Darrin Drader
Explorer
Forked from: Designing a 2e Retro-Clone
This discussion brings up an important factor with old school roleplaying, which is that for many, it wasn't the rules themselves that were important with previous editions of D&D, but the worlds you could create with them. The obvious examples are Forgotten Realms, Planescape, Al-Qadim, and Ravenloft, but as Mutant Future shows, there's a lot more that could be done with the core old school D&D rule set than just traditional fantasy. So with that, why not come up with a list of products we wouldn't mind seeing published under these rules.
1. Ancient Cthulhu: Back when the Cthulhu gods were used in the original Deities and Demigods, Cthulhu was still under copyright. This is no longer the case, it's now public domain, so why not design a setting that takes place either in a medievel or ancient setting where all magic is powered by the Cthulhu mythos? (hint: this might look a lot like Conan with the serial numbers filed off).
2. Space Opera: When I designed Reign of Discordia, what I had in mind was a game that used a streamlined set of rules (True20) that incorporated elements of Star Wars, Star Frontiers, and Star Blazers. A lot of people seem to be digging the setting, and we have more on the way, but if anyone is interested in converting the setting to old school rules, contact me and we'll see what we can come up with, whether it be licensing or publishing under RDP.
3. Pulp: I love the pulp era of fiction. That whole style of giant creatures, giant robots, tropical islands with dinosaurs, detective, and Indiana Jones style adventure is really a lot of fun. It's also very broad, covering everything from The Lost World, to King Kong, to Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.... What we're talking about here is retro-scifi with retro sensibilities.
4. Modern: I mean why not have a game set in the modern day, complete with modern technology, modern firearms, terrorism, espionage, and gang warfare?
5. Conspiracy: Similar to modern above, except that it takes its influences from the X-Files, or Fringe. There's something large going on, it might involve strange experiemental technology, the supernatural, or aliens. Characters probably either work for the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, or a privately funded organization that has to duck the law in order to keep secretly saving the world.
I think this could be a cool idea, but since we're talking about entire other genres, some new elements would need to be created, such as character classes within these genres, weapons, races, etc. One of the major differences between this project and something like D20 Future is that the character classes would probably have to be narrowly defined rather than being broad like they were in Modern. That effectively means a new build of the game for every distinct genre. Or, another option would be to do supplements for OSRIC or whatever game we happen to be talking about, that contained all of the changed rules.
Remathilis said:
This discussion brings up an important factor with old school roleplaying, which is that for many, it wasn't the rules themselves that were important with previous editions of D&D, but the worlds you could create with them. The obvious examples are Forgotten Realms, Planescape, Al-Qadim, and Ravenloft, but as Mutant Future shows, there's a lot more that could be done with the core old school D&D rule set than just traditional fantasy. So with that, why not come up with a list of products we wouldn't mind seeing published under these rules.
1. Ancient Cthulhu: Back when the Cthulhu gods were used in the original Deities and Demigods, Cthulhu was still under copyright. This is no longer the case, it's now public domain, so why not design a setting that takes place either in a medievel or ancient setting where all magic is powered by the Cthulhu mythos? (hint: this might look a lot like Conan with the serial numbers filed off).
2. Space Opera: When I designed Reign of Discordia, what I had in mind was a game that used a streamlined set of rules (True20) that incorporated elements of Star Wars, Star Frontiers, and Star Blazers. A lot of people seem to be digging the setting, and we have more on the way, but if anyone is interested in converting the setting to old school rules, contact me and we'll see what we can come up with, whether it be licensing or publishing under RDP.
3. Pulp: I love the pulp era of fiction. That whole style of giant creatures, giant robots, tropical islands with dinosaurs, detective, and Indiana Jones style adventure is really a lot of fun. It's also very broad, covering everything from The Lost World, to King Kong, to Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.... What we're talking about here is retro-scifi with retro sensibilities.
4. Modern: I mean why not have a game set in the modern day, complete with modern technology, modern firearms, terrorism, espionage, and gang warfare?
5. Conspiracy: Similar to modern above, except that it takes its influences from the X-Files, or Fringe. There's something large going on, it might involve strange experiemental technology, the supernatural, or aliens. Characters probably either work for the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, or a privately funded organization that has to duck the law in order to keep secretly saving the world.
I think this could be a cool idea, but since we're talking about entire other genres, some new elements would need to be created, such as character classes within these genres, weapons, races, etc. One of the major differences between this project and something like D20 Future is that the character classes would probably have to be narrowly defined rather than being broad like they were in Modern. That effectively means a new build of the game for every distinct genre. Or, another option would be to do supplements for OSRIC or whatever game we happen to be talking about, that contained all of the changed rules.
