What makes a world good to explore in traditional stories (novels, games, movies, etc) but not as fun to explore in a tabletop game?
Ages ago, I wrote about "what makes a good setting" for me:
https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2015/12/game-of-thrones-star-wars-and-what.html
A couple of things that are better in novels than RPGs, IMO, are:
- Obvious good x evil.
- Events that cause a risk of destroying the world.
- Characters that are "the chosen one" or similar, since it devalues PCs.
[sorry, posted twice]
Big secrets about a region, that will change the world once revealed. With games, you can't just have one set of lore that keeps getting dropped, and acting like it's a surprise.
Adventuring situations that involve lots of tedious hardship, like escaping a slave camp or going to the mountains to study with the master.
Different races or species that co-exist, when some of them are clearly superior or inferior, and some of them present almost irreducible moral quandries (like intelligent vermin; you can't let them endlessly reproduce, but you don't want to murder or starve them, either). Balance issues and troubling ethical ones abound.
Worlds where heroic powers are often the result of unique secrets. In a game, either they aren't unique, or you have to come up with new powers and origins all the time for new characters.
Massive urbanization. You can write stories about such places, but for adventuring, it's easier when life hasn't been streamlined, organized, commodified, fenced in, and distributed according to status. The only real adventures you can have are rogue or -punk adventures unless you get out of town, or cause a world-changing cataclysm (see above).
Overshadowing NPCs can be a significant problem. E.g. Luke Skywalker probably doesn't need your PC's help, nor can you reasonably kill Darth Vader unless we're doing a parallel universe thing.
Same with massive reveals. If absolutely no one in the world is supposed to know what happens in the fourth book, you really need to set your game after those events.
Similarly prophesies and chosen ones aren't terribly welcome when they aren't the PCs. (And honestly I find it gross when they are.)
It really goes to show you how the whole "ancient ruins in the wilderness" setting carried so much weight in the early days of the hobby, doesn't it?
Quote from: MeganovaStella on December 11, 2023, 08:11:14 PM
What makes a world good to explore in traditional stories (novels, games, movies, etc) but not as fun to explore in a tabletop game?
The biggest one for me is settings which rely on the author's tone, style or sense of humor for their appeal. Discworld is probably the best example. There's a Discworld RPG, but if you don't have Terry Pratchett GM-ing it (from beyond the grave no less), all you'd be doing is parroting someone else's jokes.
Quote from: pawsplay on December 11, 2023, 09:09:01 PM
Big secrets about a region, that will change the world once revealed. With games, you can't just have one set of lore that keeps getting dropped, and acting like it's a surprise.
That's a big one. This is the inherent problem people run into when trying to adapt Dark Souls to the tabletop. Each of those games is about slowly uncovering the secrets which underlie the fundamental order and history of the world. You can't really pull that trick more than once without radically altering the setting (say by having a many-thousands-of-years gap between games).
Quote from: Eric Diaz on December 11, 2023, 08:46:42 PM
Ages ago, I wrote about "what makes a good setting" for me:
https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2015/12/game-of-thrones-star-wars-and-what.html
I saw you name-dropped R E Howard's Hyborian Age in that article. I've said for a while that the Hyborian Age is probably the closest you'll ever get to an objectively perfect RPG setting in something that wasn't actually designed to be one. Because it was designed for disconnected short story adventures it maps extremely well onto the RPG adventure format. Because it's nations are pseudohistorical (and lets be honest, reliant on broad national stereotypes), they're instantly recognizable, even to someone with no knowledge of the source material and very little knowledge of history. And because Conan's adventures don't usually have a lot of lasting impact on the setting, there's isn't much canon to worry about screwing up.
Leiber's Nehwon and Moorcock's Young Kingdoms partially share all these traits, but not to anywhere near the same degree. Vance's Dying Earth has the first and third quality, but lacks the instant recognizability. Ditto with Ashton Smith's Zothique, and Gene Wolfe's World of the New Sun.
Quote from: pawsplay on December 11, 2023, 09:09:01 PM
Big secrets about a region, that will change the world once revealed. With games, you can't just have one set of lore that keeps getting dropped, and acting like it's a surprise.
This is the biggest one, and you landed it fast. Settings meant for stories often are built with one or even a few "big reveals", which work wonderfully for the viewers- but they don't work well in any other context. This is even more of a big deal if the reveals totally change the tone of the world- the mystery of Attack on Titan is compelling during the first couple arcs, but once the reveals have happened, nothing in the prior scenario that looked so solid for a game would ever work. By the end, the subtext you were sold at the start has been entirely erased.
QuoteAdventuring situations that involve lots of tedious hardship, like escaping a slave camp or going to the mountains to study with the master.
These are actually wonderful if you are doing a 1 on 1 session, because the choices the character makes can be really powerful. What they don't work for at all is any group situtaion.
QuoteDifferent races or species that co-exist, when some of them are clearly superior or inferior, and some of them present almost irreducible moral quandries (like intelligent vermin; you can't let them endlessly reproduce, but you don't want to murder or starve them, either).
Here's where you lose me. This is just fine; you have endless stories about the ratfolk if you decide to live with them, or you can do a cool campaign where you genocide them before they genocide you. I have 0 issue with games with these concepts; in fact, I would say I narrowly prefer them.
QuoteWorlds where heroic powers are often the result of unique secrets. In a game, either they aren't unique, or you have to come up with new powers and origins all the time for new characters
If the heroic powers aren't so overpowering that everyone needs them, only the PCs and a few notable NPCs might have them, and they could still be challenged by pretty much everything in the monster manual. I think this stuff can work ok, as long as the PCs are either a group hunting down the people with the cool powers (who may be vampires or whatever), or are one of a handful of groups who have the powers themselves, which provides a total excuse for literally everything ("the bad guys want to kill anyone who could oppose them with the powers", "if you don't go and do it no one else can", etc.). This also lampshades the common issue at midlevel where you could afford a wave of hirelings to mass-farm dungeons or whatever in a standard world- it's now plausible that a squad of four sets off to save the world or whatever.
QuoteMassive urbanization. You can write stories about such places, but for adventuring, it's easier when life hasn't been streamlined, organized, commodified, fenced in, and distributed according to status.
You can do this by setting adventures in warehouses, underground tunnels, outside of the city, etc. But I 100% agree it's a problem and there are people who try to make it work in settings, with decent success.
I think Kult may have a problem sort of hinted at by the others above. Once you get a whiff of the reality behind the illusion, I think much of the interest starts to wane. Having said that, I never actually played it.
It depends on the type of game you want of course. A big one for most D&D style games is that the PCs should be the best people available for missions, and they won't run afoul of overwhelming power (like a large government) in doing their thing. The counterexample for this that comes to mind is the end of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" where the knights are charging the French castle and then the bobbies come arrest them all. Good models for this type of setting are the American Old West and the pirate age Caribbean.
Quote from: Venka on December 11, 2023, 10:26:30 PM
QuoteMassive urbanization. You can write stories about such places, but for adventuring, it's easier when life hasn't been streamlined, organized, commodified, fenced in, and distributed according to status.
You can do this by setting adventures in warehouses, underground tunnels, outside of the city, etc. But I 100% agree it's a problem and there are people who try to make it work in settings, with decent success.
Urbanized doesn't have to mean safe and civilized. Shadowrun and Cyberpunk both work in urban settings. What you do need is a certain amount of lawlessness.
