GURPS 4th Edition Revised Announced

 

Another unexpected RPG announcement - and another one I am happy to see even if I am not really doing anything with GURPS or planning to anytime soon. This edition of GURPS is 20 years old at this point which I suppose means it has lasted longer in its current form than the legendary Third Edition which truly put GURPS on the map in the late 80's and through the 90's. It's weird. GURPS was a standard reference in any wide-ranging RPG discussion back then, both for the universal mechanics and for the universal coverage (and high quality) of its supplements. Even if you didn't play it you knew about it and may have used some of its books to craft a campaign in something else. It was a significant part of the RPG landscape. 

These days, despite the longevity, I feel like GURPS is an obscure reference in most discussions I see online if it is mentioned at all. It is fairly crunchy and we know tastes have moved on from that over the past decade +. People who think 5th edition D&D is complicated might keel over at the site of a GURPS weapons table and spontaneously combust opening GURPS Vehicles for 3E. Sometimes though the complexity is worth it -whether you call it realism or verisimilitude or whatever. GURPS has definitely filled a niche but that seems to be a smaller niche now. The 3rd edition was a big deal, then 4th edition came out and it felt like GURPS just faded away within a few years. I bought all the hardcovers as they were published as I assumed we would get around to playing it at some point ... but we did not. SJG had a hard time keeping them in print, Munchkin became their main focus, and it felt like the line just dried up. Other places online, where GURPS was a normal part of the conversation, seemed to forget that it existed or only spoke of it in past tense. It's similar to the Hero System which was once a major player and has been continually in-print for decades but has largely faded from popular conversation within the hobby.

I was still surprised that this was an update and not a full new edition. It's been 20 years and that's a pretty good run for any edition of an RPG - is it not time to reboot? If you're going to go through this much work, that is? From the discussion in  the forums it sounds like they are doing a pretty extensive retouching of the two Basic Set books from art to text edits and even adding in some new material, all while bending over backwards to keep the page number references the same. That's going to put some significant limits on what you can or cannot do. It also sounds like money is a limiter here and I totally get that. I appreciate the goal of not making the books people own obsolete but I do have to ask - if the game isn't making you any money right now why make this partial, limited update? Why spend that money on meeting modern standards on layout, art, and language to go part way? Why not come out with a new edition and get some attention? Run a Kickstarter like everyone else is doing and emphasize the 20 years of buildup and support and say you're making an edition for the next twenty years? 

I ask this because doing an update now effectively closes that door for years if a major goal is to not anger your existing GURPS fanbase. I could see putting something out as a stalking horse to see if people want a new edition but a partial re-doing of the core rules might as well be a new edition in gamers' heads. Doing v4.5 in 2026 means you'd better not be doing v5.0 in 2027 or 2028 as "we just bought new rulebooks" is all you're going to hear at that point. I mean maybe there are no problems to solve with 4th edition. I haven't read it in years but I doubt that nothing has really come up in two decades of play. 

Also I'd say they need to call it the "core rulebook" if they are updating and consolidating it into one volume. That's what people are calling these things now. If it's an appeal to the younger generation then stop calling it the Basic Set, which is a total 80's throwback reference they mostly won't get, and for those of us older members of the crowd that term used to mean it came in a box, and GURPS did, for a while, but not for 30+ years now.

Always liked this cover

The other thing GURPS needs is a setting - a big, popular setting. Being the serious RPG nerds' toolkit is a fine enough niche but if you want to attract some attention you need a reason for people to get excited. 

• D&D has, well, "D&D" in the name, history, and a bunch of published settings some of which have novels and miniatures and video games built around them.
• Warhammer has a lot of the same attractions as D&D
• Basic Roleplaying has Runequest which has Glorantha
• Hero System has Champions as its flagship and is still probably what most people call it
• Savage Worlds has Deadlands

Most game systems have some kind of setting that plays into their strengths. GURPS major perceived strength in the past was world books which covered a lot of historical ground, some fantasy, and some science fiction but there was never one setting that was purely "GURPS" the way Champions defined the Hero system. It needs one, because settings are what really lock people into a game. You don't need to change the essence of GURPS like making it a dice pool or a d20 based game. You do need to get something out there in the world that gets people's attention and gets them interested in your game. I rambled on about these same issues 8 years ago and I don't think much of anything has really changed.

I hope this goes well for them - I'd like GURPS to survive at least. But I would really like to see it thrive again.

Steve Jackson Games - Part 2

Steve Jackson Games recently put out their annual report to stakeholders and I saw some things I think are problems. Yesterday I talked about the problems I see with GURPS. Today let's talk about Kickstarters. From the report:

The 2012 Ogre Kickstarter project is still not completed. We made big steps forward on all of the various commitments, but we're coming up on five years after the project closed, and we are still sinking time into the project. The good news, though, is that we're seeing real progress; several outstanding pieces of the project are finally coming to a close. Whew.

