Fantasy Setting for GURPS

[aesir23]

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.

[whswhs]

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

[trooper6]

Originally Posted by Juballa

Oh, absolutely. TSR had Dragon, which ran adventures occasionally. I'm not sure what precipitated the decision to break off adventures into their own magazine. Were they receiving so many that they felt it was justifiable? Did the idea come first, and they approached known freelancers to get the first issues out (before the unknown freelancers were able to supply enough material to keep the ball rolling)?

I suppose the question for our purposes boils down to, "why aren't GURPS GMs submitting adventures to Pyramid?"

Just to riff off of something whswhs said...if a bunch of authors were inspired to submit adventures to Pyramid...there is no guarentee that they would be fantasy adventures...or if they were, that they'd be whatever it is pawsplay thinks of when he thinks of as "modern genre fantasy." Or that they'd be appropriate for Dungeon Fantasy.

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.

[pawsplay]

Originally Posted by trooper6

Caithness. That would be exactly where in Yrth you'd go to game that.

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.

[pawsplay]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I've actually seen several different types of book that could be called a "setting":

There are some definite issues with marketing settings. Nonetheless, it seems like GURPS has something to gain from at least lobbing a couple of darts at the center of the target when it comes to genre emulation. GURPS as "the game of campaigns you make up yourself using really strangely incongruous elements, or else slavishly researched historical games," is kind of a limited approach to publishing.

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.

[aesir23]

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.

[trooper6]

Originally Posted by pawsplay

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.

I was going to counter, but this is getting tedious. You win, GURPS has no fantasy settings that match exactly what you want, and there is no way for you get what you want. You should probably play MERPS.

[Juballa]

Originally Posted by trooper6

Even if we had one hundred adventures published next quarter, none of them might be what some of the posters calling for adventures want.

You are absolutely correct. And your numbered list shows exactly the sort of questions that, in a published adventure, I'd like to have answered right at the beginning, so as I read the adventure I can determine what might need to be changed to fit it into my game.

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?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Juballa

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?

The start for this thread actually asked about settings rather than adventures. Those two products are not equivalent.

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

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Juballa

Are any being submitted (either to e23 or Pyramid)?

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.

Originally Posted by Juballa

If not, why aren't folks doing so?

The answers I've seen so far are:

1. Some authors don't feel like they can write general purpose adventures. (The Bill/Kromm answer)
2. Given the historically poor sales of adventures, some authors are dubious about the return on their effort. (I want to say Phil Masters said that, but I'm not sure)
3. Some authors simply find other projects more interesting. (That would be me.)

As I've said here before, I've pitched adventure ideas in the past and they've met with at least preliminary interest, but I've ended up working on other things. Once Low Tech is out of the way, another project I'm involved in has resolved itself, and there's been time to see how well Renaissance Florence is selling, I'm toying with the idea of pitching an old fashioned dungeon crawl, but I've got a list of things I might be interested in, and an adventure isn't necessarily at the top of the list.