Systemless Sourcebooks?

[copycat042]

I would like to see a collection of genre books, and equipment books, to which anyone could just add their conflict resolution system of choice, to have a relatively complete RPG. It could be made modular, too. You could tell players: "We are using the sci-fi equipment book with the fantasy genre book." and no one would be lost.


Anyone know of a source, or care to create such a thing?

[Rob Lang]

Crikey! That's a tough ask, copycat! The source books could indeed be generically written (like the fantasy items in ) but many systems demand quite a lot of detail and specifics. There are a few systems that do not require much (Risus, Sketch, Stickguy) but these are very light systems indeed. Questions such as "How much damage does the doohicky do?" (try not to say that too fast) will need to be answered.

Perhaps an alternative would be to create sourcebooks with generic numbers throughout and then at the front conversion rules to any given system. Pick a load of systems and convert them. This is, of course, a great deal of work.

How do you envisage these books working?

[copycat042]

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

There are a few things that might count as such books already. "Guns Guns Guns" from BTRC lets you design firearms for a number of systems based on real life mechanical properties of the weapon. Of course, its one of those books that has so much math, if you can do it for the game, you probably have the expertise to to make them in real life. (One of the reasons I don't care for GURPS books on technology)

FUDGE is supposed to be able to handle these things fairly well.

History books are pretty good, as resources, but perhaps we need something a little more specific. You can find plenty of information about the armor thickness of a WWII tank - but what its like to drive one or what the tankers ate at night is a that is a bit more esoteric. Yet those are the details for fleshing out a character and world.

I seem to recall a few a few d20 supplements with title like "1001 Sci-Fi Weapons" that try to do something like this.

This certainly sounds like something that would be fun to do, and since I tend to write rules and setting as different parts of the document not that hard. However, these books would probably suffer the same sort of problems as generic systems. Even if the listed damage is the same - using a 13mm gyro-jet, a an 8cm mirror IR Laser, or a 2 inch ether disruption ray indicates a lot about the setting. At the very least, this is an indication that we need very tight focus for each book - "Hard SF, Space Opera, Space Western" rather than a generic book for space games.

Tell me a setting you'd like to see, and I'll try to bang out a few pages for you.

[copycat042]

I found a twerps supplement which looks very close what I am imagining. It is short ,to the point, and gives a good idea of the "feel" of the setting.

http://www.mecha.com/~conkle/twerps/cyber.html

Maybe what i am looking for is a huge collection of TWERPS supplements?

[koipond]

When I write a setting book for CyberGeneration, I use as little crunch as possible because I personally like books that drop me into the world without a bunch of numbers to get in the way. This may be weird, but with the review of Mile High Dragon what was interesting is that the reviewer said that it could be dropped into any setting really, and gave an example of one.

I'm a big fan of systemless sourcebooks, or as systemless as you can make them.

[copycat042]

4e put me off crunch entirely. We used to play D&D exclusively, all the way from 2E to 3.5, and i kept seeing more and more of the mechanics getting in the way of the fun. It got me looking for the old twerps stuff i used to have. I also looked at Dinky Dungeons, and started listening to a myriad of rpg podcasts. I heard the Gutter Skypes using QAGS, and I realized, that you could use QAGS to play in any genre, and that you could plug in the twerps settings to give you the framework upon which to hang the QAGS mechanic. Then I realized that you could do the same thing with many of the free rules-light systems out there. So, that was my journey, in a nutshell.

[BubbaBrown]

I actually have used a sourcebook of this nature. It's not exactly systemless, but focuses on weapons using standard scientific terms and converts them over to different game system mechanics at another point. It called "Edge of the Sword Vol. 1: Compendium of Modern Firearms by Kevin Dockery". It's very informative. It talks about the weapon damage based on the size of the round, the characteristics, and muzzle energy. It talks accuracy in terms of statistical probability to hit targets and various distances. Towards the end of the book it finally gives a conversion chart for weapon damages based on the rounds they fire to various systems: Edge of Sword, Cyberpunk, Hero, Call of Chuthulu, Twilight 2000, MPSE, and D20.

So rather than systemless, it remains system agnostic until the very end where it gives a variety of conversions and comparisons.

I really wish there were more as it really helps to have the science and then down-convert it to your system of choice.

[Age of Fable]

Books like that don't seem to sell very well. I wrote a systemless fantasy setting based on , and the feedback was basically that people might buy it if had rules for using it with D&D.

[Age of Fable]

There was a book by ICE (who made Rolemaster and Middle Earth Role Playing) called ...and a 10-Foot Pole, which gives the weight, scarcity, preparation time and relative price of various items in different time periods. It's nominally for Rolemaster, but really it looks like you could convert it pretty easily.