Post/Author/DateTime	Post
BitsyTheSpiderQueen 01-19-04, 02:23 PM	I've read the FAQ and a few threads here but I'm still having a hard time understanding this project. Apparently WOTC is trying to create a world for MtG and D&D and wants help. Yet you can't post any ideas for a world. If that's so then what is the purpose of this board?
Mak 01-20-04, 03:42 AM	Actually, it's the posters who want to make their own shared world. Nothing ever happens because too many cooks spoil the broth.
Brknlf 01-20-04, 12:16 PM	That is pretty much what happens. The project is aimed at having lots of /cooks/, the problem with this is that a few like minds start to come up with an interesting idea and one of two things happnes. Either someone tries to add something new to the idea and the original posters beat them down or someone doesn't like the idea a few other posters have been working on so they get on the thread to express how lame the idea is and how they could make it better. The arguements drive people away so that eventually there are two or three active posters and their ideas become stagnant. The actual intent of the board was to come up with things for this one world and then convert it into both D&D and MtG stats. A big problem is that many people have been trying to place it immediately into statistics of either game. Instead of creating the world to make it believable, people are always worring about MtG magic and D&D magic, both systems cosmos and make up of the planes (which are completely different concepts in both games). What the WizO's that came up with this were thinking is that people are always offering conversions for the worlds created in books, like the Belgariad series or Lord of the Rings or Conan even, and trying to offer stats for both D&D and MtG (in different locations of course) and they thought it might be interesting for those people who like to make stat conversations for popular worlds to make up their own world and then convert it. It offers something to those who like to create worlds and it offers something for those who like to convert the worlds into stats and, with the conversions, it also allows others to even play either game in the world. The problem is really getting to a point of actually creating and being able to make the conversions (for any game really). Personally, I think the project should start small and get big, like a small area with a city or two and some wilderness to develop or something. Along these lines, another problem is people are also trying to introduce alien ideas. It seems to be a contest to see who can come up with the most unique idea (hollow worlds, completley new concepts of magic, rings around the planet, more detailed shadow magic). Even then, as soon as someone suggests trying a normal start and then allowing unique or weird ideas to develop outside of the norm, people complain about hating the 'norm'. So, I guess I'm really just saying what Mak said, too many coiks spoiling the broth. It might be good if there was a WizO assigned specifically to this board to keep the project running. Such as by implementing a few rules like we start with this building block and move on, no posts outside of the building block until that WizO decides to allow it. Its harsh and all, but it could keep things a little more focused around here.
Mak 01-23-04, 03:43 AM	Worlds are best when they spring from one or two minds. Remember, Dragonlance was great while Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman were in charge. When they left, the new authors virtually terraformed Krynn into an unholy Greyhawk/Forgotten Realms-like mess. When they came back, they had to start the War of Souls just to fix everything, but as Takhisis said, "Your little world will never be the same again..." Now that Ree Soesbee is taking a vacation, the same thing is happening to Legend of the Five Rings. :mad: I really have no idea what needs to be done to save this board, other than assign one really creative person to make an entire world. I doubt anyone is up to the task, and I don't think other people would even like that.
Brknlf 01-23-04, 09:47 AM	I really have no idea what needs to be done to save this board, other than assign one really creative person to make an entire world. I doubt anyone is up to the task, and I don't think other people would even like that. Actually, this is a good idea. But maybe on a reverse scale. I think this is part of the problem when trying to create the big stuff first (planet, cosmos, the entire being of magic). One person could come up with something coherent and interesting, but not everyone else would like it or agree to it. Even still, everyone would want to be a part of the big picture, so making the big picture first with only one person goes againt the nature of things; that is this is a board to both create a world and then convert it to any game imaginable (though D&D and MtG are the big ones, it could be converted to whatever people want). If we looked it it on a smaller scale. If we started with, say, one city and surrounding area. People could choose to create one thing to add to the city, a feature of the city, a shop, an NPC of importance, a guild or faction of some sort, a temple, a haunted graveyard, etc. etc., or one thing to the surrounding area, various farms, millers, goblin strongholds, monsters in the wilds, etc. etc. As it grows, the world will grow around, slowly but it would grow. Instead, everyone is trying to get their ideas excepted about exactly how many gods their should be or who the most powerful people should be or how magic should work or the physics of the world or how many moons and such. Even this way, it would still need something like a moderator to keep things coherent and to do things like prevent a twink from coming on and saying the most powerful mage in the world lives in this city and every citizen is his slave (or some other outlandish, twinkish idea).
