What turns you off/on

[Nomadic]

No this isn't a thread about buttless chaps and trolls in cat suits. This is in regards to campaign discussion. :P

Anyhow I have noticed that I have a harder time responding to some campaign threads versus others. So I have decided to lay out why that is as far as I can tell. I invite everyone else to do likewise. However, this is not a thread for railing on other people's way of doing things. It is instead I hope something that will help everyone learn what they are doing wrong in attracting reviewers to their campaign threads. Furthermore it also should help to show what people are doing right to get your attention.

To start I think what gets me the most is when a thread is overly complex in design. I don't mean images and excerpts or anything else. What I am talking about is when I have to go through extra steps just to read the info on the setting. The most notable troublemakers here are PDFs (which take forever to load) and threads that get too wordy (saying 5 things where 1 would suffice). Other things that turn me off in this category are people linking to other sites and wikis without providing much in the main thread. I know I may sound lazy and really I am. However that is just how it is for me.

What else turns me off? 4e. No I am not a h4ter or anything like that. It is just a system I don't enjoy so when I see something that uses it I can't really comment unless I have something to say in regards to the fluff. 3.5e and 3e I am better with but I still have difficulty with them from time to time.

On the opposite end of the spectrum I get excited with in-depth and well organized posts. Tastefully arranged pictures and stories also score points with me. I especially love smoothly implemented custom rules (even just house rules). What will get me excited more than anything is when everything fits together or is starting to fit together in a new and interesting way (especially when it meshes well with real world believability). Most of all I want to be able to put in my 2 cents. So ask questions, spit out ideas, anything that gives me an opening to jump in and reply will grab me.

There are of course other things that get me one way or the other. These are just what I feel are the big ones. Feel free to drop me a line if you want something reviewed though, just remember that I will be more eager to view it if these facts are remembered.

So then, now its your turn. Tell me what gets you excited and drives you off when someone is laying out their new campaign world. Lets all help each other out in making this a more interactive review community.

[Ninja D!]

What turns me on is people creating suggestive thread titles.  ;) YEAH BABY!

But as I read further in, I see that this thread might deserve a better response than this and so I will try to oblige.

First off, I can tell that this was possibly prompted recently by my campaign thread.  I have noticed some of these problems and I am working on gradually moving away from the PDFs once I have something worth looking at.  I know my stuff can be a bit wordy but I often like it that way.  If that scares some people away, so be it.  I may, however, be making a shorter overview for each cultural group in time.

Now for me; I like it when thing are presented clearly.  Formatting your posts to be read simply is a must!  I prefer to read more fluff and less crunch.  However, I particularly like crunch that is well tailored to fluff (and no, I don't mean things like monsters where the fluff exists because of the crunch, I like things like races that are well thought out and have stats to go with them that make sense).

Along the lines of how Nomadic said 4E can make him disinterested, I am this way with home made systems.  I just can't get into learning a new system just to review things for someone else.  Variant systems are the same way unless they are so minor as to be more a collection of house rules.  I will still gladly give me thoughts on the fluff for these projects, however.

[Hibou]

Skin-tight leather. Do I get an a-men, LV?

On a more serious note, it's generally a variety of things. I like simplicity in some places, complexity in others. I can't stand things that are too wordy. And it has to be intense, as if the setting in question were being spoken with energy and not sounding monotone. There have to be ups and downs, things that grab your attention, and different kinds of emphasis to different aspects.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Man, I could probably an entire book about what turns me off in fiction, and that includes game settings.

Things that turn me off: Anything that implies that life is harsh/brutal/cruel/a struggle/cannot be won/(I could go on).  As soon as I read about large wars (i.e. wars that cover a large area or at least the main-focus area) that are happening or are about to, horrible demons/abberrations running amok, any emphasis on survival, and whatever else would fall under the previous sentence.  Essentially if I could read about of version of it in a real-world newspaper I see no reason to need to encounter it again in a significant way in my fiction.  Note: This also includes pretty much anything that falls under the word "intrigue".

Things that do not necessarily turn me off but aren't going to turn me on: Anything mundane.  Also any attempt to build something "believable".

Things that turn me on: Wildly fantastic ideas.

[Pair o' Dice Lost]

Question for those who don't really like stuff being too wordy.  For the world I'm working on now, after a short in-character intro on monsters, races, whatever's being presented in a given post, I divide the content based on mostly-fluff and mostly-crunch stuff and spoiler that.  Does that help (so if you want the crunch you can skip right to it) or is that not what people mean by "too wordy"?

[LordVreeg]

Skin-tight leather. Do I get an a-men, LV?

On a more serious note, it's generally a variety of things. I like simplicity in some places, complexity in others. I can't stand things that are too wordy. And it has to be intense, as if the setting in question were being spoken with energy and not sounding monotone. There have to be ups and downs, things that grab your attention, and different kinds of emphasis to different aspects.

This is a really good use of a thread title.  Don't abuse this dangerous skill.

