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

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by whswhs

So what exactly is your complaint?

...

Unless by "fleshed out" you mean specifically "publishes lots of predesigned adventures." But, once again: Adventures don't sell as well as worldbooks, which don't sell as well as genre books, which don't sell as well as toolkits.

Why is this so? Well, there's the generic nature of GURPS...

A "To be fleshed Out" List:

Dungeon Fantasy could use a worldbook and a bestiary (Volume 1 is on the way!). A few published adventures also wouldnt hurt. I'm not sure what fantasy tech will cover, but this could help also.

Action! - I dont know that a worldbook for action is necesary, but a few Locations (Fictitious Evil Dictatorships to overthrow etc), and maybe even an adventure wouldnt hurt there either. (Along the lines of Lair of the Fatman).

There are plenty of others. Id be willing to bet that you could write a worldbook for wuxia adventures for example.

The closer you bring any bookset to finished adventures, the easier it is to accept the newcommers and get them rolling/roling.
Nymdok

[Ts_]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Are you saying that Steve Jackson Games ought to have a business strategy aimed at gaining and occupying the dominant market niche where they could sell game world and adventure books in economically viable quantities? It seems to me that WotC has occupied that market niche already. Competing for it would probably just mean Steve Jackson Games would go out of business; selling to gamers who want something that WotC doesn't give them is a way to survive as a smaller firm.

I was about to say that ... Or at least say, that without this mainstream gamers will never flock to GURPS ... Thanks for the great post explaining why that really isn't an option! I'm happy to stay with GURPS and don't really care what its market share is as long as it survives. Making GURPS more popular at the price of killing it doesn't seem like a good idea ...

Ts

[Pragmatic]

Originally Posted by whswhs

So what exactly is your complaint?

What complaint? I completely and fully recognize that SJGames is making the right business decisions.

The topic is "why isn't GURPS as popular as the d20 system". One reason is the lack of support. Hasbro/WOTC/TSR has put a lot of effort into fleshing out their worlds. Even with the sparse campaign world printing schedule of 4e, they're still managing to put out two hardbacks and at least one adventure for each. Because they can afford to, given their customer base.

Yes, it's circular logic. They have a big fan base, because they have a lot of support. They have a lot of support, because they have a big fan base. We can't expect that from SJGames, and I personally don't. I accept that SJGames puts out consistently good products that are very balanced against each other (trust me, I know quite a few products put out by Hasbro/WOTC/TSR were absolute groaners...).

So I don't really have a complaint. I'm just pointing out that one hardback doesn't a campaign world make. Likewise, I don't read the AAA Travel Guide for Oregon & Washington, and assume I know everything about a city just because I read the two-page entry.

[trooper6]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

What complaint? I completely and fully recognize that SJGames is making the right business decisions.

The topic is "why isn't GURPS as popular as the d20 system". One reason is the lack of support. Hasbro/WOTC/TSR has put a lot of effort into fleshing out their worlds. Even with the sparse campaign world printing schedule of 4e, they're still managing to put out two hardbacks and at least one adventure for each. Because they can afford to, given their customer base.

But you didn't address what I pointed out...and that is that there are companies that heavily support their lines: Call of Cthulhu and Traveller being two really good examples...and they aren't on the list of Top 5 games either. I don't think that "well supported" is the reason D&D is #1.

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by trooper6

But you didn't address what I pointed out...and that is that there are companies that heavily support their lines: Call of Cthulhu and Traveller being two really good examples...and they aren't on the list of Top 5 games either. I don't think that "well supported" is the reason D&D is #1.

Agreed it's the DnD brand identity... one of the things that is hurting DnD 4e is its weakened brand identity.

Sure OD&D, and AD&D 1-3.5 where all pretty different systems but they had very much simualr play feel... 4e has gone with a different feel.. on of the reason Pathfinder is doing so well.

[Pragmatic]

Originally Posted by trooper6

I don't think that "well supported" is the reason D&D is #1.

Name recognition, as someone else pointed out in this thread.

Also, seem to recall that I said (in an earlier post) that when someone says "role playing game," the top two names that come to mind are "Dungeons and Dragons" and "World of Warcraft."

