GURPS MODULE PRIME BETA will never happen. Why? Well, most of the material we had for it is now obsolete and useless for G4e.

Beyond that, GMPA was the worst selling of the four products done, and that was because players and stores couldn't figure out what it was or that they needed it. The concept
was "captains log for GPD" but the concept was too hard to explain in a single sentence.

Captain's Log itself (with its mix of fiction, new rules, scenarios, tactics, and fun
things to read) evolved over time and its loyal readers did not have to have the concept explained. That concept, by the way, is enough "module" stuff for the stores to stock it forever (but few of them do) and enough "current" stuff for players to buy it as a magazine. This was partly a matter that the minimum print run was five times the first-day sales and without back issue sales, it's not practical to print. Fortuntely, we have oodles of CapLog back issue sales.

There is no other product in gaming like Captain's Log, and nobody who isn't a current reader understands it. GURPS players just couldn't get the point.

If it was a magazine, why was it called a "module"?

If it was a module, why did it include magazine-type features?

And the word "module" means "D20" to most gamers, and nothing else in GURPS was ever called a module.

We will probably do something next year that fulfills the same mission under a different title. It's been suggested that a pure magazine might be easier to explain. Something
like the Journal of the Prime Aide Society or whatever. (Nobody can think of a good name.)

We would accept that stores won't stock it except for the first release (they'll buy some, but not back issues). Given that we can print our own stuff the size of the print run isn't an issue any more.

I'm not sure what kind of features need to be in it, and what would carry it if we didn't have "rule modules" inside it like racial profiles. But then, the only racial profiles sent to Module Prime were the low-interest ones that didn't rate their own sourcebooks.

Look at GMPA and leave out the Hydran and combat sections. What's left? What else could be added to "carry" the magazine and make it something players want?

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, October 21, 2004 - 07:56 pm: Edit

Well, sheesh. I figured I'd have a little more time than that...

You did that on purpose didn't you?

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, October 21, 2004 - 08:16 pm: Edit

Well, in the GR thread I mentioned:

Prime Adventures but Gary pointed out that Adventures didn't sell well.


Prime Directive: Supplemental. This could basically be GMP under a new name. GMP was a great idea I thought as it was CL for GPD but instead of ships it provided racial profiles. However, perhaps racial profiles could get their own Supplement. But for me at this time it's hard to imagine not including racial profiles.

Low interest need not be the driving force either. Hydrans didn't have a lot of major issues to present and so seem to fit in a smaller format. Their race is a single species. They might have been able to be expanded into a CL size Supplement or could share one. Prime Profiles Module A (B, C) could be racial profiles only including at least two but perhaps three racial profiles.

So, to sum up I suggest:

PD: Supplemental for a bi-annual magazine. What's in it? That need's to be determined.

Prime Profiles: Module A (B, C...) for the smaller racial profiles. Hydrans could be the first but would need to be expanded. Paravians are about done right? So PPMA could have Hydrans and Paravians.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, October 21, 2004 - 08:35 pm: Edit

Another idea I had was Memory Alpha but would that post copyright issues?

The Magazine could include Star Maps and planetary data of unexplored worlds. People may not like preset adventures but I know I'd like to have some nice material that I could use to put one together.


So a magazine could include:

~Fiction
~Utility maps
~Adventure Seeds
~Equipement articles
~The wonderful Why Things Work column.
~Tri-Video News
~A short Comic Strip or the occasional comic box.
~Weapons and Armor Details
~Ground Forces Articles (combat, tactics, how planets are captured, definitions. SVC and SPP could blow out their military knowledge through a SFU filter here about ground tactics and intel procedures).
~Deck Plans
~Combat resolution alternatives
~Universal News (a short article on the basic happenings of the SFU side ofthe universe)
~Pre-Generated Characters from History
~Innergalactic Critters
~Art
~Product News

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, October 21, 2004 - 08:36 pm: Edit

BTW: Prime Profiles would be a Module series, not a periodical.

