August 19, 2014: GURPS Fourth Turns 10 With . . . Sean Punch

I've been doing this for a long time – by which I mean "working on GURPS." I'll have been at it for 20 years come August 2015 (or November 2014, if you count my first freelance project). But August 19, 2014 marks another anniversary: the 10th birthday of GURPS Fourth Edition. In other words, I've spent more than half of my career as a game developer working on Fourth Edition!

To quote a better-known Canadian: "Whoa."

Asking me to pick a favorite Fourth Edition moment is like asking someone to pick a favorite child, but I have a few: When Steve Jackson asked David Pulver and me to revise his game into its fourth edition in 2002. When the GURPS Basic Set, Fourth Edition actually came out a grueling two years later. When SJ Games published my first original hardback, GURPS Powers, in 2005. When I kicked off the first "genre redux" series in the form of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy in late 2007. When Pyramid, Volume 3 launched in November 2008, giving GURPS what I feel is one of the best supporting 'zines any RPG has had, ever. And especially when the GURPS book I most wanted to write when I hired on in 1995, GURPS Zombies, finally went to print in 2013.

But it isn't all about me. A whole bunch of writers have helped to build GURPS Fourth Edition into a successful game system. Without them, I wouldn't even have a job. So in honor of Fourth Edition's 10th birthday, I'm going to ask some of these creative minds to share their thoughts about the edition. And as we're celebrating a 10th birthday, there will be 10 candles on the cake – 10 Daily Illuminators, starting with this one.