The Campaign Builder's Guild

So I was thinking the other day... why not try something a little less common: a world designed in unison by 3-5 people (maybe more), and start building right from the beginning of an age where life becomes more than hunting and gathering. It'd be an interesting and exciting project to take part in.

We could start with a world map, ecology, and available resources, and begin constructing a timeline regarding important events, inventions, and wars.

For the sake of reason and ease of creating the world, we'd have to limit our races/creatures list, designating what creatures originate where and eventually allow them to migrate elsewhere.

There'd be lots to work out as time went on, but with a crew of 3-5 people I'm sure things would be resolved well.

Anyone else up for this? :gather:

It sounds like an entertaining idea, to say the least.  History really isn't my thing, but I do a fair job with religions.  Depending on who else expresses interest, I might help.  It's not that I don't like anyone, but certain people do clash...  Anyway, if you need someone to play god, I'm willing to help.

Sounds good. The project could use people with different areas of expertise. My own areas seem to be history, balance of forces/powers/concepts, and an obscene fascination with sciences and the art of pioneering.

I'm just good at framing things up, even if I take it all apart  hundreds of times...  I have so many ideas of pantheons to use, it's not even funny...  so yeah, the pantheon is mine if I do this.

I'd like to be in on this.

I'm pretty good at organization, new rules ideas (for races and classes and magic systems and stuff), and i can make maps etc.

I think that very early on and low tech would be cool. Maybe either late stone age, european bronze age, or something based off of the Mayans, Incans or Aztecs (cause there is such a richness of myths to use as inspiration there. and besides, their architecture is awesome).

Welcome aboard both of you (assuming Natural becomes in on it for sure :)).

I think that the cultures that emerge as time goes on in this shouldn't really resemble any real-world one, at least not largely. Once the timeline gets going and basic dates for discoveries and inventions get going, the world is probably going to start coming together by itself. Perhaps fragments of real-world civilizations will appear, and logically the beginnings of civilization as the inhabitants of the world know it will appear much like ours did, but for the most part I can see the project featuring unique cultures. Structures like step pyramids and the like, for example, are very probable if the culture is big with astronomy, and an early civilization's largest cities could be built across hundreds of huge step pyramids, bridges of wood supported by stone connecting them. But I'm rambling.

As you can see from that little bit of pondering, it'll likely be a massive goal to build such a world from scratch. But with a team, it can be done.  :afro:

Anyone have any ideas for a project name?

I think the first thing that we should get worked out is the rough time period and some of what we want to achaieve with this CS. Then we could work out some name based on the rough outline.

As i already said, i vote for very low tech, and possibly mayn/incan style societies (not a mirror, but taking elements from the society).

I think you're missing the point here, supadupaman (no offense). I think what Witchhunt wants for this project is NOT pick a rough time period: he wants to start at zero and have the world develop "naturally" as its history is developed by the creators. This is a fresh idea because the common way of going about it is to have a current situation and then develop its history backwards. he big advantage is that you can create a world that is playable in any of its timeframes. You will basically have a more or less fully developed campaign setting at any point in time. That's what I think WitchHunt wants and it's very ambitious, to say the least.

While you're at it, you could try to have magic develop accordingly. It's unrealistic (in my mind) when the stone age people walk out of the forest, settle down, discover magic, and suddenly start casting time stop and wish and whatnot. Magic should evolve at the same pace as the rest of society. Hmmm.

This is a very interesting idea that I'm certainly going to keep my eye on, though unfortunately I can't join you as a creator. Perhaps I'll pop in with an idea every now and again.

Best of luck,
Túrin

Oh jeez, whoops. Totally missed the boat on what you meant. That sounds like an even cooler idea.

Name-wise, what about Genesis? It's a bit obvious, but i think it works.

Would you want this to be a world where the world got created naturally? (i.e. life crawls out of the ocean and then gradually gets more advanced). if so, we want to start the timeline just after the stone age or so, right? 9people can start making societies instead pof just doing the hunter-gatherer thing and trying to survive.

Or do you want to start with a creation myth and have the gods start the main race (is it humans or something else? andy ideas?) off at the desired starting point. If it's this method of world-birth, the first thing to do would be making the creation myth i guess. Also, would the creator gods have continuign influence on the society? or would they have servants overseeing it? or would servants show up every now and then? or do the gods just let the people fend for themselves?


As for my starting opinions, i would say the easiest thing would be to start with a humanish race (though not fully evolved yet). As for creation vs. evolution, i don't care either way particularily, but would be willing to vote if we need a tiebreaker.

I'm gonna start drawing a rough map that we could use, and i'll then make it more and more detailed as i have time and we work stuff out. Any preference on the layout of the continents?

I like this idea. I'm very good with history and making timelines, so this would work quite well for me if I were to be involved and work out a gradual development of a civilization.

I like the idea of making the world start as ocean and grows more advanced, I'll post again in a little bit and go a little further into detail about my plans. (Bell rang, gotta run!)

Just my thoughts here, there should be lots of ocean, as the peninsulas, islands, etc. make interesting locations.  Perhaps the gods created more lands as their "chosen people" expanded?  I'm in favor of a creation story, because this , at least IMO be fantasy, not a science lesson.  Maybethe gods created a bronze or stone-age culture and it evolves over time?  Just my thoughts...

how about this as a rough starting map?
 

Obviously i will make it look better later, and there need to be more small details like peninsuli, little islands, forests, deserts, etc..., but for the moment it's just the basic continental shapes, some rough mountain areas, and the locations and current direction of movement of the main tectonic plates, which allow me to have the mountains and islands in the right spot, as well as telling me how they should change as time rolls along. this can allow me to make several maps with a natural progression of geography once we get enough timeline down.

So, what do you think and is there anything that should be changed?

I actually had an idea very similiar to this once...perhaps we could make a world of individual islands, as Supa suggested. Then, every island would be the domain if a single deity of every individual creator's design, and each creator then would also make a single race to hail from the deity and forge its own civilization. That way, every founder would have their own little claim to the world, their own race, and their own society with which to interact with the others created. Then we could all cooperatively create a timeline based on interactions between the different civilizations over a certain period of time.

That could work. Not sure when i said the thing about the islands, though. Are you basing it off of the map? Cause that's the map of the whole world, and those "ishlands" are actually huge comtinents.

the individual civilizations seem like a good way to work this though. What do you think Witchhunt?