy game, and that 4th edition was a conscious change to fit the Infinite Worlds setting and a more high-tech setting approach generally.  So, being a firm fantasy GM, I use a number of earlier elements.  (Heck, I still use the pre-1989 missile rules.)

As far as supplements go, I'm biased in favor of my own stuff, but even so.  My caution is that the setting supplements are good for entrees into the settings, but they're the starting point for indepth work for any long-term campaign.

Fourth Edition GURPS is the best option.

 Always will be.


- Ed C.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;823297The 4E core is too cluttered up with genre specific stuff IMHO.

Running a game requires more work on picking and choosing what NOT to include than any previous version.

See, that's exactly what I don't want - I'd rather be able to keep as much of the core as possible than be constantly telling players "no, ignore that part, we're not using it this time". A start from the minimum and add on approach rather than starting with the maximum and taking away. Sounds like Lite or maybe 3rd is the best route, particularly since I'm probably going to be using it less for high-tech/Infinite Worlds stuff.

CRKreuger seemed to hit the nail on the head in the other thread:

QuoteGURPS 4th is take the core boardgame and all the expansions, cut them up into jigsaw pieces, pour them into a huge bag, and then say "You can make whatever boardgame you want!" It's useful only to the people that are already GURPS experts. I haven't seen anyone come in to GURPS 4th cold and actually be able to run the game. Everything in two books is a feature to the decades-old veteran, it's a morass to the newbie.

I don't want to labour on kit-bashing what subset of GURPS to use for a game, I just want to take core book + supplement and get going.