Worlds Apart GURPS

Worlds Apart Productions have announced a licensing deal to make online games based on GURPS. For those of you who wouldn't know GURPS from a similar sounding bodily function, the name stands for Generic Universal Role Playing System, and it does exactly what it says on the box, offering a modular set of rules which can be expanded and adapted for a wide range of settings. Over sixty rule books and adventures are still in print for the ever-popular pencil and paper role-playing game, with more on the way, taking in everything from Hellboy and Discworld to World War II and the Middle Ages. It's not known at this stage what kind of setting Worlds Apart will be using for their debut GURPS game, but several projects are apparently being "contemplated".

"We've been wanting to take GURPS online for a long time", GURPS designer Steve Jackson (no, not the Fighting Fantasy bloke, the other one) is reported as saying. "Worlds Apart understands the importance of taking care of the player community, and we're excited about what we're going to be able to do together."

Before you get too excited though, we should point out that Worlds Apart have carved out a niche for themselves making text-based games, effectively glorified MUDs. Both The Eternal City and Grendel's Revenge have proven popular with gamers and critics alike, but if Worlds Apart continue in this vein for their GURPS releases the graphics will be limited by your imagination rather than your graphics card, and your view of the world will involve text such as "you are standing on top of a hill, roads lead south and east" rather than millions of texture-mapped polygons. Still, that's all part of the fun, right?

Source - press release