Why isn't GURPS as popular as the D20 system and games

[tkdguy]

Originally Posted by Professor Tanhauser

I'd say that having a kind of silly sounding name doesn't help, because I know people who won't touch gurpsfor that reason, and I'm sorry to say I used to be one, until I read some gurps books after being given the 4e books.

One of my old students years ago used to have this slang, where " you're gurping" (I think it's spelled that way) meant "you're nuts." So yes, you have a point about the name. Still, the name is going to stick around, so hopefully people get past it to at least check the game out.

[Martichoras]

My female friend did great, hitting her stride instantly. My problem was that I was fairly certain she had significant potential as a role-player, but she was reluctant to believe in role-playing sessions without gamist-style combat. While D&D brings many people to the hobby, I would guess that it repulses many people as well.

One of my friends (and players) back in high school ran a MERP adventure for some girls in class. One of them, a humanist Christian, always regarded as very calm, sensible and kind, cheerily remarked after they captured some orcs: "Let's chop their fingers off, one by one, to make them talk".

Originally Posted by whswhs

GURPS Discworld sounds pretty much ideal for that sort of recruitment.

Yes, indeed.

I actively try to get people to play GURPS. Not everyone, of course, but I believe that many people's gaming preferences would be better served by GURPS than the systems the are using - D&D or WoD, mostly. Also, it improves my chances of finding like-minded gamers, and helps SJG, a company that has earned my loyalty with (mostly) great products and (uniformly) excellent customer service. Hm, perhaps it is time to sign up as a Man in Black

Originally Posted by whswhs

I'm willing to run any rules system that looks suitable to the campaign concept.

Aye, there's the rub. Firstly, I have invested much time and money into the GURPS system, and am reluctant to backtrack into a new system. The realism, playability and adaptabilty of GURPS works well for me (my one major gripe is the time it takes to create a character). I have at various times considered using the "Over The Edge" and the "World of Darkness" engines in their place, as I have had good gaming experiences with them, and I don't think they would be directly detrimental to my play experience. Fudge also seems promising. That is the matter of will.

Secondly, suitability. GURPS suits me very well. I am best at running fairly realistic and gritty stuff, and I am hard pressed to find other suitable systems that would appeal to an anti-GURPS crowd, whether they favour D&D-style games or "rules-light" games.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Martichoras

Aye, there's the rub. Firstly, I have invested much time and money into the GURPS system, and am reluctant to backtrack into a new system. The realism, playability and adaptabilty of GURPS works well for me (my one major gripe is the time it takes to create a character). I have at various times considered using the "Over The Edge" and the "World of Darkness" engines in their place, as I have had good gaming experiences with them, and I don't think they would be directly detrimental to my play experience. Fudge also seems promising. That is the matter of will.

Secondly, suitability. GURPS suits me very well. I am best at running fairly realistic and gritty stuff, and I am hard pressed to find other suitable systems that would appeal to an anti-GURPS crowd, whether they favour D&D-style games or "rules-light" games.

I have invested a fair bit in acquiring a library of varied systems; I like reading game engines for their own sake. Sometimes I run a campaign partly to test out a new engine. Since I stopped designing homegrown rules I've used fourteen different rules systems (one of them, RuneQuest, in two different editions).

Currently I have three different generic engines at hand: GURPS, FUDGE, and Big Eyes Small Mouth. Which one I pick is a matter of desired flavor. For example, I'm using Big Eyes Small Mouth for my current high fantasy campaign, Manse, partly because an opposition between wild magic and ritualized magic is essential to the setting concept, and BESM offers two different attributes, Magic and Dynamic Sorcery, that exactly fit that opposition.

I'm not primarily a grittily realistic GM. My favored genres seem to be fairly high fantasy and supers. And my underlying concept of magic is fairly close to, "If it can make a good story, magic can do it."

On the other hand, I've used GURPS for more campaigns than anything else, precisely because it *is* a highly serviceable second best engine. I've run interstellar traders trying to deal with alien cultures (based on David Brin's Uplift novels), larger than life heroes rebuilding a post-economic-collapse North America (based on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged), scientists and diplomats negotiating with advanced aliens in the 1930s, modern British teenagers in Faerie, prisoners in a gnostic supernatural analog of The Village, and private investigators solving informational crimes in 2100 A.D. (using the Transhuman Space setting). GURPS has worked well for all of these. And I'm currently playing in one GURPS campaign, as a Hispanic teenage superhero in a world where superpowers are a sexually transmitted disease. That campaign has problems, but they're not the product of the system; they're more a matter of campaign focus and character interaction.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Martichoras

My female friend did great, hitting her stride instantly. My problem was that I was fairly certain she had significant potential as a role-player, but she was reluctant to believe in role-playing sessions without gamist-style combat. While D&D brings many people to the hobby, I would guess that it repulses many people as well.

