The Murderbot short was too little. Looking forward to the novel coming out soon.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Question: Aside from D&D what other TTRPG do you most enjoy playing, or wish you could play?
The last time I played a game other than D&D (and that means "rules set from") was probably J's Champions game, so easily seven or eight years ago. Playtested a lot of things, but I was more "helping out" than really interested or invested.
Part of the reason for that is the whole "you can use whatever rules you like for whatever kind of game you like" mindset I had learned by the mid 90's. TSR's Marvel Super Heroes Role Playing was probably my favorite alternate system of all time, I liked some of the things around the WoD stuff, but it was also very much not my scene, and despite my *****iness, I like D&D, lol.
MSHAS, Paranoia, a seriously kitbashed version of Mechwarrior/Battletech were my major faves, but I have a well known distaste for "official published worlds" (pretty sure even all'ya have figured that one out, lol) and never really enjoyed a lot of the stuff we played and tried out for years.
MSHAS is "gone", and the creative mechanics for it have been dusted (which is a shame), BT/MW is a mess but also everyone sorta fell out of the make your own giant robot mode, and Paranoia is good about once every year -- maybe, if They aren't listening.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Question: Aside from D&D what other TTRPG do you most enjoy playing, or wish you could play?
Going to steal my answer from a similar question...
I think I've played in just about every setting I could imagine. Back in the 80s - I was in everything from D&D, to Marvel, Star Wars, Champions, Shadow Run, Boothill, Dragonlance, Dark Sun, you name it - if it was an RPG in the 80s I played it at least six times. I've run Marvel, D&D, Star Wars, Star Frontiers (I miss this setting, though 5e pretty much has now made almost everything), and Dragonlance. But mostly, I've always run my homebrew world which has evolved immensely since late 1980.
And to add to that...
One game, I remember enjoying - though I ran it far, far, far more than I played it - was the ElfQuest RPG. I, however, when I ran it - added quite a few "monsters" - because the one thing the ElfQuest RPG suffered from was lack of variety. If you were an elf, and let's face it, you were going to be, more than likely - your potential for a "monster manual" consisted of humans, trolls, and potentially other elves. (And trolls in ElfQuest are nothing like your standard D&D troll - they're actually intelligent, speak, and pretty normal). There were a few animals, and they gave an example of magic influenced animals gone wrong, such as Madcoil.
But I went through the monster manual and made ElfQuest versions of dinosaurs, displacer beasts, owlbears, etc., that could fit the ElfQuest world so that there was way more variety.
When the game first came out - because character sheets are clunky as Hades (imagine - your Spear skill might be: STR + DEX / 2 if you're one kind of Elf, while if you're a different kind of elf, it might be STR + DEX +2 or something)... so I'd made a dice roller that worked in DOS. I redesigned it later to allow creating custom elves. And then a few years back, worked with a guy I know to get it to work on modern Windows. It, along with maps of the world, character sheets, etc., are all on my EQ Dice Roll site.
But another game I absolutely loved - and would love to play it again is Star Frontiers. I bought all the books and modules for that, and have even imported some of those monsters into my D&D campaign. My party fears the sand sharks. (Sharks that swim in sand, like it's water!)
I also enjoyed Dragonlance back then - but I am currently playing in the 5e Dragonlance campaign - this time as a White Robed Wizard (my original character for 2e D&D was a Kender which I immensely loved).
Question: Aside from D&D what other TTRPG do you most enjoy playing, or wish you could play?
I adore Pathfinder (for the most part. There are a few issues, but every game has those), but the game I really would love to get some game time with is Dread. It’s a horror game that uses a jenga tower in favor of dice and the only mechanic is that knocking over the tower means you die (or are similarly removed from play). Pulling out a piece is like rolling a die, and failure has terrible consequences!
I also love the old school games Shadowdark and DCC RPG. If I had to pick one favorite game out of all the games I’ve mentioned, it would be DCC. Beautiful art, great old school feel, and I own so many books for it. (Coming up on 100!)
Other than that, I’ve picked up a fan-made series of an old favorite tv show, Psych, and I’ve been doing deep reading to help with lore, worldbuilding, and general how-tos of many very narrow subjects. I’m also completing a reread of Brandon Sanderson’s works, which has gone on far too long now.
You can never really read too much Sanderson, though.
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Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
This has probably been said before, but are you currently reading any books? If so, which one/s?
I just read Animal Farm, and have just started 1984. Be wary, BB (BoringBard) is watching you!
There is also a Brandon Sanderson book, Mistborn, that I have started and need to continue.
I love Mistborn! The third book is mind-blowingly awesome, especially if Mistborn is your first Cosmere series.
He is a great author. I have read Elantris, which was awesome, but I haven’t read any of his other books yet. Mistborn looks really good and I really need to continue it.
This has probably been said before, but are you currently reading any books? If so, which one/s?
I just read Animal Farm, and have just started 1984. Be wary, BB (BoringBard) is watching you!
There is also a Brandon Sanderson book, Mistborn, that I have started and need to continue.
