The Campaign Builder's Guild

I'd definitely be interested in helping to flesh out some of the details on a project like this.  Seems right up my alley.

The most effective way to convey some parts of the city seem to be an article or brief describing that part.  However, the most fun way to do so would be a PBP game or some story or roleplay.

I'd be more inclined to do the former personally, but you might get more participation from the latter overall.

/shrug

I. Uh. Yeah.

[ic=Yolek-Ja, the Iron City]The roots of Yolek-Ja lie in numerous armed camps of prospectors, each attempting to stake a claim on a cluster of mines in the Battlement Mountains. Stubborn tribal councils and trade companies fortified their positions around the veins of coal, copper, and iron, gradually building up fortresses all but on top of one another. So great was the cost and effort expended to gain control of the mines that the competing projects were not abandoned when the mines abruptly dried up. The mine's claimants realized that by leveraging their combined economic clout and taking advantage of their location, they could become a dominant trade force in Attu. The old hostilities have not died away, and the current climate in Yolek-Ja involves uneasy and distrustful cooperation between old enemies, all of whom hope to maximize their profits.

The Iron City

Yolek-Ja's layout and architecture betray its history as a cluster of mutually hostile armed camps. The city is sectional, resembling a crazed, iron honeycomb or deformed orange, recognizable in most districts as different-styled fortresses walled together. Much of the building material is native-- scrap iron from the mines, brick and adobe made from the local rust-colored clay-- and the styles of the buildings vary abruptly, from goblin stucco to dwarven wood and masonry.

A pedestrian traveling through the city might pass through several gated walls on a typical trip between home and the marketplace. Though most travel through the city is unrestricted, gates can be slammed shut and portcullises lowered in an emergency. Individuals familiar with the city can often tell what part of town they are in by the arrangement of towers and other skyline features, the types of cobblestones on the streets, the style and materials of the buildings, and in many cases, the types of people who live and work there.

Power Struggles

There is a lot of power to be had in Yolek-Ja, and most of it is held by the Mighty Five, the five organizations that simultaneously tried to claim the mines, and who survived  the formation of the city. The Mighty Five include the Hara Granite Cooperative, an originally Tiburon-dwarven mining company that grew in power and clout until gaining true autonomy, the ruthless simoc Ash Roth farrhal, the unusually stationary and urbanized boru Tribe Kol, and two of the Thirteen Tribes of goblins: bitter enemies Yil and Esho.

Yolek-Ja has no executor, since none of the Mighty Five would risk ceding control of the city to a member of one of the other factions. The city is ruled by council, and the Mighty Five have exclusive representation in both council chambers (although other organization can and do buy politicians to support their agendas.) A "large table" of more than a hundred councilors deals with most issues, but many argue that the real power is held behind the scenes by the "small table", which contains only five legislators-- one from each of the Mighty Five.

Yolek-Ja has long arms, and controls territory all the way to the Cradle Coast. A long, navigable river provides access to the city from water and nourishes fertile riverbank farmland. Thusly situated and largely self-sufficient, Yolek-Ja has been able to repel attempted acquisition by first the Cardan Empire to the west, then the Formerian Empire to the east.

Ebb and Flow

The fortunes of Yolek-Ja are accumulated by a city full of middlemen, and creatively redistributed by back-alleys and executive boardrooms full of thieves. Crime occurs near-constantly, as muggers and second-story-men evade token law enforcement they either bribe or evade, and wealthy entrepreneurs become wealthier via embezzlement, extortion, or illicit collusion with lawmakers. Much (but not all) of the shady dealings are regulated by the Mighty Five, all of whom have their own distinct civic districts, pet councilors, private law enforcement firms, cadres of lawyers, and unofficial militias.

Yolek-Ja no longer mines, but its manufacturing infrastructure is well-equipped to process all kinds of raw materials gathered elsewhere in the world. It is located along the only safe shipping route between Degawa, Entáme, and the Caden Islands, so merchant ships have little choice but to dock in Yolek-Ja to resupply (and to be taxed.) Those who sail away from the coast to avoid Yolek-Ja's merchant tax often run afoul of corsairs, which the councils of Yolek-Ja loudly decry (yet continue to secretly fund.)[/ic]

So, basically, the Mighty Five run the show, but with a lot of outsourcing. Most people, no matter what kind of organization/neighborhood/family/whatever they want to run, will be under the protective umbrella of one of the Five. (Or, you could be a sneaky doublecrosser and work for two at once! Or, you could be an "independent contractor" and try to make a living in Yolek-Ja by competing with the Five, but this might be dangerous.)

So if you wanted to run a law enforcement thing, you could run one of the private security firms for one of the Five. (There's no broader YJPD or anything.) Or if you wanted to be about government, you can't be the government, but  you could have a few councilors in your pocket via bribes and favors, and affect the political process that way (which is likely to be more interesting, if you ask me.)

