The Campaign Builder's Guild

I actually just got my first copy of Dundjinni about a month ago and found I picked it up in a matter of minutes - it's super easy. I'm still a huge fan of Campaign Cartographer, but for making quick, functional maps I haven't run across anything that beats Dundjinni.

They offer a free demo - you might want to try it out yourself....

Hey All,

Not sure if this forum is meant for non-CBG-sponsored contests, but as I can't find anything stating otherwise....

Today Eruvian.com announced the official start to its Dundjinni Mapmaking Contest, sponsored by Dundjinni. Submit the best Dundjinni map before December 15th and win $25 in Dundjinni software including art packs, etc. Multiple submissions are welcome. See Eruvian.com for details.

Cheers!

Quote from: IshmaylI think Eru's got a good idea going over at eruvian dot com, and while the database format of campaign hosting isn't my cup of tea, it's apparently working very well for you.  I'm glad you're getting proper reviews and critiques over there, and I hope you still feel welcome to post here as well!

Hey, thanks Ishmayl - I appreciate the kind words. Feel free to post, review, or give the tools a test drive on Eruvian as well. As you know from my PMs to you, I think what you all have built here is great and am open to any collaboration you're up for.

Oh, and seeing as no one has challenged the contention that Urbis is the most detailed d20 homebrew campaign setting on the 'Net, I guess we have a winner.... Congrats Jürgen! =)

Cheers!

Hi all, would anyone here contend the claim that Jürgen Hubert's Urbis: A World of Cities is THE most detailed d20 homebrew campaign setting on the 'Net?

As this thread testifies, I went looking for that very thing back in June and was pointed in the direction of Urbis. It just got published on Eruvian and weighed in at a whopping 428 (and counting!) components, the largest on the site. (A component within the Eruvian world-building environment is a character (statted), class, deity, domain, item, locale, organization, race, spell, vehicle, encounter, or entire adventure - soon to include entire campaigns as well as feats, skills, stories, and several other rpg objects.) Its publication also promoted Jürgen to Eruvian's first 2nd-level Contributor almost overnight!

Also, anyone know of a setting that has received more than 40 written reviews with ratings? If not, Urbis may already very well be the most reviewed homebrewed campaign setting on the 'Net. These reviews are on Urbis' various components as well as the setting overall, and every review includes a 5-star rating of each of these four qualities: Depth, Gameplay, Verisimilitude, and Creativity.

Just curious if you guys know whether or not Urbis has any contenders in terms of scope and detail (not to mention the creativity and thought that's gone into it). I know I'm impressed with it...thanks!

Man, I never even thought about copyright issues with stuff posted on boards. My understanding of current copyright law is that whatever you write is yours unless you explicitly assign copyright to someone else - you don't even need that little copyright sign or anything (though it might help in court).

Without an assignment of copyright, or an explicit license to it, no one else can legally use your words except under Fair Use, which allows excerpts to be used "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research". Oh, and the part in quotes there is taken from Wikipedia under the afore-mentioned Fair Use. =)

Of course, I guess a site's Terms of Service IS a contract explicitly stating that sorta thing, but it usually doesn't involve an assignment of copyright or an exclusive license, just a license stating the site has the right to post what you write online (which might even be considered implicitly understood). Now I have to go find and read WotC's ToS.... :|

That said, there is a rather lax attitude about stuff found on the web. I'm pretty sure I saw a poll on theCBG's own home page once that I'd seen before elsewhere. If those running the site copy stuff that isn't their own work and use it on the website in that manner, then that's probably, technically copyright infringement.

Ishmayl, not that a poll is anywhere near the creative effort of a book or campaign setting, but...considering we're comparing it against a single word "Shadowfell" so far...might this be a small case of the pot calling the kettle black...? ;)

Quote from: LordVreegWe should have collaborated on a town or city first.  something with an easier scope.

I agree that having a more limited scope might make collaboration easier. However, I also believe the real problem is that forums are just ill-suited for collaborative world building in general, due to the following realities:

1) Each project has a different structure and it usually takes me a while to figure it out.
2) There is no easy navigation - the mention of a character on one page almost never links to more information on the character, such as their bio, history, and stats. Maintaining this is either an issue of collective discipline or, more likely, a maintenance nightmare requiring a dedicated soul who is then syphoned away from creativity.
3) Separating discussion from decisions can be a challenge, and sometimes even reaching decisions can be tough, especially with design-by-committee projects.
4) Identifying newly made additions or modifications to the world, or getting a current overall snapshot of it can be difficult.
5) Separating the wheat from the chaff can be hard - sometimes a contributor or a piece that is contributed simply does not add to the project. There is generally no fair system of rating and reviewing a contributed piece and determining its place in the project (or lack thereof).
6) Unstructured communication regarding how the work is divvied up work can lead to multiple people duplicating effort on one area while another area is left untouched.
7) Without a final goal motivating contributors, such as print or PDF publication, interest in the world slowly fades until work ceases altogether.

