News Digest: New D&D Licensed Products, Steve Jackson Games Annual Report and New Products, Internat

prosfilaes · Feb 24, 2018

MasterYogurt said:
No, GURPS is a charity case. Objectively, you're wrong to assume it's relevant now. The GURPS Dungeon Fantasy DM screen outstripped the Characters book for SJG revenue last year. Dungeon Fantasy has not gotten new people to reach for GURPS, and SJG is pulling the plug on the project after mismanaging cost.

After 22 years, I hope they're pulling the plug. Do you know where Steve Jackson got his millions to keep his vanity project going, because I was always under the impression he was a business man. It's not relevant now, but that doesn't mean it hasn't been a successful RPG.

Just because GURPS has a million supplements doesn't mean that people are buying them.

Again, it means that someone was buying them.

Yeah, and SJG could have released an attractive product that would have given groups this experience. And they totally screwed the pooch with Dungeon Fantasy, which belies the complete lack of strategy they have. They need to let go of the "generic anything!" attitude for a while.

I don't want another fantasy setting. The world seriously does not lack for fantasy settings, and Yrth does not scream to me that SJG can produce a fantasy setting that will overcome that.

Let's say a highly attractive setting/rules combo was based on a generic system. Lots of non-generic supplements and rulebooks are released. People want to play this setting.

You say that as if that were as good as saying it. If Steve Jackson Games had something they knew was a highly attractive setting/rules combo, they'd be selling it. They don't. Short of licensed products, I don't recall the last highly attractive new setting/rules combo. Honestly, the 21st century seems rather short on them; most new settings are D&D, Pathfinder, Fate or Savage Worlds. Arcana Unearthed--I don't know if I'd call that highly attractive? Pathfinder/Golarion--maybe, but it doesn't seem to accord with your GURPS plan here.

This is what has happened with Deadlands and Savage Worlds, which is an actively successful generic rules system.

Not really. Certainly they didn't start with a generic system and build Deadlands up. Wikipedia puts them at arm's length from each other, Savage Worlds being a descendant of Great Rail Wars instead of directly Deadlands, and I didn't realize the connection before, so I don't get the impression Savage Worlds was driven much by Deadlands' success.

But it should be a success right now, not an obscure curiosity. At a time when the industry is growing like mad, GURPS isn't.

At a time when the industry is growing like mad? I'm not sure I see that. Outside D&D 5, everything seems relatively static. Numbers? GURPS isn't a success right now, but I'm not sure why you think it should be. It's just not popular versus Fate and Savage Worlds. Peak popularity for that style of crunchy game seems to have come and past, and sometimes instead of trying push a old product, you have to walk away from the trademark and line and do something that's new and that sounds new.

I want it to so that I can run lots of different games and get my regular group off of DND.

But it takes a totally different vision and strategy to make that happen.

Maybe yours, not Steve Jackson Games.

MasterYogurt · Feb 24, 2018

Sounds like we’re on the same page then.

RevTurkey · Feb 24, 2018

I would have done something radical and different in terms of presentation or possibly gone ultra safe and made a cut down DF box set (where the box was small and fit the components) using the GURPS Lite rules as a basis and then a glossy hard back or couple of hardbacks containing the full, deeper ruleset. Pretty much like D&D have done with several editions and 5th. As I said before...I think it was also a confidence problem...they were almost saying they were going to dump the game before they even had it available to buy. No vision presented for the line going forward. Utter fail from a marketing point of view. It might have been truthful business information they presented about the product they were determined to create but it wasn’t going to inspire customers. The GuRPS line seems too much like either vainty work or badly planned production. I have bought 5 copies of the 4th Edition and never used them...always selling them on and then repeating. The main reason? The crazy lack of a basic monster manual or bestiary type thing. I don’t particulalry want to convert old material either. Books on everything under the sun but nothing on the most time consuming part of the system...making characters/npcs/creatures....you know the bit that needs support the most. I think GURPS was awesome with the original box sets and was a game changer...with amazing support as well. The DF set has included a bestiary which is a massive plus and is why I will get it sometime for the right price...I may even run it this time...it’s just a shame thinking of how much more impact this game could have had on the market. They got a good amount of money from Kickstarter to reduce risk but were not willing to pay that trust back with a bit of risk taking of their own. Oh well. Hopefully SJG will rally, learn from mistakes and impress us all will what they produce next

Earth2Carnifex · Feb 24, 2018

Reading all the criticisms of DFRPG, I think most of it has some validity. This is why I am thinking The Fantasy Trip might end up being a sort of reset button for Steve Jackson Games RPG line.

Lord Rasputin · Feb 24, 2018

Koloth said:
I backed the DF KS. One disappointment was the Adventurers and Spells books were pared down versions of the basic GURPS Character book. Already had GURPS Characters so felt like that was mostly wasted content.

Uh, yeah. That was the point. It was to make a new fantasy RPG based on GURPS, which means it has to include the material from the Basic Set and Magic. The basic structure was always going to be this, and SJG was pretty up-front about it:

DFRPG Kickstarter said:
GURPS is famous for letting you play any character you can imagine. Dungeon Fantasy keeps this flexibility while trimming away unnecessary details, concentrating on just what matters to monster-slaying, treasure-hunting action

That pretty much means that Kromm is paring down the Basic Set and Magic and adding some of the Dungeon Fantasy PDFs.

