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Post by jonas on Jul 8, 2014 7:03:01 GMT -8
When I started playing GURPS (around 3rd ed), Steve Jackson Games were printing awesome and fantastical books like it was no tomorrow.
There were splat books full of ideas to use in any campaign: GURPS Dinosaurs, GURPS Dragons, GURPS Shapeshifters.
There were deep historical source books that were so good that I actually cheated and used them as sources in school projects: GURPS Aztecs, GURPS Russia, GURPS Age of Napoleon.
There were books just to awesome to exist in another system: GURPS The Prisoner, GURPS Illuminati, GURPS Bunnies & Burrows.
Last time I looked on Steve Jackson Game's homepage, the only new big book was GURPS Zombies, also know as GURPS Low Hanging Fruit. And what is Dungeon Fantasy supposed to be? GURPS We Would Rather Be More Like DnD?
What happened with the system and the company that used to give me so much love? Did Munchkin make to much money for them, so they didn't need to make more books? Was it something Stork said?
I miss GURPS. :-(
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Post by mook on Jul 8, 2014 11:41:31 GMT -8
Lo, there do I see my hardcovers, back to the beginning. Lo, they do call me. I hear ya, Jonas. I sometimes miss the 3E days as well. Though I still have my 150+ 3E books, most of them have not felt my geeky caress for far too long. But while I do miss hardcovers, I don't miss GURPS, because it's still chugging along quite nicely (thank God! It's all I run). IF you can tolerate PDFs, or even prefer PDFs (as I've come to, though whenever possible I of course want both), there are a bajillion 4E GURPS books. SJ Games releases a new PDF pretty much every Thursday morning. Once a month, this is Pyramid magazine, which is basically a monthly GURPS supplement, held to the same high standards as any of their products. Sometimes it is a PDF release of a 3E book. And sometimes, deliciously, it is a New GURPS Book. The main GURPS page always shows the last 15 PDF releases, which atm looks like 4x Pyramid, 2x 3E PDFs, 3x 4E PDFs, and 6x Car Wars/AADA. Also helpful are the forum lists of of all PDFs released in 2014 and in 2013. Finally, the Warehouse 23 page shows 223 GURPS 4E products! 20 of those are freebies, 67 are Pyramids, and the remaining 136 are new products, which is already creeping up on the amount of 3E books made. Even though there seems to be only around 17 actual, physical books for 4E, a far cry from the old days... there is still a friggin' sea of solid, well-written GURPS books available. They're just digital only. What happened with the system and the company that used to give me so much love? Did Munchkin make to much money for them, so they didn't need to make more books? The smash success of Munchkin is likely the only reason a Steve Jackson Games still exists, period. As they say over on their forums now and again, the choice isn't between making Munchkin or making GURPS; it's between making Munchkin or making nothing. My understanding is that the GURPS line is profitable, but only barely. The RPG zeitgeist of the day (barring D&D, of course, which is and has always been its own animal) simply is not multi-volume, crunchy systems anymore. Add on top of that the soaring costs of shipping, warehousing, printing, paper, coupled with the overall sluggish state of the American economy and ever-shrinking niche that is tabletop RPGs... well, it seems no surprise to me that when I look around, the majority of my favorite game companies from the '90s either no longer exist, or are a shadow of their former selves. Munchkin has kept SJ Games profitable through years when that was no easy feat, and continues to do. But I believe the only reason Steve Jackson continues even publishing GURPS is the same reason he released the ridiculously-but-awesomely mammoth Ogre Designer's Edition ... because it's his company, and he loves the game, so he'll keep publishing it until it starts dragging into the red and threatening the company as a whole. And what is Dungeon Fantasy supposed to be? GURPS We Would Rather Be More Like DnD? To be fair, the Dungeon Fantasy line was released in direct response to constant requests from the GURPS community. D&D remains the gateway for the majority of the hobby, and when those players used to fantasy hack and slash with firmly delineated choices want to try something new, they often don't know what to do with a do-it-yourself, point-buy system like GURPS. Dungeon Fantasy is basically the answer to the question, "What's the easiest way to use the GURPS Basic system to emulate dungeon crawling?" To me, it's less "We Would Rather Be More Like DnD" and more "This is how you can shave off one tiny facet of the goodness that is GURPS to do what DnD does."
