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It turns out that Elven is just Comic Sans. Weird!
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Mar 15, 2024 17:44
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hyphz posted:What winds me up most about this is when you need to give context to the negotiation so it's clear you actually have leverage, but that context is not sufficiently defined in the game world, so it becomes either a gimme or a stonewall from the GM based on how they fill the context in. As for idea I would probably pitch it like 'everyone roll Idea -> winner or highest winner gets it, possibly with a consolation note for separated parties -> if no winner, give a diluted version to the one who rolled highest, or lowest, or the most dramatically appropriate based on party comp.' (I.e. the actual archeologist would notice an archeology thing first) Obviously this does have the potential to break down but it seems to have the bracing air of fail-forward while still introducing some chaos, which I think is the real value of dice rolls: the element of the unknown. I'm sure if I had, or felt I had, a 'dice always gently caress me' curse, I would feel differently.
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Mar 15, 2024 17:45
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I understand that a unitary Intelligence score is extremely convenient for game design: I don't find that a convincing argument for using it, because it's fraught. I'll go back to the athletics example. Splicer posted:It all comes down to what ability scores are for in a system. If they're being added to the game to provide quick-build packages to help get your guy's baseline skeleton up and running using a few common archetypes for an intuitive baseline then having dials for The Muscle and Brains Of The Operation and Public Face and Second Story Man is a good way for people to quickly get a base character going. Yeah, like, if I'm making a character in ten minutes and my character concept is "an acrobat thief" and then in session 3 the GM and I suddenly need to know how well my character can swim, maybe I've thought about that or maybe I haven't. Maybe my background is that she grew up in a desert community, there are flash floods through the arroyos but nowhere else you might swim and trying to swim a flash flood is deadly stupid, so no, she hasn't got any ability to swim whatsoever. Or maybe she's just you know, from the city, is there a canal? Maybe she can swim great? I dunnoooo. Having a fall back skill or ability score is very convenient for us to leave it to the dice how well she can swim. But if I have thought about it, and I actually think my character shouldn't be able to swim, having a universal Athletics score that is based on my character's STR and/or DEX and she's got decent scores in both and I put points in Athletics because she's an acrobat thief then the maybe the game is actually taking away from my character concept: she literally is good at swimming, no matter what, because that's what the points on my sheet say. So those fallbacks are simultaneously convenient for filling out the edges with a character that you don't necessarily already know in detail or maybe only come up once every ten sessions at most and you just don't care. But they're also limitations, removing some flexibility from the game. It's OK to simplify with that understanding, in many cases, because doing so is a neutral decision. Intelligence is special IMO because of its massive baggage, though. I think it's always wrong to have a unitary intelligence score: those with "high INT" are good at too many different things that are actually unrelated, and can't be a believable person with different abilities; and much worsely so for those with a "low INT". In fact I think that score only really works when it's parked firmly in the average, so that characters can be variably decent or poor at various things depending on the dice or what the player spent on skills or feats or powers or whatever else the game system offers. I'm a DTAS guy, sure, but I can concede that sometimes that abstraction is useful mechanically: but I do not concede that that utility is sufficient excuse to keep doing the thing that both perpetuates and in many cases is used to justify a multi-century racism that is still alive and thriving all around us today. I believe there are a lot of game designers who have already come up with systems that don't tell us our characters have a singular score for brains, some have already been mentioned in the last two pages, and that quote:Calling them Ability Scores and labelling them Might, Smarts, Charisma, and Agility isn't going to inherently cause any problems actually, yeah, calling one of them Smarts, or Brains, or Intelligence, does inherently cause problems. I agree very strongly with this: quote:E: lost track of the original point: yes, the concept of a single track sliding scale of "intelligence" is a dumb oversimplification, but determining the minimum level of complexity required for what your game is trying to do is a huge chunk of good game design. Sometimes a bunch of adjectives with numbers beside them is a perfectly acceptable simplification - assuming you're not being all WIS 8 about it. Let's encourage game designers to find simplifications that don't perpetuate this harmful idea. I firmly believe in the creativity and capacity for innovation among our game designer friends, that they can accomplish such a thing, for any game concept. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Mar 15, 2024 |
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Mar 15, 2024 17:56
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I guess you have to turn the question back to be 'what's the purpose of the Intelligence stat?' Like in your intended gameplay environment, what does it do. This is actually, I think, quite a bit harder than doing it for STR/DEX/CON equivalents, because while that divide is arbitrary, you're encompassing the broad space of 'manipulate objects, engage in violence, resist harm/disease/poison'.