Wait, what? Five years on and they still haven't finished this thing? Damn! This is the kind of mistake that hurts a company's reputation, especially when they plan to keep doing other kickstarters! Clearly that project was beyond their capabilities to handle. I would add "at that time" but they are still struggling to get it done from what I see there. I'm glad they didn't just walk away like some other problematic Kickstarters have seen but this is still not a good situation.

Their KS profile shows 5 projects (oldest to newest):

• Ogre
• Car Wars Arenas
• GURPS Dungeon Fantasy
• Ogre Miniatures - Set One
• Munchkin Shakespeare

(note: I did not back any of these)

From the GDF "Risks" section:

Risks and challenges

The greatest risk of all is completing the artwork, layout, and manufacturing of the game. The text for the box set is 100% complete, and artwork and layout have started, but there are always opportunities for things to go sideways during a creative project.

None of the stretch goal PDFs have been written yet, because whether we even get to do them depends on you! However, we've produced high-quality PDFs every month for years, and we feel confident in our ability to deliver on our stretch-goal promises in a timely manner.

We believe we have taken all of the steps necessary to bring the game to completion and ship on schedule. Our last Kickstarter project -- Car Wars Arenas in 2015 -- delivered on schedule, and we think this game will also ship on time. As always, we will update backers throughout the entire process and deliver as close to on time as possible.

First paragraph, fine.

Second paragraph - that was a red flag to me because the KS projects that seem to do the best are the ones where the material is written and basically what it needs is editing and art. Once you make those stretch goals that stuff becomes a commitment  just like the core stuff and stretch goals are where a lot of KS efforts hit the rocks.

Third paragraph - I think there's a fine line between "Marketing" and "Deception" when you mention that your last project went great even as you're still trying to finish the one from before that - three years before that! I don't like that at all.

Now from the report:

Ogre Miniatures Set One - This expansion to the new Ogre Sixth Edition game was another Kickstarter project last year, and we've again caused delays that have pushed the release back later than we had planned. The problems here are less disruptive to our schedule than Dungeon Fantasy's ongoing "Destroy all deadlines" crawl to the finish line, but the lateness of the project is a source of frustration and many sleepless nights. Lesson learned: Finish all CAD work and miniatures tooling before launching any more Kickstarter projects involving minis. This is risky -- what if a project fails to fund? -- but it is worth taking the risk.

Really? There's more:

Dungeon Fantasy - Our Kickstarter project to create a GURPS introductory box set has run into more troubles and derailments than we would like. A game that was meant to go to the printer before the end of 2016 is still clogging our pipeline and causing constant distractions. The project was not as far along in the process as it should have been, and miscommunication regarding the game components ballooned our costs. At the moment, barring a miracle, what would have been a profitable project is rapidly turning into a loss. This is becoming an ongoing problem for GURPS projects (see Discworld and Mars Attacks, below, under Failures).

Sheesh. I like these guys. I've bought a lot of games from them. Besides all of my Car Wars, Ogre, and GURPS stuff there are at least 7 different Munchkin games floating around the house. That said this is not a great place to be. Out of your first 4 Kickstarter projects (over a span of 4 years) three of them have had problems and you are still working to complete them! How is that smart? Why do you keep doing it? Why are you making these same mistakes? How much is this impacting your non-crowdfunded projects? And what about that "the core text is 100% complete" yet somehow "the project was not as far along in the process as it should have been". That's not good.

They keep talking about doing a Kickstarter for the new edition of Car Wars when it's ready and I would normally be an hour one backer on that but now after looking thru all of this ... I don't know if I can. I think my first question will be "are you done with the Ogre Kickstarter from 2012 yet?" and the answer will have a big impact on what I do.

I've been worried about other companies biting off more than they could chew with multiple open Kickstarters, mainly Pinnacle. They like to run several Kickstarters a year but they haven't fallen behind on any that I've been a part of or that I have heard of and they seem to have the whole thing figured out.  That said I think it is a huge risk for a small company to have multiple simultaneous unfinished Kickstarters in play. The failure of one could cascade into the others as your talent is exhausted and it could impact cash flow severely, not to mention your reputation.

Business-wise a Kickstarter is an unusual situation in that you're getting paid for the product before creating, printing, and shipping it. That helps with cash flow but it does mean you have a fixed pile of money associated with the project. If costs go up, you're eating into the margins and you have zero recourse like you would with a more traditional project - say, raising the price or just cancelling it altogether because it's not economically viable given the costs. No, once you've funded, you have committed and you have to produce it or else face the lovely scenario of refunding 100% of what people paid with only 90% of the funding - KS keeps their cut regardless of your ability to produce.

So I am worried about one of my favorite game companies. One reason they might keep doing the KS thing is that their structure has become dependent on it. I hope that's not the case but I wonder about it. That would be bad, because if they keep overloading themselves and running into delays and ongoing problems then at some point people are going to stop spending money on them and the whole thing will fail. I hope that doesn't happen. I also hope they don't start any more KS efforts until the ones they have are complete.

