Outsourcing Urbis

[Jürgen Hubert]

In a recent thread, Eru asked whether I'd allow others to work parts of Urbis in more detail (such as individual cities, locations, and so forth).

Needless to say, I am immensely flattered by this notion.

However, since I plan to eventually publish Urbis professionally and sell it at places like RPGNow and e23 for profit (I hope), I first need to establish some general rules and warnings for this.

I can't really afford to pay other authors for writing material at the moment - most of the money I do have available will go for a decent cover piece. And I don't want to make any vague promises of "future payments" which I don't know if I can keep. The gaming industry has enough horror stories about unpaid authors as is...

So much for the disclaimer. So, what possibilities for third-party publications do exist?

* You could contribute texts to the core book and be considered a "playtester". This means that your name will get mentioned in the core book (once it gets published), and you will get a free copy of the finished product. Not much, but at least it's something I can realistically offer. However, this does limit the possible material you could write - after all, the core setting book is

not intended to go into too much detail (other than with the "example city" of Dartmouth).

* You could publish it as "fan material" on the web, which I have absolutely no problem with and in fact would appreciate. For the purposes of publication, it would naturally be considered "non-canon", but that probably doesn't matter much for a setting which hasn't even been officially published yet...   ;)

* You, and whoever else you can get to work with you, could create your own official supplements. For the foreseeable future, I will be busy with working on the main book, and don't really have time to detail any cities other than Dartmouth. But I had always hoped that I'd be able to publish short "city sourcebooks" about various locations (among other things). And if some other people are willing to write them for me, so much the better. Here are the terms I would suggest:[/list]

IIRC, RPGNow gets 25% of the sales price of any PDF products. I'd want to get a further 5% for doing the layout (I am using LaTeX for my layout, and want to keep the style of the line consistent) and for the overall rights to the whole line. The remaining 70% would be distributed among the authors (including me, if I write significant sections of it - but overall I'd be happy to leave that to others) depending on the amount of material written.

The authors retain the rights to the texts as such, but I'd retain the rights  to the setting itself. In practice, this would mean that if you were to write a city sourcebook for Svardholm, and I'd later write a "Complete Guide to the Flannish Cities", I'd either have to negotiate with you for permission to use your texts (and thus compensate you), or write the section for Svardholm completely new, but based on what you have written in your earlier publication. And since that would constitute a lot more work, I'd think twice about it - especially since it is unrealistic that I would find the time for it.

The length of the supplement would be up to you, since ebooks aren't limited by word count. I thought that 32 pages would be a good number, but in the end it will be up to you. It could be anything from a 10-page mini booklet to a 144 page magnum opus - but for starters, it's probably wise not to be too ambitious.


So, what kinds of supplements are possible? Pretty much anything you can imagine, really - there is plenty of room for expansions. Some possibilities:

* City sourcebooks - detailing individual cities with their history, neighborhoods, major NPCs and so forth.
* Booklets detailing individual organizations, secret societies, crime rings, and conspiracies.
* Booklets describing individual religions, their structures, and variant beliefs.
* Adventures
* Collections of adventure hooks in the

[Ulink=http://www.talesofterror.net/]Tales of Terror[/link] format (one starting scene or mystery, but multiple outcomes - all without game stats)
* Books on individual races and/or monsters, possibly written from an in-game perspective (such as issues of popular or scientific magazines). This would focus on the "standard" d20 creatures instead of new ones, but would explain their role in the world better and provide plenty of adventure hooks.
* Collections of urban locations, complete with maps.
* A sourcebook on Nexus Towers, their layouts, their uses, and their effects on the economy.
* Warfare in the modern age (should probably be written by military enthusiasts who can figure out all the details of d20 magic)
* Collections of "generic" NPCs like the city guardsmen in the main book (I admittedly get bored easily with writing up NPC stats - but since I am presumably not the only GM with this problem, such a product would probably sell very well, and not just to Urbis fans...)
* Collection of "named" NPCs - villains or other important people the PCs might have to deal with during their adventures, complete with stats. Both those named in the core book but not detailed and new creations are fair game.
* A sourcebook on law enforcement - how law enforcement agencies deal with crimes (including supernatural) - or fail to do so.
[/list]

I think all of these would be good starting points for short expansions of the setting. I know firsthand how time-consuming it can be to work on a setting (after all, I still haven't finished Urbis...), and there's no sense in trying to create enormous, 100+ page sourcebooks when PDFs allow for far shorter publication.


