There's been a lot of discussion in the past about the merits of collaborative worldbuilding so I thought I would show an example of what can be done. This is a setting me and my group have just put together for a new campaign of Other Worlds, this time based around the idea of doing a really epic fantasy saga (that's eventually going to turn into a global conflict a la the War of the Ring). It's a fair bit more detailed than is usually needed, and we ended up fleshing out the player characters afterwards via email, but most of this was done in one session. I would love to see other people post similar examples of their own!

The World of Amar

Broad Concept
An epic fantasy quest with many different factions, like in LotR or Babylon 5.
Politics, economics, and tensions between different factions should be a factor. A war is brewing.
The game starts in a neutral place between the races like Babylon 5 or the UN. A treaty city.
The characters are all representatives/champions of their races like the Fellowship of the Ring.
Some kind of common enemy has emerged that threatens all the free peoples
The characters are put together on a mission to stop it
Everyone has a special reason to be on the mission - some quality or power that will be needed
Characters may also be pushed/manipulated by their own faction who may have a separate agenda?
Threat could be a new land mass emerging from the sea - a relic of ancient times? 'The Tenth Kingdom'. A returned god? Some strange and powerful items might have been salvaged from this place already.
Or a new evil religion - led by an Osama Bin Thulsa Doom type figure. A false prophet. The rise of this cult could be what is causing the war (religious vs secular?). He could be an avatar or have some special item.
Or demons, planar invasion, dragons (allied to the forces on the island maybe?), gnomes, etc

Tone
More serious than comic (where possible). Magic is low key. Gritty. Characters can get hurt, even killed

History
Legends of the creation of the world
Unseelie war
The evernight
The Age of Darkness - lasted 3,000 years
Now = The Age of Twilight
Once a year the unseelie come back on winter solstice - longest night of the year
The unseelie have their sport - consume life, keep races down
Next = age of the sun? or age of darkness? - could go either way

Recent events:
New landmass emerges - its a prophecy or just discovered by ogres
Vision, ancient scroll
Lights of the world are getting dim
The dwarves have discovered something?
Ogres want to cross the great ocean

Geography
Huge staircase going down
frozen wastes
remnants of old civilisations
giant statue of unknown origin
city on stilts in marshland
incan temple in the firests (tie to beastmen?)

city states
treaty city - mos eisley-like lawless ankh moorpork
valley of the dead

Seas, lakes
An island
Gates/dimensional rift
Woods/forests
the underdark
swamp
floating rock cities in the sky
volcanos
Mordor
Indiana Jones-style dungeon/temple
A tunnel between two races (like the channel tunnel) as the surface is very dangerous

other continents are held at bay by some sort of magic barrier – invisible mist which sweeps ships away like bermuda triangle myths;

lots of dangerous/strange animals
centipedes
six legged riding cats - ridden by beastmen, minotaurs - fox guys, bull guys
flying monkeys
treehounds
Silly animal hybrids - rhinoroo, paul the dogtopus, duck-billed badgerpuss
Drakh keepers
Weird mounts
Unusual species abound - normal stuff like cats and dogs simply don't exist

Technology
Primitve tech - swords and shields and bows. Not a lot of armour. Chariots. Catapults.
Night steel/cold iron - dwarves invented after industrialisation - found the secret of reliably creating it.
Conan, Runequest, bronze age feel

Strange riding beasts as transports
Lizardmen - Star Wars lizard (from Revenge of the Sith).
Ogres - ships, dolphins, walk on land. Sea lubbers - prefer sea to land. Flying stingrays.
Dwarves - giant worms - tunnel underground. ride them like in Dune.
Faeries - giant dragonflies, lots of giant insects in their home forests. Unseelie ride horses in hunt.