Quote from: Mishihari on December 12, 2023, 01:06:41 AM
Quote from: Venka on December 11, 2023, 10:26:30 PM
QuoteMassive urbanization. You can write stories about such places, but for adventuring, it's easier when life hasn't been streamlined, organized, commodified, fenced in, and distributed according to status.
You can do this by setting adventures in warehouses, underground tunnels, outside of the city, etc. But I 100% agree it's a problem and there are people who try to make it work in settings, with decent success.
Urbanized doesn't have to mean safe and civilized. Shadowrun and Cyberpunk both work in urban settings. What you do need is a certain amount of lawlessness.
I feel like with all of these, there are fun games that violate the rules.
I've played and had lots of fun with games in urban settings (Shadowrun, James Bond 007, etc.), and with unique superpowers (like Marvel Superheroes), and in settings with iconic characters (Middle Earth, Star Wars), and so on.
I'd agree there are challenges to making some of these games work well, but it depends a lot on the players and how they work.
Quote from: Mishihari on December 12, 2023, 01:06:41 AM
Quote from: Venka on December 11, 2023, 10:26:30 PM
QuoteMassive urbanization. You can write stories about such places, but for adventuring, it's easier when life hasn't been streamlined, organized, commodified, fenced in, and distributed according to status.
You can do this by setting adventures in warehouses, underground tunnels, outside of the city, etc. But I 100% agree it's a problem and there are people who try to make it work in settings, with decent success.
Urbanized doesn't have to mean safe and civilized. Shadowrun and Cyberpunk both work in urban settings. What you do need is a certain amount of lawlessness.
The quote edited out the last sentence I wrote there: The only real adventures you can have are rogue or -punk adventures unless you get out of town, or cause a world-changing cataclysm (see above).
Working against the status quo is an option.
I'm going to comment on the article only:
1. He's right when he talks about setting books. I say this as someone working on a setting book. Good fiction is better for describing a world.
2. He sucks a lot of George Martin cock throughout. I hope he swallowed.
3. I prefer good vs. evil over morally ambiguous tripe.
4. He got real boring as he went on and I couldn't finish the thing.
Quote from: ForgottenF on December 11, 2023, 10:09:18 PM
Quote from: Eric Diaz on December 11, 2023, 08:46:42 PM
Ages ago, I wrote about "what makes a good setting" for me:
https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2015/12/game-of-thrones-star-wars-and-what.html
I saw you name-dropped R E Howard's Hyborian Age in that article. I've said for a while that the Hyborian Age is probably the closest you'll ever get to an objectively perfect RPG setting in something that wasn't actually designed to be one. Because it was designed for disconnected short story adventures it maps extremely well onto the RPG adventure format. Because it's nations are pseudohistorical (and lets be honest, reliant on broad national stereotypes), they're instantly recognizable, even to someone with no knowledge of the source material and very little knowledge of history. And because Conan's adventures don't usually have a lot of lasting impact on the setting, there's isn't much canon to worry about screwing up.
Leiber's Nehwon and Moorcock's Young Kingdoms partially share all these traits, but not to anywhere near the same degree. Vance's Dying Earth has the first and third quality, but lacks the instant recognizability. Ditto with Ashton Smith's Zothique, and Gene Wolfe's World of the New Sun.
Yup, agreed.
It is easier to use Hyborian Age than something like Middle-earth because Conan is not the "chosen one" fighting "the dark one". And familiarity, even trough stereotypes, is a big plus.
Quote from: Eric Diaz on December 11, 2023, 08:46:42 PM
Ages ago, I wrote about "what makes a good setting" for me:
https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2015/12/game-of-thrones-star-wars-and-what.html
A couple of things that are better in novels than RPGs, IMO, are:
- Obvious good x evil.
- Events that cause a risk of destroying the world.
- Characters that are "the chosen one" or similar, since it devalues PCs.
Quote from: mcbobbo on December 11, 2023, 09:55:11 PM
Overshadowing NPCs can be a significant problem. E.g. Luke Skywalker probably doesn't need your PC's help, nor can you reasonably kill Darth Vader unless we're doing a parallel universe thing.
Same with massive reveals. If absolutely no one in the world is supposed to know what happens in the fourth book, you really need to set your game after those events.
Similarly prophesies and chosen ones aren't terribly welcome when they aren't the PCs. (And honestly I find it gross when they are.)
It really goes to show you how the whole "ancient ruins in the wilderness" setting carried so much weight in the early days of the hobby, doesn't it?
Agreed that chosen ones don't work for trad ongoing campaign RPGs.
I wrote a one-shot GMfull game this year, God-Killer Prophecy, that is explicitly about the companions and chosen one going on a quest to kill a dark lord. I'm really happy with how the card mechanics create tension and that it usually isn't a pure victory for the good guys.
If you are interested you can read a little more about it here (https://composedreamgames.com/forum/discussion/9066/god-killer-prophecy-augury-edition-is-at-hand).
One big problem most fantasy and scifi settings derived from other media have is the setting was really only created to tell one specific story and is largely unusable outside of it. Mistborne might have a really interesting magic system, but the actual world-building only really supports the events of the novels so there's just not anything to do except some AU of the original story (before the story you can't do anything, after the story there's no need to do anything).
Star Wars as a setting was practically empty until WEG had to necessarily flesh it out to make an RPG out of it (which Timothy Zahn picked up and ran with as the foundation of the EU... which is why the EU has always been a good RPG setting; it started as one).
Basically, unless it's a setting with a LOT of books to it, ideally with different protagonists for different books (ex. Discworld) odds are it's just not going to be an easy port into an RPG setting (Star Wars proves it can be done, but also that it typically takes way more material than most series will offer up on their own).
This why something like Lovecraft, superhero comics and generic fantasy/scifi (i.e. pulling ideas from multiple series into a sort of gestalt) tend to be stronger entries for RPG settings than specific properties are (Star Wars EU, Star Trek and certain long running pulps notwithstanding).
I don't know that I'd go as far as saying "incompatible", but there comes a point with any setting where too much material makes the setting worse. Could be the sheer amount. Could be that with enough material, eventually you have some terrible screw ups. Could be that internal consistency gets shredded. Or something else.
1st ed. Forgotten Realms is more compatible with playing an RPG than late editions. There's pros/cons to the early unearthed arcana and 2nd ed. stuff, which even its fans will readily admit. Still some good additions in there if one is selective. Glorantha as it is portrayed in 1st and 2nd ed. Runequest is better than the later books. Once you open up to movies/novels/etc. the margins become tighter. Doesn't mean there can't be good gaming in that setting, but there are a lot more ways to screw it up.
Now, I'm not one for playing in novel/movie settings at all. I like the mystery of the setting itself to enjoy that very much. But I will say that a mashup is a better choice than a straight lift from one setting. Your unholy mix of Star Wars, LotR, Conan, and Arabian Knights may be incoherent and completely off the wall. One thing you can bet, is that none of the players will complain about lack of fidelity to canon. :o
Echoing what everyone else said. Prose stories are designed to tell those stories. They aren't designed as sandboxes for players to adventure in. The intent behind the two is completely different.
Some publishers have tried to marry the two, such as the infamous metaplots. The less said about those, the better.
Also, licensed RPGs have to work around the official "canon", whatever it currently is. E.g. I really hate the official Aliens RPG because it has to work around all the stupid stuff from the post-Aliens movies like the Engineers and is going to have to retcon itself again after the new Disney movies and shows make their own mark on the IP.
I am quite frankly very critical of the entire concept of Intellectual Property (IP) now. It's been proven time and time again that the best works are produced by single creators or small design teams with coherent creative visions, and not a small amount of luck. All these corpos that acquire or inherit IPs inevitably squander those IPs without that coherent creative vision. Even single creators can go senile without oversight (e.g. George Lucas' prequels, Ridley Scott's prequels).
