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

[pyratejohn]

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

3) Giving it away. If SJ Games had several times the resources it had today, maybe they could consider it. However, even if the authors never saw a penny, everything else has to be paid for...

Which makes me wonder how Mongoose can do it for their Traveller line? Their Secret of the Ancients campaign is free, and written by an established rpg author.

I guess they have decided that taking a bit of a financial hit by giving it away for free, on the prospect of generating new sales, is worth a shot.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by pyratejohn

Which makes me wonder how Mongoose can do it

My guess: they're vastly better capitalized than most other game companies and their stuff sells better. Never mind a free item here and there; they've got a stack of licenses (Conan, B5, Judge Dredd, Paranoia, RQ...) which can't be cheap. It's also not impossible that their process is less expensive than SJ Games's, but not having a lot of their products, I can't speak for their editorial and production quality.

[whswhs]

A subsidiary question about book production has to do with what we mean by, for example, "a fantasy book." There seem to be three models.

* You publish a book for a specific fantasy setting: licensed (Amber Diceless), traditional (King Arthur Pendragon), or newly created (RuneQuest II). Whether or not you include the core rules, the rules you do include are specific to the realization of fantasy in that particular setting. That's what the original GURPS Fantasy did, the one that gave us Yrth. Downside: People who want a different fantasy setting have to do a lot of work adapting your rules to it; people who don't like your setting have no reason to buy the book.

* You publish a book of rules for fantasy in general (with or without the core rules), and you include a specific fantasy setting as a "worked example," a demonstrated application of the rules. That's what I did, for example, in GURPS Fantasy. Downside: The fantasy setting can't possibly have as much depth.

* You publish a book of rules for fantasy in general, with no specific setting provided. If you provide a setting, you do so in a separate book, the way GURPS Banestorm does for fantasy-in-GURPS. Downside: People who don't want to create their own setting won't much want to buy the book of rules, which doesn't serve them. They may buy the setting book, and be disgruntled to learn that it's not self-sufficient. Many people are attracted to buying rpg books by the coolness of the world; you don't have that marketing tool for the rules book.

Bill Stoddard

[maximara]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

HERO requires even more work than GURPS to prepare a campaign. Also I'm fairly sure it also lacks a single super-detailed fantasy setting or a plethora of fantasy adventures.

Having played both I can say this is a major understatement. HERO requires an insane level of work compared to even GURPS 1e. Worse it suffers from the kind of "game the system" nonsense seen with Champions as player try to go for "sweet spots" where they can get the most bang for their buck.

It is akin to sort of nonsense seen with Magery and Eidetic memory seen in GURPS 1e before the fix only this goes through nearly the entire system. HERO could be charitably called a min-maxers wet dream come true complete with full harem.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by maximara

It is akin to sort of nonsense seen with Magery and Eidetic memory seen in GURPS 1e before the fix only this goes through nearly the entire system. HERO could be charitably called a min-maxers wet dream come true complete with full harem.

As far as I can tell from my experience with HERO players, this ability to minmax and game the system isn't a flaw for a lot of players; it's what makes the game fun.

Bill Stoddard

[Irish Wolf]

Originally Posted by whswhs

* Some one-genre players start out by buying the one big book. They then buy the book for the genre they like, and discover that they've paid twice for the rules. They're not happy because they've wasted money.

This was, as I recall, one of the complaints about White Wolf's old WoD books. For Vampire: the Masquerade, for instance (chosen because it's the one I'm most familiar with), almost all the rules needed to play were in the V:tM book. However, a few still required reference to the main WoD book - which also repeated many of the same rules in V:tM. You wound up paying twice (at hardcover prices, no less!) for the same rules.

(This has largely been averted in the nWoD, with the result that the V:tR book is about 3/4 the size of the old V:tM, with more discussions of specifics and of exactly how a vampire character differs from a default human character.)

I actually like the way GURPS is set up. Then again, I always create my own game worlds - the predesigned game worlds always seem to have one or more major logical flaws (if elves live for thousands of years, why are civilizations only a thousand years old "forgotten"? What legal changes have been made in the United States due to the presence of superhumans? Why are gods of death always "evil", when death is the most truly neutral force in existence, aside from gravity?). GURPS goes to the trouble of codifying my preferred style. :-)

[pyratejohn]

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

Never mind a free item here and there; they've got a stack of licenses (Conan, B5, Judge Dredd, Paranoia, RQ...) which can't be cheap.

Exactly. And anecdotal evidence would indicate those licenses total up to lose more often than they add up to a win. If I had a buck for every game company with a neat license that went under...