By David Kass (Dkass) on Thursday, October 21, 2004 - 09:31 pm: Edit

Given that its taken a while for CapLog to become what it is (in both content and readership?), was part of the problem too high of a set of expectations for MPA? Maybe by issue 3 or 4 the reader base would be at the expected level as those who picked it up and liked it continued and told their friends while at the same time new individuals would occasionally take a stab?

I'm not saying changes won't help, just that part of it may be building a customer basis for a new type of product.

I'd note that D&D had a long running magazine with much the same content as MPA...

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, October 21, 2004 - 10:29 pm: Edit

Captains Log really grew out of an evolution from NEXUS which was good. By the time CL1 came out players were wanting it and knew it was comming. GMP had no such advantage of long term introduction.

Still, the feed back SVC mentions was indicative of problems and this is a great time to rethink the product line since so much is getting rehashed anyway.

Why start with a crippled product when you can evolve a new species better suited for survival in the game world?

By Dale McKee (Brigman) on Thursday, October 21, 2004 - 11:28 pm: Edit

No Module Prime Beta??

Bummer... for a variety of reasons.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Friday, October 22, 2004 - 12:53 am: Edit

Indeed but with the loss of one thing comes another, right?

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Friday, October 22, 2004 - 12:57 am: Edit

Well you could opt for building the MPA stuff into a general rule book that comes out every so often.


If you call it "GURPS Prime Directive: ADVANCED RULE BOOK" and have it about as many pages as GPD with the same binding and then say in two years time release "GURPS Prime Directive: ADVANCED RULE BOOK II" and then about two years latter "GURPS Prime Directive: ADVANCED RULES III".
And basically make sure you have new combat rules and new weapons & equipment and new races and new monsters ( as well as fiction and adventures and the like ), would that work???

By F. Douglas Wall (Knarf) on Friday, October 22, 2004 - 03:21 am: Edit

I liked MPA.

It was full of good content. Without a strict monthly (or whatever) timetable, there was a very good ratio of "killer" to "filler." Call it a magazine if you like, but don't pressure yourself on the schedule.

Catchy name a must. Module Prime was good. Gotta have Prime in the name. Wouldn't do otherwise. Maybe even just call it GPD: Captain's Log.

The idea of a "mescellaneous supplement" was great. A bunch of stuff that's useful but not worth it's own book comes together. Instead of waiting for material to accumulate to get a book, throw stuff together that people want and need.

And not just rules. Flavor material too.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, October 22, 2004 - 09:57 am: Edit

