I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy

[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...