Report To The Stakeholders

[David Johansen]

I think, at present, nobody has come up with a new business model to help roleplaying games compete in the current market place. FFG's Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Warhammer 40000, and Star Wars lines might be closest with their topic focused core books and product lines forcing the purchase of multiple books while also providing single book points of entry.

I still think points of entry are the key weakness Roleplaying games are facing today. A Magic The Gathering starter is $15. D&D's 3 book core costs $180 at my shop and I stocked up before the Canadian Dollar dropped. Yes you can get it cheaper on-line. Roleplaying games aren't a throw away pocket money purchase. Retail hasn't completely figured out how to compete with on-line discounters either. Service and immediate availability and community only go so far and most people don't seem to appreciate the retailer beyond their price and product support.

Kick Starter is great for small established companies but not so great for start ups who don't really know their costs and usually aren't ready to go to press immediately. I don't think it's all that good for larger companies either as they already have revenue streams. Reaper and Mantic have both become extremely Kick Starter focused.

So, whither GURPS? I'm not sure, I've been arguing for a better point of entry product for years. I'm afraid that the licenced books SJG have done just aren't hot enough to get people interested. Indeed I would argue that the licences used have reduced their market penetration rather than improved it. Small sample size and anecdotal as my experience is. I think right now I'd advocate something like the Basic Roleplaying big gold book. A single volume bundling GURPS Lite with a section of fantasy, super hero, and science fiction material but hopefully with a more attractive presentation, worst cover since High Fantasy, seriously.

I try to stock the entire GURPS line and offer 40% off the GURPS Basic Set Volume One to anyone who even looks at it. I frequently run GURPS in store. I've sold four copies of the player's book and one copy of GURPS Horror in four years. It's just more than people are willing to digest these days.

[lachimba]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

Most of them, so far as I can see.

Agreed.

Also if we check the list of GURPS freelance authors for other systems they've written for then we find that the more prolific authors usually write for multiple systems and companies.

Its not as is when these authors write for GURPS they produce products 'heads and shoulders' above then they just produce trash because they are working for (insert other company).

[Polydamas]

I agree that now that the flood of d20 companies has ebbed, most tabletop roleplaying companies publish consistent rules with respectable copyediting. They don't always hold together as well as GURPS 4e when you think about them hard or compare the whole line, but 3.x D&D and its derivatives are a solid system. (Just don't try to run all the third-party materials in one setting, or accept them without reading them through and googling them).

Originally Posted by David Johansen

I still think points of entry are the key weakness Roleplaying games are facing today. A Magic The Gathering starter is $15. D&D's 3 book core costs $180 at my shop and I stocked up before the Canadian Dollar dropped. ... Roleplaying games aren't a throw away pocket money purchase.

Of course, all that 80% of the group needs is the PHB, and they do not actually need that; two or three copies are enough to pass around the group while people make their characters and the GM thinks about the first session. And $60 is about what a new computer game costs. So I would put more emphasis on the fact that almost all of the costs come up front: a serious Magic player won't be satisfied with one deck of 60 random cards, whereas a gamer can play for ten years with nothing but Characters/a PHB/...

Originally Posted by David Johansen

I try to stock the entire GURPS line and offer 40% off the GURPS Basic Set Volume One to anyone who even looks at it. I frequently run GURPS in store. I've sold four copies of the player's book and one copy of GURPS Horror in four years. It's just more than people are willing to digest these days.

Although D&D 3.x is very complicated and wordy and arithmetical too, and its many branches may still be the most popular family of tabletop roleplaying game. Are any tabletop RPGs selling well at your store? Most of the game stores I know can't afford to dedicate more than 20% or so of their square footage to RPGs, because prepainted miniatures and comics and board games and merchandise make them more money.

[sjard]

Originally Posted by David Johansen

I still think points of entry are the key weakness Roleplaying games are facing today. A Magic The Gathering starter is $15. D&D's 3 book core costs $180 at my shop and I stocked up before the Canadian Dollar dropped. Yes you can get it cheaper on-line. Roleplaying games aren't a throw away pocket money purchase. Retail hasn't completely figured out how to compete with on-line discounters either. Service and immediate availability and community only go so far and most people don't seem to appreciate the retailer beyond their price and product support.

Well, compared to one of my other hobbies, $180 isn't all that bad. For that $180 I would expect to get at least five years worth of enjoyment from it, and considering I still occasionally pull out the BECMI books to play 30+ years later...

Anyhow, the other hobby, Fishing. I can buy up to 5 years at a time for my local state's fishing license, $160 for the license for that time. Line, lures, bait, and looked at as entry, a decent rod and reel will add $50 (double that or more if you want to add different types of fishing, I stream fish, I don't fly or lake or wallet forbid ocean fish). Basic tackle box $25.

