Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
What RPGs genres are lacking?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Thomas Shey" data-source="post: 9701378" data-attributes="member: 7026617"><p>There's essentially three ways to go about it:</p><p></p><p>1. Have a large enough list of technology, items, species and creatures to supply any likely need.</p><p>2. Have a system for building the concrete elements of the above and let the GM decide the premises.</p><p>3. Do things in broad enough strokes that the fiction is informing how they interact, but the mechanics are generic enough there's limited ability to need to lock them down on that level.</p><p></p><p>All of these have issues depending on where you're coming from.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I'd argue D&D didn't really do that great a job of representing broad fantasy either. In particular, the magic and class systems forced the game into certain modes that excluded a lot of things. Fundamentally, they just didn't care, and neither did at least a majority of people who got into the game and stuck with it.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>But that's it; sand off the names and a few ultraspecific traits, and those are plenty good enough. I mean, honestly, "generic fantasy races" got that way because a lot of people did something similar to that, they just did some of it a long time ago.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/191271/n-e-w-the-science-fiction-roleplaying-game-v1-3?src=hottest_filtered[/URL]</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Its less that it was forgotten than most people never heard about it in the first place. Its a one-man-band operation, and likely never got any large distribution.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The problem is you kind of need to define what makes a game a generic SF but not otherwise generic. I'll note you can't even define it by absence of magic if you're going to use Alternity as an example; the SFX rules, and even a separate book existed after all. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>That was actually where Monster of the Week was supposed to go, not with the urban fantasy. I could mention things like the third edition of Chill (which wasn't a bad game despite the authors turning out to be awful people) but a lot of other modern ones are adjuncts to generic systems (there's at least one for Savage Worlds for example).</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>But does it do so to an extent to justify the extra effort and page count? The both of those are limited resources.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The problem with having too heavily civilized settings is the same one as in fantasy; it constrains the type of stories you can tell. At the other end if there's no civilization, that creates problems too. In some respects, a society that's getting back on their feet after been knocked down is the best of both worlds.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>There are definitely horror elements in EP. There's a lot of opportunity given the technologies and history going on thee. And there's some stuff that might be unsettling for people that's not intended as horror in a setting where people treat their bodies about the way we do our cars in interchangeablility.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Well, if you go back far enough, any setting is a post-apocalypse setting. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></p><p></p><p>In this case the big issue is that PCs are making a go of it in a universe that doesn't hate them but also doesn't consider them particularly important.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I don't think I'd call either EP or FE nightmare worlds, though both have some horrific elements. Some individual parts aren't too happy making, but they're more so in the way any place that has bad places are--in this case in kind of cyberpunk ways, but they have the advantage there are places that<em> aren't</em> like that. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The thing you have to understand about PbtA is that power doesn't mean what it means in a more representative game. It just means what sort of influence you have on your character's development and in what contexts. That's why some of the playbooks seem redundant; they aren't so much based on what they can <em>do</em> as what they're <em>about.</em></p><p></p><p>I have some issues regarding what I want, and what my players would be comfortable with regarding MotW, but power imbalance isn't really a part of it.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I'm not qualified to comment; I was mostly pointing out the core game which is (other than assuming relatively modern period) setting-free and frankly can easily just be run with the PCs deciding to go hunting monsters themselves or one of the ones that implies money being a sponsor.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Since you didn't mention them, I assumed lack of interest.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Even back in the day, there was TORG and the like and Vault and Sinless were recent attempts to revisit a more cyberpunk/fantasy combo, but if you want more broad multigenre, they aren't.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I didn't consider it inaccessible; I just don't happen to like Cypher.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Well, until recently you had the problem that if you did anything really quirky, there had to be a group somewhere that wanted, well, quirky and original. Not an individual in it: the group. Even now its harder to recruit that than something mainstream. Of books, video games and RPGs, the latter is the one most group-dependent.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Thomas Shey, post: 9701378, member: 7026617"] There's essentially three ways to go about it: 1. Have a large enough list of technology, items, species and creatures to supply any likely need. 2. Have a system for building the concrete elements of the above and let the GM decide the premises. 3. Do things in broad enough strokes that the fiction is informing how they interact, but the mechanics are generic enough there's limited ability to need to lock them down on that level. All of these have issues depending on where you're coming from. I'd argue D&D didn't really do that great a job of representing broad fantasy either. In particular, the magic and class systems forced the game into certain modes that excluded a lot of things. Fundamentally, they just didn't care, and neither did at least a majority of people who got into the game and stuck with it. But that's it; sand off the names and a few ultraspecific traits, and those are plenty good enough. I mean, honestly, "generic fantasy races" got that way because a lot of people did something similar to that, they just did some of it a long time ago. [URL unfurl="true"]https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/191271/n-e-w-the-science-fiction-roleplaying-game-v1-3?src=hottest_filtered[/URL] Its less that it was forgotten than most people never heard about it in the first place. Its a one-man-band operation, and likely never got any large distribution. The problem is you kind of need to define what makes a game a generic SF but not otherwise generic. I'll note you can't even define it by absence of magic if you're going to use Alternity as an example; the SFX rules, and even a separate book existed after all. That was actually where Monster of the Week was supposed to go, not with the urban fantasy. I could mention things like the third edition of Chill (which wasn't a bad game despite the authors turning out to be awful people) but a lot of other modern ones are adjuncts to generic systems (there's at least one for Savage Worlds for example). But does it do so to an extent to justify the extra effort and page count? The both of those are limited resources. The problem with having too heavily civilized settings is the same one as in fantasy; it constrains the type of stories you can tell. At the other end if there's no civilization, that creates problems too. In some respects, a society that's getting back on their feet after been knocked down is the best of both worlds. There are definitely horror elements in EP. There's a lot of opportunity given the technologies and history going on thee. And there's some stuff that might be unsettling for people that's not intended as horror in a setting where people treat their bodies about the way we do our cars in interchangeablility. Well, if you go back far enough, any setting is a post-apocalypse setting. :) In this case the big issue is that PCs are making a go of it in a universe that doesn't hate them but also doesn't consider them particularly important. I don't think I'd call either EP or FE nightmare worlds, though both have some horrific elements. Some individual parts aren't too happy making, but they're more so in the way any place that has bad places are--in this case in kind of cyberpunk ways, but they have the advantage there are places that[I] aren't[/I] like that. The thing you have to understand about PbtA is that power doesn't mean what it means in a more representative game. It just means what sort of influence you have on your character's development and in what contexts. That's why some of the playbooks seem redundant; they aren't so much based on what they can [I]do[/I] as what they're [I]about.[/I] I have some issues regarding what I want, and what my players would be comfortable with regarding MotW, but power imbalance isn't really a part of it. I'm not qualified to comment; I was mostly pointing out the core game which is (other than assuming relatively modern period) setting-free and frankly can easily just be run with the PCs deciding to go hunting monsters themselves or one of the ones that implies money being a sponsor. Since you didn't mention them, I assumed lack of interest. Even back in the day, there was TORG and the like and Vault and Sinless were recent attempts to revisit a more cyberpunk/fantasy combo, but if you want more broad multigenre, they aren't. I didn't consider it inaccessible; I just don't happen to like Cypher. Well, until recently you had the problem that if you did anything really quirky, there had to be a group somewhere that wanted, well, quirky and original. Not an individual in it: the group. Even now its harder to recruit that than something mainstream. Of books, video games and RPGs, the latter is the one most group-dependent. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
What RPGs genres are lacking?
Top