They do end the report on what I think is an appropriately somber note:

  A Brutal Year

We expect 2017 to be a difficult time for our team. We must complete our Kickstarter commitments; every day that the Dungeon Fantasy and Ogre projects run late is another day of stress for all of us in the office. (Fortunately, our team has the Munchkin Shakespeare project humming along wonderfully, and there's a strong chance that the project will deliver on schedule.) We will get through the year, we will complete the projects that are weighing us down, and we will do all we can to close 2017 on a high note and set everything up to make 2018 a year that makes us proud.

I hope they do, I hope 2017 is the year this sh*t stops, they clean things up, and set the company up for a solid 2018. We don't want to lose you, and we don't want to see your name tarnished! Please set things in order and lets move on.

Steve Jackson Games Stakeholder Report for 2016

I'm a little worried about SJG. The latest Report to Stakeholders covering 2016 is not all that great and has a few specific things that concern me. They're a Texas game company, they've been around a long time, and they've made a lot of things I like so I take an interest in how they are doing.

• In the 80's they were Car Wars and Ogre
• In the 90's they were GURPS
• In the 2000's they've been mostly Munchkin

Lots of people have been touched by those games. 

They have always seemed to have a handle on cash flow, which is the thing that tends to kill game companies. That part still seems to be OK, largely due to Munchkin I would guess. They're selling Munchkin at Walgreen's now - Walgreen's!

Today I'll talk about the first issue I see, then tomorrow we will hit the second. 

The first thing I see that might be a problem is GURPS. From the report:

Discworld and Mars Attacks - We published two new GURPS hardcover books late last year. GURPS fans celebrated, and the books turned out well, but their disappointing performance further supported the unfortunate realization that sales are no longer strong enough to make traditional distribution work for GURPS hardcovers. Today's cluttered market, combined with our insistence on getting it right, made both books expensive experiments that tell us one thing: Do not produce more GURPS hardcovers until we have guaranteed that the sales are there. Does this mean more crowdfunding for GURPS? Maybe! But until we see the retail sales of Dungeon Fantasy, we're holding off on any more printed GURPS releases. PDFs will continue, and we'll revisit the question of "print GURPS?" later this year.

OK, I'm sure some of the rest of you can see a potential problem here. After the big Kickstarter (which we will get to in a bit) the two big "kickoff" books were Discworld and Mars Attacks?! Seriously? 

I love the Discworld books - I've been reading them for 30+ years and I own most of them but I would never try to use it as an RPG setting because it's just not going to work. It's the same reason there's not a Hitchhikers Guild to the Galaxy RPG - a huge part of it is the wit, and your players are not going to be able to do that on the fly while playing the game. As a Big Book of Stuff About Discworld I'm sure it's great but for a roleplaying game it's a niche of a niche at best and the people who wanted one got it with the third edition books.

Then there's Mars Attacks. I don't even know where to start, really. I know Mantic put out a miniatures game of it in 2015 and it looks as though it's already being discontinued.  Who do you know that's really passionate about MA? What's the fanbase? It would not surprise me if the total number of people in North America saying "I can't wait to run a Mars Attacks RPG!" is in the single digits.  What else is going on with the universe? A new movie? There was a movie 20 years ago that was not all that big a hit even then. I'm sure the license is cheap because NO ONE CARES ABOUT MARS ATTACKS! It's not something to build or reboot a game line on!

I know, I know, but it had to be said

GURPS has always had a problem in that while it inspired some system loyalty, it has no marquee setting, and settings are what keep people interested over the decades. Consider:

• D&D has gone thru a ton of changes from the 80's to now but there's a core group of Forgotten Realms fans that stay with it and provide a big chunk of the energy around the game. They're the ones buying the novels and other product tie-ins. They're the ones recruiting new players  talking about all of those overpowered NPCs, arguing the history of fictional countries, and all of the things that come with a deep setting. Greyhawk has fans too, as do the other D&D worlds. Regardless of the rules particulars, they keep coming back.
• Why does any edition of Runequest that ditches Glorantha struggle? Because for that game the Gloranth-philes are the biggest mass of players. That's where the energy is! 
• What was the early core of Savage Worlds players? Deadlands players! It's probably still the biggest single setting but now they have Rifts, Lankmahr, and they're working on Flash Gordon! They have a strong mix of original IP and licensees that draw people in. 

I've talked about this before, back when the Dungeon Fantasy Kickstarter was going. It baffles me that GURPS still has no well-known setting of its own. Would you play 1920's Call of Cthulu without the Mythos elements? Well, that's GURPS. Sure, it's a great toolkit for making your own game but the core books have been out since 2004! If you want to draw new players in, get people excited, and most of all have people spend money on it then you need something people care about beyond mechanics! That would be "setting" and they just do not have one.

So no, I don't expect a big resurgence for the GURPS line, particularly when they are making decisions like this. I expect Dungeon Fantasy will hit the shelves and barley make a ripple as it sinks under, much like these other two have. The window for this to be a big deal was probably 2011-2014, while D&D was at a low ebb and people were looking for alternatives. Now, with 5E booming in popularity, Pathfinder still a strong second, and a bunch of OSR stuff taking up the rest there just isn't that much room left for something else. 

