arcady

Re: Lack of Fully Developed Worlds

 

What if the settings produced are not selling, not because they are generic or not "flashily presented" (personally I think both of those things are true, but still...) but for another reason?

Do we know they are 'not selling'? Are Hero's sales of its settings any worse than the industry norm for non-*** product in porportion to their rules?

 

If GURPS sells X:Y ratio of rules to settings, is the rate for Hero known to be X:(Y/Z)?

 

I've always gathered that Hero's settings did rather well with fans of Hero. If there's a problem, its that there aren't enough Hero fans.

 

Let's face it, Munchkin Realms is -not- bought by probably over 90% of DnD players. Why bother, if the GM already has a copy or you're playing is Goth-Lands, Bland-hawk, Munchkeron, or one of a thousand and one other ***/DnD settings...

 

In the DnD groups I've been with usually only the most -hardcore- of us buy anything beyond a PHB. I've got a pool of about 30 DnD gamers on hand, and I only know of 4 purchases of settings in there, and one of those sold his back to the store. Two of them are ultra DnD geeks - if it has a WotC label on it they own it. The last is me and that's as I was one of 5 GMs...

 

 

Certainly lack of flash works against impulse purchases - and that effects the core rules too

The core rulebook -IS- too big. In my group, only one other player has been willing to buy it, and he plans to sell it back. Everyone else just feels it is too big and too pricey and they're not willing to settle for a 'half the rules' book like Sidekick. About half of these people are long time Hero fans. Oddly, the one who bought it was new to Hero - but he's also an impulse buyer who sells about half his entire life possessions off on eBay every month...

 

Last Wednesday I did get two people in my Ex Machina game to possibly be interested in getting Sidekick, but only after I pointed out that Hero has local offices and they might be able to cash in on a damaged copy next time it shows up on the website...

 

The main book is still just too big. It is visually imposing. It is not the only RPG in it's price range, in fact GURPS 4e is more, but it 'looks worse' because of the physical presense of that masive volume. It's almost as big as my unabridged new Black's Law Dictionary... (and it has the same basic color...).

 

OK, but what about people who know what they want? In short, there's plenty of Hero system GMs, and a fairish number are interested in Fantasy or Sci Fi (or even Superheroes, fer Grond's sake!) Why don't they buy settings books?

Perhaps the people who would buy settings are buying these settings...? Do we know one way or the other?

 

Personally, I've even bought Hero settings for genres I refuse to use Hero for, as I like the settings Hero puts out...

 

Like I said for my review of Turakian Age (A genre I do use Hero for), it did DnD better than DnD does. It captured that subgenre of fantasy in a more playable and enjoyable manner.

 

I found Turakian age exciting, full of detail, and yet highly consistant both internally and to the 'action gamer fantasy' genre that I tend to call 'DnD genre'. A lot of past settings that worked at its level of detail lost the 'DnD feel', but this one had more DnD than DnD did... and yet also let me make rich characters that I didn't have to 'slot out' my internal logic processor to be able to use.

 

What you get is a very bare-bones setting, with one or two locales described in detail. Very few NPCs, few to no "setting-specific" critters. No adventures (a few adventure seeds, if you are lucky).

I didn't get that impression at all from either of the fantasy settings, nor the default supers setting. V-age is thin, but focused, and that works just fine for its genre. There are large expanses out there that are undetailed, but that is common in setting books - even the top settings in the gaming hobby are like that. I've got all the setting I need for several campaigns in VA, TA, and Champions (if I was willing to use Hero for supers). I don't like the -feel- of Champions, and I don't like the meta-verse that ties the Hero settings together, nor the over-presence of caucasians in T-Age, but if I didn't have those concerns they would be ideal choices. All the things I need for ready gaming are there.

 

A GM - even an experienced Hero system GM - can't sit down with these settings books and throw a game together. He/she has to generate a mass of NPCs, a mass of setting-specific monsters and then start putting them together into adventures. In other words, you need to do 90% of the work that you would like to avoid when you buy a setting.

