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.

-----
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!

 

[prosfilaes]

SJGames deliberately came after the main companies RPGNow and drivethrurpg

Which is irrelevant; as you pointed out, we're discussing GURPS coming to DriveThruRPG, which has nothing to do with Steve Jackson Games joining the PDF distribution business. GURPS being sold as PDFs and Steve Jackson Games running a PDF distribution website are two completely different matters.

You didn't ask for more than one.

You wrote that, but couldn't be bothered to back up your statement and provide another one? The Fate Core PDF being released for free is exceptional in the marketplace; I don't know of a single other company with full-time employees that does that. GURPS Lite is not the full GURPS rules, but it is a full game, and it's more than a lot of companies that sell a lot of PDFs provide.

Another straw man as nobody had ever disputed the existence of e23.

So now it's a straw man to give a source for a fact when stating it.

The difference is you assumed a motivation that SJGames had "commitment" to PDF sales. They don't need to have any commitment when the overheads amount to nothing,

The cost to run a PDF website is nothing? I'm pretty sure that it costs them to keep PDF files available for sale on their website.

 

[TrippyHippy]

Which is irrelevant; as you pointed out, we're discussing GURPS coming to DriveThruRPG, which has nothing to do with Steve Jackson Games joining the PDF distribution business. GURPS being sold as PDFs and Steve Jackson Games running a PDF distribution website are two completely different matters.

It's not irrelevant. It specifically addresses the details you raised about the timing of the establishment of Warehouse 23 in relation to drivethru and RPGNow. I simply pointed out that SJGames were skeptical about the ebook market when it began, which they were, and that they are not using it as the mainstay of their future business, which they aren't.

You wrote that, but couldn't be bothered to back up your statement and provide another one? The Fate Core PDF being released for free is exceptional in the marketplace; I don't know of a single other company with full-time employees that does that. GURPS Lite is not the full GURPS rules, but it is a full game, and it's more than a lot of companies that sell a lot of PDFs provide.

I wasn't obliged to back up anything, as it's the self evident point when people are complaining about the price of GURPS PDFs, that many other companies reduce their prices accordingly. GURPS Lite is not the full GURPS game.

So now it's a straw man to give a source for a fact when stating it.

It has always been a straw man on this thread. Nobody claimed e23 didn't exist. That was why it was a pointless citation.

The cost to run a PDF website is nothing? I'm pretty sure that it costs them to keep PDF files available for sale on their website.

They are not running the drivethrurpg website, which is what is being discussed here. They pay a commission on the sales made. The cost of making PDFs available anywhere, however, is negligible compared to the cost of a print run.

 

[prosfilaes]

I simply pointed out that SJGames were skeptical about the ebook market when it began, which they were

Do you have any evidence of that? Webpages don't count, because they weren't around when the ebook market began in 1989. That's not just sarcastic; it took a long time for ebooks to become profitable, and major publishers reasonably took some time to jump in on it. However, Steve Jackson Games was planning on it in 2003 and opened in 2005, which is way before many other publishers released their books in PDF. It was two years before the Kindle was released in 2007. I could argue that any pre-Kindle ebook publishers were early adopters, but in any case, they were not late adopters.

and that they are not using it as the mainstay of their future business, which they aren't.

No, GURPS is not the mainstay of their future business. That has nothing to do with PDFs, one way or the other. As publishers of GURPS, however, they are dominantly publishing in PDFs.

I wasn't obliged to back up anything

I suppose with that kind of logic, the fact that you're annoyed by people backing up their arguments is less surprising.

it's the self evident point when people are complaining about the price of GURPS PDFs, that many other companies reduce their prices accordingly.

Proper pricing is something that economists and business people spend lifetimes studying. Your "self-evident" is simply silly; just because some other company charges less than you for a vaguely comparable product doesn't mean that you should reduce your prices; cf. Apple for the most well-known example.

To introduce facts, Paizo sells hardback books for $10, but 64 page books (campaign settings) for $16 and 32 page books (player companions) for $10. So Paizo has made the hardback books loss-leaders and charge more for their smaller books.

They are not running the drivethrurpg website, which is what is being discussed here.

