How about a POLL to choose a world MAP [Archive] - Wizards Community

How about a POLL to choose a world MAP [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Leaves
07-23-03, 12:29 AM I offered before to do a map for the world (btw, "the world" really needs a name). I enjoy making them, and I just in general love staring at maps and guessing what an area would be like. I think that having a world map would help move the project along. I envision people who aren't really interested in the background cosmology of the world, but would love to work on local politics, cultures, etc, can "adopt-a-region" and fill it in, then others who follow them can refer back to what has already been done because you know how it all fits together.

However, making a map already decides some of the aspects of a world, and I didn't want to just impose my ideas on everybody. So, I came up with an idea: make five maps, and people can vote! I considered asking a WizO to let us use the polling feature, but then I remembered there are only about a half dozen of us rolling around in here. I think I can keep track of that many votes.

The World Creation Project Atlas (http://www.geocities.com/leaves_or/wcp/index.html)

I little about the maps. When making these, I did assume that the world would be about the same size as earth, and that it would be a sphere and so on. The scale on these maps is a grid with 1000 mile squares. The heavy, horizontal lines are the Equator and 30 and 60 degrees; the heavy vertical lines divide the globe into quarters. I included a map of the USA for scale: it is also at about the same latitude, so you can compare how tropical or arctic an area on the map might be by how it compares to a similar region of the USA. Anybody who has studied geography knows a perfect map of the Earth can't be produced on a flat map, so the areas near the poles will be pretty distorted.

I also went through and marked what kind of climates each world would have, based on prevailing wind, rainfall, and latitude. The legend and the climate maps are on the webpage.

The maps were all created using a process I developed in Adobe Photoshop, using filters.

Finally, I named the continents (or seas, on map #4). I figured it would be easier to discuss details if you could name a continent rather than saying, "the landmass in the south that's shaped like a duck." I expect us to change these names, so don't base anything on the names. (Bonus points if you can figure out what the theme for the names of each map are!)

On to the maps!

#1
http://www.geocities.com/leaves_or/wcp/map01names.txt
This map has a ring of smallish island continents encircling the globe, touching on all the climate zones.
Degree of Isolation: Low, regardless of what you might think. Since sea travel is faster than land travel, people on this world could travel a lot, and there would be lots of trade. Great for a pirate campaign. On the other hand, if you want isolation, only a few areas in the centers of the bigger continents will truely be isolated.
Easy to incorporate previous work?: Very easy. Any continents people want to add to this world can either replace one of the island continents, or go right in the middle of one of those oceans.

#2
http://www.geocities.com/leaves_or/wcp/map02names.txt
This map is something like Earth, but with fewer, bigger continents. I was doing some thinking about techtonics when making this one; I figure the whole southern quarter of Tanganyika is being shoved south-west, so that the southern coast is filled with volcanoes (like Japan). The lake in the middle of Tanganyika is forming in a rift valley where the continents are being pulled apart -- it's very deep, and has frequent earthquakes.
Degree of Isolation: High. The areas in the middle of the Baikal would have very little contact with the outside world. On the other hand, there's probably lots of trade around the sea between Bikal and Tanganyika.
Easy to incorporate previous work?: Fairly easy. You could fit a whole continent in any of the oceans.

#3
http://www.geocities.com/leaves_or/wcp/map03names.txt
This map is the most Earth-like. Moderate sized continents, with planty of land area in the temperate zone.
Degree of Isolation: Medium. Like the Earth.
Easy to incorporate previous work?: Fairly easy.

#4
http://www.geocities.com/leaves_or/wcp/map04names.txt
This map is the weirdest of the bunch: the land and sea areas are reversed, so the dark blue areas are the seas, and the rest is land. Brownish areas are mountainous regions. This has a lot of effects. Enclosed seas don't have strong tides. Little water area means less rain, lots of desert. Also, some of the seas mo
ight be fresh water.
Degree of Isolation: Very high. Over-land travel is hard, and some seas have deserts or mountains between them.
Easy to incorporate previous work?: Not very. Not much room for islands, let alone continents, if you want them to be isolated from the surrounding area.

