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Old 10-27-2009, 10:47 PM   #211
b-dog
 
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Default Re: GURPS Does It The Hard Way!

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Originally Posted by Brett View Post
The aim would be to grow the pie. PrinceYrkoon and opposedToGravity suggest that if GURPS had appealing, ready-to-run adventures on the shelves in book shops then people would buy those and get into GURPS who are not getting into GURPS now.

Unlike last time.
But be honest, GURPS has never had a very popular genre. I remember when they had GURPS Vampire and it semed a lot of people were interested in GURPS. Now DF is a very popular genre and if people saw adventures for that then they may look into the GURPS system. The only way I found out about Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying System was because I saw In Search of the Trollslayer and I really liked the adventure so now I own 5 Basic Roleplaying books.

Strange and quirky genres will not get a lot of people interested in GURPS but this is mostly what GURPS had in the past as genres. Now GURPS seems to go a little more mainstream with DF and Action and I think there will be better response from the RPG buyers.
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Old 10-27-2009, 10:48 PM   #212
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Default Re: GURPS Does It The Hard Way!

This is a good example of what I'm talking about:

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GURPS WoD (Werewolves, Vampires, Mages, oh my). 300 point characters
GURPS "Dark Souls," a wonky super-hero/horror crossover where the players have been imbued with the dark power of alien things and struggle to survive as gods attempt to wipe them out. 500 point characters
GURPS Military Space Opera, set on a specific planet 200 point characters.
GURPS Black Ops. 750 point characters.
GURPS Horror, a fairly generic game with madness-magic and undead horrors. 50 point characters.

I'm sure my friends could remind me of more.

I would like to run:
GURPS Dark Space, a wildly overpowered gothic space opera inspired by Warhammer 40k. 750 points.
GURPS Resplendent Star Empire, a Space Opera Wuxia crossover with lots of light-sabers and anime action. 500 point characters.
GURPS Supers of some kind, 1000 points
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, 250 point characters.
GURPS Infinite Earths where we go everywhere and do everything.
Obviously, the poster is writing for brevity, but this material isn't nearly as broad or as deep as it seems. In fact, there are a lot of commonalities between these campaign settings and genres. Simultaneously, a trained or talented writer has a lot of plug-and-play memes and tropes that will fit any or all of them.

As is, all of the above campaigns, whether run or anticipated, have at least one source book which can govern them, and often several. The system is GURPS, so you already have a ruleset laid out for you. The point cost of the characters is specified, so you know the power level.

The human repretoire of fundamental plots, literary conflicts, and genres isn't terribly varied. Notice how many times "Space Opera" comes up in the above list. Notice how most of them are sci-fi. Don't worry about the "This one is gothic and this one is military and this one is Wuxia." All three campaigns could be knocked off right out of the Basic Set and Ultra-Tech. Maybe watch a DVD or two if you aren't familar with the sub-genre, and pay a visit to Wikipedia.

A hungry and practiced writer can knock off an adventure for all ten of the above settings in two weeks apiece for the first draft. A week of playtesting and another week of second draft. Post it online for free, offer it to e23 for sale, and go, go, go! One adventure a month, for almost a year.

The challenge for me? Maybe I don't feel like writing a black ops adventure. Maybe there is a deadline, and Mailanka needs to have whatever I can get in by Halloween. Maybe Wizards of the Coast is trying to get me to also write adventures for them, so my head is full of magic instead of super powers.

The challenge for you? Maybe e23 doesn't want that setting or adventure. Maybe you are a good player or GM, but a terrible writer! Or you are King Tech Writer of the West Coast... but don't know nuthin' about the GURPS system.

Obviously, there are challenges. But writing adventures is not rocket science.
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Last edited by BMR; 10-27-2009 at 10:57 PM.
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Old 10-27-2009, 10:56 PM   #213
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Default Re: GURPS Does It The Hard Way!

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writing adventures is not rocket science.
Indeed not. Rocket scientists get paid, and rocket scientists get respect.
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Old 10-27-2009, 10:58 PM   #214
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Default Re: GURPS Does It The Hard Way!

The amount of writing the complainers have done in this thread, I could have a new adventure planned out for one of my groups.