What we should do is reduce copyright terms to manageable numbers (the current century-ish term is absurd on its face) and let the fans compete to produce the best stories. As has been the case for human history before copyright was legislated.
I pretty much agree with everyone else. If I could summarize for myself, a lack of restraint makes a world difficult to play. The setting author should not try to solve all the problems with world building. Rather, he should leave much of it open, incomplete, and unsolved.
A poorly written setting, whether a setting book or a mini one-off setting in a module, will answer all my questions and leave me with nothing more to do than be a tour guide.
A well written setting will evoke my own ideas. it does not try to answer all possible question, rather it provides just enough to stimulate the imagination.
Good book settings are overbuilt, while good RPG settings should aim to be underbuilt.
Fundamentally, books and book series are complete entities, which means that every facet of the worldbuilding which you want to explore in the story must be as fully fleshed out as it will ever get when you finish the book. A great example of this is the Wheel of Time, where Aes Sedai, the various Aes Sedai sub-factions Ajah, and the other groups of channeling women like the Wise Ones are all predesigned so they can interface a specific part of the story to do specific things.
RPGs don't work like that because players tend to bulldoze complex worldbuilding. RPGs are kinda imaginary sandboxes for the players' imaginations--the GM included. Your default worldbuilding is something like an intricate sand castle already built into the sandbox, ready for the players to park their minis on the battlements. But at the same time, a sandbox is a sandbox. Some players will take one look at the cistern, knock it over and replace it with a tavern, and never be the wiser that there was a poop-golem in the bottom studying maggot-mancy. RPG worldbuilding often does not understand who actually has creative control at an emotional level; players can Rule Zero essentially everything in your book, and worldbuilding is far more likely to change than mechanics. As a GM you can worldbuild freely, but as a worldbuilder for the whole system, there isn't much point in building complex structures.
However, there is significant value in understanding the things your players likely can worldbuild on their own and can't worldbuild on their own. Good RPG worldbuilding focuses on worldbuilding which players can't do in some way. If the players can do the worldbuilding on their own, they probably should because that gives them a sense of personal ownership of the campaign. This isn't to say that you can't do additional worldbuilding, but your core purpose when designing the RPG worldbuilding is to know what needs to be done, but which the players also cant or won't do willingly.
A great example of this comes from my own game, Selection.
Selection is built off an alien invasion of sorts. Right off the bat, you're probably assuming that there are dozens of alien enemy races, maybe a couple are playable, that the aliens want something like our water or our women or world domination....and there are UFOs. Because everyone's imagination defaults to XCOM and B-grade classics when talking alien invasions.
None of that's the case in Selection. There aren't any UFOs, and by the time the campaign starts and you meet one, Protomir characters will have human bodies, so the difference between a human and a Protomir is a philosophical question more than a visible reality in the fiction of the game. And Nexill-alligned Protomir couldn't care less about Earth and its resources, but are quite keen on fulfilling personal vendettas and killing Arsill-alligned Protomir by any means necessary.
These decisions are not things players probably would voluntarily make. But when you realize this is a game where the antagonist is actively hunting the Arsill (who should usually be a PC) the decision to ditch the UFO trope and go much deeper into cloak and dagger makes sense. Without that, players would default to using a UFO as a means of transportation only differing from a car in flavor.
Coming at the question from the opposite direction, I'd ask: What qualities about a game are likely to make it difficult to integrate a fictional world from another medium?
The things that make for a good RPG session are, I would suggest, the elements of (a) teamwork; (b) knowledge of, and skill in using, the rules as a mechanical system; (c) the overcoming of obstacles for a meaningful reward; and (d) the imagined dramatization of the first three elements in a way that entertains everyone. As such, an RPG-appropriate setting has to have the following qualities:
- It can't be dependent on a single character or small set of characters, or a single overarching conflict involving those characters, for its dramatic impact. (It's not impossible to have a meaningful Star Wars adventure without involving the Skywalker family, but some do find it difficult; it's harder to tell a good Wheel of Time story when your heroes know they're always a second fiddle to the Dragon Reborn.)
- The majority of its in-setting conflicts have to involve practical action, tactics or strategy of the sort that can be easily represented by a mechanical rules system. (One of the reasons I've always believed that the Chronicles of Narnia can't make for a good RPG is that all its really meaningful conflicts are about whether the protagonists make the right moral choices or not, rather than whether they're strong, skilled or clever enough to win a fight. I have also written before that this is why I think most romantic fantasy, like Mercedes Lackey's stuff, isn't as good as an RPG setting as might be expected, because romantic fantasy stories tend to get their drama out of inner emotional journeys and relationships, rather than action, war or adventure.)
- It can't be dependent on a particular style or atmosphere that is very difficult for anybody but the original creator to establish or portray. (This is a nod both to Pratchett's Discworld and to the stories of Thomas Ligotti, which are even more dependent on a particular mode of cosmic eeriness than Lovecraft's stuff is.)
- It has to allow for the actions of player characters / protagonists to make a meaningful difference, while neither imparting a sense of doom or futility nor being dependent on a perfect or all-encompassing success to be worthwhile. (Settings where your PCs replace the literary heroes as the protagonists can be vulnerable to this; unless you're prepared to game through a world where the stand-in for Frodo fails to drop the Ring in Mount Doom, it can be very disappointing to be a new Fellowship if you screw it up, and even more annoying to feel like the GM is making sure you can't screw it up.)
Quote from: Fheredin on December 12, 2023, 06:17:45 PM
Good book settings are overbuilt, while good RPG settings should aim to be underbuilt.
While you make an excellent point (no plan survives contact with the enemy,) the place I thought you were going is a good point, too:
Leave yourself room to answer 'yes' to a good player question. "Hmm , I wonder if this ratman is actually from a secret race of shapeshifters." He is now, because that sounds awesome.
Kind of but not quite the same idea as the Quantum Ogre.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on December 12, 2023, 06:38:14 PM
Coming at the question from the opposite direction, I'd ask: What qualities about a game are likely to make it difficult to integrate a fictional world from another medium?
The things that make for a good RPG session are, I would suggest, the elements of (a) teamwork; (b) knowledge of, and skill in using, the rules as a mechanical system; (c) the overcoming of obstacles for a meaningful reward; and (d) the imagined dramatization of the first three elements in a way that entertains everyone. As such, an RPG-appropriate setting has to have the following qualities:
- It can't be dependent on a single character or small set of characters, or a single overarching conflict involving those characters, for its dramatic impact. (It's not impossible to have a meaningful Star Wars adventure without involving the Skywalker family, but some do find it difficult; it's harder to tell a good Wheel of Time story when your heroes know they're always a second fiddle to the Dragon Reborn.)
- The majority of its in-setting conflicts have to involve practical action, tactics or strategy of the sort that can be easily represented by a mechanical rules system. (One of the reasons I've always believed that the Chronicles of Narnia can't make for a good RPG is that all its really meaningful conflicts are about whether the protagonists make the right moral choices or not, rather than whether they're strong, skilled or clever enough to win a fight. I have also written before that this is why I think most romantic fantasy, like Mercedes Lackey's stuff, isn't as good as an RPG setting as might be expected, because romantic fantasy stories tend to get their drama out of inner emotional journeys and relationships, rather than action, war or adventure.)