 

I'd need the same work for a Munchkin Realms campaign, unless I started at around level 16-20+. And if I used the Champions setting I'd have a wealth of NPCs that is unmatched even by using Marvel or DC...

 

If I want to 'sit down and run' I don't buy a setting, I buy a module. I didn't like the aliens module in Fantasy Adventures, but otherwise that was a pack of modules any GM could sit down and run - setting regardless if subgenre of fantasy matches.

 

Most people who want a premade setting don't WANT a detailed base on which they can build their own unique game. They want something they can pick up and use. They don't need or want to know how many swordmakers there are in "campaign city" - they want something they can run tonight at 6:30 when the players turn up.

 

And the current settings don't offer that - but WW and Forgotten Realms do.

I think this is what people buy Modules for, not Settings. People -DO- buy settings to get all of that swordmakers detail. Otherwise you can go just fine with modules and home adventures without ever noting the setting.

 

Settings are not intended for 'instant use' they are intended as toolsets to give players character backdrop and ideas, and to tell GMs how to lay in their adventures and what else they can do within the chosen framework. They also stand as answers to all the wierd questions that pop up in a game, such as 'how easily can I find a guy who makes swords in this town?'

 

Or from my game last week 'Hey, can we search this guy's neural buffer without a warrant?' and 'what's the law for unionizing here?'

 

A setting is there to keep you from going 'uh...' when something odd like that pops up as suddenly relevant to the game.

 

Settings are the tools for building adventures and characters that fit a theme. Not the actual adventure or character. That is true even with WotC and WW's material.

 

Otherwise, if you want ready to run, you go for modules.

Re: Lack of Fully Developed Worlds

 

Hmmm..you have a good point here. I can understand requiring FREd or the 5ER to play' date=' (just as XnX requires the Players Handbook to play) but a fully fleshed out settings book shouldn't require anything else to get started. All of the relevant package deals, weapons writeups, creatures etc should all be included in the settings book[/quote']I on the other hand disagree.

 

I think its a perfectly logical buy in strategy, and thus perfectly logical for a game company to push; to do as follows:

 

rulebook

genre book

setting book

setting add ons (adventures or 'region x' or etc).

 

With a presumption that if you buy any item on the list, you already have the ones before it.

 

I do -NOT- want page count in my fantasy setting wasted on telling me how to make something already covered in my genre book. The setting is just a setting, and that's all I want in it. I do want to know what it has that is different from the genre norms, but I do not want the genre norms repeated.

 

I feel it is perfectly acceptable to assume someone buys in the above order - or at least has that on hand for their group.

 

An alternate 'player buy-in' path might be:

 

rulebook

rules option for character type X book

samples of character type or rules option X

 

For example - the ultimate series.

 

Again, if you were to buy 'Vehicle Sourcebook' and then complain that it made you need 'The Ultimate Vehicle', I would answer that that is perfectly logical - you bought in the wrong order.

 

 

Its kind of like this:

 

rulebook: screw driver, nails, wood

genre book: union guy with a carpenter's education and skills

setting book: blueprints and work order for the union guy to do something other than a coffee break.

 

adventure: a finished birdhouse.

my gaming group: a bunch of pigeons ready to move in.

Re: Lack of Fully Developed Worlds

 

Its a monster! You must battle this thread to the death in a burning windmill!

With Tina Turner singing the theme song no less!

Re: Lack of Fully Developed Worlds

 

My reviews of both Ex Machina, Turakian Age, and a number of on-topic Hero items are all on rpg.net.

 

Go here:

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/search-review.phtml

and enter 'arcady' under the 'reviewer name' field.

 

For a while I was officially reviewing books for Hero, but then I fell behind and haven't caught back up yet.

Re: Lack of Fully Developed Worlds

 

TA seems too innaccessible to players. The races are there' date=' but they aren't. TA makes the assumption you have FH to back it up. Players don't need FH - FH is about fantasy setting design and not about how to make a cool character. It's too much in general, with too many options specifically.[/quote']I've always seen Fantasy Hero as a book for both.

