After spending months of lurking through the EN-World dungeons, I finally decided to join in the word-based hack-n-slash with a half-rant, half-idea repository thread of my own.
Receintly I discovered how tired I was with D20 products that continue to squeeze the last remaining interest in formulaic sourcebooks. Races and classes sourcebook barely manage to catch my attention anymore, monster manuals pass unnoticed, the count of feats and spells have become meaningless. I have enough city sourcebooks to fill several kindgoms, and enough NPC sourcebooks to populate a continent. After doing setting-hopping for years I ended up so weary of trying the Fantasy World of the Month, that I stuck my roots deep into Eberron's core and so far resist moving on. The choice on the market - both dead tree and electronic - is staggering, yet the more it grows, the more difficult it becomes to find a good idea that haven't been done a dozen times before and makes you question who needs yet another one of that?!...
So I thought to start an idea-repository thread with ideas and concepts that haven't been done before in D20 books. Anything that makes some sense from commercial point and worth to be made into a book of average or large size, but somehow have managed to remain unnoticed by the publishers.
* A sourcebook of pets - dogs, cats, exotic pets. Rules on pet creation, pet care, pet feats and skills, training, vet classes, etc. The base concept should be for realistic pets, so it is usable in D20 3.5 and D20 Modern. Magical abilities can be available for certain settings (ie: talking dogs) without the book running into a familiar sourcebook. I can see 64 to 92 pages easily on this concept, and even more if developed thoroughly.
* The Collectable Fantasy Campaigns - It is the human nature to desire things that he doesn't need, but is made to believe he cannot live without. Collectible games of all kinds are based on that model and are so far extremely successful. But what if someone in your fantasy campaign have come with the same idea and then turned it into reality? What if you could add a "collectible" feel in your own fantasy campaign, and do it in a serious manner instead naive saturday morning cartoon? Magicians catching and battling their familiars, ghost hunters infusing trading card games with the souls of long-dead, plane-hopping gods collecting world fragments into magic dice and connecting them together to build their own pocket planes, etc? This sourcebook could present different metagame mechanics for building different collecible games and several standard examples of "breeding and battling monsters", "trading card game with summonable monsters", etc. and their effect if brought within a fantasy campaign, with example "vanilla D20" fantasy world that have fallen pray to a collectable frenzy. This could easily become a 200+ page book if given proper attention.
Receintly I discovered how tired I was with D20 products that continue to squeeze the last remaining interest in formulaic sourcebooks. Races and classes sourcebook barely manage to catch my attention anymore, monster manuals pass unnoticed, the count of feats and spells have become meaningless. I have enough city sourcebooks to fill several kindgoms, and enough NPC sourcebooks to populate a continent. After doing setting-hopping for years I ended up so weary of trying the Fantasy World of the Month, that I stuck my roots deep into Eberron's core and so far resist moving on. The choice on the market - both dead tree and electronic - is staggering, yet the more it grows, the more difficult it becomes to find a good idea that haven't been done a dozen times before and makes you question who needs yet another one of that?!...
So I thought to start an idea-repository thread with ideas and concepts that haven't been done before in D20 books. Anything that makes some sense from commercial point and worth to be made into a book of average or large size, but somehow have managed to remain unnoticed by the publishers.
* A sourcebook of pets - dogs, cats, exotic pets. Rules on pet creation, pet care, pet feats and skills, training, vet classes, etc. The base concept should be for realistic pets, so it is usable in D20 3.5 and D20 Modern. Magical abilities can be available for certain settings (ie: talking dogs) without the book running into a familiar sourcebook. I can see 64 to 92 pages easily on this concept, and even more if developed thoroughly.
* The Collectable Fantasy Campaigns - It is the human nature to desire things that he doesn't need, but is made to believe he cannot live without. Collectible games of all kinds are based on that model and are so far extremely successful. But what if someone in your fantasy campaign have come with the same idea and then turned it into reality? What if you could add a "collectible" feel in your own fantasy campaign, and do it in a serious manner instead naive saturday morning cartoon? Magicians catching and battling their familiars, ghost hunters infusing trading card games with the souls of long-dead, plane-hopping gods collecting world fragments into magic dice and connecting them together to build their own pocket planes, etc? This sourcebook could present different metagame mechanics for building different collecible games and several standard examples of "breeding and battling monsters", "trading card game with summonable monsters", etc. and their effect if brought within a fantasy campaign, with example "vanilla D20" fantasy world that have fallen pray to a collectable frenzy. This could easily become a 200+ page book if given proper attention.
- but to introduce a collectable gameplay within a fantasy campaign. Yes, it's not really collectable for the GM and for the Players, as the rules and all the monster/card/etc. entries are in the book, but for the fantasy characters it is - to give a well-known example: they get a little L1 Goblin to care for, drag around and battle other monsters, catch them to fill their collection, the go to a big tourney and prove their skills and brag to NPCs or between each other. Of course, this is the most simple of examples and I expect much more serious and well-thought concepts for a collectible elements within a fictional world.
