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Patron advantage
How's everything?
Enjoying your Games Diner meal? Is the wait staff attentive? Is the chef bathed? (Then it must be a Sunday.) You do know that a little eggshell in the French toast adds calcium, right?
Re that hook/twist: You're of course absolutely right that the book's subject culture needs some twist to make it unmistakably interesting. And an Enclave book would absolutely have to explore how the population changed since its Yrth arrival; that history and change may be tightly tied to the fascinating twist, as you suggest. (Just like the major European, Arabic, and Asian cultures of Yrth, though, any enclave should also maintain deep ties to its origins; visible rooting in real Earth cultures is part of the fascination of Yrth societies.)
Of course, that advice applies to any supplement, such as the Adventures or Locations or Encounters books or anything else on the SJG wish list. Any setting or people or location has gotta have some noteworthy twist that grabs the reader (and players).
Putting the "twist" aside, I'm going to apply the word "hook" differently with regard to my idea. What I'm proposing is really a rather mundane gameworld supplement: a location, an adventure, some characters, some monsters, and so on. Nothing unique there, as far as supplements or modules go. It's the idea that each supplement introduces and focuses on one of those unexplored Earth cultures, IMO, that provides a "hook" defining the series and setting it apart from random, unconnected Banestorm supplements.
Incidentally, I followed your link to your site. Some good stuff there, and I liked [Read 'Em 'Cause You Got 'Em] GURPS Fantasy II - I've always been a fan of that book, a stance not shared by everyone who's read it. Then again, I haven't played in that gameworld, so that says something as well... : /
The book's monsters are great - especially, as you note, in that they're tied by an interesting theme. My concern, if I were to play the setting, is that they seem ridiculously overpowering for low-tech, non-enhanced humans PCs. I don't know how those Madlanders survive at all...
Anyway, with some work at making it fit (beginning with the removal of the Madlanders' bizarre neighboring societies), Fantasy II itself could be used for an enclave of arctic peoples who ended up in a particularly hellish corner of Yrth. Heavily-armed, elite PCs discovering the Madlands might even stand a chance against a herd of Headless.
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Series hook
Re that hook/twist: You're of course absolutely right that the book's subject culture needs some twist to make it unmistakably interesting. And an Enclave book would absolutely have to explore how the population changed since its Yrth arrival; that history and change may be tightly tied to the fascinating twist, as you suggest. (Just like the major European, Arabic, and Asian cultures of Yrth, though, any enclave should also maintain deep ties to its origins; visible rooting in real Earth cultures is part of the fascination of Yrth societies.)
Of course, that advice applies to any supplement, such as the Adventures or Locations or Encounters books or anything else on the SJG wish list. Any setting or people or location has gotta have some noteworthy twist that grabs the reader (and players).
Putting the "twist" aside, I'm going to apply the word "hook" differently with regard to my idea. What I'm proposing is really a rather mundane gameworld supplement: a location, an adventure, some characters, some monsters, and so on. Nothing unique there, as far as supplements or modules go. It's the idea that each supplement introduces and focuses on one of those unexplored Earth cultures, IMO, that provides a "hook" defining the series and setting it apart from random, unconnected Banestorm supplements.
Incidentally, I followed your link to your site. Some good stuff there, and I liked [Read 'Em 'Cause You Got 'Em] GURPS Fantasy II - I've always been a fan of that book, a stance not shared by everyone who's read it. Then again, I haven't played in that gameworld, so that says something as well... : /
The book's monsters are great - especially, as you note, in that they're tied by an interesting theme. My concern, if I were to play the setting, is that they seem ridiculously overpowering for low-tech, non-enhanced humans PCs. I don't know how those Madlanders survive at all...
Anyway, with some work at making it fit (beginning with the removal of the Madlanders' bizarre neighboring societies), Fantasy II itself could be used for an enclave of arctic peoples who ended up in a particularly hellish corner of Yrth. Heavily-armed, elite PCs discovering the Madlands might even stand a chance against a herd of Headless.