From: mavra@cpac.washington.edu (Peter D. Adkison)
Newsgroups: rec.games.design
Subject: Re: A new trend in roleplaying?
Date: 7 Apr 92 16:14:05 GMT
Article-I.D.: bailey.MAVRA.92Apr7081408
	<1992Apr6.204543.9468@ncar.ucar.edu>
	<1992Apr7.013723.14841@oz.plymouth.edu>
Organization: Wizards of the Coast, Inc.

In article <1992Apr7.013723.14841@oz.plymouth.edu> sos@oz.plymouth.edu (Steffan O'Sullivan) writes:

>   urban@stout.atd.ucar.edu (Art Urban (PROFS)) writes:
>   >
>   >Yes! Add on products just like this are of great interest to me, but yours
>   >is of greater interest due to the inclusion of system specific information.
>   >I'm a GURPS player by choice, and would *love* to see new skills, job tables,
>   >etc.
>
>   Hmm - the problem here is that he can't include too much detail on each
>   system because he is writing it for many systems.  The old Chaosium
>   _Thieves' World_ suffered from this.  Too much of it was wasted, no
>   matter which system you played, since 90% of the material was stats for
>   other systems.  So if he puts a lot of GURPS-specific material in the
>   book, that means he'll be putting a lot of Other-Games-Specific material
>   too, and most of the book will be worthless to you.
>
>   I would think it would be far better to put *no* game-specific material
>   in the book.  Keep it systemless, like the Catalyst series, and it will
>   be worth more, since you won't be paying for all those pages of AD&D, RQ,
>   SR, RM, FH, etc., stats that you wouldn't need - and those fans wouldn't
>   need the GURPS material, either.

Excellent discussion; just the type I was hoping for.

Steffan is correct when he states that we can't dwell too long on any
one game system; our primary emphasis has got to be on the material
being used, not how to use it.  We've gots to have the meat!  B-)

On the other hand, taking up to, say, 10% of the book in integration
notes I don't consider a waste.  Let me illustrate what I mean by
describing what we did in The Primal Order (TPO) in more detail.
First of all the book is 256 pages (at $20, to answer someone else's
question), and the integration notes take up 19 pages for 19 game
systems for an average of one page per game system, some more, some
less.  Basically what happened is that TPO ends up introducing a
complete subsystem of rules for handling deities.  There's lots of
rules, but they're all for use within a deific context and have mostly
to do with things like primal energy, deity auras, making of
artifacts, supporting of priests, and so forth.  Occasionally one of
these rules needs to interact with the rest of the game system; for
example, there's a deity ability called primal blast, which is
basically a wrath of the gods type of thing, where a deity tries to
incinerate someone with primal energy.  For this, we have integration
notes that say things like (for AD&D) each point of primal does five
points of damage, or (for Rolemaster) roll on the Primal Blast Attack
Chart (a unique chart created specifically for RoleMaster) and for
each point of primal beyond the first add 25% to your roll.  The
amazing thing is that this interface between the capsystem and the
underlying rules system being used wasn't nearly as complex as we
thought it would be.  It turned out that there were only about six
questions we had to answer for each game system, and the other
capsystems we've started working on look easier yet.  Although there
are a couple of TPO supplements that look they're going to be a real
bitch.

The other thing that we did is address specific issues related to
campaigns where the game system was solidly linked to an environment.
For example, in the Shadowrun, RuneQuest, and Ars Magica notes we
wrote up a couple of paragraphs on how TPO should be reconciled with
those campaign structures.  In a couple of cases (Synnibarr, for
example) we recommended using only bits and pieces of TPO since the
game already had quite a bit of stuff on deities.

So, while the GURPS integration notes don't include any new skills or
jobs or anything like that, they do tell you exactly how to interface
the material that is there into GURPS so that the two works can be
used together smoothly anyway.  And actually, in this particular case,
it makes sense to break away from the skills types of approach in
GURPS; divine status in TPO/GURPS isn't something we recommend you let
your players "purchase" with skill points.  Instead, there are
specific guidelines on how one can obtain divine status in TPO and we
recommend that those guidelines remain the same when playing
TPO/GURPS.

Check it out; I think you'll be pleased.

				--Mavra!
				  Peter D. Adkison
				  Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
				  mavra@blegga.cac.washington.edu

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