GURPS Basic Set: Campaigns

This review is primarily concerned with the rules for modern-day firearms combat. This is because my main experiences from this new edition stems from a present day 400+ points special ops mercenary campaign.

Although, I'll try and cover the book in general. My rating is the overall picture, not just the guns stuff.

Basic mechanics is most importantly, the Skill Roll. Your skill level is defined from how much trainign you've had (how many points put into it) and how your natural abilities are (how good your relevant Basic Attribute is). Rolls are made with 3d6 summed, you must roll equal to or lower. This makes the average roll around 10, and this is about 50% chance of success. Rolls os 3-4 are Critical Successes, rolls of 18 (and often 17) are Critical Failures. Skills rolls are modified in lots of ways, depending of the ease or difficualty of the situation, your own physical or mental condition, quality and quantity of tools or equipment, other outside and environmental factors etc.

The combat system is turn based, in 1 second segments, with the chacater with the highest initiative starting out. This system is really usable anytime stress and time are factors, you don't have to be fighting! A car chase, disarming a bomb and a myriad of other activities will also play out well in this method.
The basis of the action round, is declarations of the chosen manoeuvre/activity. Once you've begun, this is what you do. You can't change your mind, to react to the next guy, because actions are broken down into 1 second segments. This is really too short a time to react, any reactive actions will in essence be your action for your next round.
The activities are classified as either Move (just the run/move), Attack (balanced action, see later) All-Out Atack (foregoing all defensive options), All-Out Defence (foregoing all offensive actions), Aim (setting up for a precise attack the following round), Concentrate (for short-term actions, skill use etc.), Wait (setting up a responsive action, waiting to do a certain thing once a certain situation arises) and Long Term Actions (used to describe the 1 second-at-a-time progress on long actions, first aid, radio use etc.). Whatever happens around you to to you, will affect your chices and options in the following round.

Focusing on combat, the balanced Attack manoeuvre allows a single attack, along a single defence with each ready and relevant object, any number of dodge attempts, and a single step of movement. Any opponente have the same choices.
E.g. D'Artagnan with his rapier and main-gauche closes distance with a step, makes a lunge at the lead cardical lackey's face. He attampts to parry with his own rapier. The 5 other lackeys each attack D'Artagnan and hit him. He may now attempt a parry with his rapier, one with his main-gauche, and may attempt a dodge against each of the other 3 attacks.
The All-Out Attack foregoes any defensive options, but allows one extra benefit. Either 2 attacks with same weapon, if the weapon is fast or light enough, or two with separate weapons. Or a single attack with either a large bonus to attack chance or a moderate bonus to damage. Or allow a charging move, where the attacker may run and attack as well.
All-Out Defence foregoes any offensive actions. This allows 2 different defenses versus each attack. But there are limits to the number of times each weapon may be used, so you'll rapidly be stuck with only the dodge chance. Or alternatively a single, cencentrated defense attampt, with a bonus to the skill.

Concerning gunplay, different guns are rated differently, regarding how many shots they fire per second, how accurate they are on aimed shots, how difficult automatic weapons are to manage and how awkward they are to use in confined spaces or on the run. Plus a lot of other stats, important in other situations.
When attacking with a firearm, figure out any modifiers, most likely Size/Speed/Range as well as Darkness and Position/Hit location.
Size is the height or width of the target, Speed is the movement and Range is the distance from shooter to target. The "default" value, where there are no modifiers, is 2 meters, a 2 meter high person, moving 2 meters per second, 2 meters from the attacker. Larger, Slower and Closer targets are all easier, while Smaller, Faster and more Distant targets are harder. Darkness applies on a 0 to -10 scale, with 0 being full daylight and -10 being total, utter darkness. Position/Hit location refers to the added difficulty of shooting at an only partially exposed target (e.g. a guy poking his upper body out of a window) or actually going for a specific body part (the guy has a kevlar vest, and you only have a 9mm? go for the face!)

