Towns and cities and villages should have different vibes and offer different opportunities to the players.  Not every community will sell weapons or armor, some won't have herbs or potions, others may not have wagons or horses.

One of the biggest benefits I got from using Earth as my game map was being able to look up distribution of resources. The country that takes up most of the central Rockies of the US has lots of copper, gold and silver... but as much copper as the have available, they can't make decent bronze because they have no tin. Lots of zinc, so lots of brass... but no bronze except for "arsenic bronze." They trade for tin with the country to the west of them, which is mostly dwarves. The dwarves have just about everything you could ask for to make some truly awesome steel (chromium, vanadium, etc.), as in tool steel and such. So what does the country in the Rockies have to trade with them? Well it just so happens that in central Colorado is one of the only decent sources of metallurgical quality coal west of the Great Plains. The dwarves have lots of coal to use as fuel... but nothing at all to carbonize iron and make good steel. Therefore it's a given that there will either be a trade deal.... or a war.

Please understand, I'm not saying you should use Earth as your game map... but laying out where resources are (and just as important, where they are not) in many ways does more to define international relationships than anything else.

So, if you want a character with a little bit more depth but still aimed at a "starter" audience, what about 2-3 background tables included in the book? I think there were already some of those in a RM Companion (I can't check at the moment). People could pick one "background item" per table or roll dice. I was thinking of something like around 15 items per table.

The said items could be something like adjectives/personality traits (impatient, courageous, noble, etc.), or linked to a childhood event/situation (abandoned by relatives, has a (NPC) twin, has a fear of something, etc).

It doesn't need to cover every situation, only give a good idea of what elements could be added to a character background.

I don't think it should be bought with DP either as my intent is to give flavour, not any bonus/malus. It looks like talents and flaws, but without the advantages/drawbacks.

It has to work with RMU, so some of this is a non-starter until that's done and delivered.

That said, I was planning on including some of that stuff in the two starting sections (In the Beginning and Learning to Crawl). Part of stat allocation SHOULD take into account how you view your character and what you want to accomplish. The whole thing would take place in a notional "typical wilderness village" type setting.

It's always good to involve as many people as possible, but if this does move forward I would caution against casting that net TOO wide. I would think a free intro product should be available soon after (or timed to come out with) the final RMU stuff, and broad collaborations are by their nature slow. I for one wouldn't want to do the magic section...it doesn't interest me as much. Character creation and GM-type stuff is more my area.

GoF, locations of ores, cropland and the like was a major part of my world. I've got maps for trade routes, ore locations, major producers of grain, and so on. But that's not stuff for a free intro product...

 For me it comes in 3 parts; region, culture and social status with another division along gender lines.
MDC

... with another division along gender lines.

Or not, depending on the world and races.

Quote

I don't think it should be bought with DP either as my intent is to give flavour, not any bonus/malus. It looks like talents and flaws, but without the advantages/drawbacks.

It has to work with RMU, so some of this is a non-starter until that's done and delivered.

I'm not I understand what you're meaning here... From my point of view, those background elements could fit other RPG systems and you can make them generic enough to fit into SF too.

Am I mistaken or are there two products discussed in this thread?
1. A book mostly for GMs to help them learn the system;
2. A starter adventure with tips and simple rules for both beginner players and GMs.

I would rather cheer for #2 as it looks like an efficient way to learn the rules while playing compared to a set of examples.

Your thoughts?

...and then go on a simple adventure near a village.

Nirbai City, on the edge of the Nirbai Forest.   

Quote from: GrumpyOldFart on September 23, 2013, 03:25:04 PM

Quote

...and then go on a simple adventure near a village.

Nirbai City, on the edge of the Nirbai Forest.   

Depends on your audience. If you're going to relative newcomers, why not?

Exactly. They're newbies, they may not be fully aware of the degree of punniness they'll likely have to put up with from a typical gaming group. If the premise of the document is "teach the newbies"... may as well warn 'em in advance.

 

On a note related to the discussion of resources earlier... I found a new (to me anyway) site/page devoted to fantasy demographics. Like most, it is in the format of X number of people in a settlement will generate Y numbers of profession Z. And like most such listings, the number of people in listed professions nowhere near equals the total of the population it is taken from, the rest being presumably "peasant laborers." But even peasant laborers do something.

One of the reasons the whole thing with resources is important is because it defines what that "peasant laborer" does. In most cases, he'll be a small farmer and/or be attempting to raise livestock of some kind. In most settings, the individual peasant family will not have enough land to support large animals, or large numbers of small ones. A goat, a pig and a few chickens are a serious strain on the carrying capacity of their land.

But in a town in heavy forest upstream from a major city, he'll probably be a woodcutter or a boatman. In a little mining camp of 20 or 30 people, he'll almost certainly be a miner. The point is that even using the same random fantasy demographics to add in the butcher the baker and the candlestick maker, the entire character of a settlement changes according to who the peasants are. Pick the miner's pocket, you may find gold dust. Pick the boatman's pocket, you may find a frog. You're much less likely to find a frog in the miner's pocket or gold dust in the boatman's, however.

What's in their pocketses is different, what's for sale in the local store is different, what kind of food they serve at the inn is different, what kind of horse is considered especially valuable is different, the makeup and priorities of local law enforcement is different, what kind of weather makes them abandon the settlement and save themselves is different.

The culture is a reaction to the character of the peasants, much more so than the other way around. Pawns are the soul of chess.

This is the fantasy demographics:

http://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/Fantasy%20Demographics%20Version%201.pdf

A couple of other things that were fun.... random alchemy ingredients:

http://www.wizardawn.com/rpg/files/alchemy_ingredients.pdf

Random results for successfully picking pockets:

http://www.wizardawn.com/rpg/files/pick_pocket.pdf