Pretty much, SJGames is a niche publisher in a niche market. And that's perfectly okay. I'm glad to have discovered GURPS some two decades ago. I've been consistently happy with their products and, while I'd like to have MORE of them, I'm aware and accepting of the fact that it wouldn't make good business sense for them to go hog-wild like the last days of TSR.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

So I don't really have a complaint. I'm just pointing out that one hardback doesn't a campaign world make. Likewise, I don't read the AAA Travel Guide for Oregon & Washington, and assume I know everything about a city just because I read the two-page entry.

Depends what you mean by "a campaign world," doesn't it?

The last time I ran a campaign out of a book with detailed locations, large casts of NPCs, and suggestions for encounters and adventures was back in the 1990s, with Griffin Mountain. But I would not call that a worldbook. Balazar was one small, isolated, backward part of Glorantha, most of which was never written up in anything like the same level of detail. I would kind of like to run a Lunar Empire campaign, but trying to write up the Lunar capital city with that much detail would be insane, unless Chaosium had wanted to publish an encyclopedia.

Now, I've written up some settings in comparable detail for my own campaigns. But they've characteristically been miniatures. And in at least one case, Manse, what I did was have the players write up important parts of the setting, and then integrate them into a more complete treatment.

Mostly I don't do this. Rather, I have a sketch of a world background, and as questions arise, or as I come up with ideas for adventures, I write up new bits and retrofit them. Which seems to be what people who write actual fiction or drama do, too. Even an obsessive worldbuilder like Tolkien made up entirely new stuff when he had a novel to write; he seemingly had no idea that Lothlorien, Fangorn, or Rohan existed when he wrote that first page of LotR.

Settings are nice, but the key thing is to come up with a theme. The theme dictates what sort of adventures are on topic, which dictates what settings and NPCs you need to write up.

Now, for dungeon crawls, this is really simple. When you've said "dungeon crawl" you've already defined at least one of the major themes. So you can make up the setting to fit that theme, and publish it.

But for a game that's designed to accommodate many themes, this isn't so simple. If there's one thing that D&D does not do well, it's "universal." In contrast, the whole GURPS marketing strategy has always been to push universality, at the expense of optimal fit to any specific unique world. The problem is more intense when the GM wants to come up with their own original theme and build a world to fit it. (If I wrote a book on worldbuilding, I would start out by talking about choice of theme!) And the problem is not merely squared, but cubed or worse, when the campaign is theme-seeking more than theme-setting, that is, when the players get to define what the theme is by their choices for their characters, which is a style not unknown among GURPS players.

For that style of game, what you need is not a detailed writeup, with building by building maps, NPC biographies, and readymade plots and adventures. What you need is springboards. And guess what, that's what SJ Games mostly provides.

Surely, there are people like you who would like to buy the more detailed stuff. But I get the impression that attempts to sell it have not succeeded in attracting over enough of the people who play D&D and other theme-setting games, while being sufficiently less interesting to theme-seekers like me to cost some of the sales other GURPS books attain.

Bill Stoddard

[Irish Wolf]

D&D's popularity is almost syllogistic - since they came early and staked out a huge territory, they gathered a lot of fans. This made it "more popular". Today D&D has more players because, well, more people play D&D. Why do more people play D&D? Because it's easier to find more players. Why is it easier to find more players? Because more people play it.

'Round and 'round she goes, where she stops nobody knows...

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by trooper6

... there are companies that heavily support their lines...and they aren't on the list of Top 5 games either. I don't think that "well supported" is the reason D&D is #1.

Originally Posted by roguebfl

Agreed it's the DnD brand identity...

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

Name recognition, as someone else pointed out in this thread.

At least we can say well supported isnt the ONLY reason.

Name recognition certainly counts for alot, or at least it seems to. I honestly dont know how 'heard of' GURPS is in the market. I would assume that alot more people have 'heard of' GURPS than know about GURPS. I would also assume that more people know about GURPS then play gurps.

Neither of these may actually be the case, but it does have a name that Uniquely stands out (at least phoenetically) and has a feel that is very different from D&D (or so I'm told). I guess then the only real barriers are getting those who have 'heard of' GURPS to learn (at least to a GURPS Lite level) about the system and supplements, and maximize the number of those who 'Know About' the system into playing it.

GURPS obviously isnt for everyone. But I think Its a heckuva lot more useful that its marketshare suggests and would like to see that marketshare increased.

