Gurps Basic Set: Characters

by David L. Pulver, Sean Punch, Steve Jackson

Book Overview

GURPS is the most flexible roleplaying system ever created. With just this book, you can adventure in any world you can imagine. Use all types of weapons from clubs to lasers...magic and martial... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1556347294
• ISBN13: 9781556347290
• Release Date: May 2016
• Publisher: Steve Jackson Games
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 8.5" x 10.9"

Customer Reviews

A nice improvement over 3rd edition.

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.

A Good New Version

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.

Excellent New Edition

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.

The best there is

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.