Quote from: Simlasa;531465No differences I'd assign to her gender. There was plenty of combat/conflict (her sister was quite bloodthirsty) and lots of smart/creative setups. I think we were playing in Yrth for most of it.

Cool, to be honest females can be even more bloodthirsty than males.  Most don't know or care about the classic gamer way of doing things. They want results and a fun experience so they tend to forget or are oblivious to the etiquette of gamer culture in unexpected ways.

Quote from: Yevla;531252On my facebook page, SJG is going on about the new edition of Ogre.

Ogre.


I have never heard a single person even discuss Ogre, let alone play it.


Meanwhile, still no GURPS Fantasy Bestiary.

Ogre is a play-a-few-times-and-forget-about-it game from the '70s.  I very war-lite boardgame.  I have 3 editions of it ($2.50 - $9 each).  But the $100 6th edition is just a one-off that doesn't add anything new to the game rules.  It's only a collecter's game for selling on eBay.

You mentioned GURPS Fantasy Bestiary.  For GURPS 4e, right?  I'm looking through my books now.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;531473Ogre is a play-a-few-times-and-forget-about-it game from the '70s.

You might get a different opinion over on a wargaming site like The Miniatures Page.
OGRE was the starting game for a LOT of folks. The Space Gamer had good articles about it, optional units, game scenarios.
My friends and I played it (and it's GEV expansion) all through High School and even built up a force of miniatures for it.
We still get it on the table once in a while.

Quote from: Marleycat;531454Must have.  When I played it (3e) there were a good number of female players though, not including myself of course.  Couldn't tell you about 4e never tried it.

If you want to try 4th edition GURPS - stop by Cincinnati and I'll let you know when I'm running my next game session.

- Ed C.

Quote from: Koltar;531489If you want to try 4th edition GURPS - stop by Cinciunnati and I'll let you know when I'm running my next game session.

- Ed C.

Little bit hard for a person that doesn't drive and lives in Kansas City.

Thanks for the offer though, seriously.

Quote from: estar;531262And the referee determines those limits from the core book, how?

According to the campaign being run and the NPCs in it.  Maybe you didn't understand my meaning by limit?

Quote from: estar;531262And how much is the average referee willing to spend doing this compared to say Savage Worlds or one of the Basic Roleplaying variants for his chosen genre.

Doing what?  Creating a setting and NPCs for it?
 

Quote from: estar;531262In my experience not many. I know this because since early 90s I been involved the western PA gaming community and had dealing with a good number of gamers in the area (probably around 200 or so by this point). Now I haven't talked about GURPS with everyone, but it has come up more than a few times. And I have run demos and some campaigns with them.

Their reply comes mostly down to this.

"This is a great game, Rob. But I wouldn't be playing it if it wasn't for you. I just don't want to wade through all the books or even GURPS Lite just to run my dungeon/starship/superhero/horror adventure."

This has come up so often that I believe it is a major issue for GURPS and a major cause in why it declined faster in sales than it's competitors.

GURPS didn't mature until the very late '90s.  By then RPG players were already settled into their own RPG systems that they learned on.  GURPS 3rd and CI and CII arrived to the RPG party too late after RPGs were already in decline because of pogs and magic cards and Diablo games.

Quote from: estar;531262No my proposal are for complete RPGs with no other rule book. That why I specifically said "Powered by GURPS." See Prime Directive by Armadillo Design for an example of what a powered by GURPS RPG looks like.

I have those.

Quote from: estar;531262Another example is Chaosium Call of Cthulu versus Runequest versus Stormbringer. All three use Basic Roleplaying but all three are standalone RPGs.

Yep.  Just note that the rules are slimmed down for each of these book's settings.

Quote from: estar;531262Also I am not advocating a overhaul of the GURPS line. Only that a handful of complete "Powered by GURPS" RPGs be created as a introduction to the rest of the line. These would greatly lower the barrier to get started with GURPS and put the purchasers to the core books and the rest of the line in their desire to expand what they can do with GURPS.

