I've been pondering the nature of this community for some time, focusing on my own inactivity and the potential reasons for it. As far as I myself am concerned, I'm egotistical and selfish, and I've focused too much on my own material rather than reviewing or developing threads/articles to help with setting design. This thread is seeking to rectify that; I hope that by discussing why we design, my motivation will return. Also, such a discussion should prove valuable to other posters, helping them to focus their ideas.
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First and foremost, I design as a hobby. I don't get to game as much as I'd like to, so this is my way of playing with the rules without playing the game. I take great pride in getting a new rule to work just right, finding mechanical balance between the classes and races, and generally exercising my creative muscle.
Secondly, I design both to have a world to write in and a world to game in. This is where my dilemma has been coming from recently; whether to focus on my setting as a novel setting or as a game setting. Ultimately, I believe it will be more productive in the short term to focus on it as a game setting, since I don't intend on focusing on writing for several more years.
I'm currently believing that if I focus on my setting as a game world and get it to work, then I won't have to worry about little "rules aspects" in the story (for instance, one of my stories features a precognitive woman, and I realized that the direction I was taking the game was making her precognitive ability harder and harder to convert to mechanics).
Additionally, I've resigned working on my setting for future publication. If it ever comes to that, I'll be very excited and will gladly publish, but the market is quite thick with settings and systems as it is, and I don't think I'd have a good shot at forcing my way into a well established market. If my novels prove to be mildly successful, then maybe a game system could come after, but I'm not going to worry about it for the time being.
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So, why are you spending all the time you are on your setting. Once you decide why, focus on the most important reason and design towards that. I think this will make the design work more rewarding.
I design settings and systems for gaming. I generally don't think too much about tied in fiction and things so much as what player characters and their GMs are going to do for a couple of hours over some snacks and stuff.
I do sometimes tend to do this work as much to fill the gap when actual gaming becomes less of an option.
Also, I might not have earlier, but more and more I'm working towards publication.
I primarily undertake game design as a way to kill time, let my creativity run loose, and for its own sake. Alas, I don't get the dose of gaming I need by a far amount, therefore I need to vent my steam somewhere else - enter game design. :D
I design because I like to GM, and I feel like published settings are someone else's sandbox. How far is it from the Free City of Greyhawk to the Gnarley Forest? I better check the official map based on the map that was created by Gary Gygax. In my own setting, I can kinda make it up as I go along a little more and say Castle Granite is one week's ride from Tera Prima.
Why don't I design more or critique more?
I work two jobs. I have exactly one day completely off from work most weeks. I often use that day to head out to the local university's Pagan students club because I have friends there. I play Rifts once every two weeks. I haven't played D&D in about a year and haven't DMed for longer.
That mostly covers both, but especially designing. Additional reasons specific to critiquing here include the fact that because my time is limited, my internet time is very limited. Critiquing would eat up a lot of time because there are lots of detailed settings. My setting can be read in about an hour as far as things psoted here go. Some look like it could take hours to read. Then I'd feel obligated to read currently existing criticism also and then try to say something new about someone else's setting.
Why do I design?
I enjoy it. I really enjoy looking at the guts of a world and dealing with all the fiddly bits. Being in Political Science, I tend to prefer the whole Politics thing to the whole Geography thing, but that's fine by me. I'm working on a setting that I intend to do as organically as possible. I've started with the geography, and then I'm going to work on the species that would live in it, and how the sentient ones would interact, etc etc.
Why don't I design more?
School. Laziness (it might be fun work, but it's still a bit of work to design stuff). That's about it, really. I don't know why I'm not pushing this world along faster. Curse my papers ;).
Though in the past my reasons have been different, they currently lie in a frustration with popular desire to make settings so different and unique, and to avoid any cliches. When I was younger I used to have dreams about and was able to readily expand on any fantasy-related ideas thrown my way, and everything was so amazing the first time I saw it or imagined it. I could even dream being in my first few worlds and doing things, but those abilities have since gone away due to things getting boring, and they get that way because of my own need (and the needs of others) to change things and make them different from the "classic" image (which is why I love Bram Stoker's Dracula but hate the WoD vampire stuff). That's where Haveneast comes in: in Haveneast, you will save the princess from a dragon, the dragon kidnapped her just because it was evil, and you really can live happily ever after (as long as you're not stuck in the Nightmare).