- It can't be dependent on a particular style or atmosphere that is very difficult for anybody but the original creator to establish or portray. (This is a nod both to Pratchett's Discworld and to the stories of Thomas Ligotti, which are even more dependent on a particular mode of cosmic eeriness than Lovecraft's stuff is.)
- It has to allow for the actions of player characters / protagonists to make a meaningful difference, while neither imparting a sense of doom or futility nor being dependent on a perfect or all-encompassing success to be worthwhile. (Settings where your PCs replace the literary heroes as the protagonists can be vulnerable to this; unless you're prepared to game through a world where the stand-in for Frodo fails to drop the Ring in Mount Doom, it can be very disappointing to be a new Fellowship if you screw it up, and even more annoying to feel like the GM is making sure you can't screw it up.)
In practice, I've played and run lots of games set in Middle Earth, the Star Wars universe, Lovecraft, Marvel, Pratchett, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, James Bond 007, and many other fictional universes. So experimentally, I find these don't have a lot of force. For example, I alternately played and GMed in a Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG for three years in the early aughts. BtVS is bad according to most of your points, but we had a ton of fun in playing.
I see these at most as pitfalls to avoid in one's approach to the game, but not not as reasons to not play BtVS or Star Wars.
Specifically... how the story relates to the canonical characters should be addressed in the premise, but it's always possible. You can choose a time and/or place in the setting that isn't part of the canon plot. Or you can set up a secret plot that coincides with the main story, or set it in a deliberate alternate plotline.
Also, action is a function of the scenario, not the setting. I could have a political intrigue scenario in Hyperborea, or a military campaign set in Middle Earth. The Mercedes Lackey novels that I read had plenty of action. They were less violent than Conan stories, but on par with Tolkien or Le Guin.
Quote from: jhkim on December 12, 2023, 09:41:11 PMIn practice, I've played and run lots of games set in Middle Earth, the Star Wars universe, Lovecraft, Marvel, Pratchett, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, James Bond 007, and many other fictional universes. So experimentally, I find these don't have a lot of force.
Did your players find the experience of playing these games to be similar to the experience of reading or watching the source properties? To pick an example people other than me have mentioned, did people get the same amount and type of laughs out of the Pratchett game you ran as they would have out of a Pratchett novel?
You will note that Buffy, Marvel, and James Bond are not among the examples I suggested of what makes a fictional universe unsuitable for gaming, especially since the Buffyverse explicitly opened up their universe to multiple stories at the end of the series by activating multiple Slayers and getting rid of the "Chosen One" trope.
Quote from: jhkim on December 12, 2023, 09:41:11 PMOr you can set up a secret plot that coincides with the main story, or set it in a deliberate alternate plotline.
Personally I feel the further you move away from a setting's material, the less of a reason you have to use it.
Buffy strikes me as a setting that's pretty thin if you remove the fish-out-of-water valley girl and her quirky friends. How did you pull that off?
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on December 12, 2023, 10:12:25 PM
Quote from: jhkim on December 12, 2023, 09:41:11 PMIn practice, I've played and run lots of games set in Middle Earth, the Star Wars universe, Lovecraft, Marvel, Pratchett, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, James Bond 007, and many other fictional universes. So experimentally, I find these don't have a lot of force.
Did your players find the experience of playing these games to be similar to the experience of reading or watching the source properties? To pick an example people other than me have mentioned, did people get the same amount and type of laughs out of the Pratchett game you ran as they would have out of a Pratchett novel?
Obviously, playing a game is different than reading a book. But yes, we generally found our games to be just as fun as watching the source material. I'm not saying that our games were objectively as good as the writing, but when you're playing a game, you don't have to be as amazing a writer to laugh at stuff.
I realize that there are people who wouldn't want to play in a Lovecraft-based game unless the writing was objectively up to the quality of Lovecraft's writing, but that's a personal preference. If someone doesn't want to play in a Lovecraft game without Lovecraft, that's a valid preference, but it's not objective truth.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on December 12, 2023, 10:12:25 PM
You will note that Buffy, Marvel, and James Bond are not among the examples I suggested of what makes a fictional universe unsuitable for gaming, especially since the Buffyverse explicitly opened up their universe to multiple stories at the end of the series by activating multiple Slayers and getting rid of the "Chosen One" trope.
Actually, I started my campaign before Season Seven aired, so it wasn't built on that premise. But it wasn't hard to come up with something. From Season Two they established there could be multiple Slayers, so the premise was inserting another Slayer who died and was revived. There are other possible premises, though - since like with Angel, a series doesn't have to have a genuine Slayer.
I think the appeal of many games is being able to do things differently than in the static fiction. In a game, you can play out what it would be like if things were different.
Quote from: mcbobbo on December 12, 2023, 10:22:16 PM
Quote from: jhkim on December 12, 2023, 09:41:11 PMOr you can set up a secret plot that coincides with the main story, or set it in a deliberate alternate plotline.
Personally I feel the further you move away from a setting's material, the less of a reason you have to use it.
Buffy strikes me as a setting that's pretty thin if you remove the fish-out-of-water valley girl and her quirky friends. How did you pull that off?
My main campaign was called "Silicon Valley Slayage". We started a little after the release of the RPG by C.J. Carella, which was before the series ended. The setting was Silicon Valley startup culture -- but the idea was a sendup of that culture just as the BtVS series sent up high school. The PCs set up a goth dating app that was intentionally perfect for vampires to find victims, encouraging vampires to use it so they could find and stop them. The Slayer was a 19-year-old web designer, who came in the line between Kenda and Faith, and was electrocuted and revived. I have a bunch of notes on it here:
https://darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/buffy/siliconvalley/
I also had a series of one-shot adventures that were set in Santa Cruz that were themed more after sci-fi B-movies rather than vampire/werewolf/mummy horror. The protagonist there was a robotic body inhabited by the spirit of a Slayer who died in 1950s New Jersey. There was a lot of fish-out-of-water of a 1950s Jersey girl who finds herself in a robot body in a town of tatooed, vegetarian weirdos - with a boy genius inventor who is confused what happened to his android. The enemies were more centered on things like the blob, mad scientists, etc.
For a setting to be really useful for an rpg, there has to be some reason for groups of adventurers to exist and something for them to do. If the authorities are benevolent and on top of everything, there is no reason for adventurers to exist and no reason why they would even be tolerated. If everything is settled and at peace, then, again, there's no reason for adventurers to exist and no reason for society to even tolerate them. There has to be some place, even if it's only at the edges, where normal law and order can't cope and there are threats to fight. There are games that don't have this but a large majority of the ones I have seen either don't work very well as games or are things like Wander Home that I would say are not games at all.
Quote from: MeganovaStella on December 11, 2023, 08:11:14 PM
What makes a world good to explore in traditional stories (novels, games, movies, etc) but not as fun to explore in a tabletop game?
I do not believe any setting short of a completely dead or lacking any intelligent ir even semi-intelligent life is incompatible with gaming. Or maybe a setting with only non-sentient inamimate objects?
Someone somewhere will probably dig it. They might not find many others that will. But someone will find "Botanist: The Flower Arranging" to be fun.
I mean theres an RPG about playing living puppets rebelling against a dictatorship. Theres an RPG about playing woodland animals. Theres an RPG about playing a music band solving crimes and so on. Ghosts? Least three for that.
Quote from: Omega on December 13, 2023, 07:30:38 AMI mean there's an RPG about playing living puppets rebelling against a dictatorship. There's an RPG about playing woodland animals. There's an RPG about playing a music band solving crimes and so on. Ghosts? Least three for that.
