Warp factor.... well, possibly.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, December 02, 2004 - 07:11 pm: Edit

D'Oh, ya Warp Factor 1.1. I forgot, in my excitement, to put in the word Factor.

GWF1.1 (just GW would not work for sure!)

Who will publish it? Hmmm, let me go check my loto ticket...I'll be right back.

[edit] Nope, it won't be me, either. Check with me next week.

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Friday, December 03, 2004 - 01:28 am: Edit

I do not have the time to edit a full-blown magazine due to my day job; GPD on top of that is enough of an additional workload. On the other hand, if I ever win the lottery ... naah, wouldn't work then, either -- Tahiti isn't connected to the internet.

I don't think the magazine should (or could) have both SJ Games and ADB material in it. SJ Games has its own magazines and so forth like PYRAMID and I can't believe that SJ would want to give us free first-published material that could otherwise go into HIS products.

So I think that the magazine, whatever it is, would have to contain strictly ADB-created material. Which cuts it back to a 1-2 times a year product.

Maybe we don't call it a magazine at all, just consider it to be a rules supplement that comes out whenever we need it too.

GURPS PRIME DIRECTIVE WARP ONE (two, three) works for me! And then point out on the back cover that it contains new material and expansions on the core rulebook, etc

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, December 03, 2004 - 10:08 am: Edit

The problem with "a rules supplement that comes out when we need it" is that about a third of what was GMPA wouldn't fit and you'd be back into the "is this a supplement or a magazine" thing.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, December 03, 2004 - 10:11 am: Edit

I can think of one guy who could edit the magazine. I'm sure there are several (including two or three I know about and just can't call to mind) but I KNOW that Bob Gilson could do it.

By Robert Gilson (Bobcat) on Friday, December 03, 2004 - 11:26 am: Edit

Steve thanks for the vote of confidence. But 2005 is the year that my FAA job is going to send me to a bunch of schools. I won’t have a lot of time for editing a magazine. I will be able to help out as much as I can though.

I have to agree with Steve on the GURPS 4th edition thread that the best thing to do is space out the books so that you don’t run out of Big name titles until a few years down the road by the second year of the GPD4 should have a big enough following that a magazine will be good for the line.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Friday, December 03, 2004 - 06:59 pm: Edit

Ya know, Robert is probably right. At least until '06 and probably '07. (just me musing)

That is Sooo far away it seems but then CL30 seemed Sooo far away just a bit ago (in 2000).

By Hugh Bishop (Wildman) on Friday, December 03, 2004 - 09:18 pm: Edit

Perhaps a new section of Gpd material could be added to the Captains Log until the 4th edition has had time to set down roots. That would keep GPD players fed in between Supplement/sourcebooks, and allow reasonable time to better prepare a magazine format. I know that would mean a larger Captains Log, so charge accordingly. Also it would remove the spectre of having to commit to a restrictive publishing schedule.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Friday, December 03, 2004 - 09:34 pm: Edit

Hi Hugh. Haven't see you around in a while.

Very early on SVC said that that won't happen because GPD players aren't going to want to by a bunch a SFB material just for a few pages of GPD stuff and non-GPD-PLaying-SFBers want SFB stuff not GPD stuff. There are very few people who would like both (I'm one who would but to be sure I'm likely in a small minority).

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Friday, December 03, 2004 - 10:34 pm: Edit

Given what SVC said, 2005 should see GPD4, GK4, GR and GF hitting the stores. Granted two of those are re-releases, but still ... that's probably as many products as SFB and F&E combined (if you don't count the two CLs).

I don't see GPD players complaining about "not getting enough material" when you look at it that way. Especially as 2006 will be about the same!

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Friday, December 03, 2004 - 10:46 pm: Edit

There will be at least a page of GPD stuff in CL for the forseeable future, I guess. In any event, there is in CL30.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Friday, December 03, 2004 - 10:54 pm: Edit

Well, that's fair. It is a SFU product and a short bit on the goings on of GPD is certainly good. But actual game stuff like stats and such would fit well, seems to me. The GPD page does have a little bit of game material but that also fits the "Background of interest of SFB readers and is really short" thing.

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Saturday, December 04, 2004 - 12:51 am: Edit

I know. There is no easy fix for the lack of a GPD magazine or MP or whatever.

Heck, I'd settle for a hard fix.