I love Mistborn! The third book is mind-blowingly awesome, especially if Mistborn is your first Cosmere series.
He is a great author. I have read Elantris, which was awesome, but I haven’t read any of his other books yet. Mistborn looks really good and I really need to continue it.
Yeah for the most part, they just keep getting better.
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Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
Question: Aside from D&D what other TTRPG do you most enjoy playing, or wish you could play?
I wanna play Mausritter and the Dying Earth RPG. I think I've mentioned them both before.
Anybody ever play Edge of the Empire? I remember thinking, wow, what a cool system, but also, why did they turn Star Wars into D&D? Star Wars isn't about skirmish tactics. Luke never had to whittle down a storm trooper's HP. You would never describe Chewbacca in terms of his critical hit range or armor penetration.
Anybody ever play Edge of the Empire? I remember thinking, wow, what a cool system, but also, why did they turn Star Wars into D&D? Star Wars isn't about skirmish tactics. Luke never had to whittle down a storm trooper's HP. You would never describe Chewbacca in terms of his critical hit range or armor penetration.
I did. The game lasted... like six sessions?
Had some fun aspects - like character point stories every session, determined by a dice roll.
So it helps keep it feeling like a story.
However, I hated the dice. I hated the custom dice. And the symbols. Made the game way too complex.
I am sure if you play long enough - you can get to remember what the dice roll means. What three stars means versus two stars.
I am a big proponent of setting matching the system in some ways and not so much in others.
to me, a good system doesn't need 10k rules.The more rules there are, the more likely it is going to become tied tot h setting, and more deely those rules begin to intersect.
A good system just gives you the basics, and does it in less than 100 pages, and *then* it adds in the stuff that fits the setting in particular. The basics aren't hard: a way to resolve a conflict, a way to resolve an action, a way to resolve a task, a way to progress.
When you write a basic story, you often don't have a full bible to support it -- you have the outline, the rough draft of something, perhaps just a few scattered notes on a napkin. I have seen students become despondent and lost because they couldn't somehow come up with some kind of all mighty world bible like Tolkien, known folks who spent thousands on very world building tool and book and program.
Most don't understand emotionally things like how middle earth was literally forty years of work by the time it became actually popular (because it wasn't popular when it came out). They look to some of the modern authors whose work is large and big and they think "i want something that developed" without realizing that in most cases, it developed as it was written as a story. Star Wars is a great example, because Star Wars was created by one guy who wrote a 50 page bible 20 years after writing a 12 page outline because he made enough money on Star Wars to make a couple more movies.
Star trek had more stuff going into its first season in terms of world building than Star Wars would have a decade later, and even it has far less world building than exists in some of the homebrew worlds people have talked about here.
This is part of why there was such a huge push in the mid 80's to create "the ultimate game rules" -- and why that same kind of thinking continues today. A universal system, a single system that will allow you to do it all! So into each one they cram as much as they can...
I have always thought it was backwards to do it that way. You create a system you like, or find one you enjoy using, that fits with your style and way of doing things. And then you build onto that system the stuff you need for the world -- each world, each time, treating it like it was a whole new thing -- but I also have found that for a lot of folks, they have one world in them, and others have hundreds.
It does create inertia in game design, but that's nothing new. It means a lot of work for each world, but that's not anything new either. One of the biggest complaints about 5e and the classes isn't really that they have become superheroes, though that's the convenient way to express it, lol.
It is that they have become more and more and more attached to a given setting. Classes are the core rules of the Game -- and the system is "supposed to" work for our own worlds, but if they create a class or subclass, that subclass now "has to work" on a world that may not even be remotely capable of supporting it in lore.
Sure, folks can say "we don't allow these classes", but that then wrecks the nature of introduction to play. It limits the players options (and I am not about limiting player options, I am about giving them options they don't fully understand so they can learn them and have a different kind of experience). WHich, in turn, reinforces the shift towards the default setting.
And that *works*, business wise. It also isn't wrong in many ways -- but they keep narrowing it down, and the emergence of VTT has done even more to do that, to enforce that (ever try to add in a complex house rule set to a standard 5e game on Roll20? or others? If they allow it, you have to approach it from the point of view and understanding of someone else -- the programmers, specifically -- and their point of reference was the existing rules and systems, and that means there is a challenge there, because if you opt for some reason to use a different basis from the one they were familiar with, you cannot insert the rule.
And that's ignoring the whole five hundred steps (exaggerated) process to do so.
It all works to slowly chip away at the underlying idea of "make it your own" -- because you can make FR your own! Right? So yan completely change he maps and raze all the cities and build all new mountain ranges and new countries and get rid of the red wizards of thay and and -- oh, wait, you can't do that, because players want to play in FR?
because they know that they can use all the subclasses there, and all the stuff that wasn't *your own*...
And so that's how it works.