If these settings can create the in-play structures needed to make a good RPG work -- i.e. teamwork, tactics, meaningful accomplishment, and potential for dramatic depiction -- then sure, I'd buy that. It's not about the trappings or genre of the original property, it's about whether the things that make the property entertaining translate well to the RPG medium.
I'll pick another example of what I'm thinking of by citing the works of a fantasy author I personally love, but for which I can understand the lack of RPG interest: Guy Gavriel Kay. Kay has written both an epic high fantasy trilogy --
The Fionavar Tapestry -- and multiple novels which have been called "history with a quarter-turn to the fantastic", stories set in settings based on the unification of Italy (
Tigana), the Albigensian Crusade (
A Song for Arbonne), Reconquista Spain (
The Lions of Al-Rassan), Viking-era England (
The Last Light of the Sun), Justinian-era Byzantium (
Sailing to Sarantium and
Lord of Emperors), Tang dynasty China (
Under Heaven), and several others.
I love all these works, but I can see why they have never caught gamers' attention, and it ultimately boils down to the same reasons noted above: The original stories are so dependent for their resolution on the decisions of the specific, unique protagonists, and the settings are constructed first and foremost to be dramatic frameworks for those decisions rather than plausibly independent secondary worlds of their own, that trying to peel the settings away to make them work for other characters -- to make them
able to work for
any character or group of characters -- simply doesn't create an experience similar enough to reading the novels to be worth the effort. (The flip-side of this reasoning is why, apparently, J.K. Rowling has never licensed a roleplaying game based on the "Harry Potter" novels; she has, if I recall, explicitly stated that she "doesn't want other people putting words in (her) characters' mouths".)
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on December 12, 2023, 06:38:14 PM
- The majority of its in-setting conflicts have to involve practical action, tactics or strategy of the sort that can be easily represented by a mechanical rules system. (One of the reasons I've always believed that the Chronicles of Narnia can't make for a good RPG is that all its really meaningful conflicts are about whether the protagonists make the right moral choices or not, rather than whether they're strong, skilled or clever enough to win a fight.
I'd be curious to know if there are any design notes for the Narnia RPG Iron Crown was apparently working on before they got the rights pulled as an illegitimate sublicense. I had the first
Narnia Solo Gamebook they did, and that included an "Inner Strength" score that could both influence and be modified by the player's choices in the narrative, so it suggests someone at I.C.E. recognized that dimension of the stories.
As for the Rowling quote, I wonder if that had less to do with the RPG itself as with the fact that WotC was also planning to do gamebooks that would have featured the characters in some capacity.
It seems to me that the best worlds from fiction for RPGs are those that tend to episodic stories. Someone already mentioned Conan, and those stories are rarely unrelated (and you can start reading with any of them). Similarly, people have mentioned that urbanised worlds with effective governments make for bad RPGs, but James Bond (with his episodic films/books) shows that such a world can work for RPGs. Finally, Buffy worked along episode and season arcs, and it works well as an RPG (and it allowed for having a single over-powered chosen one in the party).
Quote from: Krazz on December 13, 2023, 03:02:39 PM
It seems to me that the best worlds from fiction for RPGs are those that tend to episodic stories. Someone already mentioned Conan, and those stories are rarely unrelated (and you can start reading with any of them). Similarly, people have mentioned that urbanised worlds with effective governments make for bad RPGs, but James Bond (with his episodic films/books) shows that such a world can work for RPGs. Finally, Buffy worked along episode and season arcs, and it works well as an RPG (and it allowed for having a single over-powered chosen one in the party).
First, movies and books don't prove that these setting make for good rpgs. Second, neither of those settings really has effective governments that can deal with things. The government can deal with normal things but there's always something that they can't deal with. That's where the characters are needed. Governments can't deal with the Bond villain. That's why they need James Bond. The government tried to deal with supernatural threats in Buffy and failed. That's why they need the slayer.
Quote from: mcbobbo on December 12, 2023, 06:43:53 PM
Quote from: Fheredin on December 12, 2023, 06:17:45 PM
Good book settings are overbuilt, while good RPG settings should aim to be underbuilt.
While you make an excellent point (no plan survives contact with the enemy,) the place I thought you were going is a good point, too:
Leave yourself room to answer 'yes' to a good player question. "Hmm , I wonder if this ratman is actually from a secret race of shapeshifters." He is now, because that sounds awesome.
Kind of but not quite the same idea as the Quantum Ogre.
My opinion is that you should worldbuild RPGs with humility. RPG worldbuilding needs to be a little unfinished so the players and the GM can play Calvinball with the parts which you haven't filled in completely. It's tempting to write answers for everything, but it's better to set the tone and answer questions players can't handle themselves, and then step back.
Quote from: yosemitemike on December 14, 2023, 04:59:14 PM
Quote from: Krazz on December 13, 2023, 03:02:39 PM
It seems to me that the best worlds from fiction for RPGs are those that tend to episodic stories. Someone already mentioned Conan, and those stories are rarely unrelated (and you can start reading with any of them). Similarly, people have mentioned that urbanised worlds with effective governments make for bad RPGs, but James Bond (with his episodic films/books) shows that such a world can work for RPGs. Finally, Buffy worked along episode and season arcs, and it works well as an RPG (and it allowed for having a single over-powered chosen one in the party).
First, movies and books don't prove that these setting make for good rpgs. Second, neither of those settings really has effective governments that can deal with things. The government can deal with normal things but there's always something that they can't deal with. That's where the characters are needed. Governments can't deal with the Bond villain. That's why they need James Bond. The government tried to deal with supernatural threats in Buffy and failed. That's why they need the slayer.
James Bond _is_ a government agent. This highlights a whole group of settings that are workable for games even in strong central authority settings. Government agents fighting the agents of chaos. Or the other way around. Or government agents fighting the agents of righteous revolution.
Oh, and OP if you see this, could you change the title to "... _with_ gaming?" My inner English teacher howls every time I see the title of this thread.
Quote from: Mishihari on December 14, 2023, 08:32:07 PM
James Bond _is_ a government agent. This highlights a whole group of settings that are workable for games even in strong central authority settings. Government agents fighting the agents of chaos. Or the other way around. Or government agents fighting the agents of righteous revolution.
Oh, and OP if you see this, could you change the title to "... _with_ gaming?" My inner English teacher howls every time I see the title of this thread.
He also operates well outside of any normal governmental structure. He's only nominally a government agent. He and the other 00 agents exist because the normal structure of government can't cope with this stuff.
Quote from: Mishihari on December 14, 2023, 08:32:07 PM
Quote from: yosemitemike on December 14, 2023, 04:59:14 PM
Quote from: Krazz on December 13, 2023, 03:02:39 PM
It seems to me that the best worlds from fiction for RPGs are those that tend to episodic stories. Someone already mentioned Conan, and those stories are rarely unrelated (and you can start reading with any of them). Similarly, people have mentioned that urbanised worlds with effective governments make for bad RPGs, but James Bond (with his episodic films/books) shows that such a world can work for RPGs. Finally, Buffy worked along episode and season arcs, and it works well as an RPG (and it allowed for having a single over-powered chosen one in the party).
First, movies and books don't prove that these setting make for good rpgs. Second, neither of those settings really has effective governments that can deal with things. The government can deal with normal things but there's always something that they can't deal with. That's where the characters are needed. Governments can't deal with the Bond villain. That's why they need James Bond. The government tried to deal with supernatural threats in Buffy and failed. That's why they need the slayer.
James Bond _is_ a government agent. This highlights a whole group of settings that are workable for games even in strong central authority settings. Government agents fighting the agents of chaos. Or the other way around. Or government agents fighting the agents of righteous revolution.