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Mar 15, 2024 18:07
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Pendragon, famously, has no INT stat, and so is objectively The Best Game (for this and many other reasons). Instead it has 13 sets of paired personality traits that determine just how dumb you are (and how much trouble you get yourself into) in any situation. Relatedly, the 6E rulebook and first adventure module (an updated version of The Grey Knight) should be coming out in about a month.
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Mar 15, 2024 18:10
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Nessus posted:For the first one I'm not sure of the context, but I'm imagining it's something like describing your approach briefly. 'I simper at them with my Grifter ability' vs. 'I fraudulently present myself as the wallet inspector with my Conman ability' etc. This is easier in a CRPG where you could just program in the results of various forms of treachery and roll the dice. I mean, it's also easier in a CRPG because the deception dialog is written by the game author and there's usually a tacit assumption that if the menu offers the option to "present myself as the wallet inspector" with a roll indicated, that you're not going to select it and be told that the roll was difficulty 1000 because there is no such thing as a wallet inspector in this world. I mean, that's a bit of a futile example that's easy to work around, but it's when typically an badly written adventure module will try to have a PC negotiate with an emissary from another nation and the player naturally wants to ask the stuff a diplomat would need to know, like "how do we trade with these guys?" "what military threats are they under and how are they prepared?", etc, etc. Answering all those can be difficult, and answering all those without giving an overly obvious path to success, or no path to success, is even harder.
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Mar 15, 2024 18:21
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How popular is the dune online board game treachery dot come or whatever? Is there a dune 2019 thread? I looked 3 pages deep in trad games and the other games sub forum and didnt see anything on Dune.
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Mar 15, 2024 18:47
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Online/computer games are mostly discussed in Games rather than TG, although there's definitely overlap and for example traditional board games played on a virtual tabletop are usually discussed here in TG. It's rare for a single game to have its own thread, most of the time you're looking for the category that game is in, for example the board games thread; or if it's an RPG, sometimes the publisher of that RPG has a thread for all the games they publish. Sometimes it's a subcategory, for example solo RPGs, or RPGs about lord of the rings. You're right that there's no "Dune games" thread. The Dune 2019 board game has been discussed in, and is a favorite of, the board games thread treachery.online I have no idea if it's discussed anywhere in TG but you could ask abut it in the boardgame thread since it looks like sorta an implementation of a board game, maybe? What is it?
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Mar 15, 2024 18:57
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kneelbeforezog posted:How popular is the dune online board game treachery dot come or whatever? Is there a dune 2019 thread? I looked 3 pages deep in trad games and the other games sub forum and didnt see anything on Dune. The Dune thread is on page 4 currently.
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Mar 15, 2024 18:58
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that dune boardgame thread died pretty quick, and I see recent discussion of the game in the boardgame thread, but yeah it's fine to resurrect it if you want
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Mar 15, 2024 19:15
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FMguru posted:Pendragon, famously, has no INT stat, and so is objectively The Best Game (for this and many other reasons). I'm hesitating on getting 6e stuff cause I got all the big campaign stuff for 5e already.