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Post by ayslyn on Jul 8, 2014 14:27:21 GMT -8
There were books just to awesome to exist in another system: GURPS The Prisoner, GURPS Illuminati, GURPS Bunnies & Burrows. Considering Bunnies and Burrows was it's own game well before GURPS came out, I would say that this is very easily argued. ^.^ The RPG zeitgeist of the day (barring D&D, of course, which is and has always been its own animal) simply is not multi-volume, crunchy systems anymore. Likewise, the success that Shadowrun 5e is having seems to suggest that there is plenty of room for them as well. Ya know... Rereading that it kinda comes across more confrontational that I intended. Certainly, not my plan to be hostile. It's just that I keep seeing this "truism" being trotted out and the evidence not only doesn't support it, but kinda contradicts it.
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Post by mook on Jul 9, 2014 1:17:20 GMT -8
No hostility ascribed, Ayslyn, and I have absolutely no problem thinking I might be completely off-base. Part of the problem, of course, is there just aren't any real hard sales numbers from most RPG publishers. "Success" is hard to quantify subjectively, in the absence of objective numbers. I hope there really is evidence out there showing that gamers still loves them some mechanics-crunchy games, but I don't know where I would find it. From my own corner of perception, I was barely aware Shadowrun had even released a fifth edition - I saw it mentioned in a few forum headers, but I haven't played it, no one I personally know has played it or even owns the books, afaik. At the local conventions I attend, outside of the D&D/Pathfinder crowd there is a lot of (wonderful!) interest in more abstract RPGs like Fate Core (though admittedly there's a lot of GURPS love too!). Searching the Strategicon website, I do see that the last few cons have had a handful of Shadowrun games, but I didn't play 'em, didn't know anyone who played 'em, and didn't hear any buzz about 'em. (I'm not bashing Shadowrun, btw -- just pointing out that your example of a successful game is one barely on my radar, except for the recent release of a Shadowrun video game on Steam). Anyhoo, in my brain, when I picture all of the RPG players of the world as a crowd of tiny people, a giant Katamari Damacy ball of Pathfinder/D&D rolls through and escapes with the vast majority of them stuck to it. Of the remaining fraction, there are a few grognards who still prefer crunchy-type systems like GURPS, HERO, and Shadowrun. I feel like a lot of that is nostalgia -- would a system like the new Shadowrun fare so well today if it weren't Shadowrun? I don't know. The remaining fraction of that fraction seem to be looking for more "hippy games," things like Fate Core and Fiasco. As mentioned, though, I don't have any hard data to back any of that up -- it's just how it "feels" from where I sit. I'm curious to know what kind of evidence you had in mind that contradicts that, because personally, I'd be glad to know the ol' Crunch Love is still alive and well!
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Post by ayslyn on Jul 9, 2014 10:54:33 GMT -8
The publishers don't give sales figures, but some of the sellers do. Shadowrun 5e broke all the sales records DriveThru had. Since it's release it's consistently been on their hottest sellers list. In fact, all of it's supplements have also been on it since their release. Even the fairly niche ones, like the Assassin's Primer and Gun Heaven 3. I don't know if there is any sort of ranking to how those are listed, but Gun Heaven3 is at 52, and the Assassin's Primer is at 68...
Some people certainly seem to think that only one or the other can exist, but there is plenty of room for both rules light and crunchy games out there.
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Post by greatwyrm on Jul 9, 2014 14:42:34 GMT -8
SJGames' stakeholder report shows Munchkin basically runs the show. I'm sure there's still plenty of GURPS love in Austin, but you gotta go with what pays the bills.
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Post by jonas on Jul 10, 2014 6:03:33 GMT -8
Thanks Mook, I feel a little better now. There were books just to awesome to exist in another system: GURPS The Prisoner, GURPS Illuminati, GURPS Bunnies & Burrows. Considering Bunnies and Burrows was it's own game well before GURPS came out, I would say that this is very easily argued. ^.^ Ach! Hoisted by my own petard! ;-)
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Post by ayslyn on Jul 10, 2014 11:37:42 GMT -8
Yeah, that was during the period where Steve snatched up every game license he could and converted it to GURPS.
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Post by Andy Evans on Aug 21, 2014 5:06:29 GMT -8
The Madness Dossier by Kenneth Hite published on PDF by SJ games might be worth checking out. Certainly sounds interesting from listening to the Ken and Robin talk about stuff podcast anyway.
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