Why do I design?
God only knows. I've always loved how Tolkien called it "sub-creation." It really is a religious act, making these people and places and putting them all together. I'm working on my creative writing bachelor's degree with hopes of going for my masters. In that time I want to be published, but I'm a stickler for realism. I can't read most fantasy literature these days (and I can hardly even pick up a sci-fi without flinching), for the simple reason that they aren't logical.
Look at D&D: it's a world with rampant magic that has little focus to its magic, doesn't define how magic works, has several types of magic, a huge assortment of magical items, Gods and Goddesses with inane amounts of power, and the ability to resurrect anybody that goes down. This is why I've almost never read Forgotten Realms. It was something I did, however, like about Dragonlance: there was little to no resurrection magic. But the rampant power in most of these genre stories really get to me.
All of my design comes from the need to make a fantasy world with this rampant power but that makes sense. I want to define how magic works, figure out why resurrection doesn't keep the emperor from being immune to assassins, and ask why the gods just don't "fix" everything. These questions keep me going.
But I also like to build people. I like to make well-developed personalities from highly exotic locations. I like to see how things affect them and change their character.
So why do I design? Because I love to see the development.
Writers often say that once they know their character, they lose control over them. They can no longer say "This character does this because of this." No, once a character comes into their own the writer has to acknowledge that the character does what they are doing because it is what they would do. No other reason. That's the level I want to reach in my world.
Because I can. Seriously, I know it sounds like a cop-out but really.
I design because I like to. It's not anything complex. If I play a sport, it's because I enjoy it. If I read a book, it's because it interests me. It's the same with design.
(Though, indeed; I must also echo Jharviss.)
I think designing began as an offshoot of playing that has become a purpose of its own. I love creating bits and pieces of a world. I love spending hours deciding that "yes, if there is gold in these hills it will cause that effect" and it will make my campaign more interesting.
I often find myself doing things that don't directly benefit my game; I tell myself I create "for the game" but the truth is that it serves my need for a creative outlet. I'm not disciplined enough to write novels (believe me, I've tried) but designing a world doesn't take discipline, it takes poking around at things!
I used to work on Shadowfell for fun, for adventures, and for a potential backdrop of stories. However, now I don't design anything anymore because all my spare time is put into managing this site and working on the updated version. Hopefully when CBG 2.0 is released in a short while, I will be able to step back and start working on things again.
I've never really asked myself that, really. the best reason? It's an intellectual exercise. It's hard, thinking of the way things go - how a culture would be effected by having three different genders, what space travel would have done to pre WWI Earth, what impact metahumans with extraordinary powers would have on society. Even something less esoteric - what if WWII had brewed for another decade before exploding in the mid to late 1950s, what if the Roman empire never feel, what if America had never rebelled? Attempting to answer these questions is facinating, and even more facinating is seeing how other people answer them, and then comparing answers.
Quote from: EclipseI've never really asked myself that, really. the best reason? It's an intellectual exercise. It's hard, thinking of the way things go - how a culture would be effected by having three different genders, what space travel would have done to pre WWI Earth, what impact metahumans with extraordinary powers would have on society. Even something less esoteric - what if WWII had brewed for another decade before exploding in the mid to late 1950s, what if the Roman empire never feel, what if America had never rebelled? Attempting to answer these questions is facinating, and even more facinating is seeing how other people answer them, and then comparing answers.
That's really fun. I'd love to get your input on some things "backstage". IM me at JAGXeviat if you've got the time.
Sorry for not replying sooner, Xeviat. I'd love to - mine is FinalEclipse23.
I started designing because I wanted to play DnD, but nobody in our gaming group was willing to run a game, and because I didn't want to run a pre-built world.
Since then I've been getting more and more into the game, reading forums and articles on gaming, paying more attention in the world settings of all the material I read, etc... I started getting all sorts of crazy ideas for house rules, and for a world setting that made sense. Once I realized that none of these could well be incorporated into our current campaign I started to build a new world.
