Sean's Picks of the Week (1113-1117) - Get Your GURPS Week!

Those in the know spent this week checking the temperature in the Nether Realms and wondering if Beelzebub might not be trying on ice skates. Why? Because that which never seemed possible came to pass - Steve Jackson Games is now on DriveThruRPG, currently selling 4th Edition GURPS products. They are also challenging the notion that PDFs must inherently be devalued (which, for those of us who strive to make a living at this, is a pretty big deal). Onward!

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GURPS BASIC SET: CHARACTERS

Gotta admit, I did not see this coming. Steve Jackson Games’ GURPS (Generic Universal Roleplaying System) is actually up on DriveThruRPG! In celebration of this surprise shift in my universe, I’m declaring this Get Your GURPS Week!

Naturally, I think opening up with the core book is the right move here – GURPS Basic Set: Characters.

GURPS is the most flexible roleplaying system ever created. With just this book, you can adventure in any world you can imagine. Use all types of weapons from clubs to lasers . . . magic and martial arts . . . psionics and superpowers.

Create exactly the character you want to play . . . your favorite fictional hero, or your own invention. Choose from over 400 advantages and disadvantages, over 350 skills, spells, and techniques. Customize your character with individual perks and quirks, and you’re ready to go.

No more switching game systems when you change campaigns! GURPS gives you one set of clear, comprehensive rules to cover any background. This new Fourth Edition is based on 16 years of gamer feedback from the Third Edition, and is faster and easier to play than ever before.

GURPS makes the Game Master’s job easy and fun. All rules are carefully organized, indexed, and cross-referenced. Charts and tables are clear and legible. And to help you introduce new players to the system, there’s a “Quick Start” section which covers the basics in a few pages.

This is Book 1 of the two-volume Basic Set. Only this book is necessary to play. Game Masters, and players wanting more detail, will find Book 2 valuable.

GURPS Characters is the companion book to GURPS Basic Set: Campaigns. The two provide everything you need to play or run a GURPS campaign.

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GURPS BASIC SET: CAMPAIGNS

Get Your GURPS Week continues with the other half of the GURPS Basic Set duology, this one focused on all the campaign-oriented stuff you’ll need to do pretty much “all the things” in GURPS.

With GURPS, you can be anyone you want – an elf hero fighting for the forces of good, a shadowy femme fatale on a deep-cover mission, a futuristic swashbuckler carving up foes with a force sword in his hand and a beautiful woman by his side . . . or literally anything else! GURPS has been the premiere universal roleplaying game for almost two decades. Fourth Edition makes it even better!

GURPS Basic Set: Campaigns combines information from the Third Edition GURPS Basic Set and GURPS Compendium II – plus our new core setting, with infinite possibilities for timeline-hopping adventure! (You don’t have to play in the core setting – there isn’t some game-altering metaplot – but it’s there if you want it.) This 240-page, full-color PDF contains everything a GM needs to create and run a GURPS Fourth Edition campaign.

GURPS Campaigns is the companion book to GURPS Basic Set: Characters. The two provide everything you need to play or run a GURPS campaign.

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GURPS: HIGH-TECH

As we roll on with Get Your GURPS Week, let’s look at one of the most popular GURPS releases ever. How this system handles varying levels of technology is one of its strongest design foundations, and the various books that cover the many options for gear in the nigh-infinite number of games you can play is a huge selling point. Along with this one – GURPS High-Tech – there’s Low-Tech, Ultra-Tech, and Bio-Tech, giving both players and GMs massive options for their campaigns and characters. The fact that immense research goes into these books makes them useful to any game, regardless of system (in fact, that’s why this one, in particular, is so beloved by gamers across the decades).

From the Industrial Revolution to the Digital Age, GURPS High-Tech lets you outfit adventurers of all stripes, be they a pioneer party just trying to survive or a SWAT team taking down bad guys. Its meticulously researched TL5-8 hardware includes:

• Weapons. Descriptions and stats for hundreds of historical weapons – small arms (from muskets to assault rifles, plus oddities and prototypes), light artillery, explosives, and more – with new rules for guns, gunmen, and “Gun Fu.”
• Armor. Head-to-toe protection for every budget.
• Vehicles. An essential selection of rides. Cover ground by stagecoach, jeep, or tank . . . cruise the coasts by kayak, surfboard, or patrol boat . . . cross the skies by glider, plane, or helicopter . . . and more.
• Tools. Complete tools of the trade for such specialists as detectives, divers, firemen, medics, spies, and thieves.
• Electronics. From early telegraphs to modern computers, medical scanners, and surveillance devices . . . if it beeps or blinks, it’s covered.
• Survival Gear. Camping equipment, first-aid kits, rations, and everything else explorers need.

