Quote from: Jaeger;1078776It is both. Easier rules, and a setting; preferably in one complete game.

I think you are right that many want "simplified" versions of these games. Unfortunately ask 10 players of how the game should be simplified and you get 10 conflicting answers. HERO 6th ed made some significant changes, but for some they didn't go far enough, others they gutted what was good about the system. While it was done in the name of making things easier, it missed the mark there as well adding about 50% more pages than 5th ed, which itself nearly doubled the page count of 4th ed.

Quote from: Aglondir;1078809Turning the ship around for Gurps is doable. New production values would go a long way, and by that  don't mean "sprucing up what you've got" but rather firing your entire in-house design team and replacing them with fresh talent. You don't even need to redo any rules, just take a chainsaw to the endless lists. Get rid of the "cup stacking" skills, the "college catalog" skills, and start unifying some of the disads. "Compulsive Behavior, 5, 10, or 15 points" and "Annoying Personality Trait, 5, 10, or 15 points" guts about 33% of the disad text. No one cares about the definition of Zoology or the difference between Greed and Miserliness.

Sadly, I don't think there's hope for Hero. There's complexity in the core mechanics which causes cascade failure if deleted (i.e. if you delete the Speed Chart, you mess up Flash Attacks. If you delete END, you mess up Charges. Etc.) Deleting Killing Damage and switching to one damage scale invalidates every other NPC stat block. The core power rules alone are 98 pages, and that's without examples. You could make a "Hero Lite" without powers (sort of like how Gurps Lite has no magic) but at that point, you can't run 80% of most genres.

But who knows? Everyone thought Hero was dead with Fuzion, and it came back as 5E. And when they thought that was dead, it came back with 6E, which IMO is the best version yet. Maybe 7E will be called the "Unexpected Phoenix Edition."

I disagree that you can't successfully slim down HERO, it has already been done with 2nd Ed Espionage, and 3rd ed Danger International, Fantasy Hero and Justice Inc. These stand alone games were considerably easier to learn and play and they were quite successful. The difficult part has been getting the developers to come down off the universal generic ledge and provide smaller, less complex variants of their core (generic universal) games.

There is really nothing that complicated about the core system of GURPS or HERO, it is all the add ons that add up. Remove the powers (you can substitute pre-built powers if needed) and HERO is actually a fairly light weight game. There are ways to eliminate the need for the speed chart.

Sureshot,
 How many monthly releases do PEG put out for Savage Worlds?

How many monthly releases does SJ Games release?

You're making shit up.

Quote from: Omega;1078828When was the last time they put out a new expansion or substantial setting book for Gurps?

You mean like GURPS Discworld and GURPS Mars Attacks two or three years ago and Dungeon Fantasy last year?

GURPS is just 'too busy' of an rpg. Too many subskills that add up to nothing but confusion and bloat. They need to strip it down to its nuts and bolds to start again.

Quote from: Omega;10788281: SJG has made that claim before.

2: Then make new product that the existing fans will buy sell the current edition to new fans so everyone is on the same page rather than create another divide.

3: Except they havent marketed to existing fans in how many years? It was close to a decade before Ogre and Car Wars saw reprints. When was the last time they put out a new expansion or substantial setting book for Gurps?

True never noticed that Gurps 4E I think the closest thing we have is Banestorm and though I am not sure how much it is popular. Along with DF which given the amount of support for it they consider a failure.  As for Mars Attacks and Discworld while they are settings they are third party setting. Given how superheroes were popular I expected to see a re-issue of Gurps IST or a new background similar to Hero Games Champions. I take what SJGames says with a huge grain of salt.

Quote from: Lurtch;1078844Sureshot,
 How many monthly releases do PEG put out for Savage Worlds?

I see we are back to moving goalposts again

They do put out material. It's not WOTC 3.5. material yet they are releasing new books. Even Wotc who has more money than SJGames and Pinnacle and many other rpgs companies and they are also cutting back on releasing new books. They era of a new book per month is gone and probably not coming back.