Now the more I design, the closer I get to where Jharviss is, wanting to create a world that really takes on a life of its own.
I design to improve my gaming and the understanding I have of it.
Which is also why I write so little of it anywhere.
I design for the sheer fun of it. I really enjoy writing something, coming up with a new idea for a race, or some aspect of a nation or world. I'd be on this site a lot more if I had more internet access. I do realize that I'm more focused on my own writing than on helping give constructive criticism to another's writing. I'm trying to rectify that now.
Why do I design?
I find something I just absolutely have to change those: "humans are the most varied, adaptable race', "demons are inherently evil", etc. Because I don't believe in everyone else's old clichés, no matter how much those sacred idea-cows are part of shared and/or popular mythology. I need to find the new horizons of thought, and that's just not going to happen if I don't break a stereotype.
Why don't you design/critique more?
I don't design any more. I wish I could, but something stops me. It may be a short attention span, it may be that the whole point of designing is really to entertain myself and it's gotten to the point where it just doesn't need to leave my head, or maybe it's because I've divorced myself from what really made me design in the first place: elements of other peoples' fiction that just didn't sit right with me.
I don't critique for a combination of the first reason and another: I find many are too weighed down with the baggage of "bad things are/are about to happen/are happening/have happened, and the entire setting is about rubbing it in your face" OR "this setting concentrates on being so well thought out and realistic that it forgets to have fun". Those may be a gross overstatements, but that's just the way it feels to me. I'm not someone who can easily ignore personal bias.
Re-reading this thread, I've also realized another reason why I design:
Dissatisfaction with the mundane world.
Seriously. Sure, there's a lot of interesting stuff in reality, and I happily partake in it when possible, but I can't just jump over to a foreign culture - or even different city - just because I feel like it. Odds are I'll never meet another race in my lifetime, never fly under my own power, never visit a city floating in the sky, never explore the void of space (maybe not on the last one.) So, instead, I make a world where I - and others - could, a form of escapism that also aids others escapism.
Hey! Welcome back, SCMP.
I'm not so sure I'm "back". I just happened by today and saw something I actually felt like responding to. Like I said above I can't seem to have any real ideas.
I design for a variety of reasons ...
- I can totally immerse myself in the creation process which is a great way to relieve stress
- its an exercise in imagination, creativity and writing skills
- my players enjoy (usually) the settings I create which is very satisfying
Besides, its just plain fun.
Somehow, I don't think I have ever taken the time to anwser this.
(Which is unlike a big-mouth like myself.)
Why do I design?
This is art to me. I Didn't see it as such when I started, but this setting has become my major creative enterprise for the last quarter century. An interactive art project, with all the players contributing to some level. There is some internal creation dynamic going on, and the 2 sessions a month push me onward when the motivation is not there.
There is nothing so satisfying when the internal consistency is such that the players totally immerse in-game.
Well, that came out like blather. Though it is the truth.
:blah:
I've been designing settings (or, more realistically, a setting) because I actually find it more fun than playing. When I did play RPGs, I always had this urge to write down extensive backgrounds for my character, or to write a journal of ongoing adventures from the perspective of my character. Even with other games I play, like Magic, I find the collecting and building aspects far more interesting than the playing, most of the time.
Also, as much as I like the published settings from WotC, I want to be able to push the boundaries of literary genres in my settings.
I'm currently between semesters, so I've come back here for a chance to not let my creative, analytical, and writing skills atrophy.
I design, first and foremost, as a hobby. I think the quality of most of my settings stands as proof of that...
Aside from that, though, I design because world building allows myself yet another creative outlet. There's things you can do in designing a world that you can't do in a drawing, or in a song, or such (likewise, there's things you can't do in world building, that one or more other creative outlets allow). It started when I had an idea that was just too grand in scope to fit in a single drawing, and this was the best way I've found to express that idea. That idea developed into being Xiluh, my first setting.
After that, I felt the need to start on a couple other ideas, but those never really panned out very well.....