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Old 08-26-2017, 08:54 AM   #21
Ulairi
 
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Default Re: The Dungeon Fantasy box set is great! But now I hunger for more...

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Originally Posted by The Cardinal View Post
well, looks like it's time for some serious measures at my gaming table... ("So, from now on all awarded EPs will be multiplied by the number of DFRPG box sets you own...")
I hear that the DFRPG box set makes a great white elephant gift.

It will be interesting to see how many are produced. I'm going to pre-order an extra box set at my FLGS. I'd suggest that's where we purchase gifts/extra copies. That way the intermediaries see the demand and order more.
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Old 08-26-2017, 09:28 AM   #22
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Default Re: The Dungeon Fantasy box set is great! But now I hunger for more...

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If all of the copies sell out before the end of the year...
Everyone, did you know that a dozen or so DFRPG boxed sets can be stacked to make a nice chair, or a shelving unit? Be creative!
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Old 08-26-2017, 09:42 AM   #23
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Default Re: The Dungeon Fantasy box set is great! But now I hunger for more...

The danger of doing a spacefaring sci-fi boxed set right now is people will say, "Oh, you're just trying to ride the coattails of the enormously popular Starfinder initial release." (Even if the game is only barely like Starfinder; Starfinder is space opera, but it's not straight up sci-fi, as there are very heavy fantasy elements.) That claim might be ridiculous, but a lot of people would say it. (Sort of like how Babylon 5 was said to be copying Deep Space 9... even though Babylon 5 was conceived of and in development by its author before Deep Space 9 was.)

Dungeon fantasy type things have been around since the 70s, so nobody is going to accuse anybody of trying to ride any bandwagon with that nowadays (other than the overall "most popular RPG genre" bandwagon, but that's not a bandwagon so much as just the industry). There's also the fact that GURPS Dungeon Fantasy itself was successful and had been around for a decade. While the GURPS Spaceships line is most excellent, there's not really a sci-fi equivalent to GURPS Dungeon Fantasy out there in the wild.

Sci-fi space opera also has the problem that there's much less consensus about what the "default" genre includes than is the case with dungeon fantasy. D&D established the pseudo-medieval with (more or less, depending on which game you're reading) modern ideas about gender roles, modernish economy, renaissance cities, etc. setting that defines most fantasy roleplaying. While Traveller sort of defined a default, it's not as strong a consensus as the D&D-style fantasy gaming is.

What would be cool (although I don't anticipate this happening) would be a "GURPS Space Opera" line of supplements along the lines of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy. (They could easily harness GURPS Spaceships, perhaps with a version that plucks out just the parts of Spaceships that are relevant for the implied setting of GURPS Space Opera.)
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Old 08-26-2017, 11:05 AM   #24
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Default Re: The Dungeon Fantasy box set is great! But now I hunger for more...

I'd vote for a Cliffhangers! or Pulp! box.

It's a genre/setting that I gamers "get" that's broad (e.g. late Victorian explorers to pre-WWII) enough to accommodate some campaign diversity, but still be a topic that's focused enough for a boxed theme. The types of heroes are well suited to GURPS. The theme is amenable to splashy art. Many existing GURPS supplements are natural add-ons to people wanting to dive into more GURPS post-box contents.
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Old 08-26-2017, 12:07 PM   #25
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Default Re: The Dungeon Fantasy box set is great! But now I hunger for more...

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The danger of doing a spacefaring sci-fi boxed set right now is people will say, "Oh, you're just trying to ride the coattails of the enormously popular Starfinder initial release."
That's highly unlikely as it would take a couple of years to produce, and quite probably three; it doesn't have an existing line of similar products to pillage, and Kromm would have to go over the Basic Set again because what you want for Space Opera isn't the same as what you want for Dungeon Fantasy.

As an aside, I've never heard of Starfinder.
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Old 08-26-2017, 12:12 PM   #26
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Default Re: The Dungeon Fantasy box set is great! But now I hunger for more...

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As an aside, I've never heard of Starfinder.
Starfinder is the recently released (within the last week or two I think) Pathfinder In Space game. Apparently it sold out very rapidly at gencon.

But so far as I can tell it is literally Pathfinder In Space, with cosmetic changes. As such it really doesn't hold any interest for me.

On the other hand, I'd love an SF box that would let me do something that is roughly a mashup of Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon, Star Wars, Star Trek, and Battlestar Galactica. A somewhat generic low/squishy science fiction borderline space opera of the sort from the late 60s-early 80s.
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Old 08-26-2017, 12:44 PM   #27
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Default Re: The Dungeon Fantasy box set is great! But now I hunger for more...

