Celebrim
Legend
GURPS is a great game. I enjoy it. I bought supplements for it. But GURPS will never be the industry leader, and contrary to what SJ believes this has nothing to do with GURPS being the more mature product and the market for such a sophisticated game is small.
The reason GURPS will never be the industry leader is that gaming systems aren't what sell games. It's my firm belief that the majority of the GURPS products which have ever been sold have never been used in a game. The GURPS market isn't primarily gamers. The GURPS market is primarily game masters. GURPS sourcebooks are themselves toys, because they present simulationist leaning game masters with the very sort of mental toy that simulationist leaning game masters and world builders like to roll around in thier head and play with. The real value of GURPS sourcebooks is thier ability to inform games by providing consise gamer centered information about a large variaty of topics of interest to gamers - regardless of the game system actually being used. Thus, the real value of GURPS is not in the game system itself, but in the intellectual property contained within the source books.
And the problem with GURPS is precisely that. The real value of a game is not in the game system, but in the intellectual property that it creates. Virtually all the intellectual property in the GURPS sourcebooks is open source or derived from someone else's intellectual property and is wholly dependent on it. Over the years the GURPS game simply hasn't created enough valuable intellectual property of its own.
Contrast that with D&D. Even though D&D lagged GURPS in gaming system sophistication for nearly two decades, over those two decades D&D created intellectual property that is worth literally tens and if not hundreds of millions of dollars. What is the value of the Forgotten Realms? What is the value of Krynn? What is the value of the Tomb of Horrors? Heck, what is the value of Drow, Mindflayers, Beholders, and even Flumphs? From Planescape to Darksun, from Keep on the Borderlands to Ravenloft - TSR consistantly spent most of its effort not in improving the game system but in improving the value of its intellectual property. In the latter years of 2nd edition, one might have believed that D&D and TSR were dying entities. One might have believed that with long time gamers like me leaving for GURPS that the game industry had just moved on and grown up. I know I did at the time. I was very wrong, and in retrospect its easy to see why.
The problem was simply that TSR had run out of original ideas and had too long left itself shackled to an out of date game resolution system. Refresh and reinvigorate that game resolution system, and as was seen, D&D 'miracously' recovered. D&D wasn't just taking pressure from GURPS and other mature gaming systems. D&D was taking pressure from other games that were spending most of their time developing intellectual property - Deadlands, Vampire: The Masquerade - but which didn't have D&D's 20 year old game resolution system holding them back. And this is the important point, the problem wasn't that Deadlands or Vampire: The Masquerade had far more valuable intellectual property than D&D - clearly they didn't. That would have been a serious problem that would have been 'hard' to fix. I'm not at all trying to downplay the wonderful job that the 3rd edition designers did in recreating the D&D game system, but in a very fundamental way making the game system is the easy part. You can have the best game system in the world, but if you don't have great intellectual property - if you don't have great ideas and stories - you are likely going to be a flash in the gaming pan and a foot note in gaming history.
Consider just how much value D&D's intellectual property actually has. If you look back at the D&D Reinassance, alot of the work that is best remembered was just reworking the original intellectual property - Return to the Tomb of Horrors, Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. New versions of FR sourcebooks. With all that intellectual property in the background, its hard to go wrong - at least at first.
But ultimately, the danger that D&D now faces is that it will become the next GURPS. Granted, D&D will probably never be as great of a simulationist toy as GURPS, but I'm seeing a new trend in D&D/D20 in which D&D has become little more than a player toy. How many books of players options exist out there? How many prestige classes have been published? How many feats exist in the game? How many books with new base classes are out there? We could go on and on listing these various power gamer toys and rules supplements, but the basic point will always be none of this is valuable intellectual property. It's just rules. It's just treating the game system as if it was the thing with value and not the game content.
Where is the game content? Arguably, someone at TSR must have realized where the real value lies, and Eberron is a good start but unless Eberron produces the sort of modules and memorable published campaigns that were produced by previous worlds, Eberron is going to eventually face the fate of Birthright or Al-Quedem - settings with tremendous great flavor but no intellectual property of any real value.
Where are the great modules? Doesn't anyone at TSR realize that the true value of D&D has always been its great modules? Is all 3rd edition going to be remembered for come 4th edition is 'Sunless Citadel'? Are we going to need a Return to the Return of the Temple of Elemental Evil?