I have additional ideas for supplements, which I will list for completeness' sake - but in my view, these should have lower priority for now and wait until the "core setting" itself has been better established:

* Sourcebooks detailing individual planes and their inhabitants (probably too obscure for the beginning).
* Sourcebooks detailing the other planets of the star system (should probably wait until a Bodenwald sourcebook is close to completion, because that's the city most involved with space exploration).
* Gazeteers for other continents (I think at the moment, learning more about the Known Lands and their urban societies is more important).
* A sourcebook on the economy and trade in the Known Lands (also fairly obscure, but could be lots of fun).
* Sourcebooks on ancient ruins and vanished civilizations (fun, but takes the focus away from urban adventures...)

I hope some of these ideas are inspirational for you. If you have any further ideas of your own, or any questions, don't hesitate to tell us.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Oh, and given the slow pace of my work on Urbis, it is entirely possible that such a supplement could be published before the main book...   ;)

[SA]

I'll just say that I recently "discovered" Urbis (not really true - I'd encountered it before but didn't get a real appreciation until I read the pdf), and I think it's absolutely astounding.

I've long been disassociated from the standard D&D tropes, but your setting has been sufficient to rekindle my enthusiasm, as it is rendered with such clarity, detail and originality.  So I'd be very interested in writing something for it - I have no idea what, yet, but something.

[Jürgen Hubert]

I'll just say that I recently "discovered" Urbis (not really true - I'd encountered it before but didn't get a real appreciation until I read the pdf), and I think it's absolutely astounding.

I've long been disassociated from the standard D&D tropes, but your setting has been sufficient to rekindle my enthusiasm, as it is rendered with such clarity, detail and originality.

Thank you. Frankly, I think novelty for novelty's sake is overrated. Either you end up with a renamed copy of something that  already exists elsewhere (which can lead to confusion or disinterest), or you end up with something that's truly novel - and then risk that you need far too much time to explain it properly, limiting your setting to a few true enthusiasts while baffling others (Tekumel comes to mind...).

On the other hand, elves, dwarves, orcs, halfings and so forth all have a rich myth body attached to them. Almost every gamer knows something about these beings - and many know a lot. The same goes for the quirks and details of the D&D rule system - they are familiar to many, if not most gamers.

By starting out from all these familiar tropes, I do not have to explain the basics. That dwarves are skilled craftsmen, that elves live in the forests, or that fireballs are a great way to kill lots of enemies. By assuming that all these are well known, I can built on it all and expand the world into new and strange directions - which simply wouldn't be possible if I had to explain the fundamentals all over again.

So I'd be very interested in writing something for it - I have no idea what, yet, but something.

Well, if you have made up your mind, tell us about it.

Do any of the examples I have listed seem appealing to you?

[SA]

In particular: races and monsters, adventures, and adventure hooks.

[Jürgen Hubert]

In particular: races and monsters, adventures, and adventure hooks.

All of these are good.

Adventure hooks would probably the easiest to get into. Just look at the Tales of Terror collection for Call of Cthulhu. Writing up adventure hooks in a similar way for Urbis would allow work to be split up in lots of short, non-connected sections which are easier to complete, and it would also allow the authors to create all sorts of setting details without having to write a lengthy, coherent treatise on a single subject.

I'd love to see adventures fitting into Urbis, but of course writing a coherent and well-rounded adventure is more work than individual adventure hooks, especially since someone has to playtest them.

Books on individual races would be more ambitious still, since the various nonhuman races are found in many places, and a whole book on them would have to cover all these different cultures to some degree. Probably not a subject that can be dealt with in a mere 10 pages...   ;)

Books on monsters would be easier, since monsters typically only represent a fairly small niche of the world. I'd prefer books on monsters that are already a part of the SRD (or which have been created specifically for Urbis - the surathi, the daresh, and the Fair Folk) instead of new invention - I'm rather more interested in what you can do with existing species than just throwing yet another "monster of the week" into Urbis campaigns...

The presentation for the fluff parts of such books should be a mixture of the old Van Richten's Guides and an issue of National Geographic or similar magazines - including references to other fictional publications. Personally, I think a book on ghouls just asks to be written - complete with the history of the ghoul plagues of the Lands of the Dead (and descriptions of archaeological digs in the area), and how they hide below modern cities... but there are lots of other fascinating topics waiting to be explored as well.

[Jürgen Hubert]

For those who are still interested in writing material for Urbis, take a look at Eruvian.Com. Once you have registered, register as "GM" for Urbis, and you will be able to see all sorts of Content Requests for the setting, including some mentioned above...