Magic
Celtic style magic - leylines, faerie toadstool rings, dolmens and stone circles, potions/cauldrons, pagan nature worship, rituals, poisons, scrying the future, subtle magic rather than obvious fireballs, runes, weather influence, influencing natural world, speak to animals, cause fear, curses.
Harness power
superhuman jumps
rituals, grimoires, sacrifices
alchemical
morgoth/sauron-like - drain energy from self
spirits
leyline at midsummer's eve
faerie glamour - appear as other things
black obselisk

Different races draw energy in different ways
Dwarves draw energy from ley lines, which tap into the spirit world, stone circles and chasms - leaks up to the surface from the Earth's core
Ogres - where it's stormiest (ley lines). Small rocky island where the sages live - Isle of the Sorcerers.
Some live on boats - The Waterbound
Lizardmen = magic from smoke - rituals, capturing it. firestones. Look into the smoke = see into the other realm
Faeries: faerie gateways, wardstones - portals into the other realm

Failure = drains own energy/lifespan? attracts unseelie?
Unseelie give magical energy when destroyed
Dead spots where magic has been drained away

Factions
There are 4 races on Amar, representing the 4 elements.

Richard's race: The Ohmryn
Ogre-like in appearance. 7-8 feet tall, strong and tough like Conan. Skin shade varies by region.
Embody the element of Water.
Warriors, barbarians, traders, explorers.
Surprisingly cool and laid back. They invented surfing. Philosophical. But they can be stormy.
Honourable reputation - so know can talk in good faith
Spread out across the world.

Ben's race: The Basites
Earth elemental/dwarf types. Made of rock. Sandstone yellow in colour.
Embody the element of Earth.
Solitary, religious, stubborn.
Can talk to stone.
Don't breathe air. No eyes - magical senses.
Live underground. Industrial mining - uranium? They pollute the atmosphere.
Worship stone effigies? An obelisk/stonehenge

Steve's race: The Phae-touched
Insect-like/plant-like. 3ft tall. Skin made of wood, golden brown in colour. Butterfly wings
Embody the element of Air
Fickle and curious. Good at climbing. Lot of bards.
Live in the forest realm. Hive-like society. Share a collective subconscious.
Trees have personality
They are a good faction of faeries - most other faeries are evil
Dwarves mine the night steel - cold iron - that hurts them. Source of conflict.

Paul's race: The Kasheeta
Githzerai-like. Scaly grey-green lizardy-Cardassian colours
Embody the element of Fire.
Regenerate. Infra red vision. Ritualistic daggers
Peaceful society. Mountain monasteries.
Caste system. Workers - no lives. Warrior caste - angry, expansive. Religious caste - mystics.
Breathing in the mist from the sacred volcano
custodians of the flame. tempered the volcanos
lived in the world when it was dark - before there was a sun. Created the sun?

Enemies
Seelie/Unseelie - good and bad faeries.
Enemy = Unseelie: trolls, redcaps, pixies, fomorians.
Cruel and capricious, sadistic. Treat the humans as animals.
Balorians - one eyed giants with eye blast from their single evil eye

Undead - wraiths. realm of the dead. spirits.
Afterlife - no one knows what's beyond death
Curse of the unseelie - they are collecting souls for some ritual
Demons - but could be superstition
Dragons - or not?
Jason and the Argonauts skeletons, harpies, medusa
Giant scorpions, hydra, kraken

Conflicts
Tensions between the races, particularly Fire vs Water and Earth vs Air

Earth vs Air = the Basites pollute the atmosphere with their mining, forge weapons of cold iron, and chop down the forests to fuel their machines/expand their territory (thus destroying the Faetouched's habitat). The Faetouched are very unhappy about all of these things.

Fire vs Water = clash over the seas between their lands. The Kasheeta call it the Strait of Muldrasa, while the Ohmryn call it the Alamin Channel. The Ohmryn have spirit bonds with many sea creatures that live in these waters, from sharks and whales to dolphins and octopuses. But the Kasheeta hunt them for food and also for food (a lot like the Japanese and whaling). This is a big source of conflict.

Game Length
One 'movie length' adventure - about 12 sessions.

Player Characters
We said that we've done games at the lower power level so we should try something a bit more epic and fantastical. So we intend to try a power level of 40 and 2 trademarks. This puts the characters somewhere round the Aragorn/Legolas level in terms of both power and world-significance.

