Friday Forum Philosophy - Week 4

[Matt Larkin (author)]

Week 4 (August 21st, 2009)
Method
Got a method to your particular madness?

When designing a new setting, what is the first thing you start with?

Do you prefer to work top-down or bottom-up? Some other method?

How do you decide which ideas fit a setting, and which cannot be adapted?

When presenting your setting for review, how is the best way to organize it? What do you like to read first when reading a new setting? What is the least interesting thing to read in a new setting?

Do you concern yourself most with ideas, or do you think poetic language, assonance, and grammar checking are of high importance? Does a lack of organization bother you when reading someone else's setting?

What constitutes a good description? What details do you include? How do you strike a balance between brevity and completeness?

[ooc]Resource: Light Dragon's Gaming Design Reflection thread.[/ooc]

[beejazz]

When designing a new setting, what is the first thing you start with?

Do you prefer to work top-down or bottom-up? Some other method?[/quote]How do you decide which ideas fit a setting, and which cannot be adapted?[/quote]When presenting your setting for review, how is the best way to organize it? What do you like to read first when reading a new setting? What is the least interesting thing to read in a new setting?[/quote]Do you concern yourself most with ideas, or do you think poetic language, assonance, and grammar checking are of high importance? Does a lack of organization bother you when reading someone else's setting?[/quote]What constitutes a good description? What details do you include? How do you strike a balance between brevity and completeness?[/quote]
See above. A quick global overview and a quick playable primer (for each nation or what have you) would be ideal.

[Pair o' Dice Lost]

Do you concern yourself most with ideas, or do you think poetic language, assonance, and grammar checking are of high importance? Does a lack of organization bother you when reading someone else's setting?

What constitutes a good description? What details do you include? How do you strike a balance between brevity and completeness?[/quote]

[sparkletwist]

Do you prefer to work top-down or bottom-up? Some other method?

When presenting your setting for review, how is the best way to organize it? What do you like to read first when reading a new setting? What is the least interesting thing to read in a new setting?[/quote]What constitutes a good description? What details do you include? How do you strike a balance between brevity and completeness?[/quote]
I'm still not very good at this.

[Steerpike]

[blockquote=Phoenix]When designing a new setting, what is the first thing you start with?[/blockquote]Imagery and "ideas," so what makes the setting unique/different.  Usually also a tone or feel, though nothing perhaps so concrete as a theme[blockquote=Phoenix]Do you prefer to work top-down or bottom-up? Some other method?[/blockquote]In the middle and sort of inside-out, but sometimes I wish I could work top-down more (top-down seems to create more complex political systems, in general).  I start with details, but often scattered across the world I'm creating.  With Xell I'm trying a more bottom-up approach.[blockquote=Phoenix]How do you decide which ideas fit a setting, and which cannot be adapted?[/blockquote]If it resonates with the theme of the setting (once I've decided what that is) or just the feel of the setting, it can be included, or if it produces more of a contrast (sparkletwist helped me to see the improtance of this).[blockquote=Phoenix]When presenting your setting for review, how is the best way to organize it? What do you like to read first when reading a new setting? What is the least interesting thing to read in a new setting?[/blockquote]I like the broad strokse effect too (fiction pieces), but that can be hard.  I like brief, descriptive, evoctive overviews as a way of starting a setting.  I don't like long historical overviews, and only occasionally have I enjoyed starting with the creation story.

Do you concern yourself most with ideas, or do you think poetic language, assonance, and grammar checking are of high importance? Does a lack of organization bother you when reading someone else's setting?

I think language is of the utmost importance; it's the entire way the setting can be communicated, short of pictures.

What constitutes a good description? What details do you include? How do you strike a balance between brevity and completeness?

So long as something is interesting to me, I don't care how long it is.  If something isn't interesting, if it's brief then I get it over with faster, but I still didn't enjoy it.  So how evoactive something is, or how well-written it is, is much more important than brevity for me; in fact, the longer something is (provided it's all interesting), the better, since I can always go back and read more.  Usually, however, the more there is of something the less of it is worthwhile, so in that case I'd prefer a few well-synthesized bursts of information (Knife's Edge by Kindling does this the absolute best - if any newer members haven't checked out this setting they really, really should) to a lengthy description.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

When designing a new setting, what is the first thing you start with?
A character.  I need to know who lives in the setting to figure out what it looks like.