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

It's also not impossible that their process is less expensive than SJ Games's, but not having a lot of their products, I can't speak for their editorial and production quality.

I have mentioned how I feel about their Traveller line elsewhere on this forum. But hey! I'm in QA, so maybe I'm just being nit-picky.

[moldymaltquaffer]

Here's an idea:
If you want to introduce others to GURPS, pre-generate some characters, and run a session for them.

Most of the complexity involved with the system is front-loaded during character creation. There are a few outliers (like Magic and Maneuvers) but creating the characters allows you to minimize these elements. (Or even better, provide a peek at the possibilities without them ever becoming overwhelming.)
The core of the system is quickly and easily taught. When I've introduced others to the system it's generally taken about five minutes. (A good part of which is spent saying things to individual players like, "Your character has the hit location maneuver. This mitigates a set amount of the penalty from making called shots in combat. You can attack an arm or leg without penalty, but trying for the jugular is still going to carry a significant penalty.")

It's also worth noting that by creating the characters yourself, you limit the options available (and grease the skids with appropriate disads). This allows you to have a tailored adventure in which every character's strengths (and weaknesses!) have a chance to come to the fore.

I personally like to have an emphasis on interaction between the characters, so I'll often set up potential conflicts. For example, one character with a Secret I think is likely to come out, vs another with Greed. Or a quirk "wine snob" vs a quirk "thinks being pretentious about alcohol is ridiculous".
I'll also include some quirks that I think the player will enthusiastically go over the top with. "Effeminate when angry." "Hung like a horse, and extremely proud of the fact".

[maximara]

Originally Posted by whswhs

A subsidiary question about book production has to do with what we mean by, for example, "a fantasy book." There seem to be three models.

* You publish a book for a specific fantasy setting: licensed (Amber Diceless), traditional (King Arthur Pendragon), or newly created (RuneQuest II). Whether or not you include the core rules, the rules you do include are specific to the realization of fantasy in that particular setting. That's what the original GURPS Fantasy did, the one that gave us Yrth. Downside: People who want a different fantasy setting have to do a lot of work adapting your rules to it; people who don't like your setting have no reason to buy the book.

* You publish a book of rules for fantasy in general (with or without the core rules), and you include a specific fantasy setting as a "worked example," a demonstrated application of the rules. That's what I did, for example, in GURPS Fantasy. Downside: The fantasy setting can't possibly have as much depth.

* You publish a book of rules for fantasy in general, with no specific setting provided. If you provide a setting, you do so in a separate book, the way GURPS Banestorm does for fantasy-in-GURPS. Downside: People who don't want to create their own setting won't much want to buy the book of rules, which doesn't serve them. They may buy the setting book, and be disgruntled to learn that it's not self-sufficient. Many people are attracted to buying rpg books by the coolness of the world; you don't have that marketing tool for the rules book.

Bill Stoddard

Good points, but the desire for world depth varies.

Never mind as TSR showed creating deep worlds tends to be counter productive--instead of expanding their marketshare in 1985 with Oriental Adventures TSR fragmented it. Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Planescape, Forgotten Realms, Spelljammer, and a few I have likely forgotten in 1989 only took the fragmentation to the point that there really weren't any "core" AD&D players anymore but rather specific setting players.

Licensed properties are similarly a bad idea especially in what is undoubtedly a shrinking marketplace. Simply put, licensing costs; the bigger the name generally the greater the cost and in RPG circles the cost benefit generally isn't there. There is also the risk that the licenser may have certain requirements on how you use their property which can create weird "style" hiccups with the rest of your line (this is the only reason I can fathom as to why the White Wolf adaptations feel so "off" compared to the rest of GURPS material of their time)

As for shallow worlds I doubt that even those that played in the wildly fragmented mess TSR's AD&D2 had become had a full detailed knowledge of the world they played in. Some AD&D1 veterans continued to play modules based on level regardless of what world they were set in creating a sort of Silver Age comic book land where no one cared that for today's adventure Tiamat goes by the name Takhisis.

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I don't see how doing both 1 and 2 can possibly be optimal. Doing 1 calls for releasing a big book that contains all the rules in one place. Doing 2 calls for releasing several genre books, each of which repeats the part of the rules that apply to its genre.

I never said it was optimal, and I said raised the expenses not only because not only the cost of producing the two lines, but due the the splint it would cause in sales as well.

I know it does not make business sense to do but it makes sense form 'well those that have problems with buying the same rules multiple times will buy from the unified series, those those the don't mind or but a higher priority of easy of use for the genre will buy from the others, and can 'grow' into the unified series latter if need be. But this only works in post-scarcity.