Posts Tagged by world building
| September 28, 2012 | Posted by Scott Martin |
I was recently reading a fascinating book, The accidental city : improvising New Orleans by Lawrence N. Powell. It was filled with a number of fascinating facts and historical events that were new to me–or made new by the context of the book. Even more, the chapters detailing the differences between the various Louisiana implementations of slavery led me to realize just how varied the experience could be. Visiting Monticello while reading the book, combined with the excellent work on Mulberry Row presentations at the…
| December 8, 2011 | Posted by Scott Martin |
Recently, I’ve been reading the five Otori novels, and have really enjoyed the complex world that they’ve created. I don’t know a lot about Japanese history, so I have no idea how closely the concepts correlate to real world events, but it’s a great, complex world that I’d love to game in. But it’d only work well under unusual circumstances. Playing in her world is similar to playing with real world history–it’s attractive, but difficult. Phil’s article about Drinking the Kool Aid from last week…
| October 20, 2011 | Posted by John Arcadian |
Back before Gencon, Phil threw out an article asking for Gnome Stew fans to pick games for us to pick up and review. Phil reviewed Vornheim – The Complete City Kit and I am now reviewing Microscope. We got no compensation or free copies for these games. I take a long time to do my reviews, mostly because I want to get deeply into what I’m reviewing and usually I prefer to have at least one play session. It took me a while to get…
| October 11, 2011 | Posted by Scott Martin |
At our last roleplaying meetup, we cast about for a good game. We had kicked around the idea of playing Diaspora on the message board, but no one had studied enough to lead everyone through the process. Or so we thought… until we agreed that building a cluster together sounded like fun, and decided that we’d share the responsibility instead of relying on a GM to guide us. So four of us (Bryan, Brian, Will, and me) sat down and created a cluster. Bryan and…
| May 26, 2011 | Posted by Scott Martin |
Game ideas come from the strangest places. I’m currently working out details for a new campaign–and I think I’ve stumbled on a few interesting elements that apply more generally. One big element that I’m considering is how much I want to work out before the players come to the table–do I create a detailed world with 80 pages of history, detailed maps, and several detailed alphabets? Do I show up with just a game system selected and collaborate to build a world to adventure in?…
| July 13, 2010 | Posted by Scott Martin |
If you only have a sketch of a little area and haven’t planned out the rest of the world, don’t worry– that’s one of the best ways to start. You shouldn’t waste your time working up beautiful maps and histories long in advance, unless you have the time and get a lot of pleasure from it. For a good overview on detailed world building, this wikipedia article has a lot of things to consider, though it’s tailored more towards authors and people working from big…
| June 17, 2010 | Posted by Scott Martin |
There are a lot of takes on monsters and myth in books, TV shows, and everywhere else in pop culture. I recently read the Twilight series, with its very different (though still somewhat familiar) take on supernatural beasties. Every game and game world has to pick through myths, legends, and other game systems’ takes on the creatures of legend. Every GM then has the option to adjust monsters to match their own preferences– including familiar twists from family legend, a specific version of the tale…
