Another week in the life of GURPS

[dr_kromm]

Time for the first update of November 2009. Wow, November. GURPS goings-on this week included:

• We released a freebie that I hinted at ages ago: GURPS Infinite Worlds: I.S.T, by Steve Kenson and Kenneth Hite (princeofcairo). Are you a fan of Bob Schroeck's GURPS International Super Teams? Would you like to use it with Ken Hite's GURPS Infinite Worlds campaign frame? This item should help you out!

• Actually, we released two freebies. The second was GURPS Range Ruler, by T Bone. This is a cool little tool for gamers who use tactical combat. It's just about all you need to go mapless with your figures, if that's your thing.

• We reviewed the rough PDF of Pyramid #3/13: Thaumatology. I think that the title, which hints at GURPS Thaumatology, explains itself. That should be out later this month.

• And . . . my GURPS Low-Tech edit is at the 92% mark by page count. This week, I mainly tackled vehicles: carts, dugout canoes, reed rafts, sleds, wagons, even surfboards. If you need a small vehicle for your adventuring party, chances are good that it's here. (Big ships will be in the GURPS Low-Tech Companion volumes.)

Comments

[dr-kromm.livejournal.com]

As several earlier announcements explained in more detail, we can no longer afford the expense of publishing 240- to 256-page full-color RPG hardbacks. High printing and shipping costs combined with the weakness of the RPG market for everyone (not just SJ Games!) make that a money-losing proposition. The content needed for GURPS Low-Tech to be complete is too extensive to fit into the 144-page hardback that we can justify printing, so we're releasing it as a 144-page GURPS Low-Tech hardback plus three 32- to 40-page GURPS Low-Tech Companion PDFs. Total expense to the buyer will be comparable to the cost of a 256-page hardback in 2010, were we to try to publish one, but breaking it up into four bits lets us accommodate customers on tighter budgets and/or who don't want the whole cow.

Which is a longwinded way of saying that however much we love games and are gamers ourselves, SJ Games is still a business. We would ignore printing costs, market shrinkage, and customer budgets at our extreme peril.