Quote from: Koltar;647979Bullshit.

They give you (the gamer/customer) credit for having a brain and being able to make choices - how is that 'bad' or 'complex'?

- Ed C.

I see we have a partisan.  

The basic rulebook, with just the character piece, is 336 pages.  The campaign book kicks it up to 576 pages.  

GURPS third edition was 272 pages and I found it easier to use and not especially limiting.  My impression of 4E GURPS was that they added a lot of the options from 3E source books and options into a new core edition.  

So the real issues are accessibility and complexity.  Sure, I can edit out the rules that I do not want.  But now I have a house rules document plus a 576 page two book basic set (note carefully no world book has yet been added).  

Now if GURPS is your passion then it is fine.  But I have the same basic objection to 4E GURPS as I do to Pathfinder -- giving people a 600 page rulebook is not the way to speed up rules mastery.  It's not that simple == good, but that there is a cost to making people go through a ton of rules.

You may be blessed with a group of active gamers with good system mastery in place.  But training people to understand GURPS has gotten tougher with time and the modern rulebooks don't help.  If they work for you and your circle of friend then more power to you.  But everything looks easy when you are very familiar with it.

Quote from: estar;647680A minor problem is that it would be nice to just to have some ready to run material like folk enjoy for D&D and other fantasy RPGs.

Do you mean adventures? Or easy to run, D&D style fantasy? Some sort of Monster Manual?

Quote from: VotanNow if GURPS is your passion then it is fine. But I have the same basic objection to 4E GURPS as I do to Pathfinder -- giving people a 600 page rulebook is not the way to speed up rules mastery. It's not that simple == good, but that there is a cost to making people go through a ton of rules.

Quote from: David JohansenSorry dude 4e's just a craptacular introductory product.

What about the free introductory level product? You can run that free adventure I posted above with it. Hell, you can run dozens of different campaigns with the lite version.

I'm not even a big Gurps fan, but I can see that almost every base is covered by the game line. I think Gurps does have issues with PR and marketing. But I'm not a RPG store owner, so I don't have a dog in that race.

Quote from: David JohansenWhat's missing? Well, a proper bestiary covering real animals for starters. A vehicles book that covers a wide range of real and futuristic vehicles. A realm management and or mercantile economics book. New settings, I know settings supposedly haven't done all that well but that always seems weird given how many people claim to have loved the world books and hated the system. Adventures and solo adventures, yes solo adventures, why not damnit?

I'm trying to understand; Do you want Gurps more or less complicated? You say the ruleset is incomprehensible, but you want a Gurps: Mercantile Economics book? Wait, Fuck!, hey have that too. Also, Realm Management.

Vehicles, I hear, is still coming. Again, do you want something simple, or the complex Gurps: Vehicles of 3e? I think there are plenty of usable vehicles in the genre/world/time period books already available.

A collected bestiary would be great. As they've done it now, they have the stats for beasts all over the place(riding animals and game in Low Tech, Dinosaurs in Lands Out of Time etc.). A creature compendium would be a great addition, even if the just collected the stat blocks and descriptions from all of their other published books.

Every time I read someone wanting a 'bestiary' to me that just means they got over-programmed by D&D and the D&D mindset that there HAS to be a 'Monster Manual' or 'Bestiary' all the time in every RPG.

No, there really doesn't have to be one.

- Ed C.

Quote from: Koltar;648019Every time I read someone wanting a 'bestiary' to me that just means they got over-programmed by D&D and the D&D mindset that there HAS to be a 'Monster Manual' or 'Bestiary' all the time in every RPG.

No, there really doesn't have to be one.

They are nice though. I guess it would remove much of the attraction of the existing supplement treadmill. GURPs is an alright system but the presentation and layout aren't very good, as others have mentioned. You can get it to do more or less what you want but only by forcing the GM to put on a designer's hat, and most GMs aren't willing to do that, nor should they be. Ergo, by its nature a GM needs to be experienced before setting it up so it's not really an entry point into the hobby.

KrakaJack, GURPS Lite is only good for modern and historical games and it's actually even denser than the core book.  There's a lot in there for so few pages.  I've been advocating for a GUPS Lite Fantasy supplement for years and years.  I've even put some work into writing one but since I can't just copy and paste the magic rules from the Basic Set and some of the races and monsters from Banes Storm without permission (yes I've asked, no they won't) it won't ever be quite as compatible as it should be.  Dungeon Fantasy requires the Basic Set so it's not the introductory material I'm talking about.

Nor is it in any way contradictory to want complex material in supplements while wanting a simple core.  A simple core makes it easier to bring in new people.  The economic rules mean that I've got rules for the times when the PCs all want to be merchants.  Really I've even had an entire party of Doctors once, can we get advanced surgical rules please?

Quote from: Koltar;648019Every time I read someone wanting a 'bestiary' to me that just means they got over-programmed by D&D and the D&D mindset that there HAS to be a 'Monster Manual' or 'Bestiary' all the time in every RPG.

No, there really doesn't have to be one.

That not what many gamers I am trying to introduce GURPS to tell me.

My criticisms of GURPS are not pulled out of my ass but born of talking and playing with hundreds (low hundreds) of gamers in the western Pennsylvania.

Now I know that you work for a game store and that different regions of the country have different opinions when it comes to what gamers like and don't like. Outside of Western PA I only talked to a far fewer number of games mostly when I stop at the local gamestore when I am on a business trip.

With all that caveat out of the way, the overwhelming response I get in response to adopting GURPS is that it is way too much work.