Mak 01-25-04, 11:58 PM	But isn't the small-scale approach what we've already been doing?
Brknlf 01-28-04, 12:17 PM	But isn't the small-scale approach what we've already been doing? Simply, no. I don't know how long you followed the project. I've been here and there since Wiz_O Paradox introduced the idea on both the MtG and D&D metaboards. From the beginning, people were saying it should be based on Norse Mythology, or discussing the nature of magic as a whole. People have been bantering how many planes there should be, how big the super powers (high level wizards, demi-gods, etc.) should be, how big the universe should be, how many planets in orbit around the sun, how many gods. That is large scale. Secondly to this, people have been deciding how entire races should be, this is just as large-scale (if not larger) than the earlier conversations. Small-scale would be something like having merely a town and some wilds around it. People could introduce things to the town/city and/or wilds to help it grow. Its really hard to do this with a group though, because even then, some people feel the need to make something big to get some credit in this project (which isn't the point). So, while the small-scale start might have the development of a town and a forest, someone might come along an introduce a large swamp with a civilization of strange biengs inside it that is altogether bigger than what everyone else has worked on. I haven't seen anything too small-scall. The Virix or centaur-lizard men were close. The problem with them tho is that it was large-scale, people tried to create the entire race first. In fact, the culture of them was decided for every Virix, which actually limited some potential. The desert culture was nice, but like humans, they may be diversified, but the original creator doesn't seem to keen to someone introducing a rainforest subspecies or even an aquatic subspecies (all of which could well be cool, but no one seems open enough to this development). This leads back to needing a Wiz_ type person to be in charge of things. If there could be some posting type rules about contributing and keeping things to scale, that would help, but that's only so good if you have someone to enforce the rules and keep things on a fair scale. Likewise, it helps to keep people on track and prevents people from just introducing cities, wildnerness areas and nations at random and then trying to work all the big pieces together.
Mak 01-29-04, 12:37 AM	But wouldn't that suffer from the same problem? The world would still be incoherent- patchwork.
Brknlf 01-29-04, 10:10 AM	Originally posted by Mak But wouldn't that suffer from the same problem? The world would still be incoherent- patchwork. This is the anti-small scale arguement I see alot and here is the problem I have with it. Creating big, everyone says its for consistency sake; that is to make everything coherent and prevent issues arrising later, like someone writing a story and trying to change physics or something. The problem with this is that it sets really large caps on creative potential. That is what I see as the main purpose of a project like this, opening creative potential of the posters to see what is actually developed by the posters. Creating from small scale and working on the basis of making small scale contributions, as soon as something seems inconsistent it can be discussed and fixed (note, I'm not saying it can be discouraged or rejected, just altered to work consistently with what is already in existence). As for the patchwork, this is why it needs to start in one area and grow by additions to that area. The only way it will be patchwork is if everyone has free reign to create what they want, placing cities and regions hundreds of miles apart with no apparent relation. However, by limiting the imput to the current area and only opening up more as it grows, the world will not be patchwork. Look at the biggest example of a diverse world from D&D - Toril is the world were Forgotten Realms is located. Faerun is continent/area where Forgotten Realms campaign takes place, its a quasi-medieval european typical fantasy. To the west they even have hordelands for mongrel type invasions. Also on this world are the lands of Kara-Tur or the Oriental Adventures campaign type setting, the quasi-southeast asian setting (or Chinese/Japanese hybrid reallY). Likewise on this world is the lands for the Al-Qadim campaign setting, the quasi-middle eastern/Arabian Nights setting. Briefly looking at these then hearing they are all on the same world makes the world seemvery patchwork. Then, comparing it to our world and it does match up quite well with Faerun being similar to Europe, the hordelands and Kara-Tur are similar to Asia, there is even a little verdant junble area that could work well for an Indian/Hinduistic type hybrid of a setting, and Al-Qadim is the middle east. Each area has contact and trade amongst each other much like the very diverse cultures and people of the real world do. From a simplistic point of view, diversified areas may look unrelated, however, the complex picture is one far more intertwined. Again the problem is that there does need to be one person or a small group of persons (Wiz_Os) who can manage the project some, to curb anyone trying to break to far out of the bounds of the project and to keep things on task, making sure some consistency is kept between everything. Its great to imagine the community of on-line posters will just come together and get along and everyone will agree, but we all know that's not the case just be looking at the number of arguements that arise on the other boards around here. However, another drawback to having one person to manage, or a small group thereof, is that if they are also offering creative imput for the world it is a fine line between keeping things consistent and/or using their position to make the world the way they want.