 

It's one of the Hero books I recommend even to people who don't play hero. The best way to learn how to play Fantasy in GURPS for example is to read Fantasy Hero, not GURPS Fantasy.

 

I think it's a safe gamble to make to assume familiarity with Fantasy Hero before using one of the settings built for it.

 

In my review of Turakian Age I said something to the effect of 'DnD fantasy done better than DnD can'. It has all the things that people remember fondly when they think of what makes a DnD game good, and none of the things that trip up DnD enough to eventually make the game a chore and exercise in denial of perception over inconsistancy and illogic.

 

I'd love to be in a Turakian Age game, but at present I'm the only person I know willing to GM Hero...

Re: Lack of Fully Developed Worlds

 

Netrunning is always a trial to handle. On one hand' date=' I like the "Gibsonian" ideal. Its more interactive and interesting, but its not very technically accurate. Maybe two systems, one for "cinematic" cyberpunk and one for Hard Sci Fi cyberpunk...[/quote']This is what Ex machina does. It presents rules systems for both styles and then lets you pick.

 

After reading the Gibsonian one enough to review it I've ignored it completely. The entire concept of it bugs me like a pack of fleas in hanging out in one's underwear...

Re: Does anyone here play Cyberpunk HERO?

 

One bit of GM-ing advice I can give is to watch your setting. The mood you want for CP (or Horror) games is very different from Champions or most other genres. A brightly-lit kitchen with kids in the next room watching cartoons makes it hard to keep everyone "in the gloom" so to speak. Mood lighting' date=' mood music, etc. [/quote']Sometimes horridly innapropriate music / lighting / setting can only add to how 'off' a moment is.

 

Right as the PCs, as SIU detectives, bust into the SIN-cast (sensory interface) studio to save the 14 year old human-anthro girl who's had her neural buffer loaded up with an explicit meme and hooked into a SIN-recorder for 'this weeks' live snuff flick...

 

That's when I play the utterly cheery music as the studio staff hands them the license for their broadcast and the contract to legally buy the girl which has been declared 'expendable' under the anti-terrorism statutes by the state for the crime of hacking censorship to distribute 'highly deviant memes' on the net in the form of the writings of one 'Henry David Thoureou'.

 

 

Yes, its a utopia now, and people who attempt to subvert that need to be chipped in order to learn proper ways. If they get past that, they need to be recycled for the good of society, the state, commerce, and the safe flow of information.

 

[Actually, the above wouldn't exactly happen in my setting - snuff is also classed as toxicly deviant meme. But they would brain chip the poor kid until she learned better, and failing that send her off to be a test subject somewhere, or to do a suicide bombing against a rival state (with chipping so strong that it could only be used on a short-lived subject)... or just 'convert her biomass into food']

 

 

Point being - like those movies that switch to classical music during the big gun fight - the wrong music at the right time often heightens just how wrong the event in play is...

 

You want to 'jar' the players from time to time, make them feel something is very off here... From the subtle, such as naming things with the wrong dialect / slang, to the more severe - like protraying some horrible moment in an utterly mundane or even cheery manner. Especially with the dystopian angle of [mostly] postCyberpunk, you work to keep it always 'off center'. You want them to relate to their character and the story, but to also not relate to those very same things.

Re: Does anyone here play Cyberpunk HERO?

 

I'm running a postCyberpunk game right now using the Ex Machina system.

 

I've got a setting here:

http://home.pacbell.net/arcady0/SciFi/

 

And a lifepath generator here:

http://home.pacbell.net/arcady0/SciFi/lifepath.html

 

 

 

I'd adopt the above to Hero in a flash given the right tools to do so.

 

Back when CyberHero came out I heard nothing but complaints about it - especially with regards to the netrunning rules and their use of extra dimensional movement and needing points to buy programs.

 

I prefer a realistic net over a Gibsonian net; one that takes the way info actually flows and is controlled online and just moves it through a speed up, greater globalization, and a neural interface.

 

 

 

I personally can't stand the 'overly idealistic nature' of so many other games / genres as used by gamers. Cyberpunk lets me portray realisticly motivated and acting people - some gamers end up thinking I'm being dark, but I'm not. I just grew up a little closer to the streets than the typical gamer profile suggests...

