seventeenth issue - RPG Review

What's appealing to new gamers? Two things that haven't changed since GURPS First Edition: First, you can buy one
RPG, learn it, and proceed to start gaming without digging deep to afford new core rules whenever you start up a new
campaign, and without asking your players to learn *another* set of rules. Second, it's well­supported. Don't let the fact
that we sell most of the content as PDFs deceive you ­­ there's lots of GURPS support out there, and more coming all
the time.
What's planned and upcoming for GURPS, and what do you see the longer term future of the game and for the hobby
as holding?
I'm not supposed to hint too much at things to come for GURPS, because that's a job for marketing. Everybody knows
that we have a new edition of the Discworld RPG coming within the next year, though, and that I'm busy writing
GURPS Zombies. We have more support in the works for GURPS Banestorm, GURPS High­Tech, GURPS Martial
Arts, GURPS Thaumatology, and Transhuman Space. We have two more GURPS Locations items in the works. And
of course Pyramid will continue to appear monthly.
As for the future of RPGs at large, that's a mixed vision. I can't see RPGs going away, but I do see them becoming
progressively more digital. Will this kill tabletop RPGs? I hope not ­­ I hope to see integration or cross­pollination. But
honestly, media have never been more in flux than they are right now, so predictions about such things are doomed to
look silly just a few years from now, never mind a few decades down the road.
Where does the nickname "Dr Kromm" come from? It sounds like someone who associates with Conan The Librarian.
"Dr. Kromm" was originally the moniker of a recurring villain in a campaign I ran using Victory Games' James Bond
007 system (I picked the surname "Kromm" from a phone book!). He gradually lost body parts ­­ which were replaced
with cybernetics ­­ but he didn't die. When I played in campaigns ran by various friends whom I had subjected to Dr.
Kromm, I often used the name for my PC, entirely as an in­joke. In all cases, Dr. Kromm was a mad scientist of sorts.
When I got online in 1987, I started using "Kromm" as a handle as part of the same in­joke. Hey, it seemed funny when
I was a geeky 20­year­old! It stuck, however, and to this day I have real­world friends and coworkers who think of me
as "Kromm" . . . in fact, some of them even address me as "Kromm" to my face!
Oh, and Conan's god is "Crom." We're not related.
Prior to joining Steve Jackson Games, you completed a MSc in theoretical high­energy physics. You could be, for
example, writing papers on the speculations of various types of bosons, or working in a synchrotron testing whether
they actually exist. Instead, you're writing and editing roleplaying books. Ultimately do you think that was the best
choice? What do you think you would be doing if you weren't a game designer and editor?
I left physics for a variety of reasons, some of them economic and some of them intellectual. It's a long, complicated
story, much of it pretty boring. It suffices to say that I chose employment working on a hobby over an uncertain and
10 RPG REVIEW ISSUE SEVENTEEN September 2012