Low-Tech moves ahead

[whswhs]

Kromm's announced his completion of the edit of the text of GURPS Low-Tech and its three e23 Companions.

Those of you who have been crying out (like voices in the wilderness) for worldbuilding material may be pleased to know that the Companions all have a fair bit: political systems, religious sites, economic thought, and institutions of learning in 1; the progress of military and naval organization and the logistics of military ventures in 2; food supplies, construction, crafting, transportation, and mercantile activities in 3.

There's also a decent amount of crunch: my parts include skill defaults between different musical instruments, expanded literacy and numeracy rules, a grimly realistic treatment of low-tech surgery, really huge gun designs, a bunch of ship stats, rope bridge construction, hauling loads up and down slops, and the game mechanics of buying low and selling high, among other things. Dan, Matt, and Peter are welcome to plug their own parts, which are equally full of cool game mechanical stuff.

Bill Stoddard

[nik1979]

I wish I could pre-order all of them :D. Save me the trouble of some of the anticipation :P

[Enoch]

I probably missed this, but how did the prerelease of the Thaumautology pdf work out?

Anyone know if there's a possibility for the same thing to happen with the Low-Tech book (the hardcover that is)?

[Tzeentch]

I'm really looking forward to seeing how these turned out.

[Agramer]

May I suggest you make "Companion" 4+s with things that were left out due "page/word counts" and even more crunchyness.

Thanks

ps.When will it be available on e23?

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by Enoch

I probably missed this, but how did the prerelease of the Thaumautology pdf work out?

Anyone know if there's a possibility for the same thing to happen with the Low-Tech book (the hardcover that is)?

I don't speak for the company, but as I recall, the pre-release of Thaumatology did lead to a few things being usefully fixed before the print run, and was evidently considered non-catastrophic enough that the procedure was repeated with Vorkosigan (where it definitely prevented some disastrously unbalanced weapon stats from seeing print, all else aside).

So while the internal SJGames decision-making process is their business, I wouldn't be too surprised to see a PDF-first approach again for Low Tech. On the other hand, even now that Kromm has finished the editing, there'll be little matters of (hopefully historically alert) art commissioning and table-heavy layout work to deal with. So nobody should be holding their breath just yet. We hate it when GURPS fans turn blue and expire in front of their computers.

[Woodman]

I probably missed this, but how did the prerelease of the Thaumautology pdf work out?

I can tell you from a customers point of view it went great, i bought the pdf the day it was released and finaly bought a printversion in early january. Especially for the overseas fans the pdf release is great as i can get the book at the same time as all the others, the print release usually takes a few weeks to ship across the ocean.

[SRF]

I'm really looking forward to the Low-Tech books. Any word on when round-abouts we can expect them?

[Anders]

Sometime this year. I don't think they've been more precise than that.

[whswhs]

Going by recent experience, you'll know it's available when it becomes available. Steve Jackson Games has been disinclined to make predictions about upcoming GURPS releases.

Low-Tech and the Companions have all been edited to make them consistent with each other (just this last week Kromm and I went back and neatened up the stats for boats in the main book and the stats for ships in LTC2 and 3 to make them all more consistent with each other). Now SJ Games needs to come up with art, do page layout, decide what has to be cut, and compile an index and a bibliography. When that's all done, conceivably you could see a pdf release.

Believe me, you can't be looking forward to it any more eagerly than I am.

Bill Stoddard