#5
http://www.geocities.com/leaves_or/wcp/map05names.txt
A final Earthlike world, except this one is dominated by a huge "antarctic" continent that stretches nearly to the equator. The middle of this continent would be windswept tundra, almost uninhabitable, but the edges have plenty of places to live. There are also some normal continents.
Degree of Isolation: Moderately high. The central areas of the Antarctic continent would be pretty isolated, but the rest would be as usual.
Easy to incorporate previous work?: Easy. Plenty of room in the ocean to hold anything.

So, those are my maps. I figure at least two weeks for discussion and to let other people come by and see them before anything is decided, so no hurry. Tell us all what you think!

.

(P.S. I like the name Myr for "the world". Coming from one of the Russian words for world, mir, which also means peace. Suitable if the world is mostly peaceful, cleverly ironic if it isn't.)
nick012000
07-23-03, 01:14 AM i say #3, because the leylines would be a decent disance apart.
Galen
07-23-03, 04:14 AM 2 lots of possibility to incorporate lore between land and seas.
Bandido
07-23-03, 10:27 AM Pacific islands - Lakes - Indian cities - Russian cities - Japanese islands.

I like both no. 2 and no. 3. I'm not sure which one I like more, but I think I'm being swayed by the bright colours of map no. 2 (no. 3 is quite dull by comparison). Of course, that's got nothing to do with how useful the map is, so I probably like no. 3 more. Confused? Me too.

And those maps are so great! *sees Leaves' sig*

:bow: :bow: :bow: :bow: :bow: (one for each, is that right? ;))
helium3
07-23-03, 01:24 PM . . . if you want to do something somewhat different. Physically, the lack of large bodies of water results in much wider temperature extremes on the landmasses. Your winters will be much colder and your summers much hotter.

Also, the swap in surface area covered by land vs. surface area covered by water indicates that there is less water on this world than compared to Earth. This implies that #4 would generally be a desert world.
WizO_Iyala
07-23-03, 07:42 PM Are we not getting vastly ahead of ourselves talking about maps? We don't even know what we need to put on them yet, the sort of civilisations, climates and so on.

Thinking back to what Dox said inth idea for the board, shouldn't we be fitting what we need into a map as we need it instead of having a map and cramming on what we want.

To me a more sensible process would be to create our major civilisations and determine the size, shape and characteristics of their land masses, then work out where they are in relation to each other before setting out shapes and putting them on the map. We'll end up contradicting ourselves otherwise.

Sure we can tack on islands when we need them but what if we decide we need more major continents in a particular climate zone? We'll end up re-doing the whole ting and then what is the point in doing the map int he first place?

It just strikes me as a large and rather unecessary limit to be putting on ourselves.
Dream Spinner
07-23-03, 11:31 PM I sort of agree with Iyala. I think we it would make a lot of sense to shape the world to fit the nations instead of the other way around. On the other hand, the world was there first. Civilizations rose dependant on the world. So, this way would be more realistic. But then, we have liquid elves and metallic humans and sadistic faeries and gods that rule empowered by faith. Not very realistic.
Leaves
07-24-03, 03:46 AM This is my take on it: If we are going to be working on the civilizations first, and fiting the geography to them as needed, then we can only be working on one place at a time. The way that seems to work is that you start at one place, and work your way outward. If you have two kingdoms/empires that you are working on, then either a) they are connected to each other, in which case you figure out what's in between and how close they are together, and it's really only one project, or b) you decide they have very little contact, in which case you might as well be working on two different worlds.

There's also the fact that, realistically, there are only so many people who can be involved in one project at a time on a messageboard. If we have only one thread where the central kingdom is being discussed, then it would be impossible to have 30 or so people involved.

Furthurmore, threads with in-depth discussions tend to get long, quickly. If we are going to start on one place, the thread for that location would quickly reach 4 pages or more, where it becomes an obstacle for new people to get involved. I was thinking that if we had a map, then people could be constantly starting new projects, even if the old ones had stalled, and they would know that their work fit into something larger.

I think I'm rambling, so I'll tie this up. Basically, I'm having fun in here, coming up with races and deities and so on, but I think being about to lay out cities and kingdoms would be cool, too. I could just draw a map of a place and map out the rivers and cities and describe the political system and so on, but if it doesn't fit in, I might as well be doing it somewhere else.