Feel free to link a post from Pinnacle where they are cutting back on publishing new material for Savage Worlds because they do not think it is profitable. You really can't it's okay I expect you to move the goal posts again

The link to the Pinnacle Store you can look it up the number of books they release.

https://www.peginc.com/pinnacle-store/

Quote from: Lurtch;1078844How many monthly releases does SJ Games release?

http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/

Beyond Mars Attacks and Gurps Discworld all SJGames is publishing much if is Dungeon Fantasy which for some odd reason they invested so much in and consider it a failure ( I truly do not understand SJgames sometimes ). Beyond that all you have is them publishing small very specific subject PDFs. VERY useful PDFs yet nothing major imo. I might be interested in say Hot spots Renaissance Venice or the upcoming Gurps Totem Powers and Nature Spirits. Yet I am the exception not the norm. Gamers are also fucking cheap and complain that the Renaissance Venice PDF is too expensive at 8$. Beyond that it's not a strong showing of new releases.

I think TFt while not the death of Gurps will be the true sign that shows SJGames commitment to some form of Gurps. I hope it does well yet they need to market and develop it well. If SJGames think they can just ride the wave of nostalgia towards TFT and expect to make money they maybe in for surprise. They need to step it up and more importantly not do what they are doing with DF and undermine their own product by not displaying confidence in it.

Quote from: Lurtch;1078844You're making shit up.

You are in complete and absolute denial on the state of Gurps.

SJGames has stated in their own yearly report to shareholders that Gurps is not doing well that they plan and are cutting back on supporting Gurps. Their major push was DF and even that seems to them at least to be a failure. Which I don't understand they put much time and effort and money into supporting it. Only to undermine support for it. It's a really terrible way to run a business imo. This is not me talking out of my ass and making shit up this is the reality of how SJGames is approaching Gurps. Now I can't stop you from being in denial about the subject don't fucking accuse me of making shit up when it is right there on the SJGames website. Nor get angry when people call you out for trying to ignore what is in front of your face.

At this point while not putting you on ignore I am not going to waste time responding to you in this thread any longer. Your not offering any solutions unlike other posters who disagree with me and more importantly those same posters are not in complete denial of the situation. At this point your just going to ignore anything that goes against the narrative, keep insulting me and I don't have the time or patience to waste on disingenuous, disruptive trolls.

I've offered numerous solutions. I just don't want GURPS not to be GURPS. I'm putting you on ignore because you're a moron.

Questions that remain unresolved:

1. If Pinnacle had a portfolio that extended to successful board/cardgames, would they cut down on their RPGs?
2. How light does your game currently need to be to reach the ICv2 Top 5?
3. If games are generally lighter than in the past - is this irreversible progress or fashion that can change at any time?
4. Presuming that it makes sense to offer a lighter version of GURPS, which things would you even trim without damaging the game's unique selling points?
5. Looking at the current success of L5R, is it possible that all GURPS needs is foremostly a new major version with modern production values?

I think it's important to recognize what was stated above, that GURPS exists on its own separate channel.  
They have their own forums.
They have their own E-publishing site.
They had, for decades, their own magazine.

They really didn't intersect much with other RPGs, or cross-pollinate much at all.  The people who play GURPS (and HERO) like it and will keep playing it.  There's something to be said for the "chasing WoW" factor.  Changing the essence and foundation of your product in order to market to a theoretical flood of new consumers, while practically guaranteeing losing the old consumers generally doesn't go the way companies think it will.

The issue with HERO and GURPS isn't that they are generic systems.  It's that they aren't systems at all, they're generic toolkits GMs can use to make their own systems.  GURPS 4th has something like 165 pages of ads/disads in alphabetical order flagged with a system of icons you have to learn in order to figure out what type of ad/disad it is.

HERO and GURPS both need a series of stand alone games that are tailored for a specific genre, if not a specific setting.  They also need to allow for characters of various power levels.  I haven't played GURPS since the 80s and even I know 250 point characters for DF was downright braindead.

You're never going to get new blood in by using the teaching/learning methods used when their parents and grandparents were reading RPG books.  700 pages of options ain't gonna do it.  You need a lean, mean fighting machine that gives them everything they need for a specific implementation (and most importantly NOTHING they don't).  Once they learn the system and figure out how to drive the damn thing, then you can pop the engine and start telling them what the pieces do.  Then you don't drop 5 pounds of paper on them, you give them a Builder's Guide filled with a metric fuckton of examples on HOW to design a GURPS/HERO implementation.  Then you can give them however many thousand pages of rules options the current version has expanded into.

If you don't do something like that, don't bother, quit your whining, and keep selling new versions of GURPS to the same people that haven't needed a new version since 3rd.

CRKruger is spot on. I understand why they did 250 points for DFRPG and I run it but I have my players start at 80 points because I like low level player best. I am and my players are okay dying. Having ran DFRPG for non GURPS players at cons they like the super powered 250 point builds .