You keep arguing about how committed they are to PDFs, at which case the fact that they're running a PDF webstore is quite relevant.

 

[TrippyHippy]

Do you have any evidence of that?

To quote Steve Jackson from his 2004 Report to Stakeholders:

One thing you will not see in e23 is PDF versions of our new GURPS books. We know that some publishers are issuing their new books simultaneously in hardcopy and PDF. We are concerned about the effect this will have on the retailers, and unless something happens to remove that concern, our hardback books won't be available in PDF. Support products, of the sort that aren't normally economical for retailers to carry at all, will appear in PDF and not hardcopy.

http://www.sjgames.com/general/stakeholders/report05.html

Note this was after they had launched e23. They hadn't intended to set up e23 as a means to buy current GURPS books. They revised this policy some years later (and once again, revised the policy in 2017 by releasing them on Drivethrurpg). They had been arguing this policy, fairly strongly in various online fora previously.

No, GURPS is not the mainstay of their future business. That has nothing to do with PDFs, one way or the other. As publishers of GURPS, however, they are dominantly publishing in PDFs.

It has everything to do with it. If they don't think that the physical sales are significant anymore, then any objections to releasing PDF sales becomes diminished. The PDF market is insignificant to them, by comparison to physical games sales. They are putting the PDFs online to keep GURPS alive at minimal cost, not because they see it as a great marketing venture.

I suppose with that kind of logic, the fact that you're annoyed by people backing up their arguments is less surprising.

I'm not annoyed by anything here, but your references were not useful to this discussion whatsoever, and neither are your straw man arguments.

Proper pricing is something that economists and business people spend lifetimes studying. Your "self-evident" is simply silly; just because some other company charges less than you for a vaguely comparable product doesn't mean that you should reduce your prices; cf. Apple for the most well-known example.

What is silly is regurgitating my own core argument on this thread - that SJGames is not obliged to change it's prices - as if you are trying to tell me something I don't know. Have you actually read anything I have said here?

You keep arguing about how committed they are to PDFs, at which case the fact that they're running a PDF webstore is quite relevant.

They are not 'committed' to PDFs. They just realise, as other companies have done, that they can maintain the GURPS game line at minimal cost without resorting to a print run for the foreseeable future. The PDFs are not being released with any real intent at making a significant profit. As such, they are unlikely to worry much about a few critics online complaining about their costs. It's irrelevant to them - most of their fans will have already bought the GURPS line already.

 

[prosfilaes]

To quote Steve Jackson from his 2004 Report to Stakeholders:

Again, that's 15 years after the ebook market started, and ten before the major players in the RPG industry jumped in.

The PDF market is insignificant to them, by comparison to physical games sales.

Yes, I suspect that's true of all the major RPG companies. It is, of course, doubly true of Hasbro, but Paizo doesn't produce anything in PDF it hasn't printed (except for Pathfinder Society adventures), and asserts their dependence on physical subscriptions. Unlike them, Steve Jackson Games produces new works in PDF-only, sometimes printing them after seeing how well they sell in PDF, so the PDF market for their own products is in fact more significant to Steve Jackson Games than to Paizo.

your references were not useful to this discussion whatsoever

You claimed they were late-comers to the PDF market. I gave exact dates on which they became involved in such. I can see how you might not think that useful, if you don't like facts behind your theories.

What is silly is regurgitating my own core argument on this thread - that SJGames is not obliged to change it's prices

That's not my argument; my argument is that you can't jump to any conclusions based on the fact they haven't changed their prices. You have to analyze a lot of data, much of which only SJGames has.

The PDFs are not being released with any real intent at making a significant profit. As such, they are unlikely to worry much about a few critics online complaining about their costs.

Again, despite the vast number of critics calling for Apple to reduce their prices, Apple hasn't. Is that because they have no intent of making a significant profit from the iPhone? Every company has a few critics online complaining about their costs, and I think few businesses pay attention to them.

 

[TrippyHippy]

Again, that's 15 years after the ebook market started, and ten before the major players in the RPG industry jumped in.

What do you mean "again"? The point you were disputing is made there, unequivocally. SJGames were skeptical about PDF sales when they became a thing. White Wolf was a major player, when they set up Drivethrurpg. Paizo, by contrast at that time weren't even making RPGs.

