Guest Post by farmeroz aka Phil Brown
Structural Changes
- Characters and Campaigns are now one 584-page volume.
- Existing subjects retain their familiar page numbers. References such as “p. B370” consequently remain valid.
- The duplicate front matter, Campaigns introduction, Campaigns ludography and duplicate indices have been removed.
- Combat Lite, formerly on pp. 324-328, has been removed because the complete combat system is now in the same book.
- There is one expanded table of contents and one unified index on pp. 579-584.
- Four new addenda occupy the freed and newly added pages.
- The layout is now two columns, cleaner and appreciably easier to read than the original three-column design.
The new preface explains the editorial approach and the precise page accounting on Revised pp. 1-4.
The 27 Pages of Genuinely New Rules
| Pages | New Material | Most Significant Inclusions |
| 324-334 | Addendum 1: Character Traits | Alternative Abilities; expanded Talents; character-point-powered abilities; Damage Reduction; Energy Reserve; Foresight; Heroic Archer; Impulse Points; Jack of All Trades; universal-language traits; new perks, modifiers and combat techniques. |
| 337-342 | Addendum 2: Organisations and Equipment | Pulling Rank and Assistance Rolls; TL availability for technical skills; Cost Factors for equipment modifications; flat-cost Signature Gear. |
| 566 | Addendum 3: Hit Locations | Ears, nose, jaw, chest, abdomen, spine, pelvis, joints, and veins/arteries; optional refinements to existing hit locations. |
| 570-578 | Addendum 4: Play and Combat | Group rolls; expanded Influence; extra effort; combined ST; realistic marching; Stress and Derangement; terrain, frostbite, and vision; new manoeuvres; firearms options; range bands; large-target injury; abstract difficulty and simplified resources. |
Addendum 1: Traits and Character Creation
Some key additions are:
- Alternative Abilities: the familiar Powers rule allowing mutually exclusive abilities after the most expensive to cost one-fifth, now including multiple “slots” and shared-disable rules.
- Damage Reduction as a new form of Injury Tolerance.
- Ten established Talents, including Born War-Leader, Craftiness, Driver’s Reflexes, Natural Athlete, Natural Scientist and Street-Smart.
- Energy Reserve, explicitly divided by source such as Magical, Chi, Divine or Psionic.
- Foresight, allowing limited retroactive preparation.
- Heroic Archer.
- Impulse Points and character-point-powered emergency abilities.
- Jack of All Trades.
- Universal Translator, Omnilingual and Xeno-Omnilingual.
- “N/A” self-control numbers for disadvantages that cannot be resisted.
New or consolidated perks include Dabbler, Equipment Bond, Weapon Bond, No Nuisance Rolls, Strongbow, Cutting-Edge Training, Alternative Feints, Controllable Disadvantage, Influence Shticks and Off-Hand Training.
One wrinkle worth noting: Off-Hand Training is said to “completely replace” the old Off-Hand Weapon Training technique, although the old technique remains printed on p. 232. If adopting the addendum, the new one-point perk is evidently intended to supersede the technique.
The new general modifiers include:
- Affects Others
- Costs Hit Points
- Fixed Duration
- Game Time
- Hard to Use
- Maximum and Minimum Duration
- Reduced Duration
- Reliable
- Requires Attribute, Skill or Active Defence Roll
- Switchable
- A substantial collection of standard power modifiers, including Biological, Chi, Cosmic, Divine, Magical, Moral, Nature, Psionic, Spirit, Super and Superscience.
New combat techniques are Acrobatic Stand, Armed Grapple, Close Combat, Evade, Head Butt, Stamp Kick and Wrench Limb.
Addendum 2: Organisations and Equipment
Pulling Rank is the major addition. It turns Rank into an operational resource comparable to a Patron, with:
- Organisational power ratings.
- Rank-to-Patron and Patron-to-Rank conversions.
- Assistance Rolls based on Rank.
- Modifiers for appropriateness, repeated requests, reputation, and complementary skills.
- Examples covering intelligence, warrants, reinforcements, transport, safehouses, extraction and similar aid.
There is also a valuable table identifying the earliest TL at which numerous scientific and technical skills normally become available.
Equipment modifiers now have a unified Cost Factor system. Multiple cost modifiers are added as CF before being applied, rather than multiplying repeatedly. This prevents such absurdities as an ornamental hilt becoming four times dearer merely because the sword is already fine quality.
Flat-Cost Signature Gear is offered as an alternative: one perk buys plot protection for one legitimately acquired item, regardless of price, rather than supplying wealth with which to purchase it.
Addendum 3: Hit Locations
The new detailed locations are:
- Ear, nose, and jaw
- Chest and abdomen as subdivisions of the torso
- Spine and pelvis
- Limb and extremity joints
- Veins and arteries
These introduce specific crippling thresholds, recovery penalties, wounding modifiers and missed-by-one results. There are also optional random sublocation rules for ordinary skull, face, neck, torso, vitals, limb, and extremity hits.
