Quote from: danbuter;531146I expect Gurps to continue as a wandering zombie that gets one or two fresh infusions of blood per year.

Ha!  Exactly.

Quote from: danbuter;531146SJ isn't doing much with Gurps anymore, because Munchkin is killing it in sales. Unless Munchkin sales start to drop, I expect Gurps to continue as a wandering zombie that gets one or two fresh infusions of blood per year.

tl;dr - we fix GURPS by making capitalism work differently than it does.

JG

Quote from: James Gillen;531211we fix GURPS by making capitalism work differently than it does.

Explain.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;531213Explain.

The feedback I'm getting so far is that SJG has its priorities skewed by not redesigning GURPS or remarketing it as a top priority, because their top priority is Munchkin- which of course it should be, because it makes the most profit, and they're a for-profit business.

JG

Quote from: James Gillen;531218The feedback I'm getting so far is that SJG has its priorities skewed by not redesigning GURPS or remarketing it as a top priority, because their top priority is Munchkin- which of course it should be, because it makes the most profit, and they're a for-profit business.

That's what I thought you meant.  Selling more copies of GURPS (by putting a gun to someone's head or not) will not fix GURPS.  The RPG doesn't need fixing.

On my facebook page, SJG is going on about the new edition of Ogre.

Ogre.


I have never heard a single person even discuss Ogre, let alone play it.


Meanwhile, still no GURPS Fantasy Bestiary.

I asked Kromm about a bestiary on his LJ maybe a year ago, and he said it's not going to happen. That's when I sold all of my Gurps 4e books. I've given up on them.

Quote from: danbuter;531257I asked Kromm about a bestiary on his LJ maybe a year ago, and he said it's not going to happen.

Seriously?  Yikes.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;531079In the book, it tells both first-time GMs and players to not get bogged down in all the skills and traits they have listed.  Otherwise, a game will never get started if players can't decided which to choose for their character.  A good GM will flat out say what the limits are so players can join in quickly.

And the referee determines those limits from the core book, how? And how much is the average referee willing to spend doing this compared to say Savage Worlds or one of the Basic Roleplaying variants for his chosen genre.

In my experience not many. I know this because since early 90s I been involved the western PA gaming community and had dealing with a good number of gamers in the area (probably around 200 or so by this point). Now I haven't talked about GURPS with everyone, but it has come up more than a few times. And I have run demos and some campaigns with them.

Their reply comes mostly down to this.

"This is a great game, Rob. But I wouldn't be playing it if it wasn't for you. I just don't want to wade through all the books or even GURPS Lite just to run my dungeon/starship/superhero/horror adventure."

This has come up so often that I believe it is a major issue for GURPS and a major cause in why it declined faster in sales than it's competitors.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;531079Then you run into GURPS rules that are shaved specifically for each genre.  
And players need to buy all three books to have the complete rules.  

No my proposal are for complete RPGs with no other rule book. That why I specifically said "Powered by GURPS." See Prime Directive by Armadillo Design for an example of what a powered by GURPS RPG looks like.

Another example is Chaosium Call of Cthulu versus Runequest versus Stormbringer. All three use Basic Roleplaying but all three are standalone RPGs.

Also I am not advocating a overhaul of the GURPS line. Only that a handful of complete "Powered by GURPS" RPGs be created as a introduction to the rest of the line. These would greatly lower the barrier to get started with GURPS and put the purchasers to the core books and the rest of the line in their desire to expand what they can do with GURPS.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;531079People would not buy any "D&D powered by GURPS" books when there are "Official D&D" books to buy.  Plus, SJGames would have to buy licensing if their books at too similar to D&D characters.

1) GURPS already has D&D powered by GURPS. It called the Dungeon Fantasy line. The first three books occupy three of the top ten selling GURPS PDFs.

2) A powered by GURPS Fantasy RPGS doesn't need to be GURPS D&D. Instead is should focus on 150 pt fantasy character and provide a selection of monsters, items, spells with roughly the same coverage as D&D, Runequest and the other major fantasy RPGs.

My group recruited many gamers in NW Pa since the late 80s to the GURPS. They wanted to do roughly the same things as they did in AD&D, dungeons and treasure findin but they wanted to do it GURPS style. Not have GURPS emulate AD&D. Understand the difference?

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;531079I'm not sure why people would move away from D&D if they still only want to play the D&D theme?

Back in the day it was the Bell Curve of 3D6, Character Customization, and the detailed combat. Of these Character Customization was the single greatest reason propelling players that switched to other fantasy RPGs. GURPS also appealed because it made sense and it was easy to real world concepts to what you were trying to do in GURPS. GURPS was and remains a great design for RPGs.

Today the d20 system eviscerated GURPS advantage in customization. And without a intro product this hurt GURPS badly with gamers look for an alternative to D&D for fantasy RPGs.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;531079I can see problems with GURPS as far as a GM not being able to create a world of his or her own that is as expansive as D&D's to play in.  It is too much work for one person.  D&D makes it easy for a DM to not have to create anything for a game.  So a hell of a lot more D&D games get played.