Good idea.  The thing is, would RPG players spend more cash on a core rulebook.  Fantasy Flight Games has customers that apparently will keep re-buying core rules over and over with each Warhammer character book ($60 each).  Must be nice for FFG.

Quote from: estar;531262
1) GURPS already has D&D powered by GURPS. It called the Dungeon Fantasy line. The first three books occupy three of the top ten selling GURPS PDFs.

I'm looking through my GURPS DF books now.  No mention of D&D in them.  You do know that D&D is a registered trademark, right?  D&D also has a certain play style.

Quote from: estar;5312622) A powered by GURPS Fantasy RPGS doesn't need to be GURPS D&D. Instead is should focus on 150 pt fantasy character and provide a selection of monsters, items, spells with roughly the same coverage as D&D, Runequest and the other major fantasy RPGs.

GURPS has their Banestorm setting for that.

Quote from: estar;531262My group recruited many gamers in NW Pa since the late 80s to the GURPS. They wanted to do roughly the same things as they did in AD&D, dungeons and treasure findin but they wanted to do it GURPS style. Not have GURPS emulate AD&D. Understand the difference?

Yes.  So did they ever do it?  Or they just wanted to?  There were more than plenty of fantansy books for GURPS in the late '80s early '90s.

Quote from: estar;531262Back in the day it was the Bell Curve of 3D6, Character Customization, and the detailed combat. Of these Character Customization was the single greatest reason propelling players that switched to other fantasy RPGs.

Away from d20 RPGs?

Quote from: estar;531262GURPS also appealed because it made sense and it was easy to real world concepts to what you were trying to do in GURPS. GURPS was and remains a great design for RPGs.

Today the d20 system eviscerated GURPS advantage in customization. And without a intro product this hurt GURPS badly with gamers look for an alternative to D&D for fantasy RPGs.

So you saw players rushing to GURPS because of its 3d6 dice and great design.  Then the flooded d20 system market lured those same players away from GURPS?

Quote from: estar;531262D&D works in this regard because they provide lists of items, monsters and other stuff. So do other Fantasy RPGs. But GURPS has always being notorious for having piss poor monster support in the core rules. In 3rd and 4th edition there been some excellent monster books printed but you really have to like GURPS to get to the point where you are willing to buy them.

So GURPS has a great design and has excellent monstor books, but players didn't like GURPS enough so they went back to Hasbro to buy more D&D books.

Quote from: estar;531262I will have the say that Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 1 is really good for D&D style fantasy in GURPS. It much better than then any of their past 3rd or 4th edition books in that regard.

Again you are saying D&D.  Maybe as a general term covering all fantasy genre RPGs, even though each one uses a different RPG system?

Anyway... I make my own dungeons and monsters and NPCs when I need them, using the GURPS core rules and I get ideas from the GURPS Fantasy book.  I almost never use pre-printed stuff.  Just like I don't use any clipart that comes with Microsoft Word.

Quote from: estar;531262Try to get a bunch of other gamers to play or referee GURPS and let me know how it goes. I am not argue GURPS isn't a outstanding game. I am arguing that it the way is presented discourages players from taking up the game.

I'll GM a GURPS game without mentioning what the system is that I'm using to the players.  I'll have some character sheets with me and let the players choose which character they want to play.

Quote from: estar;531262Yes ALL RPGs are down, but GURPS didn't have to fall faster relative to other RPGs.

GUPS was kind of the last one into the game.  So it could easily be the first one to go out.

Quote from: estar;531262We have counter example in the generic markets. Savage World, and the BRP related games.  How are they doing now? Have they fell faster than their competitors. How Hero System doing? My view is that the GURPS/Hero System approach is not going to fly and that it was a fluke that it worked when it did. The better approach is a hybrid of what Chaosium does and what SJ Games does. Have a complete RPGs written to the standards of the major competitors of a genre to showcase your system and then have the generic core rulebook and supplements behind it.

