[TS] Slicing the pie, a question?

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

For me, the unexpected but understandable nuance was the lack of a 100% blessing for the way things are set in the RAW.

Well, two points regarding that:

1. Like any RPG with close to half a million words of core rules and a couple million words of follow-on content – written by several people, and subject to changes made during playtesting, peer review, editing, proofreading, and publisher approval – GURPS Fourth Edition was necessarily designed by committee. You can't expect every rule to meet with the glowing approval of every individual involved. I was one influence on the design, but no more than David Pulver was – and both of us were junior to decision-makers above us on the ladder. I know that David didn't like every last one of my decisions, he knows that I disagreed with some of his, and both of us were overruled on many things . . . but that's not pettiness or politics, merely the nature of huge projects.

2. It has been a decade since those words were set down – a decade of actual-play experience, of customer feedback, of fellow GURPS writers examining our ideas and creating works that interact with the implications and flaws, of improving our own craft and looking back at what in retrospect feels a little rougher than it seemed at the time. After that long, even the primary creators are entitled to be somewhat critical of the product! I'm still proud of the work and happy to stick to the current edition, but I'm more aware of its imperfections and willing to point them out. If I weren't, I wouldn't be a very honest person!

We often lose sight of the sheer magnitude of this game system. It was created in 1986 and will celebrate its 30th birthday in less than two years' time. I was hired in 1995 and I'll have been working on GURPS for 20 years come summer 2015, yet that means I missed the first decade of its design and evolution, and truly know nothing about why many things are the way they are to this day. The edition I do know about just turned 10 years old this past summer. The total publication list is well in excess of 300 volumes (excluding deck plans, 'zines, marketing items like posters, etc.), which represents tens of millions of words – of which more than five million words are associated with the most recent edition alone. The number of primary authors falls between 80 and 100, higher if you add contributing authors and 'zine contributors. And all of that is ". . . and counting."

So yeah, there are going to be some changes of heart. ;)