Less complaining, more writing, folks. It's easy to write an adventure for your group. You don't need to write publication quality stuff, just a few good scenes to keep your friends entertained.

http://www.obrienscafe.com/adventuredesigner.html

That's the forms that I use to plan out my adventure. Fill out the forms and you'll have a nice adventure written out without a lot of fuss.
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Old 10-27-2009, 11:00 PM   #215
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Default Re: GURPS Does It The Hard Way!

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Indeed not. Rocket scientists get paid, and rocket scientists get respect.
Not all of them! Some scientists end up with reputations for being cold fathers and wife beaters, and they die penniless after their inventions and formulas are stolen. Others, like Albert Einstien, become charicatures that are actually copyrighted by their estates, passing more into legend and hype with each passing decade.

Look at Von Braun, who practically built NASA atop his shoulders and got us to the moon. Problem is, he was an ex-Nazi who is criticized to this day for bombing England with V-2 missiles and using slave labor in his facilities. Some people criticize America for putting this guy to work for us. He may have been a brilliant rocket science, but people don't forget he was also part of a monsterous evil.

I've encounted some pretty bitter and contemptible rocket scientists in online forums, scientists who sound far too jaded and burned by personal failures for me to take them without a grain of salt.
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Old 10-27-2009, 11:02 PM   #216
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Default Re: GURPS Does It The Hard Way!

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They want you to write for Pyramid and/or JTAS, get published, and impress them before you write query letters. Remember that following the instructions exactly is considered an intelligence test!
Aye, but Pyramid/JTAS are a start...I haven't looked into either one yet myself, but I assume they'd like queary letters for those as well..especially since it seems like Pyramid tends toward being themed each issue.
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Old 10-27-2009, 11:06 PM   #217
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Eventually I came to realize that they weren't interested in what I wanted to write and I wasn't interested in what they wanted to write and that indeed I am the type of "Drama Queen Artiste" that they don't want to work with so I turned my attention, time, and efforts elsewhere.

What can I say I'm a petulant, whiney, bitch.
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Old 10-27-2009, 11:06 PM   #218
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Default Re: GURPS Does It The Hard Way!

Savage Tide
Shackled City
Against the Giants
Keep on the Borderlands

These are not adventures, they are campaigns (that is, longer "chains" of adventures), and I think we need to make a clear distinction. (I'm pretty sure, in all these cases, they all started as individual adventures.) Personally, I don't think what GURPS needs is adventures, but campaigns—no sales data on those, as I'm pretty sure they've never published any. An individual adventure is fine, but I may or may not be able to use it in the campaign that I'm running. However, if there was a full-on campaign, whatever the genre, I would probably be looking into using it—for the same reasons that so many D&D GMs have purchased and used the aforementioned campaigns, such that many of you recognize those names.

That being said, SJG is not going to risk pushing resources into such a gamble (as far as they're concerned). I expect it will have to be done by an "outsider," who hands it to them in a (nearly?) complete state, with a minimum of resources required by the company.

It's clear they (& we) could use more of this.
It's clear they want more of this.
It's clear they're not going to take undue risks to produce this.
If it's going to exist at all, what's left but to do it ourselves, paid or not?
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Old 10-27-2009, 11:09 PM   #219
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Default Re: GURPS Does It The Hard Way!

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Aye, but Pyramid/JTAS are a start...I haven't looked into either one yet myself, but I assume they'd like queary letters for those as well.
Query letters are de rigeur for Pyramid, but the official line at JTAS is still "don't bother with a query letter—if it's about Traveller we'd like a look, and if it's not about Traveller we wouldn't."
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.especially since it seems like Pyramid tends toward being themed each issue.
Yeah. I have actually found that a bit off-putting. Pyramid no longer seems like the place to publish the stuff I was writing for it. I got green lights on a couple of query letters for the exploration issues a year ago, and I guess I ought to start writing.
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Old 10-27-2009, 11:10 PM   #220
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Default Re: GURPS Does It The Hard Way!

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Eventually I came to realize that they weren't interested in what I wanted to write and I wasn't interested in what they wanted to write and that indeed I am the type of "Drama Queen Artiste" that they don't want to work with so I turned my attention, time, and efforts elsewhere.

What can I say I'm a petulant, whiney, bitch.
Yeah. Me too. I don't even turn in copy on time.
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