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Old 05-28-2017, 10:44 PM   #31
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Default Re: What Do You Want For Yrth

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Originally Posted by David Johansen View Post

I would, for instance, like to suggest a need for adventures that are not dungeon crawls because traditional dungeon crawls don't really have a place in Yrth.
It would be a good setting for courtly intrigue.
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Old 05-28-2017, 11:13 PM   #32
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Default Re: What Do You Want For Yrth

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That seems to be the major disconnect. There are many who don't want Banestorm because it's not what they want and that's fine but this is the What Do You Want For Yrth thread, not the I Don't Want Yrth Thread.
For that, I'd probably want a Yrth 1100 supplement.
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Old 05-29-2017, 01:43 AM   #33
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Default Re: What Do You Want For Yrth

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There's Castle Defiance and all those ruined Elvish cities which look a lot like adventure hooks for that sort of thing to me.
Earlier, the sewers of the capital of Megalos (Fighters of the Purple Rage), and a catacomb in a hill amidst a swamp inhabited by a lich with pretensions to the throne (GURPS Undead) have also appeared. Dwarven tombs and fallen cities in the Orclands could also provide dungeon adventures.

There is actually some Yrth material in books like GURPS (3e) Warriors.
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Old 05-29-2017, 02:14 AM   #34
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I'm not sure Dungeon Fantasy and Yrth really go together. We've got Dungeon Fantasy and will undoubtedly get more of it. Why spoil Yrth with it?
I agree. The two have very different aesthetics. Banestorm bills itself as about ordinary people in a world which makes sense on the surface and follows laws of cause and effect. Dungeon Fantasy is about superheroes in a world openly governed by tropes from late 20th century pop culture and the rule of cool. Of course Banestorm has Sahud which owes a lot to '80s American stereotypes about Mysterious Orientals, and its nonhumans are pretty stereotypical ... but it encourages you to think about the local society, how the mundane economy work, etc. whereas Dungeon Fantasy encourages you to ignore these things and just have fun killing monsters and being conned by the Thieves' Guild.

Younger self needed help thinking up stories and adventure structures which were not heroic/dungeon fantasy ones. That is a skill, and there is nowhere to learn it unless you know someone who already has it. So a series of adventure sketches for another kind of party could be helpful ... they could be at the level of detail of the adventures in Pyramid. SJG says that adventures don't sell well, but waiting for GMs to just have an epiphany about how to tell other kinds of stories may not be the most productive approach ... it sounds like there are some thoughtful adventures for GUMSHOE kinds of games, and they don't have a huge market either.
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Old 05-29-2017, 06:57 AM   #35
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Default Re: What Do You Want For Yrth

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Why is this necessary? Why can't wizards just cast the full spell list?

Mystics can replace Holy Warriors as well.
I personally like to fiddle with mechanics as little as possible, and find it easier just to fudge the lore. Although I do agree I'd rather just let Wizards cast the whole spell list, because arbitrary spell restrictions just feel weird to me. I do prefer the simplicity of the Fighter-Mage-Thief trinity, and would rather just treat Clerics and the like as a type of specialist mage rather then something completely different from a Wizard.
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Old 05-29-2017, 07:12 AM   #36
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I think a Dungeon is more than just some old ruins that a band of Hobgoblins have moved into. It's those ten by ten by ten halls and that room full of potion pools that only work in that room. It's the gate that looks like it has teeth that is animated and sings Highway To Hell when passed through.

Of course, Yrth has sewers and caves and old elven ruins. But the big nonsensical dungeon has no place there and never did. That was kind of the point of the whole thing.
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Old 05-29-2017, 08:50 AM   #37
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Default Re: What Do You Want For Yrth

Yrth was invented in a time when the emphasis on GURPS's realism was high and a focus on tropes was low. That is not the case now: today, cinematic is the buzzword most used. Dungeons of the D&D sort back then were, I think, quite expected in Yrth, but not required. These weren't supposed to obey today's dungeoneering tropes; they were just underground mazes filled with monsters, traps, and treasure. There's nothing about Yrth that prevents you from putting them just about anywhere you want. In the mountains of Zarak? In a cave in the Blackwoods? Under a goblin town? Any or all. The given backgrounds aren't the only stories to be had.
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Old 05-29-2017, 09:15 AM   #38
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Default Re: What Do You Want For Yrth

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I think a Dungeon is more than just some old ruins that a band of Hobgoblins have moved into. It's those ten by ten by ten halls and that room full of potion pools that only work in that room. It's the gate that looks like it has teeth that is animated and sings Highway To Hell when passed through.

Of course, Yrth has sewers and caves and old elven ruins. But the big nonsensical dungeon has no place there and never did. That was kind of the point of the whole thing.
I think that the authors carefully designed Yrth to have room for adventures in underground complexes full of monsters and treasure, just not the rule-of-cool, 'a wizard did it' kind, and not campaigns where you bounce from dungeon to dungeon across a vague background (just like they carefully designed it to allow both high and low fantasy). I think readers can decide for themselves whether such complexes are dungeons in their ideolects.

D&D has always had the kind of dungeons which we all invented when we were 14, and the kind which try to make a bit of sense, and even a few campaigns which try to avoid them alltogether.
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Old 05-29-2017, 10:21 AM   #39
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Default Re: What Do You Want For Yrth

Although the pessimism of the other thread makes this discussion seem deep into the realm of wishful thinking, I think what Yrth needs is a decision and the implied follow-up between:

1-an in-house setting that SJG will define in detail;

2-a sandbox setting packaged with GURPS and (much like IW does) showcasing the flexibility of the rules to accommodate whatever a GM might want; or

3-a carefully devised hybrid of both.

Number 1 would require articulating a narrative vision and

(a) de-emphasizing hokey (e.g. Sahud, gunpowder, over-simplified representations of cultural groups) things, and tightening up hand-wavy things (e.g. the impact of magic on political economy) and

(b) promulgating the vision to potential writers.

Number 2 would involve publishing more tools. Good local maps but with open spots to stick your town or whatever in. Ready-made NPC character sheets or templates. Constructed background (ecology, trade, social and hard infrastructure). Advice and support materials for integrating events in your campaigns into an established world.

Number 3, a hybrid approach, would probably be best advised to split chronologically. Have the first approach take place in year whatever and the second approach be 500 or more years later.


(Quick digression: Regarding some of the very interesting discussion on the other thread, here's my personal input on a potential writer's experience. At times I have produced hundreds of pages each year of professional-quality writing in the form of organizational policies and guidelines, regulatory hearings and legal appellate submissions, commercial contracts for retail financial services, public policy and position papers, policy and legal analyses, and a few other trinkets and gewgaws. Whether that would make me capable of writing GURPS, I don't know. When I went to look into it, the WYSMXYZPTLK presented to me as a significant barrier to participation, and very probably a deliberate one; it's at that point I self-selected out of writing GURPS material for submission, just an input vs. reward thing.)

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Old 05-29-2017, 10:37 AM   #40
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Default Re: What Do You Want For Yrth

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Originally Posted by David Johansen View Post
I think a Dungeon is more than just some old ruins that a band of Hobgoblins have moved into. It's those ten by ten by ten halls and that room full of potion pools that only work in that room. It's the gate that looks like it has teeth that is animated and sings Highway To Hell when passed through.

Of course, Yrth has sewers and caves and old elven ruins. But the big nonsensical dungeon has no place there and never did. That was kind of the point of the whole thing.
There's nothing about using Dungeon Fantasy that requires or suggests procedural generated rooms or otherwise incoherent adventure design. My DF games are probably closer to the old ruins that some hobgoblins have moved into.
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