So, I'm reading Planetary and Agents of Atlas, loving their take on incorporating pulp into a superhero universe...
But I get to thinking that China Mieville's New Crobuzon stuff is just as deliciously pulpy, and represents an interesting hybrid take on fantasy and pulp - and given Mieville's obvious links to early D&D, the novels already have quite an rpg feel in places.

Long intro out of the way, how would you run a New Crobuzon campaign?  What rule set would be a good fit? (as distinct from: "what is your favourite rule set?") what specific modifications would you make to "Mievillise" it (an Undergroundesque mechanic for political change by neighbourhood maybe?), how would you model class race and magic?  Who are your PC's?  How do you treat the events of the novels?  Is the concept of trying to build a campaign around that kind of pulp-fantasy world even a sound one?

Quote from: lacemakerSo, I'm reading Planetary and Agents of Atlas, loving their take on incorporating pulp into a superhero universe...
But I get to thinking that China Mieville's New Crobuzon stuff is just as deliciously pulpy, and represents an interesting hybrid take on fantasy and pulp - and given Mieville's obvious links to early D&D, the novels already have quite an rpg feel in places.

Long intro out of the way, how would you run a New Crobuzon campaign?  What rule set would be a good fit? (as distinct from: "what is your favourite rule set?") what specific modifications would you make to "Mievillise" it (an Undergroundesque mechanic for political change by neighbourhood maybe?), how would you model class race and magic?  Who are your PC's?  How do you treat the events of the novels?  Is the concept of trying to build a campaign around that kind of pulp-fantasy world even a sound one?

China Miéville himself said that he imagined running the setting with a BRP-like ruleset.  However, I would probably use a D&D variant.

There are a bunch of obvious races: humans, cactacae (constitution and strength bonuses; possible mental/social penalties; racial favored weapon rivebows), khepri, vodyanoi (constitution bonus, tied to water), and garuda.  Re-made might be a little more tricky, given their great diversity.  Other more exotic creatures such as handlingers and the Weaver seem more appropriate as monster races.

Classes: I'd probably have a different class for each of the funky magic/science disciplines that appear in the series (whatever those fleshcrafters are called, vodyanoi water shaman, etc.), have a fighter class (to represent people like Doul, Mr. X, and the leader of the adventurers from Perdido Street Station), and a rogue-like class.  All of the other characters in the series who are generall ill-suited to adventuring (such as painters and merchants) I would describe as having NPC classes like expert or commoner.

I believe that Dragon magazine will be publishing an article soon on using D&D 3.5 for Mieville's setting.

Since I don't read Dragon, I don't know much more than that.

I think part of the wonder of reading Mieville's books comes from the sense that it's a world of unbounded possibilities for wierdness - the way you catch sneaking glimpses, glancing references to cool, strange-sounding people and places has a lot to do with the appeal of pulp generally I think.  

You lose a lot of that when you try to pin the world under glass with a "well, there will be insect-headed people, and also there will be fish people" approach - that's all well and good, but you'll be playing in a frozen version of Mieville's world, which will appeal to nostalgia for the novels but in no way recreate their actual feeling.  I think an rpg needs not to recreate crayfish people, but to recreate the feeling you get when you discover that crayfish people are an everyday part of the world.

What, practically, would I do to generate that atmosphere?  There certainly needs to be a lot of on-the-fly world generation (I'm thinking here of some of the stuff Levi's written about his cog wars game, which has some similarities to what I'm thinking of), maybe player-created races as part of character generation.  Very specific, very different, very numerous schools of magic - something like Unknown Armies, where different types of magic work very differently - and probably player-created magic, for practical reasons of not having to set out hundreds of spells for hundreds of disciplines if nothing else.  Lots of different levels of magical ability, lots of prosaic magic (like the eponymous rolemaster lists) - which makes me wonder whether class-based systems would work well.  And spirit summoning as distinct from spells I think, maybe a shadowrun style distinction between the skills.
Invention, rules for creating completely new sciences (torque, colour bombs) - remaking, as someone noted would be fiendishly hard to model - you sure as hell don't want a cyberpunk-esque "boost your physical stats and senses" approach to it.

Politics, like I said.  Given the the books are about political consequences as much as anything it would be a shame to play the adventuring ring-ins rather than the actual protagonists (or PC's playing a similar role) - I think that you therefore need rules for political consequences of your actions - you can't slide a portion of the game that big off into GM-fiat land - you need a way of determining whether you puppet show was deliciously satirical and radicalising or hackneyed and hopeless.  You need rules to model the progress of rebellions and strikes and to give the PC's influence over them.

And yeah, you definately want vampires, possible swords, stamp fighting, scab armour, air ships, giant beast summoning and sentient robots...  And a moon elemental, you've gotta have a moon elemental.

A D&D version of the work of China Mieville.  I can't think of anything that better sums up the relationship between good SFF fiction and RPGs better.

A brief discussion with the man himself a couple of years back led me to the conclusion that he doesn't know jack about rpgs as they are, and not that much about them as they were. His favouring of BRP didn't seem to be much more than a "Oooh D&D, yuck!" knee jerk. I'd treat his own estimations of what may or may not work cautiously.

There's no reason he should be an expert on the subject, mind, it's not his job, is it?

Ned

D&D would be a poor choice, for the usual reasons.
BRP would work quite well IMO, or an MRQ variant perhaps, or one of the more literary style systems like HeroQuest.