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Cyclone231
2007-11-06, 01:46 PM
In the October Roll Call thread of Tears of Blood, ten people posted. These ten people apparently get bogged down discussing minor details. For example, in August 2007, there was a discussion thread that was active, called “Feldarin Magic Universities”. For at least eight posts, there was a discussion as to whether the Baran magic university should be located above or below the sands, whether or not it should be surrounded by a sandstorm, and similar.

As you may have guessed from the above paragraph, I feel that the first community world-building project is petering off. On a fundamental level, it is finished: the races are decided, as are the various cultures, the underlying history, the technological level, the deities, et cetera. All that’s left is to wrap up the details, such as the precise names of the various secondary locales, write up the various races, and so forth.

The thing exacerbates is that, in spite of instating a wiki-based system for wrapping this all up, it still hasn’t been done. Although the [wiki] Races thread was created over four months ago, it has done very little. To take one of the worst examples, the dwarves? They have the following information on their page:

• Their name
• Their racial traits

The same holds true for the giantkin. The plaguetouched are even worse; they have no information. That’s right, not even racial traits. There isn’t even a page there.

My only conclusion is that the system is ineffective. While it is effective for laying down the fundamentals to a setting (the setting bible), it becomes completely ineffective for expanding the setting into a functional campaign setting book along the lines of Eberron Campaign Setting simply because it’s such a slow process.

This is why I recommend that someone start a new world-building project, with a key functional difference. After the groundwork is layed out - the philosophies, religions and cultures of the races, the brief historical timeline, the various important changes or new information (ex: paladins are any Lawful) - we select a person of admirable quality to write the chapter that the groundwork is laid out for, rather than having people propose and discuss and vote for umpteen pages about what the exact text of something should read. After this chapter is completed, it is discussed and perhaps editted, if necessary. Then, once everything is done, it is done.

The reason that this is posted in Homebrew is the Tears of Blood forum has a relatively small number of readers, and additionally, the application of these ideas would serve to finish it off, with little more discussion or interest, whereas beginning anew would allow the activity that originally surrounded Tears of Blood in it’s initial stages.

What are your opinions on this?

StickMan
2007-11-06, 02:40 PM
Well I do agree that a new world build would be nice, I disagree with everything else that you are saying. If we were to do what you suggest then its one persons idea's that we are expanding on and largely not are own being worked into the world. This does not work so much for me and many others. It is the reason many people on this board would like a new world build, we, i.e. newer board members, don't want to work on someone else's idea at the end we want to help sculpt the world from the start and have at least some small part of the world as our own. If some one else writes out most of the base idea's it defeats the purpose of a Community world.

Respectfully,
Stickman.

P.S. Also with 4th edition coming out in a few months seems like bad timing.

Fiery Justice
2007-11-06, 02:50 PM
This may be completely and totally wrong, but I think he's saying that, once the ideas have all been established someone would be "appointed" to write the ideas all down in greater detail (like, to take eberron, one person would do Sharn), then people would say, "We have a problem with X" and, once all the major problems (major, being defined by a large portion disagreeing, rather then disagreeing with a large portion) had been worked out, it would be tacked onto the Holy Source Book of the Community World Building Project. Now, I'm not sure I agree with what he's saying, beyond a new CWBP, but thats what I think he's saying.

Cyclone231
2007-11-06, 03:03 PM
Well I do agree that a new world build would be nice, I disagree with everything else that you are saying. If we were to do what you suggest then its one persons idea's that we are expanding on and largely not are own being worked into the world. This does not work so much for me and many others. It is the reason many people on this board would like a new world build, we, i.e. newer board members, don't want to work on someone else's idea at the end we want to help sculpt the world from the start and have at least some small part of the world as our own. If some one else writes out most of the base idea's it defeats the purpose of a Community world.

Respectfully,
Stickman.I guess I was unclear. What I meant is, that there will be the typical bloated-democracy system up to around the point that ToB is at. You know, the old "spend a month discussing and refining ideas for how to handle elves, then we vote on which ideas will be used". But then, after you've got "elves are fey-like creatures created by Assyria in the old ages, and have only in the last century left their home valley, oh and they have these game statistics" decided via vote/discussion threads. Then, after what an elf is has been decided, one person is selected to do the work of writing up the whole Personality/Relations/Lands/Appearance mess that would become completely bogged down in a vote/discussion system.


P.S. Also with 4th edition coming out in a few months seems like bad timing.If there's one thing ToB has taught me, it's that the system is slow. I have little doubt that it wouldn't get to the point of hammering out game mechanics (or, at the least, voting on them) in a couple of months.