Another week in the life of GURPS

[dr_kromm]

This week is named Diarmaid. The news:

• GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Setting: Caverntown and GURPS Template Toolkit 1: Characters are now available via GURPS on Demand.

• The GURPS Fantasy Folk: Winged Folk playtest ended and the project is with the author for revision.

• I spent the rest of my time working on queries and product-line planning – including liaison with Gaming Ballistic on some cool new stuff.

Comments

[austus]

Why hasn't GURPS made a GHOST IN THE SHELL book? It seems perfect for a GURPS adaptation. And if you are only familiar with either the animated or live action films please check out the manga and the many anime. GHOST in the SHELL has many fans that has kept it popular since the 80's. And amazingly enough there is no RPG of it at least in America. It could easily be your best-selling GURPS book ever unless you'd do a Marvel Heroes or a Star Wars adaptation. But unlike either of those there is no GHOST in the SHELL rpg in America (or anywhere I know of but Japan could have one who knows).

[dr_kromm]

Licensing is difficult – and international licensing is extra-difficult. Licensing is also expensive. With almost no exceptions, the more popular the media property, the more money the owner wants.

Thus, the effort and expense to set up a license with a huge publisher like Kodansha, to adapt a property that scored a Hollywood movie, are 100% certain . . . but the payoff isn't guaranteed, as there's no promise of overlap between "likes GitS" and "likes GURPS."

This is the more-or-less generic answer to all "Why not adapt this popular property for instant success?" questions. The huge cash and time buy-ins are out of reach. We adapt more obscure stuff largely because it's within our reach. SJ Games is a small company of around 30 people that relies on the last project to pay for the next one, not a major publisher with cash reserves and multiple creative teams.

Now if a media property owner liked GURPS and approached SJ Games, that would be a different conversation. That's more or less how GURPS Wildcards happened back in the day, for instance. But I doubt that anyone at Kodansha even knows what a "GURPS" is.