This is essentially a compact import of the sort of detail previously found in Martial Arts, Low-Tech and related books.
Addendum 4: Play and Combat
This is the richest GM-facing section. Notable additions include:
- Ham Clause: voluntarily allow a disadvantage to dominate a scene in exchange for it not recurring that session.
- Quick-and-Dirty Modifiers based on descriptive complications.
- Statistical handling of large groups and Collective Skill.
- Expanded Influence Rolls producing the full reaction spectrum rather than merely Good or Bad.
- Extra-effort options including Giant Step, Great Lunge, Heroic Charge and Rapid Recovery.
- Extra effort with powers; trading FP for skill or resistance.
- Correct rules for combining several people’s ST through total Basic Lift.
- More realistic marching: normally eight or twelve hours of travel at half Move miles per hour.
- Stress and Derangement as temporary and lasting psychological harm.
- Consolidated terrain modifiers for foraging, tracking, and travel.
- Separate frostbite damage.
- A proper illumination table, “in plain sight” rules, vision during combat, visual signalling, and a horizon table.
- Committed Attack and Defensive Attack, plus All-Out Concentrate and mental All-Out Defence.
- Partial-armour targeting.
- Non-combat shooting bonuses, close-contact gunshots, and an optional restricted-dodge rule for firearms.
- Ranged feints, prediction shots and ranged Rapid Strikes.
- Simplified range bands.
- Reduced piercing and impaling injury against very large vehicles and structures.
- Basic Abstract Difficulty, or BAD, as a single scene-wide penalty.
- Standard battery and power-cell statistics.
- Simplified ammunition and consumable tracking.
Most of this is expressly optional. The Revised book supplies a broader official toolkit; it does not silently declare that every campaign must now track Derangement, frostbitten noses and whether the sniper remembered to yomping-proof his trousers.
Changes within the original material
Most old rules are substantively unchanged, but there are several noteworthy revisions.
Heteronomy replaces Slave Mentality
Slave Mentality has been renamed Heteronomy and moved to p. 138, with a cross-reference at its old location on p. 154.
The price and central mechanics remain essentially the same: 40 points, IQ 8 to act outside orders or routine, and normally automatic failure or Will 6 when asserting autonomy. The revised definition is narrower and clearer:
- It is exotic or supernatural.
- It represents artificial construction, supernatural enthralment, Mind Control and similar imposed conditions.
- It is explicitly unsuitable for natural beings and PCs.
Thus, this is primarily conceptual repair rather than a point-cost change.
Slavery has been completely rewritten
Campaigns pp. 518-519 no longer provide rules for PCs buying enslaved people or a random “loyalty of slaves” table.
The replacement:
- Distinguishes different historical forms of enslavement.
- States that heroes do not participate in slavery.
- Treats enslavers as villains.
- Provides a price for buying freedom, generally five years’ earnings adjusted for traits.
- Leaves the behaviour of enslaved people to circumstances rather than random loyalty.
- Gives enslavers reaction penalties and, where slavery is illegal, appropriate Social Stigma.
This is both a tonal and mechanical change.
Ultravision is mechanically revised
Ultravision on p. 94 no longer automatically cancels two points of darkness penalty or halves underwater vision penalties. Instead:
- It requires actual ultraviolet light to see.
- A UV lamp can illuminate things invisibly to normal vision.
- UV vision is unaffected by ordinary visible-light dazzling or flash attacks.
- It can remain usable when normal vision has been dazzled.
That is a genuine change rather than mere rephrasing.
Clarifications now embedded in the rules
Among the more useful official clarifications:
- Extra Attack grants additional attacks only when the chosen manoeuvre already permits attacks. Attacks may be exchanged for Feints, but not for Aim, Ready or other unrelated actions (p. 54).
- A GURPS combat turn is an overlapping individual one-second turn, not a global round after which everybody’s clock resets (p. 363).
- A step may be in any direction and may include any facing change (p. 386).
- Flyers and swimmers receive explicit tactical movement costs (p. 387).
- Retreating is only indefinitely “free” on an infinite featureless plain; terrain can prevent further retreat (p. 390).
- Skill-table dashes explicitly mean that a level is unavailable, not free (p. 170).
- Critical thresholds use effective skill, not base skill (p. 381).
- Several frequently disputed matters receive short rulings or cross-references: Deceptive Attack, Feints with multiple attacks, slams, vision against attacks, firearm dodging, movement and large-target damage.
The book also adds numerous small pointers to later supplements, especially Powers, Martial Arts, Social Engineering, Bio-Tech, High-Tech, Low-Tech, Ultra-Tech and the Power-Ups series.
Editorial and language changes
The text has undergone extensive terminology correction:
- “damage” and “injury” are used more consistently as technical terms.
- Capitalization and abbreviations are standardised.
- Outdated ethnic terminology has been corrected.
- Casual or derogatory uses of language concerning disability, mental illness, homelessness, and enslavement have been removed.
- The section on online gaming is rewritten for modern voice/video chat and virtual tabletops.
These changes rarely affect mechanics, apart from the specific cases above.