I do think an all in one box for major genres of play, like I said above, in conjunction with a 3PP program would help build the GURPS user base. It also makes publishing adventures much eaiser because the writers have a baseline to work with.

I'm gonna go with specific implementations that are as concise as possible, aimed toward being booklet sized; fantasy, action, sci-fi, etc. That would've helped (still would help) me get my arms around GURPS. Bare bones would be best. As of right now, as a non-expert, I get kind of an analysis paralysis when looking at the available supplements at W23.

I learned HERO after Fantasy Hero Complete came out and even then I struggled with TLAs and terminology. A 28 page fan created Fantasy Hero Primer did more me what all of the bigger books combined couldn't - show me enough Hero to roll.

I wish I could say that the learning experience with GURPS 4th was a lot different. I eventually got a game pulled together and I really enjoy it but the core books weren't really sufficient for that. To get a handle on terminology for character and setting creation, such as 'lenses', it felt like I had to understand everything. How to be a GURPS GM did for me what the core books should've - get me going.

The Dungeon Fantasy boxed set is fantastic, but it too verges on overload not necessarily because it's too dense. It's just that I feel like I have to get back into learning GURPS mode to feel confident in deconstructing it to understand what I can use to run the type of fantasy game that I want to play. I'd much prefer to build up.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;10788721. If Pinnacle had a portfolio that extended to successful board/cardgames, would they cut down on their RPGs?

If they didn't expand their staff? Of course.

Would they be wise to expand their staff? Probably not after a certain point. What that point? Beyond my experience other than there is one and exceeding that will tank the company when the next recession in the industry hits.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;10788722. How light does your game currently need to be to reach the ICv2 Top 5?

Well none of the RPG lites darlings are in the top 5. Some of them are of comparable complexity to GURPS like Pathfinder and Starfinder. Most are what people would call medium complexity RPGs.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;10788723. If games are generally lighter than in the past - is this irreversible progress or fashion that can change at any time?

Given the composition of the top 5 and the Fantasy Grounds reports and the Orr Group report when it was still going, I think hobbyists don't give two shits about it. The hobbyist who post on forums may give more of a shit. But not the general populace.

I would say what characterizes the top RPGs are fun and interesting setting or genres and excellent presentation. Not just they are full color layouts but well-organize and easier to use. In short system doesn't sell. However there is one major exception.

A system established by a series of successful genre or setting oriented products. For example Savage Worlds, Fate, and Genesys. All enjoyed a spot in the top 5 periodically.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;10788724. Presuming that it makes sense to offer a lighter version of GURPS, which things would you even trim without damaging the game's unique selling points?

Lower points totals and fewer items on the various lists either by omitting, or consolidating items. What most don't realize that GURPS already does this for example Talents and being able to build custom power as advantage or disadvantages. Just don't show the math or present the alternatives and you are good.

Hell you can even eliminate points. Just come up with a series of packages, do the math behind the scenes and present it as something from A, then something from B, and then something from C.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;10788725. Looking at the current success of L5R, is it possible that all GURPS needs is foremostly a new major version with modern production values?

No. What it needs something completely different that has a different presentation of the main system and whatever it address can't be off the wall, a parody, or tries to turn GURPS into something like a another RPGS.

If I was handed the job I would come out with Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Call of Cthulu all grounded at the heroic level of 125 points with the stuff found in D&D, Traveller, and Call of Cthulu with each with adventures showcasing how it works and along with what make it distinctive.

Each adventure's author will need a deep understanding what makes the leader of each genre work and how that would be fun and interesting in a different when implement with the gritnesses and flexibility of GURPS.

For example a GURPS Keep on the Borderlands would showcase more of the life of the region because GURPS has explicit mechanics that define characters beyond how they fight, and cast spells. But do it with light touch.  It would also alter how the Cave of Chaos is setup to reflect the more gritty nature of the rules.

The result wouldn't be using GURPS to emulate D&D to play the Cave of Chaos as written. But instead serve as an example of how to take something like the Cave of Chaos and make a new and unique experience that is fun and interesting to adventure through the use of GURPS.

For the most part, adventurer are doing the same things they always done but with more grit and more options that involved the life of the setting.

A good example is GURPS Traveller. Which was the Third Imperium setting presented using the GURPS rules. Not GURPS emulating Classic Traveller to play within the Third Imperium. With GURPS Traveller it helped that the Third Imperium was ported between a variety of rules system and that it was skill based from the get go. So it was easier see what were quirks of Classic Traveller and what was part of the setting.