I think I have played probably every game that came out between 1981 and 2003. I was game master for a lot of them, but not all. Some I was just a player in. I am a mechanics nerd (not a rules nerd, but a systems nerd, the ways the game operates). So I like some of the coo, ideas, lol, and have no problem porting them over. Completing my dice collection to run in evens from d4 to d30 was a cool thing to me -- one of those fist pump moments that is absolutely hilarious when looked at from outside the context.
I have used D&D rules (1e, 2e, 5e) to play every single genre of game you can think of. I enjoyed doing a D&D Chthulu set up way more than CoC, because I could do more within the systems of D&D than I could within the CoC system. I've run modern day games, cyberpunk games, vampire and werewolf, the whole list.
I have done the same with MSHAS (i still wish I had some of my tables I built for that).
I do pause and take back the one. I was never able to use D&D with BattleTech / Mechwarrior type stuff. I got hung up on using a class system, and it wasn't until I had long moved past it that I realized I should have used the mechs for the classes, not a job style role. I did use MSHAS for it, though -- not a long campaign, but it was a fun one. Blew up a moon.
So it becomes about thinking in terms of game rules not as a genre, but as a way to make a genre come to life, and that's apparently very difficult for a lot of folks -- D&D is never going to escape the "medieval fantasy" genre thinking, lol, and that's ok.
With Spelljammer and Planescape, they will have mostly finished mining existing work. It should be interesting to see where they go next.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Star trek had more stuff going into its first season in terms of world building than Star Wars would have a decade later, and even it has far less world building than exists in some of the homebrew worlds people have talked about here.
I know this is an example of the point you're trying to make - but this was a bad example. Since Star Trek was a show before it was a movie, it had many episodes to "world build" (as you put it, but it was really always the same - random planet help, Kirk hooks up with alien lady, conflict resolved, Enterprise moves on) - where as Star Wars (back then) was just three hour movies. So yes, it would be easier to world build on an episodic show vs a movie.
Star Wars was better before all the world building. The version that made it to film for A New Hope had basically the perfect amount. It was all built on vibes and references, not some complex web of internal logic. It successfully created the illusion of depth with writing and design, the same way it did visually with its matte paintings. Then they just kept building onto it and it got worse and worse, to the point where these days, I can't bring myself to care about anything that comes out of the official Star Wars brand.
I really like the character class trees in EotE. They're like skill trees in a video game. They're neat, and there's rules for multiclassing (idk if they're fair or not, but at least they're core). You put points into them pretty frequently I think. And you don't have enough to unlock everything.
Star trek had more stuff going into its first season in terms of world building than Star Wars would have a decade later, and even it has far less world building than exists in some of the homebrew worlds people have talked about here.
I know this is an example of the point you're trying to make - but this was a bad example. Since Star Trek was a show before it was a movie, it had many episodes to "world build" (as you put it, but it was really always the same - random planet help, Kirk hooks up with alien lady, conflict resolved, Enterprise moves on) - where as Star Wars (back then) was just three hour movies. So yes, it would be easier to world build on an episodic show vs a movie.
Well, specifically I was referencing the Show Bible that was created for the first episode (the failed pilot). "What's a Phaser?" "What's Warp Drive?" -- basic stuff. In order for writers room to function -- even on an episodic basis like that -- they needed the commonality -- the world of the characters -- to have a foundation that all writers used. According to Gerrold, it was just barely enough, and mostly written by Fontana, lol, so not a surprise, but yeah.
Lucas did put a lot of thought into Star Wars during dev, bt for him it was a straight shot film, desert to death star, no fat, no padding, and he never went into a lot of depth on The Force until he went into dev for Empire, because everyone expected SW to be a middle road blink and gone fun film for kids.
But you are right to a lot of what I was saying -- Star Wars had nothing when it started, Star Trek had a little more, and 50 and 60 years later they are immense systems with tons of world building and instant recognition and both are seeing firm hardening of the arteries as their own weight of history piles on.
IN game terms, it is the starting with Phandelver and then creating an entire world around that one little town that *isn't* the FR, but instead something completely different and then beating yourself up because you don't have all the info about it present. Not using any published stuff beyond the basic rules, just a good simple adventure and then let the whole thing flow from there. Each Session an episode of the greatest show you can be part of.
In terms of franchises, well... no, usually a film is harder than a TV show.
Film Bibles have to provide background for the characters that is more detailed (so actors can give them ife), and usually needs a lot more depth because set designers and grips can be jerks about that, lol. Not to mention the costuming and other issues that join it. THe Bible for a well known work like, say, Game of THrones, was 300 pages, delivered from the Author and then chopped by the writing team. The bible for Gladiator was like 1100 pages, and had a crap ton of history built in around it -- not for the actors, but for the folks who made it look like it was rome.
These world books are a big deal -- you can lose a deal over a bad book, even if the pitch was great. Honestly,
Title: Comprehensive Assessment and Intervention Strategies for Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Prevention and Prognosis
Specific aim 1 (Year 1): Identify endogenous and exogenous determinants of IBD prognosis among adult population, with emphasis among disadvantaged communities (racial/ethnic minorities, sexual and gender minorities, those lacking consistent access to care, and those of low socio-economic status).