Oh, and OP if you see this, could you change the title to "... _with_ gaming?" My inner English teacher howls every time I see the title of this thread.
I don't think you can edit the titles of threads already posted on this forum.
Quote from: yosemitemike on December 14, 2023, 09:18:47 PM
Quote from: Mishihari on December 14, 2023, 08:32:07 PM
James Bond _is_ a government agent. This highlights a whole group of settings that are workable for games even in strong central authority settings. Government agents fighting the agents of chaos. Or the other way around. Or government agents fighting the agents of righteous revolution.
Oh, and OP if you see this, could you change the title to "... _with_ gaming?" My inner English teacher howls every time I see the title of this thread.
He also operates well outside of any normal governmental structure. He's only nominally a government agent. He and the other 00 agents exist because the normal structure of government can't cope with this stuff.
He works for MI6, which reports to the Minister of Defence. He's very much part of the fictional British government's structure, and is a large part of why that government is so effective (how many times has he saved the world now, after they sent him to the right place?).
I didn't offer Buffy as an example of a government agent, but rather of an over-powered Chosen One working well in an episodic game/TV series, even when part of a group.
Quote from: Krazz on December 15, 2023, 04:17:19 PM
I didn't offer Buffy as an example of a government agent, but rather of an over-powered Chosen One working well in an episodic game/TV series, even when part of a group.
Buffy serves a good example of how you can do it with power disparity, because Joss Whedon back then did feminism in a way that was actually palatable. He wanted to make strong female characters who were contrasted with strong male characters (the exact opposite of Xena, for instance).
Each of the 6 main characters, Buffy, Angel, Willow, Giles, Cordelia and Xander had their own niche, and had a counterpart of the opposite sex who filled that same niche. Cordelia and Xander were social, and compared to the rest of them, absolute wizards at it. Willow and Giles were geniuses. Buffy and Angel were supernaturally strong.
That's a good way to present strong female characters, and also a great way to construct a party of adventurers.
Quote from: Krazz on December 15, 2023, 04:17:19 PM
He works for MI6, which reports to the Minister of Defence. He's very much part of the fictional British government's structure, and is a large part of why that government is so effective (how many times has he saved the world now, after they sent him to the right place?).
I didn't offer Buffy as an example of a government agent, but rather of an over-powered Chosen One working well in an episodic game/TV series, even when part of a group.
Actual government agents have to account for every round they fire. If they can't justify it, they are in deep shit. Bond has the authority to kill whoever he wants, wherever he wants, whenever he wants without having to justify it at all to anyone. No government agent in the West has that sort of authority.
In that case, I'm not sure how that's relevant to what I said. The government in the Buffyverse can't deal with supernatural threats so the Slayer is necessary. Dealing with the chose one trope is an entirely different conversation.
Quote from: yosemitemike on December 15, 2023, 07:16:53 PM
In that case, I'm not sure how that's relevant to what I said. The government in the Buffyverse can't deal with supernatural threats so the Slayer is necessary. Dealing with the chose one trope is an entirely different conversation.
Buffy's other boyfriend, Riley, was a member of The Initiative, a spec ops team that fights demons.
Quote from: migo on December 15, 2023, 04:44:08 PM
Quote from: Krazz on December 15, 2023, 04:17:19 PM
I didn't offer Buffy as an example of a government agent, but rather of an over-powered Chosen One working well in an episodic game/TV series, even when part of a group.
Buffy serves a good example of how you can do it with power disparity, because Joss Whedon back then did feminism in a way that was actually palatable. He wanted to make strong female characters who were contrasted with strong male characters (the exact opposite of Xena, for instance).
Each of the 6 main characters, Buffy, Angel, Willow, Giles, Cordelia and Xander had their own niche, and had a counterpart of the opposite sex who filled that same niche. Cordelia and Xander were social, and compared to the rest of them, absolute wizards at it. Willow and Giles were geniuses. Buffy and Angel were supernaturally strong.
That's a good way to present strong female characters, and also a great way to construct a party of adventurers.
Saying Xena didn't have strong male characters is weird, since it was a spinoff of
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys set in the same world. Sure, Hercules only occasionally showed up on the Xena series, but that's because they were both buddy series - i.e. only two main characters. Hercules adventured with Iolaus, and Xena adventured with Gabrielle. They're exactly parallel.
That's not a great RPG model because there's only two people in the main cast, but not because of the gender balance. IMO, there's nothing wrong with having a 100% male party, and also nothing wrong with having a 100% female party, or anything in between.
Quote from: migo on December 15, 2023, 08:14:30 PM
Buffy's other boyfriend, Riley, was a member of The Initiative, a spec ops team that fights demons.
They weren't particularly effective at it though.
Quote from: jhkim on December 15, 2023, 08:37:11 PM
Saying Xena didn't have strong male characters is weird, since it was a spinoff of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys set in the same world. Sure, Hercules only occasionally showed up on the Xena series, but that's because they were both buddy series - i.e. only two main characters. Hercules adventured with Iolaus, and Xena adventured with Gabrielle. They're exactly parallel.
Hercules showed up once in a blue moon. The only non-villain male character that showed up regularly was this guy. The bumbling comic relief.
(https://i.imgur.com/6zk1oJ2.jpg)
Quote from: jhkim on December 15, 2023, 08:37:11 PM
Saying Xena didn't have strong male characters is weird, since it was a spinoff of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys set in the same world. Sure, Hercules only occasionally showed up on the Xena series, but that's because they were both buddy series - i.e. only two main characters. Hercules adventured with Iolaus, and Xena adventured with Gabrielle. They're exactly parallel.
Hercules wasn't a part of Xena, he had his own show. Xena adventured with Gabrielle
and Joxer. Initially Xena was the combat monster and Gabrielle the face, but when they decided to make Gabrielle a fighter as well, they couldn't make her look good opposite Xena, so they brought in Joxer as a clown to make Gabrielle look good. And that's the point, Joxer was used to make Gabrielle look good, and thus it wasn't a 100% female party.
Quote from: yosemitemike on December 15, 2023, 10:17:03 PM
Quote from: migo on December 15, 2023, 08:14:30 PM
Buffy's other boyfriend, Riley, was a member of The Initiative, a spec ops team that fights demons.
They weren't particularly effective at it though.
True, but it still serves as a base for a post-Buffy campaign in the Buffyverse.
Quote from: migo on December 16, 2023, 04:33:01 AM
True, but it still serves as a base for a post-Buffy campaign in the Buffyverse.
I suppose but it doesn't have much to do with the point I made.
Quote from: yosemitemike on December 15, 2023, 07:16:53 PM
Quote from: Krazz on December 15, 2023, 04:17:19 PM
He works for MI6, which reports to the Minister of Defence. He's very much part of the fictional British government's structure, and is a large part of why that government is so effective (how many times has he saved the world now, after they sent him to the right place?).
I didn't offer Buffy as an example of a government agent, but rather of an over-powered Chosen One working well in an episodic game/TV series, even when part of a group.
Actual government agents have to account for every round they fire. If they can't justify it, they are in deep shit. Bond has the authority to kill whoever he wants, wherever he wants, whenever he wants without having to justify it at all to anyone. No government agent in the West has that sort of authority.
It's fictional; I don't want to watch Bond fill out paperwork. And if you want effective government, then the Bond books and movies have that, because they have a highly skilled agent trusted by his government to make decisions in the field. No real-world bureaucracy will ever match that. You might say that it wouldn't work well in the real world, but that's irrelevant in fiction designed to be fun.
