What settings would you like to see published ?

[Trifletraxor]

I just hope they focus on a few settings and provide good support for them, instead of throwing of a lot of different poorly supported settings.

[badcat]

Judging from the past quarter century, I would say Chaosium is very good at focusing on just one setting.

You know what I would like to see put into rpg format? One of the old space opera settings from the 50s and 60s...Retief, Stainless Steel Rat, Deathworld. Or more recently, Legion of the Damned. One of the gonzo sci fi series, get off the Star Wars kick (not that there is any danger of THAT).

Maybe Steve Brust has just been waiting for Chaosium to get on its feet.:)But I doubt it.

[Agentorange]

As I said at the start there's plenty of alternative earth settings that would lend themselves to BRP. Get the vikings supplement re published, if thats still copyright do a new one. Someone already mentioned the Roland cycle. An ancient Rome supplement is in the works. Expand the field: Ancient Egypt, Babylonia/Assyria ( covers a big old time period ), Homeric Greece.

You could have a nice big Ancients campaign going with those. Focused around the Mediterranean. It's sufficiently far back you could get away with all sorts of monsters. Most people are familiar with some aspects of the Greek legends ( even if it's only Clash of the Titans ). Plenty of room for pirates, the siege of Troy. Lots of different peoples with weird gods ( I really think they're making a mistake by ditching the spirit/divine magic model, even as an option ), expeditions to the primitive tin trading peoples on that damp island to the north, there's loads of possibilities.

Someone also mentioned the Judges Guild Wilderlands setting, I'd agree that that would lend lend itself to BRP really well, it always had a gritty feel that Greyhawk seemed not to. After all Chaosium and Judges Guild have had license deals before......

[Lord Twig]

Honestly I would like to see an entirely new setting.

For me most licensed settings are too heavily restricted. What is going to happen is already know, and they don't need your characters to save the world. The characters from the book are going to do that!

[Joseph Paul]

Honestly I would like to see an entirely new setting.

For me most licensed settings are too heavily restricted. What is going to happen is already know, and they don't need your characters to save the world. The characters from the book are going to do that!

I like the unknown also but I suspect that we are in the minority. Something that I keep seeing is that peoples' ideas of "fun gaming" are shaped by exposure to media. At SF conventions it is rare to see someone dress up as an original character i.e. one that they thought up. Many more people want to be a Jedi/slave Leia, Wonder Woman, Spiderman or some other figure that has media exposure. You see Spartans after 300 comes out but no one wants to do that before the movie out of a love for Greek culture. I see the same thing with RPGs. You can have a zombie game but it is much better to have the definitive Deadlands zombie game. That name recognition appears to help sell things.

The choices come down to:

1) Stick with doing just an examination of the genre and how to accomplish it with the rules set.

2) Publish an original setting and hope to grow it into something respectable.

3) License a setting (Heinlein juvenile novels, Robert Frezza's novels, Bernard Cornwall's Richard Sharpe novels) and hope you chose the one that people want right now.

I don't believe that starting out with the rules for how to do a genre setting will be enough to distinguish BRP. Having a neat setting will help. A few games have been able to gain a fan base by having rich, detailed settings that had no other media ties. They did it once with Glorantha and Travellers's Third Imperium comes to mind also. That does not seem to be very common. So licensing an appropriate title for a game setting may be the best way to gain fans and market share.

GURPS has been doing that for quite awhile which is why I joked about them having all such licenses. Honestly I can't decide which way I would go if the decision was mine.

Joseoh Paul

[Joseph Paul]

Honestly I would like to see an entirely new setting.

For me most licensed settings are too heavily restricted. What is going to happen is already know, and they don't need your characters to save the world. The characters from the book are going to do that!

I like the unknown also but I suspect that we are in the minority. Something that I keep seeing is that peoples' ideas of "fun gaming" are shaped by exposure to media. At SF conventions it is rare to see someone dress up as an original character i.e. one that they thought up. Many more people want to be a Jedi/slave Leia, Wonder Woman, Spiderman or some other figure that has media exposure. You see Spartans after 300 comes out but no one wants to do that before the movie out of a love for Greek culture. I see the same thing with RPGs. You can have a zombie game but it is much better to have the definitive Deadlands zombie game. That name recognition appears to help sell things.