D&D works in this regard because they provide lists of items, monsters and other stuff. So do other Fantasy RPGs. But GURPS has always being notorious for having piss poor monster support in the core rules. In 3rd and 4th edition there been some excellent monster books printed but you really have to like GURPS to get to the point where you are willing to buy them.

I will have the say that Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 1 is really good for D&D style fantasy in GURPS. It much better than then any of their past 3rd or 4th edition books in that regard.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;531079GURPS stands out now from all the other generic RPGs.  It doesn't bother me if there is no "D&D" setting for GURPS, because I can make a D&D world of my own if I bothered to, or create any fantasy setting that has no player restrictions.

Try to get a bunch of other gamers to play or referee GURPS and let me know how it goes. I am not argue GURPS isn't a outstanding game. I am arguing that it the way is presented discourages players from taking up the game.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;531079All RPGs are hurting now compared to the 1980 - 1995 years.  And all generic RPGs are hurting even more.

Yes ALL RPGs are down, but GURPS didn't have to fall faster relative to other RPGs. We have counter example in the generic markets. Savage World, and the BRP related games.  How are they doing now? Have they fell faster than their competitors. How Hero System doing? My view is that the GURPS/Hero System approach is not going to fly and that it was a fluke that it worked when it did. The better approach is a hybrid of what Chaosium does and what SJ Games does. Have a complete RPGs written to the standards of the major competitors of a genre to showcase your system and then have the generic core rulebook and supplements behind it.

Quote from: Amberfriend;531143SJG could make the game easier to understand if they wished.

GURPS Lite does a good job of this. I hand out copies when I start up a new group and it works just fine.

I wish Gurps had gone OGL. Then we'd probably have a real fantasy and scifi game made from those rules (with setting embedded).

Quote from: James Gillen;531218The feedback I'm getting so far is that SJG has its priorities skewed by not redesigning GURPS or remarketing it as a top priority, because their top priority is Munchkin- which of course it should be, because it makes the most profit, and they're a for-profit business.

For me, it fine that Munchkin is by far their #1 priority. They have to go with what the number tell them and Munchkin is where it at.

What blows my mind, is what they do when they work on GURPS. For example right now there are preparing a GURPS 4e Discworld book. Probably will be the next hardcover release. I question whether that project will be the best value for the time spent on GURPS. I think they will generate far more sales by putting that effort into doing a "Powered by GURPS" Fantasy RPG.

Or at the least consolidating and editing all the Dungeon Fantasy books into a single "powered by GURPS" fantasy RPG. I prefer 150 pt GURPS fantasy to the 250 pt Dungeon Fantasy version.

Now a lot of the dynamics revolve around what the freelancers are want to so that has to be factored in.

WHAT I WOULD DO:

package up GURPS Lite as "The Nostalgia Trip". Have Kovalic do the cover, a homage to the old Purple'y/blue TFT cover. (and i only say Kovalic because apparently they only sell products with cartoons on them now...)

streamline the rules EVEN MORE, and OGL it.  Then, since the only other thing they can apparently do is sell cards, package up "Bestiary" decks, Equipment/Skill decks, etc.

New gamers would think it's a new game, and the OSR crowd would fondly remember their Melee/Wizard/TFT days, and buy-in based on that.

SOLVED.

Quote from: danbuter;531264I wish Gurps had gone OGL. Then we'd probably have a real fantasy and scifi game made from those rules (with setting embedded).

I very much agree with this. Put the risk on the poor sap who willing to put in his own time and money.  I would happily write for a OGL/CC version of GURPS even with the smaller market.

It isn't about how SJ Game treats freelancers. From what I know the freelancers receive excellent treatment and SJ Games is generous in their rates. Their document templates are complicated but that is only headache of writing for SJ Games that I know.

The appeal of a OGL/CC version of GURPS is creative control over what you create. No matter how good SJ Games treats their freelancer at the end of the day the stuff you write becomes theirs. And if I am going to put all this time in I rather have it remain mine.

So hence the major reason I write for older edition D&D than GURPS. It no secret that 75% of the material in Majestic Wilderlands was developed in my GURPS Campaign. The classes are adaptations of the templates I created. For those with Majestic Wilderlands you can see the GURPS version of the Myrmidon here. (http://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/Gods%20-%20Set,%20Myrmidon%20Template.pdf)

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;531140This is the first complaint I've heard about rolling under.  I personally like to roll within my skill range when I play an RPG.  As my skill increases, the range for my success roll increases.  If I succeed, then I can worry about whether it accomplished anything or not against an NPC.  Just like in Fallout 3.

Same here, although to be fair Frank's conversion idea to make the percentile roll-over is simple and elegant as well. I'd be perfectly happy using that too.