Topic: A Setting Proposal

[GrumpyOldFart]

Which is why I suggested that borders of land grants should be major geographic barriers. So that yes, in theory the

hordes of orcs ruled over by an ancient and somewhat mad dragon who has no interest in conquest but sends his goons out on raids aimed purely at loot and destruction

who live along the northern gulf coast of Mexico and the lower Rio Grande valley could force the GM of the

tranquil late medieval kingdom at peace

in the central US Rockies to completely rethink his setting concept...

...but only by crossing the Jornada del Muerto.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jornada_Del_Muerto

[David Johansen]

Isn't the hard problem the interaction between hexes?

I mean, there is not much point in sharing a world if the different parts don't tie together. If every hex is self contained and can not make an impact on neighbor parts then they for practical purposes are in different worlds.

Well, geographic borders would certainly be more organic.  However the intention is a collaborative world with some oversight, so the collaborators should be allowed to work out the details.  The dragon and his orcs might have some very good reasons for leaving the peaceful kingdom alone, ranging from mutually assured destruction type deterants, powerful magic, and bribery.

[GrumpyOldFart]

True, but that suggests (to me, at least) that instead of a more "first come, first served" method of dividing land grants, there should be a fair amount of discussion/collaboration between the various GMs and a lot of decisions made regarding the degree of interaction between GM X's area and GM Y's area before land grants are even considered. That way if 2 GM's want little to no interaction, the barrier is akin to the Himalayas, if they want a lot, it's more akin to the Urals.

Also don't lose sight of the fact that yes, sheer distance is a barrier (like, say, St. Louis to Denver), but it is a barrier whose effectiveness can be counted on to decrease over time. Populations grow, civilizations spread out.

[David Johansen]

Actually, one thing I was going to propose is that people commonly believe one continent is getting closer and is some sort of predatory landmass but in fact, trade is just improving as innovations and shared knowledge of navigation, ship building, and sailing increase.

[GrumpyOldFart]

Hmmm... I can't help wondering... if, for example, western Europe is a land grant, and the eastern seaboard of the US is a land grant... is the north Atlantic yet another land grant?

On the one hand, it seems to impose a lot of limits on the GM of the N Atlantic, for example in terms of population density, available races, etc. On the other hand, it means neither the "lord" of W Europe nor the "lord" of the US eastern seaboard has to learn a completely different environment (ocean) to the depth he knows his land grant in order to have the same detail and "realism" if you will in an ocean voyage as he has in, say, the caravan from Lisbon to Paris.

(Note: I keep using examples from Earth for the sake of all the assumptions about the example that don't have to be explained, eg Himalayas vs. Urals as barriers, not because I'm assuming, insisting or even recommending that Earth be the game world.)

[kustenjaeger]

Greetings

A lot of this then comes back to the effective size of land grants - one thought is that maybe these could be population based, so a relatively urbanised northern 'Italy' contrasts with, say, open 'Magyar' lands - you've probably got the same number of exceptional individuals and interesting locales and stories, just over a different number of square kilometres/miles/leagues.

Regards

Edward

[David Johansen]

I guess the real question is "How many people are interested in doing this and how much land needs to be set aside for future use?"

[GrumpyOldFart]

Well I've become a HARPer, and have my own world building thing going. I'd probably enjoy helping you guys hammer out the details, just because I'm masochistic that way, but there wouldn't be any point in me wanting a land grant in it. Granted, I'd happily do the same with the Earth world project and HARP if there was enough interest, but that's a subject for a different thread, no?

It is a very pertinent question though, not least because I've gotten the impression that most world building projects suffer from insufficient scale. Among other things, I noticed this with my Earth project, I mean I've been working just on N America for something like 25 years now and in a practical sense it's still too big. I'm still discovering new things, and I still can only just barely manage to build a campaign so incredibly huge as to justify that much space to put it in.

Given that, assuming normal (eg earthlike) physics and further assuming a world large enough not to have to adjust everything to account for low gravity, short horizons, etc.... I'd think you'll want half a dozen or so people at a bare minimum. 10 or 12 might be better if you can get em, especially if you want to allow them to choose where they are on the overall story timeline as well as geographically. For example, if your world has a glacial period, you might have one or more GMs who specifically want to play in the "Ice World" period.