GURPS High-Tech requires the GURPS Basic Set, Fourth Edition. The notes on real-world equipment will enhance any game set after 1730.

Bonus! Includes a free copy of GURPS High-Tech: Weapon Tables! No need to go through 256 pages of troublesome words when all you need is a Colt Python’s Bulk and Rate of Fire rating.

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GURPS: FANTASY

Ray Greer of Hero Games fame told me the story of how he convinced Steve Jackson to push his deadlines and include guns in the original release of GURPS; Steve was just going to stick with fantasy-level support, since a lot of folks loved the core rules for just that (and its roots in the game-changing The Fantasy Trip didn’t hurt that impression, either). GURPS Fantasy establishes beyond question the strength of the system for the most popular genre of gaming in the world.

At the same time, there’s lots of other genre-support material for GURPS fans – GURPS Horror and GURPS Supers, as examples.

Fantasy – from ancient myths to popular films, stories of heroes and magic have captured the human imagination. Now GURPS offers roleplayers a comprehensive guide to the entire Fantasy genre. Building on the flexible, streamlined Fourth Edition rules, it helps you develop a campaign to explore the world of your favorite book or film – or create a new one from your own dreams. The main emphasis is on historical fantasy, in settings from the Bronze Age to the Renaissance, but the principles apply to any fantasy setting, from the prehistoric past to the remote future.

A complete campaign setting, Roma Arcana, is ready to use in your own campaign. It can stand on its own, or fit into the Infinite Worlds campaign framework from GURPS Fourth Edition. Send a band of adventurers on impossible missions in a magical Roman Empire, as they struggle to hold back the darkness from their native city and win honor.

You’ll find help in running your campaign in Roma Arcana or any other setting – advice on creating balanced parties, devising scenarios to challenge them, and using the game systems to achieve dramatic effects.

Take the most flexible, most consistent game rules system available, and use it to run the campaign of your dreams.

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GURPS: BANESTORM

I’m closing out Get Your GURPS Week with one of the many campaign-oriented books Steve Jackson Games publishes. Banestorm is a complete world book to get folks started with the fantasy-oriented aspects of the system. For other campaign-enhancing books, check out GURPS Zombies, GURPS Dragons, and GURPS Infinite Worlds. No doubt, a lot more of the SJG campaign books will start showing up on DriveThruRPG soon.

Welcome to the land of Yrth, a magical realm of incredibly varied races and monsters – including people snatched from our Earth and other worlds by the cataclysmic Banestorm!

Whole villages were transported – from such diverse locales as medieval England, France, Germany, and the Far East. Now humans struggle with dwarves, elves, and each other. The Crusades aren’t ancient history here – they’re current events!

Characters can journey from the windswept plains of the Nomad Lands – where fierce Nordic warriors seek a valiant death to earn a seat in Valhalla – to Megalos, the ancient empire where magic and political intrigue go hand in hand. Or trek south to the Muslim lands of al-Wazif and al-Haz to explore the forbidden city of Geb’al-Din.

This book provides GMs with a complete world background – history, religion, culture, politics, races, and a set of 16 detailed, full-color maps – everything needed to start a GURPS campaign. Phil Masters (GURPS Discworld and Hellboy RPG RPGs) and Jonathan Woodward (Hellboy RPG and GURPS Ogre) have added new peoples, places, and plots, as well as lots more on magic and mysticism, all of which conforms to the just-released GURPS Fantasy and GURPS Magic.

So prepare to make your own mark on Yrth. Plunder elven ruins while evading the desert natives. Play a peasant-born hero . . . an orcish pirate . . . a Muslim double agent commanded to infiltrate the Hospitallers.

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Back when I worked for OBS (the company behind DriveThruRPG and RPGNow), we tried extensively to get SJG to consider putting their stuff up. Naturally, they wanted to focus on their e23 site. I am guessing the sheer advanced volume of traffic that DriveThru continues to show changed the winds, so here we are...

This is a low-gaming, high-social-geekery weekend for me. While we have our Prowlers & Paragons: Epic Age campaign on Sunday, tonight features low-stakes poker. Tomorrow is "Justice League," followed by... not even sure. Sunday is also the birthday celebration of my dear friend and Freedom Squadron: Global Operations Force co-conspirator, Chris Parks.

Here's hoping you have great things planned!

The Adventure Continues!

Note that I use affiliate links in all my posts as a way to generate additional revenue for my efforts; I make my Picks and other article choices, however, based on the desire to share a wide variety of things with you. Thank you for your support.