By Hugh Bishop (Wildman) on Saturday, December 04, 2004 - 06:30 pm: Edit

Hey guys I wasn't suggesting a huge addition, maybe 6-12 pages. Although I am hopeful that all those supplements will make it out in 2005, there is no real guarantee that it would happen. So a handful of "GPD" snacks in CL keeps the stomach from rumbling. What you guys say about SFB/F&E players may be true at the moment, but they will soon realize the wealth of background material that GPD brings to the SFU and the opportunities to reel in new converts to the boardgames via the RPG. If SVC ties the supplements to the CL with such things as really cool gear,etc. The RPG guys will have a reason to get CL, thus exposing them to the rest of the SFU.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - 11:57 am: Edit

Rambling thoughts.....

1. A magazine or series of supplement could expand resources for GMs and expand profits for the company, and expand writing opportunities for authors and opportunities for artists.

2. What went wrong with GMP?
a. used the word 'module' which confused the market
b. relied on 'prime' to say it was scifi. Alpha meant nothing.
c. racial profiles should have been in separate books.
d. major rules chunks just didn't fly. Example being the combat system in GMPA which SHOULD have been of interest to every gurps player.
e. too focused on GPD and not marketed to traveler, space, transhuman space, vorkosigan, etc.

3. General format for a new magazine.
a. Take GMPA.
b. Remove racial profile and big chunk of rules.
c. get much better fiction.
d. focus each "issue" on a major thematic concept including a generator, samples, tables to modify the samples or generated data, etc.

Examples of issues we could do:

GURPS PRIME PLANETS as a planet generator with a system generator thrown in the back page. This would include a lot of pre-generated planets. This would also have tables to modify the generated or pregenerated planets.

Follow this with

GURPS PRIME COLONIES to describe buildings, law enforcement,
production, and so forth. In theory, you could use either book alone but
they would also work nicely together, and could be sold to gurps traveller
and gurps transhuman space and gurps space fans.

Followed by

GURPS PRIME TRADERS (or GURPS PRIME SPACE TRADERS) which would have the free trader, fed express,
and other ships. Plus advice and rules and settings for buying, selling, swapping, trading, etc.

If you play around with the title format (three words, ofwhich the first
two are gurps prime) you can find a lot of things to do.

GURPS PRIME ASTEROIDS (mining, colonies, etc.)

GURPS PRIME STARSHIPS (starship combat system)

GURPS PRIME DERELICTS (ancient alien starships)

GURPS PRIME CREATURES (populate your planet with random stuff)

GURPS PRIME COMETS (ok, stretching here....)

GURPS PRIME MOONS (another way to do planets)

GURPS PRIME NEBULAE (ok, stretching here....)

GURPS PRIME ALIENS (plenty of subsentient, presentient, and sentient races) Could even expand the published data on races like the Cromargs.

GURPS PRIME CIVILIZATIONS (more of the same)

GURPS PRIME VULCAN (or any other famous planet)
GURPS PRIME ANDORIA
GURPS PRIME ANTARES
GURPS PRIME ORION

GURPS PRIME SPACE (grab bag of equipment, ships, places)

GURPS PRIME STATIONS (assorted orbital bases)

GURPS PRIME MARINES (ground combat module)

GURPS PRIME VEHICLES (ground vehicles)

By Stacy Brian Bartley (Bartley) on Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - 01:30 pm: Edit

Steve
All that sounds great and is certainly consistent with broadening your market.
regards
Stacy

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - 01:38 pm: Edit

A lot of these would make fine publications and are needed but some of them could come under a single heading of Prime Traders.

Traders really get around and get involved in a great many things. I could see a Traders Alminac sort of publication where articles appear about things from all over the galaxy.

Now this wouldn't be a magazine with all those schedule deadlines but would simply be a series of expansions. GPT-1, GPT-2 etc.

Planetary guides and colony guides,
Achient civilizations
Creatures
Asteroid (for mining)
Terrain info
Some Alien primer articles
Equipement

All things of interest to Traders and Mercenaries.

Separate this somewhat from Military products such as Prime Stations, Prime Marines, Prime Vehicles etc.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - 01:43 pm: Edit

I think the point that Gary made (in a recent email) was that marketability may be enhanced by focusing each book on a specific thing (asteroids, creatures) rather than a generic "some of everything in every book" sort of thing.