 

postCyberpunk is much like Cyberpunki, but without the obsession over Japan, lifetime employing corps, cyberware, and the idea of total collapse. It is still oppressively dark, but more int he sense that you have to deal with 'perfect societies' that are anything but, outsourcing, human trafficking, personalizaed information that is a bit too personal and omnipresent, and so on. Wikipedia has some great information on the subtle differences.

 

At present post/Cyber/Tranhumanism is my preffered genre, if only because I've managed to get a wealth of ideas for it in the development of my setting and it fits so well with my studies from my recently finished degree in Political Science / Criminal Justice.

Re: Lack of Fully Developed Worlds

 

I have been (very slowly) working on a 5th Edition of KAZEI 5. But my ability to do things publicly are limited until after HERO produces (I hope) some sort of CYBER HERO supplement. And that's not until 2007' date=' if I'm lucky.[/quote']So they actually do plan to do a Cyber-Hero 5e?

 

If so, I hope it focuses more in 90's and 00's Cyberpunk (post and transhumanism) than 80s dribble...

 

The only Cyberpunk game so far with a decent netrunning system is Ex Machina - one of the two methods is based on the real net advanced through nueral ware and faster connections. Skill rolls to hack security, no walking around and battling ICE-Ninjas... Layout based on info-relevance and what you search for/on and not 'walk five virtual blocks and past the virtual $tarbuck$ to get to the IBM plant'.

 

That was the real mess of Cyber-Hero... it's netrunning system - based on the Gibsonian idea that was already outmoded by the time Neuromancer was published.

 

 

I've got a complete Cyberpunk setting, but not adopted to hero at present as there's no real prepped-tools in Hero 5e for that sort of thing.

Re: Background

 

Well for the right genres, you can use a generator.

 

I've got a Cyberpunk one ready here:

http://home.pacbell.net/arcady0/SciFi/lifepath.html

 

You could use it as a launching pads for ideas.

 

Given time, I would adopt a fantasy version as well.

Re: Anthropomorphic/Furry HERO Resources

 

My postCyberpunk setting features two kinds of 'almost furries':

 

Human Anthros - humans with animal DNA to spice them up. think 'anime catgirl' as one visual for lack of a better example. Built as 'toys' for humanity, the majority of them were a violation of a Japanese patent held by 'Genki Neko' (happy cat) and within 'UN controlled space' their existance is now illegal as a result of a WTO ruling - so they've floaded the outer system's independant nations and brought with them the psych issues of races of people engineered to be 'passive toys' who want to be free of their own enslaving minds.

 

Animal Anthros - animals uplifted for use in infantry and special forces. Think furries on PcP thrown into a kill zone. Or post war, think of a bunch of semi-psychotic vets with all kinds of health issues tossed out and told to 'fend for themselves' - put bands of them in space plaguing the 'solar highways' as 'posthuman era bandits'. Possibly in the employ of various governments out to make trade more difficult for their competitors, or various terrorist groups out to change the balance of society.

 

http://home.pacbell.net/arcady0/SciFi/

 

I've only got one visual for them at present:

http://www.deviantart.com/view/16348485/ - the figure at left.

http://www.deviantart.com/view/14429296/ - used as the cover for the PDF of my setting.

Re: Anthropomorphic races

 

It's intelligence that shifts the argument.

 

With brains, they will know the advantages of coordinating and helping out their fellows.

 

Intelligence is highly linked to socialization - with some theories even linkng it back to standing upright and the problems that gives with childbirth. The notion there being that this forces us to give birth to 'premature adults'. Where in most species an animal once born can fend for itself in a fairly short while - our children are born years before they really ought to leave the womb - as anything more developed will crush the pelvis of the mother on the way out.

 

Jared Diamond advances this notion in his book 'Why is sex fun?' (or a title very much like that).

 

The relevancy here is that intelligence and socialization link together - they are developed as tools to deal with unfit offspring.