Nymdok

[robertsconley]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Are you saying that Steve Jackson Games ought to have a business strategy aimed at gaining and occupying the dominant market niche where they could sell game world and adventure books in economically viable quantities? It seems to me that WotC has occupied that market niche already. Competing for it would probably just mean Steve Jackson Games would go out of business; selling to gamers who want something that WotC doesn't give them is a way to survive as a smaller firm.

I am not. However any roleplaying game needs an influx of new gamers to be viable. It is my opinion that GURPS has gone too far in the toolkit direction and has too much of learning curve for newcomers compared to it's competitors in the 2nd tier roleplaying market.

The problem is one of presentation not of system. There nothing that needs to be fixed about GURPS itself. However three books implementing GURPS for specific genres plus adventures would make the entire line much more approachable and greatly increased it's competitiveness against other 2nd tier RPGs. Fantasy, Space, and Horror would be my candidates.

This is not an opinion that I pulled out of my ass. I ran D&D style live action events and involved in the local convention for over 15 years and dealt with hundreds of gamers from Western PA, Eastern Ohio, and Northern West Virginia. During these things I often had the time to talk about the hobby in general and I try to promote the games I like. When the topic turns to GURPS the #1 complaint is that it is too complicated to get into. Followed by it too expensive to get into because of the multitude of books needed for any single genre OR the time it needs to go through the core books and put together the stuff you need for a specific genre.

Of course I willing to concede it just an artifact of my region. But since I travel a lot for my business I heard this complaint throughout the region. My recent foray into publishing and talking with other there has also turned up similar opinions. It seems the key element to GURPS popularity in a given place is whether there is person who really likes the system, learns it, and is successful in teaching it to others. This is especially true is more rural areas.

Because GURPS is a 2nd tier roleplaying game the source of most new gamers would come from Dungeons & Dragons. Back in the later 80s in Northwest PA most of the people that adopted GURPS were looking for alternatives to D&D. Today patterns still holds that there is a consistent number of gamers turning away from D&D and looking for alternative. The question how do we steer them to GURPS instead of Savage Worlds, Basic Roleplaying, Hero Systems and the other alternatives?

I think the key is to make a version of GURPS that is ready to run for each of the three major genres that folks are interested in; Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror. Each of these should be based on themes that mirror the ones of the most popular game in each category. Which are D&D, Traveller, and Call of Cthulu. Should be powered by GURPS products not toolkits.

For a true GURPS Fantasy this would include not only character generation, and combat, but a magic system, treasure, and monsters. Each section would a subset of what found in the core rulebook.

Originally Posted by whswhs

Unless by "fleshed out" you mean specifically "publishes lots of predesigned adventures." But, once again: Adventures don't sell as well as worldbooks, which don't sell as well as genre books, which don't sell as well as toolkits.

Yes for newcomers they are invaluable to to showing off how the system works. How many people would playing D&D if it wasn't for Keep on the Borderlands. You don't need to go hogwild but a handful of iconic adventures be beneficial.

Originally Posted by whswhs

Why is this so? Well, there's the generic nature of GURPS: It's a lot harder to design an "adventure" for a system that's designed to be equally adaptable to dungeon fantasy, vampire hunting, near future intrigue, interstellar swashbuckling, and present-day police procedurals.

The generic nature of GURPS is obscuring the issue. By definition a generic system is capable of emulating X genre. So if then most popular RPG in the world is about dungeon fantasy then you use GURPS to implement an adventure based on the same premise. For horror you have an adventure where players are investigation an ancient in a modern or near-past settting. For sci-fi you have players being salwart rebels fighting an evil empire, or down on their luck merchants trying to make a dollar on the spaceways.

The point is to show how GURPS can be used to run their favorite genre. As excellent the work is on Transhuman Space, the topic is not one of the most popular.

Originally Posted by whswhs

Even the people who want a setting for GURPS, in other words, seem to prefer a setting that offers them a lot of choices to a stage set for dungeon crawls.

Having more than a little experience in this area you can write a setting that caters to the dungeon crawls folks and yet be wide ranging with lots of choices in a small amount of pages.

I know about the author guidelines and the wish list. I will be glad to answer any specific question about that in a PM.

Rob Conley
http://batintheattic.blogspot.com
http://www.batintheattic.com
http://wilderlands.batintheattic.com (lots of GURPS stuff from my personal campaign)