All this is not to say that collaborative world-building can't be done within a forum environment - there are definitely a few examples of relative success. It's just to say that the tools and processes themselves are usually against you before you even begin.

At least that's my opinion - others may disagree.

Quote from: LordVreegLots of intersting ideas.

Loved the map, and how friendly it was.  We have lots of pretty maps, but yours is friendly.  Figure that out.

Loved the seasons and the moon, especially the detail put into the moons changes.  Well done.  Does the moon change at all with the maelstroms phases?  I ran into Dwarfham while poking around...integrated culture vs non-integrated?

Looking forward to the Religion and underpinnings of religion.  The 'Demonic Goth' makes little sense without knowing what demons are in this setting.

Thanks for the feedback LordVreeg. Unless you registered and signed up as a GM you saw a player's view of Pelagos. That view is meant for players to get a general idea about the setting and introduce certain concepts (like the goth) without detailing them - in this world no one has encountered a goth for 1200 years, so they are little more than legend). The GM's view has tons more stuff, such as a more complete history, locations and characters the players wouldn't know about, character stats along with full sheets, dungeons, encounters, etc. It is meant to allow the GM to reveal the setting in the course of their campaign.

Regarding Dwarfham, it is isolated (the GM's view also gives all community stats - population, racial mix, etc.).

Here are a few links deeper into the more developed areas of Pelagos:

Hydanham - an island in the midst of an endless magical storm

Norland - a kingdom on the island of Hydanham

Barony of Middleton - a barony within the kingdom of Norland

Middleton - the capital of the afore-mentioned barony

Hovelton - the poorest district of Middleton

The Beggar King's Hovel - a building within Hovelton

Naryway - a village within the Barony of Middleton (fun to read the GM-only view of this one - the guy who did this is truly twisted)

Grey Swamp - a swamp next to the village of Naryway (another fun one for GMs, done mostly by the same guy who did Naryway)

Pelagos debuts with some 260 pieces of published content, though not all contain the level of detail seen in the locales above (though there are contributions being made daily). It also has specific content requests for about 50 more pieces of content that can be claimed and filled by anyone who registers at the site and signs up as a GM. These requests might be for a specific map to be made or a character to be built (using PCGen, the free and popular open source character generator).

The first adventure (with about a dozen detailed maps) should be published in a week or two, and will start off a campaign of epic proportions.

Quote from: Kap'n XeviatThis is a really cool idea. Ultimately, it is what I hope for my world to become some day, but through novels; I'd love for Three Worlds to become a Forgotten Realms sort of world, with many authors writing in it.

Consider my interest peaked. I'll be perusing Pelagos in upcoming days. Maybe this might get us motivated to work on CeBeGia more.

Thanks. Eruvian.com is free and open, so anyone can register and use the web-based tools to create a setting - no technical knowledge required. In fact, there are a number of campaign settings currently being built on the site, including Jürgen Hubert's Urbis, which was suggested to me not so long ago as being the most developed homebrew in existence. Once all of Urbis' content is online Jürgen will hit the "Publish" button and it will be visible to the world.

Three Worlds would be more than welcome to join Urbis, Pelagos, and the other settings under development. Who knows, what starts out as collaborative world building could later transform into collaborative story writing. That's essentially the path Forgotten Realms took, though the design team was limited to the employees and freelancers hired by a single company instead of the much larger pool of talent represented by this site and the rest of the gaming community.

Regarding CeBeGia, I know it's not easy to collaborate and publish within a forum-based environment. Often it's even difficult to explore what's been created. The lack of a simple navigational system, the difficulty in immediately separating discussion from decision, and the inability to always be able to see a current "snapshot" of the world make maintaining momentum among the developers a real challenge. The only way that I'm aware of to get around those issues is to have people dedicated to nothing but thread management, restructuring, and hyperlinking, which pulls those people away from the creative efforts. Kudos to what you've been able to accomplish so far.

That said, if there is interest in accelerating the work on CeBeGia, it might benefit from the easy navigation and structured division of labor offered by Eruvian, as well as the many other features designed to facilitate collaborative world building and the publication of the resulting world in a readily usable format.

Thanks for the feedback...I hope to see some of your work published on Eruvian some time....