REPLIES
=
Loren Knight: Well, in the GR thread I mentioned: Prime Adventures but Gary pointed out that Adventures didn't sell well.
SVC: Well, PA1 didn’t sell well because players had figured out that they were not going to buy PD1 anyway. I’ve been told over and over that adventure modules don’t sell, and maybe that’s true or isn’t, but given that self-printing means there is no minimum print run, we could in theory try one and confirm that.
=
Loren Knight: Prime Directive: Supplemental. This could basically be GMP under a new name. GMP was a great idea I thought as it was CL for GPD but instead of ships it provided racial profiles. However, perhaps racial profiles could get their own Supplement. But for me at this time it's hard to imagine not including racial profiles.
SVC: This could be one approach.
=
Loren Knight: Low interest need not be the driving force either. Hydrans didn't have a lot of major issues to present and so seem to fit in a smaller format. Their race is a single species. They might have been able to be expanded into a CL size Supplement or could share one. Prime Profiles Module A (B, C) could be racial profiles only including at least two but perhaps three racial profiles.
SVC: Hard to say, could be, maybe not. The bottom line was lackluster sales, any that has to be fixed. I might comment that doing GPD4e in Jan 05 would be the time to include a full-page explanation of what "the magazine" is and why they want it, something to be repeated in both GK4e and GR4e.
=
Loren Knight: So, to sum up I suggest:
PD: Supplemental for a bi-annual magazine.
SVC: Before I could commit the company to a bi-annual schedule, I have to know that material is going to appear to fill that many pages.
=
Loren Knight: What's in it? That need's to be determined.
Prime Profiles: Module A (B, C...) for the smaller racial profiles. Hydrans could be the first but would need to be expanded. Paravians are about done right? So PPMA
could have Hydrans and Paravians.
SVC: This could, in theory, be done.
=
Loren Knight: Another idea I had was Memory Alpha but would that post copyright issues?
SVC; Not sure, but this title has been proposed many times and I just don’t care for it.
=
Loren Knight: The Magazine could include Star Maps and planetary data of unexplored worlds. People may not like preset adventures but I know I'd like to have some nice material that I
could use to put one together.
SVC: It has been said that adventure settings do sell well.
=
Loren Knight: So a magazine could include: Fiction Utility maps Adventure Seeds Equipment articles The wonderful Why Things Work column. Tri-Video News A short Comic Strip or the occasional comic box. Weapons and Armor Details Ground Forces Articles (combat, tactics, how planets are captured, definitions. SVC and SPP could blow out their military knowledge through a SFU filter here about ground tactics and intel procedures). Deck Plans Combat resolution alternatives Universal News (a short article on the basic happenings of the SFU side ofthe universe) Pre-Generated Characters from History Intergalactic Critters Art Product News
SVC: All of that, and then some.
=
By David Kass: Given that its taken a while for CapLog to become what it is (in both content and readership?), was part of the problem too high of a set of expectations for MPA? Maybe by issue 3 or 4 the reader base would be at the expected level as those who picked it up and liked it continued and told their friends while at the same time new individuals would occasionally take a stab? I'm not saying changes won't help, just that part of it may be building a customer basis for a new type of product. I'd note that D&D had a long running magazine with much the same content as MPA.
SVC: Expectations for the entire GURPS line were never met. We had always wanted to do GURPS and, frankly, by the time we got around to it, D20 had destroyed most of the GURPS market. I hope that G4e brings this back.
Certainly, we expected GMPA to be an instant success and that didn’t happen. The word "module" was almost a death sentence as many GURPS players refuse to buy anything containing the word "module" since D20 does modules and obviously anybody who put "module" in the title of their product must be an idiot who didn’t know how to do a GURPS product in the first place.
Moreover, we didn’t "launch" GPD properly, we just expected it to fly. We need to do better with GPD4e.
=
Loren Knight: Captains Log really grew out of an evolution from NEXUS which was good. By the time CL1 came out players were wanting it and knew it was coming. GMP had no such advantage of long term introduction.
SVC; Yes and no. CapLog happened at a time when SFB was "the game" in the industry and anything that said SFB would sell. (Pity the lazy TFG types never sold coffee mugs, calendars, posters, bumper stickers, etc. back when we were selling 20,000 copies of something on the first day.) CapLog 29 and Caplog 1 are very different but you can still see most of the CL1 features in CL29.
=
Loren Knight: Still, the feed back SVC mentions was indicative of problems and this is a great time to rethink the product line since so much is getting rehashed anyway.
Why start with a crippled product when you can evolve a new species better suited for survival in the game world?
SVC: right.
=
By Dale McKee: No Module Prime Beta?? Bummer... for a variety of reasons.
SVC; Probably another name and a refocused concept and a betterlaunch.
=
By michael john campbell: Well you could opt for building the MPA stuff into a general rule book that comes out every so often.
If you call it "GURPS Prime Directive: ADVANCED RULE BOOK" and have it about as many pages as GPD with the same binding and then say in two years time release "GURPS
Prime Directive: ADVANCED RULE BOOK II" and then about two years latter "GURPS Prime Directive: ADVANCED RULES III".
And basically make sure you have new combat rules and new weapons & equipment and new races and new monsters ( as well as fiction and adventures and the like ), would
that work???
SVC: Probably not. We don’t have that much material, and a gap of that many years between products isn’t a really good idea. To build buzz and a following we need a more frequent release of products. Module Prime was supposed to be "an easy product that almost does itself and which will fill the gaps between the harder to do products.
=
By F. Douglas Wall: I liked MPA. It was full of good content. Without a strict monthly (or whatever) timetable, there was a very good ratio of "killer" to "filler." Call it a magazine if you like, but don't pressure yourself on the schedule. Catchy name a must. Module Prime was good. Gotta have Prime in the name. Wouldn't do otherwise. Maybe even just call it GPD: Captain's Log. The idea of a "miscellaneous supplement" was great. A bunch of stuff that's useful but not worth it's own book comes together. Instead of waiting for material to accumulate to get a book, throw stuff together that people want and need. And not just rules. Flavor material too.
SVC: Many good points here. MPA like CapLog strived for a ratio of killer to filler, and a Misc Supplement is just what CapLog is. I don’t want a fixed schedule until we know we have writers and material and an audience
=.

