Jarulf Posted December 16, 2008 Share Posted December 16, 2008 The way Outpost 19 is written and the way the background and setting are presented sparked my curiosity. Would people buy books (adventures, locations) that are reasonably detailed about the specific topic (presenting the adventure and location), but leave the larger background (the rest of "Known Space") somewhat vague? Books would use the same same implied setting (as decided by Chaosium, and obviously dependent on genre), maybe with connections to earlier books, but the larger details would be left alone. In a way it would be similar to the Thieves World books and similar shared world anthologies. Books, or rather PDFs could be pretty much any size from a 4 page Inn to 120 page overview of a city. I think this is something I'd be quite interested in seeing. I might not buy every book, but I'd definitely pick up some. I probably didn't explain this too well, I blame wine and the lateish hour, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harshax Posted December 16, 2008 Share Posted December 16, 2008 I certainly would. Quote And don't forget Realism Rule # 1 "If you can do it in real life you should be able to do it in BRP". - Simon Phipp Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rust Posted December 16, 2008 Share Posted December 16, 2008 I would buy "generic" or "semi-generic" adventures and campaign material, provided I could fit the material into my own setting without too much effort. In fact, this is what I plan to do with Outpost 19, and I am glad that its setting is "open" enough to enable me to fit it into my campaign easily. By the way, there is quite some "generic" science fiction location material available, from descriptions of starships or spaceports down to lists of fu- turistic weapons. Good adventures like Outpost 19, however, are very rare, and it would be nice to see more of that kind. Quote "Mind like parachute, function only when open." (Charlie Chan) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jarulf Posted December 17, 2008 Author Share Posted December 17, 2008 Sometimes I get the feeling that published settings provide almost too much information. While a lot of detail can be great (and often makes for eminently readable books) it can also be a bit much to digest on occasion. It can also make a specific adventure or setting harder to adapt to your own campaign if it differs much from canon. I doubt many buy Gloranthan adventures to run them in a different setting. But a more loosely defined world would allow writers more freedom (and less need for brushing up on obscure knowledge) to produce fun and useful material. At the same time, GMs and players would find it easier to adapt the books to their own campaigns. It would make writing books easier, hopefully resulting in more books that might have a wide appeal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tzunder Posted December 17, 2008 Share Posted December 17, 2008 Yes! Yes! and Yes! again. Simple, local, and with enough gaps at the edges to bolt it onto, under, over or next to another similarly small package, or even into a more detailed wider setting. It's the old D&D approach of building a world dungeon by dungeon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jarulf Posted December 17, 2008 Author Share Posted December 17, 2008 It's the old D&D approach of building a world dungeon by dungeon. I actually had the old Greyhawk pamphlet and various 1st ed AD&D modules in the back of my mind as I thought about this. There are companies that make both generic maps and old style dungeon crawl "modules" for download and/or POD, so there is probably a market for ready-to-run or almost ready-to-run products. Not that I have anything against the big detailed worlds, but as Chaosium is lacking in that respect this could be away for them to generate a few extra dollars (which means more stuff to buy for us). And making a new Glorantha isn't something you just sit down and do on a coffee break. And with a large selection of shorter cheaper books, I'd very likely spend more money at Chaosium than I do now. "Oh, a new nice looking little town book, 30 pages at $5. Yeah, sure worth a look." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ottomancer Posted December 17, 2008 Share Posted December 17, 2008 The monograph I am working on, Jovian Nightmares, although written primarily as a Call of Cthulhu supplement to support Cthulhu Rising, is deliberately structured so that if the mythos elements are removed (and this should be easy as I am trying to contain such stuff all in one Keepers-only chapter) then it could be used as a generic pseudo-hard sci-fi setting for BRP. I will be buying Outpost 19. I love sci-fi me, especially if written for BRP. :thumb: Quote River of Heaven - Science Fiction Roleplaying in the 28th Century http://riverofheaven.d101games.co.uk/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rust Posted December 17, 2008 Share Posted December 17, 2008 I love very detailed worlds, but I prefer the ones I built myself. Unfortunately my creativity is limited, and I like to offer my players background details in a "style" different from my own, something I would not have thought of. Therefore any "generic" material really would be most welcome as an option to make my setting more interesting and rich than I could create it on my own. Quote "Mind like parachute, function only when open." (Charlie Chan) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al. Posted December 17, 2008 Share Posted December 17, 2008 (edited) Cool adventures? An open setting? Isn't that what the old rpg magazines always promised us? And (with a couple of noticeable honourable exceptions) completely failed to deliver. I've spent £s on (old) White Dwarf, Adventurer, Last Province, GMI, Arcane looking for these. Will I buy Outpost 19? Hell yeah Will I buy The God Machine? Hell yeah Would I buy others? Hell yeah Would they be more interesting and useful than another quirky gameworld tm? Hell yeah Or a compilation of yet more rules which I'll only forget anyway? Hell yeah* Is that man spot on about too much tedious detail? Hell yeah Al * Plus I like the look of what SQs turning into and there's less to remember so if I do run with d100s it'll be with that and any rulesmods for BRP will be no use to me anyway Edited December 17, 2008 by Al. honesty Quote Rule Zero: Don't be on fire Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Newt Posted December 17, 2008 Share Posted December 17, 2008 Although not specifically for BRP, I'm designing the Shattered Lands and associated adventure books with this sort of fuzzyness in mind. Enough background if you want to run it in the native setting, but setting light that you can effortlessly translate it to your setting of choice. I went along this road because I'm getting frustrated with how closed some settings (I'm looking at you Glorantha) are getting these days. Not only does overdetailing the setting make it hard for GMs to adapt it, it also makes it hard to get into and kills off the joy of improvisation. Quote Head Honcho of D101 GamesPublisher of Crypts and Things/Monkey/OpenQuest/River of HeavenThe Sorcerer Under the Mountain Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jarulf Posted December 17, 2008 Author Share Posted December 17, 2008 Isn't that what the old rpg magazines always promised us? And (with a couple of noticeable honourable exceptions) completely failed to deliver Maybe something like this could be started outside of Chaosium (with their permission obviously) as a pdf/pod magazine focused on a few shared bare bones settings. For some reason I find myself looking directly at Nick and our Norwegian host. Magazines have been mentioned... Yes, yes, I know you're busy. If not a magazine, someone really should try to convince Dustin et al that this would be a good idea. What Ottomancer and Newt are doing with your respective books sounds very interesting too, and I is assume similar to Outpost 19 in that respect. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.