Quote from: sureshot;1078453Both companies went "fuck it were keeping everything in the rules mostly as is, changing little, and hope better production values sells our product". It fell flat with new and older dissatisfied fans. At least SJGames core books are a reasonable size. Hero Games looked to have learned NOTHING at all and came out with not one large core book but two.

Champions Complete solves the "phone book" problem. $20 and 240 pages.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/107799/Champions-Complete

Quote from: sureshot;1078491It may have more fans true yet are those fans fans just lurking or buying more Gurps product. ... .

Gurps doesn't need it's current fans. They aren't paying the bills by SJG own admission.

 It needs new ones who will buy product.

marketing to just existing fans is what has led them and Hero games on their current RPG death spiral...

Quote from: sureshot;1078453... SJGames and Hero Games could have tried to do more than market to just existing fans. The market trend or at least with fans is for less complexity and crunchiness. Both companies with the latest edition kept both in a market where enough fans are simply not interested in both anymore. At least not enough to spend money on it and voted against it with their wallets. Yes it is a risk and it would alienate older fans either way it seems...

And as sureshot points out - it's not like the risk will put them in a worse position, because:

 

Quote from: sureshot;1078453.the older fanbase is not large enough in number to make SJG and HG profitable...

Sometimes it is hard to remember that your hardcore fanbase is not necessarily your friend...

Quote from: Lurtch;1078420...SJGames made the old fans happy yet even they seem no longer be enough to make Gurps popular. So the choice is to risk a new edition or cut back on publishing Gurps and it seems they are going for the second option. I can't blame them as a properly run company does not keep throwing money at a product that does not make them money.

I can't blame them either.

I just don't think they realize that catering to their hardcore fanbase is what has gotten them to this point.

Quote from: David Johansen;1078505A great as GURPS Lite is, for GURPS to be any lighter, the calculations for Basic Speed, Parry, Penetration, and Injury would all have to change.  ...

So?

Quote from: David Johansen;1078505The thing is that there already is GURPS Ultralight but at a point things stop being GURPS ...

No.

If it says GURPS on the side of the tin by SJG then it is still GURPS.

Many years ago on the big purple a poster did a long thread on how he would simplify the Hero system to make it more accessible. Lots of good ideas of streamlining and cutting out a lot of things that would speed chargen, and make combat run faster.

And he got piled on by many who said "what's the point!? It's no longer "HERO". That would ruin it!"

As it turned out. Hero staying good old Hero was enough to kill off The Hero system.

Quote from: David Johansen;1078505I mean it's all well and good to say, we need to create a massively popular hit setting but if people could just do that everyone would be doing it.  

Yes, if it was easy everyone would have done it.

But it is rather surprising how few actually try...

(maybe a thought worth its own thread...)

Quote from: David Johansen;1078505Throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks is expensive and time consuming and if history is any indicator it's usually the one the creator was less fond of and didn't want to get stuck doing for the rest of their life.

Yes it does take a special kind of drive. And good RPG writing is hard. Maybe SJG just doesn't have it in them anymore.

I Can't blame them.

.

Hence TFT

Quote from: sureshot;1078491The status quo is not doing much to help SJgames. It's the same old chestnut with Gurps and Hero System fans. Don't change anything at all because it might makes us unhappy yet not providing any solutions to the crisis at hand that both companies are facing. Yet somehow clicking their ruby red D20s together going " I wish I wish more people would play Gurps/Hero sysyetm" .

Actually they click ruby red 3d6's, but other than that, you are not wrong.

Quote from: Jaeger;1078515Many years ago on the big purple a poster did a long thread on how he would simplify the Hero system to make it more accessible. Lots of good ideas of streamlining and cutting out a lot of things that would speed chargen, and make combat run faster.

And he got piled on by many who said "what's the point!? It's no longer "HERO". That would ruin it!"

As it turned out. Hero staying good old Hero was enough to kill off The Hero system.

.

Was that "Streamlining Hero" circa 2004?

