I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

What purpose does setting provide in a DF adventure?

Usually, in my experience, convincing the players that they're playing a recognisable character, with some kind of (possibly colourful) cultural background, rather than just a numeric artefact with the ability to diminish the "HP" attribute of other numeric artefacts.

Originally Posted by Mailanka

But we already have GURPS Japan and GURPS Arabia. Both of those already alter the magic system appropriately, and they have suggested templates. These are 3e templates, but it's not exactly difficult to use those to pick/adjust the existing DF templates. They both have monsters and discussions of what localities would look like. Why are these not good enough?

Because, as TBC says, they're rarely if ever oriented towards the sort of play that Dungeon Fantasy implies. The intergration and adaptation process isn't as trivial as you seem to think.

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Why does a whole book need to be made with the DF label slapped on it?

Remember that we're talking about the Dungeon Fantasy PDF line here. A "book" can easily be a 20-30 page document. Honestly, a good set of template modifications, some revised spell lists, a bunch of fun monsters, a couple of pages of GM advice on getting the flavour right, and a glossary of terms to slather on to make sessions sound right, would fill that with no trouble at all.

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Settings already sell poorly. A DF-only setting would only sell to the subset of GURPS that is interested in settings and DF.

I came to this thread thinking in the abstract, not worrying about commercial viability. But actually, given the sales numbers that I see for DF material as compared to those for some other lines, I think that a product which sold to a modest fraction of the maximum DF market would be considered fairly viable. Plus, I think it would sell to more than just people who wanted to run complete campaigns in the setting. DF characters are great wanderers; "This week, your characters go on a ship to Darker NotAfrica. I'll run you through a couple of dungeons there, you can pick up some cool throwing blades, and oh yeah, Fred wants his new character to be a Pseudo-Zulu, so be prepared to meet a big friendly guy with a short spear and a yen to travel..."

Originally Posted by Mailanka

I'm sure you could make it, but I don't see the point of making a request thread for what would amount to a labor of love.

I didn't start this thread. I'm just running with someone else's suggestion, to see how it might fly.

Originally Posted by Kuroshima

I also want SJG to publish "the book that handles my campaign perfectly", but alas, SJG publishes what they think will be profitable enough to justify costs.

You forgot an essential qualifier at the end of that sentence: "...and that someone competent offers to write." Believe me, that's a bigger factor than some people seem to think.

Originally Posted by roguebfl

Why do you think I was pointing saying the Elites were Persian not the People.
Just like for a large part of Medaived England the Elites were Norman but not the People.

The ruling elite in Abbasid Baghdad were Arab. The civil service elite were largely Persian. And the Arabian Nights, being created in its extant form for the entertainment of street folks in Damascus and Cairo, positively drips with Arab chauvinism. Heck, it seems to demonstrate prejudice against folks from the "wrong" bit of North Africa.

[Tinman]

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

On the other hand, as a consumer, I'd be interested in seeing such things (if, say, Phil Masters were to write Dungeon Fantasy Settings 1: I Can't Believe It's Not Africa, I'd buy it)

I'd buy it too!

and as an author, I think DF settings or just GURPS settings created with an eye towards DF compatibility would be hella fun to write.

Not to bee too much of a kiss-ass, but I love the stuff you write.
I'd be interested in seeing setting adventures from YOU. MoFD was awesome.

[Tinman]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

Because, as TBC says, they're rarely if ever oriented towards the sort of play that Dungeon Fantasy implies. The intergration and adaptation process isn't as trivial as you seem to think.

As a GM I find this to be very true, it can be a big PITA.

Remember that we're talking about the Dungeon Fantasy PDF line here. A "book" can easily be a 20-30 page document. Honestly, a good set of template modifications, some revised spell lists, a bunch of fun monsters, a couple of pages of GM advice on getting the flavour right, and a glossary of terms to slather on to make sessions sound right, would fill that with no trouble at all.

I think this is very true. Also, given the complaints about a lack of a Beastary or enough Monster Manuals, getting a few more creatures never hurts.
I am always on the lookout for Adventures or Creatures. I buy every gurps book with them.

One thing I've done for DF that has helped me as GM was take old D&D adventures & use them for DF. It's a pain to re-stat the monsters but much easier than starting from scratch.

