Completely off topic, but was the Old Guard worth watching?

Quote from: Sirfuzz;1139955Completely off topic, but was the Old Guard worth watching?

Yes. Also you quoted no one in your responses.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1139985Yes. Also you quoted no one in your responses.

Yikes... So I didn't. I'm very new to forum things if that wasn't painfully obvious.

Quote from: Sirfuzz;1139537What do you think of settings like this?
What does a setting of this nature need to do in order to keep you interested?
If you have anything you don't like about them, what would you change to make them better?

I don't like them even when they are done really well.  For two reasons:  

A. It's not the kind of setting that I'm going to use very often.
B. If I'm going to use that kind of setting, I want to make it myself, not least because I'll build it with certain themes and secrets in mind.  

Basically, the concept inverts entirely what I need in published material.  I need bits and pieces of things that I can put together how I want, not someone else's overall arc.  From my perspective, such a setting is asking me to pay for someone else to do the things that I enjoy doing myself while also not doing any of the grunt work that I'd like to avoid.  It's as if you are running a restaurant where I can go prepare my own meal but someone else will eat it for me.

I use D6 system, which is a sort of meta system that can do all genres. When I run a game it is sort of a meta setting as you describe, EXCEPT the thematics are locked into one of the 3 genre categories presented for D6 (fantasy/adventure/space). What this means is, my fantasy setting is very much a twilight zone version of medieval europe, but you can use a character from modern world or ww2 or whatever, but the world itself will be medieval-ish fantasy. You won't go from sword & sandal to mad max but you might go as far as pirates of tortuga in terms of encounters and themes. This is adhered to in the games based in the other two genre books as well (space/adventure), so that you can play in a game of D6 adventure as a 12th century scottish highlander with a greatsword displaced into the american west, but you will not encounter in that genre (adventure) dragons kidnapping princesses or roman legionaire skeletons, you will instead encounter confederate skeletons animated by a cursed battle flag led by a confederate death knight hijacking a train, for example.

The genre remains consistent, the characters can be from a different genre. I feel like if its done that way its acceptable.

Quote from: Slipshot762;1140177I use D6 system, which is a sort of meta system that can do all genres. When I run a game it is sort of a meta setting as you describe, EXCEPT the thematics are locked into one of the 3 genre categories presented for D6 (fantasy/adventure/space). What this means is, my fantasy setting is very much a twilight zone version of medieval europe, but you can use a character from modern world or ww2 or whatever, but the world itself will be medieval-ish fantasy. You won't go from sword & sandal to mad max but you might go as far as pirates of tortuga in terms of encounters and themes. This is adhered to in the games based in the other two genre books as well (space/adventure), so that you can play in a game of D6 adventure as a 12th century scottish highlander with a greatsword displaced into the american west, but you will not encounter in that genre (adventure) dragons kidnapping princesses or roman legionaire skeletons, you will instead encounter confederate skeletons animated by a cursed battle flag led by a confederate death knight hijacking a train, for example.

The genre remains consistent, the characters can be from a different genre. I feel like if its done that way its acceptable.

Thanks for the feedback. I think that entirely makes sense. Keeping it thematically in the same universe seems very important for sure. Just because you CAN throw a pile of random things at someone doesn't mean that you SHOULD. It should be flavored the right way.

Quote from: Sirfuzz;1139950So don't rely on the idea that the setting exists. Flesh out the world and make it memorable, and have it be a "by the way you can also jump into other settings" kind of deal. That makes sense! Though it's a cool gimmick to have the meta-setting going, you have to flesh out the universe first.

Well the "Universe" is already fleshed out - it consists of all the other settings you plan on connecting to. The meta-setting of Suzerain itself needs to be deeply fleshed out (if this is what you mean by the Universe, I agree, I'm looking at it more as this "between place" that has it's own emergent context going on - like Amber or something.

 The raison d'etre for the concept *is* the connective tissue that ideally the players will be involved in. So yes, all these other settings exist, and you should heavily weight the meta-setting with elements from the settings that you want to emphasize - which may only be regional within the meta-setting. For example in areas of the Suzerain meta-setting, which is heavily connected to /random Weird Wars Rome  - there might be a heavily Roman flavored ingredient to that part of the meta-setting. Similar phenomenon should exist in other locales to the meta-setting itself. By analogy in Spelljammer - the Elven Imperial fleet is informed by all the established Elven nations of Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance - yet is a syncretic thing on its own right that overlays ALL of those.

The point being is that Suzerain should have a "meta-culture" that transcends the other settings it connects - it just happens that it is a feature of the setting that Suzerain meta-characters have to/get to/do in fact go to these other settings to do , where is some important thing that is necessary only for the Suzerain meta-setting

Otherwise what is the draw of Suzerain that any decent GM can't wing on their own with already established settings? Especially in Savage Worlds which is practically already designed to do this because of the flexibility of the rules.

Quote from: Sirfuzz;1139537Hey all! I work for a small publishing company, and I was hoping that I could get your feedback.

At http://savagemojo.com we created Suzerain! A universe where your character can jump from seamlessly between realms of almost unlimited concepts. So you can do high fantasy one day, and drive mad max style through a post apocalyptic wasteland the next all while maintaining your same character.

I wanted to pick your brain...

What do you think of settings like this?
What does a setting of this nature need to do in order to keep you interested?
If you have anything you don't like about them, what would you change to make them better?

I appreciate your feedback!

Yes, I like multiverse-like settings. I'm a fan of Planescape, Everway, Gurps Infinite Worlds, Kult, etc.

I think the key for them to work is having a strong central theme, beyond just the "passageway between worlds". I.e: Planescape is a passageway between worlds too, but it has the "belief is power" central theme which is embodied by Sigil's philosophical factions.

Hope it helped.