If you ever want to learn how to get your setting threads looked at, look at allthe Celtricia threads, then do the opposite...(literally, that's why I just redid my openning post on the setting page).  The original Celtricia thread was actuallty subtitled 'the Stream of Consiousness Disaster'.

Were I to start from scratch (and the way I have been changing The Celtricia Wiki), I would not create a full setting thread.  Too much data, too much information, OVERLOAD!!!  I'd compartmentalize a lot more.  Because the continual issue with people trying to review is that there is too much to respond to, too much to grasp.  So I probably would have broken down the setting thread into a cosmology/religion, a politics thread, a game play thread, and a tech/magic/development thread.  Making it easier to respond to smaller, easier to digest posts.

SO this was not answered in the particular format requested, but the outcome is the same.  I have learned the aformentioned from responding to dozens of threads and from peoples priivate responses.  Ignore them at your peril.

[Kindling]

Things that turn me off: Anything that implies that life is harsh/brutal/cruel/a struggle/cannot be won/(I could go on).  As soon as I read about large wars (i.e. wars that cover a large area or at least the main-focus area) that are happening or are about to, horrible demons/abberrations running amok, any emphasis on survival, and whatever else would fall under the previous sentence.  Essentially if I could read about of version of it in a real-world newspaper I see no reason to need to encounter it again in a significant way in my fiction.  Note: This also includes pretty much anything that falls under the word "intrigue".

So... where do your conflicts come from, if you're ruling out war, monsters AND intrigue?

[Pair o' Dice Lost]

So... where do your conflicts come from, if you're ruling out war, monsters AND intrigue?

DU JOUR[/i] FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS!" or something similar, where a single kind of creature is everywhere and you don't use any others, or it only involves PCs fighting huge set-piece battles against hordes of mooks, that it doesn't work out.

[Moniker]

Bullet points. That drives me to read a thread, more so than anything else here.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

So... where do your conflicts come from, if you're ruling out war, monsters AND intrigue?

People.

The problem with those three factors is that too often they make the problem bigger than people.  If your problem-solving agent is a small group then there's a point at which the problem will outstrip the ability of said agent to handle it on its own.  The point of the game '" in my mind '" is for the focus to be on plucky people who save the day, not on people who gather armies.  Unless you give them a plot device taking on a war, widespread horror [I'm not sure what you meant by simply saying "monster"], and/or intrigue tend to be out of the plucky peoples' league.

So what does that leave?  Hero stories, the kind from myth where one hero or a small group face danger and overcome trials mostly without invoking large-scale solutions (as I've read them, you myths may vary).  Intrigue?  Scheming vizers who you can run a sword through.  War?  Occasionally, but generally not (and they really don't seem as much fun).  Monsters?  Sure, they're a staple.  It's just that they're generally of the type you can eliminate without an army.

[Pellanor]

Personally I find that smaller discussions on a general topic the most interesting, especially if it touches on points that relate to whatever I'm working on. I tend not to read anything that needs multiple paragraphs of preamble before getting to the main point. Basically 90% of stuff that comes up in the Meta or Campaign Elements sections.

So... where do your conflicts come from, if you're ruling out war, monsters AND intrigue?

People. *snip*

A campaign setting with War, Monsters and Intrigue can be focused on the people. A perfect example of this in fiction is The Black Company by Glen Cook. It's an excellent story about a small group of people in a world full of war and intrigue, with a few monsters thrown in as well.

I think the important thing is the focus of the game. Are you focusing on the Giant War of Death, Doom and Destruction? Or are you focusing on the people who are affected by this war?

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

I think the important thing is the focus of the game. Are you focusing on the Giant War of Death, Doom and Destruction? Or are you focusing on the people who are affected by this war?

I tend to see those as the same thing: the war is going to feel like it's overshadowing the people no matter the focus because it is just this big huge thing around them that they aren't and probably can't resolve.  I prefer if there's going to be war that it be a background piece, e.g. in the past or somewhere not too near.

[Hibou]

I can actually be a bit of a hypocrite when it comes to what gets me going on a setting, I think... I can go on for hours about certain things in my own setting, but if another setting doesn't get to the point fairly quickly I lose track.

[Pair o' Dice Lost]

I can actually be a bit of a hypocrite when it comes to what gets me going on a setting, I think... I can go on for hours about certain things in my own setting, but if another setting doesn't get to the point fairly quickly I lose track.

I'm sort of the opposite.  I realize that I have a tendency to go into excessive detail about, well, anything when I (A) know a lot about it, (B) feel strongly about it, or (C) both, as is the case with my settings; thus, I do as much as I can to make my settings manageable--separate fluff and crunch, break things up into spoiler blocks, put everything new into their own posts, rely on an in-character piece to set the mood rather than five or six dry explanatory paragraphs, and so on.

[LordVreeg]

I can actually be a bit of a hypocrite when it comes to what gets me going on a setting, I think... I can go on for hours about certain things in my own setting, but if another setting doesn't get to the point fairly quickly I lose track.

Hypocrite?  Just by posting this, you have removed yourself from that list, sir...