[Phantasm]

Perhaps I should be clear on my own position:

I don't see Dungeon Fantasy as anything other than "go there, kill stuff, take their loot, don't die, rinse, repeat." I'll use the books as a source.

That being said, I love bestiaries, especially ones that are not primarily rehashes of stuff from previous bestiaries (one of the biggest complaints I had with WotC's Monster Manuals 4 and 5 was that they were just adaptations of stuff already published, with very few actual new critters). That's why, of all the DF books, Allies and Summoners were at the top of my to-get list; I think I might have gotten them even before Adventurers. 3e's Dinosaurs is one I turn to a lot, not just for dinos but for all kinds of exotic prehistoric fauna - especially megafauna - to pepper my settings with.

So if someone was to write Dungeon Fantasy Monsters: Monsters of the Orient/the Amazon/the Andes/the Himalayas/the Congo/Mongolia/Polynesia/India/the Middle East/Australia/etc, yeah, I'd snap those up in a heartbeat.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

Usually, in my experience, convincing the players that they're playing a recognisable character, with some kind of (possibly colourful) cultural background, rather than just a numeric artefact with the ability to diminish the "HP" attribute of other numeric artefacts.

So it's either colorful cultural background, or you're a numeric artifact? Given that DF has not had "colorful cultural backgrounds" up until now, how well has DF faired without "colorful cultural backgrounds?" Has it been a disaster? Has the line lost a lot of sales?

You're excluding the middle.

Because, as TBC says, they're rarely if ever oriented towards the sort of play that Dungeon Fantasy implies. The intergration and adaptation process isn't as trivial as you seem to think.

Citation needed. I do this sort of thing all the time, so I'm either underestimating my skill, or there are quite some people overestimating the difficulty of GURPS.

Remember that we're talking about the Dungeon Fantasy PDF line here. A "book" can easily be a 20-30 page document. Honestly, a good set of template modifications, some revised spell lists, a bunch of fun monsters, a couple of pages of GM advice on getting the flavour right, and a glossary of terms to slather on to make sessions sound right, would fill that with no trouble at all.

Fair enough. But given that it would be a pretty small document, how does this fly with your previous statement that it would be "harder than I think?" Given how trivial you make it sound (that sounds about right to me), and given that books like GURPS Japan already have revised spell lists, a bunch of fun monsters, and GM advice for getting the flavor right, all you'd really need to do is adjust the templates (and there's example templates right in the book to guide your modification) and the monsters to suit the power-level of DF. Is that really as hard as you said it was in your previous statement? I don't think so.

As an aside: I'm worried that the GURPS line is beginning to divide: the standard line, which has books like Monster Hunters and Action, where people borrow them and modify them for their given campaign needs, and the DF line, which seems full of people who need books, specific for DF, for everything. They need a monsters book, because the piles of monsters published already for GURPS aren't DF enough. They need setting-design books, because GURPS Fantasy isn't DF enough. Now we need a DF Japan and a DF Arabia, because Japan and Arabia aren't DF enough.

I came to this thread thinking in the abstract, not worrying about commercial viability. But actually, given the sales numbers that I see for DF material as compared to those for some other lines, I think that a product which sold to a modest fraction of the maximum DF market would be considered fairly viable. Plus, I think it would sell to more than just people who wanted to run complete campaigns in the setting. DF characters are great wanderers; "This week, your characters go on a ship to Darker NotAfrica. I'll run you through a couple of dungeons there, you can pick up some cool throwing blades, and oh yeah, Fred wants his new character to be a Pseudo-Zulu, so be prepared to meet a big friendly guy with a short spear and a yen to travel..."

Given that settings don't sell well at all, I'd be surprised. I will give you this: DF has something the other GURPS materials don't, and that is assumptions. Since you know what you're writing to, and what you're writing to is popular, a DF setting might sell better than a vanilla setting. Still, given the troubles THS and Banestorm have...

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Still, given the troubles THS and Banestorm have...

