It kind of sounds like you want d4 Caltrops to turn his entire history of blog posts into a massive book lol
In all seriousness, though, I both love and hate massive books that are mostly lists or random tables. If they're all good and or helpful, that's great but more often than not it feels like they're just random words thrown together that don't really help me generate ideas. I think the best books are incredibly helpful. They're just really hard to find.
You actually have no idea how much I would like that haha
But yes, agreed - what I don't want from big books is what's provided in the Tome of Adventure Design, despite me mentioning it in the post. I think we need exactly ONE of those books.
When I imagine the detail I want, I really find myself gravitating towards Luke Gearing. He obviously has a master's grasp of writing, but it's the way things across his work interconnects with itself that makes it feel real. He also makes some pretty weird shit. The Isle is a pretty simple dungeon, but reading it caused me to feel genuine dread as I went from page to page. Because it felt like I was stripping back the history of the place and people there.
It elides all the circumstantial stuff - the mainland and its powers there, the reason you've come to the island in the first place, and others while giving you the tools to make you not care about any of that stuff anyway. In a single spread you learn not only the isle's residents, but their ages, their reasons for being here, what they hide, and weird intimate details about their faults.
THAT's what I want. I want a book that transports me to another place when I'm reading or running it.
Dude. Good insight. You’ve got me questioning my own design goals.
I get what you’re saying here… maybe instead of a new system we need a new sourcebook (for whatever system).
This makes me think of Warhammer Fantasy’s book on the City of Ubersreik. Just tons of entries ready for plug-n-play. Whenever I look through this, I get lots of inspiration. One of the best I’ve read.
But… it also makes me think of 5e’s Out of the Abyss. As well, this book is full to the brim with NPCs and adventure sparks and locations, etc. But every pre-game prep session didn’t bring inspiration… I felt like I was studying to take the LSAT. The info (or perhaps the way it was organized) was overwhelming.
So… when writing a sourcebook, how do you make sure it’s inspiring… not overwhelming?
I entirely agree with this take. Most of the things I have put out in the world (whether on this platform or in hard copy) - a little lapidary and bestiary based on Medieval English texts, contributing locations to a very large ‘city crawl’ and my posts on astral and natural magic - are of this type. My sense is that there is - somewhere - a sweet spot between system agnosticism and sufficient clarity to allow GMs rapidly to see how what is, essentially, fluff, can be incorporated into their games. My problem is that I have no idea where that spot is, perhaps because I care so little about mechanics that I’m content to read (and write) material which verges on being a series of fictional encyclopaedia entries without any real sense of mechanical implementation. That, I suspect, is a little too far off the mark for many.
It kind of sounds like you want d4 Caltrops to turn his entire history of blog posts into a massive book lol
In all seriousness, though, I both love and hate massive books that are mostly lists or random tables. If they're all good and or helpful, that's great but more often than not it feels like they're just random words thrown together that don't really help me generate ideas. I think the best books are incredibly helpful. They're just really hard to find.
You actually have no idea how much I would like that haha
But yes, agreed - what I don't want from big books is what's provided in the Tome of Adventure Design, despite me mentioning it in the post. I think we need exactly ONE of those books.
When I imagine the detail I want, I really find myself gravitating towards Luke Gearing. He obviously has a master's grasp of writing, but it's the way things across his work interconnects with itself that makes it feel real. He also makes some pretty weird shit. The Isle is a pretty simple dungeon, but reading it caused me to feel genuine dread as I went from page to page. Because it felt like I was stripping back the history of the place and people there.
It elides all the circumstantial stuff - the mainland and its powers there, the reason you've come to the island in the first place, and others while giving you the tools to make you not care about any of that stuff anyway. In a single spread you learn not only the isle's residents, but their ages, their reasons for being here, what they hide, and weird intimate details about their faults.
THAT's what I want. I want a book that transports me to another place when I'm reading or running it.
Dude. Good insight. You’ve got me questioning my own design goals.
I get what you’re saying here… maybe instead of a new system we need a new sourcebook (for whatever system).
This makes me think of Warhammer Fantasy’s book on the City of Ubersreik. Just tons of entries ready for plug-n-play. Whenever I look through this, I get lots of inspiration. One of the best I’ve read.
But… it also makes me think of 5e’s Out of the Abyss. As well, this book is full to the brim with NPCs and adventure sparks and locations, etc. But every pre-game prep session didn’t bring inspiration… I felt like I was studying to take the LSAT. The info (or perhaps the way it was organized) was overwhelming.
So… when writing a sourcebook, how do you make sure it’s inspiring… not overwhelming?
Thanks for the great post!
I entirely agree with this take. Most of the things I have put out in the world (whether on this platform or in hard copy) - a little lapidary and bestiary based on Medieval English texts, contributing locations to a very large ‘city crawl’ and my posts on astral and natural magic - are of this type. My sense is that there is - somewhere - a sweet spot between system agnosticism and sufficient clarity to allow GMs rapidly to see how what is, essentially, fluff, can be incorporated into their games. My problem is that I have no idea where that spot is, perhaps because I care so little about mechanics that I’m content to read (and write) material which verges on being a series of fictional encyclopaedia entries without any real sense of mechanical implementation. That, I suspect, is a little too far off the mark for many.