The thing that got one of my best players when she tried gaming was the "party" assumption that all the PCs are a team, and have to work together in everything. She was invited in to an Amber campaign. So she built an Amberite woman. Her character was out shopping when she got a Trump call from a relative for help; she said, "Why should I help you? What's in it for me?" and, getting no answer, went on shopping. The other players were seriously offended that she didn't react to her PC Detector; she thought that being self-centered and not at all displeased to see a relative come to harm was perfectly in character for Amberites, and that they were asking her both to violate her character concept and to disregard basic assumptions about the setting.

[ross_winn]

In my opinion the reason GURPS has not been as successful was a conscious choice by SJ for his company. Steve does not want to reliquish either day to day management, nor heed the advice of those he consults with for same. He has generally refused to release products he is not editorially involved in. He has also actively refused to replace or reconfigure some staff positions with more qualified people.

Without delegation SJG will simply never get bigger, and Steve will never have the success I think he deserves. Now it is his company and he can do what he likes, it is his money after all. However had Peter Adkison run Wizards the same way I do8ubt D&D 3e would have ever existed.

That being said GURPS is getting better, I think the greatest hurdles in 2005 for SJG are art, layout, and print buying. Areas where the company as a whole falls down regularly. Production problems are 100% of the issues I see at SJG.

[yam]

Originally Posted by Doktor Teufel

• Dungeons & Dragons is the progenitor of all roleplaying games.
• Dungeons & Dragons has indomitable brandname recognition.
• It is specifically focused on the ultra-popular fantasy genre.
• Its rulebooks look really cute and fancy, and have cool names.
• Many small-press folks publish for the d20 System under the OGL.
• WotC is backed by Hasbro, a megacorp.
• It offers lots of redundant sourcebooks, relieving the GM of many duties.
• It's not a crunchy system, nor is it hard to learn the basic rules.
• Enjoyable video games exist that carry the D&D brand name.
• Most gamers now know the rules, perpetuating their popularity exponentially.

So of course all this stuff is a big factor,

but one thing I've found with roleplaying games is the good GMs can make any game fun to play - even D&D - and the bad ones can even ruin GURPS.

I only know one good 'DM' as he calls himself, and he has thrown a bunch of house rules on top of d20 to make fixes in what he doesn't like. What he mainly takes from d20 is the vast array of material out there to inspire him. He has tons of worldbooks and he mines them for really good adventure ideas. Sure some dumb mechanics pop up once in a while, but when the DM is good, then these can be taken care of in ad hoc fashion.

And although there's no mental disadvantages, if we had converted our characters to GURPS, we would have known exactly what to pick. It is possible to have a good D&D game, and when you are familiar with it and with your own house rules it can be a lot easier than learning a game system that may match your style of game better.

Of course some day I will convert this guy to GUPRS ... someday...

[zorg]

I just wanted to mention that the question of how big Gurps actually is, and whether it could be enlarged, and whether this would be a good idea or not, has already been discussed to death and back again here.

Consequently, the most interesting posts here were off-topic, imo...

Don't get angry (/smiles nicely/), but don't you think the matter of Gurps market share has already been discussed quite most comprehensively?

[ross_winn]

Originally Posted by zorg

I just wanted to mention that the question of how big Gurps actually is, and whether it could be enlarged, and whether this would be a good idea or not, has already been discussed to death and back again here.

Consequently, the most interesting posts here were off-topic, imo...

Don't get angry (/smiles nicely/), but don't you think the matter of Gurps market share has already been discussed quite most comprehensively?

evidently not...

[zorg]

Originally Posted by ross_winn

evidently not...

lol!

Seriously. My question was a polite way of saying "Please, read the older discussions on the same topic, if you have anything to add after that, let us hear it..."
It's just because I get this pain in my head when another thread "Gurps vs D&D, Part X" (aka "What size is Gurps?", "Why is Gurps so small?" "Gimme more Gurps!" etc) pops up. All this brainpower here discussing the same old topics, over and over...

I mostly read this thread for the interesting (but off-topic) things whswhs (not the only one, of course) has to tell, sorting through the old news is somewhat tiresome.

[pyratejohn]

No, Traveller was a couple years after D&D. Traveller was also, as I recall, a couple years after three or four other rpgs.

Why isn't GURPS as popular? I can go to either of the local megabookstores and find at best GURPS Characters, and maybe one of the other GURPS books. I've never seen more than two GURPS 4e books on the shelf at one time. With D&D/d20, the bookseller stocks almost as much of it as they do Eastern philosophy! It's very easy to get a d20 fix. In fact, too easy. I just dropped some dough on the PHB v3.5 (I'm not hopping mad anymore about having the v3.0 carpet yanked from under me) and D&D miniatures!!! Yes, D&D miniatures! Say what you will, but I think their marketing strategy is brilliant. For $12 I get 8 pre-painted minis! With the price of metal these days, $12 buys what? Maybe three unpainted figs? And with two kids, how much time do I have to paint? Or play? So I need things that are going to help me maximize my gaming time. What are those things? Pre-painted very affordable miniatures are one. Canned adventures are another. And... I think I'm rambling at this point, and speaking of time and kids... I must away!