There might have been room for a sci-fi game in there too for the last few years but over the last 5 or so years we've had FFG's 40K universe games, their new Star Wars game, a new edition of Traveller, a new edition of Mutant Chronicles, Savage Worlds Last Parsec, and later this year we get Starfinder and a new Star Trek game! There's probably not a ton of room there either!

This is pretty clearly something that could happen in an RPG
"Remember that time we took out a tank with some muscle cars?"

To show I'm not just slagging them, how about some ideas of what they could do? OK:

• GURPS Fast and Furious - You want to bring in some new people? Want to stretch the creative muscles a bit? Want to get some attention? Strike now! I think the company that's been doing a game called "Car Wars" for almost 40 years and that has a back catalog of GURPS books on thrillers, vehicles, espionage, and tech could do pretty well at something like this. Sure, it's a license but it's not one we've seen in RPG's before and they plan to make at least two more movies over the next 4 years. For a game that's "realistic" with some cinematic options this seems perfect. (If you think it's a bad RPG license then first, take a look up there at their last two licenses. Second, look at how many people have gone to see these movies in the last 5-10 years. It's a big number and getting bigger, at or beyond Star Wars and Marvel. It's also a heckuva lot more relevant than Mars Attacks.)
• GURPS Big Superhero World - I think we all know superhero movies are big right now. There's room for another Superhero RPG if it's good. This takes two things:
• One, put out a single-volume book combining the GURPS rules and the powers book. It can be a big book, but it really helps if you can point players to one book to play this game, not 3 or more. Champions did it and has done it again. M&M has always done it. It's time to make that change. 
• Two, create an original setting that has some specific flavor, some likable, interesting iconic heroes and some detestable iconic villains and put out a setting book! Support the game with something beyond more rulebooks! It should look as good as Freedom City and Emerald City but with its own take on a superhero world. 
• GURPS Munchkin - Start with GURPS Lite. Add maximum cinematic rules. Put in all of the monsters from the card game. Make it something like Dungeon Crawl Classics in tone, add a little Hackmaster, add a little Paranoia. Make it "The First RPG You Can Win". Make it playable in less than 2 hours - maybe everybody who's still alive levels up every ten minutes of real time. It's an IP you own and there's a ton of stuff to mine from it so why not explore it in RPG form?

So there's my thinking on the whole GURPS side of the problem. Tomorrow - the other stuff!

The GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Kickstarter

So there's a Kickstarter for GURPS. I shared my experiences with GURPS in a post a few years back and to be honest I haven't added anything new in the six years since I wrote that. It's just not a game my players are interested in playing. I've actually sold off a lot of my books because they gathered dust for ten years and with the Great Internet Attic of eBay I can always go get them again if there's a sudden outcry for GURPS again.

Part of the lack of interest I think is because there have been a lot of new editions and new game systems that have come out, many for specific genres, while GURPS has been pretty much the same thing since 2004 (4th edition) which is really not dramatically different from 3rd edition (1988). So feel comfortable blaming some of the disinterest on Steve Jackson Games (insert smiley here). The 4th edition version of GURPS Traveller was a prequel setting, a lot of the more interesting books and concepts for books from 3rd never made the jump to 4th (Discworld, Myth, Atomic Horror, Rome, Greece, Autoduel) and while 4th involved the usual re-purchasing of the same books you probably owned in 3rd it never really went beyond that for me. They did branch out some with PDFs (full list here) but that was a few years into the new edition and I just was not interested by the time the PDF machine was really rolling.

The other problem with GURPS in the last decade especially is "what is the flagship GURPS game"? It's a great toolkit game for GM's who want to do their own thing but settings are what get attention and keep the interest levels up even when not actively running or playing a game. Of the universal multigenre games Hero has Champions, BRP has RuneQuest and Call of Cthulu, Savage Worlds has Deadlands, GURPS has ... what? For a while it was the alternative system - there was a GURPS version of Vampire, Werewolf, Deadlands, Castle Falkenstein, Conspiracy X, Prime Directive, and of course Traveller. Those are all licensed settings and while that's a totally solid way to go it seems like after 30 years of GURPS there should be a go-to setting for the game, something it's known for that is not a Plan B version of someone else's game.