Do you prefer to work top-down or bottom-up? Some other method?
I think I've tried top-down previously and it hasn't worked: too much to keep track of.  I haven't given enough of a try of bottom-up.

How do you decide which ideas fit a setting, and which cannot be adapted?
I go the other direction: I fit the setting to the idea.  It's the way I have to work: in the opposite direction I often become rigidly constrained to a basic setting framework which isn't meant to be interesting on its own.

When presenting your setting for review, how is the best way to organize it?
Get right to the point: say why the setting is great in plain speech.  Anything else risks someone missing the point.

What do you like to read first when reading a new setting?
The people and creatures.  Basically the inhabitants.

What is the least interesting thing to read in a new setting?
Organizations, especially nations.  If not presented as a facet of a person they don't have an intriguing individuality.  Cultures can suffer from the same problem.

Do you concern yourself most with ideas, or do you think poetic language, assonance, and grammar checking are of high importance? Does a lack of organization bother you when reading someone else's setting?
So long as punctuation, capitalization, and paragraphs are used I don't care.

What constitutes a good description? What details do you include? How do you strike a balance between brevity and completeness?
I have absolutely no idea.  I've never managed except by accident.

[LD]

>>When designing a new setting, what is the first thing you start with?
A character. I need to know who lives in the setting to figure out what it looks like.

That's very unique.

[Polycarp]

Got a method to your particular madness?[/size]

What kind[/i] of picture - well, it depends, but often landscapes, architecture, and so on.  My present setting drew its initial inspiration from this picture of a Buddha head in Ayutthaya, Thailand.  From there, places and characters are the most important to me - what the place looks like, and who calls it home.  In that sense, I'm very "top down," but I don't go for top down settings that start with the abstract - creation myths are a good example.  A myth may be about the creation of a world, but in actuality the world - or, more precisely, the people in it - write the myth.  It's inconceivable to me to form things like gods, creation myths, cosmologies, and so on without at least having a basic grasp on the concrete part of a setting.  For gaming settings especially, most of what characters will be concerned with is 1) where you go and 2) who you meet there, and absolutely everything else is a distant second priority.

That said, I tend to go where the spirit moves me, so to speak - if I'm interested in cosmology, I may do that even if I haven't completely finished what I think should come before it.  I often end up having to heavily revise that cosmology, however, because it's so important to me that the abstract parts of the world grew from its characters rather than vice versa.

I'm pretty consistent when it comes to reading settings; I like to read what I like to focus on in my own work.  I want to read things that evoke pictures immediately - pictures of the land, pictures of people, pictures of day-to-day activity and momentous events in history.  Actual pictures are nice too, but I love writing that describes a setting as if you were observing it yourself.  I tend to have an encyclopedic style of writing, which isn't always very evocative, but I try to include descriptions and walkthroughs that bring encyclopedia pages to life.

As far as technical merit, bad grammar/spelling kills me.  I was operating a wood chipper all day today and kept noting the grammatical errors on the "WARNING: YOU WILL DIE" decals.  I'm resisting the urge to call the toll free number right now and tell them they need to hire someone with at least a fleeting comprehension of the apostrophe.  I'm not always perfect myself, but I always read through anything I post several times to try and catch myself.  Good ideas without good presentation are still good ideas, but they may not be very well-known ones.

[Superfluous Crow]

When designing a new setting, what is the first thing you start with?
I always start with ideas. Making a setting is rarely a conscious choice. Some kind of imagery or thought pops up in my head, and at some point i have to gather it and put pen to paper so i can get the idea out of my head so there is room for more. Broken Verge is my only conscious attempt really, but it is the latest generation of my many attempts to make "my own setting". Ecumenopolis and Death Planet evolved from various suggestions. Hellscape from random thoughts.

Do you prefer to work top-down or bottom-up? Some other method?
Top-down. Or, maybe I don't prefer that way, but it is the only way i can make work. I tend to get a lot of disjunct ideas and then i have to get to work connecting them somehow. So I often end up with the big picture first. Of course, this approach could also be percieved as some sort of multiple bottom-up thing.  

How do you decide which ideas fit a setting, and which cannot be adapted?
Not really a strength of mine. Sometimes I get ideas that i clearly can't fit into my primary setting, and these often spawn minor settings. For example, a cityscape without end is obviously not possibly in the finite world of Broken Verge, so it had to become Ecumenopolis.  