Salome/Paulchris Sub-aim 1: Conduct a systematic literature review and meta-analysis to identify clinical, lifestyle, and social determinants of IBD diagnosis and management.
Ben: Sub-aim 2: Utilize machine learning techniques to identify additional patient and hospital level characteristics associated with IBD outcomes (discharge, length of stay, etc.).
Specific aim 2 (Year 2): Evaluate the efficacy of a treat to target precision medicine integrated approach to optimize IBD prevention and treatment for at-risk groups.
Moni work with Dr. D’orsay and team Sub-aim 1: Conduct a randomized controlled trial to assess the efficacy of targeted lifestyle modification to reduce incidence of IBD among at-risk population.
Moni work with Dr. D’orsay and team Moni Sub-aim 2: Conduct a randomized controlled trial to assess the efficacy of pharmaceutical intervention integrated with lifestyle modification and social support to improve IBD prognosis.
I dread to think of the size of the Marvel Studios bible. I know they parcel it by project and role (sometimes too tightly), but the whole thing is enormous and always changing and likely half of it sits in Feige's head, lol.
The fan made wikis are waaaay more complete than any show or film world book will ever be -- which I think is absolutely awesome. And, as we have seen with Disney and Viacom, sometimes create too many headaches for the writer's rooms and executives, so they get heavy handed so they can have breathing room (and avoid the "stole our idea" thing").
One of the few times I've heard of someone coming in with a massive bible ahead of time was Cameron, who had a full self made bible before he made Aliens, and who has a 5k page Bible for Avatar, and who apparently grumps privately about his bible for Terminator being ignored.
What I think is funny is that the ones I would expect would be the biggest -- video game bibles -- aren't. But when they are, you can tell because you see it on the screen.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
What I think is funny is that the ones I would expect would be the biggest -- video game bibles -- aren't. But when they are, you can tell because you see it on the screen.
Depending on the video game. Most larger MMOs (EverQuest - back in the day, World of Warcraft, etc.) had pretty large gaming bibles because of the quests and how they tied together, and the various lore. I'd bet that Baldur's Gate 3 has an immense gaming bible, considering the size and scope, and the trillions of possibilities - and that's not even an MMO.
What I think is funny is that the ones I would expect would be the biggest -- video game bibles -- aren't. But when they are, you can tell because you see it on the screen.
Depending on the video game. Most larger MMOs (EverQuest - back in the day, World of Warcraft, etc.) had pretty large gaming bibles because of the quests and how they tied together, and the various lore. I'd bet that Baldur's Gate 3 has an immense gaming bible, considering the size and scope, and the trillions of possibilities - and that's not even an MMO.
Don't confuse a setting bible with a quest line. these bibles don't tell stories, they set the stage for a story. The BG3 roadmap has got to be freaking enormous, though. EQ's setting bible at the close (the first time, lol) was only 80 pages. The attempts at the next generation that bounced between all those different companies and shells were significantly larger.
I should see if I can track down a setting bible for WoW. I recall one being thumbed round in one of my mythopoetic groups back in like 06 or so...
The BG3 bible is like 225 pages, if my third party source is to be believed. But they also cheat, lol: they have all the assorted Lore of FR, and that's probably the largest set of lore for any established verse at this point.
A World Bible, or Setting Bible, usually just called the Bible, doesn't have anything about story. It doesn't include plots, or characters (or, if it does, it has the equivalent of NPCs only) and while it may feature the villain, it isn't about them or the characters.
It is about the place that they are found in, the word around them. L&O:SVU has a world Bible that explains its view of New York -- although they didn't develop it until like season 8, lol, and then they did it for continuity more than anything else.
A Setting Bible will tell the writers about the customs, cultures, history, places, and "big stuff". It will lay out the politics of the realm if that's needed, and describe things like "where do klingons come from and why do they conquer".
I break it down into Cosmology, Environment (nature), Peoples, Cultures, Places, and Patterns. For a fantasy world it would include the basic rules that magic follows, in science fiction how the force or psionics operates, in mysteries, the nature of how law and investigation work. It will say "if investigating this, these are the tools available".
Not rules, mind you. Just what's possible. What exists around them. I don't use the term "the sandbox" because it is too easily conflated these days, but it was worldbuilding that programming got the concept from. You put rules and adventures on top of that setting to make it workable, and there is a fair amount of co-dev that happens in most cases, but first you gotta know the place before you can add to it.
Questlines do indeed have their own book -- massive gigantic flowcharts, lol. Those are beyond me, honestly -- I can handle maybe 9 levels deep in one of my outlines but those things can branch down as many as 15 or 16 levels, and the only thing they have in their favor is that they get to direct the player and limit their choices "you can do any one of these five things" -- but from a design standpoint, they have to break each of those five things down as far as they feel like going with them.
Is there a television show (or cartoon or movie) that isn't already a game setting - that you'd love to see into a game setting?