An atlas was my idea of how you could make everything fit together. If somebody else has another idea, I'd love to hear it.

http://www.geocities.com/leaves_or/leafangel.txt
Brknlf
07-24-03, 09:30 AM If we are going to be working on the civilizations first, and fiting the geography to them as needed, then we can only be working on one place at a time. The way that seems to work is that you start at one place, and work your way outward.

This right here is the nail on the head, this was the impression I was under when WizO_Paradox announced the idea of creating this board. Start small and work big. If it starts out one way, large forest near the ocean, but then someone suggests adding a peninsula of swampy marshes and bogs, it can be accomidated. The point of it was to grow, grow as a community and grow as a project as more people contribute to the whole.

If we have only one thread where the central kingdom is being discussed, then it would be impossible to have 30 or so people involved.

You have a complete lack of respect for your fellow members of the on-line community if you think 30 people can't cooperate on a message board (a moderated one at that) - not saying there won't be disagreements, but creating a world is a big sand box and eventually everyone can find their own corner and the smart people can figure out how to make it work together.

The central kingdom is still a large chunk to begin with. Lets assume there are thirty people posting (which there are not if you haven't noticed), one begins talking about the idea of the central kingdom and the duchies, dukedoms and baronies that make up the kindom. They begin talking about the names, locations, politics of how these all interact and why they are all loyal to one king. Several posters contribute by talking about the militaries and fuedal aspects of said dukedoms and baronies. Another poster is inspired and goes off to discuss the jousting tournaments of the knights to replicate and reduce the need for fuedal warfare between neighboring land holders. A few people start threads making up cards about the knights and lands discussed so far while some others begin to write up D&D game states, new spells, new PrC's. Another group of people begin talking about the enchanted forest in the middle of the kingdom, about the faeries and druids that live there and their secret pact with the king to offer protection in time of need (maybe this helps the king stay king, maybe there was a prophecy that fortold him, maybe he holds the other kings in thrall with the wizard that supports him). The stats people start with more cards and more RPG info about forests, druids, faeries and mythical creatures from the forest. Another person mentions a story about a treaty between the central kingdom and the elven forests to the distant north, the trade between the kingdoms and the troublesome wars between the orge mongrels to the east (which inspired the elves and the central kingdom to forge the pact). More posters begin to contribute by defining the elves and mongrel ogres more. Yet some people still like the central kingdom and the knights and they begin telling stories about knightly quests and adventures and the wizarding friends some knights make. All the while the card and RPG people are converting it into stats, the people who like art are drawing by inspiration of some of the threads and the map people are continously adding aspects of what is discussed (a few boarders for the kingdom with a few cities initially , then more as dukedoms and baronies rise up to fill in the gaps creating boundaries, the the trade route to the elves, the mystical forest in the central kindgom sproutes, then the horde lands of the ogres and the elven nations to the north, and they keep adding).

That's not thirty people all working on one thing (like the laws of the central kingdom, not everyone is interested in that). It grows by people adding new areas and aspects to what has been said already. All in all, I thought this community was supposed to grow, not stifle and limit.

Basically, I'm having fun in here, coming up with races and deities and so on, but I think being about to lay out cities and kingdoms would be cool, too. I could just draw a map of a place and map out the rivers and cities and describe the political system and so on, but if it doesn't fit in, I might as well be doing it somewhere else.

That's just it, its a changing project that is never set in stone. Everything can and will fit in. WizO_Paradox even said it, if people don't like something, they don't have to use it. If someone's creates the haunted woods of the pumpkin king and someone else makes scarecrow and pumpkin golems, not everyone has to like it or use it in any way (D&D people do have to add it to their games and it could merely be like an expansion set for MtG). In the same vein, the 5 posters enjoying the pumkin woods should be allowed to enjoy the creativity of this location.

I know this isn't the place for my rant, but like the map, creating large, dampening boundaries on anything created is realling stifling.

I'm slightly upset that the other sentient races are being so stifled. All elves have to loosely resemble |THIS| mold, not /this/. All gnomes are like (THis) not {thIs}. I'm just saddened that gnomes and elves cannot sway to allow cultural and societal differences. Just because the majority of elves are elemental shouldn't mean their can't be some demon worshiping wicked little elves living on the rims of volcanoes on an island chain.

