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Old 01-14-2013, 10:17 AM   #104
Kromm
GURPS Line Editor
 
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
Default Re: GURPS Releases seem to be slow?

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Originally Posted by Dammann View Post
I am starting to wonder if this is still true. Is it just a vocal minority who want it?
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Originally Posted by Mailanka View Post
A lot of people don't use vehicles at all. For example, Dungeon Fantasy is quite popular, and I'd be astonished if a DF gm got any use out of Vehicles.
Though this is a long thread that has resurrected an even longer discussion, that's the essence of it. GURPS is a generic system, but that doesn't mean that all genres are equal . . . we do track sales and have marketing staff, and if (for instance) GURPS Dungeon Fantasy is what moves fastest and has the best ROI, then the hack-and-slash fantasy subgenre gets easier author approval and greater in-house resources. As it happens, the most popular genre is fantasy – a reflection of the RPG business in general – and that's a genre where vehicles aren't a big deal. Add in a few more genres like that and you must confront the other truth about generic games, which is that most of the people who buy them are single-genre gamers. Reality is that a relatively small subset of our customer base want a book specifically on vehicles. If GURPS were instead a dedicated modern-day or futuristic sci-fi RPG, things would be very different.

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Originally Posted by Dammann View Post
[...] how to make a stat block for them that is consistent with similarly derived stats [...]
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Originally Posted by ciaran_skye View Post
[...] guidelines for getting some of the stat block from real life performance would be nice [...]
That's probably the feature that would make the book most widely useful, if we're being honest. Though "GURPS City Stats for vehicles" wouldn't be any more useful to gamers who don't play in genres with vehicles, or to those who simply prefer the work to be done for them, it would at least bring in the math-phobes and hand-wavers, and probably double the size of the potential market.

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Originally Posted by ciaran_skye View Post

I'm patient, especially with Spaceships existing, and my only big question is whether the hinted-at Armory will be included in Vehicle Design or at least released within a reasonable time frame afterward.
GURPS Armourer's Handbook is planned as a separate release. People agitating for GURPS Vehicle Design so that they can design weapons are campaigning for the wrong supplement. I'd hope to be able to get the two out the door reasonably close together, but I can make no promises.

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Originally Posted by Mailanka View Post
Vehicles is really for the people who want a way to stat hypothetical vehicles.
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Originally Posted by Mailanka View Post
Vehicles is ideal for a game where you have a gearhead in charge.
Taken together, those two statements are exactly right. Vehicle Design is for the system-hacker GM who is running a vehicle-heavy genre, has a personal interest in vehicles, prefers design to adaptation, and doesn't mind math. Players in campaigns run by people like that sometimes find it useful, too, but there's no denying that this is a GM-centric product, which of course further limits potential sales.

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Originally Posted by Mailanka View Post

It's the GURPS Vehicles Design System. It would surprise me if it also contained expanded rules for actually using vehicles.
From Day One, the title has been Vehicle Design. It's intended to be about designing vehicles. David Pulver has also spoken with us about something like GURPS Vehicle Action or GURPS Vehicles in Action, which would be about everything else to do with vehicles.

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Originally Posted by Mailanka View Post

But what about GURPS Action? In some examples of GURPS Action, vehicles will play a central role.
The GURPS Action aesthetic is "grab and go," however. Even in a vehicle-heavy campaign, a catalog would be more valuable than a set of design rules. Just about all the positive fan mail we've had about Action has been of the "Thank goodness I no longer have to drag around a stack of rulebooks!" variety. I suspect that even gearhead Action gamers would get more use out of a slim PDF filled with ready-to-go Hollywood favorites. I'm not saying that would be a hot seller, since once you get out of fantasy, the leading subgenres tend to be futuristic ones . . . explaning why we haven't released a lot more Action supplements to date.
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GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games
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