Fantasy Atlases

[Willow]

Hey all-

I don't recall what thread I read it in, and it was from a while back, but it was something to the effect of "alot of game designers just really want to write setting, but there's not a market for fantasy atlases, so they end up having to publish a game."

I see alot of truth in that, and I'm at a point where I'm seriously looking at writing and publishing a 'fantasy atlas' for use in RPG play, but without any accompaning RPG stats.*

A couple of simple questions:

Are there any examples of similar products being successful?

Is this indie rpg related enough to merit further Forge discussion as I press along in the project?

*I invision the setting itself as working best under the Savage Worlds rules, but I'm not about to even consider buy a license from Pinnacle until I have actual publishing experience to speak of.  I'm mulling over a free companion d20 PDF, but that's really an extra, and tangential to the primary project, and not the point of this thread.

[Willow]

Minutes after posting, I remembered an answer to question #1:  Kingdoms of Kalamar.  I had the old boxed set.  I don't know what the publishing situation for that was, but it was systemless and seems to have done fairly well for it self.

[pells]

Let me just give you my two cents, since I'm too currently working on the same type of project (i.e. pure content with no specific rules). I don't know if I can really answer your questions, but I hope this could help.

Are there any examples of similar products being successful?

I don't know of any project like this, but let me point you in a direction. If you're not developping rules, you can either sell a systemless setting or, in the opposite direction, sell a multi systems setting. Your trade would be your atlas (that's what people are buying) but you can provide stats (I guess for free) for more than one systems. After all, a setting is not GNS dependant. Back in the old days, I guess this would kind of difficult. You have needed to print different runs of books, one for each system. But with pdfs, that seems much easier. IMO, this is the way to go. Anyway, people can still use their own system if they don't want one you have to offer. They are many systems using licence that can allow you to do that.

Is this indie rpg related enough to merit further Forge discussion as I press along in the project?

IMO, yes, this is worth it. But, the main problem, I think, with this kind of project, is that most people will either tell you to write a book or that you're not designing a game since there is no rules. But I guess you can still find some great help around here, just be ready to be bullied a little bit around. IMO, it also depends on how you intend to design your atlas. Do you intend to provide a specific way of doing things, meant especially for the rpg ? If so, and I think there is still a lot of ground to cover on how to find new ways to define content, then go for it and start discussion about it.

Hoped it could help...

[Justin D. Jacobson]

This is a minor point, but it wouldn't be an "atlas" which is a book of maps (and other visuals) but rather a "gazetteer". If you do a search (e.g., on Amazon) using that name, you'll come up with some prior examples. Indeed, there was a Greyhawk Gazetteer published in the early days of 3E.

[Josh Roby]

Willow, the answer depends heavily on your definition of "success."

[Willow]

Joshua- Very true.  Right now I'm just hoping to get a book published, not lose money, and not have boxes full of unsold books in my basement.  Anything better than that is just a pleasant suprise.

[Kobayashi]

Hi

I think that St John Ross is planning to publish a new edition of Uresia without any game info  (if that's any indication that there is a market for this...). As GM I strongly feel that illustrations can really make a difference with this kind of product. But well, it's merely guessing on my part.

[Lance D. Allen]

I think, if you discuss certain things as color, adventure hooks, things that will be useful in determining if your setting will go well with a specific setting, you stand a chance of getting some useful help here. Understand that your setting *WILL* contribute to System (System being more than just the game mechanics; Color and theme can have about as much effect on the actual play as the mechanics) and make sure you address that.

[philaros]

Technically, you could count Talislanta as a successful example of this. The original book to be published was The Chronicles of Talislanta, which provided extensive details and maps of the setting, but no game stats or system at all; those were included in the separate Talislanta Handbook. And new material for Talislanta is still being published, so it's successful on some level. Arguably, though, since the Chronicles did have a companion book with game rules and stats, it's not quite what you have in mind.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Willow,

Your answer to Joshua is very important. I think you can see that if you simply wanted to get a big, colorful book into game stores, you could spend many thousands of dollars, promote ferociously to the right target individuals, perhaps see a few on the shelves in the stores, and eventually mulch most of your print run.