You guys are all suggesting "magic bullets" and making the same mistake SJ Games made. That this one project or this one change in vision is going to fix GURPS. What needed is a multitude of efforts each doing their own thing with GURPS, within reason. Cutting in SJ Games a portion monetarily of course but pursuing their own creative vision as how to present things and what kind of content to write.

Nobody know what will work unless it is tried. If you are going to push anything then push to let you or something who is interested take a crack at it. And keep in mind this will in addition to whatever SJ Games decides to release for GURPS.

Unlike Hero System SJ Games has the infrastructure and know how to do this digitally at least in the form of Warehouse 23.

Quote from: sureshot;1078491It may have more fans true yet are those fans fans just lurking or buying more Gurps product. As it stands and according to SJGames Gurps at this time for them is less profitable. Are they going to end the line no. Is their going to be less of focus on it probably.  If a rules lite version of Gurps will flop as you suggest then what is your fix. The status quo is not doing much to help SJgames. It's the same old chestnut with Gurps and Hero System fans. Don't change anything at all because it might makes us unhappy yet not providing any solutions to the crisis at hand that both companies are facing. Yet somehow clicking their ruby red D20s together going " I wish I wish more people would play Gurps/Hero sysyetm" .

A third party publishers program. Open the system up to the market and let folks that don't need to support an office, support staff, finance, a warehouse, etc have a crack at it.

Quote from: estar;1078522You guys are all suggesting "magic bullets" and making the same mistake SJ Games made. That this one project or this one change in vision is going to fix GURPS. What needed is a multitude of efforts each doing their own thing with GURPS, within reason. Cutting in SJ Games a portion monetarily of course but pursuing their own creative vision as how to present things and what kind of content to write.

Nobody know what will work unless it is tried. If you are going to push anything then push to let you or something who is interested take a crack at it. And keep in mind this will in addition to whatever SJ Games decides to release for GURPS.

Unlike Hero System SJ Games has the infrastructure and know how to do this digitally at least in the form of Warehouse 23.

I think everyone wants the third party publishers program like you do. It doesn't replace SJ content but it opens up the market and we don't know what folks will create that could hit. The GURPS engine is great. Let's see what people can do.

Quote from: estar;1078343Sure but they are not as old as SJ Games.

How is the age of the company relevant to your statement? It is not. There are publishers, some relatively new, that run like any other business with paid employees, offices and all that. Though FFG has been around something like 24 years now. SJG has been around I believe close to 39. And if FFG is disqualified then so is WOTC as they are only 5 years older than FFG.

Quote from: Omega;1078528How is the age of the company relevant to your statement? It is not. There are publishers, some relatively new, that run like any other business with paid employees, offices and all that. Though FFG has been around something like 24 years now. SJG has been around I believe close to 39. And if FFG is disqualified then so is WOTC as they are only 5 years older than FFG.

Because my statement was about SJ Games being one of the only survivors from the early 80s that had a traditional employee -company setup. Of course they are not the only gaming company like that today but they are one of the oldest if not the oldest that are still intact. There are some other late 70s/early 80s survivors but most at one point or another imploded to a few principals and a bunch of freelancers like Chaosium. That never happened to SJ Games. They had a few scares but managed to overcome them.

Which in my opinion is an indication that for the most part they, SJ and his team know what they are doing. However nobody perfect and the problems with GURPS is one area where things are not perfect. If nothing new is done, I am sure that as long as Steve Jackson in charge that we will see a slooow but steady trickle of PDFs and once in a blue moon a physical product supporting GURPS. And they would be doing it at a small profit.

Whereas, with most other game companies what would happen is the company would crater and the entire line would be out of print. Or more likely implode back to the founders with a few freelancers putting out a trickle of product.

Quote from: Lurtch;1078527I think everyone wants the third party publishers program like you do. It doesn't replace SJ content but it opens up the market and we don't know what folks will create that could hit. The GURPS engine is great. Let's see what people can do.

Well the trick is come up with something that is effective and that makes Steve Jackson comfortable. As Phil said he is the guy in charge.

The main point I would emphasive is that there isn't going to be a 3PP competitor that overtake SJ Games in GURPS. Even if GURPS is released under the OGL, Steve Jackson official stamp of approval is always going to count more than any 3PP no matter how good they are.

