What are your thoughts on system-less worldbuilding/setting books?

[Dannyalcatraz]

I've been aware of that since before 2004.... I've got two adaptations, but that's utterly irrelevant to the books themselves, which predate the RPG by 30 years.

I know how old the TTA books are.

I’ve never seen the RPG myself, though, and I’ve always been curious about if it merely translated the books into RPG form, or if the designers added additional elements.

 

[aramis erak]

I know how old the TTA books are.

I’ve never seen the RPG myself, though, and I’ve always been curious about if it merely translated the books into RPG form, or if the designers added additional elements.

the currently available one (for Savage Worlds) is focused upon the aftermath of the Proxima War arc. It adds a little outside that particular timeframe. It's not a substitute for the books themselves, either, and it uses the revised timeline from the Morrigan Press reprints (shove almost everything back a century).

The Morrigan Press one uses the same system as their edition of Talislanta, called the Omni System, and gives a bit more breadth. Sadly, I didn't get the dead tree... just the PDF.

And Morrigan got in some legal issues with their new art not being different enough... especially for Spacecraft 2100-2200. Artist complaints, or so they said.

If one is a neurotic completionist, the Morrigan Press version has about a dozen copies available through amazon.com... a couple below cover price!

 

[dragoner]

My stuff isn't exactly system-less, though while made for Cepheus Engine, it has been played with m-space, and mothership, that i know of.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

the currently available one (for Savage Worlds) is focused upon the aftermath of the Proxima War arc. It adds a little outside that particular timeframe. It's not a substitute for the books themselves, either, and it uses the revised timeline from the Morrigan Press reprints (shove almost everything back a century).

The Morrigan Press one uses the same system as their edition of Talislanta, called the Omni System, and gives a bit more breadth. Sadly, I didn't get the dead tree... just the PDF.

And Morrigan got in some legal issues with their new art not being different enough... especially for Spacecraft 2100-2200. Artist complaints, or so they said.

If one is a neurotic completionist, the Morrigan Press version has about a dozen copies available through amazon.com... a couple below cover price!

I THOUGHT there was an older RPG than the Savage Worlds one! It didn’t pop up in my cursory search. I might have to snag that. Thanks!

 

[Jd Smith1]

I very seldom use the intended system for any given setting, so I would be all in favor of a good setting with a high-quality map.

 

[MGibster]

These days, I expect the rules to be strongly tied to the setting. I don't enjoy using games like GURPS to build or adapt the rules to a particular setting, so a setting book is of limited value. I could probably make an exception for a ruleless setting that followed the conventions of a typical genre or game. I could easily use the rules for Deadlands for most westerns and just use D&D for any "not-D&D" fantasy setting.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I own and use systemless setting books, most notably, the systemless Pirate's Guide to Freeport that came out in the 3E/4E transition era. For the most part, such books created for roleplaying purposes have clear analogues in the most typical rulebooks anyway (if there's an animated skeleton in the setting book, I'm pretty sure I know where to find it).

I often change ignore the stats in the rulebooks that have them anyway to scale up or scale down challenges as I see fit, so having the numbers be a loose guideline to begin with aren't an issue for me at all.

On a related note, for the Alien movie franchise, there are a lot of field guide and blueprint books that I think of as being ideal accompaniments to the Alien RPG, even if not everything in it shows up in the RPG with stats. Just knowing that there's a gun out there that's slightly different in X or Y ways, or the ship the PCs are on is this big and has those features is almost as good as having full stats to begin with. (In the Alien RPG, I'm not likely to have a lot of ship-to-ship combat to begin with.)

 

[Voadam]

I am a big fan of a number of systemless setting books.

The Pirate's Guide to Freeport is statless and was both fun to read, established a great setting for use in games, and super useful for me in running the Freeport Trilogy of adventures.

The World of Warhammer: The Offficial Illustrated Guide to the Fantasy World is fantastic. Short heavily illustrated chapters on each of the factions from the classic era with zero game rule stuff (minis game or TTRPG).

A lot of great gazetteer stuff is either systemless or has minimal stats like "F18" next to a leader's name.

 

[practicalm]

I have always liked the Citybook Series published by Flying Buffalo.
Different businesses you can drop into your own cities if you need something and fairly easy to modify.

 

[MNblockhead]

I use The World of the Lost Lands by Frog God Games in my current campaign. The setting book itself is system neutral, but they sell crunch supplements with custom classes, etc., for a couple of systems, including 5e, Swords & Wizardry, and (I believe) Pathfinder 1e. They also have an excellent version of it on World Anvil. Having a setting book with a hyperlinked map linking to information on regions, settlements, etc. and the ability to turn on/off various layers, including a layer showing adventures and other regional setting books pinned to the related area of the map is wonderful. If I stop playing 5e, I can use the book and World Anvil realm with other fantasy TTRPGs.