No, but how do you REALLY feel about it?

[Browin Auld]

Judging by the rabid response to the petition thread, I'm starting to get the impression that you all really like the World articles.

From what I saw, the majority of the responses with a comment consisted of some variation of "It helped me with my campaign setting." Neat! ... But how? What was it specifically that you love about it? Was it something about the content that inspired you, or the way he structured things during the creative process?

Tell me! I must know...

[Occasional Sage]

Judging by the rabid response to the petition thread, I'm starting to get the impression that you all really like the World articles.

From what I saw, the majority of the responses with a comment consisted of some variation of "It helped me with my campaign setting." Neat! ... But how? What was it specifically that you love about it? Was it something about the content that inspired you, or the way he structured things during the creative process?

Tell me! I must know...

Happy to rave. Probably too tired right now to do the articles justice, though, since I haven't read them since I "signed" the petition. I'll refresh my memory tomorrow and elaborate.

Unless I'm ninja'd.

ETA:

OK, I wasn't ninja'd. Nice.

What I like about the New World articles is the very reasonable look behind the curtain of the creation process. I'm not sure that I'd want to PLAY in this world, but that's not important to me. What most gamers find themselves doing, eventually, is creating a setting to their tastes, either from scratch or within a larger preexisting world. That is done (mostly) by a guess-and-check method without an idea of how the process should be approached.

What The Giant has done with this is show how you can think about world design to create exactly what you want, whether it's like his or not. His bottom-up style makes perfect sense and allows for a suspension of disbelief which is missing from many published worlds. You end up with a sense that the story has been unfolding (in a way that many settings lack), with a broader history and theme that binds the world together.

The approach is thoughtful, smart, and creative. It's something that anybody interested in world building can learn from, whether their goal is an RPG or a novel.

[tribble]

I agree, he takes it from "uhh, so is this cool?" to a a process that can be used much faster and easier.

[Browin Auld]

"allows for a suspension of disbelief"... great point. That's very much in line with what I was thinking of earlier today when I was watching "Evolve" on the history channel. Naturally, there was all sorts of talk about a predator/prey "arms race" and how the effects played their part in determining a given species' survival and it got me to thinking: how does a race take it's place in a fantasy world? Does it "earn" it like in our world by means of some sort of prehistoric struggle over time, or can it just be summed up by saying "a wizard did it?" Granted that Rich doesn't go into origins THAT far back, I think he touches on the same principal quite nicely.

As a sidenote, I love his comments on the ubiquity of (fill in the blank)-elf races. I once played in a campaign setting where the ONLY options for PC races were elf subtypes. Not only that, but due to the DM's penchant for steampunk, there was a (yup, you guessed it) steam-elf race. Seriously. Talk about a need for suspension of disbelief.

[Occasional Sage]

"allows for a suspension of disbelief"... great point. That's very much in line with what I was thinking of earlier today when I was watching "Evolve" on the history channel. Naturally, there was all sorts of talk about a predator/prey "arms race" and how the effects played their part in determining a given species' survival and it got me to thinking: how does a race take it's place in a fantasy world? Does it "earn" it like in our world by means of some sort of prehistoric struggle over time, or can it just be summed up by saying "a wizard did it?" Granted that Rich doesn't go into origins THAT far back, I think he touches on the same principal quite nicely.

As a sidenote, I love his comments on the ubiquity of (fill in the blank)-elf races. I once played in a campaign setting where the ONLY options for PC races were elf subtypes. Not only that, but due to the DM's penchant for steampunk, there was a (yup, you guessed it) steam-elf race. Seriously. Talk about a need for suspension of disbelief.

"A wizard did it" is the most amazingly-bad, thoughtless, my-audience-won't-notice hand wave in existence. Lore Sjorberg (who is nigh-infinitely hilarious) commented briefly on this in his Book of Ratings (http://www.bookofratings.com/dndmonsters2.html) when he deals with 1e monsters:



Trapper

Like the aforementioned cube, this is yet another monster perfectly adapted to life in a dungeon. The whole deal is that it looks like a floor, but eats you like a monster. It's like the world's most boring Transformer. The odd evolution of D&D monsters leads me to conclude that one of the following must be true: dungeons have existed for at least fifty million years or there's some sort of hyperspeed Lamarckian evolution going on or evil wizards routinely make new monsters to relax and impress waitresses or hey, are those nachos? Can I have some? D+


Really, there needs to be thought behind things before they get included. That's what Rich's process yields: coherency. You'll find a distinct lack of Steam Elves by using it well.

[Mercenary Pen]

Got consistency, believability, and everything in its proper place.

Moreover, it's focussed on making every race in the setting interesting- even giving gnomes their own new bit of edge- that little something about them that differentiates these gnomes from the carbon copy gnomes you get in just about every other roleplay setting.

[Occasional Sage]

Got consistency, believability, and everything in its proper place.

Moreover, it's focussed on making every race in the setting interesting- even giving gnomes their own new bit of edge- that little something about them that differentiates these gnomes from the carbon copy gnomes you get in just about every other roleplay setting.

That's a good point; because of the way the setting is thought through, there's nothing included to just be filler. Everything has a purpose and a place. No gelatinous cubes here!

[Duke of URL]

I'm currently developing a setting, and I found myself using many of the same processes Rich does... just not so well organized. So I'm going back now, using the articles as a starting point, and then deriving a checklist of things to factor in so that I can link the various fragments of the setting into a cohesive whole.

I don't think there's anything revolutionary in the articles, but what they do show is a process that can be shamelessly stolen and adapted. :smallcool: