While it's been some time since that panel, I started rolling it around in my head, and wondering... would a guide about this particular genre be something that Game Masters out there would find useful? If so, should it be the first of a series about exploring such genres through the medium of TTRPGs?
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| It could be done... if it's something folks want to see. |
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Genre Guides For All Your GMing Needs
Regular readers who've checked out my supplements before now know that I tend to stick to two major formats; 100 Random X, and A Baker's Dozen of More Detailed Y. In case you're one of the folks out there who hasn't gotten a copy of any of my supplements so far, the former category has entries like my Platinum-selling supplement 100 NPCs You Might Meet At The Tavern or the slightly-less-popular 100 Sci Fi Bands. The latter category has entries like my somewhat-controversial bestseller World's Oldest Profession: A Baker's Dozen of Brothels, as well as the Electrum-selling 10 Fantasy Villages.
While I've also written world guides, feat lists, modules, and other styles of supplements, these two formats make up the bulk of my catalog. What makes them so popular, based on feedback from the audience as well as observed trends, seems to be the following factors:
- Game Neutral: A long as you're playing within a given genre, the supplement is still usable.
- Supplemental Resource: These guides fill-in things that GMs don't want to make up on the fly, but they aren't, themselves, necessary for running any particular game.
- Evergreen: Whether you're playing now, or in 25 years, these resources will still be usable.
Looking at these broad strokes, the GM's Genre Guide project fits within all of these parameters, so I feel like it could work... if, that is, it's something readers show an interest in.
What Would Be Included?
I have not yet nailed down the specific format for how this guide would go, and what would be between the pages. With that said, I do have a general layout in mind, and some things I would like it to offer players. Those include:
- Introductory Story: This would set the tone, and be written in the style of the genre in question.
- Genre Overview: The first section would explore the broad strokes of the genre, giving GMs a foundation to work from.
- Genre Elements: Once the overview is established, and examples are given, we break down the genre's most important elements, providing them like the ingredients in a recipe.
- Running The Genre: After the genre has been explained and explored somewhat, this section would offer advice for how to run games set in this genre, along with tips and tricks to make the game stand out, and how to get your players in the spirit.
- Reading and Viewing Recommendations: Since genre can be a complex beast, I'd like to follow the best practices I've seen in other gaming books, and offer some examples for GMs to also take in to immerse themselves in a particular genre.
All of that would, ideally, come out to about 10,000 words or so by the time all is said and done. It might run a little longer, or a little shorter, but that's about the word count I'd be aiming for with these. And while I'd like to start with a Gothic line (Midwest Gothic, New England Gothic, Southern Gothic, you get the idea), if folks enjoy the project I'd be more than happy to stretch out to other genres and provide insight into how to best make those work, too.
How You Can Help
If this sounds like a neat idea, there's a couple of things you can do to help make it a reality. First and foremost, share this post around to get as many eyes on it as possible, and to help gather support. Secondly, leave a comment (here, as well as on social media if that's where you found this blog post) with the genre or subgenre you'd most like to see get its own guide in this series. Gothic preferred, but not required!
The other thing that will really help is, once the series starts coming out, make sure you pick up your copy, and leave a review so that more folks will see the supplement. The more copies something sells, and the more ratings and reviews it gets, the more likely it is that the algorithm will promote it, which creates a cycle where the publisher will want to keep the train rolling... so keep that in mind if you want to see this idea made into a reality sometime in 2024!
Also, if you'd like a short, snappy guide to tide you over till then (and to give you an idea of the sorts of advice I normally give in a project like this), you might want to check out 100 Tips and Tricks For Being a Better Game Master!
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You could probably do a Genre period for WoD in the modern, old west, Victorian, gilded age, dark ages, even Roman times.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I would like to see generic fantasy and Pathfinder 1.0 treatment. I have run games in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Roman Empire. TSR tried its hand at genre books when it published the green series of books, right before they swung into Spelljammer. Too many people play in an unspecific fantasy time zone of a middle age meshed with Roman history having elements of the Renaissance. Too many DMs don't understand the technology that was present in these ages and the differences. Like in Roman Times glass existed, but it was real expensive, where clay pots had existed for hundreds of years and those were easy to come by; therefore a potion would be contained in a small clay jug, instead of a steel or a glass flask.
I have seen a DM who ran their game in the Escape from New York prison, and our prison bus had just crashed. We had the normal classes in this fantasy/modern mash up. I joined a Kickstarter that let me bring in superhero elements into Pathfinder or D&D. The game had heroes like H.G. Wells and his all too real time machine, and Edgar Allen Poe.