02-03-2015, 01:14 PM | #31 |
Join Date: Oct 2014
Location: Chicagoland
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Re: Reprinting GURPS 4E books?
That'd be cool. All errata fixed, all full color and hardbound, etc, with some marking on the spine to show they're part of a "complete set". I'd buy it.
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02-03-2015, 01:24 PM | #32 | |
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Southeast NC
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Re: Reprinting GURPS 4E books?
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After a little early resistance, I've adapted well to a digital RPG collection. Much easier than carrying a dozen hardbacks everywhere. I do worry that it makes the hobby less visible, though.
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02-03-2015, 02:12 PM | #33 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: The Great White North
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Re: Reprinting GURPS 4E books?
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02-03-2015, 02:55 PM | #34 |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: Reprinting GURPS 4E books?
I think that a volume containing a condensed Basic Set or expanded GURPS Lite plus Action or DF or whatever the post-apocalyptic equivalent they were thinking of would help spread GURPS, but like a Print-on-Demand option, all we can do is ask. I would not be able to buy it at this point in my life, and I think that SJ Games has pretty good data that their audience is in its 20s and older rather than 14-22 like WOTC decided D&D players were.
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"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature |
02-03-2015, 09:02 PM | #35 |
Join Date: Dec 2005
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Re: Reprinting GURPS 4E books?
One thing that needs to be avoided at all costs in an entry level product is the dense 4e style stat blocks and templates. People just bounce right off of them. Overbuilt characters are a real problem in 4e as it is. Keep the character's short and sweet. That's why there's 4 attributes in the first place.
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http://www.neutralgroundgames.com |
02-04-2015, 12:03 AM | #36 | |
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
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Re: Reprinting GURPS 4E books?
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*plus you have two kinds of established fans, ones that will buy everything, and ones that will buy occasional new things. But we're obviously a subset of the market and can only be sold product that needs to be newly developed so comes with cost. GURPS by it's very nature means specific supplements are not required to play so you relying on individual need or desire GURPS is about as far away from the old oWOD model where every splat book was consumed for metaplot teasers and crunch creep (but they sold a lot of books, although questions about longevity abound, which they don't for GURPS). I think GURPS stuff works pretty well for this my tablet reads them fine with indexes (and searches) contents pages and sub divisions. Last edited by Tomsdad; 02-05-2015 at 04:05 AM. |
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02-04-2015, 08:50 AM | #37 |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: Reprinting GURPS 4E books?
In electronic format, the index is replaced by the search function. It's easy to find external PDF indexing software, as well. (Which, if you really wanted, could index every word in your PDF collection. I also imagine any number of fan-curated special-purpose indices for specific genres, or categories like "all Advantages", etc.)
Editorial time saved by not creating an index could go into making more content, rather than more layout and infrastructure. I quite like physical books, but for gaming purposes, electronic search and retrieval is killer. GURPS 5e won't look like a bunch of PDFs, but something down the path you see in bits and pieces from GCA / Hero Labs / RealmWorks / MapTool / etc -- a database with smart, gaming-specific front end software. |
02-04-2015, 09:10 AM | #38 | |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: Reprinting GURPS 4E books?
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Composing indices is an expensive profession for a reason: it is not just about compiling references, but deciding "they might look up this concept under that name; these five pages are the key reference to this concept and the others mostly refer back to them; these ten pages refer to the same concept under different names."
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"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature |
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02-04-2015, 11:28 AM | #39 |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: Reprinting GURPS 4E books?
I'm aware of that. I'm also aware of the use I get out of the indices at the end of the GURPS PDFs, compared to the use I get out of simply generating those dumb cross-references with the PDF reader.
You're also neglecting the case where you _do_ want to run down every cross-reference to find all mentions of some advantage or rule. A specifically-tuned index will be better at doing exactly the job it was specifically tuned to do. And that's one of those things you can have with a multiplicity of electronic indices for the same texts. SJG (or fans) are still perfectly free to produce a "key fundamental reference" index, or an index biased any other way that proves useful. When it comes to speculative possibilities for future work, there's no good reason to assume that a good database search agent only does simple string matches, any more than Google does now when you "search the web". |
02-04-2015, 07:02 PM | #40 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Australia
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Re: Reprinting GURPS 4E books?
I haven't read everything in this thread, so my apologies if it has been mentioned before.
Why does SJG not use Lulu.com as a PoD solution for out of print books? Using this service would free SJG from any concerns with shipping, returns, etc as this is all handled by Lulu. It's all online and simple to use. The end user could then decide if they want to get a particular book in full colour, B&W, hardcover or soft, provided SJG have configured those options for the books they want to sell on Lulu. The resulting books are awesome and you would be hard pressed to spot the difference between an original print and a Lulu print. |
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lulu, print on demand |
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