The whole Pathfinder D&D 4th edition thing is a special case and a result of Wizards shooting themselves several times in several different ways. It going to be more like Chaosium and Mongoose Runequest.

The moment Chaosium said "Hey we are back with Runequest' It sucked the oxygen out of the 3PP market except for Design Mechanism. Anyway with Warehouse 23, and now the experience working with Gaming Ballistic, SJ Games has options short of releasing open content.

Well, you're free to publish all the free, non IP breaking GURPS support you want as long as it's free.  And there is a fair bit of that.

Personally, I wish I had the time to do free stuff but the equation is pretty simple, good stuff takes time and money so it's hard to do good stuff for free.

As I've said, I think there's space for a Cephus Engine style, clone.  The real barrier is that the fans would never be able to agree on what that should look like and it would just fragment.  The most valuable thing GURPS has to offer is a functional, unified standard.  As is often the case, people are willing to accept the limitations of the existing standard but unable to accept them in the context of a new standard.

The OGL deliberately put D&D into the wild, and let it go.  I'm pretty sure Steve Jackson will never go for that.  Implementing a quality control and compliance system would simply cost more than SJG could ever make from running one.  Or that's basically the argument they've put forward in the past.

Quote from: David Johansen;1078533As I've said, I think there's space for a Cephus Engine style, clone.  The real barrier is that the fans would never be able to agree on what that should look like and it would just fragment.  

Much like D&D.

And yet...

Quote from: Lurtch;1078487Sureshot,

The market is for D&D. If SJ Games launched a "rules lite" 5E people would be unhappy. Do you post on the SJ Games forums? It has more posters than this forum does.

The question is: is the market for D&D because it has a better product? Or is the market for D&D because it has the attention? A second question would be: at which point does streamlining become dumbing down?

Quote from: David Johansen;1078533As I've said, I think there's space for a Cephus Engine style, clone.

Fudge was developed by Steffan O'Sullivan  in part because of GURPS issues with scaling small creatures versus large creatures. While a distinct system from GURPS a fair amount of GURPS design ideas made it way in.

It also includes the idea that it would do what GURPS does but in a much easier to learn package.

Fudge Design Notes
From the Fudge Design Notes

QuoteAnd in fact, though I tend to pick on GURPS later in this document, that's merely because I'm most familiar with it. I would pick more on other game systems, but I don't like most of them well enough to have gotten to know them as well as I know GURPS. So please don't take the comments below as anti-GURPS - they're really not. They're just examples of what I found lacking in all existing games, which drove me to write Fudge.

So folk here wanting something that is a simplified GURPS, Fudge is your ticket. Not only it has its origin in that ethos it also open content under the Open Game License and the core is designed as a toolkit.

If folks are interested in the discussion that led to Fudge you can poke around here. This is part 2 of Steffan's post.

As personal note, I poked around with this myself. What lost my interest is that with 4DF, a +1 bonus has an outsized effect on the odds thus making the steps in character advancement too large of an increment. But then about two years ago I realized that (and tested) a d6-d6 which doesn't have the same issue. But by then I was into other projects and also played AGE which proven to be more elegant way to do what I want to do.

Quote from: David Johansen;1078533The real barrier is that the fans would never be able to agree on what that should look like and it would just fragment.

The advantage of using GURPS as a designer  is using a system that one knows well. While there is an existing audience for GURPS stuff as shown by Gaming Ballistic's kickstarter, the designer still needs to grow their audience to make what they are doing "stick" so to speak.

Quote from: David Johansen;1078533The OGL deliberately put D&D into the wild, and let it go.  I'm pretty sure Steve Jackson will never go for that.  Implementing a quality control and compliance system would simply cost more than SJG could ever make from running one.  Or that's basically the argument they've put forward in the past.

Sorry for not being explict, but in the words of Kenobi there are alternatives now. In the 2000s when this debate first erupted we only had the example of the OGL, and traditional licensing. Since then several successful alternatives emerged like the DM's Guild, Savage World's licensing, and so on. So the choice isn't just between Nothing, traditional 3P licensing, and the OGL.