The Future of the DFRPG

[scc]

The thing is that SJ Games never seems to plan on putting out more then the initial worldbook for any of it's settings. So not only are they not planning any adventures it also tends to result in the worlds feeling 'stale', there are plot hooks but you get no idea on how they are going to pan out, which is very difficult for a beginning GM to deal with.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Perhaps because despite so many GURPS settings people keep saying it does not have any?

I think the problem is one of labels here. What GURPS doesn't have is a "default" or "core" setting, which is well supported with expansions. This is what people usually mean when they say that "GURPS doesn't have a setting." Originally Infinite Worlds was intended to be that core setting for 4th Edition, but 1) IW is kind of a meta-setting as opposed to a setting in itself and 2) that fell through anyways.

GURPS has had several well-supported settings in the past. Traveller, Transhuman Space, and WWII all qualify as well supported settings.

A few other settings received multiple expansions - Infinite Worlds got two Alternate Earths books and an Adventure book; Fantasy/Banestorm had three adventure/expansion books, though those were long out of print.

GURPS 4th Edition doesn't really have any well supported settings. The closest it has is Dungeon Fantasy, which is well supported but tries to stay setting/world agnostic.

I said myself way back when we were discussing this in the What GURPS needs... now thread that Gamers like settings with expansions and meta-plot which moves that setting forward, and for whatever reason SJGames strays far away from those kinds of expansions. That thread, or a new one, would probably be a better place to continue discussing this.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

I think the problem is one of labels here. What GURPS doesn't have is a "default" or "core" setting, which is well supported with expansions. This is what people usually mean when they say that "GURPS doesn't have a setting."

I said myself way back when we were discussing this in the What GURPS needs... now thread that Gamers like settings with expansions and meta-plot which moves that setting forward, and for whatever reason SJGames strays far away from those kinds of expansions. That thread, or a new one, would probably be a better place to continue discussing this.

Thats the problem though, people effectively keep moving the bar on the setting thing. It would be much better if they are more upfront on what they want.
SJG has to try and anticipate the market but when people say they want a good setting and you deliver then they say we meant a different genre or we wont consider it a setting till it has multiple books its a problem.
And its further complicated by different needs and tastes. Put too much effort into one setting and other products get less attention which annoys those customers.
I started another thread for adventures and the recent Pyramid experiment with Technomancer is another way to address this. Have a themed issue for a setting. But those not liking the theme may feel the issue was a waste, that is bad for subscriptions.

I prefer a solid setting book, no meta plots.
So Banestorm with Abydos, Hellsgate and Caverntown all work for me. I can play with the setting or create my own and use those.

[Gollum]

I also do prefer settings without metaplot. The problem with metaplots is that ...

It enforces to buy everything. Indeed, if you buy an adventure and don't have the whole metaplot changes begore that adventure, it's hard to understand it.

And it prevents your PCs to do important things in the game world, because it can ruin all the metaplot (especially when it is not totally published and, then, not yet known by the GM when he is running his game). Suppose, for instance, that characters of a Lord of the Rings campaign kill Gollum* at the beginning of Frodo's journey and the end of the story would be completely different.

* Lord of the Rings' character, not me ... ;-)

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Thats the problem though, people effectively keep moving the bar on the setting thing. It would be much better if they are more upfront on what they want.
SJG has to try and anticipate the market but when people say they want a good setting and you deliver then they say we meant a different genre or we wont consider it a setting till it has multiple books its a problem.
And its further complicated by different needs and tastes. Put too much effort into one setting and other products get less attention which annoys those customers.

Yes. That's why, in my humble opinion, SJG would better focus on only one setting. Even if a universal and generic roleplaying game offers great leeways. One good setting, fully developped attracts more people than a lot of settings that give you about as much work to do by yourself than if you build your ownsetting.

I'm not a big fan of fantasy adventures. But I will buy DFRPG as soon as it will be developped enough.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Are we talking a GURPS-wide setting, or one only for fantasy or even Dungeon Fantasy?

[Gollum]

I don't know for others, but for me, a DFRPG setting with several adventures making up a campaign would make the job. After all, it is supposed to be fully compatible with GURPS Basic Set.

[lordabdul]

Although the "What GURPS needs... now" thread had a lot of interesting discussions on settings and stuff, we're in the DFRPG thread so we might as well stick to that. But even considering DF only, there are 2 possibilities for running such a product line: either keep the setting vague and imprecise, letting everybody come up with their own, or have an actual official setting.

The second one is obviously what Pathfinder or RuneQuest, for instance, went for. The first one, however is what DF did. I remember some people saying that it makes writing adventures difficult because the world elements have to be generic enough to fit any game, but I'm not sure that's true? (that it's difficult, I mean) As far as I can tell, the "no default setting" route is what DnD5e, along with a host of F20/OGL revival games like DCC RPG have been embracing? (DnD 5e's supplements are generally in Forgotten Realms, but the rulebooks don't assume anything, I believe?) Someone more familiar with DnD and its clones might be able to correct me, but AFAICT the gazillion adventure modules available for those games work because they assume some "default cliche" setting (just like what DF does in many places, including the couple adventures it ships with). Some might present and detail a specific place around which the adventure is happening, but generally only mention what's needed for the adventure to work, to make it more adaptable to a custom game.

