This post on the report to the stake holders thread on the Steve Jackson Games forums got me to thinking.

Quote from: Kromm;1561847I'd beg GURPS fans to consider and remember one thing: SJ Games could have cut GURPS and its staff – or at least sent us on an unpaid holiday – to reduce the drag on Munchkin and Ogre. Instead, the company paid us to stock the e23 queue with new items . . . while giving us the same vacation time and bonuses as other staff, no less. Hot sellers such as Munchkin paid for that. That's because the current hold on new GURPS releases is a temporary thing, and SJ Games is committed to lifting that hold once it frees up the human resources to do so. Wait and see!

Well, SJG can bloody well consider that we can spend our money elsewhere.  If GURPS got some support it would sell better.

Which brings me to an ugly question.  Is it time for fans of GURPS (and possibly HERO) to take their money elsewhere?

Which makes me also wonder if there's potential for a fan driven, crowd sourced GURPS replacement problem.  I recognize that there's a lot of material out there but for anyone who loves the game and wants to contribute to its success SJG is like a great big wall of piss off.

So, what about it?  Is there potential to build a modular open source 3d6 engine with a realistic tactical bent that offers a compatible touch stone for personal creations without the resistance of a controlling publisher that lacks the vision or desire to go forward?

Quote from: David Johansen;647147Which brings me to an ugly question.  Is it time for fans of GURPS (and possibly HERO) to take their money elsewhere?

Which makes me also wonder if there's potential for a fan driven, crowd sourced GURPS replacement problem.

If you must, there's JAGS. See if Marco will accept people writing for his system and how far he's willing to take it. If I was him, I'd run for the hills, but you never know.

For my point, I have my 5th edition HERO books and they're not going anywhere for a while. In fact, if my players have their way, they won't even be seeing much use in the future...

JAGS is okay but I think the system would need to be a bit looser and more modular.  The whole 4d6-4 thing is a bit of a problem IMO but I like the way he structured the stats and advantages.  Either way though, Marco's a great guy.

HERO 5th?  What about 6th?  Actually that's why I mentioned HERO fans maybe having a stake in something like this too.  Admittedly, without editorial direction and focus these things tend to end in flames.

Still, let's talk core elements.

Classless and levelless of course.  3d6 success rolls, personally I think I'd go roll high rather than low but it's easy to make the flip flop an option. 3d6 stats where one point is one point (sorry HERO).  Less than 6 stats but with substats / advantages.  No supernatural powers in the core character creation rules, but all supernatural powers following a fixed design structure that is in the GM's section.  A strict, keep your stuff substructure compatible or get out, policy would be a must.  We GURPS fans love internal consistancy.  Armor absorbs damage.  I'd like something like the one second round but I think it might be possible to make it part of a longer round with a simple phased system for handling vehicles and superheroes.  I'd like to see a vehicles type system fairly early on.  Something with a little less detail but maintaining the mathematical and physics aspect of it.

Quote from: David Johansen;647154JAGS is okay but I think the system would need to be a bit looser and more modular.  The whole 4d6-4 thing is a bit of a problem IMO but I like the way he structured the stats and advantages.  Either way though, Marco's a great guy.

Those are things to take up with Marco, I don't feel as if I could speak to why he uses 4d6-4 (even if we did have that conversation in the past). And I can only wonder about what you mean by saying "looser and more modular".

Quote from: David Johansen;647154HERO 5th?  What about 6th?

6th was a horrible mistake, one driven by Long's personal ego. But that's really besides the point. HERO has basically failed at this point no matter the cause and the result is a bit of an opening for a replacement.

The only question I would have is if there is a significant market for a replacement...

Quote from: David Johansen;647154Admittedly, without editorial direction and focus these things tend to end in flames.

This is the first thing one must deal with. Such a project needs to have someone in charge, to do the core rules with a single vision- and to approve or disapprove (although the latter would carry little weight if it's a open source type of thing) latter additions by others.

That's why I suggested Marco, he's shown he's up for that level of work needed to produce a core product for what would be a rather complex system and that he's capable of doing more than retreads of other designs. I don't think many others are.

Until you have that person (or step up to be that person yourself), talking about the details isn't going to do much.

I agree that vision matters.  But I also know that my own vision isn't particularly universal or all encompassing.  Of course, with JAGS the work is already done.  That's an advantage and a disadvantage.  You get the direction and focus and a whole lot of the work done but it also removes the aspect of getting people involved and making them feel like a part of the process.

There's also the question of money of course.  Marco owns JAGS and probably would like a share of any money made.  Whereas I'm talking about a very grass roots, crowd sourced and funded project that probably goes on Drive Thru rpg and has a core that doesn't pay out to anybody.  That way individuals could write their settings and supplements, benefit from the single core and all work on the core would be controlled by a core committee.  hmmm design by committee is a bad way to do things on the whole.  Still there'd need to be an oversight committee or some other sort of peer review.

As for me stepping up, I think I'm probably a bit too much of an ass to succeed at centering this sort of thing on my own work.  I did a bunch of notes up for a GURPS replacement / repair but I was never satisfied with it.  Which is the other problem with me.  I never finish anything.

Well, there is always D6. It's like the exact opposite of GURPS in style: loose & easy to play. But it's been released as open and it's completely d6 based and multi-genre.

Good point and a good system but not a replacement for GURPS.  It would serve the desire to self publish with an existing system but if you want internal compatibility you're screwed.

Quote from: David Johansen;647147Is there potential to build a modular open source 3d6 engine with a realistic tactical bent that offers a compatible touch stone for personal creations without the resistance of a controlling publisher that lacks the vision or desire to go forward?