Future Adventures
Campaign = LotR style trek across the world.

•   Consult with a great sage or dragon - he releases great energy when killed
•   Government has the group's souls - thus the PCs must serve the state?
•   The PCs are drafted into being heroes? Like the dalai llama?
•   There could be specific set pieces - events that are prophecied to happen but the characters may be able to manipulate or prevent them and thus change the future?
•   Need to deliver a princess for sacrifice?
•   Need to persuade a high level character to assist the group?
•   Must travel through a barbarian land?
•   Maybe stop some foe from gaining magic item we later hear about, that might control the source of elemental powers/races – a gem that controls fire, water, wind and earth?
•   A wagon or chariot chase, or rooftop pursuit
•   Is there some horror emerging in new town that was built over site of horrific battle, but for 50 years had seemed fine? Maybe to investigate?
•   Maybe there are still lots of starving, homeless refugees around, after catastrophe destroyed their nation – and we need to help them, as no one else will?
•   Maybe we need to fight off attacks by separatists or ultra-nationalists who see our fame, and the new international unity, as threatening their way of life?
•   Do we carry out assassination?
•   Are we just used as celeb-like figureheads to make displays of new peace and progress, even though horribly assassinations/poverty/arms deals/deadly research/experimentation on underclass/slavery is still going on, and we just have to do interviews for local media, or make speeches about how life has improved? Or are we used to break strikes and protests, or defeat guerilla freedom fighters, or other ethically dubious things?
•   Is one of the character's family held hostage to ensure loyalty?
•   Negotiate with huge dragon would-be ally, once we have delivered sacrifice?
•   Do we have to rescue hostages? Or do we rescue people after natural disaster-type cataclysm?
•   Great sea journey
•   Does an ocean run with blood?
•   Demons possess all the children of village and attack their parents?
•   Do we lead forces in huge battle, including maybe one of us fighting against our own kinsmen? Maybe a great siege?
•   Face the Unseelie Wild Hunt
•   Do we enter underground complex, and have to escape in a tunnel that turns out to be the belly of a great demon worm?
•   Demonic doppelgangers posing as refugees?
•   Do we face fetches (when Unseelie steal children to take back to phae court as slaves or converts, they leave artificial children in their place, made of glamour, magic, sticks and blood and leaves and leeches – homunculi)
•   Do we have to infiltrate the Unseelie court itself? Or ally with them against greater threat? Or are we sent to them to negotiate peace, which our superiors believe will fail, and we were just sent as decoys whilst our governments prepare military strike?
•   Is an entire civilian city or region quarantined off and left for dead by its government?
•   Do we have to enter the dream sea, or climb the endless stair? Or delve into one of our nations' worst military secrets?
•   Visit a strange, maddening city, with its towers and architecture all jutting in impossible directions, and inside-out buildings
•   Monsters that draw water from foes' bodies, or manifest from air or water inside people's bodies and kill bunch of NPCs before we get magic protection set up
•   Visit/consult with the great elusive desert caliph, who is a spirit of sand and manifests from the dunes itself, surrounded by fellow djinn nomads, made of sandstone, burnt wood and blue firestones
•   Do we have to tame riding beasts, from flock of giant eagles, or pteranadon-types?
•   Encounters with talking animal people – maybe all the beasts in Unseelie infected area are possessed by spirits, or all the villagers have been shapechanged into beasts, and their personalities begin to change to reflect their new forms?
•   Do we have to navigate great underground twisting tunnels of water ways? Or visit hell to bring someone back? Magic-infected area where walls and floor and sculpture is infused with graspings arms and hands and teeth, and blinking eyes, and moaning voices, begging for release?
•   Do we have to do subterfuge work whilst great parade or musical carnival is ongoing
•   A race that only communicates in song, or through braille or sign language – or borrow others voices, or speak through musical instruments?
•   A being that constantly dies and is reborn every 6 hours
•   Deal with maze-like catacombs criss-crossed with deadly traps
•   Or are we possessed and forced to do horrible things, or do we have to hunt down doppelgangers and clear our names?
•   Does someone have to fight a duel, atop 30' high pillars, or leaping from platforms made of raised crossed swords, by a tribe of swordsmasters? Maybe the swordmasters gather once each year, mass bouts and competitions, and allcomers must join the sport and try to not get knocked out of competition – but also try not to win and defeat the royal champion (who everyone else allows to win, otherwise face repercussions and execution), but just put up a challenging fight, to get in his/her good graces
•   Race of medusa children, sort of like tieflings, in that they are distrusted and reviled, but most aren't evil, and are trying to make up for their ancestors' demon pacts
•   Bear or walrus-people ice nomad cannibals
•   A merchant people who don't trade in money, but in dreams or secrets or hope or emotion, or years of people's life
•   A religious people who consider it the greatest honour to be sacrificed to a blood thirsty deity, or ruler, who stays young and ever-beautiful, through bathing daily in blood
•   Rescue dragon or beast's lost children?