If we had, for example, published "gurps prime ancient civilizations" and somebody came up with another one, we could toss into into the subsequent "gurps prime space explorers".

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - 04:36 pm: Edit

So people have a understanding, the point I made was this:

CAPTAINS LOG has a bunch of departments that you see in every single issue -- Victory at Origins, Battleforce 600, new ships & SSDs, Star Fleet Warlord, etc -- and every one of those regular departments has someone to fight for it.

There is enough in the SFB end of things that this is possible ... but not for GPD. We are so new that we do not need an "update every topic" product coming out every six months. So what we do is concentrate on just one topic in each issue, and cover it very completely.

The idea is to print books that a GM would want to use as background for their own campaigns -- and which players would want to buy in self defense -- concentrating on the kind of topics that a GM would otherwise have to develop himself; see above for ideas.

That was my take on the original basic concept, SVC improved on it, and I'm sure it will evolve further. But it is a starting point!

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - 07:32 pm: Edit

Ya, I wasn't suggesting a department type magazine. That's why I called it The Prime Traders Almanac. I mean there might be a few regular things like an introduction and TOC but that's about it.

I agree that products that tackle a subject and cover it completely would be good things if that's the way stuff rolls in. And I suppose it can be made to roll in that way.

Pro's are that it's easy to locate a subject. A con to my idea would be finding a subject.

A Con to the Specific subject publication is that it's difficult to find a place for the odd really cool thing that shows up after it's subject has been published. A Pro to my idea is it's totally open.

The Almanac could be a useful source book for Traveler players as well.

The Almanac does NOT replace all products and could indeed allow any of them to be still published.

By Peter Miller (Thegolem) on Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - 08:59 pm: Edit

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned before, but is anyone here familar with the Star Wars Adventure Journal which used to be published by West End Games?

I don't have any of my issues handy, but basically a quarterly (I think) publication, which combined adventure seeds, character sketches, locales, "news reports" and a healthy dose of fiction. I can't comment on its sales, as I'm not privy to that kind of information, but I certainly found it a great read and bought is religiously, even though I didn't play the D6 Star Wars game frequently.

This 'Almanac' idea of Loren's kind of just made me remember the 'Adventure Journal' and I thought I'd mention it. Apologies if its been discussed already, I haven't been following the boards as often as I used to.

By Troy J. Latta (Saaur) on Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - 10:21 pm: Edit

Just an aside, there's already a rather nice system generator and planet generator in GURPS Space.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - 01:01 am: Edit

Troy,

Depending on emphasis, a GPD system generation system can still be very useful.

The GURPS Space (and First In) systems are designed to generate a realistic (as much as we know at the time of writing) distribution of stars and worlds. Unfortunately, what that means most of the time is, "Gee, look. Another airless frozen rock orbiting a red dwarf. Wheee."

However, that is completely unnecessary in GPD. GPD ignores 99% of all stars out there. Therefore, skipping all of the dreck and going straight for the interesting and/or useful worlds would be quite useful.

Or, better yet, having a "reverse" system would be cool, too. By that I mean that you start knowing that you need a type M world, then generate a realistic system around that world which will support it. (I.e. no red dwarfs, the planet is the right size, no non-main sequence stars, etc.)

By F. Douglas Wall (Knarf) on Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - 02:02 am: Edit

I would support a more magazine type format. I totally support themed issues, but I definitely see the magazine's flexibility to address things as they come up.

By Richard Wells (Rwwells) on Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - 03:15 am: Edit

The problem with a periodical format is how much will be regularly useful. Looking at MPA, when the material I was unlikely to use (Hydrans, deckplans) or already had (reprinted from other GURPS books) was removed, only about a dozen pages remained. $20 is a considerable sum for a newsletter with multiple house ads which is why I deferred purchasing until after the price reduction.

I prefer broader titles. Instead of just producing planet generation systems, add to it other related material. Where on a planet a colony will be placed. Common civillian vehicles seen on planet. Expected support facilities for various sizes of planet and how they would differ depending on planet type (counting moons and asteroids as tiny airless planets). Basically, a one book information center that covers everything needed to make a plausible encounter with a planet including those elements unlikely to be planned because of the style of campaign.

A military campaign might not seem to be interested in details of the civillian transportation networks but that could be vital in handling a disease outbreak. That information would also be handy for espionage and merchant campaigns though for quite different uses.