By Jeff Johnson (Jeffro) on Friday, October 22, 2004 - 11:32 am: Edit

What core supplements do you forsee beyond the major Races? (Traveller did a whole book on Scouts, a whole book on Trade, a whole book on Ground Forces, a whole book on Nobles, a whole book on Ports, etc.)

If the magazine is slated to feature everything that doesn't go in a major race book... then that doesn't sound very good to me. You don't really need articles that fool with game mechanics and rules so much because... well... people that want that can get GURPS books that give in depth treatment on just about everything.

You could take the minor races that you plan on using for the magazine, do 'em up extra good, and make a Prime Directive "Alien Races" book. Emphasize in your marketing that it could be used generically with GURPS Space or any other role playing system. I think GURPS has changed the market to make game-specific magazines nigh unto obsolete. Your best bet perhaps to make definitive sourcebooks that have a broad applicability to many systems and gm styles.

Alternately, I wish someone would do a modern "Space Gamer" type magazine. If ADB did it, they could feature Federation Commander and GPD articles.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Friday, October 22, 2004 - 01:02 pm: Edit

OK: Take the word Module from Prime Profiles and just number them. A lot of GURPS stuff is numbered so it would fit. So you'd have PP1, PP2 etc.

I love the name Prime Profiles but hate the acronymn!


Getting GURPS players interested in a poduct like Prime Profiles might be difficult with SFU only races so I would recomend that volume one and two (of my imaginary product) would contain one race from the Trek universe. So volume One (hey that's it PPV1! Much better) could contain Hydrans, Paravians and Tholians. Feature Tholians because they are Trek. PPV2 could contain Vudar, ISC and Gorns and Feature Gorns as they are Trek.

PPV would then be a full size race book. I would note that Tholians and Gorns could be switched and that might actually be better since they sort of go with the Paravians. But is anybody even working on the Gorns yet?

Two Profiles could be done too in a smaller format (CL size) but with a name like Prime Profiles you would expect to see more than two.

LAST THING: There is LOTS of room to do a whole lot for Tholians which could include a profile for Selts in the same publication. So it might be able to be done as a full racial profile book. My thinking though, is that it might be more useful to use them (Tholians) to help sell a multi-race book. Some races might not sell well because they are NOT Trek.

By Kenneth Jones (Kludge) on Friday, October 22, 2004 - 02:46 pm: Edit

IMO defintely Farm out the secondary Trek races to multi racial books. That have non trek related races.

Obviously the big three are stand alones. But the Gorn,Orion,Tholian could all be combined with yet another race.

I'm split 50/50 on the Kzinti. They might be able to stand on their own or need to be helped along with the Federation.

Here's a quick take on combining the races according to closeness. With MOST of the focus being on the primary race but the secondary having enough support to function as well until demand for a focused book on them comes about.

