"Truly Systemless Campaigns and Adventures" Topic

Is there a market for anything such? Would you spend money on a campaign or adventure that had no rules, only guidelines for how to run it?

Examples:

You see before you a Thryng. These are fast, sleek, purple lizardlike carnivores, and you know they are ferocious, and the top of the food chain on Arcturus IV. It does not seem to notice you at the moment.

GM: The Thryng will have stats roughly equal to a tiger, velociraptor, or whatever your system uses for a fast, smart, agressive, solitary predator.

Get the idea? No real stats imposed, but enough quick description that the GM should be able to look something up in his rules to find the closest possible stats quickly.

Or is this not a good idea? Do you believe that a campaign or advanture should always be married to a particular system?

Curious.

I've bought plenty of RPGs and scenarios just for the 'fluff'… with no intention of using the accompanying rules system.

So yeah… if the setting/subject interested me.

I think I would buy it if it was complete enough for my genre or period.

I wouldn't want it so general that it could be a sci fi creature or a fantasy creature at the same time.

How do you distinguish a SciFi creature from a Fantasy creature? A fast sleek carnivore is bad news whether you're Spaceman Spiff or Ugh the Barbarian.

If it breathes fire or casts spells or is undead, it can't be SF so it must be fantasy.

Well, Foundry's african natives are pretty generic, and would work fine for the spear-armed varieties. Steer away from the Foundry Maasai, because Mark Copplestone sculpted them to model the distinctive maasai physique, very unlike west African body shapes.

link

But those guys are a bit expensive if you need hordes of 'em.

I recommend Old Glory's Lost tribes, even though they are slightly fanciful. Great figures, and a good price.

link

If you swap boring shields for the ones which come in the pack, they look much more historical.

I also recommend the really cool masked tribes range, but these are completely fantasy. Cool nonetheless, and a real treat to paint.

<Test edit>

Whoa, I did not write the above! It was changed after I did an edit. Here's my post:

Fascinating idea, and it's the sort of thing an like me proselytizes about all the time. But isn't setting a up a system to do that, in fact and by definition, "systemizing" it?
--
Tim

I would buy something like that.

I always was one to get the generic world/genre books before one specializing in a particular universe.

Examples using Gurps worldbooks –
Gurps Space – not Gurps Traveller.
Gurps Horror – not Gurps Vampire.
Gurps Fantasy – not Gurps etc…

I like to pull ideas out of the material to use in the game rather than be told, "This is how is works."

I'm used to doing this with RPG systems that I really don't use. I do not play Gurps, but will steal and mix the ideas in their books.

We always convert/translate the info over to either the Fudge or Theatrix RPG systems.

"Whoa, I did not write the above!" I was wondering what in the h#ll natives had to do with this thread. lol!

Definitely – Although James Desbrough (Post Mortem Studies) has already released a number of similar books; 100 Horror locations, 100 SF adventure seeds, 100 fantasy adventure seeds, etc etc.

Zardoz

Grape Ape,

Are you looking to enter into the market or just mulling the thought around the old melon?

Books that offer fluff without a system will produce black or white reactions, IMO. If inexpensive then the issue is moot, but if a $50 USD book without an operating system, that could be a bad thing.

Small seed books, themed fluff manuals that give the GM tons to work with without being tied to a system has a value to be sure, IMO again.

Without the rules you would need to be particualr about certain aspects;

not to big of a book
not too much of a price tag
some art…but not crappy art
consistant flow
something unique

I know this is nothing special or insightful but if you consider a book that has no real value for playing other than the details of a game it must be affordable, clean, and useful….not the kind of useful like one man's garbage thing but rather useful in a meaningful way.

$8-10 for a (just for example) RPG setting for link (escape from city 17)

It has a begining, bad guys in the middle, and an end…escape.

If the detail work is there, a few decent pics, weapons/items, and is complete…minus PC's…then yes I think it could and would be welcomed.

Another rehash of Tolkien-ish fantasy with the mouth of evil, bobbits, gorcs, and felves…no way in hell.

So I guess a better question would be more to the point, "here is my idea for a campaign that can be useful for any RPG system, what do you think?".

This is just my opinion based on observation.

No.

Green Ronin did Freeport, a setting well established during the height of the d20 bust. They did it as a systemless book with a few sourcebooks. No such plans to expand upon it or any other all purpose sourcebooks this year.

In the dawn of role playing games, Catalyst and Task Force Games both did all purpose materia with Heroes of Legend, City Books, Grimtooth Traps, etc… Neither is around in any new book publishing capacity these days.

I've seen some people talk about the love of the all game system sourcebook but if they were truly the top market picks, there would be more of them. They have to compete with every other source of information like Wikepedia and their utility goes down quickly depending on what you're talking about. Writing out game stats if you run Champions of 3rd ed? Not fun.