The Campaign Builder's Guild

What kind of things would we consider to be "constants" of the universe in terms of magic, peoples, and stuff like that? If we know that, then the general story will come together quickly. Maybe we should vote on this stuff.

You know, I think I want to help giving this a shot. In fact, I think I'll throw in myself as a candidate for leadership/guidanceship/whatever. A few of my ideas regarding the topic:

1. These things regularly fail, so a dedicated leader and a focused project is a must. If I get to run things, any content must pass my veto before getting in, though I will use this veto as little as possible, unless we get far more input than I expect.

2. No meta-world. Any DM can make a Sigil-like thing and link it too each of the worlds found on these forums. We would be underestimating ourselves if we devoted our whole community to creating such a thing.

3. A solid theme. Even more so than in a single-person created world, the world has to have some sort of theme. If the theme is generic enough in its nature, everything that is written must be linked to it, otherwise, everything that is written that does not involve the primary theme must be consistent in flavour and style with what is already written.

4. Voting. I'm not sure how much use of voting I would make if I were in charge. I think we'll be discussing topics for a while (the "DISCUSS: theme" thread will be our first thread), then either reaching consensus (possibly when someone just goes ahead and posts a very detailed treatment of the discussed topic) or putting the ideas together for a vote. As for theme, I think we will debate it in a thread, then boil it down to a number of broad statements, vote, and then go through the process again to get a more detailed theme statement, before continuing.

5. My involvement. If I shall lead this project, I will minimize my own contributions to keep this from becoming a sole project. I will just try to be active enough to keep things going in the contributional part, and of course as active as possible in the organizational part.

6. The community. I don't know about you guys, but I read every subforum here, and I think a few others do too. If we get a separate subforum, we will most likely have support from most of the active posters here, which would be a good start.

7. General conclusive statement. The above states how I think a community world should be created to actually get further than some initial discussion, and it applies regardless of whether I will lead this project or not. So give me some feedback here.

;) Túrin

Heh... my vote's for you ;)

I agree with everything you've said, espcially the part about discussing things for awhile before we really settle down on something.  I think votes are pretty important; if we have enough people active, then we can at least get some good votes on things like race/class preferences, general world mood/tone/theme, etc.  Let's let this stew for a few more days, with discussion about whatever we want in this thread, and if things seem promising enough, I'll set up a forum for this project.

I'll definitely vote and criticise on what is given, but new material proabably won't be coming from me in any large quantitity.  I vote Turin for leader as well.

I'll help mainly with ealaborating on simple ideas if we get anywhere, and I'm most certainly willing to be part of any commitee that is formed for this thing, but sole leadership/motivation just isn't my thing.

Quote from: TúrinÃ,  Voting. I'm not sure how much use of voting I would make if I were in charge.Ã, 

... thats not a good way to gain support.

but i get what you're saying.Ã,  voting on everything would be bad and take forever.

I wasn't even trying to get support. I just stated that I am prepared to run this if other people want me to, and then I went on to state what I think is the best way to get this project beyond its initial stages. Those were just my honest opinions, I wasn't trying to win votes or something like that.

In my opinion we should in general go for a frontloaded approach regarding votes. Once we have the theme and a few other things decided, we should no longer need votes: consensus will arise naturally in the discussion thread because everyone works to conform to the theme we have decided upon, and when the leader decides not to include someone's contribution it will hopefully be obvious to everyone why he decided to do so.

We need to avoid running multiple votes at the same time as well.

But, like I said, the amount of voting we need is the major organizational topic that I do not have a solid opinion on as of yet.

I do seem to be rallying support already though. Good. Just follow me, my mindless zombie army... :D

OotS plug: "Goblin morale is terrible." "Here's my answer to goblin morale: goblin zombies!"

Good night everyone.
;) Túrin

EDIT: @ Ishmayl: as for letting this stew and seeing what we want, I agree we need to wait a few days before actually starting the work, but I don't think we should already discuss actual content. Right now, we just want to see whether there is enough support from people to work on this project, who will lead it, and how it will be organized. Discussing the world itself is for a "DISCUSS: theme" thread to be opened as soon as we have decided on these other things. This to avoid the problem some projects like this one have had: while the community waited for the project to come of the ground, the initiators had already decided what the world was going to be like before the project had actually started, thus estranging the community.

I'm sure that Kal would agree: The best approach to most endeavors is an oligarchy. I say we have three individuals who each have a vote/veto (ever notice they're angrams?) who would be co-chairs of the project.

Just my thoughts.

-Elven Doritos
The Take-Charge Guy

hmm, just don't let them be called the triumvirate, and it'll all be good...  1turtle   Turtles!

Let the benevolent dictatorship of Turin begin! If he's got both the time and inclination to coodinate this affair you folks would silly not to accept it.

I'm not sure I stated this clearly earlier, so I'll state it now in response to ElDo: I favour a single leader in this project, so there can be no confusion of responsibility (the leaders won't be waiting for each other to take the lead in any specific place) and the world will hopefully be more consistent in the end. There should be one or two people (either mods (which means Ishy on this forum) or active contributors) who step in when the leader is absent for a longer time. When the leader just disappears for a longer time without a note, such a person should arrange for a vote or some other system to get a new leader.

Edit: Thanks nastynate. I must admit that now that I stated my candidacy, I do hopeÃ, we get to do this. Hopefully this projectÃ, will inspire our community (including me)Ã, for their own projects.

Well, we should obviously hold a pseudo-election for the position.

However, with one person who holds exclusive veto power, I say that such a "community project" becomes "one person's world where other people submit the content." I don't favor a single editor. That's me.

-Elven Doritos

I'd go for a system with turin as main "leader", and two other highly active members as people to step in.  If we need an override on a veto, and they both agree, perhaps that would balance the veto?

i'd nominate Kalos and myself, but feel free to suggest others.  I don't claim to know much, but I'm always here.

Veto power isn't everything. You can only keep stuff from the world, and I already stated I think the amount of veto-ing should be minimized. Besides, if you have more than one leader, one is always going to be the most active one (most likely, by FAR the most active one).

I'm not saying the leader should be editor as well. Like anything but the organizational parts (and a veto-right to keep a consistent theme but that shouldn't come up very often) the leader should delegate as much as possible. I think that is the furthest you can go with a community project without aiming for a quick death.

I agree we should vote for that position, which is IMO the main reason why this thread needs to stick around for a few days right now (along with debating the organizational stuff). We can't just nominate candidates though: the person chosen must have the "time and inclination" (quoting nastynate). I think Xathan is going to propose himself though, if I read between the lines of his last post correctly. So let's see what happens.
;) Túrin

Waiting isn't my strong point, but as long as nobody listens to me, then we're cool  !lol

The above was at ElDo, and I'd edit to note that if it weren't for having to redo the layout of the post.

@critical threat: though I'm not particularly opposed to your idea of two "back guardians" I think any leader we choose will notice when people disagree with the veto being made and retract it. Like I said, I think that something should be vetoed only when it is obviously out of sync with the rest of the content, and this should be obvious to most other contributors as well. So a quick support for the writer from a few community members should be enough to undo a veto. Though the guardians are a good extra measure I think, especially if they also watch for long absences of the leader (two weeks?).