Hi all,

I'd like to introduce you to Pelagos: World of Storms. This world is in the early to mid stages of development and is a collaborative effort between a handful of GMs that have come together to test the possibilities of a new structured web-based collaborative world-building environment. The primary goal is to turn Pelagos into a massively collaborative effort, with tens or even hundreds of GMs working together, each owning different portions of the world and fleshing them out (leveraging a unique system and toolset designed especially for this). Some might own entire kingdoms with other GMs owning towns within, while others may opt to own a simple inn and make it the best it can be (anyone know how to make an inn here? ;)).

Part of this goal is to publish Pelagos online, and possibly eventually in print. Visit the link above and you'll see a player's view of the world. Register and sign up as a GM for Pelagos and you'll see a GM's view of the world, with all the character sheets (in PCGen format), villain's plans, dungeon layouts, etc. The hope is that many hands will make light (and detailed) work, and in a year or so we'll have a campaign setting that has hundreds of towns, villages, and dungeons with maps, characters, and unique items, as well as dozens of adventures grouped into a few campaign paths.

I'll leave the introduction of the setting's key themes and features to the site itself. Any and all feedback is welcome, as are volunteers who want to own and develop a piece of it.

Cheers!

Definitely a worthy question LordVreeg - any opinions?

Oh, and for those of you interested in the original question, I posted the poll on RPGNet and ENWorld and have gotten a fair number of responses over the last couple days. Here are links to the results, if you're interested: RPGNet and  EnWorld.

I'm actually doing some work with Jurgen on Urbis and on my own campaign setting, Pelagos, which is pretty much all I can handle at the moment. That said, with a strong enough vision and a fairly complete foundation (both of which Jurgen has created in spades), I'd be willing to consider working with others to develop their settings further. I'm looking for settings that have a strong "feel" to them, as well as enough foundational material to act as a sturdy framework for any detail work I do. Feel free to drop me a PM if you want some help on your setting and I'll review what you've got.

One thing that may be of interest to you and to other serious world builders is the online environment in which these settings and others like them are being developed. It is specifically designed for collaborative world building projects like what you're describing, where multiple world builders come together to bring a single vision to life in great detail. The tools ease and formalize the division of labor amongst collaborators, allowing them to build structured content and to create specific content requests when they need help (e.g. I need a two-story tavern built and populated with half a dozen roughnecks, one of whom should be the proprietor who has links to the local crime syndicate). Other collaborators and even visitors to the setting can volunteer for individual content requests and submit them for review by the owner.

The site isn't completely done, but it currently supports locales, characters (using PCGen, the popular open source character generator), items, vehicles, spells, and races, and there are over 300 of these components within the various settings that are already on the site and in the repository - a searchable free-for-all of components that others can use if they need a character, a map, or whatever. It will also soon support classes, feats, skills, domains, languages, and eventually scenes (specific moments at a given locale), adventures (a series of scenes tied together by a plot and decision tree), and entire campaigns (a series of adventures sharing a storyline). All components have both player and GM-only aspects, so players can be directed to the site to experience the setting as an online player gazetteer, while those that wish to GM within the setting can sign up (for free, of course) to see all the juicy GM-only bits.

Anyway, I'm on the development team for the project and would love any feedback that you and other experienced world-builders might have to offer (just drop a note to contact@eruvian.com). It is due to be launched in Beta in a little under two weeks, at which point you'll definitely be hearing more about it. So, consider this notice a special invitation to preview the tools before they are promoted to the world. ;)

There have definitely been some lame episodes and concepts. Personally, I thought super soldiers had very few redeeming qualities. I also thought the Altantis episode before the finale was pretty bad. Anyone else have an opinion on the episode with Michael and his genetically engineered lobster/squid/cockroach/dude-in-a-rubber-suit baddies?

You know, the time loop episode was just awesome...hands down my favorite....

In terms of favorite baddy, I have to say that Baal's multi-dimensionalism (Is that a real word? 'Tis now...) has always been fun...though I also really liked Apothos.

Never cared for the replicators...you just couldn't get any good banter in with a replicator....

Very cool. It's always bugged me that the ability to hit a target and the ability to damage that target were a single roll in the d20 combat system. Even moreso, that sometimes toughness is expressed as armor (especially "natural" armor) and sometimes as damage reduction - the concept underlying both seems pretty much the same to me.

Of course, the d20 designers chose speed of gameplay - as few dice rolls as possible - over realism, and I can understand why. Is an extra die roll worth the extra realism? It's up to the individual gamer....

So, spells, deities, and items seem to be the most popular things to mod so far. Heck, 467 spells is HUGE! In regards to your own combat system, is it a mod of an existing one or is it completely from scratch? If it's a mod, which system forms the foundation for it? d20?