TheRPGSite

Pen & Paper Roleplaying Central => Pen and Paper Roleplaying Games (RPGs) Discussion => Topic started by: GeekyBugle on September 23, 2022, 10:55:24 AM

Title: What type of settings are in dire need of an OGL treatment?
Post by: GeekyBugle on September 23, 2022, 10:55:24 AM
What the tin says, inspired by this comment in another thread:

I have a few ideas for open source settings to break up the WotC monopoly, actually. So, what concepts need settings? I can think of *punk (DungeonPunk, SteamPunk, whatever), multiverse adventures, fantasy space travel, fantasy mech warfare, sword & planet... I guess scifi too: bug hunts, bug wars, space opera, cyberpunk... what do you guys think deserves attention?

So, what is the general opinion?

I'm working on a couple of Sword & Planet settings for my own games, they will be released under the OGL. But you can never have enough of those.
Title: Re: What type of settings are in dire need of an OGL treatment?
Post by: THE_Leopold on September 23, 2022, 11:06:51 AM
I've been working on a redo of FFG's Mechamorphasis for years.  The world need more shape changing mech games.
Title: Re: What type of settings are in dire need of an OGL treatment?
Post by: Zelen on September 23, 2022, 11:59:07 AM
Need a setting dedicated to futuristic wheelchair combat
Title: Re: What type of settings are in dire need of an OGL treatment?
Post by: Jam The MF on September 23, 2022, 01:49:42 PM
I think I'd prefer something in between Sword & Sorcery, and Forgotten Realms.  Forgotten Realms is too wide open, and yet too well defined.  It is too much of a kitchen sink setting.
Title: Re: What type of settings are in dire need of an OGL treatment?
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on September 23, 2022, 02:35:42 PM
Let’s keep the thread serious, please.

Anyway, what I would like to see are updated takes on scifi settings. Let’s face it: most of these settings were made in the 80s and 90s, so they look quaint and dated now because of all the unpredictable technological change that has happened in the last two decades. Nobody predicted smartphones, social media, AI art, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, etc.

As for planehopping… I’ve been reading third party planes books like The Book of the Planes, Portals & Planes, Beyond Countless Doorways, Dark Roads & Golden Hells, etc. I wondered something: what if you made a planehopping game from scratch without using D&D alignment as the basis for the cosmology? Let’s face it, the MotP is really silly in places and isn’t really conducive to adventuring. But otherwise, what I consider vital is the “Multiverse City” full of portals to the multiverse and full of various philosophical factions.
Title: Re: What type of settings are in dire need of an OGL treatment?
Post by: estar on September 23, 2022, 04:24:31 PM
Anyway, what I would like to see are updated takes on scifi settings. Let’s face it: most of these settings were made in the 80s and 90s, so they look quaint and dated now because of all the unpredictable technological change that has happened in the last two decades. Nobody predicted smartphones, social media, AI art, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, etc.
Have you taken a look at what the Cepheus folks are doing?
Title: Re: What type of settings are in dire need of an OGL treatment?
Post by: Jaeger on September 23, 2022, 04:35:08 PM
One thing to keep in mind with the archetypical RPG medieval fantasy settings; is that baseline D&D is actually a very gonzo setting.

If you look at the 'Medieval Fantasy' media that has actually reach a level of mainstream popularity:

Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, The Witcher.

By comparison, they are all far more lower powered magically, and more internally consistent as settings, than any TSR or WotC D&D setting.

It is much easier to add, than it is to subtract the crazy.

If you want to make an OGL fantasy setting with the intention to appeal to the widest possible audience: Less is More.
Title: Re: What type of settings are in dire need of an OGL treatment?
Post by: APN on September 23, 2022, 04:55:54 PM
Gemmell esque settings. The Waylander books seem like standard low magic fantasy stories until you include future technology, mutants and time travel. Jon Shannow includes that and western setting, post apocalypse and demonic hordes, even using magic to flood the world and raise the titanic.

Unfortunately David Gemmell was quite determined that his stories never be translated into films or tv as he didn't want anyone messing with them but for a serial number filed off setting they are quite good.

Druss stories less suitable. He is a strong guy who turns his enemies into mince by the horde load  with a demon inhabited axe. Every story more or less translates into low fantasy alamo, entertaining but you can only do the victory against overwhelming odds thing a few times before it gets stale.

Away from Fantasy, filed off serials of Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Blakes 7, X Com (invasion of earth, getting ass kicked, adapting their technology and taking the fight back to them. It would be a high fatality total party kill setting for a while until the PCs can break through to gain skill/gear they need), War of the Worlds, some kind of Undersea war/land that time forgot with Dinosaurs, Highlander, Starship Troopers, Battlestar Galactica (fleeing from nigh invulnerable enemy and coming across indications that this sort of thing has happened before).