Quote from: yosemitemike on December 15, 2023, 07:16:53 PM
In that case, I'm not sure how that's relevant to what I said. The government in the Buffyverse can't deal with supernatural threats so the Slayer is necessary. Dealing with the chose one trope is an entirely different conversation.
Someone said the Chosen One trope didn't work well in RPGs, and I raised it as a counter-example. It wasn't supposed to be an example of gaming with an effective government.
Quote from: Krazz on December 15, 2023, 04:17:19 PMI didn't offer Buffy as an example of a government agent, but rather of an over-powered Chosen One working well in an episodic game/TV series, even when part of a group.
For clarity (because I think I was the first one who suggested the "Buffy" setting worked better when they opened it up to an unlimited number of Slayers), I didn't mean to suggest the "Chosen One" trope can't work in an episodic series or in an RPG. What I meant to say was that I think a lone "Chosen One" who's already
exclusively defined as an NPC is generally counterproductive in an RPG setting, because it immediately suggests the PCs aren't part of what is really the "most important" story dynamic of the setting in the same way that metaplot events they can't affect do. (The most frequent complaint I ever heard about the Aeonverse metaplot was the fact that the biggest fights or events, like Caestus Pax vs. Divis Mal, were limited to NPCs and couldn't be affected by PC actions.)
And even when a PC
can be the Chosen One of the setting, limiting that role to a single player -- which is generally a requirement of a "Chosen
One" trope -- can have undesirable fallout. What happens if more than one player wants the role? What happens if the Chosen One, in the setting, would logically have authority to give orders to the other PCs in ways the other players don't like? What happens if the players realize the GM is "plot armouring" the Chosen PC against death, but nobody else? And if he doesn't, what happens if the Chosen PC
is killed and
nobody else wants the role? And so on.
By allowing multiple Slayers in its world, the "Buffy" setting avoided these issues for gaming groups by allowing more than one Slayer in a group and allowing any one Slayer PC not to have to be central or indispensable to a given group or campaign plotline -- which works well for RPGs but less well for a dramatic TV or novel series based on a single primary protagonist. (It's worth noting that the series only created the "all potential Slayers now active" plot point as part of its series finale, because telling stories where Buffy was no longer unique or indispensable to her world would have been a significantly different type of show.)
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on December 16, 2023, 02:28:33 PM
Quote from: Krazz on December 15, 2023, 04:17:19 PMI didn't offer Buffy as an example of a government agent, but rather of an over-powered Chosen One working well in an episodic game/TV series, even when part of a group.
For clarity (because I think I was the first one who suggested the "Buffy" setting worked better when they opened it up to an unlimited number of Slayers), I didn't mean to suggest the "Chosen One" trope can't work in an episodic series or in an RPG. What I meant to say was that I think a lone "Chosen One" who's already exclusively defined as an NPC is generally counterproductive in an RPG setting, because it immediately suggests the PCs aren't part of what is really the "most important" story dynamic of the setting in the same way that metaplot events they can't affect do. (The most frequent complaint I ever heard about the Aeonverse metaplot was the fact that the biggest fights or events, like Caestus Pax vs. Divis Mal, were limited to NPCs and couldn't be affected by PC actions.)
And even when a PC can be the Chosen One of the setting, limiting that role to a single player -- which is generally a requirement of a "Chosen One" trope -- can have undesirable fallout. What happens if more than one player wants the role? What happens if the Chosen One, in the setting, would logically have authority to give orders to the other PCs in ways the other players don't like? What happens if the players realize the GM is "plot armouring" the Chosen PC against death, but nobody else? And if he doesn't, what happens if the Chosen PC is killed and nobody else wants the role? And so on.
By allowing multiple Slayers in its world, the "Buffy" setting avoided these issues for gaming groups by allowing more than one Slayer in a group and allowing any one Slayer PC not to have to be central or indispensable to a given group or campaign plotline -- which works well for RPGs but less well for a dramatic TV or novel series based on a single primary protagonist. (It's worth noting that the series only created the "all potential Slayers now active" plot point as part of its series finale, because telling stories where Buffy was no longer unique or indispensable to her world would have been a significantly different type of show.)
The original post on Chosen Ones was from someone else on the second post in the thread, and didn't mention it being limited to NPCs:
Quote from: Eric Diaz on December 11, 2023, 08:46:42 PM
- Characters that are "the chosen one" or similar, since it devalues PCs.
I'd guess that would depend on how it's played out. Would you be happy to play a knight in Pendragon when only the NPC Arthur can draw the sword from the stone? Or how about playing a space marine rather than the Emperor in 40K? If they're distant and don't directly affect the plot much, I think it can be achieved.
As for Chosen One PCs, I wouldn't want a lot of the things you mentioned - plot immunity, giving orders, etc. But just because it can be done badly, doesn't mean that games that avoid that can't do well.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on December 16, 2023, 02:28:33 PM
For clarity (because I think I was the first one who suggested the "Buffy" setting worked better when they opened it up to an unlimited number of Slayers), I didn't mean to suggest the "Chosen One" trope can't work in an episodic series or in an RPG. What I meant to say was that I think a lone "Chosen One" who's already exclusively defined as an NPC is generally counterproductive in an RPG setting, because it immediately suggests the PCs aren't part of what is really the "most important" story dynamic of the setting in the same way that metaplot events they can't affect do. (The most frequent complaint I ever heard about the Aeonverse metaplot was the fact that the biggest fights or events, like Caestus Pax vs. Divis Mal, were limited to NPCs and couldn't be affected by PC actions.)
I liked some of the background for
Aberrant, though I never ended up running anything in the Aeonverse (White Wolf's Adventure/Aberrant/Aeon Trinity). In general, I think one can extend the canon to allow the PCs to be important
if that's what you want to do. If the GM and players are willing, then it's usually easy to write in changes. In Aberrant, I'd just toss the future history out and allow Divis Mal and Caestus Pax to be beaten by PC action.
I've played and run a bunch of Star Wars games set in the time of the Empire, even though Luke Skywalker is the Chosen One to defeat the Empire. Usually I haven't even needed to clash with canon, as there are many possible plots where the PCs still have a vital role to play. Still, I'd be open to setting in various alternate timelines, or simply at different times and places such that the Chosen One arc doesn't happen or isn't relevant.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on December 16, 2023, 02:28:33 PM
By allowing multiple Slayers in its world, the "Buffy" setting avoided these issues for gaming groups by allowing more than one Slayer in a group and allowing any one Slayer PC not to have to be central or indispensable to a given group or campaign plotline -- which works well for RPGs but less well for a dramatic TV or novel series based on a single primary protagonist. (It's worth noting that the series only created the "all potential Slayers now active" plot point as part of its series finale, because telling stories where Buffy was no longer unique or indispensable to her world would have been a significantly different type of show.)
The Angel series was also already going on before that Season Seven - so that was a clear model how there could be another relevant series of adventures even if Buffy was the only Chosen One. I had started my Buffy RPG series before the Season Seven revelation - but we still had a Slayer because early on it was shown that there could be multiple Slayers if they were revived. I also had another series of one-shots were a dead Slayer's spirit came to possess a robotic body. It's pretty easy to find a plot excuse for a spinoff if there is interest.
Quote from: migo on December 16, 2023, 04:31:39 AM
Quote from: jhkim on December 15, 2023, 08:37:11 PM
Saying Xena didn't have strong male characters is weird, since it was a spinoff of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys set in the same world. Sure, Hercules only occasionally showed up on the Xena series, but that's because they were both buddy series - i.e. only two main characters. Hercules adventured with Iolaus, and Xena adventured with Gabrielle. They're exactly parallel.
