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!

View attachment 91075​

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.

View attachment 91076​

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.

View attachment 91077​

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.

View attachment 91078​

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.

View attachment 91079​

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!

 

[RafaelLVX]

They are, however, complaining about it. Not a straw man at all.

I can guarantee they don't live on sales of physical GURPS books these days. The whole Dungeon Fantasy boxed set affair was both a way to tap into the renewed interest in the genre after 5e came out and, to quote their own words, "to see if there is demand for printed product to continue supporting GURPS in retail", and thus go back to selling physical books, which they don't for years (at least not for GURPS).

Here's a message they sent me back when they had the Kickstarter campaign, after I ranted the Dungeon Fantasy set PDFs were too expensive:

The goal of this campaign is not to sell PDFs, it is to sell a box set of books. We know we can sell PDFs, we have been for years. The intent is to see if there is demand for printed product to continue supporting GURPS in retail.


What it boils down to: We want the actual pledge levels to be the books. We are offering the PDFs because enough people asked for it, but that is not our focus. We need to determine the demand for the physical product, which will affect the future of the GURPS line in general.

 

[TrippyHippy]

I can guarantee they don't live on sales of physical GURPS books these days.

They don't live on the sales of GURPS at all, these days. The sellers for SJGames are Munchkin, Car Wars, etc. The physical book sales have dropped, but the PDF sales aren't a replacement for them, just a cheaper way of keeping them available to people without the overheads of a print run.

 

[RafaelLVX]

The physical book sales have dropped

That I know, I was referring to your previous affirmation that

maybe SJGames aren't that bothered about electronic sales and are more focussed on long term sales of Physical Books. Maybe that's why they took this long to sell them on Drivethrurpg also.

which is evidently not true, or at least mutually exclusive with your recent sentence that "physical books sales have dropped". They can't be both avoiding to sell on DTRPG and focus on physical books that don't sell, that wouldn't make sense. They could perhaps have been protecting their margins on digital products by making everyone buy exclusively on e23, but I guess that changed now.

 

[TrippyHippy]

...which is evidently not true, or at least mutually exclusive with your recent sentence that "physical books sales have dropped". They can't be both avoiding to sell on DTRPG and focus on physical books that don't sell, that wouldn't make sense. They could perhaps have been protecting their margins on digital products by making everyone buy exclusively on e23, but I guess that changed now.

I think the former point is more prominent, but they may still be looking at things like Dungeon Fantasy and the like to try and get stimulus back into the physical book market. It's not a mutually exclusive point if they are looking at ways to get the physical sales back up to what they were. As I say, the PDF sales won't ever amount to a replacement for physical sales so the point was that they may have been holding back to see what other options they could muster. They may have just decided that ideas like Dungeon Fantasy haven't worked, and so the latest move to putting the PDFs on drivethrurpg, might just be the final 'oh, well..".

 

[stargazera5]

I think the former point is more prominent, but they may still be looking at things like Dungeon Fantasy and the like to try and get stimulus back into the physical book market. It's not a mutually exclusive point if they are looking at ways to get the physical sales back up to what they were. As I say, the PDF sales won't ever amount to a replacement for physical sales so the point was that they may have been holding back to see what other options they could muster. They may have just decided that ideas like Dungeon Fantasy haven't worked, and so the latest move to putting the PDFs on drivethrurpg, might just be the final 'oh, well..".

PDF sales certainly won't amount to a replacement of physical sales if you are massively overcharging for them compared to what the general market is willing to bear. That's basic economics. The impression their giving is that this is more an attempt to self-justify their lack of interest in PDFs.. Like they are getting ready to say, "See, we told you going to DTRPG like people have been pushing us won't improve sales. Look at how bad the numbers are!" without bothering to meet the consumer side of the market at a level the consumers are willing to match.

 

[TrippyHippy]

PDF sales certainly won't amount to a replacement of physical sales if you are massively overcharging for them compared to what the general market is willing to bear. That's basic economics. The impression their giving is that this is more an attempt to self-justify their lack of interest in PDFs.. Like they are getting ready to say, "See, we told you going to DTRPG like people have been pushing us won't improve sales. Look at how bad the numbers are!" without bothering to meet the consumer side of the market at a level the consumers are willing to match.

I can't directly speak for SJGames motivations on prices, you'll note. However, I've seen PDF sales figures for other companies, and while some might seem to be successful, the actual unit sales are deceptively small. While SJGames could lower their prices and encourage a few more people to buy in, the ultimate impact on profit or public awareness could be negligible. Honestly, I just don't think it is a priority for them.

You could argue that other companies do fine by reducing prices, but other companies have different priorities in terms of what they want to do with PDF sales. Evil Hat, for example, actively push low cost (or even free) access to their core books as a marketing plan to bring greater market awareness of their products. Pinnacle's Savage Worlds does a similar thing with their very low priced Explorer Editions. I think the problem for SJGames is that GURPS was built for an economic model that worked very strongly in its inception 30-20 years ago, but doesn't quite work so well in the way RPGs are generally marketed and sold today (and is appreciated by the fans). That, and there is a lot more competition for generic, universal systems out there too.

 

[RafaelLVX]

Let me go on record and say I'll never buy their stuff at that price point.
Not that they release anything cool these days anyway, it's just Dungeon Fantasy on top of more Dungeon Fantasy. Don't expect them to release a 4th edition Cyberpunk or marvellous adaptations and settings like Greece, Conan, Camelot, Vampire The Masquerade, etc.