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Welcome to the Generic Universal RolePlaying System!

With GURPS, you can be anyone you want – an elf hero fighting for the forces of good, a shadowy femme fatale on a deep-cover mission, a futuristic swashbuckler carving up foes with a force sword in his hand and a beautiful woman by his side . . . or literally anything else! GURPS has been the premiere universal roleplaying game for almost two decades. The new Fourth Edition makes it even better!

More than 1,500,000 copies are in print – not counting foreign editions. GURPS Lite, a 32-page distillation of the basic GURPS rules, is available for free download. We also have dozens of GURPS adventures and e-books available on e23.

Whatever your favorite roleplaying genre might be, GURPS can handle it. More about GURPS . . .

Here are the last ten GURPS books (both new titles and reprints/revisions) we have shipped. Click on a cover to go to that book's page.

Here are the last ten GURPS supplements released on e23. Click on a cover to go to that item's page.

May 2010 (Be Great For Us All)

Sappy, but you must admit that "May" sounds verb-ish. Anyway . . . after missing the train on my December 2009 quarterly roundup, only to crash it into a rather premature March 2010 report back in February, I think I'll keep updating the news every three months instead of hewing to calendar quarters. In other words, you're getting this update now because if I wait for June, I'm liable to forget again.

As is customary, I will start with GURPS supplements released since my last report. All of these are available via e23:

• The Dungeon Fantasy series grew yet again with the publication of Dungeon Fantasy 10: Taverns, by Jason "PK" Levine and Loren Wiseman. Do you miss the way that fantasy adventures used to start out with drinking and brawling at the inn, followed by a "chance" encounter (choo-choo!) with an old man or a mysterious cloaked stranger who just happened to have a stupidly dangerous quest to offer? Then this is your book!
• Transhuman Space: Teralogos News – 2101, Second Quarter and Transhuman Space: Teralogos News – 2101, Third Quarter were formerly free web releases for the Transhuman Space line. Now they're free PDFs. Either way, the news reports within describe events that haven't happened yet, and that could spark adventures or possibly entire campaigns.*
• Jason "PK" Levine's Psionic Campaigns offers lots of welcome advice on planning to do and pitfalls to avoid when running a campaign that features psi powers. It's designed for use with Psionic Powers, but it isn't a "crunchy" book – much of the discussion would be valuable no matter what system you use.
• Stefan Jones' Alphabet Arcane: Lost Serifs is a free follow-up to his Alphabet Arcane. It expands on the original, offering some background that links together the fantastic artifacts, as well as further ideas that could form the core of an encounter or an adventure, or even serve as a campaign backdrop.*
• Big Lizzie, by W.G. Armintrout, is a classic cowboys-and-dinosaurs adventure. What? It is a classic – it's from Space Gamer #64 (revamped for GURPS Fourth Edition, of course).

* These are FREE! You could be downloading them as you read.

Alongside these releases were two new issues of Pyramid:

• Pyramid #3/17: Modern Exploration (March 2010) looks at what's left to be discovered in the modern era, giving both whip-toting pulp archaeologists and spooky investigators in black suits things (and Things) to unearth and worry about.
• Pyramid #3/18: Space Exploration (April 2010) is for explorers of the final frontier who bring back eggs that hatch horrible alien parasites . . . oh, and I suppose for stalwart scouts and colonists in more sedate space settings.

Don't forget that Pyramid requires no subscription. I could have listed those releases with the other e23 items above them, because they work the same way: they're useful supplements in their own right, they'll remain on sale indefinitely, and you can buy just the volumes you want. What makes Pyramid a 'zine is that each issue is a collection of articles, not a monograph, and tied together by Steven Marsh's editorial musings.

We haven't forgotten our pledge to update GURPS Third Edition books to PDF form as time and energy allow. After the major flurry of new releases in late 2009 and early 2010, we needed March and April to plan our May through July publications, so there was room on the schedule for five GURPS Classic titles – four for Transhuman Space plus a bonus item for fans of sparkly undead:

• Transhuman Space Classic: In The Well
• Transhuman Space Classic: Deep Beyond
• Transhuman Space Classic: High Frontier
• Transhuman Space Classic: Broken Dreams
• GURPS Classic: Blood Types

So . . . what are these releases that we're planning, then? The stock answer is "You aren't cleared for that!" Okay, I can leak a few hints. Just remember that's all they are. I can't predict the future (people who can do that fix lotteries and stock markets, not manuscripts) – and of course RPG publishing involves almost as many surprises and pitfalls as a dungeon (but far less loot!). In no particular order:

• Pyramid continues to thrive. (What is it about pyramids and eternal life?) Exactly what the theme of each month's issue will be depends entirely on what contributions we receive; I have no predictions.
• Jason "PK" Levine's Psis – third volume of the de facto series that started with Psionic Powers and continued in Psionic Campaigns – has been reviewed and is in the publication queue. It offers advice for players in campaigns that feature psi, and includes a time-saving system for selecting psionic traits.
• William H. Stoddard's City Stats is also reviewed and in the queue. This short supplement shows how to attach vital stats to cities in a way that makes it easier to use cities in play, catalog them, and describe them to players.
• Scott Maykrantz's Magic: Plant Spells is in final revisions. It will greatly expand the Plant college of Magic.
• David Pulver's Spaceships 8: Transhuman Spacecraft continues to wend its way through editing. This is the last planned release in the Spaceships series, but who knows what the future holds?
• Plenty more Dungeon Fantasy projects are in various stages of development. We currently have a final draft from Peter V. Dell'Orto, a first draft from Matt Riggsby, two more first drafts in progress (one by Peter and y.t., the other by y.t. alone), and an outline for yet another item by Matt.
• There's still a historical worldbook (PDF) in editing. I'll let slip at this time that it's Crusades, by Gene Moyers.
• William H. Stoddard is currently working on an all-new Transhuman Space project for GURPS Fourth Edition.
• Jason "PK" Levine has been authorized to work on at least two more staff-written projects, neither of which has to do with Dungeon Fantasy or Psionic Powers.
• Hans-Christian Vortisch's Tactical Shooting just left playtesting. Barring sudden disaster ("Your gun explodes."), this realistic counterpart to Gun Fu should be out before year's end.
• Low-Tech (by Peter V. Dell'Orto, Dan Howard, Matt Riggsby, and William H. Stoddard) is through editing and in fact has already been reviewed in rough PDF form. Its three associated PDFs are also edited and in the layout bullpen: Low-Tech Companion 1: Philosophers and Kings (by Riggsby and Stoddard), covering the literate and powerful; Low-Tech Companion 2: Weapons and Warriors (by Dell'Orto, Howard, and Stoddard), on the armed and violent; and Low-Tech Companion 3: Daily Life and Economics (by Riggsby and Stoddard), on the poor souls who feed and clothe the first two lots. Progress has been very good, and my hope to see them all in 2010 doesn't seem misplaced!

Further out, revisions on Ken Hite's Horror continue, albeit slowly. We're also talking with people named Masters, Pulver, Stoddard, and Vortisch, among others, about future work. Moreover, there are projects by at least three or four new writers on the scope. Which brings me to my final point . . .

We publish because you write! We're always looking for new GURPS PDFs, so why not visit the e23 Wish List and learn what we want. Then download the GURPS formatting guide and WYSIWYG template, and shoot us a query. Even if you're new at this, if you can write and your idea is sound, we might just be interested. If you really want to start with something smaller, then don't leave Pyramid out of your plans; the Pyramid Wish List awaits.