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On the other hand, I'd love an SF box that would let me do something that is roughly a mashup of Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon, Star Wars, Star Trek, and Battlestar Galactica. A somewhat generic low/squishy science fiction borderline space opera of the sort from the late 60s-early 80s.
The problem with that is that those are some vastly different sub-genre's to support. They vary drastically on the realism slider, on the power level slider, on the "weird powers" slider, importance of Space Battles, and even on the technology slider. Star Wars dials most of those up to 11, while Star Trek falls somewhere in the middle, and Battlestar Galactica dials them down to 2-3. I don't think you can capture all of that in a book that's anything like Dungeon Fantasy or Monster Hunters which removes the toolkit and provides a defined genre to play in. Ultimately, that's the big failing of the idea of a "Space Opera" box set, because you either need to make it so broad that it's still a tool kit - and thus fails to do the simplification that makes the Dungeon Fantasy RPG Box a good idea - or you have to narrow it down and annoy some people. I'd much rather see something like a Tales of the Solar Patrol box set, as that would at least narrow the subject down to something that can be played right out of the box.
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Old 08-26-2017, 01:10 PM   #28
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Default Re: The Dungeon Fantasy box set is great! But now I hunger for more...

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well, looks like it's time for some serious measures at my gaming table... ("So, from now on all awarded EPs will be multiplied by the number of DFRPG box sets you own...")
Hard core sir.



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(Sort of like how Babylon 5 was said to be copying Deep Space 9... even though Babylon 5 was conceived of and in development by its author before Deep Space 9 was.)
And that DS9 was completely redone as a response to B5? DS9 was originally supposed to the Voyager series, but when they heard that B5 was being made Star Trek decided to get the jump on it and dusted off their other idea and rushed it to press.
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Old 08-26-2017, 01:44 PM   #29
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Default Re: The Dungeon Fantasy box set is great! But now I hunger for more...

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Even if it's not your cup-of-tea for a campaign, consider running some one-shots for people who don't play GURPS using it. The more simplified rules and familiar backdrop will make it easier to get people to try out GURPS, then you can move on to campaigns in other genres if you prefer.
I don't think it would help GURPS for me to run a one-shot in a style I've actively disliked every time I've tried to play.
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Old 08-26-2017, 02:17 PM   #30
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Default Re: The Dungeon Fantasy box set is great! But now I hunger for more...

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The problem with that is that those are some vastly different sub-genre's to support.
I'd disagree here, actually. I think there's a bit less distance between the genres than is usually perceived.

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Originally Posted by ericbsmith
They vary drastically on the realism slider, on the power level slider, on the "weird powers" slider, importance of Space Battles, and even on the technology slider. Star Wars dials most of those up to 11, while Star Trek falls somewhere in the middle, and Battlestar Galactica dials them down to 2-3.
I'm not as familiar with Battlestar Galactica, having never watched much of it, but I'd argue that Star Trek and Star Wars are actually not that far off on either the "tech level" or "weird powers" fields. Both of them rely quite heavily on what GURPS classifies as "superscience" - technology we either have no way of knowing is possible, or that outright contradicts our knowledge of physics. And both have quite a lot of weird powers - Star Wars has The Force, which seems to fill most or all of the "space magic" niche, but Star Trek has a plethora of aliens with telepathy, energy beings with effective omnipotence, and so on. The difference, I feel, lies in the presentation of technology and powers - Star Wars very much takes an approach of "it just works, roll with it!" and doesn't bother trying to explain much, whereas Star Trek is all about the technobabble descriptions of how bouncing a graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish lets them reconfigure the tachyon stream and thus explode the Borg Cube. But those explanations don't actually mean anything, typically.

Of course, how a story presents its technology is an important part of genre - the fact that Star Trek tries to present a description and Star Wars doesn't is part of what makes them different sub-genres. But the basic level of science fiction technology and supernatural powers is, I'd argue, pretty similar in both series - which means they're probably not as incompatible in the same broad genre treatment as you might think.

What I'd like to see in a hypothetical Space Opera box set (or worked genre example line, a la Action, Dungeon Fantasy, etc.) would be coverage for three main sub-genres. First, and most central, probably, would be Space Opera proper. This would be fairly high-powered, high-stakes action, with strong passions and such dominating. Second would be "Space Exploration", focusing on bold adventurers going out and scouting frontiers, final or otherwise, exploring strange new worlds, etc. Finally, there's the lower-stakes "Scoundrels in Space", the adventures of lower-income, down-on-their-luck space venturers, trying to keep their ships flying and maybe make enough profit off various activities, legal and otherwise, to someday retire.

I like those three sub-genres in particular because I think the latter two represent very common space adventure stories, and because they frequently feed into more classic space opera stories. Star Trek is pretty much the archetypal Space Exploration narrative, but most of its movies, for example, are Space Opera stories, I'd argue - they're almost all big stories with the fate of worlds (or more!) in the balance, and the characters always seem to become more driven by sweeping emotional motivations than they are in regular episodes. Similarly, Scoundrels in Space characters are frequently drawn into larger stories - against their wills, it's true, and if they do get involved deliberately, it's typically for baser motives. But true heroism seems to come through. This is basically Han Solo's character arc in Star Wars, for example. And Serenity, the Firefly movie, moves its characters from the bottom-feeding low-level criminals they were into a plot that involves exposing government corruption over a whole solar system.

My overall point here is that the sub-genres have a fair bit of overlap in them, particularly the sort of characters that appear in them a lot, and that makes them well-suited for a collective treatment.
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