A coach called Dan John said, never write your own advertising copy: ask your best, long-term clients, "why do you come?" and whatever their answer, however much it might surprise you, that's your appeal. Even if you want your appeal to be something else, that's what it is, so roll with it. I think the same applies to RPGs.

People have mentioned the massive library of worldbooks GURPS3e had. And that was their appeal. Even people who didn't play GURPS bought them. They said, "No, it's not the worldbooks, it's our wonderful modular rules," and people said, "No, it's your worldbooks," and they said, "No, ROOLZ!" and changed the rules and stopped writing worldbooks, and fans didn't buy the rules, and they said, "See? Nobody wants to play RPGs these days."

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;971506A coach called Dan John said, never write your own advertising copy: ask your best, long-term clients, "why do you come?" and whatever their answer, however much it might surprise you, that's your appeal. Even if you want your appeal to be something else, that's what it is, so roll with it. I think the same applies to RPGs.

People have mentioned the massive library of worldbooks GURPS3e had. And that was their appeal. Even people who didn't play GURPS bought them. They said, "No, it's not the worldbooks, it's our wonderful modular rules," and people said, "No, it's your worldbooks," and they said, "No, ROOLZ!" and changed the rules and stopped writing worldbooks, and fans didn't buy the rules, and they said, "See? Nobody wants to play RPGs these days."

Sounds about right. I use my GURPS sourcebooks for other game systems far more often than I use them to actually play GURPS.

I expect their sales numbers said rules not world books.  I also suspect qualified writers for world books were less available.

SJ has always been pretty savvy about the business side of this business. I don't know why they did what they did with 4E, but I'll bet it wasn't because the 3E setting books were making a lot of money. They probably take quite a while to write and only sell a few thousand copies.

Quote from: Larsdangly;971524SJ has always been pretty savvy about the business side of this business. I don't know why they did what they did with 4E, but I'll bet it wasn't because the 3E setting books were making a lot of money. They probably take quite a while to write and only sell a few thousand copies.

Could be. I neither know nor care. Every RPG company on the face of the earth could go out of business tonight and it won't affect next weekend's game for me. I just know I'd probably buy more books if they didn't stop supporting editions of games I own and use. But I also know I'm not the target audience for 99% of RPG products.

Quote from: Larsdangly;971524SJ has always been pretty savvy about the business side of this business. I don't know why they did what they did with 4E, but I'll bet it wasn't because the 3E setting books were making a lot of money. They probably take quite a while to write and only sell a few thousand copies.

My guess would be that they were following the industry standard as their competitors moved to full color hardbacks, so did they.  My understanding is that a major factor in this is the number of people who would download or photocopy books instead of buying them.  Full color books are harder to reproduce in black and white.  Now, way back in the day of the survey in the first edition boxed set I voted for cheaper, shorter world books.  The reality is that I've never had much money.  As a store owner I personally find that the big full color hardbacks really limit the sales of rpgs.  Savage Worlds, on the other hand does pretty well for me.

Quote from: David Johansen;971519I expect their sales numbers said rules not world books.  I also suspect qualified writers for world books were less available.

It's less that and more effort vs return. A worldbook takes as long to write and edit as a rulebook, but only so many people buy them. Added up all together it's big sales, but no individual worldbook will sell that much. Whereas you write one rulebook and (hope that) everyone will buy it.

It's a bit like a stack of tv series vs a movie version of some story. But despite $200 million movies, people are still making tv shows. If you do it well, you can be successful. They just decided not to bother any more.

Lately GURPS books have become TROPES books. Cut/Pastes from IMDB, Wiki, and others. Their older books make better source material than what comes with most RPGs.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;971607Lately GURPS books have become TROPES books. Cut/Pastes from IMDB, Wiki, and others. Their older books make better source material than what comes with most RPGs.

They have? Which are you thinking of?

I think the story of GURPS is the story of the hobby. They started with some great ideas and first edition systems ca. 1980, grew it all to a great height, but there is a pretty hard upper limit to growth if you are in the business of selling hard copy books to table top role playing gamers. The market will never die, but it is small with low profit margin, so it is basically dominated by hobbyists and companies that are happy to make a few tens of thousands of dollars. There really isn't a good financial reason to double down on publishing something like GURPS.

Quote from: Piestrio;971464I agree. As much as I like 4th there was really nothing wrong with 3rd and SJG cut off one of their biggest assets (great library) when they dumped 3rd for 4th, they should have just included the errata, updated the looks and kept going with 3rd.

The thing about Fourth Edition is it consolidated and streamlined a lot of things.  So it made GURPS simpler while still being mostly compatible with previous editions.
In my mind that is a legitimate reason to do another edition.  While a Fifth Edition could improve  some things I dont think it would be significant enough to encourage a lot of sales.
Things were improved in Third Edition, Attributes, Skills and Advantages ALL got some streamlining by changing point costs and things like Talents were added.  However the core advantage is the game is more streamlined and thus easier to pick up then prior editions.

As for cutting off the Third Edition material, not only are they compatible (Costs are the only thing you wold have to change, abilities could be just left in and combat had some changes but except for PD the change is fairly transparent.)
The DFRPG is another effort to streamline things by focusing on one genre only.

As for Edition changes GURPS still does well at not making them just to get cash infusions or because the rules were sloppy and had lots of complaints.
Compare D&D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editions_of_Dungeons_%26_Dragons which seemed to come out with a new edition every 4 or 5 years vs. GURPS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GURPS
 GURPS came out with editions in 1986 First and Second (I think Second was mostly the same rules with a new edition made to keep it in print), Third in 1988 and finally Fourth in 2004.
So Third Edition came out kind of soon but Fourth had a respectable time gap and is the current in print version to this day.

Quote from: David Johansen;971555My guess would be that they were following the industry standard as their competitors moved to full color hardbacks, so did they.  My understanding is that a major factor in this is the number of people who would download or photocopy books instead of buying them.  Full color books are harder to reproduce in black and white.  Now, way back in the day of the survey in the first edition boxed set I voted for cheaper, shorter world books.  The reality is that I've never had much money.  As a store owner I personally find that the big full color hardbacks really limit the sales of rpgs.  Savage Worlds, on the other hand does pretty well for me.

Another consideration is that most of the historical material has been well covered and with the internet those books have less value as people have an easier time looking stuff up.

On the other hand, I've always felt that 4e got build-happy and cluttered.  Power modifiers are used far too often for my tastes, though that does help to cut down the number of separate items and rules for specific abilities.  On the other hand it also makes cross referencing a constant pain in the ass.  But yes, I think fully integrated database GURPS would be the next logical step but with a line of boxed games like Dungeon Fantasy to keep the line on store shelves.

Is the entire run of 3e books available as PDF on the world's biggest rpg PDF seller?  Why?  They're just leaving money on the table for no good reason.  No one's got a back catalog like that.

Quote from: CRKrueger;971722Is the entire run of 3e books available as PDF on the world's biggest rpg PDF seller?  Why?  They're just leaving money on the table for no good reason.  No one's got a back catalog like that.

1) SJ Games was a pioneer in e-commerce and Steve Jackson made some money off of a ISP called Illuminati Online.

2) Along the way they created a e-commerce store called e23 and later folded it into Warehouse 23.

The net result is that Steve Jackson has their own ecommerce solution for years and not about to pay OBS for something they already have going. Especially when they had theirs up and going five years prior to OBS's site.