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Would a Everywhen supplement full of D&D characters and tropes be a popular seller? Now personally I have no interest in such a setting book, but I wonder if an EW supplement that went ‘full bore Tolkien’ would be very popular.
Over the years I’ve repeatedly seen requests for help in adding D&D creatures and monsters to BoL. It started back in the days of Legendary Edition, when D&D 3.5 was getting very heavy with rules bloat and while players were happy, GMs were getting tired of the amount of prep required to run a game. There were lots of moans about stat blocks, I seem to recall. The simple and elegant rules of BoL appealed to GMs, but their players still wanted to play in the typical D&D universe.
The mini setting ‘The Broken Seal of Astarath’ in the Everywhen core rule book includes rules for elf, dwarf, human, ogre, orc and goblin characters and is compatible with BoL Mythic. However it is a fairly basic mini setting that has a very specific set up of everyone on both sides of the ‘good’/’evil’ divide banding together to fight a demonic threat to the whole world. Not very D&D and not very Tolkien.
I would say there is enough there to get you started and you just need to go through your D&D books and translate what you need – but that might be too much work for some people (busy lives, work pressures, children, etc.)
I think both BRP and All Flesh Must Be Eaten came out with supplements to recreate that D&D experience with their specific rule sets, although I’m not sure how well those supplements sold.
What do you think? Would you snap up such a product?
[In the interests of full disclosure I’ve never run or played in even a single session of any version of D&D. And while I know D&D has moved beyond the trad dungeon, I’ve always thought that ‘the dungeon’ was the silliest idea ever! I have no dog in this fight – I’m just curious on your thoughts. Personally I think such a supplement might sell very well.]
Last edited by Gruntfuttock (12/03/2020 12:34 pm)
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I haven't bought Everywhen - its about the only BoL type product that I don't have. I really have not seen any reason for buying it because I find BoL is so easy to adapt to any setting.
I ran the D&D 3.5 adventure - The Red Hand of Doom for my wife to play as a single person using BoL rules. This is an adventure that in D&D terms takes characters from 6th to 12th levels, so it is pretty extensive. BoL was able to handle it - probably one of my favorite adventures that we have played. (Her character was an Elven Sorceress and my NPC character that accompanied her was a Human Barbarian/Mercenary).
So do you need an Everywhen to D&D supplement, not really - but then I am sure that there are those that would love it.
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I remember you mentioning those games - good times!
I agree with you that BoL is easy to adapt to anything, but also I've found EW to be a fun rule set and I use that more than BoL these days - but that is mainly because of the games I've been running lately. When it comes to fantasy I'm a hard core S&S bloke - High Fantasy is not my thing - so I always use BoL for those games.
Actually it would make more sense for any such supplement to be a BoL supplement rather than a EW one, but Simon has said that he is happy with BoL as it stands and has no intention of returning to it again. As EW had the mini setting featuring the basic Elf/Dwarf/Orc set up, it already has the main foundations worked out, so I thought any such work would make more sense as a EW supplement.
I suspect you and I are of a generation that expected to have to work out their own stuff for anything that was missing from a rule set. Younger generations of gamers seem more likely (gross generalization, no doubt) to expect published product to plug any gaps or develop new directions in a rule set. And even old hands like us usually have many calls on their spare time. Therefore, I think such a supplement would sell well.
But what do I know? It's definitely not a product I would be interested in buying. But there does seem an ongoing interest in using BoL to play 'D&D lite'.