The Campaign Builder's Guild

I'd like to suggest a recommendation system to help promote settings. The idea here is to recommend other settings (classes, systems, etc.) that people find comparable to yours. Essentially, you'd be promoting the works of others, and others would be promoting your work.

This approach is clearly different than our typical "push one's own work as hard as one can" method, but I think it might help. How many times have you received a comment that read something like "I really like X, it reminds me of Y in another setting"? This would be a good way to give those other settings some extra visibility.

So, here's where you step in: what settings do you think should make recommendations, and what settings do you think they should recommend? If you like setting X, what other settings might you like? I'll be sure to keep a list up here, and of course, this can always be copied into the setting threads.

If you like Luminous Crayon's Jade Stage, you'll probably like:

Polycarp's Clockwork Jungle

Lord Vreeg's Celtricia

If you like Steerpike's The Cadaverous Earth, you'll probably like:

Kindling's Knife's Edge and Demon-Haunted

Salacious Angel's Wizard,Dystopia, and and you, ARRUNTULLA!

Cataclysmic Crow's Broken Verge

Gypsylight's Frankenstein's Legions

Light Dragon's The GrimDark IdDark

FREAKINAWESOMEHORSE's Vibrant

If you like Polycarp's Clockwork Jungle, you'll probably like:

Lord Vreeg's Celtricia

If you like Lord Vreeg's Celtricia, you'll probably like:

Polycarp's Clockwork Jungle

Luminous Crayon's Jade Stage

So, a web of "if you like X, you'll probably like Y" linkages? That's a very cool idea.

That's exactly what I'm thinking. This way, people are that much closer to other settings.

By the way, I had a feeling you'd come here sooner or later...

"Of all the Meta threads, in all the forums, in all the woild, LC walks into mine."

Oh, I think I get it now.  Took me a little while to parse together exactly what you meant (may be my fault, I haven't been getting much sleep lately).  But what if you think that certain parts of your setting are similar to some but not other parts?  It seems almost like there should be ways to distinguish why you might like one if you like the other.

But maybe I am just overcomplicating things

Quote from: Luminous Crayon"Of all the Meta threads, in all the forums, in all the world, LC walks into mine."

"Here's looking at you, LC."

I support this idea. I'm not sure exactly where to start, though, or what would lead people to associate two specific settings. "If you like Clockwork Jungle, then you'll probably like _______________."

If you like Bizarrerie, you'll probably like the stuff SA pumps out.  :D

I think it would be helpful to start with a list of all the possible settings, then work on linking them together with other ones.

Somehow I ended up as Ilsa in this film parody?

See, I've thought about this idea for a bit, but the thing that confounds me is that most of my favorite settings in this community are pretty seriously dissimilar from my own.

Quote from: Luminous CrayonSomehow I ended up as Ilsa in this film parody?

See, I've thought about this idea for a bit, but the thing that confounds me is that most of my favorite settings in this community are pretty seriously dissimilar from my own.

I was just going off of the fact that you referenced yourself as Ilsa from the third person... unless I have my lines mixed up, which is entirely likely. Rick says that about her, right?

That's my problem as well, sort of. A lot of the settings I really like are dissimilar, not just from my own.

It's a nice idea, but, when I tried to make these linkages, except for a handful of "traditional D&D" settings (nothing wrong with that, I'm just saying, it's the only broad 'category' I could find), everything here is so diverse that it's hard to find a huge amount of commonality. That's a good thing, of course. :)

Well, it doesn't have to be huge amounts of commonality, really. The settings aren't all going to be entirely unique, down to every last element. For example, I believe there's been a few attempts at creating a universal metasetting. I think there's also been a couple that were intended to have an "anime" tone to them. Some settings are similar simply because they're just so freakin' huge! Certainly, all of these settings are different and individual, but if you look hard enough, I'm sure you'll eventually find some similarities.

I don't know how many DVD jackets I've seen with a tidy little list of "If you liked this movie then you might like these movies that have only the vaguest relation to the one you're watching".

If we can at least draw a single substantive connection between two given settings then I think we'll be ahead of the curve.

We might, for example, write: "If you liked the races of doj-oln-beh then you might like the races of blah"

I really ought to complete that thought. It could count as a first entry...

EDIT: oh yeah, the end of that sentence should be "Clockwork Jungle".

If you like the Cadaverous Earth, you'll probably like:

Kindling's Knife's Edge and Demon-Haunted ("The sanatoriums of Glib Furrow overflow with the damned demented, and more often than one might think, their madness is that of the blood-bloated.")

Salacious Angel's Wizard, Dystopia, and and you, ARRUNTULLA! ("The magic of lust and consumption and death. The alleys are filled with it. In the sun's harsh light we hide it away in our breasts where it festers and burns.")

Cataclysmic Crow's Broken Verge ("Organs, limbs, skin; all of these can be replaced with harvests from the recently dead. This is what allowed the melek to become near-human in the first place. This has had the unfortunate side-effect of giving them a not quite undeserved reputation for grave robbing and desecration.")

Gypsylight's Frankenstein's Legions ("It was only when Faust demonstrated the superiority of a revolver that had a demon bound within it, which could fire at blinding speeds and never ran out of ammunition so long as it was greased with fat of a newborn lamb, to a group of Prussian generals that his work enjoyed the same manner of widespread, albeit tentative, support that Frankenstein and his other successors enjoyed.")

Light Dragon's The GrimDark IdDark ("Framed against the desert waste and the setting sun, there I was, smuggling the gawds-be-damned "silk" from the very diseased, germ-infested gullet of the ID Core itself in the Shattered Lands for the gawds-be-fed Queen herself.")

FREAKINAWESOMEHORSE's Vibrant ("Infinite Iterations of Nightmares and Madness")

This is a fantastic idea!
   What about a keyword cross reference like they do with blogs. Like a list of words that are linked up to settings/elements?
  Off the top of my head: Macabre, Haunting, High adventure, Western, Feudal(Japan/Europe etc), system/rules-heavy, Homebrew Mechanics, Extensive, Bare-bones, Visually Striking(meaning thread presentation)

 Hope you get the idea.

 Although Steerpike, you have done a fine job in my opinion.
 

You guys got the right idea! I'll be sure to add those suggestions to the opening post.

Quote from: GambleWolfWhat about a keyword cross reference like they do with blogs. Like a list of words that are linked up to settings/elements?
  Off the top of my head: Macabre, Haunting, High adventure, Western, Feudal(Japan/Europe etc), system/rules-heavy, Homebrew Mechanics, Extensive, Bare-bones, Visually Striking(meaning thread presentation)

That's actually not a bad idea. I'll copy that over to the State of The CBG thread, and see what Nomadic thinks about adding that into the code for 2.0.

>>If you like the races of doj-oln-beh, you'll probably like:
the races of Clockwork Jungle


May want to specify that doj-oln-beh is The Jade Stage.
Good idea and good luck.