Raise a Million For GURPS

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

Point taken. On the other hand, HALO is, by the nature of things, the property of a big, well-financed company who will expect big financial benefits to justify their even noticing you, and probably move with glacial slowness when you need a response from them. Discworld is the creation of one reasonably-minded (if perfectionist) ex-gamer, now being looked after by, basically, his family and his reasonably-minded agent. The chance of getting a viable license out of the latter without getting hideously burned is, well, a bit greater.

I agree extreme caution is warranted. When you're dealing with a company that will put $60M into a project and they expect go get $200M out, three orders of magnitude less revenue/profit/cost is a rounding error and not worth their time, etc. You'd need a dedicated fan on the inside willing to make the case and take on the management of such as a side project.

Let's just say that I'd be quite happy with 500 guaranteed pre-sales on most TS PDF products.

Quite. TG hasn't quite hit 500 yet since its release in Sept 2013 either.

[gruundehn]

Originally Posted by wellspring

Word of mouth is compelling because it follows an exponential progression. Even with a small starting population, the rate of growth and time spent compounding are more important. Also note: it's free. Strong impact and reach, low cost, take advantage of the social nature of how the product is used... WOM is a powerful tool in RPGs, social skills of the players notwithstanding.

Compare also the other marketing tools at your disposal. Advertising is out of the question. I can go into detail if you'd like but essentially the problem is you need a certain number of exposures over a long period of time before it has any effect. This is a high-involvement product that requires detailed marketing communications-- capturing people's attention for this kind of communication is not easy, either. There's also a high degree of embeddedness inherent in an RPG; winning groups is a different animal than winning individuals.

You mention having a nice presence at cons, and amen to that. But in addition to booths, let me recommend demo games.

There's a whole literature on product adoption, and we can talk that if you like. To me, the key applications to GURPS are: compelling benefit to switch (people will stick with an inferior alternative that they're already invested in). And most of all, switching costs (here's where product adaptations matter).



Point taken. I don't know our market share, but is it declining or just stable within a market that's in decline?



I wasn't talking about your friends. I had a specific company in mind when I wrote that, and apart from assuring you that it's accurate I can't really say more without legal implications. The point is, there are companies that have achieved success in the RPG market that are no more, because they made poor business decisions. Especially when it comes to blowing through cash and over-promoting.

When it comes to marketing decisions, I'm all about objective and task. Money has to be spent optimally, and it has to be spent with a forecast profitability outcome in mind. That used to be impossible, is still hard for small-to-midsize businesses, but is both possible and essential in many highly competitive markets. The kind of number-crunching Douglas is giving is essential.

Word of mouth is a great advertising but slow campaign. When I was selling vacuums door-to-door my trainer told me that if you do good your customer will tell four people and if you do bad your customer will tell twelve people. That maxim is decades old now and with social media I doubt it is true but the idea is there. Customers are good advertising because they speak from THIER experience and usually know the person they are talking to and thus know which "buttons to push" when praising or denigrating a product.

However, merchandise is also a great advertising campaign. Wearing a shirt that says "This week I was an Orc, last week I was a space pirate" or something similar will interest someone from two different interest groups who might then enquire about GURPS (and if you didn't wear such shirt or other merchandise, how would they know to ask?), so usable merchandise that is visible and intriguing can be a way to expand the customer base among those who had no idea that they were interested.

[lachimba]

If it was easy to license Harry Potter then where's the CRPG (C for computer)?

[Anders]

To what extent are fan conversions of other setting a help or hindrance?

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by lachimba

If it was easy to license Harry Potter then where's the CRPG (C for computer)?

Harry Potter is notoriously non-game-licensable. JKR ain't going for it. However, I believe that the earlier post was suggesting that a "magic school" game (with, obviously, all serial numbers well filed off) would be a perfectly good way to exploit the general interest in the idea - if one could be made to work.

As it is, no, there aren't even any dubious not-actually-Potter knock-offs out there that I know of. Which is a little bit interesting.

[D10]

GURPS strenght is its system. Whenever I get the chance to explain why I like GURPS, I get a positive response from other roleplayers. Thing is, I dont have the time or energy to GM more games or to bring more people into the fold, its getting harder and harder.

But when I do, I always encourage the newbies to read the rules and understand the design decisions behind the setting in a way that empowers them to GM in the future.

I try to make every game I GM somewhat of an opportunity to learn more GURPS, specially to learn how to GM GURPS.

[Þorkell]

On gaming stores, FWIW.

There's one gaming store* in the entire country here. They have GURPS books, I think it's at most 10 titles there. As far as I can tell there has not been much movement with those books, they've sat on that shelf for ages.