Banestorm and THS are edge-case settings though. THS is very hard sci-fi with a density of 'background' that makes even hard sci-nuts (like myself) wince, and Banestorm has Christianity with a twist in it. As I've discovered you tend to get 4 types of people playing 'magical fantasy rpgs': Those that hate 'real world' religions in their fantasy, those that take Christianity very seriously, those that don't care, and b-dog. Banestorm puts off the first 2 and doesn't add much to 'D&D' fantasy that the third wants. It's the 'b-dog' type that are drawn to Banestorm, they want to explore Christianity/Catholicism (both modern and ancient) in a quasi-medieval fantasy setting... and that's Banestorm to a 't'.


Personally I'm drawn more to settings like The Madlands. Weird stuff, not just more blehneric 'kitchen sink D&D'.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Right? DF won't give you the tool to run Xanth, Game of Thrones, or Lord of the Rings. To say "I want a DF supplement that gives my game a deeper exploration into Elven linguistics" or "I want a DF supplement that allows for courtly intrigue" misses the point of what DF is trying to do.

It wouldn't even come close to running the fantasy campaign idea I've currently got back-burnered. None of the templates have Guns or Driving skills, there's no advice for running investigations, the magic is a couple orders of magnitude too fast, and elves. None of the 3 pick-up-and-play lines does me much good, actually.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

Sorry, but it is actually possible to walk a line that gives you something that's very clearly "dungeon fantasy", or near as damnit, while also providing a large dose of cultural flavour and a strong specific aesthetic. Things like Al-Qadim and Nyambe existed for precisely this reason, and were not entirely unsuccessful.

Refusing to admit that there's any kind of cultural flavouring to a dungeon fantasy game just reduces the whole thing to an abstract wargame; the characters just become playing pieces. Even computer games have progressed beyond that.

Its also worth repeating that Dawn of Magic drew heavily on classical and Aztec and Lovecraftian influences, not just medieval ones. So DF starts out as something other than generic pseudo-medieval fantasy minus monotheism (its more "Kromm's vision of D&D land" and D&D broke away from its original inspirations a long time ago), and there would be nothing wrong with creating a worked example of pulling in another set of tropes and monsters and powers.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

Banestorm has Christianity with a twist in it. As I've discovered you tend to get 4 types of people playing 'magical fantasy rpgs': Those that hate 'real world' religions in their fantasy, those that take Christianity very seriously, those that don't care, and b-dog. Banestorm puts off the first 2 and doesn't add much to 'D&D' fantasy that the third wants. It's the 'b-dog' type that are drawn to Banestorm, they want to explore Christianity/Catholicism (both modern and ancient) in a quasi-medieval fantasy setting... and that's Banestorm to a 't'.

That's the thing, though. People jump up and down and say "You know what GURPS needs? A setting!" So we give them a setting. We give them lots of settings. And they turn up their nose at each of them. "Ugh. Hard Sci-fi? I wanted something sillier. Tales of the Solar Patrol? Ugh. Who likes the 50s anymore!?" Or "Banestorm? Meh, it's too real-world. Madlands? Isn't that just D&D with Winnie the Pooh? Meh." Japan takes too much work, Banestorm is too "real world", Madlands isn't real-world enough. What are the chances that the GURPS setting writers will now hit exactly the right tone? Or is there a right tone? Sometimes it seems to me, as Kuroshima points out, that some people want Phil Masters or Bill Stoddard to write their campaign for them, but that seems, to me, an impossible task.

So that's why I want to know why we think this time, this time, it'll be different. If I had insight into how well the Mirror of the Fire Demon sold, that might help. Adventures have the same problem as settings: Nobody buys them because an adventure (like a setting) needs to fit the campaign vision and assumption of the GM and his group. But if Mirror of the Fire Demon sold well, that would tell me that, indeed, this time it could be different, because the people who buy DF are fundamentally different from the people who buy most GURPS products, or at least their campaign needs are (less customized, more generic, more easily served by pre-fab settings/adventures)

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Sometimes it seems to me, as Kuroshima points out, that some people want Phil Masters or Bill Stoddard to write their campaign for them, but that seems, to me, an impossible task.

I don't know about impossible; I'd imagine that both Phil and Bill like a very large paycheck.

That said, we've collectively wasted more text on this subject than it would've taken us to write up a pretty good free version of DF: Arabia or DF: Africa.