Ok so the question has been raised. Will this be open to all RPG’s or do I have one in particular system in mind? Origninally I was only thinking of Making it for DnD 3.5 as this is the system I am most familiar with.
However I don’t want to focre people to play a system of they don’t want to.
So I’m going to open it up for discussion. Please let me know if you think I should make it from one system or open it up for all systems.
Let me know why you think I should choose one way or the other,
Also if anyone has had experiance with creating both hoe much more effort is involved to do it for each method.
But most of all from a players point of view would you prefer to have a book that is focused on the one system and have it a little more tight, Or are you happy to lose a little of that tightness so you can have the freedom to use whichever system you like. (is there even a trade-off in respects to this?)
I personlly have not had anthing to do with a settings book which was open for all RPG’s so I would be flying blind, in doing this, but I’m open to the challange.
Your feed back is appreciated.
Ray Williams
5 Comments
I’d suggest writing the book as an open sourcebook. Instead of focusing on specific stats for creatures, include the politics of regions, the types of terrain, the stories that might be encountered.
Maybe make it like a travelogue, describing creatures in general terms…these herbivores are known to be swift, these predators have claws that can rip through an armoured warrior like an axe through a can of meat, these northerners are known for their ability to down copious quantities of an alcohol called “Scurd” which renders unconscious those with a lesser constitution.
You can offer hints of stories that can be told within the setting, and then anyone can apply your book to any system they might use. If you really want to, you could then offer a quick appendix at the back of the book to give some game specific information for a game you know, or provide ideas on how to convert your general information to a range of systems.
But that’s just my 2 cents.
Oh…P.S.
Have a look at The Morae River to see the kind of thing that I mean.
I would carefully consider your GOAL. Do you just want to share your world with lots of people? Or do you want lots of people to buy the product? Or do you want to create something that is standalone and useable?
I personally think you should pick a system and write for that. It will help focus your writing and design. If it is mostly background / setting then this shouldn’t be a massive deal to create other docs later. Check out Atomic Overmind Press for a company that does a lot of products for multiple rules systems. They alter the layout and feel to meet the expectations of the people playing each game and I think this is an important element for marketing. Be careful to choose a game system that supports the kind of play / mood / feel that you want for your game – Matt Wilson (head of Privateer Press) recently said that making their Iron Kingdoms setting a d20 prodcut caused some problems when trying to make the d20 magic system work the way their fiction described it.
These are just some of my thoughts. I hope they help.
Hi Ray,
It sounds like a cool idea. Though I’d be more inclined to make up my won game play mechanics. Even if they were based of something else. When ever I was trying to come up with a new play mechanic I always tried to think of how it would work in a story and base it from that.
Fore instance when my friend and I were designing a battle board game he wonted a system where mages had to “absorb magic from the world around them”. I suggested that they take that as there action for that fais and they would get a token, then magic spells would cost a cretin amount of tokens.
Although that’s just me. I do really like what Michael above had to say about describing things in general terms. It allows a GM to adapt your setting to any current system. So say two systems deal with “swiftness” in two different ways. Let’s say one has a dice roll and another uses movement points.
So both GMs will be thinking “well this thing is apparently fast” so one gives it a couple more dice for it to roll on it’s movement while the other gives the creature more movement points.
This way you are not limiting your audience. I think it would also end up being a lot simpler to create. Well that’s just what I’d do. Although you should know that I have the benefit of programming a computer to do all the dice rolling for me.
Thank for this,
I have thought about it a fair bit in the last couple of days and I think I will set it up to use the DnD 3.5 Rule set.
Every time I think about a creature I immediately think of skills or traits that it could have which relate directly back to this system. I think I will design it for 3.5 and then at a later date bring out some sort of conversion table to help dump the setting into other systems.