Customer Reviews

GURPS Basic Set: Characters, Fourth Edition

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Those of you who don't know about the basic concepts of GURPS should go to the marvelous review that somebody wrote for the 3rd edition basic set.

I'm a game master with 25 years of experience who turned to GURPS about 7 years ago because the game systems I was using didn't support cross-genre play very well. I loved the 3rd edition in spite of its problems, which could be daunting at times. The biggest problems were that the stat generation system encouraged "gaming" the system, there were an awful lot of little loopholes in the skills that the players could exploit, the psionics system was overpowered, and the game system had kind of sprawled over the years. I've got a good group of players and we worked around the problems but kept encountering new ones as we delved further into the world of GURPS.

Enter 4th edition! It solves the gaminess of the stat generation system with such a simple rule I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of it. The loopholes in the skills have mostly been resolved (I haven't finished checking them over yet) and the Psionics system has been dumped in favor of a different simpler system that still seems to get the job done. This book sticks with the character generation system so I can't address the rules sprawl issue yet.

I had concerns about spending so much for a single book (I've only gotten Characters so far but I'll be buying Campaigns as soon as the budget allows) but one of the little secrets is that you really aren't buying a single book. The Characters book includes all of the rules from the following 3rd edition books: Basic Set, Compendium I, Martial Arts, Supers, and Psionics. No more digging through multiple books! Furthermore you are saving a lot of money by buying a single book at $23.00 on Amazon vs. buying 5 books at $12.00 each! I also need to congratulate the editors on doing a MUCH better job of organizing the material in this book than the 3rd edition. The use of language is only slightly clearer than in the last version but it is still greatly appreciated.

Another thing that was greatly appreciated was the hardcover format, I'm hard on my roleplaying books and was about to buy another copy of the 3rd edition book when I saw the fourth edition come out. The improved artwork and use of color was also nice.

The sole caveat that I offer is to the GM's who are thinking of converting to 4th edition. I've run a few games and it runs very smoothly but this game system has the potential to be even MORE complicated than the last version. You need to think very carefully about how detailed you want your campaign to be and then STICK WITH IT! The players may well complain bitterly about not being allowed to use all of the little extras that are now available but the game can bog down quickly if you use everything that this system offers. My group of players were pretty insistent until we ran a game with all of the options and it took 10 times longer to generate characters and to resolve a fight scene than normal and it didn't change the results at all.

My sole complaint is that the index is good instead of being GREAT like it was in 3rd edition. Of course it used to take several tries to find the right index in 3rd edition because there were always several books to choose from...

Final note, I HIGHLY recommend getting GURPS Character Assistant, it is does a much better job of remembering all the little ins and outs of the character generation rules and does a much better job of formating the character sheet and... best of all... no more messy handwriting!

Fourth edition is a welcome streamlining and reconsolidation of the sprawling GURPS rules set. It pulls in a lot of material that was previously contained in the 3rd Edition Basic Set, Compendiums, and various world books and puts it together into a new cohesive, and in some places simplified, rules set.

This volume covers all aspects of character building. It does provide all the basic game mechanics and a minimalist coverage of the combat system. So although it does not stand completely alone, it provides all the rules a player would need to know (more detailed rules aimed at game masters are in the Campaigns book).

The power range of characters has been changed. In the past high power characters were somewhat constrained by rules that were aimed at detailed low to mid power levels. But most of those problems have been addressed. For example, one of the sample characters is an AI controlled military robot that is over 1600 character points (this is something that 3rd edition would not have handled as smoothly).

So all in all an enthusiastic *must buy* for this if you are a fan of detailed RPGs. GURPS gives you all the tools for role playing in any setting and the GURPS world books are some of the best around. World-hopping and hard sci-fi campaigns are especially at home with GURPS and now this new edition makes other genres like superheroes and high-powered anime campaigns easier to run.

I have been a GURPS player for many years now. I have enjoyed the system and the level of realism, or lack thereof, the GM could want or need. But, as systems grow, they can get klunky. GURPS 3e had become weighed down by expansions and rules additions from the ennumerable books that had been released. 4e has cleaned up the rules and placed them down in a more consistent manner and fixed "mistakes" of the old version. I was hesitant to buy the new version, given my library of 3e material, but I am happy with my purchase. I have played with the new rules and the changes have been a good thing. I would recommend to all GURPS 3e players to give the new version a chance.

