The Campaign Builder's Guild

Xeviat, thanks for the reply - I wonder did you get my e-mail?  If not, my apologies I'll resend that.

As a continuation of Q&A, here is another question set I received.

QuoteChecked out the site link and holy cow!  I can't wait to spend an hour there.  Looks good.
 
My sense is that you are building a context, a storytelling frame of reference for players to input their own games in, right?  Are you looking for direction of the universe type stuff as a narrative, major events that could resonate as shake-ups, individual adventure scenes or specific expositions of sites, 'guilds' and/or life in the colonies... or any combination of the above?  I figure the 'crunch' is part of the PbP but the 'fluff', the details of a setting that makes it work could be encyclopedic.  I presume that you all have some (at least) general idea of the overall direction of things so as to keep a dynamic, living setting moving.  But what about politics and race dynamics?  Is there a giant multi-system trading monopoly or is it mostly done by independants?  How does the average person make a living?  I understand that the players will set forth throwing the dice against the universe but does the general populace see them as pirates, or as pioneers?  I realize that to great extent this would depend on whether or not the players were actually pirates or pioneers, but, just asking in general.
 
I'll spend more time in detail on the site this weekend so maybe some of these questions will be answered.  Looking forward to it.

they[/b].  For SB, we are more interested in the stories, whereas those who will be making games later might be more interested in the system they can design: Classes, skills, items, etc.

Hopefully that sheds some more light or hits a few more palettes.  

QuoteAs far as writing goes, what are you looking for content-wise?  What are the details to work with, or, how much are you willing to leak out?  I'd love to hear more about the nature and scope of the input you are seeking.

Starborn World-building[/b]

For the scope of this game there are several areas in development, just like any other campaign.
An entry is considered a single page, like the image I included above, of the top-half of the Mars entry.

Locations
Are the here-and-there of the game, we include in these entries a number of areas of focus. These locations are tightly related to races, which in our settings are genetic variants of humans.  In everything our team has written thus far we try to be as speculative as possible, examining the 'who/why' of cause-and-effect. With each entry varying it is difficult to say 'which' is the most important, but as a frame-work we generally have chosen to focus on several 'key' areas as follow:

Summary
History
Notable Locations
Notable Groups & Individuals
(Ancillary Categories)

Skills & Abilities
We are developing skill trees based on our proprietary system, which allows us to build in dependencies much like Diablo and other modern games, where skills are tied directly to progress, with prerequisite skills, combination of skills, and skill-levels.

Timeline
Basically everything is tightly related to the setting as a whole - and as such we try to include a detailed timeline and thread it directly through to our individual entries.


That touches on the nature and scope of the writing.

Hey there, Ishmayl said that I would be within the scope of those interested parties here to post this.  So, please let me know if interested.

[size=150]Web-based Sci-fi Game Seeks Staff & Story-Guides[/size]

InMyth.com is a site in development of a new gaming platform for online forum-based RPGs.  Like members here at TheCBG.org, the developers behind InMyth.com, of which I am one, are passionate gamers turned architects in search of providing something better than what existed before.  Our goal is to build games that inspire people to imagine something else.

We are currently seeking equally passionate people who enjoy world-building and story development.  Why?  Because we are using our open platform to host something of a '˜flagship' game, an entire sci-fi universal space-opera of no small scope or imagination called Starborn.

We look for those interested in either joining on to get involved in the developmental stage during '˜world-building' or those interested in more lasting roles as '˜story-guides'.
Initially the two are one-and-the same.  

Phase 1 (Pre-Launch Current Development)
Story-Guides & World-Builders
Both groups will work hand-in-hand to continue the existing setting development and populate the Starborn universe with all those various components which make settings live.  We are following a similar model as table-top gaming, despite having no ties to any system beyond our own proprietary model.  Writers will be joining a small existing group of writers on this development.

Sample of a Starborn location entry into our game's Datalink (wiki/manual): http://www.inmyth.com/images/Starborn---Datalink---Mars.jpg (Large Image)

Phase 2 (Game Open - Late Fall/Early Winter 2008)
Story-Guides
Will continue on after launch as either story-guides or general staff members.  These people will either enter into the moderation staff, if they desire to remove themselves from direct story-creation, or will continue on as active members of the story's development.  Starborn relies on continually updates in the form of news, events, quests, and much larger vivid story arcs called "Episodic content".

World-builders
These people will be allowed to either stay on solely as content creators for the universe, expanding story elements, but not having to focus on expanding the 'day-to-day' possibilities of the universe through the generation of quests and the like as mentioned above.  Instead, they will focus on providing new and updated content that Story-Guides and players are able to rely upon; think of them as the canon writers.

Either group may choose to not continue on as all positions are obviously voluntary.

[size=150]Interested?[/size][/color]

If you find yourself interested, but wanting to know more - good, that was my intent.  If not, well sorry - I suppose I should have better targeted my pitch (Not interested, perhaps you can contact me to let me know why. ).

For those interested, I have kept things vague because we are not ready to have the public view our unfinished project pages.  However, for those interested, please contact me or reply with interest to this post and I will contact you shortly with additional information for your review.  If at the end of that inspection you are still interested we will work to bring you on-board to participate and integrate with the existing world-builders and story-guides as mentioned above.

I look forward to hearing from you all, and as with what we're trying to do with InMyth, empower your dreams.

Thanks,
Matthew Smith
Founder InMyth.com

Quote from: IshmaylYeah, I liked that one too, but I would like to see it larger.

Interesting thing about that map is that it is simply a different technique applied to the top map I described earlier.  I took a portion of it, affixed it and blended it through photoshop to produce the effect.  My edge blending could be better but it was a smash and grab job.

Warning very large animation of what would happen if the world flooded. (which was necessary for this world in that the beginning of the game was set with a earthshaking celestial event.)

A merger of sorts, first I create the shapes in photoshop, then I drop them into a terrain program for Terragen, render the terrain.  After that it heads back to photoshop where I do the seas, and the like at my leisure.  The map is a 20MB .psd photoshop file right now, a lot of the stuff is hidden but really cool as I've combined the terrain rendering softwares things with the photoshop map.

Strange place for a first post I know but maps are what I enjoy, so here are a bevy of unfinished maps I've done in the past.
Newish unfinished map

Semi-new playing.
Goofing off and learning map.
My First map, Pern for my friend.
Pern map.
For a sci-fi setting.
Planetary System Map
First map that started trying new methods.
Old map 1.
and its earlier version
Old Map 1.2