Oops 02-01-04, 11:20 PM	I just decided to stop in. From what I've read on this thread and another small one, it seems to me that the original intent of this board has turned out to be simply unworkable. An idea that might work would be this: Everyone creates their own threads with their own separate story worlds. People can contribute, but ultimately the creator is the author and has the final say in everything that happens within their storyline. Then, if someone decides they like someone else's idea, they adopt it into their own story. Over time, the ideas that people like will be repeated, and everyone gets their own little plot of creative space to work with. The really popular stories can be expanded and turned into "franchise universes" with the original author (or an appointed successor) still having the final say in what gets incorporated into the main storyline.
Brknlf 02-03-04, 10:18 AM	Originally posted by Oops I just decided to stop in. From what I've read on this thread and another small one, it seems to me that the original intent of this board has turned out to be simply unworkable. An idea that might work would be this: Everyone creates their own threads with their own separate story worlds. People can contribute, but ultimately the creator is the author and has the final say in everything that happens within their storyline. Then, if someone decides they like someone else's idea, they adopt it into their own story. Over time, the ideas that people like will be repeated, and everyone gets their own little plot of creative space to work with. The really popular stories can be expanded and turned into "franchise universes" with the original author (or an appointed successor) still having the final say in what gets incorporated into the main storyline. This could work, but there are a few things to note. The first thing is that changing the focus of this forum won't work too well. There already is a story posting forum called Once Upon a Time (http://boards1.wizards.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=344) . As well, there is already a board for creating homebrew worlds called Homebrew (http://boards1.wizards.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=295) . In the same vein that this is concerned, stat conversion for various game systems (including D&D and M:TG) already occurs on the boards as well; I'm sure everyone has seen various offerings for LotR characters and such. As soon as we only do these, its good enough reason to just be rid of this board all together and have Wiz_Os move the threads to the appropriate boards. The unique aspect of this board alone is the creation of a world amongst the posters. The original intent was to make this world and then convert aspects of it into D&D stats and M:tG cards. This was one of the original problems, instead of thinking of the world itself, everyone was instead thinking to try and make it easy to convert to either game system. Another problem was that everyone turned it large scale, Wiz_O Paradox originally asked for a singular starting location - some posters instead where worried about physics and the nature of magic. That being said - the idea you propose can be quite workable within the original intent of this board. Everyone can start working on remote locations for the world. The only way for any individual area to become part of the world is if multiple people contribute to the original idea. Also, the original poster can not allow/dismiss contributions to their own ideas - that is really counterintuitive to the point of this board, which is for all posters to create a world together. As soon as someone makes their own idea and has final authority over it, they might as well take the idea they create and post it in the appropriate forum for individual ideas where they can pick and choose advice as they see fit. A strong point for here would have to be that no one person can have final authority on any major element as well; such as one person cannot set a definitive number of gods in the world, one person cannot set a definitive number of planets in the sky, one person cannot set the sole standard for anyone one race, one person cannot say the exact workable system of magic that everyone on the world uses. Along those lines, no one person can introduce something completely radical that would affect the world in such a manner as to make everything else change; these include things that would change physics as we know it on the entire world, or they cannot add something new and alien to the entire theme (like crystal meteor showers that rain down with a high magical flux, or add major historical events that predates present time (like saying there was a really advanced ancient civilization that left scattered implements of technology behind); all in all, they cannot add something that would require every other idea to be retrofitted to the radical/alien concept. In fairness, maybe major ideas could be introduced like those I mention above, in a proposal of sorts, but then only accepted by vote of the all the active posters at that time and we'd have to take 3/4's majority (or higher) to have it accepted. Likewise, any location someone offers as 'new' cannot be extremely large (like introducing a grouping of continents at one time or even an entire continent at one time); simply for the fact that it limits the potential of growth for the entire world. With remote type locations, no one needs to say they are all related when they are created, so long as the opportunity to make them related exists and people can explore this relation if they so choose independently of the development of the location. This way if anyone ever likes an idea and/or wants to use them to really play a game, they can pick and choose what they like. Who knows, at some point a few unique poster created worlds/campaign settings/etc. might exist in unison here as well. Again, this all stems from the fact that for creating individual homebrew worlds, stories, stat conversions, or game elements, there are other forums already in existence which accomidate doing those already.