It seems that having "an actual setting" is only really required for having campaign books (as opposed to one-shot adventure books)... DCC RPG has more than 50 adventure books but no real setting AFAIK. On the other hand, DnD will assume you're playing in the Forgotten Realms for most of the default DnD 5e-branded adventure books, and that lets them anchor the adventures better in a world, and also write adventures that are more than a simple dungeon crawl or encounter (unlike DDC RPG's modules).

So for DFRPG, this means that it can either keep being setting agnostic, which shouldn't prevent it from having lots of one-shot adventure modules a la DCC RPG et al, or it could get an official setting upon which it can build a collection of setting-specific adventures and campaigns (it might have to be a new setting, since I think the only existing one that could fit the bill is Banestorm, and we already discussed how that might not be the best choice).

Originally Posted by Refplace

Adventures are on the wishlist and have been for as long as I remember.

Yes, but obviously that wish isn't getting fulfilled, so that's why I was wondering if it was possible for SJG to proactively hire writers to do spec work, basically... which you then answered with:

Originally Posted by Refplace

Authors write what they are interested in, there is not enough money to write things they have no desire to write and it would likely be an uninspired product if they did.

That doesn't seem correct to me. I won't claim to know much about the publishing world, but I do know there is precedent for writers specifically hired to do something on spec and then producing award-winning material.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by lordabdul

It seems that (someone tell me if I'm wrong)

These aren't wrong so far as they go, but they are incomplete. GURPS is mostly submission-driven, but if there's sufficient business reason to do so, they'll approach authors about potential books. For example, among the stuff I've written, Fantasy-Tech 1 and Against the Rat Men are the result of SJ Games coming to talk to me about something they'd like written, not me coming to them (my involvement in the Low Tech series was also the result of someone coming to me, though I don't know if that was SJ Games's choice or Bill, in his capacity as senior author, choosing to come to me). I'm sure other regular authors have had something similar happen with them.

The key words there are "sufficient business reason." SJ Games does tend to publish toolkit books rather than adventures and connected setting material not just because they want to or because the authors want to, but because that's what makes money. It's a bit of a vicious cycle because this attracts not just authors who are more inclined to write toolkits than settings and adventures, but also because it attracts customers who are more inclined to buy toolkits than settings and adventure.

So, then, "sufficient business reason." If SJ Games thought that they'd do well to publish more adventures, they could approach potential authors to do so, like they did to ask me about what eventually became Against the Rat Men. I'd be willing to listen to any plans they had, and I imagine they could find a couple more, though many of the "usual suspects" have explicitly said they aren't into writing adventures, at least not in the sense it's given in the writers' guidelines.

But they don't. Why? Probably because there's a long history of adventures not selling well enough to make it worth their while. Pyramid issues with adventures in them don't sell as issues that focus on gear and rules. Adventures published to date don't sell as well as toolkit books. My DF adventure-like works have sold ok, but not nearly so well as, say, the Low Tech Companions and Treasure Tables, so there's a very clear incentive to the company as well as the author. There's certainly a segment of the market which wants adventures and so on and isn't well served by the current GURPS lineup, but judging by where the money goes (which, as a business, SJ Games pays the most attention to), it's not a large segment. And building up a "critical mass" of adventures and other connected material to appeal to those people who want adventures rather than toolkits requires a lot of potentially unprofitable effort (publishing a line of connected adventures and setting books is one thing; publishing a line of connected adventures and setting books which people will buy in sufficient numbers to make the whole thing profitable is another), so to deliberately attempt it is to take a huge, huge risk with the product line and could end up killing GURPS altogether.

Now, more adventures and connectable settings for GURPS do appear from time to time. In the DF realm, there's one full-sized adventure, an encounter, a bunch of short adventures in Pyramid, and another full-sized adventure on the way. Maybe somebody will start writing stuff which links things together (Caverntown, for example, gestures vaguely in the direction of Pagoda of Worlds at one point), and over time there'll be enough connected material for someone to call it a functional DF setting. Or maybe not. But it looks to me like the people who aren't being served by current product offerings need a lot of material, and given the shoestring on which GURPS operates, the publisher just can't jump there.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Other companies whose forums I frequent also say that. And based on how few settings or adventures I've bought because I'm not interested in them I'm inclined to believe them.

I think the best we could hope for is a Book of the Random Dungeon: a book of tables for randomly generating What's Next in an impossible underground complex that probably only exists to be killed and looted, with or without stat blocks for the enemies and treasure. And if you already had enemy and treasure stat blocks you could probably just find one online.