Could even be something close to D&D/fantasy? Maybe just to have a rule system around it?
Violet Evergarden.
Lycoris Recoil.
The Expendables (you make your own overly dense action hero from the 80's and go do something foolish. I am using the second one as part of an adventure basis, lol)
Appleseed.
Dashiell Hammett. Ok, an author probably means nothing, but trying to list just the shows and movies is a really long list.
El Mariachi.
Push (2009, psychic powers. The world intrigues me.)
"A Certain" series -- Index, Railgun, Accelerator, the others.
Yeah, none of them really have much in common, superficially. What they do all share is a strong sense of worldbuilding, a good, intricate setting or background against which all the action takes place.
THe first one I would set prior to the TV show, during the war years, while Violet is still feral and making her name as a killing machine. With a few players, we would even do the kind of love story stuff, lol. I am not big on romance, but I am big on feels, and that show breaks me.
Second one" We have a peaceful nation where bad stuff is hidden and kept that way by orphans who basically are enslaved assassins, divided into two groups (boys and girls).
Third is because some days it is just fun to go out and F S up.
Appleseed is a fascinating setting, with options for cyborg stuff in a post apocalyptic setting.
I have yet to encounter a decent set of rules that help set up or support a great hard boiled Noir setting. Like Gone with the Wind, folks today think of the stories as being "common" and "i've seen this before", never realizing that they all had a start and a source and it is often the heart of a lot of the stuff they do like.
I mean, the idea of Bards who travel around as assassins? Come on...
Push was supposed to be the Chris Evans franchise before he played with marvel for a second time, lol. The psionics, noirpunk features in a five minutes from now setting are interesting.
The Certain series is not even slightly about the characters themselves in my vision, it is strictly about the world itself. The idea of the hundred or so known different groups all competing for different things under or around the eyes of each other, the division of powers into "magical" and "Scientific" the notion of a giant chunk of a big city being given over entirely to students (who are test subjects), the fact they can have someone kill over 10,000 clones -- I mean, damn, that's a scary ass but interesting world.
I might have a few ideas. Nothing big or involved, mind you. *looks innocent*.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
The Murderbot short was too little. Looking forward to the novel coming out soon.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Question: Aside from D&D what other TTRPG do you most enjoy playing, or wish you could play?
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The last time I played a game other than D&D (and that means "rules set from") was probably J's Champions game, so easily seven or eight years ago. Playtested a lot of things, but I was more "helping out" than really interested or invested.
Part of the reason for that is the whole "you can use whatever rules you like for whatever kind of game you like" mindset I had learned by the mid 90's. TSR's Marvel Super Heroes Role Playing was probably my favorite alternate system of all time, I liked some of the things around the WoD stuff, but it was also very much not my scene, and despite my *****iness, I like D&D, lol.
MSHAS, Paranoia, a seriously kitbashed version of Mechwarrior/Battletech were my major faves, but I have a well known distaste for "official published worlds" (pretty sure even all'ya have figured that one out, lol) and never really enjoyed a lot of the stuff we played and tried out for years.
MSHAS is "gone", and the creative mechanics for it have been dusted (which is a shame), BT/MW is a mess but also everyone sorta fell out of the make your own giant robot mode, and Paranoia is good about once every year -- maybe, if They aren't listening.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Going to steal my answer from a similar question...
I think I've played in just about every setting I could imagine. Back in the 80s - I was in everything from D&D, to Marvel, Star Wars, Champions, Shadow Run, Boothill, Dragonlance, Dark Sun, you name it - if it was an RPG in the 80s I played it at least six times. I've run Marvel, D&D, Star Wars, Star Frontiers (I miss this setting, though 5e pretty much has now made almost everything), and Dragonlance. But mostly, I've always run my homebrew world which has evolved immensely since late 1980.
And to add to that...
One game, I remember enjoying - though I ran it far, far, far more than I played it - was the ElfQuest RPG. I, however, when I ran it - added quite a few "monsters" - because the one thing the ElfQuest RPG suffered from was lack of variety. If you were an elf, and let's face it, you were going to be, more than likely - your potential for a "monster manual" consisted of humans, trolls, and potentially other elves. (And trolls in ElfQuest are nothing like your standard D&D troll - they're actually intelligent, speak, and pretty normal). There were a few animals, and they gave an example of magic influenced animals gone wrong, such as Madcoil.
But I went through the monster manual and made ElfQuest versions of dinosaurs, displacer beasts, owlbears, etc., that could fit the ElfQuest world so that there was way more variety.
When the game first came out - because character sheets are clunky as Hades (imagine - your Spear skill might be: STR + DEX / 2 if you're one kind of Elf, while if you're a different kind of elf, it might be STR + DEX +2 or something)... so I'd made a dice roller that worked in DOS. I redesigned it later to allow creating custom elves. And then a few years back, worked with a guy I know to get it to work on modern Windows. It, along with maps of the world, character sheets, etc., are all on my EQ Dice Roll site.