Federation/Kzinti
Klingon/Lyran/Hydran
Romulan/ISC
Gorn/Orion
Tholian/WYN/LDR/Selt (Independant Empires or something like that.)

By Patrick H. Dillman (Patrick) on Friday, October 22, 2004 - 03:03 pm: Edit

PRIME: The Journal of Prime Directive. A possible name for the CL like portfolio for small adventures, maps, insignificant races, armory, ect.

I like the Prime Profiles volume # idea as expansion line. Prehaps these could be aligned to cover the same geographical areas as Federation Commander?

Just some ideas I thought of.

PHD.
(Stateside tommorrow! Yipee!!)

By Jeff Johnson (Jeffro) on Friday, October 22, 2004 - 03:39 pm: Edit

Kenneth,

Awww.... Don't you think it's time the Tholians got their own book? One major race, one minor race (the Selts), a bunch of "Space Atlas" entries on the Holdfast, and a "Planetary Survey" of their capital.

Sounds like a must-have book to me!

By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Friday, October 22, 2004 - 03:50 pm: Edit

Kenneth,

SVC has made it a point that their shall be a "Feline Empires" book that will deal with the Lyrans, WYN, Kzinti (probably the LDR thrown in their too), and possibly a little bit-o-Carnivon information.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Friday, October 22, 2004 - 03:50 pm: Edit

They could get thier own book but to a degree there would be some repetative stuff. We'll have to wait and see just how big it ends up being. I don't know how big it will be without doing a bunch of stuff on the old galaxy and players won't be playing old galaxy RP games, I'm sure of it. Yes, there needs to be a good chunk on old galaxy information but only to serve towards a better understanding of this galaxies Tholians.

Even if a new SFB module were to come to be centered on the Tholian HG, I don't think that would go far in GPD. Players are mostly going to want to play the big three.

BTW: Kzintis and Lyrans will share "Feline Empires" as a major sourcebook.

By Jeff Johnson (Jeffro) on Friday, October 22, 2004 - 04:03 pm: Edit

I think a good standard for the magazine could be one Planetary Survey plus one Minor Race. I know everybody says that Adventures don't sell, but I like them any way. Maybe I'm an idiot, but "Amber Zones" an adventure seeds aren't good enough for me. (Maybe GPD has a broader audience than typical Hard Core GURPS gamers and could use adventures in order to help give non-professional GM types everything they need to jump in?)

One world, one race, one adventure, a dozen adventure seeds. That sounds like a good mix to me. Instead of a monolithic fiction piece, put in short bits of fiction in the sidebars for "color."

I still think that it should be more of a generic background resource and less of a magazine. Title each one as if it were a seperate Star Trek Episode. "GURPS Prime Directive: Balance of Terror" or something along those lines.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, October 22, 2004 - 04:41 pm: Edit

This really isn't the topic to discuss race modules or who might be in which one. The only point to that discussion here is whether to include them in GPD Magazine.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Friday, October 22, 2004 - 05:19 pm: Edit

I'd say no due to the alternatives suggested. If there is no place else then yes include them. Better than not getting out.

Creating colorful NPCs with short histories might be a good alternative.

By benjamin sun (Ben2207) on Friday, October 22, 2004 - 06:31 pm: Edit

Keeping in mind, that I took only a very brief look at GPD(it's been years since I've played any types of GURPS). I do think Prime Directive: Supplemental has a lot of promise as a name for what is proposed though

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, October 22, 2004 - 06:50 pm: Edit

Remember that any title has to start with GURPS to get the stores to notice it.

GURPS PRIME DIRECTIVE: SUPPLEMENT #1 is a bit mouthy.

By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Friday, October 22, 2004 - 06:55 pm: Edit

How about just:

GURPS PRIME DIRECTIVE: To Boldly Go... #x

Since I'm assuming "To Boldly Go Where" is Trademarked by Paramount or something.

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Quote:

The concept
was "captains log for GPD" but the concept was too hard to explain in a single sentence.

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