I haven't been fishing in about ten years (Long story I won't get into here), so I'm looking at needing to basically start all over entry level equipping. Estimate is $350 for the first year, doubled if my wife decides she wants to get in on it as well.

[Nikosandros]

Originally Posted by David Johansen

I still think points of entry are the key weakness Roleplaying games are facing today. A Magic The Gathering starter is $15. D&D's 3 book core costs $180 at my shop and I stocked up before the Canadian Dollar dropped.

The 5th Edition Starter Set costs $20 and includes characters and a very nice mini-campaign. The Basic Rules are available online for free.

Of course, if you get serious about D&D you'll buy the 3 core books, but if you get serious about MtG you're going to spend way more that that.

[David Johansen]

My store is primarily a miniatures gaming space. It started out because I wanted to rent some workspace for a while and have somewhere to game and I thought if I carried some of the cool new stuff that the other stores here were neglecting it would help to pay for the space. It's as fly by night / shoe string an operation as there's ever been.

It's had it's ups and downs but I'm still going after four years. The rpgs are a bit hit and miss but I often kick myself when someone walks away because I didn't have something. But GURPS is a hard sell. It's like a massive wall of options that just stops new players cold. I may take a better swing at it in the new year, print up some new copies of GURPS Lite to give out and push for a big crazy science fiction campaign. Of course, the majority of people will be looking for Star Wars, sigh.

I'm afraid the D&D starter set is pretty bad, it doesn't have a proper rule book in it. I know that Basic D&D is free on-line, indeed that was enough to shift me towards giving 5e a look. But a cripple ware starter set is a sad state of affairs and printing a booklet isn't all that cheap.

Personally, there's a lot more that could be done to move GURPS in stores and no one plan is necessarily better than another but some might be better than doing nothing.

[David Johansen]

They're helpful of course but I think a pre packaged setting and game book is a better bet. I just think the ones SJG have done would probably sold more copies if they'd been generic ones. I'm just not sure Hellboy or Vorkosigian are popular enough in the gaming community to increase interest in GURPS.

I suspect Disc World is a little too silly to be the GURPS makes a comeback book. There's an age where kids want to be taken seriously and it intersects with the age at which they try gaming for the first time. But then again when I drop my kid off at high school I see lots of girls wearing pyjama pants and animal hats so maybe self consciousness is dead. If SJG print it I'll carry it and try to put the novels right on the shelf next to it. It's amazing how ignorant people can be of any media that isn't a top rated television show or a blockbuster movie.

I tend towards the lower priced point of entry because people have real mental break points at twenty, fifty, and one hundred dollars and it's a lot easier to get someone to drop a twenty on a whim. That and kids have limited funds and we need to be recruiting kids if we want to have a future.

Palladium's still around after all these years for a reason. Their games are a decently priced, single volume entry point with decent to great art and they've never feared to sell the awesome over the sensible.

There is the big box of toys approach to starter sets and it works well for board games and Warhammer. I'm not sure what a GURPS big box would look like. Lots of cardboard fold up scenery, maps, and a build your miniature system maybe. Anyone wanna invest a million dollars to promote GURPS? It would be AWESOME!

[Rocket Man]

Originally Posted by David Johansen

Palladium's still around after all these years for a reason.

I'm afraid you wouldn't know it by many of the game/hobby stores in this area.The only place I've seen Palladium books turn up is in the "used" section, where you can buy pre-owned stuff for a few bucks. Mind you, there are some cool finds to be had that way, but if there's anything new, it's not appearing on the radar here.

EDIT: Just realized you meant Warhammer -- I'm not a miniatures gamer, so I didn't make the connection. Apologies.

[David Johansen]

No, Palladium's still around and still does okay with the teenaged gamer crowd due to their affordable format.

I moved on to Warhammer just as a point on the big boxed game market. I haven't seen a proper rpg marketed that way but Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay third edition was fairly close to it.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by David Johansen

But GURPS is a hard sell. It's like a massive wall of options that just stops new players cold. I may take a better swing at it in the new year, print up some new copies of GURPS Lite to give out and push for a big crazy science fiction campaign. Of course, the majority of people will be looking for Star Wars, sigh.

That is an interesting view, that GURPS feels intimidating because it has so many options, whereas CoC/WoD/D&D present a default and modules expanding on it or tweaking it. I can certainly see that many people would like something like DF or Action! packaged with an excerpt of useful rules modules from other volumes and a pointer to either Lite or Characters + Campaigns, but I could not really vote with my money for something like that.