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Old 08-27-2017, 04:20 PM   #51
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Default Re: The Dungeon Fantasy box set is great! But now I hunger for more...

I would definitely buy a supers box set or an after the end box set. Not sure about Cyberpunk, maybe. I think I would prefer a Steampunk box set.
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Old 08-27-2017, 04:27 PM   #52
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Default Re: The Dungeon Fantasy box set is great! But now I hunger for more...

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I'm not sure I'd got that far, or else everybody will wind up with ST 20 or 30 (though that does almost fit some comic books). I'd probably do a sliding scale or just put a cap on after which it becomes drastically cheaper (perhaps 1/level).
Not if they stick to buying things to concept. And letting someone like a Bruce Wayne type plop 5 points into being a reasonably strong person as an aside to all his other powers isn't anything I see being an issue. Nor the mobility-focused Flash or Captain America also being a top-performer "realistic" strength level for 10, when that 10 points could just go to buying up more of their niche.
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Old 08-27-2017, 04:48 PM   #53
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Default Re: The Dungeon Fantasy box set is great! But now I hunger for more...

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I think that works for a Space Opera Genre book but goes against the goal of keeping a boxed set simple and play out of the box.
And that is the problem with trying to cover Space Opera. The more sub-genre's of Space Opera you try to cover the less ready-to-play the supplement gets and the more like a toolkit it becomes. Conversely, the more specific you get in technology, scale, scope, and style the fewer sub-genre's you are covering and the less of a "Space Opera" set you have and more of a "Space Setting" you have.

It's kind of like doing a Fantasy set. If you did a fantasy box set you could cover medieval backdrops, ancient empires, huge racial treatises, different styles of play, etc. That's exactly what GURPS Fantasy did. OTOH, Dungeon Fantasy takes a *VERY* specific sub-genre of Fantasy and makes it ready-to-play.

Space Opera needs to do something like the Dungeon Fantasy approach or it's no longer ready-to-play. If you want lots of talk of technology, scale, scope, and style... well... that's all covered in GURPS Space. If you want a ready to play Space Opera game then it needs to narrow the focus like a laser and make some very specific assumptions. And by necessity those assumptions cannot match up with or be completely compatible with running any of Flash Gordan, Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon 5, Foundation, or Future History.
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Old 08-27-2017, 04:54 PM   #54
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Default Re: The Dungeon Fantasy box set is great! But now I hunger for more...

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Not if they stick to buying things to concept.
IME if you make something so easy to acquire [as 1/level ST] then concept will be damned because... why not? There's a reason why things cost points in the first place, and completely unbalancing those point costs will lead to lop-sided character creation. I don't disagree that there's a problem with the cost of ST, particularly in a cinematic game where some characters are supposed to have insanely high ST scores, but I don't see repricing it so cheap across the board as a good fix.
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Old 08-27-2017, 05:03 PM   #55
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Default Re: The Dungeon Fantasy box set is great! But now I hunger for more...

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I'd argue that Space Opera actually doesn't need a specific setting. What it needs is probably a bit more discussion of setting elements then, say, Dungeon Fantasy. But both space opera and space exploration genres are the home of things like single-biome planets and single-culture species. Complex worldbuilding isn't necessary. (There are, of course, some space opera settings that actually do have some pretty intricate worldbuilding - Dune springs to mind - but those, I think, can be left to the individual GM who wants to get complex).
I wouldn't remotely call Dune "space opera." It's not all the way over to hard sf with Hal Clement and Poul Anderson; but it's not pure adventure for the sake of adventure, either. There is some effort being done at worldbuilding and sociocultural analysis and future history, way beyond what's needed for space opera. I'd say that it's maybe "firm science fiction." After all, it originally appeared as a serial in Analog, which was THE hard sf magazine of its day, even if it wasn't either planetary design from astrophysics up or wiring diagram fiction.
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Old 08-27-2017, 05:37 PM   #56
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Default Re: The Dungeon Fantasy box set is great! But now I hunger for more...

<MOD>

This thread is definitely the place to talk about whether a space opera box set or a superhero box set -- or any box set -- should be the next thing SJ Games does. Buuuuuut that doesn't include quibbling over the definition of what is and is not "space opera" or arguing about whether GURPS is a good system for supers games. Please curtail the threadjacking or split those off into their own threads, and keep this focused on the topic of "other box sets."