Opening Scene
Start in fellowship of the ring/council of elrond style meeting - all the races, deciding what to do
Place = like green zone in iraq, a safe-ish fortress surrounded by hostiles
It's a giant standing stone /ley line nexus/ancient meeting place - forbidden
Beastmen patrol it / it's under siege?
Get given the mission and sent off on their way

Quote from: soviet;582281There's been a lot of discussion in the past about the merits of collaborative worldbuilding

Big difference between collaborative worldbuilding and narrative games. The former leads to the awesome, the latter is a wargame. I don't think there's been nearly enough discussion hereabouts on collaborative worldbuilding, if any.

Quote from: The Traveller;582286Big difference between collaborative worldbuilding and narrative games. The former leads to the awesome, the latter is a wargame. I don't think there's been nearly enough discussion hereabouts on collaborative worldbuilding, if any.

Well I think the assumption here has largely been that it's swinery, at least in some circles. I agree with you it can be awesome, and that's why I chose to post my example here, to show what can be done. I'm the GM of this campaign and I would never have come up with half this stuff on my own.

Soviet, go post this in thecbg.org.   The campaign builders guild will eat this up.

Quote from: soviet;582290Well I think the assumption here has largely been that it's swinery, at least in some circles. I agree with you it can be awesome, and that's why I chose to post my example here, to show what can be done. I'm the GM of this campaign and I would never have come up with half this stuff on my own.

Ah that explains why my last few threads in that direction went nowhere. Crazy talk really, you can play a perfectly good RPG in milieus that a bunch of strangers on a forum came up with. Those were the only threads I bothered reading on rpgnet actually. It might have been more constructive had you not opened the thread with [your product] though, all things considered. Yeah I get it but still.

In fact this is pretty damn engaging.

Quote from: soviet;582281There's been a lot of discussion in the past about the merits of collaborative worldbuilding so I thought I would show an example of what can be done. This is a setting me and my group have just put together for a new campaign of Other Worlds, this time based around the idea of doing a really epic fantasy saga (that's eventually going to turn into a global conflict a la the War of the Ring). It's a fair bit more detailed than is usually needed, and we ended up fleshing out the player characters afterwards via email, but most of this was done in one session. I would love to see other people post similar examples of their own!

The World of Amar

Broad Concept
An epic fantasy quest with many different factions, like in LotR or Babylon 5.
Politics, economics, and tensions between different factions should be a factor. A war is brewing.
The game starts in a neutral place between the races like Babylon 5 or the UN. A treaty city.
The characters are all representatives/champions of their races like the Fellowship of the Ring.
Some kind of common enemy has emerged that threatens all the free peoples
The characters are put together on a mission to stop it
Everyone has a special reason to be on the mission - some quality or power that will be needed
Characters may also be pushed/manipulated by their own faction who may have a separate agenda?
Threat could be a new land mass emerging from the sea - a relic of ancient times? 'The Tenth Kingdom'. A returned god? Some strange and powerful items might have been salvaged from this place already.
Or a new evil religion - led by an Osama Bin Thulsa Doom type figure. A false prophet. The rise of this cult could be what is causing the war (religious vs secular?). He could be an avatar or have some special item.
Or demons, planar invasion, dragons (allied to the forces on the island maybe?), gnomes, etc

