[Kromm]

Which compels me to emphasize that this general sentiment is what has delayed the project for so long. Were we convinced that we could sell Third Edition-style bestiaries, with seat-of-the-pants stats blocks and no point costs or complicated advantage builds, there would've been Fourth Edition bestiaries years ago. By our fairly careful estimates, adding in the need to build beasts on points multiplies the workload by three or four. More harshly, that need narrows the pool of writers from "dozens" down to "one or two we'd really trust to get the stats and formatting right."

That's strictly FYI. It isn't a criticism of the desire to have points totals. I understand that viewpoint, and actively endorsed it in DF 5 and DF 9 (and, really, in DF 3). But I won't lie and say it's a marginal extra. It's most of the work, and nobody much has filled us with faith that they could turn in hundreds of critters with 90%+ of the stats and formatting correct. We're okay with having to edit 90% to 99%, but not with having to edit work that's at 80%, 70%, or worse. Even some very good and long-established GURPS writers only bat .500 on stats and/or formatting . . . and when it's "and" and not "or," that can amount to 25%.

We're still looking at plans for it and still discussing what to do. We have somebody in mind, and we made more progress on 4/30/2010. But the above requirement for crunch means we cannot assign that work until that somebody is done other work.

Originally Posted by kmunoz

It's my understanding that GURPS Bestiary has been attempted and put on hold more than once, due to a variety of factors. I can imagine how difficult it must be to put together: it requires more art than most other books and is 99.9% crunchy.

It's mainly the crunch that's delaying it. As I said, if people were happy with Basic Set-style stats blocks and no points, then we would be discussing errata in the bestiaries released in 2006, not the release dates of bestiaries that still don't exist in 2010.