I just remember when the project started. There were plenty of posters saying 'oh yeah, great idea, can't wait, I'd like to draw cards, I like norse mythology, yadda yadda' on both the MtG and D&D metaboards. If anyone hasn't noticed, you only have about 4 active posters. Occasionally someone steps up and tries to work within the confines, but if you haven't noticed they leave just as quickly too. That's not really a 'community' board in my eye (and this has been around for months now), its more like a few friends getting together to create something they like. I think everyone is leaving because the creativity is being stifled by rigid guidelines on the application of creativity.

That's just my rant, I'm crawling back into the wood work again, leaving it in the hands of the 4 or 5 people who actively post and agree with each other.
Dream Spinner
07-24-03, 02:22 PM ((I had created a wonderful post, but I was kicked offline. So now you must settle for a not-as-wonderful copy of it.:())

I have to think some more about Brknlf's post some more, but here's a thought for now (That was so much more elegant in the original):
Originally posted by Leaves:[/i]
Furthurmore, threads with in-depth discussions tend to get long, quickly. If we are going to start on one place, the thread for that location would quickly reach 4 pages or more, where it becomes an obstacle for new people to get involved.

Well, I was thinking about starting a thread that I would be constantly updating (well, not constantly as the project has really slowed down) that would would retell what has been established already.
Also, addressing Brknlf's main problem, I would also say (This version really does suck) that newcomers are completely free to create new stuff, add onto older stuff, and/or argue against the older stuff (Yep, is defintely worse). I've noticed that people come and then vanish, but never really know why. If it's because we're stifling them and their thoughts, which is really horrible, then I want to at least try to "reopen" this project. I'm hoping this thread I'm planning on can both make newcomers be able to go over so-far established things so that they can move onto doing whatever quicker and to reassure them that any of their ideas and/or thoughts are completely welcomes, even arguments against, as long as it is presented courteously.
I fear, though, that stating these things as established would make people think they can't do anything about it, which is completely not the case. I know that if someone thought that the elven gods were idiotic and said so with manners, I would definitely listen. I may even agree.
And now I'm getting off topic. That's all. :)