 

You have to suddenly nurture that offspring, and that leads to the development of more and more sophisticated means of teaching, communicating, and learning.

 

Which creates society as parts of the supportive backdrop to enable those factors as well as protect the unfit offspring and those members deligated to their advancement.

 

Socialization thus revolves around the notion of protecting your fellows. It is in your own interest to do so - they carry with them your own genetic potential and your own survivability.

 

On those grounds, even many anti-social animals can learn the value of protecting each other.

 

 

 

The idea of intelligent prey that tolerates a vastly smaller population eating its members goes in the same category as giant mecha and the Force - it may be fun fiction, but it has no basis in realism.

Re: Your "2005" Pet Gaming Projects

 

P.S.: I would love a Review of Ex Machina & Tranhuman Space

Ex Machina review here:

 

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10835.phtml

Re: Anthropomorphic races

 

I disagree - intelligence does not equal a disposition to violence.

 

Have a look at Puppeteers from Ringworld.

 

Once a herd animal, always a herd animal.

No, but it does mean you can think of new ways to survive - that's a core aspect of intelligence.

 

Actually, one of the key things intelligence gives humanity is that while many species murder for pure fun (watch cats or wolves sometime - they kill just for kicks, or to hurt the feelings of surviving victims, and so on - very evil minded animals) we are the only species that while doing that, can then turn around and choose not to do it.

 

You cannot teach a wolf or a cat to stop murdering. They will not only hunt to survive, they will hunt for thrill kicks or to harm, and it cannot be 'unlearned'. But you can teach a human to find alternatives for agression, thrills, and anger.

 

 

It's an issue of free will which is something of what defines sentience. An intelligent animal will be able to look at a situation and re-examine its options.

 

 

You're prey;

Given: these other guys keep trying to kill me and my people.

Given: In our pre-sentient past, the animals we evolved out of only had the choice of running and watching as those they loved were killed.

 

Given: I can think now.

Given: How can I keep from getting killed.

Solution: remove the killer.

Method 1: Kill them first.

Method 2: isolate them away.

 

So you either wipe out the predators or you ship them somewhere and confine them.

 

You may be a herd animal, but you're a herd animal with brains, and you want to live.

 

Herd animals -do- protect their fellows. Almost every land animal does that to some degree, as do many underwater animals.

 

If you had the choice of running and losing loved ones or removing the threat, and you could easily remove the threat because your numbers were so vastly superior... you would, if you had any brains, remove the threat.

 

And in this argument, we're giving them brains.

 

Heck, even other predators would remove each other... Wolves kill coyotes and cats everyday. Give the cats and coyotes a pack of grenades, a sniper rifle, or even some suicide bombers and the wolves will have a problem. So the wolves will try to get armed first...

 

And when those two have near wiped each other out, the winner goes for the bison, who just machine gun him down with their several hundred thousand people who have access to the same brain power and same tech (heck, even unarmed, several hundred thousand bison will take out a few hundred wolves with modern military gear just by running in a coordinated direction by communicating).

Re: Anthropomorphic races

 

The comic Kevin & Kell posits a world where all animals' date=' including insects, are sentient and predation is big buisness.[/quote']If all animals were sentient, the most likely result of this one would be 'Kill Bunnies'.

 

The bunnies, mice, deer, and 'assorted cute fuzzies' would by definition vastly outnumber the predator races.

 

They would arm themselves and take a page from history's 'G' section - genocide. Armed rabbits would wipe out the foxes, cats, wolves, and even polar bears. Even if you armed the predators. At that point it becomes a numbers game.

 

Consider China's advance into Korea during the Korea war, when one out of five Chinese solders had a rifle capable of only a few shots at most before needing to reload and vastly out of date even in that era. The rest of them had old grenades that looked something like those flasher things guys on airport runways use to direct traffic - big and bulky. They just got maybe four or five of those to tie onto their uniforms.

 

A lot of them got nothing.

 

But they still swept back the most advanced military in the world of that day - because they outnumbered us on the order of millions.

