Tinkering: Types of Worlds

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

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

And people can make decisions based upon personal preferences that they then decide everyone else will agree with based on some imagined similarity.

[Nomadic]

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

And people can make decisions based upon personal preferences that they then decide everyone else will agree with based on some imagined similarity.

SCMP what EE was talking about with the Government and obscenities works. That's how we did it back when I was administrating forums and it is effective. The key is to talk with everyone and make sure the definitions are clearly stated

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

SCMP what EE was talking about with the Government and obscenities works. That's how we did it back when I was administrating forums and it is effective. The key is to talk with everyone and make sure the definitions are clearly stated

And all I'm staying is don't believe a method is objectively good or even necessary just because you can't personally see a problem with the decision.

[Elemental_Elf]

SCMP what EE was talking about with the Government and obscenities works. That's how we did it back when I was administrating forums and it is effective. The key is to talk with everyone and make sure the definitions are clearly stated

And all I'm staying is don't believe a method is objectively good or even necessary just because you can't personally see a problem with the decision.

Name some settings where you see a grey area. We'll use the stated method to determine if its Magic or not.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Name some settings where you see a grey area. We'll use the stated method to determine if its Magic or not.

I wasn't talking about settings in that instance.

And I can't think of a setting that has them.  But if we simply use labels that already have one meaning we run the risk of implying that there can never be anything else.

[Elemental_Elf]

Name some settings where you see a grey area. We'll use the stated method to determine if its Magic or not.

I wasn't talking about settings in that instance.

And I can't think of a setting that has them.  But if we simply use labels that already have one meaning we run the risk of implying that there can never be anything else.

But the whole point of the chart is to make generalities about campaign settings and books. By being general, it precludes the addition of too much specificity because most specific examples will be covered by the general types we have listed.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

But the whole point of the chart is to make generalities about campaign settings and books. By being general, it precludes the addition of too much specificity because most specific examples will be covered by the general types we have listed.

Then shouldn't the word used be more general than "magic", especially since that word already has certain connotations?

[LD]

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

-That is a good solution which permits proper display of the settings.

-However, I am not certain that it does what I wanted- which was to provide an easy way to see at a glance the major differences between settings and to see what is vaguely and generally specific. (Or to be easily searchable... once could use FIND... but that is a bit inelegant) This spreadsheet could quickly become a hunt and peck wall of text. (If only we could have EXCEL built in to the forums to do a SORT...)

I like it, but I do not know if it is optimal to display what I am trying to do.

-That being said, if someone else wanted to cross-classify using your system, so that we have two different styles of charts to present the roughly the same information in different graphical ways, that would be very useful!

-I think that limiting the adjectives for each square to 4-5 would work well.. any more than that would make it difficult to paint broad strokes and would lead to overlapping adjectives.

[Biohazard]

I think the matrix works wonderfully the way it is. It fits both of my settings quite well, and with the option to show different colors to declare it's in multiple columns, you can't really miss any aspect of the setting. In its current rendition it'd be a very nice way to showcase all of the registered settings either on the homepage or through one link from it to help new people look for specific ones to read and to allow longtime members to compare settings underlying structures.

[Elemental_Elf]

I like the way the material is presented in the first matrix rather than Ghostmans simply because it groups similar settings.

[Superfluous Crow]

I think we should use both; one to give a general overview, and one to differentiate the settings a bit. So people would go to table 1 to check what they settings they would probably be interested in, and then table 2 to figure out which one of them they should read.

[Elemental_Elf]

I think we should use both; one to give a general overview, and one to differentiate the settings a bit. So people would go to table 1 to check what they settings they would probably be interested in, and then table 2 to figure out which one of them they should read.

[LD]

CCrow- That's what I was suggesting. :)

All- thank you for the tacit approval of my system as well. :)

[Matt Larkin (author)]

Interesting thread. I'll play the game:

Eschaton is historical fantasy. I might also call it Dark Fantasy or Alternate History.

Probably this means Low-Fantasy (or Medium Fantasy??), Bureaucracy. Not sure how to reflect Dark Fantasy, because dystopian implies things I'm not sure I'd want to imply, and it's certainly not horror. Of course parts of the tales edge into Wonder.

[Superfluous Crow]

CCrow- That's what I was suggesting. :)

Ahh, yes, i was just agreeing with that option. Didn't mean to take all the praise for your idea. :)