On Mon, Sep 25, 2006 at 04:40:54PM -0500, Tim Hall wrote:

>THS promotes itself as a generally optimistic view of the future, in 
>contrast to most Cyberpunks settings which are explicitly dystopian. 
>But it's not a complete utopia either; utopias tend not to make very 
>exciting adventure settings.

I think that's fair.

>The trouble I have with THS is that it's a big sprawling setting with no 
>real focus. Sure, there's a lot of stuff for PCs to do, but it doesn't 
>have a 'core story' in the way Cyberpunk or Call of Cthulhu does.

It has _lots_ of core stories. It's a full world, not a single campaign.
That's glib but I think it's valid: sure, the "core story" of D&D is
"kill creatures and take their stuff", but most of the more interesting
D&D games I played went a long way beyond that.

Indeed, that's why I've tended to get bored with Cyberpunk games - they
almost always end up telling the _same_ story...

But yeah, this lack of focus on a single campaigning environment has
been mentioned before. One of the things that's apparently coming up in
_Changing Times_ (the rules upgrade for THS to GURPS4) is a bunch of
campaign possibilities to give GMs some idea of the sorts of game to
which the setting lends itself.

-- 
Roger, gaming grognard
Lots of role-playing stuff: http://tekeli.li/