Report To The Stakeholders

[Pragmatic]

Originally Posted by Andrew Hackard

THAT WOULD SURE BE NICE WOULDN'T IT.

I've been reading too much Discworld lately. (I know, crazy...)

Just saying, this brought a Discworld character to mind. :-)

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by adm

This raises an interesting question; IF SJGames decides that it is no longer practical to continue producing GURPS material, how likely are they to change GURPS to an open license so others can produce new GURPS material?

At a guess, not likely at all. Consider: Ogre was OOP for many years. Then they had a Kickstarter and it made them nearly a million bucks. Car Wars was OOP for many years, then they sold out a reprint with remarkable speed, had another successful Kickstarter for some support material, and they're gearing up for a new edition. If GURPS goes into abeyance, they're not going to just give it up. They understand that "not profitable to produce now" does not necessarily equal "not profitable to produce ever." It just goes into the vault until they can figure out a way of making it profitable again.

[Tom H.]

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

They understand that "not profitable to produce now" does not necessarily equal "not profitable to produce ever." It just goes into the vault until they can figure out a way of making it profitable again.

This is a great point that validates some of my earlier posts in this forum.

For example, when arguing for more GURPS adventures or other things that just ARE NOT MARKETABLE, we are constantly refuted by naysayers who only want to explain the numerous hostilities of the market.

These pessimists assume that markets don't change, that strategies can't be innovated, or that a new approach can't revive a good idea.

Now the critics may be right and have valuable insight. But what concerns me is their absolute insistence that nothing new will ever work.

[Tom H.]

Originally Posted by robertsconley

...
SJ Games has never seriously entertained the notion of making GURPS open content.
...
But now there is another way forward...
...
In any case SJ Games retains control of their IP. Everybody knows where to find (or avoid) the third party GURPS products.
...

I would love for something like this to happen.

I would like to produce some GURPS adventures but fear losing control over the outcome if SJ Games published it.

Without having investigated the process deeply, these are the risks that concern me in going the SJ Games route:
(1) Getting accepted into the limited production schedule,
(2) Waiting for editing and art resources,
(3) Compliance with existing layout, lack of creative control
(4) Having worked many hours to complete a product with the risk of getting pulled due to poor sales expectations. (Didn't this happen with the new Disc World?, granted that was a physical print.)

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by Tom H.

These pessimists assume that markets don't change, that strategies can't be innovated, or that a new approach can't revive a good idea.

This is absolutely true, so long as the potential vendor continues to monitor the market and look for new sales approaches.

I've seen a fair few products (in the games industry and elsewhere) reappear after years (or decades) when the market and the distribution technologies changed, and new ways to turn honest profits appeared. I've seen a lot more migrate to the back of a filing cabinet and vanish from memory, because no new approach ever does appear, or because the ones that do look chancy and uncertain, while other market opportunities for newer products look bigger and more certain.

Think of all your best-loved RPG products that are no longer on the market. (We all have them.) Odds are, somebody has the rights, and honestly intends to do something with them ... one day...

Heck, I've got a list of old ideas of my own that I once thought I could turn into something saleable, one day. (It doesn't help that some that I have dug out proceeded to die like dogs, commercially.) Road to Hell paved with blah blah blah.

As to whether any given company is making serious attempts to get any given old project out into the world through new channels, or whether they just have a very dusty filing cabinet - we very rarely know. Commercial confidentiality and all that. We can only judge by results.

[Mack_JB]

This is the same in almost all hobbyist commercial pursuits. I have multiple model railroad kits I am sitting on, because currently the market won't support them -- but someday it might. In one case I sold an entire product line to a guy who thought he could make a go of it -- he's finding it a hard slog.

Only time will tell, and watching what the consumer market is doing.

[scorpion]

Worthless anecdote from my life... :)

Played GURPs a few times in the 90s (MtG sucked the oxygen out of gaming then), and I bought a ton of GURPs books in the 90s, loved reading them, imaging scenarios, characters, etc. Collected them for a while.

When 4E came out, I upgraded, and never managed to play. Time was limited, and getting a game together seemed like too much work. The massive tome that is 4E is hard to wrap head around, and GURPs LITE just seemed hamfisted.

Then I bought the How to GM GURPs PDF (hemmed and hawed, buying a PDF seemed weird)... Ran my first game two weeks later and now am playing semi-regularly.

The kicker that brought me back, wife wanted to make Steampunk Garp, and books said adopt a persona... she asked me if that GURPs stuff on my shelf might help, we picked up GURPS Steampunk, and now a game is going.

I really think that the Powered by GURPS idea with a "GM's Guide" that is "How to GM GURPs in the worldview and a "Players Guide" with just the subset needed to play in the genre might be the best way to expand the hobby. Thinking of how I found D&D in a physical bookstore while my mom was shopping and fascinated with the Red Box and picture of a dragon...

GURPs appears to have a much bigger barrier to entry than it does, because the "Basic Set" isn't basic, it's a Rules encyclopedia. "How to GM Gurps" is really the basic set...

[PK]

Originally Posted by scorpmit01

GURPs appears to have a much bigger barrier to entry than it does, because the "Basic Set" isn't basic, it's a Rules encyclopedia. "How to GM Gurps" is really the basic set...

Well said. Personally, if The Powers That Be were to tell me that we could bring one ebook into print*, I would absolutely lobby for How to Be a GURPS GM, because I agree that it should be on the shelf next to the Basic Set.

* To be clear, they haven't.

[Anders]

We need a GURPS Cooking. Then we can all be steakholders.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Anders

We need a GURPS Cooking.

Hey, I'm doing what I can.