But another game I absolutely loved - and would love to play it again is Star Frontiers. I bought all the books and modules for that, and have even imported some of those monsters into my D&D campaign. My party fears the sand sharks. (Sharks that swim in sand, like it's water!)
I also enjoyed Dragonlance back then - but I am currently playing in the 5e Dragonlance campaign - this time as a White Robed Wizard (my original character for 2e D&D was a Kender which I immensely loved).
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I adore Pathfinder (for the most part. There are a few issues, but every game has those), but the game I really would love to get some game time with is Dread. It’s a horror game that uses a jenga tower in favor of dice and the only mechanic is that knocking over the tower means you die (or are similarly removed from play). Pulling out a piece is like rolling a die, and failure has terrible consequences!
I also love the old school games Shadowdark and DCC RPG. If I had to pick one favorite game out of all the games I’ve mentioned, it would be DCC. Beautiful art, great old school feel, and I own so many books for it. (Coming up on 100!)
You can never really read too much Sanderson, though.
Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
I love Mistborn! The third book is mind-blowingly awesome, especially if Mistborn is your first Cosmere series.
Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
He is a great author. I have read Elantris, which was awesome, but I haven’t read any of his other books yet. Mistborn looks really good and I really need to continue it.
Yeah for the most part, they just keep getting better.
Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
I wanna play Mausritter and the Dying Earth RPG. I think I've mentioned them both before.
Anybody ever play Edge of the Empire? I remember thinking, wow, what a cool system, but also, why did they turn Star Wars into D&D? Star Wars isn't about skirmish tactics. Luke never had to whittle down a storm trooper's HP. You would never describe Chewbacca in terms of his critical hit range or armor penetration.
Too many RPGs do that.
I did. The game lasted... like six sessions?
Had some fun aspects - like character point stories every session, determined by a dice roll.
So it helps keep it feeling like a story.
However, I hated the dice. I hated the custom dice. And the symbols. Made the game way too complex.
I am sure if you play long enough - you can get to remember what the dice roll means. What three stars means versus two stars.
But that part slowed down the game - every time.
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I am a big proponent of setting matching the system in some ways and not so much in others.
to me, a good system doesn't need 10k rules.The more rules there are, the more likely it is going to become tied tot h setting, and more deely those rules begin to intersect.
A good system just gives you the basics, and does it in less than 100 pages, and *then* it adds in the stuff that fits the setting in particular. The basics aren't hard: a way to resolve a conflict, a way to resolve an action, a way to resolve a task, a way to progress.
When you write a basic story, you often don't have a full bible to support it -- you have the outline, the rough draft of something, perhaps just a few scattered notes on a napkin. I have seen students become despondent and lost because they couldn't somehow come up with some kind of all mighty world bible like Tolkien, known folks who spent thousands on very world building tool and book and program.
Most don't understand emotionally things like how middle earth was literally forty years of work by the time it became actually popular (because it wasn't popular when it came out). They look to some of the modern authors whose work is large and big and they think "i want something that developed" without realizing that in most cases, it developed as it was written as a story. Star Wars is a great example, because Star Wars was created by one guy who wrote a 50 page bible 20 years after writing a 12 page outline because he made enough money on Star Wars to make a couple more movies.
Star trek had more stuff going into its first season in terms of world building than Star Wars would have a decade later, and even it has far less world building than exists in some of the homebrew worlds people have talked about here.
This is part of why there was such a huge push in the mid 80's to create "the ultimate game rules" -- and why that same kind of thinking continues today. A universal system, a single system that will allow you to do it all! So into each one they cram as much as they can...
I have always thought it was backwards to do it that way. You create a system you like, or find one you enjoy using, that fits with your style and way of doing things. And then you build onto that system the stuff you need for the world -- each world, each time, treating it like it was a whole new thing -- but I also have found that for a lot of folks, they have one world in them, and others have hundreds.
It does create inertia in game design, but that's nothing new. It means a lot of work for each world, but that's not anything new either. One of the biggest complaints about 5e and the classes isn't really that they have become superheroes, though that's the convenient way to express it, lol.
It is that they have become more and more and more attached to a given setting. Classes are the core rules of the Game -- and the system is "supposed to" work for our own worlds, but if they create a class or subclass, that subclass now "has to work" on a world that may not even be remotely capable of supporting it in lore.
Sure, folks can say "we don't allow these classes", but that then wrecks the nature of introduction to play. It limits the players options (and I am not about limiting player options, I am about giving them options they don't fully understand so they can learn them and have a different kind of experience). WHich, in turn, reinforces the shift towards the default setting.
And that *works*, business wise. It also isn't wrong in many ways -- but they keep narrowing it down, and the emergence of VTT has done even more to do that, to enforce that (ever try to add in a complex house rule set to a standard 5e game on Roll20? or others? If they allow it, you have to approach it from the point of view and understanding of someone else -- the programmers, specifically -- and their point of reference was the existing rules and systems, and that means there is a challenge there, because if you opt for some reason to use a different basis from the one they were familiar with, you cannot insert the rule.
