Discussion on GURPS 4E Revised or Database

[Yorunkun]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Actually that is the easy part, at least technically.
Each publication would be a module and encrypted. You buy whatever modules you want and there added to your copy of the database. This ccan be done offline or as an online server. However it means additional publication efforts and I am not sure there would be enough profit to justify the extra man hours.
But it is not a hard process, just one that would take some extra man hours.

So how do I register the dozen or so hardcover books that I bought in a shop?

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Yorunkun

So how do I register the dozen or so hardcover books that I bought in a shop?

I did mention that the publication and licensing was the hardest part right?
I think to take advantage of a new system like that we would have to buy new issues. That is the thing that seems to get overlooked when these talks keep coming up. People see the tech side and even if they do not know how they understand it can be done. However they overlook the business side which is far more complicated.

[namada]

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[DangerousThing]

If we could have a serious requirements doc, I'd be willing to do the programming, if we could get some funding. Sorry, but my wife and I are living on a fixed income. :(

However, blasphemous as this may be, I don't think we should start with GURPS until we can demonstrate that the technology works. We should start with a game like GURPS to show that it can handle the problems, but unlike enough that it won't have licensing problems.

Or perhaps even some totally unrelated content. I don't know.

I have been a user-interface programmer, a database programmer, and a systems analyst. The only reason I'm not doing that now is that my wife became ill and required a full-time caregiver. I have a decent amount of time, just not in convenient 8 hour blocks like Penn State liked.

I do think that we should use crowd-sourcing, but we'd need to find a kick-ass application for this software.

What does everybody think?

[Yorunkun]

Again, I think this would be really cool to have but ...

... yeah, I think having to re-buy content for the DB would matter to the tens of thousands of people who bought the hardcovers.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Yorunkun

Again, I think this would be really cool to have but ...

... yeah, I think having to re-buy content for the DB would matter to the tens of thousands of people who bought the hardcovers.

Do we even know that GURPS Characters and GURPS Campaigns has sold 20k physical copies each?

[Yorunkun]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Do we even know that GURPS Characters and GURPS Campaigns has sold 20k physical copies each?

No, we don't, actually. Online sales is some 2000+, but one would hope there's more people who bought the printed edition.

Funny thought, that. Do GURPS players globally only number in the lower thousands?

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Yorunkun

No, we don't, actually. Online sales is some 2000+, but one would hope there's more people who bought the printed edition.

Funny thought, that. Do GURPS players globally only number in the lower thousands?

Some data on that would be reelly nice. If somebody starts a thread on this in another forum, please drop a note (and link to it) in this thread.

From about a decade ago, it was said that D&D (and what few derivatives existed at that time) was by far the biggest game, with Storyteller (Vampire and stuff, including AFAIK Exalted and Adventure!-and-so-forth) being by far the second biggest, and systems like GURPS and Hero System and a few others being (presumably including Ars Magica) noteworthy for their ability to stay afloat and support a stream of new and updated supplement books.

[JP42]

Originally Posted by Yorunkun

So how do I register the dozen or so hardcover books that I bought in a shop?

Right now, stores can participate in a program called Bits and Mortar that allows anyone who purchases a covered hard copy of a RPG or supplement from the store to download the PDF version. It would likely harness a very similar system.

[Yorunkun]

Maybe it could work if it were launched as the core publishing platform for the next iteration of the GURPS ruleset.

This next edition would have to be redesigned and marketed with modularity as the central tenet. The resulting product might consist of a very bare-bones "GURPS modern" as the core, and expandable with pay-for content adding depth (i.e. skill specializations and techniques, detailed combat rules ...) and breadth (new rules and equipment by genre, i.e. hard sci-fi, magic ...).

Do away with printed books altogether: Purchase of a PDF would unlock the respective rules in the DB; subscribers can print off custom-rulesets for their campaigns from the DB. Add a number of subscription models from supporter" (includes, say, a subscription for Pyramid) to "all you can eat" for hardcore fans and there might be a business model in there somewhere.

I think this is what WotC had in mind with 4e. It's quite bold, and could fail on a number of fronts, business-wise and technologically. Still, a nice dream.