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Mar 15, 2024 20:06
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Nessus posted:I guess you have to turn the question back to be 'what's the purpose of the Intelligence stat?' Like in your intended gameplay environment, what does it do. This is actually, I think, quite a bit harder than doing it for STR/DEX/CON equivalents, because while that divide is arbitrary, you're encompassing the broad space of 'manipulate objects, engage in violence, resist harm/disease/poison'.
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Mar 15, 2024 22:33
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I had a weird idea recently while working on my Dicey Fate Project. My first Dicey Fate game in development, Wild Hunt, uses an original setting that is inspired by RWBY but has elements of Dark Souls, S-Cry-Ed, Dune, and such. It is also very LGBTQA+. It's not a good setting, but it is a setting and there is some narrative fiction included. On it's own, it's my common problem of not having enough follow-through to really flesh one out. However, Peter Watts, author of Blindsight, put all of his novels on Creative Commons, non-commercial, attribution. He credits this to his success and ability to avoid irrelevance as the spread of his novel grew his appeal. Thus, it makes me wonder if I did something that I have personally never heard of before: a creative commons RPG setting. It would be commercial, attribution, sharealike. I'd give up my ownership of Wild Hunt and give it to the community. People would be free to make their own commercial products in the setting with the caveat that I had to be credit AND their writing also must be creative commons, attribution, sharealike. In theory, this could (if anyone cared) create a naturally web of things growing as those who like the game can freely and commercially make their own additions -- whether game supplements or otherwise -- with the caveat that they also have to contribute to the growing web of this setting. It could be seen as exploitative as it would be using the community to grow the game in a way that benefits me. But, since I allow you to sell your own stuff, you do make your own money and it's not like I own your stuff, everyone does. What do y'all think about that?
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Mar 16, 2024 02:48
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I believe there are projects like that, although most of them seem to be systems rather than settings? There are certainly quite a few indie games that have released CC SRDs to allow people to create derivative projects. My other thought is that it feels like you need to have some kind of major following or draw to make these things get off the ground. Established creators can do it because they're established, but I've also seen people drop projects like this and just have nobody show up.
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Mar 16, 2024 03:02
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Antivehicular posted:I believe there are projects like that, although most of them seem to be systems rather than settings? There are certainly quite a few indie games that have released CC SRDs to allow people to create derivative projects. Oh, I've released systems before. I did that with MHR and FEV. You are right. No one showed up. But, CC is nonrevocable so it doesn't bother me. If it ever does happen, its there. As for the setting, it'd be interesting to make something new out of it. Collaborative world building. My publisher has been talking about trying out kickstarters. That might help spur things if I offer it as a thing on the KS. Might give it a traction.
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Mar 16, 2024 03:05
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Eclipse Phase 1e and Esoteric Enterprises are Creative Commons. They both have dedicated followings but there was not a huge explosion of fan books following the release of either game. Eclipse Phase had some great fan-adventures like those on the Path of Totality site and everything on Farcast, but no commercial products that would create an organically growing web like what you want. Mothership and Mork Borg have created ecosystems like the one you're describing, but neither of them are Creative Commons. There is the related question of whether other people will be inspired by your setting and write stuff for it. How many people have expressed interest in the game as it currently exists?
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Mar 16, 2024 03:11
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mellonbread posted:Eclipse Phase 1e and Esoteric Enterprises are Creative Commons. They both have dedicated followings but there was not a huge explosion of fan books following the release of either game. Eclipse Phase had some great fan-adventures like those on the Path of Totality site and everything on Farcast, but no commercial products that would create an organically growing web like what you want. People have, but I haven't marketed it a lot yet but it is like not coming out until 2026. We Dig Giant Robots releases this year. Petmon next year. Wild Hunt is slated for 2025 to 2026. But, the people I've told thought it was cool. It runs on the same engine as Magnificent Heroic Roleplaying but with a lot of tweaks like more detailed powers, lore sheets, and a bunch of other stuff. I have been slowly trying to build hype for dicey fate with MHR by talking to people dissapointed with Cortex and talking to them about it. Got interest but nothing intense. A lot of people really grateful but all of them saying they aren't interested in their own publishing at the moment.
