InsomNY said:and some of the material is really jarring or seems out of place.
René said:I'd like to take another approach: instead of inlcuding pastiche so regularly, Mongoose should come up with OWN Hyborian background.
The inclusion of pastiche in RPG products gives me often a feeling of incompleteness: you get some information about specific locales / buildings / persons, but there usually remain wide gaps because of lacking information in the sources (=pastiche). I don't have the Shadizar box at hand: there I encountered some examples of this phenomenon.
VincentDarlage said:There is remarkably little pastiche in Shadizar. Beyond the names of a few people and places, I had to invent practically everything else. I didn't give a key to every building/structure because a city the size of Shadizar would have 14,489 buildings and structures! Also, I didn't want Shadizar to be static. If a key says a shop is there, then a rules-lawyer or unimaginative GM will declare that is exactly where the shop is, no matter how many years have gone by. How many times have you seen businesses go out of business or relocate? It happens A LOT. I figure it happens even more in Shadizar.
As Kurt Busiek's comic does. I think the pros and cons of both approaches are fairly clear, but resorting to the pastiches was certainly not the only choice, and neither is it 'ignorant' not to.René said:I'd like to take another approach: instead of inlcuding pastiche so regularly, Mongoose should come up with OWN Hyborian background.