 

 

Consider a herd of buffalo with guns going after the wolves on their heels, even if those wolves had tanks - the book on that one doesn't have many pages and it doesn't end well for the wolves...

 

 

The premise works in comedy, but if you apply it to any world where the actors have free will, it will be over for the predators very fast. Gm's already have to tie down most gamers to keep them from having their PCs look like Rambo-Bunnies... In this setting, you'd have to tell them ahead of time to ignore the logical consequences as a part of the genre.

 

 

 

All that out of the way....

 

 

I've got predator anthropomorphs in my (of all things) hard science post cyberpunk setting. They're not common in the location of the setting by any means, but they are out there in UN controlled space. Earth governments engineered them as soldiers they could use in the most 'ethically challenging' missions - no matter how advanced tech gets, at the end of the day it always takes infantry to finish the fight. Infantry with built in infravision, sonar, claws, scent tracking, superior hearing, and conviently short lifespans is ideal - especially if you don't mind them eating the POWs.

 

Plus, not being human, you can do agent orange, mustard gas, anthrax, and ebola drops on territory you need final solutions for without worrying about clearing them out first.

 

 

I've also got the 'cute fuzzy animal' anthropomorphs - this time flipped as humans with added 'cute animal' DNA to produce an ideal labor supply for human trafficking - one built to be submissive, attractive, and lacking in the complications of civil rights. The original model for them - anime catgirls. In the settng they were designed by a Japanese firm by the name of 'Genki Neko' and then 'ripped' by the Chinese government. A WTO patent suit later declares all the Chinese 'copies' illegal and the UN goes to the task of 'euthenizing' roughly 1 billion of them scattered throughout the solar system before the far-colonies revolt (out of a sense of profit/property loss rather than social equity) and arm theirs.

 

But I don't have Hero system stats for any of this.

Re: Your "2005" Pet Gaming Projects

 

I've got two in the works:

 

1. A '[Post/Transhuman]Cyberpunk' setting:
   http://home.pacbell.net/arcady0/SciFi/
   'Dystopian Hard-Science drama onboard a giant space station in orbit around Jupiter'
    
   Inspired by the tail last few minutes of a dream I had the night before I started writing, it's managed to bust out over 80 pages now. By writing it in book form - and posting it in a PDF - I've managed to stay focused and keep my vision intact. That's something I was unable to do with my fantasy setting which I've always approached as a website of random thoughts, resulting in a randomly scattered setting that I feel, but haven't managed to express.
    
   The PostCyberpunk setting however has come together wonderfully.
    
   It's game system tailored to Ex Machina, because there is no Cyber Hero anymore and because Ex Machina is does the net right in one of its two cyberspace systems...
    
    
   
2. As a result of project one, you get project two:
    
   A new Lifepath generator for the 'cyber' genres, in beta version:
    
   http://home.pacbell.net/arcady0/SciFi/lifepath.html
    
   Over the next few days I'll be customizing it for multiple different 'subgenres' of Cyberpunk, with a present plan to do '80s Gamer Cybperunk', 'Classic Literary Cybperunk', 'PostCyberpunk, and 'Transhuman'.
    
   That said, feedback and ideas for data I could add are appreciated.
    
   The present version tailors to hard science Post/Transhuman (meaning no true-AIs but other Transhuman themes present), the basis of my own setting.
    
   That said, the present project for me is adding toggles for the subgenres of:
    
   80's gamer Cyberpunk
   Post Cyberpunk
   Transhuman
   Fantasypunk
   Lit-punk
   Mosquito
    
   Where Mosquito is my own setting (Cyberpunk on a giant space station in orbit around Jupiter - see my sig for the 80+ page PDF download...), and Lit-punk will be based off of what kinds of people show up in the non-gaming literature. Fantasypunk will be a straight copy of the Shadowrun norms...
    
   This toggle will probably take a few days to get perfect.

Re: Adult themes in gaming, a rant of sorts

 

80% or thereabouts of gamers are people who I find utterly distasteful. Sadly, that probably includes a lot of people in this thread and this forum.

 

I get about the exact opposite ratio from the general population.