And that's ignoring the whole five hundred steps (exaggerated) process to do so.
It all works to slowly chip away at the underlying idea of "make it your own" -- because you can make FR your own! Right? So yan completely change he maps and raze all the cities and build all new mountain ranges and new countries and get rid of the red wizards of thay and and -- oh, wait, you can't do that, because players want to play in FR?
because they know that they can use all the subclasses there, and all the stuff that wasn't *your own*...
And so that's how it works.
I think I have played probably every game that came out between 1981 and 2003. I was game master for a lot of them, but not all. Some I was just a player in. I am a mechanics nerd (not a rules nerd, but a systems nerd, the ways the game operates). So I like some of the coo, ideas, lol, and have no problem porting them over. Completing my dice collection to run in evens from d4 to d30 was a cool thing to me -- one of those fist pump moments that is absolutely hilarious when looked at from outside the context.
I have used D&D rules (1e, 2e, 5e) to play every single genre of game you can think of. I enjoyed doing a D&D Chthulu set up way more than CoC, because I could do more within the systems of D&D than I could within the CoC system. I've run modern day games, cyberpunk games, vampire and werewolf, the whole list.
I have done the same with MSHAS (i still wish I had some of my tables I built for that).
I do pause and take back the one. I was never able to use D&D with BattleTech / Mechwarrior type stuff. I got hung up on using a class system, and it wasn't until I had long moved past it that I realized I should have used the mechs for the classes, not a job style role. I did use MSHAS for it, though -- not a long campaign, but it was a fun one. Blew up a moon.
So it becomes about thinking in terms of game rules not as a genre, but as a way to make a genre come to life, and that's apparently very difficult for a lot of folks -- D&D is never going to escape the "medieval fantasy" genre thinking, lol, and that's ok.
With Spelljammer and Planescape, they will have mostly finished mining existing work. It should be interesting to see where they go next.
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I know this is an example of the point you're trying to make - but this was a bad example. Since Star Trek was a show before it was a movie, it had many episodes to "world build" (as you put it, but it was really always the same - random planet help, Kirk hooks up with alien lady, conflict resolved, Enterprise moves on) - where as Star Wars (back then) was just three hour movies. So yes, it would be easier to world build on an episodic show vs a movie.
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I've played a tiny bit of GURPs before, and found it a bit complicated. Still, I want to try people it again, and giving Pathfinder a go.
Also, I do have an idea for creating a maze RPG one day, so that would be cool.
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HERE.Star Wars was better before all the world building. The version that made it to film for A New Hope had basically the perfect amount. It was all built on vibes and references, not some complex web of internal logic. It successfully created the illusion of depth with writing and design, the same way it did visually with its matte paintings. Then they just kept building onto it and it got worse and worse, to the point where these days, I can't bring myself to care about anything that comes out of the official Star Wars brand.
I really like the character class trees in EotE. They're like skill trees in a video game. They're neat, and there's rules for multiclassing (idk if they're fair or not, but at least they're core). You put points into them pretty frequently I think. And you don't have enough to unlock everything.
Well, specifically I was referencing the Show Bible that was created for the first episode (the failed pilot). "What's a Phaser?" "What's Warp Drive?" -- basic stuff. In order for writers room to function -- even on an episodic basis like that -- they needed the commonality -- the world of the characters -- to have a foundation that all writers used. According to Gerrold, it was just barely enough, and mostly written by Fontana, lol, so not a surprise, but yeah.
Lucas did put a lot of thought into Star Wars during dev, bt for him it was a straight shot film, desert to death star, no fat, no padding, and he never went into a lot of depth on The Force until he went into dev for Empire, because everyone expected SW to be a middle road blink and gone fun film for kids.
But you are right to a lot of what I was saying -- Star Wars had nothing when it started, Star Trek had a little more, and 50 and 60 years later they are immense systems with tons of world building and instant recognition and both are seeing firm hardening of the arteries as their own weight of history piles on.
IN game terms, it is the starting with Phandelver and then creating an entire world around that one little town that *isn't* the FR, but instead something completely different and then beating yourself up because you don't have all the info about it present. Not using any published stuff beyond the basic rules, just a good simple adventure and then let the whole thing flow from there. Each Session an episode of the greatest show you can be part of.
In terms of franchises, well... no, usually a film is harder than a TV show.
Film Bibles have to provide background for the characters that is more detailed (so actors can give them ife), and usually needs a lot more depth because set designers and grips can be jerks about that, lol. Not to mention the costuming and other issues that join it. THe Bible for a well known work like, say, Game of THrones, was 300 pages, delivered from the Author and then chopped by the writing team. The bible for Gladiator was like 1100 pages, and had a crap ton of history built in around it -- not for the actors, but for the folks who made it look like it was rome.
These world books are a big deal -- you can lose a deal over a bad book, even if the pitch was great. Honestly,
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I dread to think of the size of the Marvel Studios bible. I know they parcel it by project and role (sometimes too tightly), but the whole thing is enormous and always changing and likely half of it sits in Feige's head, lol.