Oops 02-03-04, 06:19 PM	A problem with what you have just said is that if people start on small corners of the world and can't have events extend beyond a certain area of time and space, then the things people can do are really limited. If someone wants to involve one or more moons, the moons have to be voted on. If someone wants to include any form of magic, then either a system of magic has to be worked out beforehand, or the person has to redo their work if a system is decided on that contradicts what that individual has done. If a bizillion people make up a bizillion continents, then there is no way to incorporate them together into a single planet without serious patches on physics. If strict rules aren't set up, contradictions will come up quite often, preventing a global framework from tying everything together without destroying a whole lot of creative work. If there are few enough people that they can work together to build a cohesive world without a lot of fuss, then people will come later and say, "I never agreed to that! This should be a group project!" Edit: Is the Homebrew board for any world, just D&D style d20, or something in between?
Brknlf 02-04-04, 04:30 PM	Originally posted by Oops A problem with what you have just said is that if people start on small corners of the world and can't have events extend beyond a certain area of time and space, then the things people can do are really limited. If someone wants to involve one or more moons, the moons have to be voted on. If someone wants to include any form of magic, then either a system of magic has to be worked out beforehand, or the person has to redo their work if a system is decided on that contradicts what that individual has done. If a bizillion people make up a bizillion continents, then there is no way to incorporate them together into a single planet without serious patches on physics. If strict rules aren't set up, contradictions will come up quite often, preventing a global framework from tying everything together without destroying a whole lot of creative work. If there are few enough people that they can work together to build a cohesive world without a lot of fuss, then people will come later and say, "I never agreed to that! This should be a group project!" Edit: Is the Homebrew board for any world, just D&D style d20, or something in between? A couple of quick comments on this. What I said is really no different then what you said: Everyone creates their own threads with their own separate story worlds. What I added was perhaps a few rules to prevent anything unruly from happening and a way to make it work for the 'one world project' idea. The point I'm making is that if people just want to make their own worlds by themselves, then they can go to the homebrew board. Here, they should all be open to other people who like their ideas to add to it or make suggestions to change it. If the original poster has some strange final arbitration over what they create, then there isn't any point in calling it a group effort - which is what this board is - and they should to go to the homebrew forum for suggestions that they can take or not as they want. What I was saying is that we can all create seperate threads for this world project and it doesn't have to be connected and, in the end, nothing has to really be on the same world; I mean, come one, no one is going to publish anything off this board and if anyone uses it for a real table-top campaign or card game, they're only going to take what they want anyways. The only thing I'm trying to get at is to try to keep some consistency between them. We can just assume everything is pretty similar to our own world, physics-wise and we have one moon for now. If someone wants something interesting, we can just say 'hey, how about two moons on the planet', take a vote and rework as necessary depending on what the majority think of the idea. As for the bazillion posters making a bazillion continents, lets be honest, there never was more than a dozen or so active posters at one time on this board (maybe more when the idea was initially offered on the metaboards). As for magic, you suggested ambient magical engery. How much more complex then that does it need to be. If we limit it too much, it limits potential explorative growth for this project. I mean, someone might want to make a group of people who burn candles to harness magic, some might want people who use runes, some might want people who use tattooes, some might want people who perform complex rituals while others might want people who use harness the power within. We can all just assume they pull the ambient force via whatever means they've learned to do it and that's how they manipulate it to make magic/spells. As far as magic level itself, we just stick to the norm. We all have some understanding that spells of mass destruction isn't something ever magic using person learns easily and requires training in their magic discipline just as we know time travel spells, wish spells or planes hoping type spells are the ultimate and are amongst the megarare spells that few, if any, really can harness. I would like to say there is a difference between creating the setting and creating the mechanics/system. The point here is to create a world, much like an author might, then translate the things we think are cool into a game system. Some people have been going about that backwards, trying to develop the world around a specific system. Much like the real world, any game system is really too limiting for something this big. As crazy as it sounds, if we all contributed to one singular world it would still take us plenty of time to even get close to having something like a geography book, that's overlooking lots of details too. As far us just creating a world individually, that's not why I'm here. I have my own homebrew world that has been used in a couple of game systems, its running well enough during the sessions where I run it. Edited - P.S. About the homebrew forum, most people use d20 as it is a WotC board; but game system isn't a prerequisite when making a campaign world. Again, I feel there is a difference between campaign world and game system; that is a campaign world could really use almost any game system.
Oops 02-08-04, 10:57 PM	Let me know how things work out. My email address is available, and you can send me private messages. I don't see how this project is going to work, but I'm not ruling out the possibility. I'm out for now.