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Leaves 07-23-03, 12:29 AM	I offered before to do a map for the world (btw, "the world" really needs a name). I enjoy making them, and I just in general love staring at maps and guessing what an area would be like. I think that having a world map would help move the project along. I envision people who aren't really interested in the background cosmology of the world, but would love to work on local politics, cultures, etc, can "adopt-a-region" and fill it in, then others who follow them can refer back to what has already been done because you know how it all fits together. However, making a map already decides some of the aspects of a world, and I didn't want to just impose my ideas on everybody. So, I came up with an idea: make five maps, and people can vote! I considered asking a WizO to let us use the polling feature, but then I remembered there are only about a half dozen of us rolling around in here. I think I can keep track of that many votes. The World Creation Project Atlas (http://www.geocities.com/leaves_or/wcp/index.html) I little about the maps. When making these, I did assume that the world would be about the same size as earth, and that it would be a sphere and so on. The scale on these maps is a grid with 1000 mile squares. The heavy, horizontal lines are the Equator and 30 and 60 degrees; the heavy vertical lines divide the globe into quarters. I included a map of the USA for scale: it is also at about the same latitude, so you can compare how tropical or arctic an area on the map might be by how it compares to a similar region of the USA. Anybody who has studied geography knows a perfect map of the Earth can't be produced on a flat map, so the areas near the poles will be pretty distorted. I also went through and marked what kind of climates each world would have, based on prevailing wind, rainfall, and latitude. The legend and the climate maps are on the webpage. The maps were all created using a process I developed in Adobe Photoshop, using filters. Finally, I named the continents (or seas, on map #4). I figured it would be easier to discuss details if you could name a continent rather than saying, "the landmass in the south that's shaped like a duck." I expect us to change these names, so don't base anything on the names. (Bonus points if you can figure out what the theme for the names of each map are!) On to the maps! #1 http://www.geocities.com/leaves_or/wcp/map01names.txt This map has a ring of smallish island continents encircling the globe, touching on all the climate zones. Degree of Isolation: Low, regardless of what you might think. Since sea travel is faster than land travel, people on this world could travel a lot, and there would be lots of trade. Great for a pirate campaign. On the other hand, if you want isolation, only a few areas in the centers of the bigger continents will truely be isolated. Easy to incorporate previous work?: Very easy. Any continents people want to add to this world can either replace one of the island continents, or go right in the middle of one of those oceans. #2 http://www.geocities.com/leaves_or/wcp/map02names.txt This map is something like Earth, but with fewer, bigger continents. I was doing some thinking about techtonics when making this one; I figure the whole southern quarter of Tanganyika is being shoved south-west, so that the southern coast is filled with volcanoes (like Japan). The lake in the middle of Tanganyika is forming in a rift valley where the continents are being pulled apart -- it's very deep, and has frequent earthquakes. Degree of Isolation: High. The areas in the middle of the Baikal would have very little contact with the outside world. On the other hand, there's probably lots of trade around the sea between Bikal and Tanganyika. Easy to incorporate previous work?: Fairly easy. You could fit a whole continent in any of the oceans. #3 http://www.geocities.com/leaves_or/wcp/map03names.txt This map is the most Earth-like. Moderate sized continents, with planty of land area in the temperate zone. Degree of Isolation: Medium. Like the Earth. Easy to incorporate previous work?: Fairly easy. #4 http://www.geocities.com/leaves_or/wcp/map04names.txt This map is the weirdest of the bunch: the land and sea areas are reversed, so the dark blue areas are the seas, and the rest is land. Brownish areas are mountainous regions. This has a lot of effects. Enclosed seas don't have strong tides. Little water area means less rain, lots of desert. Also, some of the seas mo ight be fresh water. Degree of Isolation: Very high. Over-land travel is hard, and some seas have deserts or mountains between them. Easy to incorporate previous work?: Not very. Not much room for islands, let alone continents, if you want them to be isolated from the surrounding area. #5 http://www.geocities.com/leaves_or/wcp/map05names.txt A final Earthlike world, except this one is dominated by a huge "antarctic" continent that stretches nearly to the equator. The middle of this continent would be windswept tundra, almost uninhabitable, but the edges have plenty of places to live. There are also some normal continents. Degree of Isolation: Moderately high. The central areas of the Antarctic continent would be pretty isolated, but the rest would be as usual. Easy to incorporate previous work?: Easy. Plenty of room in the ocean to hold anything. So, those are my maps. I figure at least two weeks for discussion and to let other people come by and see them before anything is decided, so no hurry. Tell us all what you think! . (P.S. I like the name Myr for "the world". Coming from one of the Russian words for world, mir, which also means peace. Suitable if the world is mostly peaceful, cleverly ironic if it isn't.)
nick012000 07-23-03, 01:14 AM	i say #3, because the leylines would be a decent disance apart.
Galen 07-23-03, 04:14 AM	2 lots of possibility to incorporate lore between land and seas.