Write it, and people will buy and use it.

But consider whether you just want a GURPS clone (which could be written just as D&D, Traveller etc clones have been written) or something different.

Maybe it's time for that retroclone of The Fantasy Trip that occasionally gets mentioned from time to time.

Take Gurps and get rid of 80% of the skills. Maybe rename a few things. Publish it.

I would start with Mongoose Legends and iterate until you have something you like.

For example nearly everything in the system is in 5% increments. So change it to a d20 roll and +1 for every 5%. Then look at changing over to a 3d6 and so on. The virtue of this approach is that you are starting from a recognizable Open Gaming system and transforming it into another type of system. Rather than just trying to finagle some clones.

I think what important for a GURPS replace are the following point.

*It uses 3d6, roll high or roll low doesn't matter.

*It has attributes centered around 10. Uses roughly a similar scale to D&D/Runequest/etc.

*Attributes dominate the calculation of skills

*Every die roll represents a concrete action that the character is taking. In other worth if you roll to attack it actually represents a single swing of a weapon. The casting of a single spell, etc, etc.

*Characters are highly customizable.

*Combat is deadly to experienced character by the fact their hit points are relatively fixed.

I've still got my Fixing GURPS notes I posted a year or so ago.  But I didn't think there was much enthusiasm for it really.  My ideas generally get pretty far away from my starting point.  Take a look at my various cracks at a D&D redesign over the years.  Dark Passages is about as close as I could get.

I don't know.  Is GURPS like D&D?  Do people play it for the cachet of playing GURPS?

As far as publishing it goes, non-publishing it would seem to be the route I'm talking about.  The problem is creative control.  People need to have a sense of control over their own creative content if the idea is to work.  It cannot be just about me and my ideas or me and my enthusiasm and succeed.  It needs enough people saying "yes, this serves my needs, I can work with this" to form a community.  The idea of one guy putting out enough content to replace GURPS is a bit laughable.

I'd have to stop posting on-line tirades for at least a week.  

Quote from: David Johansen;647254I don't know.  Is GURPS like D&D?  Do people play it for the cachet of playing GURPS?

In the late 80s, the appeal of GURPS was that you can make the character you want how you want. Combined with a well-designed system with lots of tactical options that felt deadly and realistic.

D20 address the customization issue for D&D which hurt just about all RPGs that featured that as part of their design. Suddenly it wasn't an important distinction.  However GURPS good design and how each rule tied into something concrete you did as your character is still appealing but not compelling.

The best way to show how good GURPS is, is to put out concrete examples so people can just pick it up and play. A complete rulebook not toolkit, decent adventures* and settings.

Quote from: David Johansen;647254As far as publishing it goes, non-publishing it would seem to be the route I'm talking about.  The problem is creative control.  People need to have a sense of control over their own creative content if the idea is to work.  It cannot be just about me and my ideas or me and my enthusiasm and succeed.  It needs enough people saying "yes, this serves my needs, I can work with this" to form a community.  The idea of one guy putting out enough content to replace GURPS is a bit laughable.

It would have to be under a open license for that to occur. And if you want to jump start, you need to show how good it is by having adventures and settings ready.

The big problem is that with Mongoose Legends, Openquest fills the niche for a skill based, tactically detailed system based on realism RPG

*Mirror of the Fire Demon a DF adventure is pretty good and one of the better ones released by SJ games.

Anyhow, a few rough thoughts on where I'd travel with it.

1 - relatively few stats with substats that can be bought individually like advantages.  Similar to the arrangement of IQ, Per, and Will in GURPS 4e only more so.  However, the point would be that you'd only need a very small stat block for minor npcs and monsters.

2 - 3d6 + Skill, roll over, try and reduce the number of modifiers to more scalable fields.  For example aiming, bracing, leading the target etc are all rolled into a single modifier range.  Similarly reduce the number of procedural rolls.  Get hit locations and crits off the success roll.

3 - I liked the idea of Agility + Skill as the target number for attacks but on 3d6 it made Agility too good.  It might be as simple to fix as making attacks +5 to hit at point blank range.

4 - Powers should come with advantages and disadvantages and there should be options for swapping them around.  The idea being to cut down on the block bloat that 4e sufferes from and keep character builds simple and easy to read.  Cinematic stuff like trained by a master should be powers as should magic.  Cuts down on subsystem bloat.  Even so, magic should be very different than super powers.

5 - It's fine to have a skill for everything but more of them should go in cascade headings so that the overall list doesn't bloat the book.  I think it doesn't hurt to make some skills cost more than others relative to their difficulty but on the other hand there needs to be some flexability for character specific stuff that won't massively impact play.

Maybe disadvantages could tie in to specific things rather than going into the general pool?

Here's a bit of what I was doing with stats.  I'm not sure I'd do it exactly this way now but it illustrates what I was talking about.  However, here you bought factors in stats and they added into the stats so you didn't actually buy stat values.

Agility = 10 + Musculature + Coordination + Reflexes - Size
Intelligence = 10 + Empathy + Memory + Reason
Perception = 10 + Sight + Hearing + Smell
Strength = 10 + Endurance + Musculature + Size
Willpower = 10 + Confidence + Reason + Resolve

I think it would be better to buy the stats for ten points and have the sub stats act as ways you could buy them up and down for five points to model specific things.  Though I'd probably want to get away from the GURPS points scheme just to keep the separation clear.  Maybe a character's built on ten points and stats cost two points and sub stats and skills cost one.