From: duncanj@umd5.umd.edu (James Duncan)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: Supplements for Multiple Systems
Date: 27 Sep 92 21:29:46 GMT
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park

In article <1992Sep15.214127.1@wharton.upenn.edu> millerl@wharton.upenn.edu writes:
>Yet another change of the newsgroups later...
>
>In article <MAVRA.92Sep15095012@bailey.cpac.washington.edu>, mavra@cpac.washington.edu (Peter D. Adkison) writes:
|| In article <1992Sep11.215349.23527@afterlife.ncsc.mil| acadams@afterlife.ncsc.mil (Arthur C. Adams) writes:
|| 
|||   Wouldn't it be great if, some day, role-playing supplements
|||   were released with stats for _all_ of the appropriate systems?

Yes, but the major problem here is copyright restrictions and fear of
lawsuits. More companies, however, are starting to cooperate with such
ventures these days because they are finally realizing that it is a
good ideas to have a wide range of support material and it often means
more sales of the base product.

|| You are not alone.  I know of several cases where this type of stuff
|| is starting to crop up.  For example:
|| 
|| * The product by The Armory, that someone else mentioned, which allows
|| someone to convert back and forth between various game systems (if
|| there's someone out there who has this, mind posting a review?).

I assume you mean the RPG DATA CON Data Conversion Charts. At a cost
of $10.95 for 30 pages of almost entirely charts and few guidelines on
their use the product is vastly overpriced, and far less useful than
it could have been.

|I saw it at Atlanticon but forgot to go back and buy it when I went
|around to purchase stuff. Instead I bought Millenium's End, which was a
|mistake. If I wanted that style of game I would use one of Greg Porter's
|designs, like TimeLords or CORPS, because they're simpler. The
|transparent scatter diagrams are a neat idea, though.

Millenuim's End is easier than TimeLord but no where near as easy to
use as CORPS, which is one of the cleaniest, easy to use rule sets
I've seen in years. The scatter diagrams in Milleniums End are really
cool. Almost conviced me to translate GURPS into a percentile system
just so I could use them.  The Millenium's End background material is
excellent. The Night Walker/Ville Affair adventure supplement is well
written and is really not dependant on the _M.E._ rules.

|In addition to the ones you mention, GURPS implictly supports this kind
|of universal supplement style thang. RolePlayer magazine has printed a
|lot of conversions. It was also in Fantasy Hero for the Hero system.

This alone convinced me to buy Hero products. Hopefully, more game
companies will realize the advantage of doing this. Many GURPS players
buy Hero stuff as source material and the same goes for Hero gamers
picking up GURPS books. Use the source material and discard the rules
in favor of your favorite rule system.

|| * I asked Steve Jackson if he'd be interested in a joint venture to
|| publish a product on how to play Talislanta using the GURPS rules.
|| There are a lot of GURPS players who complain about not having a
|| well-developed and supported world to play in, and a lot of Talislanta
|| players who want a more detailed rules system.  Steve was enthusiastic
|| about the idea, and I'm working on a formal proposal to send to him
|| (if you're reading this Loyd, expect e-mail Real Soon Now!).

Sounds interesting. I guess I should start reading the Talislanta
posts now. 


|| * We'd like to see published a description of how one can write stats
|| for various creatures, NPCs, and items in a system-independent format.
|| This would *not* have rules for actually resolving things like melee,
|| or spell combat, but would simply provide a way of publishing "stats."
|| 
|| * This publication would be considered "public domain."  Anyone and
|| everyone could freely use the rules, terms, etc, photocopy to their
|| hearts content, and refer to the publication itself without fear of
|| copyright or trademark infringement.

I'd love to see this done and adopted by RPG magazines. Sometime agao
I proposed a generic RPG game exchange system, but the idea died off.

|| * To catch on, we'd want to work together with as many game companies
|| as possible to get "Official" conversion notes for how to convert
|| stats from Envoy to their game system.

Can we get more info on Envoy, please?


|Loren Miller                           internet: MILLERL@wharton.upenn.edu

- Jim Duncan
From: sem@hpcndaw.CND.HP.COM (Steve Mullins)
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 16:32:49 GMT
Subject: Re: GURPS: Quick Contest (Update)
Organization: HP Network and System Management Division