Heck, even make up a chart and roll on it, combining horror with fantasy (undead apocalypse in high fantasy elmore land), Sci Fi with Super Heroes (legion of Supers take on alien invasions), Western with Kung Fu...

Oh wait that's like Far West. It'll never happen.

(Yeah I know it's in the 'final stages' according to the latest waffle but it's been like that for 11 years)
Title: Re: What type of settings are in dire need of an OGL treatment?
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on September 23, 2022, 05:24:13 PM
Anyway, what I would like to see are updated takes on scifi settings. Let’s face it: most of these settings were made in the 80s and 90s, so they look quaint and dated now because of all the unpredictable technological change that has happened in the last two decades. Nobody predicted smartphones, social media, AI art, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, etc.
Have you taken a look at what the Cepheus folks are doing?
A retroclone of Traveller with a lot of setting books. Can you summarize it for me?
Title: Re: What type of settings are in dire need of an OGL treatment?
Post by: estar on September 23, 2022, 06:56:14 PM
A retroclone of Traveller with a lot of setting books. Can you summarize it for me?
Cepheus is a clone of Mongoose Traveller 1e that was put together from a variety of open content sources by Jason Kemp when Mongoose bungled the Traveller's Aid Society as a the Mongoose Traveller 2e 3PP program due to it's restrictive licensing. Which made it undesirable to use for the existing Mongoose 3PP community which was focused on original setting due to the fact that Mongoose only released rules as open content not anything from the 3rd Imperium.

The Traveller 3PP folks started using Cepheus as a stable foundation for their settings. In recent years the community has started to rapidly expand (in Sept 2022, up to 796 products) to encompass a variety of settings. The most notable of the new batch is Hostile which is an updated take on Alien style of science fiction.

Here is the list of settings products for Cepheus on DriveThruRPG.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?filters=45550_2120_0_0_0&src=fid2120



Title: Re: What type of settings are in dire need of an OGL treatment?
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on September 23, 2022, 07:01:01 PM
A retroclone of Traveller with a lot of setting books. Can you summarize it for me?
Cepheus is a clone of Mongoose Traveller 1e that was put together from a variety of open content sources by Jason Kemp when Mongoose bungled the Traveller's Aid Society as a the Mongoose Traveller 2e 3PP program due to it's restrictive licensing. Which made it undesirable to use for the existing Mongoose 3PP community which was focused on original setting due to the fact that Mongoose only released rules as open content not anything from the 3rd Imperium.

The Traveller 3PP folks started using Cepheus as a stable foundation for their settings. In recent years the community has started to rapidly expand (in Sept 2022, up to 796 products) to encompass a variety of settings. The most notable of the new batch is Hostile which is an updated take on Alien style of science fiction.

Here is the list of settings products for Cepheus on DriveThruRPG.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?filters=45550_2120_0_0_0&src=fid2120
Do they have anything like TSR’s Alternity’s Star*Drive setting?
Title: Re: What type of settings are in dire need of an OGL treatment?
Post by: estar on September 23, 2022, 07:05:51 PM
Do they have anything like TSR’s Alternity’s Star*Drive setting?
Like something with a human dominant good guy style federation in the midst of dozens of alien cultures?

There is Terra Arisen but like most Cepheus settings it is really a bit of this and a bit that and so it is own thing.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/400138/Terra-Arisen?filters=45550_2120_0_0_0

Title: Re: What type of settings are in dire need of an OGL treatment?
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on September 23, 2022, 07:33:56 PM
Do they have anything like TSR’s Alternity’s Star*Drive setting?
Like something with a human dominant good guy style federation in the midst of dozens of alien cultures?

There is Terra Arisen but like most Cepheus settings it is really a bit of this and a bit that and so it is own thing.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/400138/Terra-Arisen?filters=45550_2120_0_0_0
No. Think a setting where you have a dozen empires that are all humanocentric (as here humanity is the first and so far only race to develop FTL), survived a hundred fifty years war that wiped out a dozen others, now the new Space UN/NATO is trying to reintegrate the Frontier colonies that were abandoned during the war, and also they’re now suddenly encountering scary dogmatic alien empires that won’t roll over like the others because they have their own FTL.
Title: Re: What type of settings are in dire need of an OGL treatment?
Post by: Zelen on September 23, 2022, 08:31:13 PM
What the tin says, inspired by this comment in another thread:

I have a few ideas for open source settings to break up the WotC monopoly, actually. So, what concepts need settings? I can think of *punk (DungeonPunk, SteamPunk, whatever), multiverse adventures, fantasy space travel, fantasy mech warfare, sword & planet... I guess scifi too: bug hunts, bug wars, space opera, cyberpunk... what do you guys think deserves attention?

So, what is the general opinion?

I'm working on a couple of Sword & Planet settings for my own games, they will be released under the OGL. But you can never have enough of those.

Serious talk: I'm not sure that settings go well with "Open Source" / OGL mentality.