• "Banestorm", formerly GURPS Fantasy, is a cool idea and one I fell in love with a long time ago but I've managed to run all of 3 sessions of it because non-history buffs don't get excited about it and would rather play Greyhawk or the Forgotten Realms or Middle Earth given the chance.  
• "Ogre" is another one SJG owns completely but is a little bigger in scale to the point that there's not a ton of opportunity there to do RPG things with the flagship entities. Battletech has good-sized war machines but they each require a human pilot, keeping characters right there in the middle of things. The whole point of Ogre is that the giant tanks are autonomous and don't need human control. At one point I thought playing the ogres themselves was the key to making it work but with no free will, no emotions, and no manipulatory limbs there's just not a whole lot to build on there. 
• "Autoduel" seems absolutely perfect as a setting for an RPG. It's semi-post-apocalyptic so there's room to roam and ruins to explore. It's near future with lots of higher-but-recognizable tech floating around. There are obvious and well-supported options for playing duelist types in the big cities, lesser duelists in the smaller towns, or roaming the wastelands in between as adventurers or truck drivers (all of which have been covered in supplements for the boardgame to some degree). There were adventures in Autoduel Quarterly that were effectively RPG adventures, some of which were pretty interesting. It's just never really taken off and I'm not sure if that's lack of a big push by SJG, the declining interest in post-apoc RPG's in the 90's and 00's, or what exactly but it's a setting with a lot of potential. 

I spent a ton of time playing through this solo and with friends

So GURPS has been around but not really a big part of the RPG scene for the last few years. It's been supported, but not really promoted outside of the existing player base. Now SJG is launching this Kickstarter to re-ignite/gauge interest in the game and I have truly mixed feelings about it.

I'm really glad they're doing a KS for GURPS. It's about time!

I'm disappointed that it's for "Dungeon Fantasy" - the most generic kind of RPG. The kind of RPG I already have at least ten other systems for and so do many other players!  From the site:

Sometimes you want an intricate fantasy setting that encourages roleplaying and characterization – one with lovingly detailed cultures and plots, enabling you to give each hero a past, a family, and a home town. Sometimes you want to use every rule, making the game richer and more realistic . . .

. . . and sometimes you just want to play a combat-monster warrior who stomps monsters and takes their stuff!

Many – perhaps most – gamers started out playing simple dungeon-crawl RPGs or hack n' slash computer games. Some of us still recall that time fondly, but pretend to have "outgrown" it. But if you love the smell of fireballs in the morning, GURPS Dungeon Fantasy is for you.

No - D&D is for you! or Pathfinder! Or Swords and Wizardry! Or Labyrinth Lord! Or Dungeon Crawl Classics! Or any of the other umpteen dozen dungeon crawling RPG's on the market!

GURPS was the game we played when we were tired of dungeon crawling! because D&D was built for that and has always been better for that kind of game! 

GURPS is a great game for so many other genres, why did they choose this specific subgenre of fantasy for the "GURPS litmus test kickstarter"? If it fails or just barely funds I suspect we won't see renewed support for GURPS in a big way and that would be a shame. I know fantasy is the big dog in RPG's but its also the most crowded pool and dungeon crawls are the most crowded part of all. 

Also, from what I am reading, GURPS DF does not have any particular setting associated with it. It's sort of generic D&D type fantasy without any well-defined world. So there's no setting hook here and  the playstyle is certainly not unique - the pitch is pretty much "play D&D using some of the GURPS rules" and that's a shame. I suppose you could adapt one of the D&D settings over for it but if you;re going to play this style fo fantasy game and set it in a D&D setting why not just play D&D?

So I don't know if I'm going to back it. I kind of want to because it's GURPS and I'd like to see more from them, to see what a new generation of designers could do with the full game. 

Sidetrack: Imagine if they had an easy 3rd-party licensing setup like Savage Worlds or Mutants and Masterminds or Pathfinder - we might see a new wave of some pretty cool material come out for the old game. If an announcement of that kind of thing was part of the Kickstarter I'd be at least a little more interested too. 

That aside, it's $65 (with shipping) for yet another dungeon crawling game using a different system. Why not put that money into games we're already playing which include several other dungeon crawling type games? Why not build on what I already have instead of starting a new project? Heck, why not go buy a copy of Descent ($60 at Amazon as I write this) and get plastic mini's and cardboard map tiles?

What are the odds it will have support at the level of Pathfinder? D&D? DCC? Based on the track record I'd say it's pretty slim as it's been awhile since SJG really got behind a particular part of the GURPS line and really pushed it. Looking at what's available DF might be the best-supported GURPS sub-line but if the new set covers a lot of the core material, well, there's not a ton left over. Looks like there's all of one published adventure and no real setting material so it's mostly short books on mechanics. Whee.

The other question, if I did back it, is "when are we going to play it"? When are we going to choose this over D&D, Pathfinder, DCC - the usual suspects. What makes this better than those games for dungeon crawling? "But it's GURPS" - well that makes it different but not better. What hook does it have besides "GURPS"? How do I sell it to my players beyond "it's GURPS" because most of them have very little experience with that system and are pretty happy with the last 3 versions of D&D and Pathfinder. 

So I don't know - I'm still undecided. Leaning towards "skip it" but undecided. The KS runs for 23 more days. If I do jump in it will probably be late in the run and it will mainly be because I want to see GURPS get another chance at growth and not because I expect to play it much. I'll force a session or three on the Apprentices if nothing else if it goes that way but it will be more about future possibilities than the actual game in the box. 