When presenting your setting for review, how is the best way to organize it? What do you like to read first when reading a new setting? What is the least interesting thing to read in a new setting?
I organize it by element, posting various pieces one by one. When i get to collecting it all, it will probably be in the wiki. Using a thread is a bit problematic really. When reading a setting I look for the quirks and unique parts. These are usually found in magic, race, or religion. If any of these seem interesting I'll go on to countries. I dislike long creation stories, or the history of the world. These parts are dull, don't say much about the world as it currently is, and contain few of the quirks that make the campaign special. (with exceptions)    

Do you concern yourself most with ideas, or do you think poetic language, assonance, and grammar checking are of high importance? Does a lack of organization bother you when reading someone else's setting?
Having english as a second language makes me less sensitive to these errors, but a dull writing style can still make me give up on a setting.

What constitutes a good description? What details do you include? How do you strike a balance between brevity and completeness?
What i hate the most is a lack of physical descriptions when describing objects, cities or, especially, races. This annoys me to no end. If things work pretty normally I'd rather skip them (trade in a city for example), but I don't mind paragraphs being long if they hold my attention which they can usually hold by keeping things fresh and new and original.

[LD]

>>What is the least interesting thing to read in a new setting?

1. Timelines.
2. Creation Story.
3. Lists of Gods.
4. Lists of Countries with statistics on the % ogre, % human,, % dwarf

Now, all of these can be interesting if done well- and Pair O'Dice's timeline in Death from the Depths pulls off the Timeline quite well. But generally, I see these things at the top of a setting and I am immediately turned off.

I cannot see a 'theme' from these ideas. I cannot see why this setting is more interesting than "Generic Fantasy #47". When I read a setting, I want it to sell me on uniqueness and cleverness. I want to feel a difference. I want to be absorbed in new ideas that challenge my conceptions of the game, how to play it, and my philosophical understanding of the real world.

To me, games are not an escape- they are a piece of art like books, a way to better understand the self, others, and to interact with the world. If a setting fails to have a connection with these things- then it is very difficult to get excited about its contents.

Admittedly, games are also interesting and intriguing- they need to have "fun" elements. My GodSmack! notably is an adrenaline rush of excitement and play. The education in it, however, is the interaction of history with myth and the stories that can be told as people have religious and philosophical struggles while facing difficult moral choices.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

>>When designing a new setting, what is the first thing you start with?
A character. I need to know who lives in the setting to figure out what it looks like.

That's very unique.

I'm a muck-levelist, I like to see things from the bottom.

[Superfluous Crow]

I think most often settings are a way for me to manifest my ideas, rather than the setting being the primary objective and ideas merely content for said setting. I don't know how that works for you?
It's the difference between coming up with ideas for a theme and a tone, and coming up with a tone and a theme for your ideas.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

I'd say it often starts with a single idea for me. And then a bunch of disparate ideas for other things start to fit together.

But at some point, a theme develops, so I think about how to expand on it.

[Llum]

Do you prefer to work top-down or bottom-up? Some other method?

When presenting your setting for review, how is the best way to organize it? What do you like to read first when reading a new setting? What is the least interesting thing to read in a new setting?
[/quote]Poetic language and assonance are more icing on the cake. They aren't needed but they can bring something to the next level. Grammar is good, but usually as long as things are well spelled, I'm not terribly good at english grammar myself so I probably wouldn't notice a lot of things. Like commas, I just tend to throw those things in anywhere.

What constitutes a good description? What details do you include? How do you strike a balance between brevity and completeness?

I don't think you can really have a bad description, as long as you get what your trying to across. That being said, a lot of people on the internet can't handle something thats more then three or four lines long. Personally if its good and I like it, I welcome the Wall of Text.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

When designing a new setting, what is the first thing you start with?

I've had all kinds of things spawn ideas. Some I can't remember.

But one I do, when creating Echoes of Divinity, this line popped into my head about the dark gods returning to the world after 3000 years of exile. That spawned the entire setting. The setting increasingly diverged from my original vision, but we did play out the entire 2 year campaign I wrote from it. We didn't play D&D, but in D&D terms I'd say we went the whole lv 1-30 range then.