Beyond that, there's a lot of room to spread out. Be a copper magnate and his company, a corrupt bureaucratic department, a gang of street thugs, or the crew of a corsair. Be creative!

Are we doing this in here, or will you make a new thread?

We're not doing this in here, but feel free to post about ideas and whatnot, if you like.

Pending administrator approval (and some sort of estimated timetable for its implementation), I'd like to let this project be a test of the wikifarm and its capabilities. That way, rather than a linear thread, we could have a bunch of interconnected pages that link back and forth freely, etc.

If the wiki idea falls through, we'll set things up in a seperate thread, and let this be a discussion/commentary/ideas thread.

But like I say, feel free to use it now for whatever discussion purposes you feel drawn to. I'd be interested to hear what sorts of organizations people are planning to develop.

LC, it will definitely be okay for you to use your wikifarm in this manner, but be aware that it's still a little ways off.  Not terribly long (I can finally see the light!), but not terribly soon either.  I will make sure you get plenty of updates when it's about to take place though. In the meantime, you would obviously be more than welcome to use the current wiki; you wouldn't have administrative capabilities, but you would be more than welcome to set up your own few project pages and go from there.  Also, another thing I've been thinking about is offering members their own personal forum for special projects if they have them.  Would that be something you would be interested in?

me develop cabal of medical men by day and necromancers by night.

Will it be PBP, story format, or what?

I'm thinking of running an intelligence firm, specializing in whispers and secrets from the Big 5 and various other factions.

Bump and update!

This project is officially going live when the wikifarm does. I will create a Streets of Yolek-Ja wiki, for which you will all have editing access. (I want you all to be able to interact with other factions and their pages, and am trusting you all not to conduct that interaction by way of sabotage. Not that any of you would ever do such a thing, of course!)

I ask that you do two things:

1. Run your concept by me before you start.

This is mainly a "does this fit in the setting" kind of check. I will probably suggest a few changes where things clash ("Actually, the orks are all extinct-- could that person be a different race?") and give you a few ideas that you might want to use-- or not. ("You know, with a printing press or two, those guys could churn out a massive propaganda machine. Just sayin'.")

2.) Resolve conflicts by narrative, when possible.

Because I don't want this to turn in to a "My faction beats your faction!" "Nuh uh!" slugfest, I ask that you let the flow of the story determine the outcome of gang battles, and whether that spy gets caught or not. Consider which outcome makes the whole thing more interesting (rather than the outcome that makes a particular faction benefit most.) It is totally not cheating if you talk to your "rival" players to rig the results of a conflict between you. Also remember that setbacks can be fun and interesting to work with. (And if you get "setbacked" into a corner and your faction seems completely depressing and unusable, you can always start a new one.)

That's my spiel for today. I primarily want you to know that this project is definitely going to happen. So be brainstorming about what you want to write about.

Mind if I use a Bardic Guild, watch the scope, send skalds to bars, try to influence politics behind the scenes, etc?

I think it would be fun being a colporteur guild (sellers of religious texts) and represent the Reverent Walkers or the Cho or something of the sort.  That could evolve quickly, yep yep.

I'm in. Not sure what I'm going to do - I'll read over the main setting more - but this seems like a ton of fun. Plus, anything that uses a wiki is something I want to support. :)

Hi!  I just wanted to pop in and share a thought I had about this, and cooperative efforts generally.

I've been fascinated by the wiki idea ever since I learned about its existence, just for the prospect of having a large user base work cooperatively on a database.  I think cooperation is one of the things that appeals to us all in D&D, too - the cooperation between players, and between the players and the DM makes the game more interesting, more interactive, and infinitely more detailed than a PC or board game could ever be.

"The World at Dawn" is a bit part of a long and rich tradition of forum games on a few other sites that I visit.  There, this type of game is called an NES, or "Never Ending Story."  This is because originally, they weren't forum games at all - somebody would post a story, and somebody else would continue it, and so on.  The problem with this was that sometimes people were irritated by others' contributions: Player 1 could give a 10 page beautiful story on the rise of their majestic and cultured empire, and Player 2 could put out a single ham-fisted paragraph about how that empire "blew up" or whatever.  The thread needed an arbiter to set down what the rules were and who could do what.

The reason that NESes were so successful once they had been transformed into moderated games was because they, like D&D, have reciprocity.  Ask any of the World at Dawn players who've written up lengthy orders and stories - it takes a significant amount of time and thought to do.  Players write these stories because they expect something in turn from the moderator, whose job (in my humble opinion) takes even more work.  Each participant gives, just like in D&D, where the DM builds worlds and the player participates in them.  If the DM's purpose was only to be a rules lawyer and tell players when their actions broke the RAW, he would be bored and the players would feel like their playing effort was not reciprocated - they might as well just play NWN with their fellow players or something, since the DM isn't adding anything.