Koloth said:
The GURPS line does a wonderful job of providing a rich rules framework and piles of setting material. The big failure is the lack of ready to run modules/adventures. Want to run a Pathfinder or D&D game? There are piles of adventure paths and stand alone one or two session modules. Want to run a GURPS game? Other then a couple of basic modules, your are pretty much out of luck unless you want to make up your own.

How much does having published adventures matter? I don't know the answer to that question. I did want something more of a megadungeon in the boxed set, as a megadungeon has replay value; I Smell a Rat is basically one-and-done, and kinda railroady. Having a second megadungeon for sale would be good for demonstration games. But how many D&D and Pathfinder players are playing published adventures? For all the chatter here, I gather the number is much lower than folks realize, especially for D&D (Pathfinder was made to run the adventure paths). This is much more so in the GURPS community. Granted, part of the idea was to break beyond that community, but I'm not sure how great the incentive is to do it with a bunch of published adventures.

Personally, my criticisms of the boxed set are:

I Smell a Rat didn't have much replay value. I would have wanted a multilevel dungeon, something like a smaller Caverns of Thracia. Some folks are just going to use the boxed set and nothing else, and this would accommodate them.
Kromm doesn't like gear loadouts, but having them would speed up character creation. The platonic ideal here is for someone to get a boxed set under the Christmas tree, then bring it over to grandma's house where s/he can play a game with his/her siblings and cousins that afternoon while waiting for ham and potatoes.
Likewise, I was hoping for something like "Pointless Slaying and Looting" from Pyramid #3/72, which would have also sped up character creation. I have fond memories of the Mentzer Red Box.
Monsters needed more artwork, and more artwork of the unique monsters. I think we all know how dragons, earth elementals, giant rats, giant spiders, scorpion swarms, and zombies all look. By contrast, many of the unique monsters lack pictures here. I doubt this affected sales at all, but it does make the game easier to play. All of the monsters that originally appeared in Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 1 do have artwork there that SJG could have repurposed. Many of the monsters from Dungeon Fantasy 2: Dungeons lack artwork, and frankly need it, like the mindwarper or the toxifer.
While this couldn't be done in the boxed set without raising costs, I'd like Cardboard Heroes of all the monsters in Monsters. That would make a great support product.

Koloth · Feb 24, 2018

Lord Rasputin said:
How much does having published adventures matter? I don't know the answer to that question. I did want something more of a megadungeon in the boxed set, as a megadungeon has replay value; I Smell a Rat is basically one-and-done, and kinda railroady. Having a second megadungeon for sale would be good for demonstration games. But how many D&D and Pathfinder players are playing published adventures? For all the chatter here, I gather the number is much lower than folks realize, especially for D&D (Pathfinder was made to run the adventure paths). This is much more so in the GURPS community. Granted, part of the idea was to break beyond that community, but I'm not sure how great the incentive is to do it with a bunch of published adventures.

Don't know about the world at large, but for the groups I have played with, the majority of our runs have been in published modules or adventure paths. Back when D&D didn't have versions, there weren't adventure paths and we would simply decide which module to try next. Often a poor photocopy of one from a game magazine. Even when a GM was doing a self generated adventure, we often supplemented with a pregenerated module just to give the GM a break.

I hope SJG gives some consideration to a GURPS module KS similar to the one for Ogrezine. More funding would equal letting out additional contracts for more modules. That way they aren't risking money on something that doesn't sell.

aramis erak · Feb 24, 2018

prosfilaes said:
I think a lot of PoD stuff will be out there. I also don't think the line will be as neat as "core rule books"; Paizo will still be printing adventure paths, whereas a lot of core rule books are already PDF only. Color books on 8.5x11 or A4 paper are really awkward to use in PDF form, so I suspect that's going to be part of the dividing line; if they have enough money to print in full color, they're likely to continue printing in full color.

Is that what they're trying to do? I'm expecting more of a fancy reprint for RPG fans who like cool reprints. Include a bunch of stuff, add a bunch of notes, etc. Any way, if they set up the Kickstarter right, I suspect they won't lose money on it, and what's being your own boss for if not for being able to do vanity projects?

The announced (but not yet set up) KS plan is to do the boardgame side as a KS, and see how it goes, plus PDF reprints of those items SJ has rights to.

Lord Rasputin · Feb 26, 2018

Koloth said:
Don't know about the world at large, but for the groups I have played with, the majority of our runs have been in published modules or adventure paths. Back when D&D didn't have versions, there weren't adventure paths and we would simply decide which module to try next. Often a poor photocopy of one from a game magazine. Even when a GM was doing a self generated adventure, we often supplemented with a pregenerated module just to give the GM a break.

The last one was true in my experience, but otherwise, this has been mixed. I've had one friend who liked to run them exclusively, but otherwise, most avoided them. And I've played in many groups over more than 30 years.

Koloth said:
I hope SJG gives some consideration to a GURPS module KS similar to the one for Ogrezine. More funding would equal letting out additional contracts for more modules. That way they aren't risking money on something that doesn't sell.

If they're stand-alone and have replay value, sure. If they're adventure paths, no.

prosfilaes · Mar 2, 2018

aramis erak said:
The announced (but not yet set up) KS plan is to do the boardgame side as a KS, and see how it goes, plus PDF reprints of those items SJ has rights to.

According to the new FAQ, Steve Jackson got the rights to what he wrote and nothing more, so we won't be getting exact reprints of anything. All new art, for better or worse.