Bandido 07-23-03, 10:27 AM	Pacific islands - Lakes - Indian cities - Russian cities - Japanese islands. I like both no. 2 and no. 3. I'm not sure which one I like more, but I think I'm being swayed by the bright colours of map no. 2 (no. 3 is quite dull by comparison). Of course, that's got nothing to do with how useful the map is, so I probably like no. 3 more. Confused? Me too. And those maps are so great! sees Leaves' sig :bow: :bow: :bow: :bow: :bow: (one for each, is that right? ;))
helium3 07-23-03, 01:24 PM	. . . if you want to do something somewhat different. Physically, the lack of large bodies of water results in much wider temperature extremes on the landmasses. Your winters will be much colder and your summers much hotter. Also, the swap in surface area covered by land vs. surface area covered by water indicates that there is less water on this world than compared to Earth. This implies that #4 would generally be a desert world.
WizO_Iyala 07-23-03, 07:42 PM	Are we not getting vastly ahead of ourselves talking about maps? We don't even know what we need to put on them yet, the sort of civilisations, climates and so on. Thinking back to what Dox said inth idea for the board, shouldn't we be fitting what we need into a map as we need it instead of having a map and cramming on what we want. To me a more sensible process would be to create our major civilisations and determine the size, shape and characteristics of their land masses, then work out where they are in relation to each other before setting out shapes and putting them on the map. We'll end up contradicting ourselves otherwise. Sure we can tack on islands when we need them but what if we decide we need more major continents in a particular climate zone? We'll end up re-doing the whole ting and then what is the point in doing the map int he first place? It just strikes me as a large and rather unecessary limit to be putting on ourselves.
Dream Spinner 07-23-03, 11:31 PM	I sort of agree with Iyala. I think we it would make a lot of sense to shape the world to fit the nations instead of the other way around. On the other hand, the world was there first. Civilizations rose dependant on the world. So, this way would be more realistic. But then, we have liquid elves and metallic humans and sadistic faeries and gods that rule empowered by faith. Not very realistic.
Leaves 07-24-03, 03:46 AM	This is my take on it: If we are going to be working on the civilizations first, and fiting the geography to them as needed, then we can only be working on one place at a time. The way that seems to work is that you start at one place, and work your way outward. If you have two kingdoms/empires that you are working on, then either a) they are connected to each other, in which case you figure out what's in between and how close they are together, and it's really only one project, or b) you decide they have very little contact, in which case you might as well be working on two different worlds. There's also the fact that, realistically, there are only so many people who can be involved in one project at a time on a messageboard. If we have only one thread where the central kingdom is being discussed, then it would be impossible to have 30 or so people involved. Furthurmore, threads with in-depth discussions tend to get long, quickly. If we are going to start on one place, the thread for that location would quickly reach 4 pages or more, where it becomes an obstacle for new people to get involved. I was thinking that if we had a map, then people could be constantly starting new projects, even if the old ones had stalled, and they would know that their work fit into something larger. I think I'm rambling, so I'll tie this up. Basically, I'm having fun in here, coming up with races and deities and so on, but I think being about to lay out cities and kingdoms would be cool, too. I could just draw a map of a place and map out the rivers and cities and describe the political system and so on, but if it doesn't fit in, I might as well be doing it somewhere else. An atlas was my idea of how you could make everything fit together. If somebody else has another idea, I'd love to hear it. http://www.geocities.com/leaves_or/leafangel.txt
Brknlf 07-24-03, 09:30 AM	If we are going to be working on the civilizations first, and fiting the geography to them as needed, then we can only be working on one place at a time. The way that seems to work is that you start at one place, and work your way outward. This right here is the nail on the head, this was the impression I was under when WizO_Paradox announced the idea of creating this board. Start small and work big. If it starts out one way, large forest near the ocean, but then someone suggests adding a peninsula of swampy marshes and bogs, it can be accomidated. The point of it was to grow, grow as a community and grow as a project as more people contribute to the whole. If we have only one thread where the central kingdom is being discussed, then it would be impossible to have 30 or so people involved. You have a complete lack of respect for your fellow members of the on-line community if you think 30 people can't cooperate on a message board (a moderated one at that) - not saying there won't be disagreements, but creating a world is a big sand box and eventually everyone can find their own corner and the smart people can figure out how to make it work together. The central kingdom is still a large chunk to begin with. Lets assume there are thirty people posting (which there are not if you haven't noticed), one begins talking about the idea of the central kingdom and the duchies, dukedoms and baronies that make up the kindom. They begin talking about the names, locations, politics of how these all interact and why they are all loyal to one king. Several posters contribute by talking about the militaries and fuedal aspects of said dukedoms and baronies. Another poster is inspired and goes off to discuss the jousting tournaments of the knights to replicate and reduce the need for fuedal warfare between neighboring land holders. A few people start threads making up cards about the knights and lands discussed so far while