Pros/Cons of an 'official' campaign world

[assault]

Re: Pros/Cons of an 'official' campaign world

 

An 'official' campaign world could be kinda fun if regular, frequent micro-updates occured, say weekly or bi-weekly. The latest issue of Millenium Weekly, so to speak. Even people jumping in later could just incorporate them chronologically, or dive right in and use past issues as backstory. The regular print frequency of campaign material just wouldn't fly.

 

This sounds a bit like what Traveller has been doing for most of the last quarter century.

 

For examples, see: http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/traveller/oldnews.html

 

This stuff has been gradually accumulating over several years. If anything, it's been building up rather too slowly.

 

A certain amount of it is metaplot. Other bits are just random mad ideas. At least a few of the latter seem to have been influenced by posts made to the Traveller Mailing List, effectively becoming fan contributions to the official universe.

 

Of course, all this stuff takes time to write. Granted, not a huge amount of time, but the amount of time involved in deciding _what_ to write could potentially push things up quite a lot.

 

I guess, basically, these entries are plot seeds.

 

Hmm... Well, if Steve, Darren et al don't have the time/energy/desire to do something like this, it would still be possible to create one unofficially. It would need to be a bit controlled, with a kind of editorial board ensuring that everything stayed strictly compatible with the official CU.

 

It would need to be necessary to stick to the official CU, of course, simply to ensure mutual comprehension. If Foxbat appeared, for example, he would need to be Foxbat as he appears in the books, not some other character named Foxbat.

 

It would be appropriate for entries that coincide with Champions releases to make reference to the topics of those releases. This could extend to at least some other Hero System releases at well.

 

For example, the release of a DC:TAS product would be matched by an incident involving a street level vigilante. A Fantasy Hero product might be matched by an archeological discovery referring to one of the CU's "earlier historical" periods. A Star Hero product might be associated with an incident involving aliens. And so on. Of course, some of these associations might be a bit too laboured, so not every such product would be covered. But Champions ones and relevant generic Hero system ones, at least, should be.

 

Apart from that, anything interesting, funny or weird would be fair game. Who knows, they might even influence the official Official CU!

 

Or something. The preceding paragraphs are just thoughts that randomly fell out of my head...

[MitchellS]

Re: Pros/Cons of an 'official' campaign world

 

Hmm... Well' date=' if Steve, Darren et al don't have the time/energy/desire to do something like this, it would still be possible to create one unofficially. It would need to be a bit controlled, with a kind of editorial board ensuring that everything stayed strictly compatible with the official CU. [/quote']

To me the whole point is to get official information about the CU. I'm really not interested in unofficial material at this point. I can do enough unofficial material by myself.

[Theron]

Re: Pros/Cons of an 'official' campaign world

 

I like the common ground and benchmarks a shared setting provides. Way back in 84 when I went to my first Origins in Dallas, Champions players were going on about what we were doing with Foxbat in our own games, and we still do that sort of thing today on web fora.

 

The downsides of an overly plotted metaplot have been thoroughly explored.

 

That having been said, I'm probably the only person on the planet who misses the C:NM and Bay City continuity. Not the rules. Certainly not 9/10 of the artwork, but the setting itself rocked my world.

[Superskrull]

Re: Pros/Cons of an 'official' campaign world

 

That having been said, I'm probably the only person on the planet who misses the C:NM and Bay City continuity. Not the rules. Certainly not 9/10 of the artwork, but the setting itself rocked my world.

 

Huh. Well, you should be glad that so much of it has leaked into 5th ed. after all, the VIPER take on superhumans, like Dragon Branch is quite similar. Also, several individuals seem to have gotten in or been changed to be more like their C:NM analogs.

[Starlord]

Re: Pros/Cons of an 'official' campaign world

 

That having been said' date=' I'm probably the only person on the planet who misses the C:NM and Bay City continuity. Not the rules. Certainly not 9/10 of the artwork, but the setting itself rocked my world.[/quote']

 

I enjoyed the NM, Bay City, and Allies books and still use mine. They have the huge stigma of being attached to Fuzion and I think that understandably effects some folks' judgement. I believe Mr. Long had a hand in a couple of those sups and some of it was brought into the 5E CU.

[Guest WhammeWhamme]

Re: Pros/Cons of an 'official' campaign world

 

I like the common ground and benchmarks a shared setting provides. Way back in 84 when I went to my first Origins in Dallas, Champions players were going on about what we were doing with Foxbat in our own games, and we still do that sort of thing today on web fora.

 

The downsides of an overly plotted metaplot have been thoroughly explored.

 

That having been said, I'm probably the only person on the planet who misses the C:NM and Bay City continuity. Not the rules. Certainly not 9/10 of the artwork, but the setting itself rocked my world.

 

Actually, no. I found the setting awesome.

 

And this may get me e-mobbed, but I like Fuzion more than Hero. I just like Herophiles more than Fuzionites... and it's the gamers that make the game, not the rules system (or at least, enough so that Hero wins).

 

It just solved so many problems.

[MitchellS]

Re: Pros/Cons of an 'official' campaign world

 

Actually, no. I found the setting awesome.

 

And this may get me e-mobbed, but I like Fuzion more than Hero. I just like Herophiles more than Fuzionites... and it's the gamers that make the game, not the rules system (or at least, enough so that Hero wins).

 

It just solved so many problems.

Fuzion was an oversimplification of Hero. I'm all for making Hero "seem" simpler to gamers. Fuzion just took it too far. I also have concerns about any superhero game which needed a fan's house rule plugin to properly work well.

 

There's nothing wrong with the C:NM universe. In many ways I found it much more interesting than the current CU. I think a great deal of the underlying mystic aspects of the CU came from C:NM myself. I think what messed up the setting for me was the art though. If the book has been less "Image-style" art I would have been more interested in it. Art is the first thing I look at in a book. I go page by page and look at all the pictures before I start reading the text. If I don't care for the art I generally have a lesser opinion of the book.

[Guest WhammeWhamme]

Re: Pros/Cons of an 'official' campaign world

 

Fuzion was an oversimplification of Hero. I'm all for making Hero "seem" simpler to gamers. Fuzion just took it too far. I also have concerns about any superhero game which needed a fan's house rule plugin to properly work well.

 

There's nothing wrong with the C:NM universe. In many ways I found it much more interesting than the current CU. I think a great deal of the underlying mystic aspects of the CU came from C:NM myself. I think what messed up the setting for me was the art though. If the book has been less "Image-style" art I would have been more interested in it. Art is the first thing I look at in a book. I go page by page and look at all the pictures before I start reading the text. If I don't care for the art I generally have a lesser opinion of the book.

 

They simplified the powers, enough so to be a problem, sure. Everything else, however, was pretty awesome innovation.

 

I'm not sure what fan's house rules you mean there...

[zornwil]

Re: Pros/Cons of an 'official' campaign world

 

I see some of the points here, but I don't see that much of a downside to having an official campaign world aside from of course ensuring it's interesting enough for people to buy it, so that it's worth the effort. The kind of people who get so mad about continuity problems that they won't buy anything else by a company are frankly likely to be volatile in general and just walk away over or any old thing. If people don't like where the campaign world goes, that's understandable, but that just comes back to making it high quality enough to keep a growing or at least profitably steady population interested.