Carl Cravens has a dilemma. He’s got an idea for a space opera setting, and wonders whether to submit it as an article to Fudge Factor, or whether to polish up a longer version to sell as a downloadable PDF product.
I’ve wondered whether there’s any commercial potential for a Kalyr RPG. In terms of quantity, I’ve certainly got more than enough material for a 128-page worldbook. Much of it’s pretty disorganised at present, and I will have to rewrite the bulk of the actual text. The game mechanics would be Fudge, which is released under the OGL. I don’t have any real idea as to whether I’d be able to sell the thing to anyone who wouldn’t qualify for a playtest copy (i.e. my current players) The other issue is that much of the material is already available online, and The Phoenyx have a non-exclusive licence to it.
The post by Mike Mearls about core stories also makes me think. Successful RPGs have a standard storyline for adventures; D&D has “Adventurers kill monsters, take their stuff, and go up in levels”, Call of Cthulhu has “Investigators explore strange places, discover Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, and go horribly insane while saving the earth. What’s the core story of Kalyr? (As the GM and worldbuilder, I think I know this, but I wonder how clear it is to anyone else)
Did we ever mention to you that we considered licencing Kalyr instead of building the Phoenyx Fantasy World? We decided it wasn’t “generic” enough, though considering how the PFW has turned out (or failed to, through lack of time) perhaps we ought have.
No, you didn’t. That revelation comes as a bit of surprise!
I’m not surprised you thought it wasn’t generic enough; I originally wrote in deliberate reaction against DnD-style generic fantasy, even though it had some of the same literary influences (especially Vance)
Well, that was the thing, we pretty much want(ed) DnD-style generic fantasy. For the familiarity factor, and all. Had the project worked, we’d've looked at doing a generic space opera (though we were never sure if that meant Star Trek or Star Wars), a few other generics, then started in on the more flavourful stuff.
We also idly kicked around the idea of publishing (likely in PDF, but back then that was an untested commercial market) selected Phoenyx worlds. Sort of a vanity press. Kalyr was top of the list. Celandra was up there, but the multiple authors, including some that have disappeared, might make that problematic. (The Phoenyx’ absurdly-broad licence is really only intended to keep e.g. one player from getting upset with the game and demanding all his work and everything derived from it be pulled out of the archives, or one GM from demanding a game be shut down rather than passed on to a new GM, mostly in the multi-GM worlds. It’s not intended to interfere with publishing it anywhere else, and is subject to being rewritten to better express that without being so broad whenever somebody wants to pay a real lawyer to do it.)
I would have thought Celandra would have made a good “Phoenyx Core World”. The interactive history format makes for a good involved backstory, and the short fiction the players write can supply a good cast of NPCs.
Partially, but there’s personal prejudice involved: Celandra’s always been *too* prolific for me to keep up on, so I’m rather more familiar with Kalyr (though I haven’t fully kept up on *it*, either).
I can’t keep up with Celandria either; I’ve been lurking for eaons, and quite often I find I don’t have time to read all the posts, and just skim them or even delete them unread.