Thursday, January 3, 2019

Gaming Ballistic's 2018 and new GURPS DFRPG material

Douglas Cole put out a thorough look at the year of Gaming Ballistic, both the company and the blog. I suggest you check it out.*

Gaming Ballistic 2018 Year in Review


There are a couple things of special note to Dungeon Fantastic in that blog:

1) More Dungeon Fantasy Role-Playing Game Support

"Dungeon Fantasy RPG
I have three signed contracts for more work in Nordlond for 2019"

Great! More DFRPG support is not a bad thing.

I will say I don't love Vikings as much as Doug or some of my players. I don't dislike them, but I don't make Norse culture a big part of my game worlds. So Norse culture based material is, inevitably, less useful for me than "generic Euro-monsterdom" type settings and material. I'm more likely to plunk down a big dungeon full of dragons than a well-developed and logically consistent section of setting that's Norse. It's just a fact.

2) Said Support Has Monsters?

"If the three existing products go well, I suspect a Nordlond Bestiary will be something that could be compiled in the last portion of 2019, but this isn’t a product announcement. It’s recognizing that with four books probably containing 50 to 100 unique monsters, all of which have their own unique flavors, that this sort of creature catalog is a good idea."

Oh, nice. I like books of monsters. I like them a lot.

I do hope this really means monsters, and not "statblocks." Hall of Judgment is really cool, but a lot of the bestiary is mundane animals and bandits and so on, and that's as fun as Animals, Herd in the AD&D Monster Manual. As in, not really. Cool monsters I can give names to without unlauts and accent characters and then sic on my PCs so they can butcher each other are always welcome. Especially those by people not named "Sean Punch" or "Peter Dell'Orto," because I write really nasty monsters and Sean writes even nastier ones with exactly my sensibilities in mind. Sean writes monsters I like in the same way that Quentin Tarantino writes movies I like - it's like he knows what I think would be cool and what is cool about the stuff I think is cool. But another person's perspective be be good and useful.


So we've got that going for us.


I'd also point out that Doug goes into the issue I had brought up regarding this blog - how to connect to the audience? How to find people? If you know good, time-to-effectiveness efficient ways to do that, I think Doug could use the pointer. He can also use your eyes and your word of mouth. He's a good guy making great product; help him find the people who are looking for him . . . especially the ones who don't even know they are missing what's he's making.



* It's long, though. It's thorough even by Doug's standards, and Doug likes his posts complete. I read it in chunks.

7 comments:

  1. Noted with interest on the "nifty monsters and not a book of various harmless fauna." I can say that the work I'm doing now will have a few new and unique threats, but that's not the main point. The other two CAN be chock full of interesting threats, though, and attention will be paid.

    Thanks for the comments. You know I pay attention.

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  2. "I will say I don't love Vikings as much as Doug or some of my players."

    I don't like Vikings at all. Like, not even a little bit. I'm about as done with fantasy in Northern/Western European drag as one can be. So it's excellent that Doug isn't. The old standbys are more popular than my own preoccupations with the Mediterranean and more obscure parts of Asia and Africa, and we'll get real variety in the cultural connections and signifiers in DF/DFRPG-related works rather than having it all look the same. So go, Doug!

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    Replies
    1. Well, there's an untouched area in my Nordlond world based loosely on Kamakura-era japan plus smatterings of Korea and China, if you want to indulge in flights of adventure fantasy . . .

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    2. Vikings and Asians in the same world? That's totally unrealistic!

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    3. I know. Pretty soon you've got Viking-wielding katanas chucking tomahawks, and then it's all over.

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    4. I'm pretty sure I saw some of them on the History Channel, during Sharks vs. Vikings Week.

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  3. The Ranger's Apprentice, Book 10: The Emperor of Nihon'Ja has English rangers leading Vikings, defending against Mongul invaders. How's that for a mixed bag of culture?

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