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Old 08-27-2017, 06:46 PM   #57
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One of the quieter features of DFRPG is cutting big-item "switches" to nearly zero. That is, a major part of the game's streamlining is taking all of GURPS' (in)famous optional rules sections, and making the decisions on each one for the GM: either tossing the thing out or presenting it as a standard rule.

The only big thing I've seen so far with an "Optional Rule" label on it the Training Expenses rule.

I imagine new boxed sets would want to follow that lead. For Space Opera (a fine choice that, done right, could show off many GURPS strengths), that would mean not leaving the GM to make all sorts of choices about tech level, game world scale, nature of space travel, etc. The set would make as many decisions on these things as needed to present GMs with a ready-to-play setting.

That, to me, suggests less of a "Space Opera" box and more of a "Tales of the Galactic Exploration Agency"-like box. Something pretty specific – not only in presenting a setting (even if in broad strokes), but also in setting down a defined rules set, not tons of rules options.
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Old 08-27-2017, 07:13 PM   #58
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Default Re: The Dungeon Fantasy box set is great! But now I hunger for more...

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I imagine new boxed sets would want to follow that lead. For Space Opera (a fine choice that, done right, could show off many GURPS strengths), that would mean not leaving the GM to make all sorts of choices about tech level, game world scale, nature of space travel, etc. The set would make as many decisions on these things as needed to present GMs with a ready-to-play setting.

That, to me, suggests less of a "Space Opera" box and more of a "Tales of the Galactic Exploration Agency"-like box. Something pretty specific – not only in presenting a setting (even if in broad strokes), but also in setting down a defined rules set, not tons of rules options.
To my mind that is right and why I think a boxed set needs at least an implied setting. DFRPG implies it by whats in the Monsters book, the magic system used, races and templates as well as other minor details.
Its a pretty typical high fantasy type game though so that is fine.
A modern day Action, MH or even Supers boxed set could get away with such an implied setting as well. However for Space Opera your going to have to choose a lot more on the style and technology and thus narrow the appeal even further.
As much as I like Space Opera I think its not the best choice for a boxed set.
However a MH or Action boxed set could have a bug hunt supplement that would at least cover one type of Space Opera.
Or you could do a boxed set GURPS Bug Hunt or GURPS Awful Green Things and it might sell well but it would not appeal to all Space Opera fans as it misses many variations. Still that could be a fun and very play out of the box kind of thing.
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Old 08-27-2017, 07:23 PM   #59
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Default Re: The Dungeon Fantasy box set is great! But now I hunger for more...

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That, to me, suggests less of a "Space Opera" box and more of a "Tales of the Galactic Exploration Agency"-like box. Something pretty specific – not only in presenting a setting (even if in broad strokes), but also in setting down a defined rules set, not tons of rules options.
I'd suggest some sort of Space Patrol - one part Texas Ranger bringing law to a rugged frontier region, one part Survey Scout of the uncharted frontier, one part Space Marines as the only military presence in the region. It's kind of what the original concept of Star Trek was from the first pilot and first few episodes - before Star Fleet and the Federation was layered on - and a lot of 50's sci-fi like Forbidden Planet and even later stuff like Space Rangers.

Of course, the converse campaign to that would be a Space Pirates set in exactly the same region. And a mid-ground would be Space Traders trying to eek out a living amongst all the pirates and hazards of the Frontier (cough... Firefly... cough...). And it wouldn't be hard to cram all three of those campaign scopes into a single box, using the same Frontier Sector backdrop.
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Old 08-27-2017, 07:43 PM   #60
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Default Re: The Dungeon Fantasy box set is great! But now I hunger for more...

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Surprised to hear given my guess is if DFRPG sells well, then there will be more DFRPG. That would fill up the schedule again.
I doubt it, mostly because the big work in the boxed set would be stripping down the core rules. More dungeons would use some sort of template or loose format, I suspect, like the one in the box. I have played the game and have my set, but I haven't done a detail read yet, but if it IS complete, I suspect that the kind of things you'll see will be dungeons, templates, and other things you can use easily, as-is, with the under-the-hood toolkit stuff hidden. Themed monster books. The whole point of the DFRPG box set is that it's complete.

The notional Sci-Fi, Bug Hunt, Monster Hunters, or Modern Action type distillations will take as much work as the original set, because you have to start from the full GURPS panoply and then carve away everything that's not your subject, then take what's left and distill it twice or thrice until it's the concentrated essence of the genre, implemented with 3d6-roll-low.

So I could easily see lots of stuff coming out for DFRPG without clogging the pipeline, while a new boxed set will be more strain.
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