The choices come down to:

1) Stick with doing just an examination of the genre and how to accomplish it with the rules set.

2) Publish an original setting and hope to grow it into something respectable.

3) License a setting (Heinlein juvenile novels, Robert Frezza's novels, Bernard Cornwall's Richard Sharpe novels) and hope you chose the one that people want right now.

I don't believe that starting out with the rules for how to do a genre setting will be enough to distinguish BRP. Having a neat setting will help. A few games have been able to gain a fan base by having rich, detailed settings that had no other media ties. They did it once with Glorantha and Travellers's Third Imperium comes to mind also. That does not seem to be very common. So licensing an appropriate title for a game setting may be the best way to gain fans and market share.

GURPS has been doing that for quite awhile which is why I joked about them having all such licenses. Honestly I can't decide which way I would go if the decision was mine.

Joseoh Paul

[Jarulf]

So they may have a base, BRP, and different flavors of settings to go with it in short order. Would that be sufficient or do they need to have a licensed product to make this thing go? What is there left to license? Has GURPS taken them all?

Joseph Paul

Actually, I think Steve Jackson Games have stopped doing licensed setting books for 4th ed of GURPS. Traveller is the only exception I think. :-)

I doubt they'd need a special license to do a Fantasy Earth type of thing they did with Vikings, Land of Ninja and Monster Colosseum. And wasn't there rumours of a Rome book in the works?

Apart from that one, someone was working on a setting with everything thrown in (i.e all the powers). The BRP answer to Infinite Worlds for GURPS I guess.

[Jarulf]

I like the unknown also but I suspect that we are in the minority.

Joseoh Paul

Include me in that minority. I'm definitely more interested in a new setting than one based off of books as long as it was reasonably different to all other generic settings out there.

I'm not a huge fan of Harn, but they got it right when they said they'd never publish stuff about what happens after a certain year. Any setting with a future history presents some potential problems for a group, and perhaps more so if it's based on a series of novels.

My main objection though is that there are too few really innovative settings designed just for games, well that's my impression at least

This is a niche Chaosium have a good chance of filling now.

That said, there are certainly some fictional settings that'd be interesting to see for a game that haven't been mentioned yet.

Steven Erikson's, The Malazan Book of the Fallen is one.

The Roland Cycle as we've mentioned repeatedly here now.

I wonder if anyone from Chaosium is lurking in the shadows here, twitching their tentacles and writhing maniacally in insane laughter at our discussions...

[Trifletraxor]

Malazean book of the fallen, that would be a great world to play in.

But I too hate playing in worlds with worldspanning wars and changes with predetermed results happening while you play. Glorantha's hero wars have been bugging me all the time I've played RuneQuest.

Sverre.

[badcat]

Sometimes a setting with moderate changes while you play can work fine, witness Tekumel. I don't really think having a setting or not is going to make or break this new BRP book, however. Chaosium may well not have any setting plans in the works at all (and if they do they tend to take years to come to fruition), and the blurb on their site emphasizes homebrew settings and adapting ones' favorite book or film anyway. That's fine with me. Glorantha always bugged me, the Young Kingdoms were too grim (talk about big wars and massive changes, and a lot of the best of it came from the game designers anyway), Hawkmoon didn't make sense (Moorcock was too tongue-in-cheek with it), Elfquest too comic-bookish, I am not a Ringworld fan, etc. So I will be just ecstatic to have all the BRP rules material without any setting material or indeed a tailored setting of some sort. Nobody knows what I like as well as I do, after all. I don't know where to start...Deathworld? Tekumel? Atlantis? Dragaera? Hyboria? Eluviel?

[Jarulf]

But I too hate playing in worlds with worldspanning wars and changes with predetermed results happening while you play. Glorantha's hero wars have been bugging me all the time I've played RuneQuest.

Sverre.

I really like a lot about Glorantha, but sometimes I feel it makes for better reading than playing. :-)

[Jarulf]

Sometimes a setting with moderate changes while you play can work fine, witness Tekumel. I don't really think having a setting or not is going to make or break this new BRP book, however. Chaosium may well not have any setting plans in the works at all

If they don't have a setting, how will they make more money on the book once sales go down (i.e., we've all bought our copies...)?

More rule books? Licenses?

