The Campaign Builder's Guild

Quote from: Light DragonPerhaps I should retitle the squares "Might" and "Magic" rather than High Fantasy/Low ... to reduce the controversy somewhat?

How about "Might Focus" and "Magic Focus", just to be better-descriptive?

Quote from: CrowIt's a pity we can't have more axes...
Settings are defined by:
Their level of magic: none, low, med, high
Their level of technology: low, medieval, renaissance, indsustrial, modern, future, steampunk.
Their scope: location, region, world, universe, multiverse
Their purpose: adventure, wonder, bureaucracy/intrigue, discovery, survival, horror etc.
Their morality: black/white (high fantasy), gray (low fantasy)
Their realism: gritty, game-ish/artificial (erfworld-esque), cinematic, simulation
Their style: alternative history, classic fantasy, exotic, dystopian

Of course, this system has the downside of not giving any kind of overview of the distribution. But i think we have to set down some definitions for style/setting in the above diagram; isn't pulp and adventure pretty much the same?

This is interesting... but splitting things up as you note would almost defeat the purpose of clarity and easy-to-see differences.

Re: Silvercat: Might-Focus v. Magic-Focus... Good idea!

Quote from: GhostmanYou could make several tables with different axes. For example...

Table 1:
* Tone (upbeat --- grim)
* Scope (cosmic --- backwoods)

Table 2:
* Technology (futuristic --- primitive)
* Fantasy elements (commonplace --- absent)

Table 3:
* Oddness (OMGWTFBBQ --- the world as we know it)
* Intrigue (high intrigue --- no intrigue)

I will keep this in mind. I like the arrangement, but I do not like the need for 3 tables.

After reviewing everything, I have begun to wonder whether Dystopian is more of a "setting" or a "style"... There seem to be a lot of steampunk dystopian, or modern dystopian, or low fantasy dystopian floating out there. Should I move it to the other axis? I do not think that would solve the problem of double-listing, but would it seem more coherent?

I suppose this is a good argument for Ghostman's solution of more tables... "Tone" seems to be different from setting or style

Dystopian (A terrible place. You are unlikely to win.)
Harsh (A land of struggle, but you can win and gain great honor.)
Neutral or Lazy Morality (Basically Good v. Evil... eternal struggle, no real indepth study). Good is going to win.
Happy (Generally positive vibes even though the world may be bad. Good always wins.)
Utopian (A great place. Almost nothing is wrong. And good will always win.)

Would it be a good idea to take Dystopian out and label every setting either (D), (H), (N), (A), (U)... or would that be too complicated and distract from the chart?

Perhaps place them in different colors?

or you could do as previously mentioned and make 5 tables: one for each tone.

I feel like an applied version of this cube in the form of tags (which would allow for more than two dimensions) would be a powerful reference tool for the site (or just the wiki).  I'd put my own CBG-published setting (Wake) in High Fantasy/Wonder-Discovery; it'd be cool if visitors looking for Wake (laugh) or, more likely, Wondrous High Fantasy could find similar settings by theme rather than combing through all of the available content.  Similarly, reviewers not interested would know what to avoid before opening it.

Of course, you could theoretically manage wiki pages that mimic a tag, but that requires effort!

would actually be quite brilliant to tag the main pages of each setting on the wiki with its various "attributes"

Crow- the problem with tables is that it makes the classifications too intimidating. Your magic classifications are interesting, but it is not too helpful to understand how things work when the differences are too accentuated. I am trying to classify by a broad stroke.

I think that separating out Tone from Style and Setting makes sense... but after that is done (by colors or letters), I think the chart will be about as complicated as it can be without reducing its utility.
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Eladris- Great idea. That is what I was hoping to accomplish with this listing- to help myself and others find inspiration or find the type of setting they want to use. I think it can be really useful for casual visitors to the site- to help them make sense of the myriad settings.

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And I have a new technology idea for Polycarp! here... You know how Images sometimes have "onmouseover" text that will appear- if text on this site could have onmouseover text that appears when the mouse goes over it , then more useful information could be jammed onto the chart.

