Ginger Stampley, at >a href="http://www.whiterose.org/pam/"> Perverse Access Memory asks, in her 74th Game WISH column:
Name three or more supplements (or core books, for that matter) for existing game systems that you’d like to see. Why? What inspires your interest in these supplement? What existing supplements or materials are you using instead?
Well, this is a relatively straightforward enough question. There are two that spring to mind very quickly.
First, I have spoken in the past about the Aria system, which I regard mostly as a brilliant, but ultimately failed, experiment. Aria had two books-- a main system, which I thought was interesting, but ultimately unplayable, and a world creation book, which I thought was even more interesting and potentially useful as a general supplement, rather than just Aria. Aria was sort of intended to be a system for making other systems, though, and one promised supplement that I had eagerly (and leter bitterly) awaited was the Aria Magic supplement.
In the library of books never written that exists in my mind, the Aria Magic book would have been a fairly large tome, built along the same lines and with the same strengths, as the Aria Worlds book. Which is to say, no matter how flawed it might be to practice it, the book would have been a good college try at explaining how to design a magic system for a given fantasy world setting. There have been lots of times where I tried to either emulate a magic system I liked from a set of books, or create a magic system de novo but system-writing is, in a word, tough. Or rather, writing balanced, coherent systems is tough.
Writing coherent worlds isn't trivial, either, and the Aria Worlds book took an approach I really liked. Each chapter had not only the concepts and rules (as such) but also two examples. One example, (the Northmen of the Firth, or some such) was sprinkled through each chapter, to illustrate each point as it came along, then a final larger example (the City State of Somewhere) at the back of each chapter.
Note, of course, these were extended examples, like two threads that ran through all the chapters, ending with a nice description of each culture by the time you had reached the end of the book. Then there were chapters of more examples, once all the rules were given: A chapter full of eight small examples, and another chapter which was one extended example.
I thought, then and now, that this was just a brilliant way to write a meta-system, and I would have dearly loved to see an Aria Magic book that took the same approach. Several running example threads, and a cap of larger complete examples woven around a competent set of meta-rules for magic design would have been a godsend at that phase in my gaming hobby, and damned interesting reading, now. Bonus points for examples of failures, discussions of trade-offs, how to hunt for loopholes, and generally how to get what you want out of the system. Even more bonus points if there were a few chapters tying it all back to the Aria Worlds supplement, too.
The second would be a supplement or two for Nobilis. I'm not, in general, the kind of GM or player who wants or needs a lot of supplements for a game. Generally speaking, if I can't see a good way to run a game out of the main book, then I probably don't want to buy it at all. I can certainly see ways to run good games from the main Nobilis book. On the other hand, the main Nobilis book is still flawed. Even though the one existing supplement is for LARPS, I've found it helpful in filling in some (some!) of the mechanical details. What I would look for in another Nobilis supplement would be something similar-- something to fill in some of the social details.
Nobilis is as much a social game as Amber, but it lacks the support that the Amber game has in, well, the Amber novels. The Amber novels not only give the Amber game a good, solid set of NPCs and examples of how they interract together, the game in my opinion is built on them directly. Nobilis, while it has a few token examples in the book and the existing supplement, does not focus on them, nor can it begin to really go in detail about how the Nobilis interract with each other. Something that goes into detail on how various Nobles might view and act upon their various Codes; how they might resolve differences (when they exist) between their codes and the codes of their Imperators or Family members; whether there are any organizations that cross the Code lines of the Imperators-- do the Powers of Birds and Beasts, say, have an affiliation to each other or an organization that cuts across their politics? What other leagues of that sort might exist?
The third... took a little time to come up with. I am not, by my nature, a big supplement buying kind of guy, although I have been in the past. Strictly in order to round out the third, I'd have to say: well, Ginger mentioned something like The Economic Order, so I can't swipe that one. But in the same vein, I wou;dn't mind seeing something lke The Political Order, or GURPS: Governments. (And if that last sounds boring, I note that GURPS: Religion is one of the best supplements they put out, and I bought it long after I stopped playing GURPS on a regular basis.) I don't think a lot of people have a good grasp of how governments actually govern today, other than the broadest strokes. It's hard to believe that many people have the same grasp of other government systems, whether they're modern or historical. And a guide that gives good thought and guidelines to creating fantasy or SF governments-- ones that really govern on a day to basis as well as in the political sense-- would be a great read, in my opinion.
One thing I do want to add, though-- I have absolutely no desire to see the fabled Rebma Supplement for Amber. I'm not impressed with Wujcik's interpretation of very much at all, and I'm almost positive that I would be very unhappy with his interpretations of Rebma-- and given the scarcity of information we'd have on Rebma, it would have to be almost entirely whole cloth.