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Mar 16, 2024 03:14
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mellonbread posted:Eclipse Phase 1e and Esoteric Enterprises are Creative Commons. They both have dedicated followings but there was not a huge explosion of fan books following the release of either game. Eclipse Phase had some great fan-adventures like those on the Path of Totality site and everything on Farcast, but no commercial products that would create an organically growing web like what you want. Eclipse Phase’s CC NC-BY-SA license didn’t allow derivative commercial products. All fan books would necessarily have to be freely distributed, which is not really any different from the usual tradition of fansplats shared on forums and hosted on Web 1.0 websites.
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Mar 16, 2024 07:12
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FMguru posted:Pendragon, famously, has no INT stat, and so is objectively The Best Game (for this and many other reasons). Someone in the industry thread was talking about an essay they were doing on how psychological issues and mental health are portrayed in RPGs (as a rule, very badly!) and how they relate to genre emulation (also as a rule very badly despite thinking they're doing it well!) and Pendragon not even trying to be in the slightest 'realistic' beyond genre emulation of your knight having a fit because he thought about a girl he likes too much or not enough or something and running off naked into the woods, to be found about a year later having been taken care of and/or had adventures with a kind maiden, a wise old hermit and/or the fairies. Because Pendragon's personality trait rules are built around knights being massive drama queens all the time, of course.
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Mar 16, 2024 07:25
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Leperflesh posted:I understand that a unitary Intelligence score is extremely convenient for game design: I don't find that a convincing argument for using it, because it's fraught. So, starting over and shortening and taking into account that points 1 and 2 are deliberately abbreviated to get them out of the way: 1) You don't like ability scores as a concept, but that's not your main point. Agree to disagree (also you're using "DTAS" wrong). 2) You are not arguing that oversimplification of, grouping, or forced assignment of skillsets for the sake of gameplay is inherently bad. You wouldn't object on principle to a skill called "mathematics" even though mental arithmetic and mathematical theory are two extremely different "real world" skillsets, or to all Fighters getting Athletics as a standard skill if it's required for their class to function. 3) You're not claiming that the concepts of "Leonardo DaVinci, pretty smart guy" or "Bob is a fuckwit" were invented out of whole cloth in 1912. 4) You are, accurately, claiming the skillsets and capabilities that were specifically categorised as counting as intelligence for the "Intelligence Quotient" test were (and still are) chosen and tweaked and manipulated so the "right" people get the good numbers. 5) Because of point 4, cultural well poisoning means any ability score called "intelligence" is going to be inherently based around racist ideologies, no matter how unintentionally by the game designer. 6) The cultural well is so thoroughly poisoned that splitting up mental stats into any kind of "makes sense" categories is going to go badly. Cultural inertia means that even a very well meaning attempt is likely to end up with some variant of "Rational, Intellectual Colonialist vs The Wise Savage", regardless of the specific adjectives used, and even if the author somehow manages to avoid that mechanically, the same cultural inertia means that any actual play is just one bad day away from reverting to it anyway. 6) Given points 4 to 6 mean that trying to divvy up the entirety of humanity's mental landscape into 2 to 4 neat packages is a bit of a minefield, and given that there's so many alternatives (ranging from the PBTA & BitD ability scores equivalents, pendragon's setup, to class based systems, to point-buy systems with pre-built packages, to DTAS'ed D&D's Class + Background + Archetype + Redesigned Feats deal), then the obvious conclusion is to just... not do that. Have I got you right? Because if so then yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Splicer fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Mar 16, 2024 |
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Mar 16, 2024 14:04
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LatwPIAT posted:Eclipse Phase’s CC NC-BY-SA license didn’t allow derivative commercial products. All fan books would necessarily have to be freely distributed, which is not really any different from the usual tradition of fansplats shared on forums and hosted on Web 1.0 websites. I was curious about that after they said it was CC. Because, to be honest, if it was 100% CC, then frankly I'd sell a book in the Eclipse Phase universe, tbf. I bought that book when it was free. It's a cool setting and I'd happily make poo poo for it. I never bought 2nd edition. Not sure if it's good or not. Hear mixed things, but I did hear it fixed the action economy b.s. in 1e where you could make yourself get extra actions.