[David Johansen]

hmmm...really I forsee the ice world lying in the future not the past if what I've written is chosen as a foundation.

[GrumpyOldFart]

Past or future either one, if the conditions and the backstory are laid out so that you can have active games going on there simultaneously with your "present day" setting, you have, in a practical sense, increased the "size" of your world.

[David Johansen]

If we need at least a dozen contributors, a bigger world may only be needed a few years down the line as people come and go but it's worth keeping in mind.

[GrumpyOldFart]

Well now I say that you'd need X number of contributors at a minimum to justify Y sized world.... but then again, there's no reason why every continent on a given world has to be in use as game territory either, especially at the beginning.

If, for example, you only have 4 people collaborating on a shared world project, you might be able to give them all a good balance of "isolated enough to do your own thing" and "interactive enough that a party could unintentionally find itself changing GMs" that would please all concerned in a continent the size of Africa or S America, could probably do so in a continent the size of Asia, and should certainly be able to do so within Eurasia/Africa/Australia/Indonesia/Micronesia. And of course, multiply the possible number of settings according to whether you're counting oceans as more land grants, and the same dirt in a different era as another land grant.

But that doesn't mean that continent has to be the only landmass on the planet either. It just means that all the continents/land grants added later have to agree with the same "setting physics" that was established for the original four, and the original four have to agree not to explore very far (if at all) into land grants that are only "potentials" thus far. That's where the difficulty comes in, as the GM has to find a way to "wall off" a section of the game world in such a way that no one can bypass it. I have yet to see a GM build a "game board" so large that the party couldn't find a way out of the box.

[Cory Magel]

I think the large collaboration project could be useful in Spacemaster due to the fact that 'tiles' could be planets and therefore you really could design your own complete idea into the setting.

IMO, a collaboration simply wouldn't work as an official game system setting if everyone is working in the same world.  If you separated contributors sections by continent it could work, but the more contributors you had the faster it would fall apart.

[kasalin]

This might work if someone sets the overall parameters of the world.  ICE would need to set out the gods, races, cultures, history etc. so that everyone develops from the same pool.  I can't see this working if everyone participating is working off their own ideas. 

There would need to be a common template that is filled out for each land grant.  Population, races, economies, allies, enemies, histories, etc.

Histories would be one of the hardest items.  Imagine having one land grant speak of some cataclysmic event that reshapes the land and the neighboring lands have no mention or effect of it. 

If there is no one controlling vision, this effort doesn't have much chance of a cohesive feel.

[Cory Magel]

This might work if someone sets the overall parameters of the world.  ICE would need to set out the gods, races, cultures, history etc. so that everyone develops from the same pool.  I can't see this working if everyone participating is working off their own ideas. 

There would need to be a common template that is filled out for each land grant.  Population, races, economies, allies, enemies, histories, etc.

I agree that this is what would have to be done.  Just throw in a little oversight from The Powers That Be.

Histories would be one of the hardest items.  Imagine having one land grant speak of some cataclysmic event that reshapes the land and the neighboring lands have no mention or effect of it.

That, actually, would still be possible.  Earthquakes, smallish scale meteor strikes, volcanoes erupting, floods, tidal waves, plagues, etc could be examples of events that explain away localized cataclysms.  You could even go so far as to say just about anything was the wrath of the gods inflicted upon any number of people(s).

[GrumpyOldFart]

To use another Earth based example, you could just require that the GM whose land grant includes Hawaii isn't allowed to have a tsunami as a game device without first getting agreement from the GMs whose land grants include the coasts of Asia, Australia, N America and S America.

[David Johansen]

That's what makes it a collaborative effort.

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

I have had a number of thoughts on this matter. I wish to review a number of scenario proposals that have arrived in my inbox and do some more deep thinking on how this could be made to work, at least as an initial experiment. Then I will make some suggestions hopefully in the next week.

Best wishes,
Nicholas