I don't know a thing about the game industry, but to keep the game in the public mind, I assume they need new products.

Hawkmoon didn't make sense (Moorcock was too tongue-in-cheek with it),

And high if rumours are true ;-)

[badcat]

Beats me. Read the BRP news bit on their site, though. They have sold CoC in virtually the same form for over quarter century now, but hey, I don't KNOW...I'm just speculating based on Chaosiums historical and present habits. Me, I'll probably buy two or three copies and then update with another whenever a new printing comes out, just like I have with CoC. I suppose the best scenario for us would be that it sells like hot cakes, becomes the new rpg rage, Chaosium is suddenly flush, buys up Conan, Tekumel, etc., starts spitting out new supplements by the dozen, has a contest for settings which I win and the setting is successful, everybody is happy and buys lots of copies of THAT, and a new golden age ensues for rpgs.:eek:

[Trifletraxor]

Beats me. Read the BRP news bit on their site, though. They have sold CoC in virtually the same form for over quarter century now, but hey, I don't KNOW...I'm just speculating based on Chaosiums historical and present habits.

Cthulhu is a ruleset with a setting though, or actually 3 main settings (1890, 1930, modern), and several smaller ones (dark ages, cthulhu rising, etc.). And they've released a lot of supplements for those settings. I don't think the system alone would survive without all the support it's been given (or at least not the the extent it has today).

Sverre.

[badcat]

Point.:cool:

[Joseph Paul]

They have concentrated their efforts on CoC for a quarter century because the fans buy it. They are making money on the adventure supplements and the settings for the game i.e. original CoC covered the Twenties, Cthulu by Gas Light expanded to the Victorian era, and then there was Cthulu Now! for modern era stuff. While the core mechanics stayed pretty much the same you needed to get each rule book for the rest of the period specific info. That is the 'new products' that Jarulf wondered about.

The fans seem to be really dedicated to the genre and are willing to buy the adventures and supplemental rules in greater quantity than other games Chaosium has had. They show much the same fervor as those that enjoy Glorantha.This was confirmed for me in a conversation with Chaosium personel (Charlie? Lynn?) some years ago. It doesn't help the succes of the other products that when things get tight you concentrate your efforts on the best sellers. However CoC was outselling the others already.

This paradigm that Chaosium admits shaped their product decisions is what worrys me about the success of BRP. I don't think that BRP itself is bringing all that much to the table as a generic game that is not already there with GURPS and HERO especially if, as has been expressed here, that it is just compiling all of the extant rules into one spot. I think that BRP needed an overhaul to bring it up to snuff with the options available in GURPS 4e and HERO 5e(?). In thirty years we have found out quite a bit about ancient and medieval warfare as well as modern and near future and the rules should be updated to reflect that. Maybe they have.

I really can't see BRP taking off with out at least some supplemental help. If they want to stay generic then I would like to see work done on helping GMs and setting designers do their thing. A compendium of technologies (and how those get used) would be good as would a dedicated system of designing new things. More on long term task resolution ala Ringworld.

World books may be problematic. As similar as GURPS is it is probably pretty easy to adapt their stuff. So do I pay $20 to $30 dollars for a Roman setting book or do I buy a used copy of GURPS Rome? What could Chaosium bring to the table in regards to detailing settings that the others do not? Well detail for one. They do seem to be pretty good at that.

I think they may have a shot at scenario books. I really liked what they did with Sun County for instance. However those require a rules set and a world setting unless the scenario book is going to serve both those ends. Capturing the imagination and wallets of the gaming community could be tough but it is the paradigm they used with CoC. Ooooh-and Pendragon.

Joseph Paul

Edit: What Trifletraxor said-Better and more succintly than I did.

[badcat]

And I think you are dead wrong.

[Jarulf]

Beats me. Read the BRP news bit on their site, though

I did, but it doesn't really say anything about their plans. Just that you can use it for pretty much anything you want, but we already knew that :-)

sells like hot cakes, becomes the new rpg rage, Chaosium is suddenly flush, buys up Conan, Tekumel, etc., starts spitting out new supplements by the dozen, has a contest for settings which I win and the setting is successful, everybody is happy and buys lots of copies of THAT, and a new golden age ensues for rpgs.:eek:

A financially strong Chaosium would be a very nice thing to have :-)

And I hope your dreams come true, I'll even buy a copy if it's even half-decent ;-)

[Jarulf]

And I must stop ending every sentence I write with :-)

[Jarulf]

Re the good sales of adventures for CoC I think SJG have said they don't want to produce adventure books because they don't sell all that well (PDFs may be a different thing though as they are much cheaper to produce and can be any size you want). Everyone says they want adventures but no one actually buys them or something to that effect.