So either I am getting a skewed idea of how the market as a whole perceives GURPS. Or that it is truly an issue with GURPS. But I feel I have an accurate view based on the same opinion being voiced to me year after year by new gamers.

And what I really don't like is how SJ Games and the forum members over on the SJ Games initially responded to my initial posting on this issue both publicly and privately. I wrote a polite email explaining the problem and why.

I didn't expect them to agreed with me as they supposedly have access to far better data than I do (their sales figures). But I did expect a better response than the total insulting brush off I got. It especially annoying because in my day job I often deal with challenging technical problems from customers that are sometime very unhelpful. If treated them like I was treated I would be fired.

And to be clear this is a blind spot in an otherwise excellent gaming company. I seen this before where companies and individuals that are very good and very competent have a handful of blind spots that they can't or won't admit that they suck at. The lack of a decent ready to run GURPS product is one of them.  

Transhuman Space, World War II, and Discworld are not good subjects for a
powered by GURPS RPG that would draw in gamers looking for alternatives.

Quote from: Votan;647989The basic rulebook, with just the character piece, is 336 pages.  The campaign book kicks it up to 576 pages.  

GURPS third edition was 272 pages and I found it easier to use and not especially limiting.  My impression of 4E GURPS was that they added a lot of the options from 3E source books and options into a new core edition.  

So the real issues are accessibility and complexity.  Sure, I can edit out the rules that I do not want.  But now I have a house rules document plus a 576 page two book basic set (note carefully no world book has yet been added).  

I disagree about complexity. GURPS issues is solely one of presentation and accessibility. Having used many complex RPGs, I feel that the GURPS core books are an outstanding reference book. But reference books are not what is needed to entice gamers from other systems into playing your game when they seek out alternatives.

One other thing about GURPS Lite: it is totally settingless.  Yes you can run Caravan to Ein Arris and All In A Night's Work.  But frankly it just doesn't give you enough to run much of a game.

It's a great hand out.  I use it with new players as such.  Of course then they want the core book in hand for more options and that's when the trouble begins.

Quote from: KrakaJak;648008Do you mean adventures? Or easy to run, D&D style fantasy? Some sort of Monster Manual?

Caravan to Ein Arris is a very bland  introductory adventure especially if you want to get players of Dungeons & Dragons to adopt your product. They would have been better off using something based around Orcslayer with more roleplaying involved.

Dungeon Fantasy primarily benefits those who already use GURPS, like me. As a introductory products it has the twin strikes of being an add-on and requiring a total of 5 books to use. Two Core books, Magic, DF 1, and DF 2. And while you get a ton of characters options, a good selection of equipment, the treasure selection and monster selection pale compared to the other alternatives that people can pick.

And Creatures of Night is typically of why SJ Games struggles with bestiaries. Except it is full of creatures nobody ever heard of which causes the same problem Runequest 2nd Edition and Tekemel had.

In my experience most gamers when looking for alternatives are not typically looking to jettison the entirety of what they had with D&D. Often they are looking for a better D&D. Better characters customization, more realistic and detailed combat and so on.

Two things are affecting GURPS sales negatively no matter how much of it gets converted to expensive PDFs: GURPS itself, and the current RPG industry.

Not sure how an open/clone/SRD/whathaveyou of GURPS would be more popular?

GURPS' "problem" has always been it does what it says on the tin.  It gives you everything you need.  The problem is, you need to create not only the setting from the available options, but the game itself.

If they actually cared about selling it, they could do a lot worse then look to how SW products are structured.  A series of specific games "Powered by GURPS", would show people how to take 12 million pieces and make it into something specific.

Quote from: CRKrueger;648058GURPS' "problem" has always been it does what it says on the tin.  It gives you everything you need.  The problem is, you need to create not only the setting from the available options, but the game itself.

If they actually cared about selling it, they could do a lot worse then look to how SW products are structured.  A series of specific games "Powered by GURPS", would show people how to take 12 million pieces and make it into something specific.

Agreed. GURPS as is stands in 4th Edition asks you to read 600 pages and decide for yourself which 100 you need for your campaign. This is great as a reference book, as others have said, but it would be rather more accessible if it was (say) a 128 page "core rules" book supplemented by settings.

My experience with GURPS is much the same as others described and I'm sure I've mentioned it before.

I really liked the 4e books at first, but every time I sat down to do anything with them I realized that the toolkit approach essentially meant hundreds of hours of work to do damn near anything to have enough ready to use material to actually run a campaign.

I'm not the only one - all the GURPS people in my area are either sticking with 3e or they just use 4e lite to run historical games.

I think GURPS is a fine system. It really does need just some genre books full of ready to use material. If you could combine the tons of ready to use material you get from games like Palladium's products with the rules of GURPS, you'd really have something (note - I'm not saying convert Palladium to GURPS, I'm saying have books of ready to use stuff like Palladium does).

Quote from: jgants;648080I really liked the 4e books at first, but every time I sat down to do anything with them I realized that the toolkit approach essentially meant hundreds of hours of work to do damn near anything to have enough ready to use material to actually run a campaign.

If you have GURPS already then the various PDF lines are really useful.

GURPS Action
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy
GURPS Monster Hunters

BaneStorm has a lot of useful of stuff for any fantasy campaign as well.

Quote from: estar;648087If you have GURPS already then the various PDF lines are really useful.

GURPS Action
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy
GURPS Monster Hunters

BaneStorm has a lot of useful of stuff for any fantasy campaign as well.

Those games sound very tongue in cheek by the titles, are they serious approaches or just lots of wacky gonzo and 4th wall stuff?  I don't have any interest in Munchkin the RPG (at least not as a main fantasy line).