Discussion on GURPS 4E Revised or Database

[Propjock]

Being able to apply computation to GURPS would have the potential to ease a lot of the preparation aspects of the game as currently being discussed in the "Why I'm Leaving GURPS thread". Any kind of (N)PC creation would benefit as well as many of the rules that lean towards simulation (e.g. collision damage, throwing, falling, etc.)

A generic system that could be tailored on-the-fly to meet your campaign genre would be very awesome. Done right - revolutionary even. Unfortunately, it's not a cheap thing to do. The requirement to actually print out a subset of custom rules is interesting but means that there's the whole additional requirement of doing print based layouts on top of screens for digital presentation (which I think is more of a must have going forward than even print).

I would pay for both a one-off rules compilation and/or a subscription to a service that could do chargen, allow crowd sourcing of a bestiary, and get an integrated Pyramid (i.e. new rules from articles introduced could be available for compilation).

[Refplace]

If your willing to pay an upfront client fee most database programs can doo all this and many pretty easily. I use one for myself that holds the house rules and campaign details. Stat blocks and descriptions for monsters, spell rules, cosmology and race info.
I do not port most of the rules in there but it would be easy to do that.
This is for personal use of course.

[munin]

Originally Posted by johndallman

A few problems with that:

It doesn't give you the organisation scheme: that has to be devised, and is not trivial.

Supporting a lot of different databases and servers on different platforms and getting them to behave consistently is not trivial either.

Any structured data (which I believe is what we're discussing) will necessarily require you to define its structure. That is a problem to be addressed, but its not an objection to using a database-server structure specifically. Any solution you come up with will require that. But organizing material into books/chapters/sections from a database is a really basic web problem (little different than how this website organizes material into forums/subforums/thread/posts), even with optional rules to be chosen to be included or not.

Modern database and server roll-your-own packages are mostly all cross-platform already, which is the point of their existence. The only thing that will differ across platforms will be the user interface, and that's only if you don't use browsers. I haven't researched them recently but I'm sure there are packages to generate pdfs from database content as well. There's a lot of stuff out there.

Converting a book to a structured-data version would be the equivalent of layout work -- specifying headings, content flow, etc.

I'm a few years out of practice, but setting up a web server to serve this content wouldn't take even a small web company very long. They'd probably spend more time on appearance and user interface than on the database back-end, but then I was a database guy so I may be overestimating the difficulty of the other work based on how hard it would be for me. :)

But honestly, I have no idea if this would be a good thing for GURPS.

[Raekai]

I like how this took off! I was worried when no one had replied as u quickly as I had hoped. The ideas are certainly interesting and more good points are being made, but here's my question...

What's SJGames stance on Kickstarter? I think many of us might pitch in something, and it could bring more publicity to a smaller market.

[Dammann]

I believe that they have said that they wouldn't use KS for any project where the work wasn't already done. They did use it for OGRE, which was a pretty big deal for the company, disrupting all kinds of other projects (like GURPS).

[Raekai]

Originally Posted by Dammann

I believe that they have said that they wouldn't use KS for any project where the work wasn't already done. They did use it for OGRE, which was a pretty big deal for the company, disrupting all kinds of other projects (like GURPS).

Damn... That's kind of a shame. But the work is already "done". It just needs to be organized, right? Sure, it might be semantics, but it's kind of true. Everything is there, it would just be an amazing new way to present material.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Raekai

But the work is already "done". It just needs to be organized, right? Sure, it might be semantics, but it's kind of true. Everything is there, it would just be an amazing new way to present material.

No, it's not "done". It would involve a complete redesign of their publication strategy and their "trade dress." It would involve a lot of re-editing of all the GRUPS products and a overturn of all their publishing processes. It would also be a scheme that, at present, has a lot of potential for failure, because it doesn't address the desires of a lot of buyers for hardcopy and would involve abandoning the FLGS market. And if it's to run on tablets without a full-time internet connection, it gets harder.

It is too soon to be trying something like this; it's not too soon to think about what would be involved, but SJG will want to decide in private about what to do.

[Raekai]

Originally Posted by johndallman

It is too soon to be trying something like this; it's not too soon to think about what would be involved, but SJG will want to decide in private about what to do.

I think this has been the best point so far. I'd really like to see where they would take this. If they tried, then they could pull it off. If I had the skills, resources, and time then I would tackle it myself.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by johndallman

No, it's not "done". It would involve a complete redesign of their publication strategy and their "trade dress." It would involve a lot of re-editing of all the GRUPS products and a overturn of all their publishing processes. It would also be a scheme that, at present, has a lot of potential for failure, because it doesn't address the desires of a lot of buyers for hardcopy and would involve abandoning the FLGS market. And if it's to run on tablets without a full-time internet connection, it gets harder.

It is too soon to be trying something like this; it's not too soon to think about what would be involved, but SJG will want to decide in private about what to do.

Quted for truth.
It is certainly technically possible. I could do it in just a few months part time.
I am sure others could as well and with various platforms, most of which would work on any OS. However the issues with publishing, liscening and more would be huge and actually far more work. All for what is probably a really low volume and niche product at this time.

[BaHalus]

I really love this Idea. I imagine something like this a lot. Other thing I would love would be a GURPS-based PC game. It would be awesome, as GURPS rules are much better and simpler than the rules used in most games.