Topic: Director's Briefing - 4th December 2012

[Mungo]

With Rolemaster Rome, the "default" setting is 24 BC, with scope for expansion along any other period of Roman history. There may well be sourcebooks that cover these other periods (I'll talk with Graham about this if you want, as I plan on contributing material over time).

What I think would work best if you stick to one time period and build several supplemenets based on that.

The main pain point of the ICE customer base is in my opinion lack of time since we all have reached a certain age where family, jobs, other hobbies,... need to be balanced with the passion for RPG. Personally I think Rome has the potential for a GREAT setting, but having rules and some info is not enough to play. Especially when it is not only about developing a plot, but also trying to stick somehwat close to historic reality.

What I would need is: for a specific area detailed maps, adventure hooks, fully fledged NPCs and how they interact, politics and threats on a grander scheme,...

For example you could take Gaul: just pacified by Cesar's armies. Germans and Celts are still in the neighbourhood. So lots of potential for intrigue, saving the Empire or dealing another blow against that Southern aggressors.

[Wolfhound]

For instance, Aaron Smalley (nod to Aaron) is working on No Quarter under the Crown, which is based in his world of Aernth, for which we have already published City of Archendurn and Dun Cru. Subject to his real-world commitments, Aaron will probably send further manuscripts GCP's way in the future. What we won't be doing is opening up a wish list for Aernth modules. If someone wants to collaborate with Aaron on writing an Aernth module, talk to Aaron. Likewise I'm not going to chain Aaron to a wordprocessor and make him crank out X Aernth modules per year.

In reading some of the posts here I'm thinking that some of the other ideas that I've had for the World of Ærnth would be worth trying to turn out as quickly as possible (due to the fact that the "No Quarter under the Crown" is intended as a detailed campaign for moderately high level characters), so that there is more lower-level material for this setting (which BTW, has been built my more than just me, as there has been help from many others in developing this world over the last 25+ years). 

There has been extensive work done on the Channel Cities portion of the setting (as well as a few TGC articles in the early days of the GuildCompanion.com) that I could pull together to provide for a slew of lower level adventures/scenarios relatively easily.  There are a couple of longer campaign plot-lines set within the Channel Cities that have been used to move characters from low levels up to moderate levels in the various past campaigns. 

Someone had mentioned political intrigue?  That was the driving force behind the development of the Channel Cities back in the late 1980's, which combined with the Archendurn Kingdom were the starting point for the entire Ærnth setting.  Several thousand hours of thought and effort went into the design and history/background of this city to create an environment that has similarities to ancient Rome in the economic power that it holds over the rest of the world, but yet has even more potential political intrigue due to it actually being five cities next to one another, each with its own (and different forms of) government and economic strengths. 

Unfortunately the Channel Cities is freakin' huge.  Approaching 400 pages with the small bit that I've so far imported into the master digital document that I started a few years ago to try to consolidate the many large ring binders and index card boxes, with having pulled in less than 20% of the material that has so far been developed for it.  With hundreds of hand-drawn maps of taverns/inns, details on a couple thousand businesses, more than a dozen underworld guilds in addition to the scores of artisan guilds that have been at least partially detailed, and the several thousand NPC's that have been detailed so far to populate this large metropolis.  And unlike some of the past commercially released city setting (can't recall off the top of my head which TSR product it was that I had purchased back in the mid-80's that was so disappointing as to cause me to start this project) with claims of a million people but a map of less than a square mile) a lot of thought and effort went into actual population densities as well as proportions of the many different types of artisans that such a city would actually need to support itself and its economy (as well as the trade that would be needed to support the huge food influx to support such a population). 

So guess what I'm wondering is if I should look at starting to try to turn out (and if so, how to organize it) materials covering the Channel Cities portion of the Ærnth setting (in addition to the other smaller modules that I've been hoping to get to that are set in or near the Archendurn Kingdom that have been on the back burner for years now).  With the intention of having more lower-level adventures to lead up to the "No Quarter under the Crown" campaign module that is currently being worked on.  Although I suspect Nicholas (from his previous post) probably want's me to keep plugging away at the current project before putting too much effort into other projects.

And as Nicholas mentioned, the setting was designed with the intent of being a group effort, so if anyone else has any ideas or is interested in producing adventures set within the setting, be sure to get a hold of me. 

[markc]

I think an important question is do you have the rights to the collaborative work?
MDC

[Wolfhound]

The intent behind the collaborative nature of the setting so far has been that by contributing to the setting the contributor retains primary copyright, but that aspects of it can be used by other contributors via referencing the original contribution.  As an example if someone wanted to create an adventure module that detailed some aspect of the sewer system (or some business or merchants estate or some such location) in the city of Martelain (or any of the other four cities) portion of the channel cities they would be able to and pull in background material that I've already contributed to, the setting covering the underworld guilds that use the sewer system, history of the city and ties to locations that I or others have already detailed as well as existing street maps of the many "districts" of the city (as long as it fits with the feel and existing info about the city of Martelain). As long as they reference the origin of the setting and acknowlede the contribution of others, the majority of the work originated with them, and it is approved as being part of and fitting with the setting, they would be able to collect any royalty payments based on it being published through ICE.

Likewise if someone wanted to write an adventure module covering one of the several religions that exist within the setting that, would be fine as well, again as long as it does not counter or contradict the work that myself or other contributors (Aran Mull and Dale Maxwell both contributed to some degree to the religions, in addition to what I've written so far) have already developed.  But again, they would need to agree to allow other contributors to reference and build off of their contributions in the future, so that the setting as a whole can continue to grow and develop.

 If someone has an adventure idea (small one-shot or even a larger campaign type of extended plot-line), but needs a world to plug it into, the entire globe of the planet is roughly mapped out, so they could let me know what they are thinking for an environment and topography and there is a good chance that we could find someplace within the existing world where it could fit (a fair portion of the continents are only roughly mapped out and thus can be changed if needed to fit), as long as the feel and theme of their idea fits with the feel of the world without contradicting anything else that has already been developed so far.

[pastaav]

I think the magical bullet is settings where material is released regulary...

Personally I gave up mostly on Shadow World because of the style of the high magic items. When every treasure is designed to be over the top the material get hard to reuse. Still...my point here is another thing.

The rate of new things in the released material was the other important factor when made me give up on Shadow World. Terry alone can not produce material quick enough and the question of overrunning the time line is a real problem in my book. Describing the world in greater and greater detail is good for the true fans, but for us that only are slightly interested in such details (i.e. they are hard to reuse) the fact that the time line is stuck until Terry finished with the whole world or gets around doing the Grand Campaign is a show stopper to many customers because it makes the causal reader feel like there is no real progress.

IMHO one of the great problems here is the Grand Campaign that turned out to be too large bite to handle, but IMHO still blocks real progress with Shadow World. I did actually reused most of the material from the Grand Campaign in my game are there are some pretty good ideas there, but I think the best that could happen to Shadow World would be if Terry officially eradicated Grand Campaign from ever becoming canon and promised that he would continue to provide materials and idea that can be used in an upcoming climax, but that he intentionally leave it to individual GM to design the actual climax and will just push it forward. That would give GMs using Shadow World more openings to come with material that Terry can approve.

The same goes for Cyradon that is designed pretty much around about what happens in this new place, but never got the continuation of material hinted in the beginning. It takes a rather special GM mind to devote to such a setting where you don't get answers but only got help with beginning of the campaign (that often is the easiest to do if you go totally solo).

It is IMO dangerous to develop setting material that ties down into events at a singular point in time that will be released in a upcoming book. People think about such events as the metaplot for a season of a television show and will expect their regular fix that progress towards the climax.