Hercules wasn't a part of Xena, he had his own show. Xena adventured with Gabrielle and Joxer. Initially Xena was the combat monster and Gabrielle the face, but when they decided to make Gabrielle a fighter as well, they couldn't make her look good opposite Xena, so they brought in Joxer as a clown to make Gabrielle look good. And that's the point, Joxer was used to make Gabrielle look good, and thus it wasn't a 100% female party.
Joxer appears in a little less than a quarter of the Xena episodes. In most episodes, it's just Xena and Gabrielle, plus whatever guest stars there are. But sure, Joxer regularly filled in as the comic relief so that Gabrielle didn't have to be the comic relief all the time.
I agree that Xena doesn't have strong male characters in the main cast, but my point was that Hercules also doesn't have strong female characters in the main cast -- and that's OK. I don't think that RPGs or series need 50/50 gender balance, especially if there are only two or three main characters. It's OK for there to be a show like Hercules or Supernatural about two male buddies - and it doesn't need to add a strong woman character to the permanent main cast. The same goes for Xena.
Quote from: jhkim on December 16, 2023, 04:37:38 PM
I agree that Xena doesn't have strong male characters in the main cast, but my point was that Hercules also doesn't have strong female characters in the main cast -- and that's OK. I don't think that RPGs or series need 50/50 gender balance, especially if there are only two or three main characters. It's OK for there to be a show like Hercules or Supernatural about two male buddies - and it doesn't need to add a strong woman character to the permanent main cast. The same goes for Xena.
The point is that both Xena and Buffy are explicitly feminist shows, and while Xena is of the autistic lesbian variety of unhinged feminism, Buffy is the kind that every sane and well adjusted adult - even if socially conservative - can get behind. And Xena's storytelling and plot style also doesn't work well for RPGs. They started out with Xena fighter and Gabrielle face, but that wasn't sustainable. Buffy was able to sustain having Xander and Cordelia continue just being faces and not suddenly become martial arts masters over the course of the series.
Quote from: Krazz on December 16, 2023, 10:32:46 AM
It's fictional; I don't want to watch Bond fill out paperwork. And if you want effective government, then the Bond books and movies have that, because they have a highly skilled agent trusted by his government to make decisions in the field. No real-world bureaucracy will ever match that. You might say that it wouldn't work well in the real world, but that's irrelevant in fiction designed to be fun.
Bond is a government agent in name only. The part of MI-6 he works for is only nominally part of the government too.
Quote from: Krazz on December 16, 2023, 10:32:46 AM
Someone said the Chosen One trope didn't work well in RPGs, and I raised it as a counter-example. It wasn't supposed to be an example of gaming with an effective government.
I don't know who that was but it was not me.
Quote from: Armchair Gamer on December 13, 2023, 11:30:35 AM
I'd be curious to know if there are any design notes for the Narnia RPG Iron Crown was apparently working on before they got the rights pulled as an illegitimate sublicense. I had the first Narnia Solo Gamebook they did, and that included an "Inner Strength" score that could both influence and be modified by the player's choices in the narrative, so it suggests someone at I.C.E. recognized that dimension of the stories.
I have one of those Narnia gamebooks I think. Also a Sherlock Holmes gamebook.
Quote from: migo on December 16, 2023, 04:31:39 AM
Quote from: jhkim on December 15, 2023, 08:37:11 PM
Saying Xena didn't have strong male characters is weird, since it was a spinoff of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys set in the same world. Sure, Hercules only occasionally showed up on the Xena series, but that's because they were both buddy series - i.e. only two main characters. Hercules adventured with Iolaus, and Xena adventured with Gabrielle. They're exactly parallel.
Hercules wasn't a part of Xena, he had his own show. Xena adventured with Gabrielle and Joxer. Initially Xena was the combat monster and Gabrielle the face, but when they decided to make Gabrielle a fighter as well, they couldn't make her look good opposite Xena, so they brought in Joxer as a clown to make Gabrielle look good. And that's the point, Joxer was used to make Gabrielle look good, and thus it wasn't a 100% female party.
Yeah, but if you were going to make a Xena/Hercules RPG the party would probably consist of:
Xena
Hercules
Gabrielle
Iolaus
Autolycus
And maybe Joxer is a GM character there for comic relief.
Quote from: zagreus on December 18, 2023, 11:18:10 AM
Quote from: migo on December 16, 2023, 04:31:39 AM
Quote from: jhkim on December 15, 2023, 08:37:11 PM
Saying Xena didn't have strong male characters is weird, since it was a spinoff of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys set in the same world. Sure, Hercules only occasionally showed up on the Xena series, but that's because they were both buddy series - i.e. only two main characters. Hercules adventured with Iolaus, and Xena adventured with Gabrielle. They're exactly parallel.
Hercules wasn't a part of Xena, he had his own show. Xena adventured with Gabrielle and Joxer. Initially Xena was the combat monster and Gabrielle the face, but when they decided to make Gabrielle a fighter as well, they couldn't make her look good opposite Xena, so they brought in Joxer as a clown to make Gabrielle look good. And that's the point, Joxer was used to make Gabrielle look good, and thus it wasn't a 100% female party.
Yeah, but if you were going to make a Xena/Hercules RPG the party would probably consist of:
Xena
Hercules
Gabrielle
Iolaus
Autolycus
And maybe Joxer is a GM character there for comic relief.
Nah man, you know someone is going to want to play Salmonius. He the real MVP
Quote from: MeganovaStella on December 11, 2023, 08:11:14 PM
What makes a world good to explore in traditional stories (novels, games, movies, etc) but not as fun to explore in a tabletop game?
I think this really boils down more to adventure structure than the setting itself.
Quote from: ForgottenF on December 18, 2023, 12:22:35 PM
Quote from: zagreus on December 18, 2023, 11:18:10 AM
Quote from: migo on December 16, 2023, 04:31:39 AM
Quote from: jhkim on December 15, 2023, 08:37:11 PM
Saying Xena didn't have strong male characters is weird, since it was a spinoff of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys set in the same world. Sure, Hercules only occasionally showed up on the Xena series, but that's because they were both buddy series - i.e. only two main characters. Hercules adventured with Iolaus, and Xena adventured with Gabrielle. They're exactly parallel.
Hercules wasn't a part of Xena, he had his own show. Xena adventured with Gabrielle and Joxer. Initially Xena was the combat monster and Gabrielle the face, but when they decided to make Gabrielle a fighter as well, they couldn't make her look good opposite Xena, so they brought in Joxer as a clown to make Gabrielle look good. And that's the point, Joxer was used to make Gabrielle look good, and thus it wasn't a 100% female party.
Yeah, but if you were going to make a Xena/Hercules RPG the party would probably consist of:
Xena
Hercules
Gabrielle
Iolaus
Autolycus
And maybe Joxer is a GM character there for comic relief.
Nah man, you know someone is going to want to play Salmonius. He the real MVP
Another good option!
Quote from: zagreus on December 18, 2023, 11:18:10 AM
Yeah, but if you were going to make a Xena/Hercules RPG the party would probably consist of:
Xena
Hercules
Gabrielle
Iolaus
Autolycus
And maybe Joxer is a GM character there for comic relief.
They did make a Hercules/Xena rpg. I own the boxed set. You play character's that aspire to be as good as Joxer one day. Being as good as Gabrielle or Iolaus is a distant dream.