What great article that provides wonderful insight. Thank you for sharing. Honestly I think the last thing we need is yet another "new" rule-set. Just my personal opinion.
There are already so many out there. I personally have lost interest in learning yet another rule-set. Personally I think you could use any of the dozens out there to build something special and unique that would lend itself to an already established player base.
New rules have kind of become one of the biggest turn-offs for me when it comes to buying products, unless like Ultra Violet Grasslands, I can easily import it into my own game, or be so inspired that I would put in an effort to convert it to say OSE, The Black Hack or OD&D, which is really easy to do.
And then of course there is the the fact that so many rules-light games or new rule-sets just haven't been forged through long-term playtesting and tend to fall apart, especially over longer campaigns and require a good amount of house-rules tacked on to patch things.
Really looking forward to Adamiir my friend! Much inspiration to draw form.
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.
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?
What great article that provides wonderful insight. Thank you for sharing. Honestly I think the last thing we need is yet another "new" rule-set. Just my personal opinion.
There are already so many out there. I personally have lost interest in learning yet another rule-set. Personally I think you could use any of the dozens out there to build something special and unique that would lend itself to an already established player base.
New rules have kind of become one of the biggest turn-offs for me when it comes to buying products, unless like Ultra Violet Grasslands, I can easily import it into my own game, or be so inspired that I would put in an effort to convert it to say OSE, The Black Hack or OD&D, which is really easy to do.
And then of course there is the the fact that so many rules-light games or new rule-sets just haven't been forged through long-term playtesting and tend to fall apart, especially over longer campaigns and require a good amount of house-rules tacked on to patch things.
Really looking forward to Adamiir my friend! Much inspiration to draw form.
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.
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!