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Old 10-27-2009, 04:47 PM   #24
Agemegos
 
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Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
Default Re: GURPS Does It The Hard Way!

Quote:
Originally Posted by opposedToGravity View Post
i dont agree.
The evidence is in the e23 "What's Hot" list. Which I will link again: http://e23.sjgames.com/hot.cgi?lmt=1...-10-27&ord=qty
Quote:
apparently world books sell.
Yes, world books sell, but not as well as genre books. And genre books don't sell as well as rule expansions. And rule expansions don't sell as well as gear books. And gear books don't sell as well as the basic set. Everyone wants the basic set, and the gear books overlap a lot of genres. But then the SF players don't buy Fantasy or Dungeon Fantasy or Supers, and the Interstellar Wars and Tales of the Solar Patrol players don't buy Transhuman Space. And only a few of the Transhuman Space players buy Singapore Sling.

And adventure is within a campaign scheme, and a campaign is within a setting, and a setting is within a genre, and a genre is only a fraction of the immensity of GURPS. Because GURPS covers a lot of genres, and each genre covers a lot of settings, and each setting covers a number of campaign schemes, each adventure is going to sell to only a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the GURPS market, and only to the GMs within that.

Quote:
if on the other hand there would be more support for these worlds i am pretty sure that sales of those world books would also increase.
I agree. But that isn't much help to the people who write the adventures. If I wrote, say, a dozen good adventures for Tales of the Solar Patrol SJ Games would gladly publish them, and the availability of those adventures would increase sales of TotSP, the Spaceships series, Ultra-Tech, and even, probably the basic set. That would be great for Steve Jackson, and nice for Sean Punch, David Pulver, Kenneth Peters, and especially Lizard. But I don't get royalties on the basic set, TotSP, Ultra-Tech, or Spaceships. Those adventures would have to sell 600 copies to make me 4 cents per word, which is a derisory rate of pay.

Adventures would be rain-makers. But most of the rain would fall in someone else's bucket. So writing adventures isn't an attractive prospect for writers.

I have written adventures, some of them quite successful. I used to run events at games conventions, and I had a little reputation for doing a very good line in traditional, structured, face-to-face, over-the-table RPG adventures unlike the LARP and improv. theatre fare that tended to prevail. Such adventures are quite difficult to write. My last one took five months, required extensive feedback from a GMing group, and had to be playtested three times before it ran right. That's a lot of work to do for a measly few hundred bucks, which I could earn in a day as a consultant.

Everyone wants to write the next Spaceships or Mysteries because they sold quite well (however, we recognise that we are not as good as David Pulver or Lisa J. Steele). Everyone wants to write a world book, because they are fun. Very few want to write adventures because they are difficult, not fun, and don't sell very well.

SJ Games wants to publish them. But free-lance writers don't want to write them. A series of good adventures would be great for SJ Games, but not so good for the writers.
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