The beauty of the mechanics for this new edition, is that is does away with a lot of problems in the previous edition.
First off, the more bullets you fire in an automatic burst against the same target, the more likely you are to hit with just 1! A table gives you the bonus for the number of shots fired. And the rating for the weapon's Recoil is now a measure for how successfull (meaning, how much lower than your modified skill you've rolled) you must be to hit with more than one bullet.
E.g. an M16 Assault Rifle can fire 12 shots per second in a burst. This gives +2, taking at average modified skill (10, 50% chance) to 12 (about 73% chance) - TO HIT WITH A SINGLE BULLET! For each full multiple of the weapon's Recoil rating you make the roll by, you hit with one extra bullet. The M16 has Recoil of 2, so making the modified roll by 2 (rolling 10, because we're rolling vs. a whopping 12) means one more bullet hits. Comparing with firing just a short burst of 3 bullets (giving no bonus), resulting in a skill of 10, recieves no bonus, and is thus just a success, and only a single hit bullet. So it's a trade off: The more bullest fired, the more likely you are to hit with one - or more - but you'll run out faster!
In 3rd edition to comparison, recoil was a penalty, adding up for each successive shot of burst fired. So in this way, the more bullets fired continuously, the less likely you were of hitting anything. The more bullets fires in a sigle combat round, the more rolls you got to make, but each with less chance of success. The new edition simplifies by also having only 1 roll per round, not several. Rules for spreading a burst over several targets requires several rolls though. But each target is handled as above, with the total number of bullets fired divided among the targets. Resulting in several attempts of hitting, but each with less chance, when compared to sending all bullets at a single target. Because the divided number of bullets will result in a lower bonus (if any).

The second fine feature, is the mecnanics of aimed shots versus unaimed shots. Guns are rated for their Accuracy (Acc) with a positive number from 0 to about 7, and their Bulk, with a negative number. Both can be modified with various sighting devices, telescopes, laserdots etc. Acc is based on sights on the weapon, the quality of workmanship and design, and the ballistics of the bullet. Bulk is defined by weight, design and how rapidly it can draw a bead on the target. High power long arms have high Acc and a punishing Bulk. Handguns have poor Acc but less hampering Bulk.
When making an unaimed shot, the Acc won't mean anything. The Bulk will only modify your skill roll (negatively!) if you're very close to your target, are in confined spaces, awkward position or moving while shooting.
If the shot is diffucult, taking an Aim action is a good idea, if you have the time (and are in a good position). The Bulk only applies if you're too close or awkwardly placed, moving is not an issue, since this will not allow aiming. The Acc is now a (positive) modifier to your skill roll.
Back in 3rd edition, unaimed shots may easily have been Snap Shots (with a -4 modifier), if the modified skill was below the Snap Shot number for the weapon. This was based on much the same criteria as Bulk. This was eliminated by Aiming. And the Accuracy scale went much higher, Acc numbers for guns were about twice what they are in 4th ed. So in this situation, you could easily have a Snap Shot with a rifle virtually impossible (needing a critical succes to hit), but after 1 second of aiming you'd be 99,9% sure of hitting. Because the difference could be well over 16, from a -4 Snap Shot penalty to an Acc of 12.

This was combat, atatcking and gunplay. What about getting hit by all those bullets?
The GURPS has fairly detailed mechanics for injuries and fatigue, with the option of keeping it simple or going into almost painstaking detail. Either apply damage to a pool of hit points, or go into detail with where the bullet hits, and what type of damage.
Different modifiers apply to differet damage types in different places. A stab from a knife to an arm might be nasty, but the same stab to the torso, might hit an organ, and thus be deadly.
Also, lots of rules apply as to how much damage a certain body part can take, before it's cripple or lost, or what the cut-off point is, after which excess is lost due to overpenetration.
While a bullet to the head can kill instantly, the same bullet to a leg won't. It will cripple the limb, or even take it clean off, but overpenetration will waste a lot of energy. You won't die instantly, but rules fro blood loss, shock and infection might take you out in the end. Lots of details and extra rules for the gory fans or simulationists.

The book has a sort-ish section with important, but quite general lists and rukles of gear, equipment, weapons, armour etc. More detail is given to such things in appropriate supplements. But it's a good start.

Sections regarding game world design, game mastering etc. is invaluable. Novices will get great input from this, quickly giving then experience and routine. veteran players should still get good input, since I for one play a lot on the fly, and often skip much in the way of campaign or setting design

All in all, this edition offers a lot of good changes from previous editions, enough to justify buying it, no doubt about that! And the rules are good, generic, simple yet with ample possibilities for expansion and detail, flexible and the system offers a lot of support. Lots of sourcebooks - both rules-wise, crunchy books (regarding technology, magic etc.) as well as setting based books.

Why didn't I rate this as a 10.0? Well, past experiences and my many years as a gamer telle me: Nothing's perfect! I've houseruled my way through years and years of 3rd ed play, to adapt to what we thought was right and what we wanted. This, of course, is a personal choice. But the strength of GURPS is, that once you have some routine, you can easily change whatever you want.
We've been playing 4th for a few years, but very sporadically. We've already made some house rules, to rectify things we saw asa problem in our Mercenary campaign. This might not be relevant for others. Some rules were made, because no released GURPS book covered this (or none we had). Perhaps it has been described now? Perhaps we'll annull our own rule, change it, or make a hybrid.

All I kow is, I haven't been playing GURPS since '91 for nothing. I'm in a campaign running on its 14th year, and still going strong. That's how long lived GURPS can be!