some others begin to write up D&D game states, new spells, new PrC's. Another group of people begin talking about the enchanted forest in the middle of the kingdom, about the faeries and druids that live there and their secret pact with the king to offer protection in time of need (maybe this helps the king stay king, maybe there was a prophecy that fortold him, maybe he holds the other kings in thrall with the wizard that supports him). The stats people start with more cards and more RPG info about forests, druids, faeries and mythical creatures from the forest. Another person mentions a story about a treaty between the central kingdom and the elven forests to the distant north, the trade between the kingdoms and the troublesome wars between the orge mongrels to the east (which inspired the elves and the central kingdom to forge the pact). More posters begin to contribute by defining the elves and mongrel ogres more. Yet some people still like the central kingdom and the knights and they begin telling stories about knightly quests and adventures and the wizarding friends some knights make. All the while the card and RPG people are converting it into stats, the people who like art are drawing by inspiration of some of the threads and the map people are continously adding aspects of what is discussed (a few boarders for the kingdom with a few cities initially , then more as dukedoms and baronies rise up to fill in the gaps creating boundaries, the the trade route to the elves, the mystical forest in the central kindgom sproutes, then the horde lands of the ogres and the elven nations to the north, and they keep adding). That's not thirty people all working on one thing (like the laws of the central kingdom, not everyone is interested in that). It grows by people adding new areas and aspects to what has been said already. All in all, I thought this community was supposed to grow, not stifle and limit. Basically, I'm having fun in here, coming up with races and deities and so on, but I think being about to lay out cities and kingdoms would be cool, too. I could just draw a map of a place and map out the rivers and cities and describe the political system and so on, but if it doesn't fit in, I might as well be doing it somewhere else. That's just it, its a changing project that is never set in stone. Everything can and will fit in. WizO_Paradox even said it, if people don't like something, they don't have to use it. If someone's creates the haunted woods of the pumpkin king and someone else makes scarecrow and pumpkin golems, not everyone has to like it or use it in any way (D&D people do have to add it to their games and it could merely be like an expansion set for MtG). In the same vein, the 5 posters enjoying the pumkin woods should be allowed to enjoy the creativity of this location. I know this isn't the place for my rant, but like the map, creating large, dampening boundaries on anything created is realling stifling. I'm slightly upset that the other sentient races are being so stifled. All elves have to loosely resemble \|THIS\| mold, not /this/. All gnomes are like (THis) not {thIs}. I'm just saddened that gnomes and elves cannot sway to allow cultural and societal differences. Just because the majority of elves are elemental shouldn't mean their can't be some demon worshiping wicked little elves living on the rims of volcanoes on an island chain. I just remember when the project started. There were plenty of posters saying 'oh yeah, great idea, can't wait, I'd like to draw cards, I like norse mythology, yadda yadda' on both the MtG and D&D metaboards. If anyone hasn't noticed, you only have about 4 active posters. Occasionally someone steps up and tries to work within the confines, but if you haven't noticed they leave just as quickly too. That's not really a 'community' board in my eye (and this has been around for months now), its more like a few friends getting together to create something they like. I think everyone is leaving because the creativity is being stifled by rigid guidelines on the application of creativity. That's just my rant, I'm crawling back into the wood work again, leaving it in the hands of the 4 or 5 people who actively post and agree with each other.
Dream Spinner 07-24-03, 02:22 PM	((I had created a wonderful post, but I was kicked offline. So now you must settle for a not-as-wonderful copy of it.:()) I have to think some more about Brknlf's post some more, but here's a thought for now (That was so much more elegant in the original): Originally posted by Leaves:[/i] Furthurmore, threads with in-depth discussions tend to get long, quickly. If we are going to start on one place, the thread for that location would quickly reach 4 pages or more, where it becomes an obstacle for new people to get involved. Well, I was thinking about starting a thread that I would be constantly updating (well, not constantly as the project has really slowed down) that would would retell what has been established already. Also, addressing Brknlf's main problem, I would also say (This version really does suck) that newcomers are completely free to create new stuff, add onto older stuff, and/or argue against the older stuff (Yep, is defintely worse). I've noticed that people come and then vanish, but never really know why. If it's because we're stifling them and their thoughts, which is really horrible, then I want to at least try to "reopen" this project. I'm hoping this thread I'm planning on can both make newcomers be able to go over so-far established things so that they can move onto doing whatever quicker and to reassure them that any of their ideas and/or thoughts are completely welcomes, even arguments against, as long as it is presented courteously. I fear, though, that stating these things as established would make people think they can't do anything about it, which is completely not the case. I know that if someone thought that the elven gods were idiotic and said so with manners, I would definitely listen. I may even agree. And now I'm getting off topic. That's all. :)