| caveman's guide to gaming I have been worked on about a dozen Fantasy RPG worlds in the past 20 years. I have abandoned all of them. I never got very far on any of them, beyond a large scale map and a few sketchy notes. With Mohr Vesik, I am telling myself I am creating this world because I want to create, not because a game with Marmy depends on it. I want to do my own Campaign Bible (often depicted as a three-ring binder full of notes) for my own creativity's sake. I started by just writing notes everywhere, having a pink notebook beside the bed, a virtual folder on my traveldrive (mirrored on PC) and a small notebook in my bag -- they always say that you should take notes whenever they come to you. I looked at this scattered pile of notes and decided I needed some continuity, some thread of Law in the Chaos. I came up with the idea of Articles -- where I write a topic with a cohesive beginning and end, broken down with a basic outline. For example, the first article I am writing is the full description of the central breadbasket nation, Hyrmdaal. This will be an exercise in too much or too little. It's not about writing only what you need, as is often considered sacrosanct in campaign design, it's about being completionist. I want my world to have it all covered, not right at the beginning but as it progresses. Follow-up articles about Hyrmdaal might include focuses on the capital city of Genrovi or a breakdown of the two pantheons that make up religion in the country. I also get to play with layout & design by making it readable when printed. More focused on the actual game that is playing out in Mohr Vesik, I am writing thoughts and ideas on my VoxBlog, over at passerby.vox.com. In fact, I will mirror this there. That is where I write out of context, where I write not with the Voice of the World in mind but with me in mind, as if to an audience -- most likely an audience of me. Marmy can choose to read or not too read; I doubt it will be very spoilerific. Anywayz, the start of this post was to link to a couple of threads going on in the Game Design Forums. The original topic was, "What do you consider 'Traditional' GM prep?" and it led into "The Abyssal Guide: Create A Bog-Standard Dungeony Fantasy Campaign With Dungeons. My favourite comment was the reference to "fairly caveman stuff" which is basically saying, "This is the stuff that has existed for ages and everybody knows how to do it." But not everybody does and not everybody does it the same way. I like reading other people's methods because I don't really have any. It's nice to get basic hints and suggestions. June 05 07 |
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