The idea behind GURPS is that it provides a set of core rules that can be adapted to any setting (thus the "universal" part of General Universal Role-Playing). It does a good job of this, although it is better suited to a somewhat more realistic feeling than heroic wackiness. A human isn't going to take too many sword hits and shrug them off.

The strong point of GURPS is character generation. Players are allotted a number of points to build their characters, and may buy characteristics, skills and "Advantages" (things like the ability to use magic, being wealthy, or any of hundreds of other things), and may get additional points by taking "Disadvantages."

This new 4th edition is in by far most ways an improvement over 3rd edition. They closed a lot of loopholes and fixed a number of less-than-optimal things. I like the changes to combat especially.

There are a couple of things I would have done differently.

1) They took the skills out of psionics (and every other supernatural system, for that matter), making it purely advantage based, but they left magic as skill based. They really should have made each magic spell into an advantage too, because now it's not as well balanced with the rest of the system as it could be. Couple this with the fact that you can now take IQ at 10 points a level if you don't take the associated Will and Perception, and you can easily have a Wizard character with an IQ of 17 or so in a 100 point campaign, who can buy spells at a very high skill level with 1 point.

2) They should have dumped the "earn character points through study" system. Yes, it's easy to just ignore it, but if you get stuck with a GM who goes by the book you may very well find yourself wasting a lot of time with tedious accounting issues.

4th edition institutes a good set of rules that allows the GM to create powers and abilities by modifying Advantages with an extensive set of Enhancements and Limitations. This is really nice for the workaholic GM, but the GM who lacks huge amounts of free time is going to be hoping for supplements with a lot of sample powers worked out for him or her.

I first heard about the Generic Universal Role Playing System (GURPS) back in 2005. At the time, I was already playing Dungeons & Dragons as well as d20 Modern, so despite the endorsements this system received, I pretty much mentally brushed it aside.

Fast forward to 2007. I somehow start thinking about GURPS again, and manage to take a look at the Characters book with a more objective frame of mind. I suddenly become *very* intrigued, even joining the Steve Jackson Games forum to see what Game Masters/players were churning out. This time, I was impressed, but still not ready to try another pencil and paper roleplaying game.

And then it was early 2009. I hear about GURPS from another set of gamers, and once again returned to the forum. After quite a bit of reading, I was sold, and so ordered both main books on Amazon.

I was happy I did.

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GURPS, unlike most pencil and paper roleplaying games out there, does not truly have it's own "setting". While it's true there is a potential for campaigns with the included information on Infinite Worlds, the actual mechanics of the system do not assume the user is going to solely play action, fantasy, horror, romance, science-fiction or whichever genre(s) they prefer.

No, GURPS truly is Generic. This can both be a positive and a negative. The former, because the included variety does cater to whatever you wish to play, and the latter, because it takes effort from everyone involved to actually *use* the correct combination of game mechanics within to reach the desired effect. It really helps to have a campaign idea in mind before opening either book.

Also, GURPS uses the point-buy method of character generation (much like Mutants & Masterminds, New World of Darkness, Shadowrun, etc), rather than level-based (d20 Modern, Dungeons & Dragons, Spycraft, etc). This can be a little disorienting for those that are beginners to RPGs in general, but quickly makes up for that shortcoming with amazing on-the-fly versatility: you can conceivably play a 500 point character that is superscience inventor, yet a terrible combatant and a 100 point character that is a legendary swordsman, but not fully grown yet.

It should be noted that this system starts off at a fairly "realistic" level of mortality: a 9mm bullet to the head probably will kill the average man, knives do more damage to the neck and suffering a crippled leg will mean the character in question may spend months recovering. I greatly enjoyed this, not only because it means *where* you attack is as important as what you use, but also because I don't have to work my way backwards from a larger-than-life set of rules.

And yet, with the myriad of Advantages (traits that benefit the character), Skills, and optional rules, you can indeed play a John McClane type character that rides fireballs on a daily basis. Is this perfect? Not entirely. There is a point where the granularity in choice can both hinder and fail to represent certain characters, such as high tier superheroes (think Superman, Green Lantern or Phoenix). The Powers and Supers supplements go a fair way towards mitigating this concern, but I still would use GURPS for mostly street level superheroes.

