juergen_hubert

Many of us are enthusiastic worldbuilders. And many of us worldbuilders also try to make our RPG settings "original".

Yet there is a danger to making a setting that has too many unique elements. After all, the setting isn't just for the game master, but also for the players. They need to understand the setting enough to play convincing characters that exist in that world, and act accordingly. And the more setting information they have to absorb to do so, the more difficult it will be to get buy-in from your gaming group.

Personally, I think settings work best when there are a few strong, central unique elements that support strong themes on what the setting - and the campaign - are supposed to be all about, scaffolded by numerous familiar, common tropes from the intended genre (such as science fiction or fantasy). This should help convey the information the players need most effectively.

But I am curious how you see this issue. Do you regard this as a problem at all, and if so how do you approach it?

Since I am already a heavy BookWyrm user, I have decided to create my own BookWyrm list for my RPG books. This is incomplete, and focuses mainly on my physical books - I have bought several thousands of digital RPG books over the years.

Has anyone created similar lists, and if so where are they?

A question: Does GURPS have any rules for slapstick brawls, like those in a Bud Spencer movie? In such fights, the brawlers constantly use their environment for comedic effect, and they only ever fall unconscious if they lose the fight (maybe with the addition of some bruises), with no real lasting injuries.

I am asking because while I like the setting of Brancalonia, I don't think Dungeons & Dragons is a good fit for it - but default GURPS brawling rules strike me as too lethal.

Hello! My name is Jürgen, and I translate German folk tales.

Folk tales are, essentially, another oral storytelling tradition like tabletop role-playing games, where stories are told by amateur storytellers for their audiences. There are some important differences, of course - tabletop role-playing games emphasize group storytelling, as well as (usually) serial storytelling involving the same protagonists, which are largely absent in traditional folk tales. Nevertheless, I've often noted that they share the same overall "chaotic energy" of more formal story structures in art and literature, and indeed both folk tale storytellers and role-players often have similar ideas.

In the 19th century, German folk tales received a lot of scholarly attention. Numerous early folklorists inspired by the Brothers Grimm collected folk tales from specific regions and published them together with added commentary elabroating on the historical, cultural, and folkloric context of the tales.

I've been reading through a lot of these collection in recent years, and this has given me an idea for a new type of metafiction:

Imagine that you are a folklorist, and have researched folk tales featuring specific supernatural creatures. Then you publish them as a collection, adding your own scholarly commentary to the basic tales you have collected from the locals.

Only both the folklorist and the folk tales aren't from Earth, but from a fictional, D&D-type fantasy setting, and the supernatural creatures in question really do exist in that world.

So the folklorist in question could not only write about the folk tales themselves, but also compare and contrast the perception of the "common folk" (as shared in those tales) with what is known by other scholars and the latest "scientific knowledge" about these creatures.

A good example of this kind of metafiction can be found in assorted Elder Scrolls lore books - my favorite being "Ancient Tales of the Dwemer" where the editor constantly snarks about the shoddy scholarship of the original author - and this kind of snarking absolutely shows up in 19th century folk tale collections as well.

What do you think of this concept? Do you think this might sell?

And do you have any suggestions for improving this concept?

Does a timeline of Call of Cthulhu scenarios exist? That is to say, a timeline with scenarios about when they took place, not when they were published.

I have this fantasy of a grand "Once Upon A Time in America" Call of Cthulhu campaign spanning multiple generations, starting early in the 20th century and running a scenario for each subsequent year - which eventually gets to the "Raid on Innsmouth" scenario, the creation of P Division and Delta Green, running throughout the rest of the 20th century using the rich history of Delta Green (and possibly even into the 21st century).

But while it is always possible to create your own scenarios, it would be very useful to have a list of premade scenarios I could use for any given year.

I am currently running a "dungeon delving" campaign (in the Ptolus campaign setting), and one of the characters has decided that she wants to get some side income by carving chess sets out of monster carcasses they have come across and selling them.

This is novel enough that I feel I ought to develop some further plots from this. So, any ideas for:

• the kind of people who might buy such chess sets
• what kinds of shenanigans might develop from something like this - supernatural or otherwise?