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Mar 16, 2024 15:17
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Covok posted:I was curious about that after they said it was CC. Because, to be honest, if it was 100% CC, then frankly I'd sell a book in the Eclipse Phase universe, tbf. I bought that book when it was free. It's a cool setting and I'd happily make poo poo for it. I never bought 2nd edition. Not sure if it's good or not. Hear mixed things, but I did hear it fixed the action economy b.s. in 1e where you could make yourself get extra actions. Eclipse Phase 2e manages to be a bad game in entirely new and unique ways.
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Mar 16, 2024 17:19
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Covok posted:Thus, it makes me wonder if I did something that I have personally never heard of before: a creative commons RPG setting. 1) They were group projects from SA or 4chan's TG boards, and thus never remotely reached a "finished" state as the groups squabbled over drafts, forked, and disbanded 2) Content availability was a slapdash mix of wiki stubs, drafts put up on free file sharing sites that limited downloads or deleted over time, and warring "releases" only available from IRC/Discord/etc bots None of which particularly mattered, because 3) The ones I saw were all meant as All of which is I guess a long winded way to say "I've seen it tried, but never seen it tried well"
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Mar 16, 2024 18:10
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Splicer posted:Even that's not starting early enough. It goes "Game need -> design element". Sometimes after adding a design element you may want to find additional uses for it, but if you're designing anything, game or otherwise, and you've added an element and /then/ started working out what to do with it you've already hosed up. Post-hoc design is bad design. To use another example from my increasingly questionable memory, I recall the Leverage RPG gave you stats in the form of Cortex dice for the five 'archetypes' of the show's cast: Mastermind, Grifter, Hacker, Thief, Hitter. All of these encompass some degree of mental exercise but they have at least more delineation: understanding a security system would fall under Thief and Hacker, but likely not Grifter.
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Mar 16, 2024 19:28
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Nessus posted:I can see various cognitive capacities being very important in a game that is ultimately about detective stuff, either directly (the curiously underserved space of mysteries, although I suppose that requires the module writer to write a mystery) or indirectly (Call of Cthulhu et al.) No, you don't need to have stats for "cognitive capabilities" in a detective game. In fact, doing so would be both thematically and mechanically wrong. Gumshoe (and Trail of Cthulhu) already exist if you want an example of how you would model investigative skills in a detective game.
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Mar 16, 2024 20:22
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I have yet to see a system surpass Tri-Stat. Body Mind Soul Vast potential of up to 12, meet your potential by rolling under the curve that your value represents. Option to use skills to manipulate potential. It overly simplifies everything that it manages to create excellent potential for role playing while offering some unique considerations of what intelligence is. Is it based on intuition? Is that mind or intuition for soul? I think this whole debate is stuck on mechanics when it should be contextualized in world. Dnd forces lack of context and it feels weird if you actually question the rules. Simple means a neat tiny debate. But I guess in the end I’m making the system matters argument.