To see some of this design thought in action, my Scourge of the Demon Wolf is a GURPS adventure adapted for use with Swords & Wizardry. I originally ran in a campaign where the characters were at 130 points.

Most of the adventures I have currently in the hopper (The Deceits of the Russet Lord, the Night's Bride Coven, Elf Lord's Temple, etc) will work with 120 to 150 pts heroic GURPS fantasy characters.

Scourge and Russet Lord probably can get resolved by characters that are only 75 points.

Quote from: Lurtch;1078862I've offered numerous solutions. I just don't want GURPS not to be GURPS. I'm putting you on ignore because you're a moron.

You are taking the same stance as guys decrying any changes to the HERO system in the  'Streamlining Hero' thread from 2002 on the big purple:
"Anyone making any of your changes would no longer be playing HERO..." (Actual Quote)

How did that attitude work out for the Hero system again???

Quote from: CRKrueger;1078877I think it's important to recognize what was stated above, that GURPS exists on its own separate channel.  
...
They really didn't intersect much with other RPGs, or cross-pollinate much at all.  The people who play GURPS (and HERO) like it and will keep playing it.  ...

And it shows.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1078877Changing the essence and foundation of your product in order to market to a theoretical flood of new consumers, while practically guaranteeing losing the old consumers generally doesn't go the way companies think it will.

True. Switching gears would be a risk.

It's easy to tell other people what to do with their time and resources.

I cannot blame SJG if they just keep doing what they are doing.

Quote from: Lurtch;1078813I cannot wrap my head around Savage Worlds because the system doesn't make sense. GURPS makes sense. I love the Savage World settings and I wish GURPS would treat their system more like that

It doesn't really need to "make sense" for me anymore. I too was tied up in realism + playability and GURPS does this well IMHO, BUT, I've ran and played SW and it just works. Sure, the math seems wonky at first glance. Sure, it seems lighter at first glance than it actually is. But it does what it says on the tin (Fast, Furious, Fun) and I can run it with less prep. But, if you like GURPS you should keep playing GURPS. I founded a GURPS group in Seattle and my cohort is still running it to this day. It takes more effort to recruit or find players, but this is largely true for any game not D&D.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1078877HERO and GURPS both need a series of stand alone games that are tailored for a specific genre, if not a specific setting.  They also need to allow for characters of various power levels.  I haven't played GURPS since the 80s and even I know 250 point characters for DF was downright braindead.

That is a good solution though the rules would need to written so that it's not geared for the Gurps gamer and more Joe or Jane Gamer getting into the hobby.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1078877You're never going to get new blood in by using the teaching/learning methods used when their parents and grandparents were reading RPG books.  700 pages of options ain't gonna do it.  You need a lean, mean fighting machine that gives them everything they need for a specific implementation (and most importantly NOTHING they don't).  Once they learn the system and figure out how to drive the damn thing, then you can pop the engine and start telling them what the pieces do.  Then you don't drop 5 pounds of paper on them, you give them a Builder's Guide filled with a metric fuckton of examples on HOW to design a GURPS/HERO implementation.  Then you can give them however many thousand pages of rules options the current version has expanded into.

The problem is that the a amount majority of the Gurps fanbase adamantly want the teaching/learning methods used when their parents and grandparents were reading RPG books. They want the complexity and crunchiness to remain unchanged. While I agree that as you put it the need for a lean mean fighting machine that gives them everything they need for a specific implementation will be frowned upon, probably considered a betrayal of the core roots of the game or the common phrase in the hobby (nasal, whiny voice) " it's been dumbed down!". Then complain that more books are needed to be bought to complete the system. Even if your version is the easiest, fastest, most accessible generic comprehensive rpg on the market.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1078877If you don't do something like that, don't bother, quit your whining, and keep selling new versions of GURPS to the same people that haven't needed a new version since 3rd.

Trust me they still will. Every now and then when I used to frequent the TBP their would be "why don't people play Gurps, Hero System, Rfuts etc anymore" Posters like myself would say they reduce the complexity and crunchiness and we would be told that it would ruin the rpg, lose it's roots, end of the world. Then go back to complaining for the sake of complaining that not enough gamers are willing to play their favored rpg and put the blame squarely on them.

Quote from: Jaeger;1078887True. Switching gears would be a risk.

It's easy to tell other people what to do with their time and resources.

I cannot blame SJG if they just keep doing what they are doing.

Agreed and seconded.