The fan made wikis are waaaay more complete than any show or film world book will ever be -- which I think is absolutely awesome. And, as we have seen with Disney and Viacom, sometimes create too many headaches for the writer's rooms and executives, so they get heavy handed so they can have breathing room (and avoid the "stole our idea" thing").
One of the few times I've heard of someone coming in with a massive bible ahead of time was Cameron, who had a full self made bible before he made Aliens, and who has a 5k page Bible for Avatar, and who apparently grumps privately about his bible for Terminator being ignored.
What I think is funny is that the ones I would expect would be the biggest -- video game bibles -- aren't. But when they are, you can tell because you see it on the screen.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
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Depending on the video game. Most larger MMOs (EverQuest - back in the day, World of Warcraft, etc.) had pretty large gaming bibles because of the quests and how they tied together, and the various lore. I'd bet that Baldur's Gate 3 has an immense gaming bible, considering the size and scope, and the trillions of possibilities - and that's not even an MMO.
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Is there a television show (or cartoon or movie) that isn't already a game setting - that you'd love to see into a game setting?
Could even be something close to D&D/fantasy? Maybe just to have a rule system around it?
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Don't confuse a setting bible with a quest line. these bibles don't tell stories, they set the stage for a story. The BG3 roadmap has got to be freaking enormous, though. EQ's setting bible at the close (the first time, lol) was only 80 pages. The attempts at the next generation that bounced between all those different companies and shells were significantly larger.
I should see if I can track down a setting bible for WoW. I recall one being thumbed round in one of my mythopoetic groups back in like 06 or so...
The BG3 bible is like 225 pages, if my third party source is to be believed. But they also cheat, lol: they have all the assorted Lore of FR, and that's probably the largest set of lore for any established verse at this point.
A World Bible, or Setting Bible, usually just called the Bible, doesn't have anything about story. It doesn't include plots, or characters (or, if it does, it has the equivalent of NPCs only) and while it may feature the villain, it isn't about them or the characters.
It is about the place that they are found in, the word around them. L&O:SVU has a world Bible that explains its view of New York -- although they didn't develop it until like season 8, lol, and then they did it for continuity more than anything else.
A Setting Bible will tell the writers about the customs, cultures, history, places, and "big stuff". It will lay out the politics of the realm if that's needed, and describe things like "where do klingons come from and why do they conquer".
I break it down into Cosmology, Environment (nature), Peoples, Cultures, Places, and Patterns. For a fantasy world it would include the basic rules that magic follows, in science fiction how the force or psionics operates, in mysteries, the nature of how law and investigation work. It will say "if investigating this, these are the tools available".
Not rules, mind you. Just what's possible. What exists around them. I don't use the term "the sandbox" because it is too easily conflated these days, but it was worldbuilding that programming got the concept from. You put rules and adventures on top of that setting to make it workable, and there is a fair amount of co-dev that happens in most cases, but first you gotta know the place before you can add to it.
Questlines do indeed have their own book -- massive gigantic flowcharts, lol. Those are beyond me, honestly -- I can handle maybe 9 levels deep in one of my outlines but those things can branch down as many as 15 or 16 levels, and the only thing they have in their favor is that they get to direct the player and limit their choices "you can do any one of these five things" -- but from a design standpoint, they have to break each of those five things down as far as they feel like going with them.
Yeah, none of them really have much in common, superficially. What they do all share is a strong sense of worldbuilding, a good, intricate setting or background against which all the action takes place.
THe first one I would set prior to the TV show, during the war years, while Violet is still feral and making her name as a killing machine. With a few players, we would even do the kind of love story stuff, lol. I am not big on romance, but I am big on feels, and that show breaks me.
Second one" We have a peaceful nation where bad stuff is hidden and kept that way by orphans who basically are enslaved assassins, divided into two groups (boys and girls).
Third is because some days it is just fun to go out and F S up.
Appleseed is a fascinating setting, with options for cyborg stuff in a post apocalyptic setting.
I have yet to encounter a decent set of rules that help set up or support a great hard boiled Noir setting. Like Gone with the Wind, folks today think of the stories as being "common" and "i've seen this before", never realizing that they all had a start and a source and it is often the heart of a lot of the stuff they do like.
I mean, the idea of Bards who travel around as assassins? Come on...
Push was supposed to be the Chris Evans franchise before he played with marvel for a second time, lol. The psionics, noirpunk features in a five minutes from now setting are interesting.
The Certain series is not even slightly about the characters themselves in my vision, it is strictly about the world itself. The idea of the hundred or so known different groups all competing for different things under or around the eyes of each other, the division of powers into "magical" and "Scientific" the notion of a giant chunk of a big city being given over entirely to students (who are test subjects), the fact they can have someone kill over 10,000 clones -- I mean, damn, that's a scary ass but interesting world.
I might have a few ideas. Nothing big or involved, mind you. *looks innocent*.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
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