Sean Patrick Fannon
Writer & Game Designer: Shaintar, Star Wars, Savage Rifts, much more
Please check out my Patreon and get involved directly with my next projects!

 

[stargazera5]

"They are also challenging the notion that PDFs must inherently be devalued (which, for those of us who strive to make a living at this, is a pretty big deal)." Yeah, I saw them advertised on DTRPG earlier this week and was very interested in updating my very aging physical copies with new PDFs until I saw what the prices were. My reaction at that point was, "Are they insane?" PDFs have helped drive a lot more RPG play to a larger audience as they bring the price down from a niche product to mass market/impulse buy. If you push the prices up like they used to be, you'll drive RPGs back to being a niche market.


Needless to say, I am NOT buying GURPS PDFs at those prices.

 

[marroon69]

hmmm devalued? You remove the materials, printing, storage, shipping to the house and handling costs once you have the product. Not sure why they feel PDF is devalued it seems they should be lower priced.

 

[dm4hire]

I agree.

If these were new editions of the books I'd be more inclined to accept the listed value, but they are not. The investment capital SJG put into these books should have long since been paid back since first production. Any sales of the PDF is strictly profit at this point. Not to mention that with a PDF, since there is not investment beyond paying for art, editing, writing, and layout, there is no further expenses towards the book that incur as with print. Once the initial break even point is reached there is nothing left to gain but profit.

New PDF only products having high costs seem to reflect that desire to quickly regain the investment and then eventually lower in value until they reach a stable selling margin from what I've seen. I've seen several new PDFs start high on DriveThruRPG only to diminish in cost or be featured in sales that lower the price.

Most people also prefer to own printed work (though that medium is shifting). Low PDF prices tend to push print sales; either being sold as part of a bundle or purchased as a method of preview before deciding to buy the final product.

I would think SJG would want to get more people into the game and offering a lower entry, at least for the core product would do that. Similar in the way that Paizo offers their core products for $10, but charge a higher amount for everything else.

 

[AriochQ]

5e books are MSRP of $49.95. These PDF's are listed at $25-$30, which seems reasonable at a normal print copy price point of $50. Of course, Amazon sells 5e for around $30. That price point makes these PDF's seem overpriced.

In a perfect world, we would pay $30 for a hardback, $15-$20 for PDF's, or $40 for both.

 

[stargazera5]

5e books are MSRP of $49.95. These PDF's are listed at $25-$30, which seems reasonable at a normal print copy price point of $50. Of course, Amazon sells 5e for around $30. That price point makes these PDF's seem overpriced.

In a perfect world, we would pay $30 for a hardback, $15-$20 for PDF's, or $40 for both.

Those seem like reasonable price to me for the level of product of a core book, with rare exceptions that have a higher than usual amount of material going higher. Most of my individual PDF purchases are in the $5-$15 range, depending on product size and quality. Also, many of my PDF purchases are in bundles, especially Bundle of Holding, which discounts them significantly.

 

[Arashi Ravenblade]

PDF's should always be under 20$. Its bad enough hardbacks at 253 pages is 44.95 + plus tax. I understand inflation and things going up but I buy all my books if I can on Amazon, that 44.95 book i mentioned, cost me 26 on there.

 

[OptionalRule]

I expect PDFs to be priced to reflect any difference saved from moving from a physical product to a digital one but that's not as much as people think it is and I don't expect it to be a whole lot. I don't know there's a solution to this. 20 or 40 bucks for a PDF means you're just not going to move that many, people have better things to spend their money on and for the most part gaming is fairly rare as a hobby, even with the recent resurgence. I'm an old man now so I can afford it, but there's no way I could afford the prices that books come with now, particularly given how often "updated" versions come out.

 

[prosfilaes]

I was quite surprised to see GURPS books on DriveThruRPG. They haven't mentioned it on their Illuminator, and there was no other signs that they were going to give up on their e23 only practices. It's a pretty limited range of works, too; only the published 4E books, plus a handful of PDF-only 4E works, but none of the Dungeon Fantasy books, only some of the 4E PDF works, and none of the older works. (It's missing a few of the licensed 4E works, too, but that's probably outside of Steve Jackson's control.)

 

[Mr. Greengoat]

SJG is not alone in setting an above average price for their PDFs. The pricing is in line with what they have been charging on their own longstanding digital storefront. I believe they charge more because their feel they have a higher quality product in terms of usability per page than most and their releases are much more measured.
I would agree with them in that SJG writing, editing, and design in their product is pretty high, if sometimes their illustrations make me grind my teeth. (Design INTENT is always arguable.)