DF in Yrth

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

If you ignore the cultural and political geography of Yrth, what is the point of setting your game there?

The (perfectly valid) minimalist reason for running a DF game nominally set on a documented world (Yrth, the Discworld, historical Earth, the Forgotten Realms, whatever) is furniture. In fact, place names, mostly. Where does my barbarian character come from? "The Nomad Lands, somewhere over the Whitehood Mountains" (or "Quirm; he's the son of a local vintner who never wants to see another cask") just sounds cooler than "Umm, somewhere northern and cold and stuff". What's the name of this big corrupt city whose sewers we're exploring? "Megalos, capital of the Empire!" (or "Ankh-Morpork, obviously."). And so on.

How far you expand from there, adding setting-specific politics, species and ethnic relations, and all the rest, is a matter of taste. But "barbarians come from the north, ninja come from the mysterious east, and the city is the only one so it doesn't have a name" is just too simplified for some people.

(And the first reason for using a setting with an existing GURPS sourcebook is that you might actually need game mechanics for something in the setting, every now and again. Plus, settings designed for other games systems may well be flavoured by the mechanics of those systems.)