Fortunately that's not what you indicated as what you want. So let's look at those goals - (1) make a really good-looking, interesting book, (2) make a bit of money, or at least not lose any ... I'll go out on a limb and say, "in the course of a year." Sound OK?

Historically, most books of this kind published for role-playing have been associated with specific games. The majority of the GURPS line probably qualifies, or to get more fringe-y, the Spherewalker supplement for Everway. I'm getting the idea, though, that you're thinking more about a product that's like the gazetteers published for a lot of fantasy fiction, right? "Atlas of Pern," that sort of thing.

Well. Whether this turns out to be a good seller, I can't say. So far, the only things I've seen reliably produce good return, for this hobby, are small, punchy, well-supported (in the webzine sense, not supplement), and ready-to-play games, sold primarily on-line.

Perhaps there's room for what you're describing. Speaking for myself, I think all the "Atlas of Pern" books are pretty, certainly, and like most fantasy buffs, I like maps with neat stuff on them. So here's what I suggest, most of it in line with what you're talking about already.

1. Book. Definitely a book, and whether there's a companion PDF (with or without rules), that's fine, but there's gotta be a physical book.

2. High-quality. I mean, high-quality, full of instrinsic interest, and not yet another Fantasy Heartbreaker type map. As I see it, most of the atlases that people can't sell, don't sell because they're bogus, not because the market somehow doesn't like them.

3. Some indication of how exactly it can specifically be used by a role-playing group. Even if there are no rules for hitting goblins and surviving poison or whatever, I'm talking about instructions such that I can take this product and actually utilize it during prep and play. If that seems obvious to you ("why would I have to explain that?"), then good! It means you're prepared to write it.

4. Sales and distribution ... here's where it gets tricky. Because as you've probably figured out, pumping it to the game stores is a straight path to Ye Olde Mulcher (although don't write them off for later), and no matter what, on-line promotion is the only way to get an RPG product sold to end-users, period. So it looks as if direct on-line sale would be the way to go, along the lines of the Forge-ish model.

Problem - such sales are most powerfully driven by on-line accounts of play. So that means you need to have lots of positive feedback for initial customers, and lots of positive interactions between you and them, for this to work.

Sound risky? It does to me. I print up this gorgeous, high-production, actually meaty book, and then I hope that enough people actually use it in the space of two or three months, so that some of them post about it. And then I hope these posts are good enough so that more people want to buy it ... I dunno, very risky.

My suggested solution: start small. Start with one map, not a world, and really write up those instructions with passion. Make this available as a PDF, and use it yourself, and see whether other people use it and post positively about it. From there, then move on to the book plans.

Best, Ron

[Dav]

I have always felt that one of the greatest flaws with the setting book is the idea that you are asking someone to purchase your own fanfic.  In the end, no matter the setting, they are all fanfics of someone else's game.  When I talk to most of the people in my gaming groups (and, granted, a bit over 50% are paid roleplaying people (artists, layout, design, etc.) in my groups), most of them agree that "world creation" for a game is the "fun bits of being a GM". 

Honestly, I have more fun crafting NPC's on the fly and taking ten seconds to sketch some sort of orientation guide.  I always get annoyed with canned settings and "In the world of X, this is how things work". 

Now, granted, I can't prep a game worth a damn.  I just can't.  I have tried to sit down and design a world and write down copious information about that world and somehow convey that through storyline.  I'm not that guy.  I'm more the seat-of-my-pants style of GM and tend to riff off of what my players respond to... and, largely, setting information tends to be the bane of that style of GMing.

In the end, the only setting information I've ever used would be something along the lines of that "100 adventure ideas" from the D&D book (but not that list, because those are more the "go into the dark hole" variety).  I mean, in my experience, players want to know they are walking on grass/mud/sqamp/swimming and how far it is to a town, rather than giving a damn what the grass/mud/swamp/swimming is actually called by the locals.  I'm sure others feel differently, and that's fine, but I've honestly never encountered a group that cared enough about setting beyond the basics (spaceship, desert, forest, post-apocalyptic city, etc.) to bother with devoting a product to it. 