Back in the 1990s and the Oughts, I loved conspiracy-based RPG settings and material. I devoured GURPS Illuminati, Delta Green, Kenneth Hite's Suppressed Transmission columns, and so on.

But in the last decade, I've moved away from them. Part of it may be that I realized that how many conspiracy theories ultimately originated in antisemitic slanders. Part of it might be their mainstreaming by the resurgent fascist right and their supporters. And, of course, the great villains of our day perpetrate all their villainy in the open, rarely even bothering to hide what they are doing.

So I no longer enjoy settings where "The Conspiracy" and their schemes are the main focus of the setting. While I don't mind having "small-c" conspiracies in a game, I don't like it when there is a secret cabal of conspirators running everything.

How about you? Do you still enjoy Conspiracy-based setting, or have you lost your taste for them as well?

Here is another German folklore with some rather Lovecraftian elements. It's a brief one, so I will quote it in its entirety, but it's so very juicy.

"The legend is widespread in the Holstein region that a rooster who has lived for seven years in the exact same house will then lay an egg. A strange animal will come out of this egg which people call by different names: Dragon, crocodile, and so forth.

A man named Swatkopf lived in the parish of Wewelsfleth. This man had a rooster which, since it had already lived within his house for seven years, laid an egg into the crib for his horses. But a strange thing crawled out of this egg. During the day, it always stayed in the crib for the horses. However, as soon as it became dark, it flew up to the owls’ gable in the house and made fluting noises. Now Swatkopf would have liked to sell his house, but he could not get rid of it. Then he had it torn down and built a different building on the same spot. The animal now moved away from him and to his neighbor Kasten Tumann, and in the evening sat in his chimney as a clump of fire. If Tumann was home, then the fluting thing always looked inside through the window, and caused him no little terror. In the end, Tumann took this so hard that he went to the sea and never returned home. But then the animal was also gone, and no one has seen it again."

While it is lacking in proper Lovecraftian words and phrases such as "squamous", it makes up for being very bizarre. The "Fluting Thing" has no clear appearance, but it drives the locals to madness and exile, and nobody knows what it wants. The notion that a bizarre creature can hatch from a rooster's egg is part of basilisk narratives, but the actual description of the creature is rather different.

(Note: I took the picture myself when I passed through Wewelsfleth last year.)

I just had an idea for a #CallOfCthulhu / #DeltaGreen scenario:

In a desperate gambit to gain a positive Return on Investment before their IPO, a multi-billion AI company turns to a Mythos source to power their latest AI model. Hilarity ensues.

So what precisely did they attempt, and how does it go horribly wrong? What are your thoughts?

When reading Cory Doctorow's recent essay "The tedious power of stroytelling", I had a breakthrough in my understanding of folklore:

A huge part of folklore is imbuing the environment with intent where there is none.

As a species, we humans want to believe that we live in an ordered (and perhaps just) universe, where things happen for a reason. That someone intended for things to happen as they did. As a trained physicist, I know that this very often not the case - but this assumption is hard to shake. Thus, we come across folkloric narratives like these:

• "My cattle have fallen ill. A witch must have cursed them!"
• "This rock formation is spectacular. It must be a petrified giant!"
• "I suffer from sleep paralysis. A night hag is tormenting me!"
• "My infant child has a disability. It's actually a changeling which has been switched for my real child!"

And before we dismiss such notions as the superstitious relics of bygone ages, we should remember that we haven't really changed - the folklore just takes on new and different forms. For what else are modern "conspiracy fantasies" than a particularly toxic subset of folklore? That "vaccines cause autism" is just another modern take on the changeling myth. We cannot accept that things often happen that are outside of conscious human control, and then we come up with new stories that add human intent.

What are your thoughts on this?

GURPS 3E had an amazing number of supplements on the most bizarre subjects, and I wonder what your favorite among them is.

My own nomination is for GURPS Y2K, which was published (of course) in 1999. It was basically a collection of essays on how to end the world (or at least human civilization) in style, and furthermore served as an introduction to survivalist/prepper communities.

Have you ever done a map using a GIS (Geo-Information System) framework?

And if so, what would you tell someone who is contemplating such a thing with no prior practical experience of such systems?