I ran into this issue with another project of mine developing a science fiction game & setting. I began talking with another individual who I told about the project, and he started coming up with concepts for it. Usually I'm excited about having other people join on my efforts, but I could tell from the stuff he was producing he didn't quite understand the creative vision I was really trying to express with this project.

Now this didn't lead to anything particularly bad. I explained to him that's not what I was looking for, and eventually we ironed it out. But a successful resolution between two people talking about a game in-development is one circumstance. A game that's published and sold with an OGL license is another.

Lets say you design a serious game setting, call it "Megaspace" or something. And then someone else takes your content and decides they're going to build some weird fetish content around your OGL content. Now everyone assumes Megaspace involves furries with giant genitalia and detailed interspecies result charts, because that clickbait content got tons of hate-clicks and whatever passes for games journalists are attributing that content to your setting (and technically they're right, if it's OGL).

How do you plan to deal with this?
Title: Re: What type of settings are in dire need of an OGL treatment?
Post by: GeekyBugle on September 23, 2022, 08:40:40 PM
What the tin says, inspired by this comment in another thread:

I have a few ideas for open source settings to break up the WotC monopoly, actually. So, what concepts need settings? I can think of *punk (DungeonPunk, SteamPunk, whatever), multiverse adventures, fantasy space travel, fantasy mech warfare, sword & planet... I guess scifi too: bug hunts, bug wars, space opera, cyberpunk... what do you guys think deserves attention?

So, what is the general opinion?

I'm working on a couple of Sword & Planet settings for my own games, they will be released under the OGL. But you can never have enough of those.

Serious talk: I'm not sure that settings go well with "Open Source" / OGL mentality.

I ran into this issue with another project of mine developing a science fiction game & setting. I began talking with another individual who I told about the project, and he started coming up with concepts for it. Usually I'm excited about having other people join on my efforts, but I could tell from the stuff he was producing he didn't quite understand the creative vision I was really trying to express with this project.

Now this didn't lead to anything particularly bad. I explained to him that's not what I was looking for, and eventually we ironed it out. But a successful resolution between two people talking about a game in-development is one circumstance. A game that's published and sold with an OGL license is another.

Lets say you design a serious game setting, call it "Megaspace" or something. And then someone else takes your content and decides they're going to build some weird fetish content around your OGL content. Now everyone assumes Megaspace involves furries with giant genitalia and detailed interspecies result charts, because that clickbait content got tons of hate-clicks and whatever passes for games journalists are attributing that content to your setting (and technically they're right, if it's OGL).

How do you plan to deal with this?

Easy, the name of the setting isn't OGL. Neither it's the name of the game, everything else is, go wild with your furrie porn.
Title: Re: What type of settings are in dire need of an OGL treatment?
Post by: estar on September 23, 2022, 08:54:53 PM
Serious talk: I'm not sure that settings go well with "Open Source" / OGL mentality.

Sure it does.
https://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/blackmarsh_srd.zip

Lets say you design a serious game setting, call it "Megaspace" or something. And then someone else takes your content and decides they're going to build some weird fetish content around your OGL content. Now everyone assumes Megaspace involves furries with giant genitalia and detailed interspecies result charts, because that clickbait content got tons of hate-clicks and whatever passes for games journalists are attributing that content to your setting (and technically they're right, if it's OGL).

How do you plan to deal with this?
Ignore it. At the level I operate at people buy subsequent products because they not only like it but also the fact I was the one to write it.  I am not worried what the other guy doesn't with my material. I am worried about what I do with my material.
Title: Re: What type of settings are in dire need of an OGL treatment?
Post by: Zelen on September 23, 2022, 09:07:20 PM
How do you plan to deal with this?

Easy, the name of the setting isn't OGL. Neither it's the name of the game, everything else is, go wild with your furrie porn.

Fair enough! That's actually a pretty good compromise in terms of maintaining product identity while also embracing & harnessing the creative nature of the hobby.
Title: Re: What type of settings are in dire need of an OGL treatment?
Post by: GeekyBugle on September 23, 2022, 10:07:05 PM
Serious talk: I'm not sure that settings go well with "Open Source" / OGL mentality.

Sure it does.
https://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/blackmarsh_srd.zip

Lets say you design a serious game setting, call it "Megaspace" or something. And then someone else takes your content and decides they're going to build some weird fetish content around your OGL content. Now everyone assumes Megaspace involves furries with giant genitalia and detailed interspecies result charts, because that clickbait content got tons of hate-clicks and whatever passes for games journalists are attributing that content to your setting (and technically they're right, if it's OGL).

How do you plan to deal with this?
Ignore it. At the level I operate at people buy subsequent products because they not only like it but also the fact I was the one to write it.  I am not worried what the other guy doesn't with my material. I am worried about what I do with my material.

That's the other way of dealing with it.