Opinions...

[Kindling]

I am considering putting Reth Jaleract on hold and working on a new setting.

The best way I could describe it is as a Mash-Up Punk setting, as described on the TV Tropes entry for Punk Punk :P

A lowish tech fantasy world, but with a very modern mindset, modern firearms (but with scarce ammo), something of a Wild West vibe (lots of scrubland and small, lawless towns), demonic possessions, egyptian deities, lycanthropes, evil angels and the French Foreign Legion.

While I think these concepts have huge potential for awesome, I really don't want to abandon Reth, as I know I will if I start work on a new project. Ideally, I'd rather incorporate my ideas for the new setting into the old.

The problem is, I really can't see that working. I think it would totally spoil the mood and feel of Reth Jaleract if I were to start grafting some of those concepts onto it.

Do you guys agree? Can you persuade me it's do-able? Or am I just going to have to regretfully ditch Reth, and hope I'll come back to it at some point further down the line?

[Acrimone]

Make it the future of Reth.  THat's what I did when I wanted a different feel for my campaign world -- I fast-forwarded several hundred years and said, "Now things are like this..."

Or make it the past.  Come up for a good story how this all happened.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

I think it can help to have several vastly different projects. You work on one for a while, until a new idea sparks for the other, then switch. Maybe it means taking a long break, but maybe it's worth it.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

Further thought: My experience is, once these ideas start rolling around, it can be hard to ignore them until you at least get them down and start to flesh them out a little. Then you clear your mind to figure out which setting you want to focus on.

[Ninja D!]

I agree totally with Phoenix.

[Ishmayl-Retired]

I'm going to agree with Phoenix as well!  And I'm going to pretend I said it first!!

You must all listen to me. !turtle

[sparkletwist]

I like the idea of displacing it in time. I've done this in the past, with generally good results-- it added to the depth of the world, and elements you liked from both settings could be incorporated, because you just assume it's something that'll stay around.

[LordVreeg]

Art is a strange mistress.

For many of us, though we are writers and artists and actors as well, campaign/setting design is it's own art.  It certainly is mine.  

A large-picture question I had to answer a long time ago was whether I looked at Celtricia as a piece of art, one among many I would create, or the discipline itself, with each entry, each historical plot, each adventure, each NPC, and each session, being the piece of artwork within the discipline.  I cannot even look t Celtricia as a body-of-work, it is either a piece or the collected discipline. I certainly have many creative ideas that have not fit within the framework of Celtricia that have had to be discarded.

[note=outside factors]I think some of this decision has been made easier by my players.  The longer you keep up a setting, the more detailed and real it becomes.  Some settings need to be abandoned (I had 5 settings before Celtricia) as you outgrow them, but once you have discipline that can contain a lifetime of creative work, it is hard to put down.[/note]

I have a number of fellow GMs that look at settings as a writer does, citing the need to finish a series or project and get onto another one.  I think this is valid, though I note that many of the archetypical writers of the fantasy genre take world building very seriously, and their new works often are written in their greater 'discipline' (Feist, Jordan, Martin, Tolkien, Brust, for examples), and I also notate that most writers, whether fiction or non, write their stories in the real world and so do not change 'setings' either.

Basically, is Reth a piece of artwork among many you will create, or the over-arching discipline that will contain your individual pieces of art.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

For myself I suppose I tend to mostly agree with Vreeg. Even Eclipse is just a different time period in the same setting as Eschaton.

However, that said, I could still see maintaining additional settings for fiction, even if most of my writing was set in the same universe. Actually, I have two main fiction universes under development, one fantasy, one science fiction (this one on hold).

So I don't necessarily think the choice represents a mutually exclusive decision. You can have a massive on-going project that serves as a repository for much of your work, and still have side projects to help scratch those creative itches.

Also, remember, the more you incorporate into a single setting, the more likely it is to become DivSet--which may be good for gaming (I'm more skeptical about it being good for fiction), but you should be aware of the effect regardless.