Quote from: SilvercatMoonpawThat sort of stance comes down to inexplicable personal preferences that should have no place in categorization.

Actually its one of the big ways the US government defines obscenities, it works a lot better than you'd think.  

Quote from: Light Dragon4. "Eberron should be under Adventure: it's not focused on finding new things but about the action. If the game is significantly about fighting bad guys on you home turf it shouldn't be Dis/Ex. (If you want something you can mention there put down Hollow Earth Expedition.)"
Eberron is difficult to classify. I'll put it in both places. When I run an eberron game, it's often about going to xendrik, the demon wastes, and retrieve X, Y, Z. and make a map, and report what you see.

The new 4E Eberron will be emphasizing its Pulp roots, to differentiate it from other 4 E settings (since 4E stabbed Eberron and stole its good ideas).

Another kind of way to organize this would be putting the actual settings on the vertical axis and the qualities describing the settings on the horizontal axis. This way, you need only one table. Here's a quick & dirty example for you:

Setting	Tone	Fantasy Elements	Tech Level	Style	Morality
A Game of Thrones	Grim	Scarce, Low	Medieval	Politics, Intrigue	Ambiguous
Hyborian Age	Brutal	Scarce, Low-Medium	Mixed (bronze age to medieval)	Action, Adventure, Horror	Dark Ambiguous
Forgotten Realms	Medium	Abundant, High	Renaissance	Action, Adventure, Politics	Simplistic
Babylon 5	Medium	Scarce, Pseudofantasy	Hi-Tech Future	Action, Politics, Intrigue	Fairly Ambiguous (initially deceiving)
Mad Max	Grim	n/a	Modern Post-Apocalyptic	Action	Rugged Survival
Cthulhu	Despair	Scarce, Low-Extreme	Early 20th Century	Horror	n/a
Riddick	Brutal	Scarce, Pseudofantasy	Hi-Tech Future	Action	Cynical

Quote from: GhostmanAnother kind of way to organize this would be putting the actual settings on the vertical axis and the qualities describing the settings on the horizontal axis. This way, you need only one table. Here's a quick & dirty example for you:

Setting	Tone	Fantasy Elements	Tech Level	Style	Morality
A Game of Thrones	Grim	Scarce, Low	Medieval	Politics, Intrigue	Ambiguous
Hyborian Age	Brutal	Scarce, Low-Medium	Mixed (bronze age to medieval)	Action, Adventure, Horror	Dark Ambiguous
Forgotten Realms	Medium	Abundant, High	Renaissance	Action, Adventure, Politics	Simplistic
Babylon 5	Medium	Scarce, Pseudofantasy	Hi-Tech Future	Action, Politics, Intrigue	Fairly Ambiguous (initially deceiving)
Mad Max	Grim	n/a	Modern Post-Apocalyptic	Action	Rugged Survival
Cthulhu	Despair	Scarce, Low-Extreme	Early 20th Century	Horror	n/a
Riddick	Brutal	Scarce, Pseudofantasy	Hi-Tech Future	Action	Cynical

That's pretty good, though we'd have to come up with definitions about what words are and are not allowed in each column.

P.S. I'm not sure Babylon 5 was psuedo-fantasy, save for the technomages and the mention of 3 ages...

Quote from: Elemental_ElfActually its one of the big ways the US government defines obscenities, it works a lot better than you'd think.

Not if you don't agree with their choices.

Things can still work if you don't agree with them. Perhaps they could be better, but they can work without being good.

Also relevant to this discussion is the good old setting stat-block:
http://www.thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?50164

Ghostman's idea is excellent.  Some definitions are in order, though - what's the difference between "brutal," "grim," and "despair?"  I think it's a great way to categorize settings, but it would probably be best to set down some standard meanings of words (particularly with regard to tone) to prevent a plethora of near-synonyms.

Edit: Or in other words, exactly what EE said.