In the past couple of years, Steve Jackson Games has made a number of surprising (and welcome!) moves: offering both 4th and 3rd Edition GURPS products as print-on-demand, selling PDFs through DriveThruRPG as well as their own Warehouse 23, and even allowing a bit more freedom for developing a GURPS ruleset for the Fantasy Grounds virtual tabletop. Then came the surprise announcement that not only had Steve Jackson regained rights to The Fantasy Trip game, but immediately launched a massively successful Kickstarter to bring it back into print!
And now, yet another announcement that I never thought I would see:
In 2019, the world of Cidri, the official setting for Steve Jackson’s The Fantasy Trip roleplaying game, expands – everyone is invited to contribute adventures (solo and game-mastered), area writeup and history, monsters, characters, treasure, and more to the game.
In celebration and support of the return of The Fantasy Trip, Steve Jackson Games will release a limited publishing agreement for the game in 2019. Under the terms of the license, writers and illustrators will be able to create original PDFs for sale on Warehouse 23, the Steve Jackson Games web store, and earn royalties for the sale of those works. PDFs offered for sale under this agreement will have the right to use the world of Cidri and the TFT game mechanics, all under an official “Compatible with The Fantasy Trip“ logo.
The limited publishing license will provide fans of The Fantasy Trip with more support than Steve Jackson Games alone can manage, as well as offering creators an opportunity to showcase their talents and transform their ideas into official PDFs.
Please watch thefantasytrip.game for more information on the upcoming TFT Limited Publishing Agreement.
This is huge news. Huge! Primarily, because it all but assures that the modern Fantasy Trip will have a great deal of support (thanks to a passionate and creative fan base in addition to official products coming down the road). But also, for me — and I imagine quite a few others — it offers a tantalizing hope for what could happen for GURPS in the future.
Now, there has been absolutely no official mention of ever opening up a similar publishing agreement for GURPS. In fact, despite fans clamoring for it for years, the company has always strongly said that it will never happen, so let’s not get hopes up too high. But… I just can’t help myself from wondering if that stance might soften should the Fantasy Trip program be a smashing success (so I plan to support it as much as I possibly can). There is an official forum thread where folks are discussing the new agreement, as well as at the unofficial Fantasy Trip Discord server.
Here’s looking forward to the re-release of The Fantasy Trip, and its attendant limited publishing agreement, being a hit!
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This has me so excited. One of the things I have come to appreciate is the 3rd-party support I’ve found for other game systems. I was saddened to see that GURPS had no such system in place. I understand control over their IP and maintaining brand purity is important. I just worry that without something like this in place, GURPS will stagnate and eventually fade away.
It definitely feels like something lacking in 2018, but I can’t quite tell if that’s because I really, really want to see it happen as a fan, or if I think it makes good business sense. But fingers are way crossed for the future, to have the chance to someday find out!
Apple/MACOSX Mindset (GURPS) vs Microsoft/Windows Mindset (d20)