Aging World Builders
http://unclebear.com/?p=2052#comment-7586
Mr. Newquist says, “I love world building, but as I’ve whined before, I just don’t have as much time for it now that I’m a dad. So I definitely have an interest in quick, cheap set pieces that I can drag and drop in to my campaign.”
Well, I can’t say anything informed about having kids, but as to world-building and the increasing responsibilities of adulthood… I dunno. I know for me as I was getting interested in world-building back in middle school, settings like Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, and Mystara were getting bigger and bigger. Reprints of setting cores had to include more and more. The whole thing just seemed to snow ball. Dragonlance and White Wolf had many of us expecting a meta-plot that we were not always so strongly encouraged to ignore. It wasn’t that we were being told that we had to use the official material, but well… hundreds of pages of setting material became sort of a standard. A standard that even the most dedicated of home brewer would find hard to compete with in the time frames that TSR or other publishers were releasing.
But, back in the day with nothing but a basic set, I had hours of fun. Then I added the Fiend Folio and a PHB. It was probably the Fiend Folio that got me started thinking about what these creatures were doing when my players weren’t kicking in their teeth and taking their rations money. And with the old Greyhawk boxed set as my guide I started world building. Much of it was imitation at first, but gradually I started to blaze my own trail. There was no Dungeoncraft, no blogosphere, no one, in other words, to tell me I was doing it wrong.
No one that is, except my self. I was so blinded by wanting to compete in the quantity department I completely lost site of the quality… Not to mention the utility.
So here we are. Full circle. I don’t need to know every street and store of every burg in every kingdom of my fantasy world any more than I need to know the same about New York City to run a modern horror game. The notion is laughable. Back then though… It was the abso-freaking-lutely amazing Night City Sourcebook for Cyberpunk that really undid me. That was the gold standard for setting development, and I just wasn’t going to be satisfied with anything less from myself. It took me years to figure that out. attempt after attempt after attempt; none of them were up to my unrealistic standard.
What’s funny is through all this I would completely wing games just like I did when I barely understood THAC0 and Saving Throws. I did this because I wanted to play and my masterpiece of world building wasn’t finished.
Now it’s now. I seem to be surfing the wave of the internet “old school” revival. For a while I was of the opinion that it was all nostalgia. That the old mechanics of whatever game (usually some flavor of D&D) were clunky and antiquated. Maybe they are, but part of the fun for me is hacking mechanics. If I collect anything it’s systems. There. I’ve said it. I collect systems. Settings I can build myself. And I don’t need even a fraction of the material I need from a system, and I tend towards the lighter rules when I GM. All I need to world-build I will call either a catalyst or a skeleton. Forgive my mixed metaphors.
By catalyst I mean the party; the PCs. When I run a game it should be all about them anyway. It isn’t about the Ring, it’s about the Fellowship. I would say “catalyst” is the ideal, even in the absence of a skeleton.
By skeleton I mean a few hundred words of description, maybe a handful of maps, and that’s about it. Depending on the play style a few tables can be helpful.
In summary: sure, world-building is time consuming if your goal is the 3.0 edition of Forgotten Realms, or the old TSR boxed sets, or even Night City. However, I propose that the ideal should be more like the back of the Star Frontiers Expanded Rule Book or Keep on the Borderlands. I don’t need a lot to work with.
Breaking the Rule of 4
I don’t understand the “What the-” reaction to this. Am I the only one not surprised by this? The skirmish game wasn’t very good, the design of 4e has been compared to famous money sinks like MMOs and CCGs, and now this? Seriously? Maybe I’m just cynical. This means only one thing to me. More cheap common singles.
5 out of 5 Crystal Skulls
I agree. I did see it in the theaters and I am very glad that I did not listen to the anti-hype. I’ll say nothing else and simply refer you to the dice monkey.