Now CoC and GURPS are two very different beasts and probably don't compare all that well. IMO CoC aims at GMs who want good adventures for their players and GURPS seems to aim at GMs who like to tinker and build worlds. So where will BRP fall between these (extremes)?

I agree that BRP could use good books about designing your setting (similar to the GURPS Fantasy and Space books) and running campaigns of particular types, but I'd also like to see world books.

It'll be interesting to see at any rate. I'm hoping for a couple of settings (original or licensed), supported with source books and adventures. The only problem with that is I might hate those settings, and thus won't buy anything...

I do want to see short PDFs from Chaosium though, at $5 or so, with rules variants, small drop-in settings and adventures. They already have the infrastructure in place with their new catalog and the Tuesday Terribles and I imagine the risk would be low. I wouldn't be surprised if they are planning something like that.

Sorry to ramble.

[Enpeze]

They have concentrated their efforts on CoC for a quarter century because the fans buy it. They are making money on the adventure supplements and the settings for the game i.e. original CoC covered the Twenties, Cthulu by Gas Light expanded to the Victorian era, and then there was Cthulu Now! for modern era stuff. While the core mechanics stayed pretty much the same you needed to get each rule book for the rest of the period specific info. That is the 'new products' that Jarulf wondered about.

The fans seem to be really dedicated to the genre and are willing to buy the adventures and supplemental rules in greater quantity than other games Chaosium has had. They show much the same fervor as those that enjoy Glorantha.This was confirmed for me in a conversation with Chaosium personel (Charlie? Lynn?) some years ago. It doesn't help the succes of the other products that when things get tight you concentrate your efforts on the best sellers. However CoC was outselling the others already.

This paradigm that Chaosium admits shaped their product decisions is what worrys me about the success of BRP. I don't think that BRP itself is bringing all that much to the table as a generic game that is not already there with GURPS and HERO especially if, as has been expressed here, that it is just compiling all of the extant rules into one spot. I think that BRP needed an overhaul to bring it up to snuff with the options available in GURPS 4e and HERO 5e(?). In thirty years we have found out quite a bit about ancient and medieval warfare as well as modern and near future and the rules should be updated to reflect that. Maybe they have.

I really can't see BRP taking off with out at least some supplemental help. If they want to stay generic then I would like to see work done on helping GMs and setting designers do their thing. A compendium of technologies (and how those get used) would be good as would a dedicated system of designing new things. More on long term task resolution ala Ringworld.

World books may be problematic. As similar as GURPS is it is probably pretty easy to adapt their stuff. So do I pay $20 to $30 dollars for a Roman setting book or do I buy a used copy of GURPS Rome? What could Chaosium bring to the table in regards to detailing settings that the others do not? Well detail for one. They do seem to be pretty good at that.

I think they may have a shot at scenario books. I really liked what they did with Sun County for instance. However those require a rules set and a world setting unless the scenario book is going to serve both those ends. Capturing the imagination and wallets of the gaming community could be tough but it is the paradigm they used with CoC. Ooooh-and Pendragon.

Joseph Paul

Edit: What Trifletraxor said-Better and more succintly than I did.

While you maybe somehow right in your idea that it is necessary to relaunch the whole BRP system to be a commerical successful, I think this is not so easy as it sounds.

First I think that the guys at chaosium do great games, but lack merchandising skill. (eg. game design 80%, economy 20%) At the moment they found (succeeded their luck roll?) a source of income in producing CoC. But opening new markets is IMO not their thing. To avoid the risk loosing much money, they should leave this to other more adventureous or knowledgable (from a commercial POV) companies.

