February 5, 2023: GURPS "New Edition" Chatter At RPG.Net

[RoboAdmin]

February 5, 2023: GURPS "New Edition" Chatter At RPG.Net

Read this article on the Illuminator.

[Frisbeedragon]

Long time lurker, first time posting.

Ok, when the company first seemed to be encouraging rumors of a fifth edition a few weeks ago, I was intrigued but not sure what to make of it. I kind of assumed there was no real chance of it happening.

But now they're doing it again? It seems like a strange thing to do if there are no plans. I'm starting to think there really is something in the works.

Anyway, my big hope for GURPS, whether in a new edition or in a changed policy for existing editions, is not any new gameplay rule or option, but for the company to allow and even encourage third party content. Sure, adventures and supplements written by others is competition in a way, but look how it has allowed D&D to explode. And, after WoTC stepped in it recently by suggesting they might take that away, the other big names in the industry are going the same way. I think that lack of an open source or open license GURPS rules set is a primary thing holding it back. Tightly control your IP and you just end up holding on to an ever-diminishing pie. Let everyone have a piece and the total amount of pie you have is much more than it was, even if it's no longer the whole thing.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Frisbeedragon

It seems like a strange thing to do if there are no plans. I'm starting to think there really is something in the works.

They're taking the opportunity of the OGL fiasco to get people to talk about GURPS. The talk is dying down a bit or devolving into arguments about measuring systems, so they just poked a stick into the embers to try to get it going again.

[Frisbeedragon]

You may be right. But you know what would be a much better way to latch on to the excitement around open licenses and make GURPS relevant again? Release the rules under an open license.

[Frisbeedragon]

"We did indeed have a big surge [in sales] across the board,” said Chris Birch, the co-founder of Modiphius (Fallout and Dune TTRPGs). “At the same time we launched our own World Builders community content programme supporting creators ‘to become our future competitors’ through a curated, supported, programme offering free marketing, seminars, free art packs and more via [DriveThruRPG]. This had a huge uptake with lots of creators who were previously working on 5e indie projects switching to us.”

That's from an article on Polygon titled D&D’s OGL controversy turbocharges sales of virtually every other tabletop RPG
https://www.polygon.com/23587624/non...-sales-numbers

[Archangel Beth]

Speaking ENTIRELY as a fan, who has no inside knowledge or leverage, I wonder if some form of open-licensing adventures would be feasible. "For use with {setting X}" kinds of things...

Revamp GURPS Lite a little -- stuff in Magic, perhaps, give it 48 pages -- and let people Refer To That "openly" in adventures, make NPCs based on it, maybe even bundle it (unmodified) with their adventures?

Of course, the real tripwire that people might entangle themselves by doing "And here's my ~totally authorized~ GURPS Star Wars adventure!" (Which, obviously, no.)

Anyway, adventures have never really caught on as something SJ Games has produced profitably, so it would probably be a low-risk kinda thing, if the legalities were sorted well and able to be made clear enough not to attract easy misreadings. If someone's campaign/adventure arc caught on, then the players would probably want more of the actual books. If nothing caught on, then oh well.

(What I'd really love would be a "GURPS-Beyond" -- DnDBeyond made it easy for me to participate in a game without knowing hardly anything about the D&D system. But that's not open-source.)