You claimed they were late-comers to the PDF market. I gave exact dates on which they became involved in such. I can see how you might not think that useful, if you don't like facts behind your theories.

They were latecomers to the PDF market for the reasons given above. You're dates show that. Steve Jackson's quote tells you why.

That's not my argument; my argument is that you can't jump to any conclusions based on the fact they haven't changed their prices. You have to analyze a lot of data, much of which only SJGames has.

You haven't got an argument beyond arguing for the sake of it.

 

[jmucchiello]

Nobody cares which of you is "right" and/or which is "wrong".

On topic: I don't see why people can't complain about the price. I won't buy the books for those prices. For me, that is all that really matters.

Carry on.

 

[barasawa]

If I started this mess, that wasn't intentional.

I was just pointing out that PDFs supposedly have a significantly lower cost than a hardcopy book. Well, we know that the cost of digital distribution is much smaller than printing and physical distribution, and in the past publishers have very clearly stated that printing the book is the biggest part of the cost, so the cost difference between making a digital (aka pdf) and a physical book must be huge!

When cost to manufacture goes down, it's pretty traditional to drop pricing as well, because the lower cost increases sales. This effect can easily make for greatly increased profits due to the increase in sales, except when the demand greatly outstrips supply for some reason, then things tend to go up. Super basic economics stuff there.

Taking all that into account, the price of the GURPS pdfs seem to be way too high, especially when compared to the rest of the market, who obviously have the same kind of basic costs to create a book as SJG.

I've played a lot of GURPS, and haven't gotten a new one since probably 2nd edition. I'd love to get a new one, but when you add up for all the basic books to play, it's too bloody much.
(What the heck did they bloat their books with?!?!?)
So I check out these new PDFs (Of their books they've already created, so no new item there) and find them nearly as expensive as dead trees! WAY too EXPENSIVE !

Sure the PDFs have all the same info, but display and access, other than being able to search for a specific word, isn't that great. They're supremely portable, but only if you have the display device, which really isn't so portable, unless it's a small model, but then the display suffers even more. Our clients for accessing digital books are usable, but honestly they are no where near as useful as that physical book, at least not yet.

I for one will often get PDFs of things I'm not sure will be great, or in high use. Then if I like it enough, or the usage warrants it, I'll also try to obtain the physical copy. (I hear that's not at all uncommon)

SJGs selling their PDFs that high likely aren't "refusing to devalue their product", but are likely instead "decreasing costs while simultaneously increasing profits". Something that isn't consumer friendly at all. Even so, I still like SJGs, although I doubt there's anyone there that I know anymore, it's been a rather long time since the 80s.

That's the whole of the point I was trying to make now spelled out in a rather verbose version, with maybe a bit extra to try and clear up a few things I said.
I'm not sure what the argument is actually about, unless it's participants are just big into debating, but I also got a bit lost with all the back and forth and snippet quotes.

What I've posted is just some facts, and my own opinions. The facts don't change no matter what anyone likes, and everyone is welcome to have different opinions.

 

[prosfilaes]

What do you mean "again"? The point you were disputing is made there, unequivocally. SJGames were skeptical about PDF sales when they became a thing. White Wolf was a major player, when they set up Drivethrurpg. Paizo, by contrast at that time weren't even making RPGs.

They were latecomers to the PDF market for the reasons given above. You're dates show that. Steve Jackson's quote tells you why.

The ebook market started in 1989. The modern, totally mainstream era started with the Kindle in 2008. Even in the RPG market, Wizards still doesn't sell PDFs of their 5e Player's Handbook, and Wizards and several other game companies came long after Steve Jackson Games in selling PDFs. They weren't latecomers, even if they weren't trailblazers.

As for right now, they're using PDFs more dynamically than Paizo or WotC; they're publishing new works in PDF-only, and using that to find which smaller works need print runs.

 

[TrippyHippy]

>>snip<<<

You are arguing for the sake of arguing here. Other people on this thread have expressed irritation about this now. I certainly have no interest, whatsoever, in continuing. Please stop.