Che Webster

Which GURPS?

It was Kenny who taught me to frame my solo game something like this:

GURPS and the Mythic GM Emulator Deck are helping me to play in…

You get to add the World or setting information, whether as a short description (…a Wild West magical realm with dragons) or something simpler (…Narnia). The main benefit is that you are setting up the parameters: these rules, this Oracle, this World.

Putting aside that there are methodological questions that remain unanswered with Kenny’s format, the basic idea is sound. Unless you are the kind of person who then needs to clarify which specific edition of the rules you are talking about.

It’s no secret that I am seeking to play more GURPS. I’d go further and say that I am, over the longer haul, seeking to master that system of rules. But I have a problem because I can’t decide where to play: logically, it’d be the current Fourth Edition, but my heart is drawn to the Third. Sometimes I want to play First Edition, or even Man-to-Man.

The real problem is that I am high on the openness and creativity scale but low on the conscientiousness and duty scale. In other words, I love to mess around with whatever takes my creative fancy right now, but I have zero reliability and sticking power. My answer to the question of edition is, “Yes.”

I do know I want GURPS stripped down and simple. I am aware that I prefer the sourcebooks and aesthetic of the Third Edition. Even though I can appreciate the refinements and cleaner (clinical, even) approach of Fourth Edition, my heart is ever drawn to the older versions.

When you play solo, the important thing (even if it eludes me constantly) is to figure out how to be honest with yourself. After all, the solo game is just for you.

But I admit it: I am torn.

Perhaps the answer is to cut the Fourth Edition into a shape that looks more like the Third? Or maybe the right choice is simply to go back to what I like most, sit down, and play.

Sometimes I hate how divided I am inside.

Game on!

6 comments

  1. The issue here is that finding the right answer is hard, because there’s no clear wrong answer. I’m pretty sure if the debate were between 3rd and 4th edition of a certain, popular, fantasy RPG we’d decide right away. But both 3rd and 4th editions of GURPS are pretty solid games. I tend to fall to 4th a lot of the time just because I like how the character creation works. However, I agree on the asthetic and the layout of 3rd.

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  2. I’ve read through the 3e book multiple times. Getting through the 4e books, however, are a slog. I also have way, way more 3e books than I do 4e. I prefer the way the earlier core books provided all the basics you’ll need (and some more advanced material), but leave a lot of the mechanics for specific genres up to splat books. 4e, on the other hand, front loads so much material into the two core books that it’s overwhelming.

    In short, 3e gets me excited to play. 4e is, to me, denser and more confusing. I prefer the weird art from Dan Smith in 3e. 4e art feels sterile and unexciting.

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  3. I find that once you get into the actual play, there isn’t a huge difference between GURPS 3rd and 4th editions. I like the rules of 4th better overall, but they are definitely just a refinement of 3rd, not a big departure.

    The big difference is in presentation, 3rd was a better onramp for new players, because it didn’t try to put everything in the Basic Set. Unfortunately, that led to contradictory and incompatible rules coming up in different supplements. A lot a cruft built up over the life of 3rd.

    4th had a goal of eliminating all that cruft and being more truly generic and universal in just the Basic Set. That made it much larger. That size (and probably also trying to keep page count down to keep the price down) made it much more efficient to organize the Basic Set more as a reference book than a teaching aid. Unfortunately, this all came at the cost of ease of use for newcomers.

    In some ways, I got the best of both worlds. I got to learn using 3rd edition, then transfer over easily to 4th once I already had good familiarity with the system.

    If you’re playing mostly low-tech fantasy, without firearms or lots of powers, there’s hardly any difference. (Half-points in skills and skill difficulties, and whether HP comes from HT or ST, and taking PD out of 4th are the biggest. Of those, only PD is an ‘in play’ issue, the rest are more character creation.) I’d say stick with what you like most. Even if you eventually want to add in some rules from 4th edition at some point, it’s not that hard, because they are so similar at their core.

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