Tone
More serious than comic (where possible). Magic is low key. Gritty. Characters can get hurt, even killed

History
Legends of the creation of the world
Unseelie war
The evernight
The Age of Darkness - lasted 3,000 years
Now = The Age of Twilight
Once a year the unseelie come back on winter solstice - longest night of the year
The unseelie have their sport - consume life, keep races down
Next = age of the sun? or age of darkness? - could go either way

Recent events:
New landmass emerges - its a prophecy or just discovered by ogres
Vision, ancient scroll
Lights of the world are getting dim
The dwarves have discovered something?
Ogres want to cross the great ocean

Geography
Huge staircase going down
frozen wastes
remnants of old civilisations
giant statue of unknown origin
city on stilts in marshland
incan temple in the firests (tie to beastmen?)

city states
treaty city - mos eisley-like lawless ankh moorpork
valley of the dead

Seas, lakes
An island
Gates/dimensional rift
Woods/forests
the underdark
swamp
floating rock cities in the sky
volcanos
Mordor
Indiana Jones-style dungeon/temple
A tunnel between two races (like the channel tunnel) as the surface is very dangerous

other continents are held at bay by some sort of magic barrier – invisible mist which sweeps ships away like bermuda triangle myths;

lots of dangerous/strange animals
centipedes
six legged riding cats - ridden by beastmen, minotaurs - fox guys, bull guys
flying monkeys
treehounds
Silly animal hybrids - rhinoroo, paul the dogtopus, duck-billed badgerpuss
Drakh keepers
Weird mounts
Unusual species abound - normal stuff like cats and dogs simply don't exist

Technology
Primitve tech - swords and shields and bows. Not a lot of armour. Chariots. Catapults.
Night steel/cold iron - dwarves invented after industrialisation - found the secret of reliably creating it.
Conan, Runequest, bronze age feel

Strange riding beasts as transports
Lizardmen - Star Wars lizard (from Revenge of the Sith).
Ogres - ships, dolphins, walk on land. Sea lubbers - prefer sea to land. Flying stingrays.
Dwarves - giant worms - tunnel underground. ride them like in Dune.
Faeries - giant dragonflies, lots of giant insects in their home forests. Unseelie ride horses in hunt.

Magic
Celtic style magic - leylines, faerie toadstool rings, dolmens and stone circles, potions/cauldrons, pagan nature worship, rituals, poisons, scrying the future, subtle magic rather than obvious fireballs, runes, weather influence, influencing natural world, speak to animals, cause fear, curses.
Harness power
superhuman jumps
rituals, grimoires, sacrifices
alchemical
morgoth/sauron-like - drain energy from self
spirits
leyline at midsummer's eve
faerie glamour - appear as other things
black obselisk

Different races draw energy in different ways
Dwarves draw energy from ley lines, which tap into the spirit world, stone circles and chasms - leaks up to the surface from the Earth's core
Ogres - where it's stormiest (ley lines). Small rocky island where the sages live - Isle of the Sorcerers.
Some live on boats - The Waterbound
Lizardmen = magic from smoke - rituals, capturing it. firestones. Look into the smoke = see into the other realm
Faeries: faerie gateways, wardstones - portals into the other realm

Failure = drains own energy/lifespan? attracts unseelie?
Unseelie give magical energy when destroyed
Dead spots where magic has been drained away

Factions
There are 4 races on Amar, representing the 4 elements.

Richard's race: The Ohmryn
Ogre-like in appearance. 7-8 feet tall, strong and tough like Conan. Skin shade varies by region.
Embody the element of Water.
Warriors, barbarians, traders, explorers.
Surprisingly cool and laid back. They invented surfing. Philosophical. But they can be stormy.
Honourable reputation - so know can talk in good faith
Spread out across the world.