Agreed.  But really, it's much too late to do any re-booting of RPG publishers.  People are into their phones now more than anything else.

Quote from: estar;531268What blows my mind, is what they do when they work on GURPS. For example right now there are preparing a GURPS 4e Discworld book. Probably will be the next hardcover release. I question whether that project will be the best value for the time spent on GURPS. I think they will generate far more sales by putting that effort into doing a "Powered by GURPS" Fantasy RPG.

Discworld seems like a complete waste of time.  I never bothered with the previous printings of it.  I didn't read the book.  Probably never will.  But Steve Jackson likes to publish stuff that he wants to buy.  Not what customers ask for.  Plus, he doesn't have anyone to write the books we all want to buy.  And for a reason.

Quote from: Sigmund;531275Same here, although to be fair Frank's conversion idea to make the percentile roll-over is simple and elegant as well. I'd be perfectly happy using that too.

I'll look at it again.  But I much prefer a bell curve that a 3d6 roll provides.

Quote from: Yevla;531296Although I'm sure its a fine game in it's own right, I am merely pointing out the hypocrisy of others claiming that SJG doesn't make any new GURPS material (when I've seen plenty of folks clamoring for new GURPS material) because Munchkin is the money-maker (which it is, of course), while the company is working on/releasing a new edition of Ogre (when I really don't see anyone clamoring for new Ogre releases).

In a similar vein, friends and I have often wondered why Steve Jackson has such an obsession with obscure 70s sci-fi GURPs suppliments when most of the folks I've met use GURPS to run homebrewed fantasy worlds. No one buys these things. As horribly misguided as WotC's marketing department is, at least they're trying.

Steve Jackson is like Howard Hughes.  Just not as rich.  He publishes things that only he is interested in doing.  A $100 Ogre game using '70s rules?  And there will be typos and scores of errata to download afterwards for it, just like all his other editions of Ogre have.

I would love to see more Traveller written for GURPS, but that universe is pretty much established by now and no one would buy it but me.  I might be the only one that bought GURPS New Sun, which was a (Hmm?  What is this all about.  Never heard of it before.  Now I have all the New Sun novels, and I am a huge fan of Gene Wolfe which is weird).

Quote from: languagegeek;531313Really superficially: change the name. On a shelf with other RPGs with cool, flashy, or exciting names, 'GURPS' is kinda sad for 2012.

Yes!

Quote from: Marleycat;531442I don't think GURPS is a bad game but rules lite it isn't.

If you use every rule in the book, no it isn't lite.

Quote from: misterguignol;531446Maybe he meant GURPS Lite, which is a thing that exists.  I haven't ever looked at it because GURPS isn't my kind of game at all.

I did a review of GURPS Ultra Lite on YouTube.  Their six-page rule book.

Quote from: Marleycat;531459It's a simple game to run as long as you use just the basics.  It's the original modular game, too bad it's treated so badly by SJGames.

Were there any differences you noticed? Just curious because I don't think I run any game different from a man.

No difference as far as I can tell whether a guy or gal is the GM.  Women tend to be more organized though on their laptops than guys, I've noticed.

Quote from: Simlasa;531474You might get a different opinion over on a wargaming site like The Miniatures Page.
OGRE was the starting game for a LOT of folks. The Space Gamer had good articles about it, optional units, game scenarios.
My friends and I played it (and it's GEV expansion) all through High School and even built up a force of miniatures for it.
We still get it on the table once in a while.

The keywords "starting game".  Tell a wargaming now to play Ogre.  Other worse things to do is tell a Pathfinder player to play 1979 Traveller.  AMC Pacers are not driven anymore.

Quote from: Marleycat;531493Little bit hard for a person that doesn't drive and lives in Kansas City.

Thanks for the offer though, seriously.

That's what Skype is for.