I remember that I found it odd that the system had no experience levels but the emphasis on skills sounded alluring almost more realistic than D&D ). I was still very much a novice when I read about GURPS in one of the early issues of the single esoteric rpg magazine published in my gloomy eastern-european homeland.
Gygax's death and the "retro-clone movement" are what has fueled most of the gaming blogs I've seen in the last year and a half – there hasn't really been a catalyst event like that for GURPS, nor would I imagine there will be. But the SJG message board has been around for a long time, will continue to be around for a long time, and the online presence of GURPS will, if anything, probably only grow. What D&D is now compared to what it used to be has shifted radically, and I also get the feeling that two or three years ago, 90% of the gaming blogs out there right now, didn't exist. But ultimately, you can compare a GURPS product from 20 years ago to a GURPS product from today and most of it's going to be at least roughly compatible. The rules didn't change all that much, it was more a point of view that changed. As much as people gripe about the shift from GURPS 3rd to 4th edition, I'd say it's more like the shift in D&D from 1st to 2nd edition AD&D. Their message board is very high-traffic and the GURPS community itself, while there are plenty of their own "edition wars", hasn't gone through the tectonic-shifting changes that D&D has over the years. I'd also lean in the direction of "GURPS People do their own thing". Thus ended our GURPs 4E campaign.Īnd for what it is worth, rumor on the GenCon dealer's hall floor has it that the real money at SJG comes from Munchkin and related light gaming products – GURPs is a legacy product supported by those others.
If I'd had more free time I might have analyzed what had changed the feel, but I'm really busy with life – and with so many great games to play I don't have time to figure out what broke in a game system.
Throw in the fact that they've somehow decided that charts are bad, forcing you to dig through text laden passages to find rules, and it was a big downer. Not only were most of the non-core books decidedly short or rules (as much as 2/3+ color text and less than 1/3 devoted to material I could actually use in the crunch filled GURPS system), but the changes had decidedly flattened out the GURPS experience. Having played a lot of 3rd edition GURPs, I bought every 4th Edition book when it came out.