Thinking Back on Steve Jackson Games

I used to be a huge fan of Steve Jackson Games, and while I don't have anything against them they just haven't been on my radar much in the last 5 years. I thought I might work through why on this post.

Like a lot of gaming stuff for me, it starts in the 80's. I saw Car Wars on the shelf at the local mall hobby shop that was my main place for that kind of thing. It pushed three of my buttons (cars and games and blowing things up) and it was not very expensive in pocket-box form so I picked it up and had a blast. I ramble on some more about it here. Keep in mind that this was pre-Battletech, an era when the goal of most wargames was "realism" and the resulting complexity was embraced by all. Star Fleet Battles and Squad Leader were the big dogs here. The idea of a smaller game that didn't try to cover everything with a full page of rules and where "fun" was the main goal was definitely marching to a different drummer. We played it quite a bit and there was new material every year and I picked up a lot of it.

Not long after Car Wars I picked up another pocket-box game called "Ogre" about a force of conventional military units trying to stop a giant robot tank. I was already a fan of Keith Laumer's Bolo stories by this time and having a game that effectively fettered them was extra cool. The expansion game G.E.V. soon followed and now I was a fan of two SJG games.

Pretty soon I also picked up Illuminati, the conspiracy card game and though we never played it a ton it was a blast whenever we did and I loved the whole concept. That's three SJG games that were in our rotation by the early to mid 80's.

Then, as I was going through college GURPS 3rd Edition came out and was a big player in our RPG sessions for several years. A comprehensive system that provided a solid non-class-and-level approach and was as well supported as D&D was a great thing to have as AD&D petered out after 10 years for some of us. From pure historical campaigns to crazy time-travel shenanigans to standing in for Rifts and Mechwarrior we got our money's worth from GURPS.

Somewhere in the late 90's (looking back now) things started to drop off. Car Wars sputtered and died except for a few regional tournaments kept alive by dedicated gaming groups. Illuminati went through a couple of editions and a CCG version that didn't really last past the first few years and then that game went silent. Ogre had a very cool miniatures focus for a while but that pretty much dies out by the early 2000's.

GURPS kept going for a few more years but seemed to mostly be caught up in licensing stuff like Deadlands, Vampire, and Castle Falkenstein - popular 90's games. Also, GURPS Traveller, which seemed to make up a significant part of the line in the 90's - we preferred original/mega flavor ourselves. If it wasn't that then it was second editions of books we already had, from Greece to Rome to Magic to Old West to Martial Arts - it was fine and all but there was not a big incentive to go spend another $20 on a book that was a slightly cleaned up and perhaps moderately expanded version of a book I already had. Also, we were still playing third edition - there wasn't a new edition of the game. Then in 2004 they went to a new edition and that pretty much killed GURPS for my group. We were in full on D&D 3E mode and there was not room for much else. I ended up getting most of the very nicely done GURPS 4E books but I've never read half of them and never run or played the game at all.

Somewhere along in the early 2000's is also when SJG first published Munchkin, which exploded and has in some sense consumed the company. Don;t get me wrong, I'm glad they found a way to survive the d20 wave, the CCG collapse and the general tough economic times for game companies of the last ten years, and I like Munchkin as a game, but I wish that they had been able to keep more life in their other game lines while they kept feeding the beast. I'm glad the best-known Texas game company is still rolling but their games today don't interest me as much as they once did. They were a pretty innovative bunch too, running their own BBS and later their own local internet service for years. Warehouse 23 was one of the first online retailers and PDF providers too. They're still dabbling in online games and mobile apps. I wonder what their next cool thing will be - something besides Munchkin Discworld, I hope.

There is hope - they had that big Ogre Kickstarter last year ... that has not yet been delivered. They do seem to be making progress but it is clearly consuming the majority of their non-Munchkin resources and is taking far longer to deliver than they had planned but I'm sure it will happen. There has also been talk about a Car Wars Kickstarter too but that is on hold until Ogre is completely finished and they've said we won't see Car Wars before 2015.

So what took their place?

I think Mongoose was the English SJG for a while, with a wide range of RPG's and miniatures games though there was a lot of churn from 2000 to about 2010 or so.

I thought Kenzer was going there too with KODT and Kalamar and Hackmaster and some boardgames but they quieted down too in the last few years.

For me I think Pinnacle took over as the "smaller American game company doing interesting stuff." Between Deadlands, Hell on Earth, and Lost Colony they had a solid line and they had their Brave New World supers game for a while too. They then shifted over into Savage Worlds which is looking like GURPS in some ways when it comes to the product line - a nice mix of historical, fantasy, and generic support books that don't require a separate version of the core rules every time you start a new campaign. They don't really have boardgames but they do have miniatures and have had card games and seem to have some interest in expanding into other types of games as well. I like almost everything they do, and I can be pretty picky (and cheap)so that's saying something.

So to wrap up - I hope SJG continues on strong for as long as they desire. It's a little like an old girlfriend where things ended without big drama - people grow apart sometimes and while the interest isn't what  it once was I have no ill feelings toward them and generally wish them well. Maybe someday (like when they get back around to Car Wars) our interests will align again and we will see where things go. Some of us do remember them before they were the Munchkin company and hope to see them reclaim some of that status again.

