Tschai RPG — PBTA Planet of Adventure!

Tschai RPG — PBTA Planet of Adventure!

Tschai RPG — PBTA Planet of Adventure!

Do you like Jack Vance? How about games powered by the apocalypse? Maybe the beautiful production values of some of the french roleplaying games strike your fancy? Well, I am happy to be able to help!

I am pleased to announce that I’m the official english-language translator for the Tschai Roleplaying Game, by the french publisher 500 Nuances de Geek. This publisher secured the license for Jack Vance’s culturally-rich science-fantasy “Planet of Adventure” setting. They are currently crowdfunding a french roleplaying game in that setting on Ulule.com, the european equivalent to Kickstarter. The original game is being designed by the excellent game designer Tiburce Guyard, who is using the core of Dungeon World as his foundation. I will be working with him to prepare an english-language version of his design as the official translator.

I encourage you to take a look, and back it if you are interested!

https://www.ulule.com/tschai/

30 thoughts on “Tschai RPG — PBTA Planet of Adventure!”

  1. ron d I suspect that Tiburce Guyard Could explain a bit more about his design approach on the project, but PBTA does shape the conversation in a much more dynamic way than the old GURPS setting book could.

  2. Jason Pitre

    I’m afraid I’m going to have to disagree.

    What makes a game within this universe work is the GM, not the rules.

    PBTA is too weird and too specific for a generic SF adventure campaign setting like this.

    Any OSR clone could work as well as GURPS did. FATE might be another option.

    Heck, you could even use Traveller (any incarnation) because in essence it’s a SF adventure featuring humans and aliens.

    Settings like this only ever require specific rules if there is some quintessential thing that needs to be captured in a mechanic that makes sense.

  3. Aaron Griffin

    I don’t believe in a ‘one true system’.

    I believe that there is a best possible combination of system and setting that also is a matter of taste.

    Unique settings require mechanics that make them better.

    Likewise a mechanic that doesn’t evoke the theming of the setting will result in a game that isn’t as good as it could be.

    I do wonder why they chose PBTA as the core system for this game.

    Trying to adapt PBTA to everything is as stupid as trying to make everything use the D20/D&D system.

    It’s why generic systems like GURPS are inherently flawed as their mechanics don’t always match the type of game that is being ‘simulated’.

    If all you have is a hammer then all your problems will look like nails.

  4. Oh, is it not finished yet? I googled it but couldn’t tell. Other than Nate’s cover for the translation of Dungeon Planet, I know zero about the state of Dungeon World in French (out here on the West coast they don’t make us learn it). Might be nice to get a pdf just so I could look at it though, once it’s out.

  5. sure, of course i will be happy to send a copy of our work ! Just mail me to Maitresinh AT gmail Dot com Johnstone Metzger

    We’ve been talking a long time ago about a translation of Adventure on a dungeon Planet on the storygame forum. Here it is ! (called “Science fantasy”)

  6. Christo Meid the translation is effectively a stretch goal for the original campaign which is funding the development of the original French version. We expect a good deal of co-development of the product, but it’s not currently commercially available in French.

  7. Christo Meid I have not yet had the opportunity as I don’t have a french language rpg group locally and I haven’t dug into the translation work yet. That said, eager to do so because. Tiburce Guyard has done a great job in focussing play on members of diverse cultures who rebel against the tyrannies of their home societies. There’s even a bit of Dogs in the Vineyard mixed in there.

  8. Johnstone Metzger Class Warfare is already published & printed. I translated it 🙂

    The GURPS supplement Planet of Adventure is actually pretty good IMHO. But obviously, it cannot really transcribe its good ideas into the game mechanics. So it’s mainly simple advices and up to the GM to bring that to the table.

    Dungeon World is a good framework to begin with because the genres are pretty close. Still, the Tschaï books are more focused on planet & social exploration than, let’s say, on dungeon crawling so there’s obviously a little bit of work & tweaking to be done here.

  9. That does look pretty cool, I love the visuals, which make me think a little of Moebius and some material out of Heavy Metal Magazine, that movie Light Years/Gandahar (that is totally a good thing).

    I also had never heard of ulule.com before.

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