 

 

Gamer geeks are just sad pathetic anti-social deviant-sex obsessed often drug abusing people...

 

So, yeah, I probably don't like most of you, and that's just the way it is...

 

 

Frankly, I've been burned by negative experiences so many times that I'm willing to say that opinion now, even here.

 

There's a thread around here somewhere about bad gamer experiences, I've got a long list in there, and a lot of it deals with the obsession some gamers have with raping female characters...

 

Here:

http://herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=479273#post479273

 

 

All of this, by the way, happening in the Bay Area.

 

If I wasn't addicted to gaming, I'd give it up. Dealing with gamers usually just isn't worth it.

Re: Herophile Fantasy art

 

The differences?

 

It's possible to make recognisable pictures with relatively little skill using 3D art. Things come more pre-packaged. So you could say the starting threshold is lower for 3d computer art.

Kind of like photography, but with a bit of drawing and sculpture mixed in if you make original textures and models.

 

Anyone can go down to the local corner store and buy a $5 disposable camera and snap off some naked pictures of their girl/boy-friend. And that's about where 80% of the Poser community comes in...

 

Likewise they can use that same camera and photograph the local woods, street corner, or whatever and get the results of about 50% of the Bryce / Vue / Terragen community.

 

However only an idiot would deny that there are true artists among photographers. Some of them work for Playboy, and some of them wander out into the woods and become the next Ansel Adams. As in, it's not the medium that makes the difference.

 

You can scan through renderosity.com and find some very highly respected users of Poser who, however, are little more than the guy with the $5 camera. Likewise you can find complete unknowns who are cross-comparatively better than Ansel Adams.

 

Popularity in the Poser communities is usually driven primarily by two factors, the same two factors that drive popularity on most of the internet:

 

1. Putting up pictures of naked women

2. Claiming to be a woman who looks hot naked.

 

Generally though, if you look at the facial expressions of an artists work you can tell a lot. Also, how 'canned' is what they do. Do they work in prepackaged poses, expressions, textures, lightings, camera angles, render settings, and so on, or do they actually do something that has its own particular emotion?

 

 

Given some of the above, I don't look at it in terms of how is it different from drawing, I instead compare it to photography.

 

You have more control than you do in photography, but then, you also have more control than you do in photography.

Re: Good D&D style setting to use to bootstrap?

 

Well, I've called Hero's own Turakian Age "DnD fantasy done better than DnD" for a reason. Here's my review of Turiakian Age: http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10598.phtml

 

It will look and feel like DnD, it just won't have the problem of not making any sense.

 

I'd recommend that. If you must use a WotC published setting, then your choices are all bad, but of them Greyhawk is better in the same way that getting shot in the leg is not as bad as getting shot in the head...

Re: Turakian Populations

 

Well, you don't really need to do all the research.

 

The short end of what I'm getting at is that 'western fantasy' doesn't map to what it claims to be based on. It is not medieval. The genre conventions aren't possible in the medieval feudal model.

 

You can toss the genre and go feudal, or keep the genre and not try to fit medieval statistics to it.

 

If you choose the second option, you then only need to do research if you care about the statistics.

 

Most people get by with 'its a big crowded city'. But if you care more than that, you need to find a way to figure out how big. Since most of the rest of the world -does- work as an example for the western fantasy genre you can just pull easy to find numbers from anywhere else.

 

 

If you care for the statistics, know that the actual regions of the western world make a poor map over for western fantasy after the fall of the Roman empire.

 

Look at a place with tech and political structures similar to 'western fantasy' and you find some things are 'the same' and others are different from Europe.

 

Communities are still highly clustered - a village every mile sort of thing, with wilderness in lands not ideal to farming. Cities are just bigger, because trade allows that even in the face of constant war. Even with things like the Mongols killing 100% of the population of Beijing (or was it Shanghai?), you still get cities in the hundreds of thousands up to a million or so.