This, I think, is the problem with a wiki idea where we submit stories and descriptions while a moderator edits them and makes sure they are in line with his campaign world.  There's no reciprocity there - the contributors give their time and creativity, but what do they get back?  There's certainly the satisfaction of helping people out, but even here at the CBG we know that's not enough.  This is why we encourage people to review campaigns so their own campaign will be reviewed - reciprocity matters.  The campaign reviewer knows he'll be reviewed in turn.    The World at Dawn player knows that if he submits orders, he'll get updates in return (eventually :D ).  I think you might find it difficult to get people to submit a great deal of stuff to the wiki if they don't get anything back.  "Step[ping] in occasionally as a mediator of sorts and as a fact-checker" doesn't really give that reciprocity.

I'm not criticizing the idea so much as the execution - cooperative efforts like D&D games, forum games, and wikis work best when everybody sees benefits from the time that they commit.  There are always some people, like wikipedia editors, that see their contributions as a "public service," but my experience is that most people like something in return, whether that's you reviewing their settings or your participation in a cooperative game or story.

My recommendation is just that, when you decide to launch the wiki, you ensure the project's success by making sure there's a motivation besides wanting to help you out with your campaign.  That probably means expanding your role as the moderator - what will you give back?  What do you offer the contributors so that they'll have another reason to contribute (besides the fact that they like you :) )?  Answering that question is what has made NES forum games succeed on other sites in the past, and failing to answer that question has unfortunately caused a great many other such forum games to die off.

Thanks for reading.

QuoteMy recommendation is just that, when you decide to launch the wiki, you ensure the project's success by making sure there's a motivation besides wanting to help you out with your campaign. That probably means expanding your role as the moderator - what will you give back?

Yeah, this is the big issue I'm trying to grapple with, honestly. I'm glad you're chiming in on the subject; you definitely seem to have more experience with this sort of project than I do.

A jointly-written encyclopedia is certainly much drier than what I have in mind. I'm shooting for more along the lines of a diceless, statless game of sorts, so I'll be stirring the pot myself. I think that with the right kind of setup, a lot of the conflict and interest could be entirely player-generated, but I'll definitely have an antagonistic hand in the drama, as well as an organizational one.

The tough part is figuring out exactly what kind of intervention/interaction (and how much of it) is just right.

"Dice-less" forum games are easy, but "Stat-less" forum games are hard.  At the end of the day, players want to know where they stand vis-a-vis other players without parsing your language.  It would be hard to tell from my updates in TWD which state was the most prosperous, but you can determine that from the stats.  D&D would certainly be a lot harder to run without them.  Stats prevent arguing between players and stem off questions like "how advanced is 'very advanced?'"

Like I said, the original "NESes" were a lot like the project you're describing - stories posted by different authors to describe one world.  This can work really well if you have a core of dedicated, imaginative posters with a lot of time on their hands, but there is a reason the NESing community rarely does those any more - those people are hard to come by and eventually get bored and move on.  Moderator updates and "stats" make posters want to post because they're waiting for the next chapter of the story - "did I win that war? How did the library building go?" The 'Pure Story NES,' as the moderator-less version is often called, is much harder to attract people to.  Personally, I don't have the free time to contribute a great deal (I really need to go to bed right now :( ).  I would absolutely love to review everyone's settings and write stories for everyone and play in the Noble War forum game, but I just can't make that much time.  Pure Story games take much more of a time investment than a Forum Game like TWD - note that a lot of my players just post a few sentences for orders when they don't have time, and that's fine.  They remain equal players in the game because I keep developing them in updates.  Someone who only posts a few sentences in a Pure Story game, generally speaking, has their contribution washed away in a flood of long and detailed stories by the more committed members.

I'm pretty new to the whole wiki thing and I don't know how that affects all this; I'm still not exactly sure what you have in mind generally.  I think you need to more precisely define what your "stirring the pot" will actually entail.  I'd also strongly recommend that you advance time in this endeavor - that is, the "in-game" clock progresses, instead of just having your contributors post about a static world at one point in time.  Otherwise, people are just building an encyclopedia, and it's not really a game at all.  Stuff needs to happen to keep people's interest, otherwise they'll post until they get bored and then fall away.

In case you're interested in how other people do forum games, this is basically the NES nexus.  There is a ton of stuff here, with all different kinds of games, with all different systems and ideas.  The last NES I ran was much more stat and rule based than TWD, and based on the 10th century history of the Holy Roman Empire; it can be found here (it's no longer active).

I hope that helps a bit.