While they'd be happy to special order for me, I don't see why I'd do that. I can go to W23 or Amazon or some other place online and to it myself and save myself the journey to the gaming store.

*Arguably two, but the other one is almost solely concerned with family friendly board and card games.

[Anders]

Clearly we need a Sean Punch/Jason Levine swimsuit calendar.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by PK

Most roleplayers don't consciously care about rules.

This is very, very true. You might think I feel otherwise, given all the crunchy and rules-heavy material I write for GURPS – witness GURPS Powers, or the GURPS Power-Ups series, or even the reams of templates in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy. However, my publication list merely reflects the fact that I'm the custodian of the rules system. My job is fixing old rules, vetting new ones, checking that everything is consistent with them, and occasionally adding to them. My practical experience as a GM is that most of my players don't really look at the rules; they care about rules only when rules hinder their current Moment of Cool (or, occasionally, their power fantasy). I mean no offense to anyone reading when I say that the level of rules-concern I see on these forums is orders of magnitude out of whack with how the vast majority of gamers actually feel about rules.

Originally Posted by Gigermann

I say focusing on "physical print" is holding onto the past a little too tightly.

Yes, it is. One could generalize from "We have two licensed print products on hold for financial reasons" to "Printed GURPS books are no longer profitable," but one would be in error in doing so. I guess we could make printed books work if we undid the decision to shift day-to-day GURPS support to PDF and reserve print for special items. However, that decision was made for some very good reasons: PDF does not have printing or shipping delays, is available anywhere the Internet goes, enables easy errata fixes, and (most important of all!) allows us to publish ultra-short and short items that cover extremely niche interests, making GURPS more things to more people.

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Also, a "Mere" five that cost no less than $30-60 million each in development costs, and made back that money by 3-5x each time. There's so much money there that a complete RPG line is a rounding error in the cost line items.

Essentially any successful video-game property that has seen one or more sequels to the core game will dwarf the most successful tabletop RPG. Lines blur a bit for D&D, but the rest of us aren't D&D.

(Though there are times when I think I could raise funds by tending bar at a suitably adult games shop and selling GURPS-themed cocktails with names like "Quick Contest" and "Critical Failure." An RPG funded by tip money would almost be worth doing just to say you did it.)

Originally Posted by borithan

My personal feeling is that it isn't a very RPG friendly setting. The Harry Potter story is the story of the setting.

Yep. Between it being a hermetic set piece that doesn't brook interference with the storyline* and the property owner being publicly unhappy with RPGs, I doubt that would work out.

* I know several avid fan-fic writers who find the setting far harder to work with than almost any other.

Originally Posted by Anders

Clearly we need a Sean Punch/Jason Levine swimsuit calendar.

(We need to attract gamers, not scare them off. If you're going to the extent of using my physical self to sell games, you'd be better off asking me to either tend bar for or dance the tango with gamers. My swimsuit game is a distant third to that.)

[Joe]

Originally Posted by David Johansen

So, just on a silly, throw-away whim, I was wondering how we could raise a million dollars for a GURPS renaissance.

Originally Posted by Kromm

(Though there are times when I think I could raise funds by tending bar at a suitably adult games shop and selling GURPS-themed cocktails with names like "Quick Contest" and "Critical Failure." An RPG funded by tip money would almost be worth doing just to say you did it.)

Question - answered!

More seriously, I have no actual experience in the industry, so obviously I defer to those with real knowledge - but just to throw my two cents into the discussion as an avid fan, I'll say that I'm on the side of those who say we need better, more accessible gateway drugs.

To my mind, one of the best candidates is the "GURPS Intro Kit" idea that keeps coming up throughout this thread, under various names. Different people have different ideas of what it might contain: I'd probably just include a pre-packaged adventure written for first-time GMs, simple pre-gen characters, and a sheet of Cardboard Heroes with the appropriate PCs and NPCs, just for funsies. A couple of nice maps, paper props, or player handouts if possible; if not, not. In my fantasy world, it's a physical boxed set - but to be more realistic, I think it could also work really well as a PDF.

It would be:

• Good for new players;
• Good for a night of pick-up-and-play gaming even for experienced players;
• Good for convention play;
• (Most importantly?) it would also be a good thing to buy for folks who like D&D, or Pathfinder, or even just computer RPGs, but have never tried GURPS, and might like it. It would be a great way to show other roleplayers how fast, simple, playable, and fun GURPS can be.

The simplicity and playability of GURPS' basic mechanics would be front and center; the full suite of GURPS options - particularly for character creation, but also for more richly simulationist approaches to every situation under the sun - would be left for later, if picked up at all. Result: easy fun.

This has been said many, many times, of course, but I thought I might just add to the fan chorus.