 

Almost anywhere in the world makes for a decent example, save for Europe. Europe just had a very odd political and health situation from about the fall of Rome up until the rise of nations that caused its cities to be smaller than they should have been and made the whole idea of freely wandering adventure very difficult (for example, the California gold rush was a gold rush not because of the gold, but because it was almost the first time in western history that the wealth was not owned by the state or even mined with forced labor).

 

 

Medieval Europe had small cities, but, in many of them it also had a lot of ruins from when those cities were once larger...

 

 

You can, for an easy mark to western fantasy, and as such Turakian as well, take a Europe like layout and just up the populations in any place with good trade and low disease. Then toss out the word feudal - that's not the political structure of DnD/western fantasy. Look instead to Monarchy Or Impterial - the systems of Europe after and before Feudal.

Re: Turakian Populations

 

Meso America, India, Asia, and Africa were locked in more warfare and strife than Europe during the period, but still had cities with vastly larger populations.

 

Europe chose a fractured decentralized system of government based on making 90%+ of the population serfs - a form of slavery in that it prevented freedom of movement and freedom of economic activity. It's closest modern equivalent are the collectives of Mao's cultural revolution and what happened in Cambodia - both of which caused massive deaths and population drains on their civilizations (but for reasons somewhat different than those of Feudal Europe).

 

In most of the world during that period you could freely travel and adventure, and make your way in life - and this worked to boost populations as it encouraged great trading empires like the Persians, and the situation in India, or empires of conquest like the Aztecs and Inca. Or other great empires like Ethiopia, Benin and Songhai.

 

 

Despite western fantasy having cultures that seem European, Europe is actually a very -bad- model for getting your details. There are some very key and very critical problems with using Europe as an example, some of them are:

 

• Feudalism prevents free travel, land ownership, and the right of claiming booty - which conflicts with the fantasy idea of family owned farms and people who wander as they will for hire as sellswords or simply to pillage minority disenfranchised populations like orcs.
  
• Europe's plagues are not typical for fantasy. They disrupt the pattern for populations.
  
• Europe was already too deforested. It lacked the same number of 'monsters' as most of the world.
  
• Monotheism created an over riding cultural pressure of conformity. Fantasy tends to have a diversity to it's belief systems and a level of social egalitarianism not possible under the monotheisticly controlled society.
  
• Lack of strong central governments. This at first might seem to match fantasy - which often claims the same nobility structure as Europe. But fantasy's nobility tends to work more like Monarchy or Imperial systems - Brittain, Ancient Rome, China, Aztecs and so on. Fantasy's nobility tends to be stronger and weaker at the same time - stronger in holding the 'kingdom' as a whole, but weaker in not having the complete dominance of people's lives one sees in Feudalism (were everyone is a vassal, or slave, of someone else).

 

DnD Fantasy, which is what Turakian Age uses, has as the easiest example to draw from Earth the Roman Empire, but with the technology of Europe's middle ages. Moving out of Europe however, you can often find many societies with social and economic structures very similar to fantasy. Many of them even have wildlands full of monsters (lions, tigers, bears, oh my!).

Re: Turakian Populations

 

Large cities are exceptional - it is very difficult to organise the movement of large amounts of food and water necessary to sustain a large population.

Around 1000 through 1400 AD the world was full of large cities, they just weren't in Europe.

Re: Herophile Fantasy art

 

She's actually based on a miniature, or I wouldn't gave gone -that far- with the design.

 

Here's the mini:

 

https://www.fantization.com/Painting%20Contests/Celtos%20Contest%20June%202002/Ron_Spencer4.JPG

 

-NOT- painted by me.

 

I got into 3D art in 1999. Originally thinking it would be an 'easy way' to do illustrations, rather than the drawings I'd been doing. Turned out 3D work is harder, and not at all like I expected it to be. But it's a lot of fun so I keep at it. There are things you can do in 3D that you just can't pull off in other mediums. Eventuallly I'll figure out how to do some of them...

Re: Turakian Populations

 

Most fantasy underestimates city populations.

 

There were unusual exceptions in Europe that made its cities smaller than those in other parts of the world at that time or in earlier periods on similar technology.

Re: Herophile Fantasy art

 

An Orc.