The reason GURPS will never be the industry leader is that gaming systems aren't what sell games. It's my firm belief that the majority of the GURPS products which have ever been sold have never been used in a game. The GURPS market isn't primarily gamers. The GURPS market is primarily game masters. GURPS sourcebooks are themselves toys, because they present simulationist leaning game masters with the very sort of mental toy that simulationist leaning game masters and world builders like to roll around in thier head and play with. The real value of GURPS sourcebooks is thier ability to inform games by providing consise gamer centered information about a large variaty of topics of interest to gamers - regardless of the game system actually being used. Thus, the real value of GURPS is not in the game system itself, but in the intellectual property contained within the source books.
And the problem with GURPS is precisely that. The real value of a game is not in the game system, but in the intellectual property that it creates. Virtually all the intellectual property in the GURPS sourcebooks is open source or derived from someone else's intellectual property and is wholly dependent on it. Over the years the GURPS game simply hasn't created enough valuable intellectual property of its own.
Contrast that with D&D. Even though D&D lagged GURPS in gaming system sophistication for nearly two decades, over those two decades D&D created intellectual property that is worth literally tens and if not hundreds of millions of dollars. What is the value of the Forgotten Realms? What is the value of Krynn? What is the value of the Tomb of Horrors? Heck, what is the value of Drow, Mindflayers, Beholders, and even Flumphs? From Planescape to Darksun, from Keep on the Borderlands to Ravenloft - TSR consistantly spent most of its effort not in improving the game system but in improving the value of its intellectual property. In the latter years of 2nd edition, one might have believed that D&D and TSR were dying entities. One might have believed that with long time gamers like me leaving for GURPS that the game industry had just moved on and grown up. I know I did at the time. I was very wrong, and in retrospect its easy to see why.
The problem was simply that TSR had run out of original ideas and had too long left itself shackled to an out of date game resolution system. Refresh and reinvigorate that game resolution system, and as was seen, D&D 'miracously' recovered. D&D wasn't just taking pressure from GURPS and other mature gaming systems. D&D was taking pressure from other games that were spending most of their time developing intellectual property - Deadlands, Vampire: The Masquerade - but which didn't have D&D's 20 year old game resolution system holding them back. And this is the important point, the problem wasn't that Deadlands or Vampire: The Masquerade had far more valuable intellectual property than D&D - clearly they didn't. That would have been a serious problem that would have been 'hard' to fix. I'm not at all trying to downplay the wonderful job that the 3rd edition designers did in recreating the D&D game system, but in a very fundamental way making the game system is the easy part. You can have the best game system in the world, but if you don't have great intellectual property - if you don't have great ideas and stories - you are likely going to be a flash in the gaming pan and a foot note in gaming history.
Consider just how much value D&D's intellectual property actually has. If you look back at the D&D Reinassance, alot of the work that is best remembered was just reworking the original intellectual property - Return to the Tomb of Horrors, Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. New versions of FR sourcebooks. With all that intellectual property in the background, its hard to go wrong - at least at first.
But ultimately, the danger that D&D now faces is that it will become the next GURPS. Granted, D&D will probably never be as great of a simulationist toy as GURPS, but I'm seeing a new trend in D&D/D20 in which D&D has become little more than a player toy. How many books of players options exist out there? How many prestige classes have been published? How many feats exist in the game? How many books with new base classes are out there? We could go on and on listing these various power gamer toys and rules supplements, but the basic point will always be none of this is valuable intellectual property. It's just rules. It's just treating the game system as if it was the thing with value and not the game content.
Where is the game content? Arguably, someone at TSR must have realized where the real value lies, and Eberron is a good start but unless Eberron produces the sort of modules and memorable published campaigns that were produced by previous worlds, Eberron is going to eventually face the fate of Birthright or Al-Quedem - settings with tremendous great flavor but no intellectual property of any real value.
Where are the great modules? Doesn't anyone at TSR realize that the true value of D&D has always been its great modules? Is all 3rd edition going to be remembered for come 4th edition is 'Sunless Citadel'? Are we going to need a Return to the Return of the Temple of Elemental Evil?
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