06-07-2009, 10:35 AM | #71 |
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Vermont
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Re: Fantasy Setting for GURPS
I'm one of those GURPS GMs that believes that the best setting is the one you build yourself to fit your needs, the second best setting is the conversion you do out of the fiction you love. No system let's you do either of those things as well as GURPS, and that's why I'd take GURPS Fantasy, GURPS Space, and (hopefully soon) GURPS Horror, over the best pregenerated fantasy setting ever designed by man.
That said, from what I gather reading these forums, a series of short e23 PDFs detailing original fantasy settings that run the gamot of style, mood, and scope would probably sell pretty well. Something similar to the historical Hot Spots series that they just started.
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06-07-2009, 11:00 AM | #72 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Fantasy Setting for GURPS
I've actually seen several different types of book that could be called a "setting":
A quick sketch of a game world, one that gives a rough idea of what's where and a starting point, but expects the GM to fill in all the details for the particular campaign they want to run, included as part of a book that also does other stuff, such as a genre book or rulebook A comprehensive atlas of a game world, with maps and statistics and information on all the important people, within which a GM can pick a location and make up adventures A detailed guide to a smaller setting, with a whole series of built-in possible plot threads, predesigned character writeups, significant locations, and connections among them, so that you have a bunch of encounters waiting to happen, any one of which could turn into an adventure A guide to a smaller setting with a preplotted adventure running through it, with all the details presented in the specific order in which they'll be encountered during the adventure Now, GURPS certain has the first, in profusion: my own Roma Arcana, the various Alternate Earths, and a bunch of shorter sketches from various supplement for both 3/e and 4/e. And it has the second, at least in the form of Transhuman Space, which is an incredibly well worked out milieu. I think a case could be made that GURPS Cabal (for 3/e) and GURPS Banestorm (for 4/e) are sufficiently detailed to count as examples of the same thing. What it doesn't have is an example of the third or fourth. But there aren't many good examples of either of those. I've used the old RuneQuest supplement Griffin Mountain, which is the third, and White Wolf's Midnight Circus, which is sort of a miniaturist variant on it; I've offered to run Beyond the Mountains of Madness (for Call of Cthulhu), and I understand there's a comprehensive campaign book available for Pendragon that's well thought of. But it's a huge labor to come up with such a product. And you really need to have fans of a specific world before it's profitable to write a book of this sort set within that world. GURPS fans have more diverse tastes than that; I think any such book would risk being a niche product. I mean, "I want to play a RuneQuest campaign set in Glorantha" lead pretty easily to "here's the remote land of Balazar, filled with adventures waiting to happen"; but "I want to play a GURPS campaign" doesn't lead directly to "set in . . . ." Any one setting you pick is going to appeal to only a subset of GURPS fans. And if you take the same idea and shrink it to 32 pages or so, then either you'll be giving just a quick, low-detail sketch of the setting, or you'll be giving a single adventure with a single plot . . . which is a different type of product. Bill Stoddard |
06-07-2009, 11:38 AM | #73 | |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Medford, MA
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Re: Fantasy Setting for GURPS
Quote:
When whswhs says that the GURPS is huge, he is absolutely correct. And it isn't just genre that are the factors-- 1. Genre writ large. Sci-Fi? Fantasy? Modern Espionage? Old West? Historical? 2. Subgenre. Epic Fantasy? Low Fantasy? Romantic Fantasy? Dungeon Fantasy? 3. Power-level. 50pt Starting Characters? 300pt Starting Characters? 4. Gritty vs. Cinematic. Can you take Trained by a Master? Will there be Cinematic Fighting but Gritty Injury? Gritty Fighting but Cinematic Injury? Is the adventure based around the use of Silly Cinematic rules? 5. Robin's Laws/GNS. Is this adventure designed a bit more for the simulationists in mind? For the gamists in mind? For the narrativists in mind? For the method actors? For the power gamers? The adventures I design generally have as their climax something that is method actory. Where the most important moment is not a boss battle, but a moral or ethical choice. I've been long tempted to submit an adventure because the sorts of adventures I like aren't generally published....but I bet that isn't the adventure you want. 6. Presence or absence of supernatural things. Caravan from Ein Arris is a fantasy adventure...but no magic...which means some folks may not be happy with it. 7. Standalone vs. Campaign. Even if we had one hundred adventures published next quarter, none of them might be what some of the posters calling for adventures want. |
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06-07-2009, 11:45 AM | #74 |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: Fantasy Setting for GURPS
Other than the facts that, like all of Yrth, the question of Good versus Evil is in some doubt; that weapons, armor, technology, and the economy edge into the early Renaissance; that magic is rare but nonetheless well-codified; and that Caithness is romantic/quasihistorical rather than mythical; then, yes, apart from Caithness being the exact opposite of all the criteria I set forth, you are correct.
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06-07-2009, 11:49 AM | #75 | |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: Fantasy Setting for GURPS
Quote:
GURPS Fantasy is a great book, but unless you actually plan on running a game in Roma, you are still left with the task of creating a world before you can have your first adventure. It can be a sketchy world, but even the sketchiest setting is going to take hours, considering at the least you have to decide what acceptable PC traits are. |
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06-07-2009, 11:50 AM | #76 |
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Vermont
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Re: Fantasy Setting for GURPS
What about a 70 page PDF treatment, similar to that given to Britannica 6 detailing an original sword and sorcery setting?
Call it DF 6: Expanded World, and I think plenty of people would shell out $9.99. Granted, I wouldn't be one of them, but I think it fits what a lot of people on the fora have been asking for.
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My ongoing thread of GURPS versions of DC Comics characters. |
06-07-2009, 11:50 AM | #77 | |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Medford, MA
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Re: Fantasy Setting for GURPS
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06-07-2009, 12:23 PM | #78 | |
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Portland, ME
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Re: Fantasy Setting for GURPS
Quote:
But step away from the question of whether the published adventure is going to be what I want, or what you want, or what anyone in particular wants. We're not going to get 100. I'll be surprised to see any. Are any being submitted (either to e23 or Pyramid)? If not, why aren't folks doing so? Is it just because no one thinks they'll be useful (even though the e23 Wish List specifically mentions that they'd like to see them)? Or, as Bill mentioned, because their scenarios are too firmly anchored in a particular campaign to be easily generalized? |
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06-07-2009, 12:39 PM | #79 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Fantasy Setting for GURPS
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I *could* do a full-length setting, of type two. Conceivably I could do one of type three. I don't plot linearly enough to do an adventure. Bill Stoddard |
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06-07-2009, 12:44 PM | #80 |
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Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: East of the moon, west of the stars, close to buses and shopping
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Re: Fantasy Setting for GURPS
In the current version of Pyramid, there was one in #5, and according to Kromm's blog there are two coming up in #8. There were adventures in the old Pyramid as well; I know I had several published.
The answers I've seen so far are:
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Tags |
fantasy, setting, yrth |
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