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Mar 16, 2024 20:49
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Going off of memory (and as a player, not ST), the 1e rules for Panty Explosion (later Tokyo Brain Pop) represented all of your stats via Blood Type and the Godai, making literally every roll into an exercise in bullshitting that what you were doing made sense for your character to do astrologically. We also managed to lock the system at one point by killing enough of the cast, Carrie-style, that "during the recurring popularity votes to determine the [whatever terms were most/meh/least] pecking order, the creepy psychic girl must always lose even if the ST has to cheat" was impossible to make true, at which point we quit [Edit: the "your ingame BFF dictates how successes happen, your ingame rival dictates failures" system was inspired, admittedly. Also probably a group ruiner in certain dynamics.] AmiYumi fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Mar 16, 2024 |
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Mar 16, 2024 21:10
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Lemon-Lime posted:No, you don't need to have stats for "cognitive capabilities" in a detective game. In fact, doing so would be both thematically and mechanically wrong. e: Like to be clear, this is 'oh this is why I didn't think of Gumshoe/TOC' -- the one time I had a fair shot at learning it in action, I did not succeed in so doing, whether due to the GM's errors or simply that I was not at my best that Friday morning at Origins. Thinking back, the first hour or so of the slot was character creation, which also may have been a bad call there -- in my personal opinion, if the point of the sesh isn't 'learn the game' you probably want to provide premades for a con game. Nessus fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Mar 16, 2024 |
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Mar 16, 2024 21:21
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AmiYumi posted:Admittedly, I have seen a few of these before - to my knowledge, none of them particularly caught on. A number of reasons spring to mind: I feel none of these apply here. 1) I am not a 4chan and I don't goon anymore. I don't plan to goon to make this happen. I'm not looking to goon. Gooning is a waste of time in project development. I'll make a finished product myself and sell it to a publisher. 2) It will release on DTRPG and Itchi.io. With no plans to take it down. Being CC also means copy and distribution will keep it trucking. 3) It is not a D&D setting. It is a world where mankind tried to solve death with tech and made it so no one dies...they just eventually give in to their worst emotions and become Reapers, mindless ravaging monsters. The first Wild Hunt ended in a nuclear explosion that ended the world. But, since men were immortal, they reformed from Dust and rebuilt. The Age of Kingdoms rose...and fell to war. War made Reapers and the Second Wild Hunt. The School that made Hunters took over as people fled to them for safety after the Kingdom's fell. Now, everyone lives around the Four Great Schools. They are guarded by people who suffer to unlock their Awakening and train to master it and their transforming ranged/melee weapons called Armis. The Great Schools are varied from the metropolitan High Tower to the desert of Desolation and so on. Advanced tech remains even though mankind has forgotten their past so there is tech and robots and androids. Everyone stops aging at 50 and lives forever...until they eventually suffer too much and break becoming Reapers. The world is on the backfoot. The Faculty of the Great Schools hid a great secret to maintain their power. That Reapers aren't forever or inevitable. That people can be helped past the process through helping them learn how to control themselves again and learning this in life can even lead to transcedence to a state where mankind cam exist indefinitely. But why reveal that and lose their power over the people? Edit: In short, to clarify, this is me MAKING something enirely myself and then letting people do whatever they wish with it, including commercially. Covok fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Mar 16, 2024 |
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Mar 16, 2024 21:53
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Covok posted:I don't goon anymore. I don't plan to goon to make this happen. I'm not looking to goon. Gooning is a waste of time in project development.
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Mar 16, 2024 22:00
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I just realized Obsidian.md can link to specific pages in a PDF and I feel like I just leveled up my GM note-taking skills by an order of magnitude, if not my GM skills as whole.
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Mar 16, 2024 22:03
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Nessus posted:Extremely true Not gonna lie, I was completely aware of what I was doing.
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Mar 16, 2024 22:22
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Covok posted:Not gonna lie, I was completely aware of what I was doing.