Combat is very engaging. The inclusion of hit locations (Head, Neck, Vitals, Arms, etc) means that a highly skilled character (Skill 16+) can end a fight quickly if their opponent can't adequately defend themselves or that even an amateur (Skill 9-11) has a chance at winning. Skills truly do matter here, as there is no automatic assumption of combat experience without them.

Social skills are numerous (Diplomacy, Intimidation, Fast-Talk, Sex Appeal, Streetwise among others) and there are quite a few ways to both boost them and penalize them (Charisma, attractiveness, Disturbing Voice, Odious Personal Habits, etc). With enough skill, you can con someone out of their clothes (though this is usually very cinematic!) or find out where the local crime lord hides.

One more thing that I have to say, and it's about the GURPS community: i've seen campaigns ranging from Redwall to A Song of Fire And Ice to the Civil War to Pulp Heroes to Sliders to modern day military to the near future and even Star Wars. It's just that adaptable.

Ultimately, if you're willing to invest some creative energy into the system, you will be pleasantly surprised. Just don't tackle everything all at once ;-).

The rules are better than before and this game certainly ranks up there, lacking in name only. Since it is a rulebook, it seems appropriate to discuss the rule changes.

Nothing is all that new. More advantages, more disadvantages and more skills to choose from (lifted from sourcebooks all, I'll wager), just as you would expect. Strength has been changed, which may be a hassle when converting, but compared to most other new versions (e.g., D&D), conversion is hardly the appropriate term. You have to erase a couple of things on your character sheet and write in new values. So, don't let the conversion issue stop you from switching over.

Systemically, the changes are so minor that you could probably use your old sourcebooks without modifications and nobody would notice.

One change I had hoped to see was a rewrite of the spell rules. I can't help but think there are some simple ways to make magic more interesting. For example, you could combine more powers into a single spell and take penalties to the skill roll depending on a task. I mean, why do we need three separate skills that heal wounds? One spell is sufficient; just take a penalty if you try to heal someone more than once per day, try to heal more with less energy, etc.

In any case, the ruleset is still one of the best out there. There may be styles of play that make one or another ruleset preferable, but most of the time GURPS will do just fine. Therefore, I give five stars.

Well written, nice arts, easy to understand system, easy to learn and flexible. Much much more flexible than d20, and also much more realistic. Having played d&d for some times now, I was getting rather frustrated about the lousy you-hit-me-I-hit-you combat system. With Gurps, things are much more dynamic. Give it a chance, you won't regret it.

GURPS is painstakingly balanced for the creation of characters from the perspective of average modern day humanity, yet still allowing for characters ranging from the woefully inept to the super-human. The magic system is well thought out, the powers system is set up to, with the proper allowance of points, allow you to build just about any ability you want, if not already listed. All in all, a very well thought out system for those not afraid of a little number crunching. I have played all versions of the system up to this edition and would readily use it for most anything.

At a distance GURPS had always seemed a little intimidating. It also had some of the coolest campaign settings of any role playing game on the market. After a demo session at a convention I realized that game play itself was really fast and really fun.

Everyone is overwhelmed by GURPS at first, and I was no exception. But once I saw how all the parts worked together, I realized that I could break it up into little bits and work to understand each of them separately. And that's when I saw that I had the coolest role playing game construction kit that I'd ever seen. With one system I could recreate the world of Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren, Jim Butcher's Storm Front, Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, Ben Bova's Colony, or Robert E. Howard's The Conquering Sword of Conan (Conan of Cimmeria, Book 3).

Since my gaming preferences cover a pretty broad spectrum, and I'm always looking to make something new, it was perfect. If you're looking for the toolkit that will let you play the game you've always wanted, buy this, along with GURPS Basic Set: Campaigns (4th Edition). If you prefer to have something a little better defined for you, try buying GURPS Traveller: Science Fiction Adventure in the Far Future (GURPS Traveller) or Transhuman Space (HC) (Transhuman Space), or even GURPS Discworld if you think you can wrap your brain around Terry Pratchet in real time.

GURPS is an awesome game system. I bought the basic set as my first intro to GURPS after decades of playing AD&D. The learning curve can be a bit steep. Don't try to learn it all at once; start with the Gurps Lite and add more complex rules as you get comfortable.

Finding specific rules in the book during game play can be difficult. The authors should provide more cross-references to make searching for specifics easier. As we played the first few sessions, we often got frustrated with the amount of time spent hunting things in the rules.