Magic Systems

Because it had the WIld Mage, that's why

Confession: D&D's magic system is not my favorite. It works, and I'm comfortable with it, but there are other games that do a lot more with magic than any edition of D&D. Barking Alien had a post or two on this that sparked a fair amount of discussion and I wanted to expand on some of my comments there.

Magic is one of the distinguishing features of a fantasy game and to me there are two main elements of interest: mechanics and feel. Rather than go into a bunch of theory I'l talk about some specific games.

I'll use D&D as the baseline for my comparison - because it was the baseline for me. Mechanically magic is limited but 100% reliable: spells always go off, magic items always work. There are saving throws, but even then there is often some negative effect applied. At first this was fine but in comparison to to other approaches it doesn't feel especially "magical". It can feel more like science or superpowers at times

Example: a wand of fireballs typically has 50 charges. A 50 charge limitation is not much of a limitation in Champions, and that wand will always work and will always inflict some kind of damage unless you use it on a foe that's highly resistant to fire, specifically.

Now this saves a lot of player aggravation but magic in books and movies is often portrayed as risky business, not an infinitely-repeatable formula. It is also often shown as being draining or tiring to the magic-user - not so in D&D. Magical items are typically rare and wondrous, perhaps a relic of a past age - a wand of fireballs is something a medium level wizard can crank out every month if he wants.

Also in some sources wizardy types are portrayed as having more than just a spell list - they can sense magic, see things others can't see, and know arcane lore that others have no need to know. In the later versions of D&D you can give them some knowledge:arcane type skills but the closes they come to the rest of it is Read Magic and Detect Magic, which mechanically are the same as every other spell. They can't automatically see "magic" or tell that an item is magical just by touching it.

All that said I'm perfectly fine with D&D as-is, because at this point D&D is just expected to work a certain way and the tolerance for change is pretty narrow. Still, sometimes I'm in the mood for a different flavor of magic.

The first system I recall that felt really different to me was GURPS Magic. Now I had been exposed to Fantasy Hero and WFRP 1E before I ever played GURPS but those didn't register the way it did. Here was a system where magic was not going to wipe out an army but had far more utility type effects built in. Spells were learned as a special type of skill which meant even a starting wizard could have many of them and there was a chance they wouldn't work! Casting limits were determined by your skill and by your ability to handle the energy physically - go too far and it started causing fatigue! Go even farther and it could cause serious damage! Mechanically it fit with the rest of the game, and it felt like a completely different approach than D&D - wizards had broader abilities but  less powerful spells at an individual level and it felt much more personal. It also played more like art than science to me. Beyond the general "main" GURPS magic system there was room for different approaches such as Unlimited Mana. Magic items were also less powerful and less common than in most D&D campaigns.

Warhammer FRP, second edition, coming years later, had another great system. In Warhammer magic is inherently dangerous, tapping in to the power of chaos which has temptations similar to that of the Dark Side, and far more corrupting to those who succumb. It is tolerated as a necessary tool to fight the real threats coming from Chaos directly but it is not sure and not safe.In this system skill and experience help but there is always a chance that the winds of magic (flowing from the chaos wastes at the north and south poles of the world) will blow the wrong way at the wrong time and bad things will happen. Smaller effects are fairly safe but screwing up something big can result in anything from a physical mutation to daemonic possession. It's a "grim world of perilous adventure" and the magic system feels like it springs directly from that world.

Sure, there's a chance your wizard may go insane but there's enough mind-bending stuff in the world that everyone else has a pretty good chance of losing it too if they go poking into ruins and tomes of forbidden lore. They might also end up maimed, mutated, or dead as well so the risks are a part of the lifestyle. It's a pretty fair cross between D&D and Call of Cthulu. Notably, magic items are closer to D&D style - most are potent and many are permanent, though you're not going to be cranking out magic swords or fireball wands in this game.

Beyond the mechanics there is a lot of atmosphere tied to magic as well - much of it is secret, there is always more to learn, and there is a price for learning it too quickly. Plus if word gets out that a PC is delving too deeply into the secrets of chaos it's a pretty good bet there will be witchunters on his trail, something unlikely to happen to magic types in most other fantasy games.

Finally the other game I wanted to mention came out in between those first two - Shadowrun. Playing a magic type in Shadowrun feels more complete than any other game I have played.  Sure, they know spells, and they are often quite potent, but they are so much more. Summoning elementals or spirits is built right in to the mechanics and explained very well in the "fluff". Basic spellcasting works about like a skill and is not a sure thing all of the time. Casters have to resist fatigue similar to GURPS and can push themselves into taking physical damage if they go to far. They can create temporary magical effects tied to an item. They can use items as a focus to increase their casting power. There are permanent items but the powerful ones are fairly rare and typically only good to the magically aware.

