Hi all,
I've been tinkering away for some time with our homebrewed system, and in the past few months I've really begun pulling it together into a format we hope to eventually throw on drive-thru. We have very low expectations, and consider this a mere personal project, but part of that project is taking a professional approach for it's own sake (despite the anticipated single digit financial return).
We've ended up with a quite universal system, which we use to play in a variety of settings: Low and high fantasy, 1930's eldritch horror, 50s pulp, western, space opera, etc. You get the drift. I am well aware that mechanics matched to genre tend to make better games, but there's also something to be said for being able to work one system across a variety of games, and that's where we've ended up.
My conundrum is where to focus my efforts for this first toe-dip into self-publishing.
Our basic ruleset is pretty straightforward, and of course we think it's fun and unique, or we wouldn't use it. But no matter how unique, a system without a setting has poor appeal. On the other hand, I don't want to reiterate the rules for each setting.
I cannot decide whether to simply pool all the rules together as a stand alone system, including the 'plug-ins' that enable each setting; then present the settings in their own guides. Or whether we should combine the system and a single setting into a more traditional product.
If we put it all together into a rules+setting product, let's call it 'Old-Swords', then drop a second setting called 'Space-Guns', I don't want it to be seen as "Space-Guns is just Old-Swords in space". Nor do I want to repeat a lot of material by including the main rule set over again. I mean, the basic rule set is the same, but the feel of the game is completely different. I see the rules document and the settings as quite different beasts.
Either way, we'll probably start off with free abridged rules, alongside a few PWYW one-shots. But whether we go from there to a stand alone SRD with all the extra crunch, or a more comprehensive SRD+setting is a puzzle.
I'm interested in people's thoughts.