If that's your thing, and you think there is a market for it, then have-at... I'm just curious what game you tie your setting to.

Dav

[Valamir]

My suggested solution: start small. Start with one map, not a world, and really write up those instructions with passion. Make this available as a PDF, and use it yourself, and see whether other people use it and post positively about it. From there, then move on to the book plans.

Not that Ron needs any help, but this is such an important thing that I wanted to hit it again.  I think the problem with setting books is the same as the problem many GMs run into when prompting campaigns.  They get this big grandiose idea about kingdoms and empires and religions and culture and races and right up an encyclopedia entry or two and think that its time to start playing.  Thing is you don't play kingdoms or empires or religions or cultures or races (well, you don't in most RPGs anyway)...you play people.  And people have to interact with other people about things that people find compelling.  Mrs Smythe the peasant woman isn't likely to care about the march of the Treants against the Orc Hold of Kama rama ding dong.  But she's likely to care ALOT about the rumors of fey things in the meadow where her children play.

So like the campaign, the setting needs to scale down.  A paragraph on the goals, ambitions, passions and motivations of a single person is far more useful to engendering actual play than 10 paragraphs on history, the royal dynasty, and caravan routes through the desert.

There's a really good discussion on setting up a campaign / adventure in http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=19939.0]This%20Hero%20Quest%20Thread. 

I think the advice given there on how to write a campaign adventure maps almost 1:1 over to how to write a useful setting supplement.  Sure maps and histories and backgrounds and timelines are important and fun.  But detailing for a specific place "who is doing what to whom and why" on the level of individual people is something that is immediately useful and has never really been done.

Start with a village or two and work your way up and eventually you'll have enough stuff for a book that taken collectively gives a much better view of a world than any number of encyclopedia entries.

Ralph

[Willow]

I mispoke when I said 'Atlas'- 'Gazeteer' is indeed more like it.

Thanks everyone for the feedback.  It's a lot to absorb, so I'm going to have to go back and read it again later.  But I'm intending on focusing on the writing, not the maps.  (The two books on my shelf that I'm stylistically comparing it to the most are the Kingdoms of Kalamar book (Kenzerco), and the World of the Wheel of Time (Tor).)

I have a couple of friends who draw really well, and live in a college town, so I'm hoping to not pay too much for art.

Initial response to the setting ideas over on rpg.net has been good.  The thread's here if you want to take a look: http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=264555

And Ron- I'm not going to skip on the 'how to use this for your game' sections.  I think that's sorely missing, even in big settings, like Forgotten Realms.  Just because you have a map and a description of a dozen countries doesn't mean you're going to know what to do with it.

[Willow]

Ron:  What do you mean by setting books not selling because they are 'bogus'?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Willow,

Checking back on that sentence, I said "atlases," (in the sense of gazetteers), not "settings."

Most gazetteer or "check out my hundreds of cool maps and history" books are bogus for the same reason that you and I already agreed about - they are not being presented in an instructional way.

At present, this kind of RPG material is published much in the sense that people can throw stuff at a wall. Some of it is sticky, but no one knows which, and the big shared myth among publisher and customer alike is that what sticks will be pleasing to the eye. The general solution, so far, is to provide the biggest bowl possible, with the prettiest colors, and therefore reinforce the illusion ("this is so sticky! this is gonna be so cool!") rather than provide anything helpful.

At most, such a book touches off sparks of hope - wowww, this would be so cool if it showed up in play. But that's not even inspiration, it's just hope. Reading the book becomes entertaining because the person enjoys the hope ... but that's not actually, concretely getting expressed in play.

I have used maps and gazetteers effectively during play, I know it can be done. You have probably done it too. If your book explains how you did it, and then instructs and inspires others (who to date have been gazing at their RPG splat book maps in hope, but without payoff), then it will be non-bogus.

As I said, I think you and I already agree about this, based on your recent post.

Best, Ron