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Mar 16, 2024 22:27
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Nessus posted:This makes sense, although I suppose you are further back than I was. I can see various cognitive capacities being very important in a game that is ultimately about detective stuff, Like, start thinking of a detective game. Presumably you're emulating the detective genre. Let's say it's a Sherlock Holmes style genius + normal-but-still-capable people setup. You don't need to track the difference between +2 smarts and +3 smarts in that because PC "mental capacities" are either Sherlock or Not Sherlock. Everything after that is skills. Let's say it's more of a CSI deal - well, everyone there is "smart", they just have different skills. You might have one guy with a "photographic memory" power as their gimmick but there's no need to go down the route of "I have +3 to spatial reasoning" when "I'm trained in crime scene analysis" is much more straightforward. That's what I mean - start designing your project and add components as you discover you need them. If you decide you're probably going to need a component before you've even started then odds are you're going to end up warping your project to accommodate the component rather than using the actual best components for your goal. Splicer fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Mar 16, 2024 |
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Mar 16, 2024 23:16
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Splicer posted:Why though? I suppose due to long habituation I was thinking in the terms of games which are relatively broad 'simulators' like Call of Cthulhu or Cyberpunk, as opposed to designing from the ground up.
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Mar 16, 2024 23:43
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Covok posted:Thus, it makes me wonder if I did something that I have personally never heard of before: a creative commons RPG setting. It would be commercial, attribution, sharealike. I'd give up my ownership of Wild Hunt and give it to the community. People would be free to make their own commercial products in the setting with the caveat that I had to be credit AND their writing also must be creative commons, attribution, sharealike. In theory, this could (if anyone cared) create a naturally web of things growing as those who like the game can freely and commercially make their own additions -- whether game supplements or otherwise -- with the caveat that they also have to contribute to the growing web of this setting. World of Near is a CC-licensed standalone fantasy setting, carved off of Clinton Nixon’s The Shadow of Yesterday by Eero Tuovinen. He added a bunch of material from various authors that built on the original. I haven’t read it in a while but I recall it was pretty decent. I searched on Creative Commons fantasy settings and got another couple of hits on worlds that didn’t go anywhere. Thanlis fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Mar 17, 2024 |
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Mar 17, 2024 00:16
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Splicer posted:Why though? You're absolutely right, the problem lies in that people are trying to make an all in one system that can adapt to anything. I imagine that, back in the 70s, the 6 stats worked because they all more or less agreed on the abstraction they were using. As someone mentioned up thread, int was just magic smarts. And considering the vancian source, it's obvious that int was the closest way they felt they could mechanize the brain space to carry more spells than others. But those wizards were also in great physical shape and wielded swords too. There's a reason rogues didn't exist in the first run, because they didn't need a class to do those things, it was assumed that these dungeon divers could all do that. Once the abstraction was deemed too broad we get this break down into further granularity until you have charisma meaning the ability to use magic through sheer force of personality but also lol nat 20 to seduce a dragon. Making a universal system is a pipe dream unless you're doing a GURPS or AGE method where you have a core that slots different skins on top for different themes. But even that has its own struggles. The modern indie scene has given each genre more room to experiment, and the relative success the Blade and Apocalypse engines show there are ways to operate outside that traditional ideology. The drawback is that the system only works for that setting or that game. You can't pull Blades in the Dark's core and apply it to high adventure fantasy because it wasn't meant for that. You can probably take its core and modify it to suit that genre, but you'd have to sacrifice its ability to represent other genres. And that's fine? It just requires a lot of work and buy in to make that happen. And too often a slap dash of D&D is "good enough" for most people.
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Mar 17, 2024 00:18
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Thanlis posted:World of Near is a CC-licensed standalone fantasy setting, carved off of Clinton Nixon’s The Shadow of Yesterday by Eero Tuovinen. He added a bunch of material from various authors that built on the original. I haven’t read it in a while but I recall it was pretty decent. Your link isn't working. But also, that's awesome. I wish I could ask him how it went.
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Mar 17, 2024 00:28
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Vaults of Vaarn is CC. https://graculusdroog.itch.io/ https://vaultsofvaarn.com/about/ https://vaarn.github.io/#/ It seems to have worked out for the creator: https://www.patreon.com/vaultsofvaarn https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joello/the-shrike-0
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Mar 17, 2024 01:33
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Oh, this is cool. I didn't know other people gave settings out for free. That is awesome! I think I will contribute to this trend.
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Mar 17, 2024 02:29
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