Second there is already a small market for BRP. We at this forum belong to it. The problem is: many of us think that BRP is good as it is. No redesign is necessary (/looks at mediocre MRQ) Plenty of old but not well known BRP ideas and subsystems are already out there. But they are OOP and thus not accessible to 95% of the gamers. So just collecting them and showing them around in one complete book is a good beginning strategy IMO. If, and only if it seems that d100 gains more popularity, (I doubt this, but maybe I am wrong) they could still make a BRP2nd Edition some day. The base of such a 2nd new edition would be the coming DBRP. But at the moment the best way for Chaosium to go with the least risk and granting some (basic ) income would be the release of DBRP in Nov. 07 as planned.

[badcat]

Sounds like a good analysis, Enpeze.

Jarulf, I was just kidding around about the contest and all. It would just be to much like WOTC. I really think rpgs are much better when done by non-business professionals. Marketing makes the world go 'round, but it seems to me that those who are good at it are not so good at making games/settings that I enjoy. I really think Chaosium is on track right now, and I sincerely hope they don't get too ambitious and blow a good thing. I hope they continue their slow pace and keep putting out things slowly and carefully, and don't go the route so many others have. And I hope this new book is just what they say on their site...a collection of BRP rules from all the various games collected together, and NOT a significant change in those rules. And I hope it supports them enough so that they can keep putting out worthwhile material, not piles of splats and settings no one will buy. Which would almost certainly break them.

[Joseph Paul]

Jarulf- I think that you are right about COC and GURPS being different beasts in regards to adventure book sales. I think that one of the histories of Chaosium pointed out that they had some slack there for a while but recently released a new slew of adventures. Testing with the monographs seems to help them make decisions as it looks like some of the stuff on the shelves of my FLGS was done as monographs first, in particular the "Secrets of..." series. I do not think they would tie up resources in stock if they did not have a good track record of moving the stuff. GURPS may not have such a record.

I can't say that I have any knowledge of what sells for GURPS but frankly I can't recall ever wanting to play/run a GURPS adventure just wanting the details of the worldbooks/genre settings.

Enpeze- I understand that there is a market for as much of the original rules as can be had. My concern is that those don't cover some of the things that more recent games have thus limiting the utility of the release. I can see an initial release happening to take care of the collectors but then I would want to see an upgrade that adds those things that are missing currently. Better firearms rules, combat options; perhaps by genre, breaking, breaching, and destroying things, laying out the formulae so that GMs can figure out what it takes to break stuff that is not listed, making stuff in game by PCs etc.

Joseph Paul

[Jarulf]

Jarulf, I was just kidding around about the contest and all. It would just be

Hm, yeah I got that :-)

Doesn't everyone have the perfect book they'd want Chaosium to publish? I do, it'll never get written of course but there is a setting book in my head. Well, some vague kernels of an idea anyway...

It would sell like ice-cream in Hell.

I really think Chaosium is on track right now, and I sincerely hope they don't get too ambitious and blow a good thing. I hope they continue their slow pace and keep putting out things slowly and carefully, and don't go the route so many others have.

I really hope you are right. And let's not forget that in spite of some pretty big changes in the industry, Chaosium have managed to stay in business for over three decades now so they are at least doing something right. I don't know how many companies started in the 70s are still around, but I doubt there are that many. So I have faith that now they have a little extra cash (I understand they got some for the Eternal Champion licenses) they will plod along much as they always have.

It's obviously impossible to try to predict the future or what their plans are for BRP and what mix of buying licenses, selling licenses, original settings, CoC they will have. I do think there will be PDFs to buy though.

It'll be interesting times though.

[Jarulf]

I do not think they would tie up resources in stock if they did not have a good track record of moving the stuff. GURPS may not have such a record.

I really couldn't say. I've not kept up with Chaosium for over a decade (I don't play CoC) and I'm new to GURPS but what you say sounds very likely.

I can't say that I have any knowledge of what sells for GURPS but frankly I can't recall ever wanting to play/run a GURPS adventure just wanting the details of the worldbooks/genre settings.

That's what I hear from a lot of people. They want the crunchy stuff (tech books etc) and the fluff (world books) and generally show little interest in adventures.

Better firearms rules, combat options; perhaps by genre, breaking, breaching, and destroying things, laying out the formulae so that GMs can figure out what it takes to break stuff that is not listed, making stuff in game by PCs etc.

Joseph Paul

These, I think, are all things that would probably work as PDFs, perhaps collated and updated at a later date into various books if they sell well.