Spirits are a big part of the game and are far more than meatshields. Summoning a spirit lets you use them for that of course, but they can also be asked to perform various services, used for combat effects (like armor),  or even be used to power spells! The whole spirit/elemental subsystem is very well done and makes it feel like an integral part of how magic works.

The biggest differentiation for me though is astral space. Being magically active automatically ties you to the astral plane. You can feel magic and if you "asense" you can see into the astral plane and see what a magical person/place/object is and gain some information about them. You can see a spell or a spirit coming. If seeing isn't enough you can fully shift over to the astral plane, basically moving to another layer of reality to deal with threats that way. It's a cool concept and it works well within the game and it feels "right" for what mages are about in this universe. Mages are aware of and vulnerable/exposed to things that mundanes never have to deal with, and it makes the whole system something special.

There are other little touches as well - centering, initiation, lodges, totems, "background count", and all of the little things that mages can dig into.

And that's only one type of character in the game!

Getting back to D&D, I have mostly played clerics in my limited playing time, and for them I think the D&D system works just fine - calling on your personal relationship with a deity to power magical effects, well, it should be pretty reliable. For wizard types though I lean more towards introducing some risks and that's probably why I favor the Wild Mage. They were big in second edition and there was some crazy stuff they could pull off (and some horrible accidents too). I think there was a prestige class for them in 3E but I never saw one in play and that seems like a reduction anyway - let me play it from 1st level! They came back in 4E as a type of sorcerer and while not as over the top as the 2E versions they still have that random element that I enjoy so much. I hope they will make a return in some expansion for Next to help keep things lively. It's not always about mechanics, sometimes it's just about feel.

GURPS and Me

Our schedule for the apprentices has been uneven lately without either of them being here for an extended period of time at the same time in some time. This has frustrated my attempts at furthering the Basic D&D campaign so I've been looking at running some different games depending on who is here on any given weekend. We also have an aspiring apprentice who's a little young but doesn't like being left out, so I've been looking at some simpler games too. There will probably be a few posts like this one in the next week or so as I share some thoughts about different games.

Looking at games on the shelf, one thing I noticed was an entire shelf full of GURPS books. I started playing GURPS in late 1988 while I was in college and had a new group of friends who played a lot of non-TSR games. My first experience with GURPS was when we switched a then-running Fantasy Hero campaign over to GURPS when we changed GM's. I liked it and went and bought the rulebook right away. We later played some GURPS Mechwarrior and several iterations of fantasy. My best friend picked it up too and ran a few fantasy campaigns and a space campaign for our other group too over the years. Being a longtime Traveller player too I picked up most of the GURPS Traveller books as well, though I've never run a game of it.

I like GURPS a lot and think it handles realistic levels of game quite well. It does get a little strange at the supers/ultra-tech end of things though, where you might be rolling 20d6 for laser rifle damage, but at the gritty fantasy/Traveller/ Mechwarrior end of things where you are basically a normal human doing fairly normal things plus maybe magic and psi, it works very well and is pretty easy for the new player to pick up. It's pretty easy to adapt/convert things as well.

I was a little sad when they went to a 4th edition in 2004 because my 3rd edition rulebook had been good for 15 years and I was sorry to see the compatibility break, but after reading 4th ed it's not all that different, really. I have most of the 4th ed books now though I have never run or played GURPS 4 - thanks to an amazing deal on eBay. All of the GURPS books are excellent resources on whatever subject they cover - my brief Classical Age/ Arcana Evolved camapign relied heavily on my GURPS Greece and Egypt books.

The most fun I had playing it was when a friend ran an anything goes time travel campaign so I used a combination of Ultra-Tech and Supers to make a hi-tech intelligent car that was invulnerable to most forms of damage - the Baron Industries Five Fifty, or B.I.F.F. We only played a few sessions but it was fun and the sci-fi runs were pretty straightforward but the old west adventure was challenging in many new ways.

All that said it's never really taken off with my main group of players. Some of that is that we were big into Hero system first, so if we're going generic or dimensional hopping or time traveling or super heroing then Hero is our first choice. Some flavor of D&D is always out first choice for fantasy, and Warhammer makes a strong case there too. For Traveller the GURPS books capture the default universe very well but the system is so different from classic Traveller mechanics that it feels off - MegaTraveller was my system of choice in the past but that has been replaced by the new Mongoose Traveller, which is simply great.

So I think the problem with GURPS in my groups over the years is that it's been at best a 2nd or 3rd choice for systems and doesn't have any compelling settings of its own to make it a 1st choice. Banestorm is a blast for history buffs (if you are one check it out) but most of my players are not that into it. Besides that one I can't think of a supported original setting for GURPS comparable to the Forgotten Realms, the Third Imperium, Deadlands, Warhammer's Old World, or the World of Darkness and I think that keeps it in the "tinkerer's system" niche rather than a full-fledged AAA system of its own.

As for me, if someone I knew wanted to run a campaign in it, I'd sign up for it in a minute, but I'm not going to start out a bunch of totally new RP'ers with it.