The Campaign Builder's Guild

Eh... I'm more or less in the same place as always, except for some minor scaling things back and toning them down a bit. Maybe a little more concern for "realism" (a meaningless term in gaming... not sure what else to call it though) and a healthier appreciation of cliche and its place in gaming. Not that I don't love the occasional absurd stuff, but I tend not to make it the centerpiece of my stuff anymore.

EDIT: In terms of reading, I'm ashamed to say that reading in my free time has dropped off a bit. I do more than enough reading for school lately. I keep wanting to get around to all the classic and iconic fantasy and scifi I missed out on the first time around.

I've added a ton of philosophy to my library in the last couple years, but am still extremely happy to read cheesy fantasy and sci-fi.  Even better is when sci-fi/fantasy and philosophy combine!    

Quote from: beejazzEDIT: In terms of reading, I'm ashamed to say that reading in my free time has dropped off a bit. I do more than enough reading for school lately. I keep wanting to get around to all the classic and iconic fantasy and scifi I missed out on the first time around.

I'm more or less in the same place. Used to read all the time, but i never seem to have enough time now. Just got through H.P. Lovecraft (which you might know as i recently made a thread about it) and i continue my search and subsequent reading of classics. I luckily managed to avoid much of the really cheesy fantasy, usually dividing my attention between classical authors, such as Jules Verne and Tolkien, and whatever i could find of random fantasy books.
I can easily feel that my taste has shifted a lot. My setting alone has gone through many different incarnations based on what i liked at that point; it started out as a classical world with meddling gods, a central mountain, cliche kingdoms and stuff like that. After  i stumbled over Mieville and the Wheel of Time (which i by the way admire; except for the stupid sci-fi references) my eyes where opened to how fantasy could be so much more than knights and dragons. And now I have a distinct aversion to classical high fantasy. I do read "light litterature" though, I just prefer to get it from other genres. The australian author is sadly one of my favorite authors: his books barely require a brain to read, but by god they are exhilarating. It's like watching an action movie, only in book form. Can recommend them if you are looking to take your mind on a break for 200 pages.
Now that my rant on bad taste is over, here is what is next on my reading list: the Gone-away World, which should be good (or so i hear), More than human which one of my friends recommended, maybe Prey by Chrichton (got it cheap), and the Translated Man, a book published on lulu.com which sounds slightly Mievilléian. I have also heard a lot of praise for Malazan. I have also begun reading some non-fiction, like Bill Bryson's A short story of nearly everything (also neat) and started on Secret History of the World which is a book on esoteric religion. And some philosophy and science stuff on the side.    

Ooh, you're reading Bill Bryson? I absolutely loved A Walk in the Woods.

Haven't read much by him, but it was a neat book :)
Said the title wrong, btw, it's "a short story of nearly everything" (fixed it in the other post). Made a (too) literal translation of the title in my language...

Bryson's stuff is great.  I remember being very engaged in that book, to the exclusion of much of the outside world.

Mine have changed, but not in the same way- I used to create very 'divset' worlds, whereas now- largely due to proper education in modernist and post-modernist literature- I learn more ethocentric.  My worlds are less fluffy and sporadic, and more focused.

I still make various races, but instead of doing it for the hell of it, I create them more as a lens for focusing on conflict and difference, and demonstrating by the parallax of their various view points the chief thematic elements in my worlds, which are almost always very dark.

So now, when I come back to my old worlds... I tend to really take a hatchet to them.  Cut that pork barrel world building!  Or something like that...

Rather than discard things, though, I try to cut them apart, then hammer them back together into more focused pieces- what were ten races become one, for example, with immense complexity and depth of story and meaning.

It may look simpler after all that work, but I feel better about my results at the end of the day... after a formal art education, if there's one thing they drilled into me, it's avoiding 'kitsch'.  

My players never seem to notice it though...

Quote from: BlakeMy players never seem to notice it though...

Maybe not consciously. But elegance in design can be transparent--we notice its lack more than its presence.

Quote from: PhoenixMaybe not consciously. But elegance in design can be transparent--we notice its lack more than its presence.

That's so true.  Such as players becoming irritated when something they expected turns out to be inconsistent- plot holes, particularly when they get the player to do something he or she wouldn't have wanted to do, can be very disheartening.