Apparently DF 12 is going to be Ninjas.

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

Originally Posted by newtkeeper

Couldn't the same thing be said about ninjas? You have your thieves, you have your martial artists...

No, it can't, because I don't have a good idea of what can go in a pirates book to differentiate them. But I did have a good idea of what would go in a ninja book to make them different from templates that are superficially similar. So no, you can't say that about ninjas. At least, I couldn't say that.

I'm not being mean, here. When Sean and I talked about ninja, both he and I had a pile of ideas about how a ninja wasn't just an artificer, not just a martial artist, not just a thief, and not just a crossover of the two. Someone says DF: Pirates and I think, okay, I can't write that because I don't know what niche to stick them in. That wasn't an issue with ninja. If anyone ever says "What niche do they fill?" about a potential new template, you need a deeper answer than "That's what they said about ninjas, too!" You need a lot of ideas to fill a book. Even all the coolness Sean and I conceived of about ninjas left me short of wordcount, so there was some back-to-the-drawing-board stuff that went on about what else was cool about ninjas. IMO the best stuff in the book came out of the need to fill it out a bit more, but to me it also demonstrated you need a BIG, meaty idea to fill even a fairly small book. That said, Roguebfl's idea of a High Seas book is sheer awesomeness, because you aren't left hoping you have 12,000 words to say about pirates.