Re: What GURPS needs... now
 

Gollum's "two cents" rocked. I say what Gollum said!

Re: What GURPS needs... now
 

I have to agree with you (with the caveat that, out here in the peanut gallery, I haven't a tenth the knowledge of what "GURPS needs" that SJG has).

GURPS LITE is a fine work as it stands.* However...

Over the years, the go-to description of GURPS, from both fans and detractors, has become "It's a toolkit, not a ready-to-play game." True enough. So it's not surprising that GURPS LITE turns out to be... a toolkit lite.

That makes LITE an honest introduction to GURPS, and I appreciate that. But for the newcomer looking to sit down and quickly play GURPS... There's a nice toolkit lite but still no ready-to-play game (other than that old Caravan adventure).

A handful of "lite" play supplements for use with LITE, each a combination of a brief setting and an adventure, sure sounds like a good welcome for newcomers. Just combine LITE with one of the play supplements, and boom, instant ready-to-play introductory game (with free built-in toolkit, too! : ).

==

* Small tangent on LITE: I'd like to see an updated LITE, and jotted down ideas here. I only suggest a freshen-up, though (the "current" LITE is 13 years old!), not a big reworking.

(In pondering improvements to LITE, anyone smart would have also looked at LITE for 3e for inspiration; I didn't think to do so until later. Turns out that LITE 3e packs in far more than I'd remembered! With no more pages than LITE 4e, LITE 3e managed to include more weapons, a bigger character form, a full-page sample character, basics on non-humans and animals, a Tech Level table, a little section on jobs – and the magic system! That's quite a feat!)

Re: What GURPS needs... now
 

To expand my thoughts and piggy back on Gollum a bit, very recently it was free RPG day. I went to my FLGS and looked over the table of free RPGs. I picked up the new Runequest Quickstart (very exciting!) and I also got a book from Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Was there any GURPS? No.

Looking around the Chaosium site (an old school company that has been doing really well recently (look at all their ENnie nominations!)...guess what I found? Last year they launched a six month campaign for their Organized Play program. They say: play it in your FLGS to get the word out about CoC! Play it on Twitch! Play it where you want! Why don't we have anything like that? We have MIBs (though when I emailed the contact to join years and years ago I never got a return contact...so my impression about the MIB program isn't that high) but we don't have some cool 6 month unfolding campaign that people can run in the FLGS.

Other companies are doing things to keep their name in people's minds and to offer people things they can just jump in and play. What are we doing?

Re: What GURPS needs... now
 

I'd just like to see enough in there to give people something playable so they can get an idea of how the default GURPS magic system works, like was done with Skills, Advantages, and Disadvantages.

We could start with the GURPS Lite 3e spell list, for example.

Re: What GURPS needs... now
 

Thank you very much guys!

I’m saying that for a very long time, in many threads …

But I also understand the answer that has been made by GURPS authors until now:

Writing that kind of stuff requires time and money. And GURPS fans are mostly experienced game masters who love building their own game worlds and adventures. So, since GURPS doesn’t really sell as well as we would like, it is impossible to please GURPS fans with new books full of crunchy things and to do stuff for newbies at the same time.

But, after thinking a bit about it, I’m asking something: to myself as well as to others …

We are experienced GURPS game masters. We have time. And we already do a lot of work to build our own game worlds and adventures. Furthermore, some of us already have some audience on the web …

OK. My website doesn’t. But it’s my fault! I didn't post anything for months. Perhaps even years …

Official authors cannot spend time or Steve Jackson Games money to attract newcomers ... But maybe we can! For free. Just because we love GURPS. And because if more and more people buy it, there will be more and more interesting books ...

I’m not speaking about rewriting GURPS books like GURPS lite here! Nor about writing unofficial adaptation of other roleplaying games. We don’t have right to do so and since Steve Jackson Games are very respectful about others' rights (including ours), we have to follow the same guideline.

But we can write adventures with ready to play characters for GURPS Lite. With page references and rules explanations everything required. And we can put them somewhere on the web where newcomers will find them very easily.

The Mook already did something like that. Actually, his website is full of very interesting stuff for newbies.

Why don’t we do the same thing? … Why don’t I do the same thing? It would be better than complaining or contenting ourselves with writing here what should be done to our opinion …

OK. It's clear: I’m speaking for myself now! It will be my challenge. For the next year. Or the next couple of years. Because I’m very slow.

Re: What GURPS needs... now
 

I think a spell list is the wrong way to go about magic for a GURPS Lite product. But, you could do a simple version of ritual path magic, noun-verb magic, or path/book magic within a couple of pages.

Re: What GURPS needs... now
 

Is pulling from books beyond the Basic Set a good idea for GURPS Lite?

Re: What GURPS needs... now
 

It's a fair question. I think it's well established that the magic system in Basic was one of the elements that was not as well converted as other elements of the basic system. I look at how complex the rules are for magic in Basic versus what we've learned about how to create magic systems since, and I think the tradeoff would be a net positive.

For some reason, Lite doesn't include task difficulty modifiers. It would be easy to make a version of Lite that does, and then explain e.g. path/book magic in terms of task difficulty modifiers. That's sticking close enough to Basic for me to feel comfortable. Others may draw that line at a different place. But, if Lite has to be fully compatible with Basic's magic rules as-they-are, I think it would be a much more difficult task.

Re: What GURPS needs... now
 

I was going to suggest a Munchkin supplement for Gurps but I realized one is coming out (hopefully) later this year.

Re: What GURPS needs... now
 

Well, play what? It looks like SJG is one of the few companies left that really focuses 90+% of its effforts on its core system. Most of the other "generic" systems sort of "emerge" from a few core lines (like Modiphius 2d20 system, or GUMSHOE) or have at least one core setting as its focus. HERO has Champions, D&D has the Forgotten Realms, Pathfinder has Golarion, Cortex has Firefly, BRP has Cthulhu.

GURPS has... Banestorm? Transhuman Space?

Versatility has always been GURPS' strong point, and I would assume that most of use here are because of that. But that makes selling it in the first place a bit harder, especially in these days when systems tend to recede a bit in the background.

Savage Worlds seems to have a similar system-first agenda, but a different complexity and pricing strategy.
FATE adds a different licensing strategoy on top of that.

The aforementioned Chaosium was a pretty close relative for a while. Making most of the money with other licenses (Cthulhu, Munchkin) and having a core generic system with a shoestring budget (BRP, GURPS).
After the recent takeover, they seem to focus more on their own IP (RuneQuest, Cthulhu), with the system being secondary…