Ben's race: The Basites
Earth elemental/dwarf types. Made of rock. Sandstone yellow in colour.
Embody the element of Earth.
Solitary, religious, stubborn.
Can talk to stone.
Don't breathe air. No eyes - magical senses.
Live underground. Industrial mining - uranium? They pollute the atmosphere.
Worship stone effigies? An obelisk/stonehenge

Steve's race: The Phae-touched
Insect-like/plant-like. 3ft tall. Skin made of wood, golden brown in colour. Butterfly wings
Embody the element of Air
Fickle and curious. Good at climbing. Lot of bards.
Live in the forest realm. Hive-like society. Share a collective subconscious.
Trees have personality
They are a good faction of faeries - most other faeries are evil
Dwarves mine the night steel - cold iron - that hurts them. Source of conflict.

Paul's race: The Kasheeta
Githzerai-like. Scaly grey-green lizardy-Cardassian colours
Embody the element of Fire.
Regenerate. Infra red vision. Ritualistic daggers
Peaceful society. Mountain monasteries.
Caste system. Workers - no lives. Warrior caste - angry, expansive. Religious caste - mystics.
Breathing in the mist from the sacred volcano
custodians of the flame. tempered the volcanos
lived in the world when it was dark - before there was a sun. Created the sun?

Enemies
Seelie/Unseelie - good and bad faeries.
Enemy = Unseelie: trolls, redcaps, pixies, fomorians.
Cruel and capricious, sadistic. Treat the humans as animals.
Balorians - one eyed giants with eye blast from their single evil eye

Undead - wraiths. realm of the dead. spirits.
Afterlife - no one knows what's beyond death
Curse of the unseelie - they are collecting souls for some ritual
Demons - but could be superstition
Dragons - or not?
Jason and the Argonauts skeletons, harpies, medusa
Giant scorpions, hydra, kraken

Conflicts
Tensions between the races, particularly Fire vs Water and Earth vs Air

Earth vs Air = the Basites pollute the atmosphere with their mining, forge weapons of cold iron, and chop down the forests to fuel their machines/expand their territory (thus destroying the Faetouched's habitat). The Faetouched are very unhappy about all of these things.

Fire vs Water = clash over the seas between their lands. The Kasheeta call it the Strait of Muldrasa, while the Ohmryn call it the Alamin Channel. The Ohmryn have spirit bonds with many sea creatures that live in these waters, from sharks and whales to dolphins and octopuses. But the Kasheeta hunt them for food and also for food (a lot like the Japanese and whaling). This is a big source of conflict.

Game Length
One 'movie length' adventure - about 12 sessions.

Player Characters
We said that we've done games at the lower power level so we should try something a bit more epic and fantastical. So we intend to try a power level of 40 and 2 trademarks. This puts the characters somewhere round the Aragorn/Legolas level in terms of both power and world-significance.

Future Adventures
Campaign = LotR style trek across the world.

•   Consult with a great sage or dragon - he releases great energy when killed
•   Government has the group's souls - thus the PCs must serve the state?
•   The PCs are drafted into being heroes? Like the dalai llama?
•   There could be specific set pieces - events that are prophecied to happen but the characters may be able to manipulate or prevent them and thus change the future?
•   Need to deliver a princess for sacrifice?
•   Need to persuade a high level character to assist the group?
•   Must travel through a barbarian land?
•   Maybe stop some foe from gaining magic item we later hear about, that might control the source of elemental powers/races – a gem that controls fire, water, wind and earth?
•   A wagon or chariot chase, or rooftop pursuit
•   Is there some horror emerging in new town that was built over site of horrific battle, but for 50 years had seemed fine? Maybe to investigate?
•   Maybe there are still lots of starving, homeless refugees around, after catastrophe destroyed their nation – and we need to help them, as no one else will?
•   Maybe we need to fight off attacks by separatists or ultra-nationalists who see our fame, and the new international unity, as threatening their way of life?
•   Do we carry out assassination?
•   Are we just used as celeb-like figureheads to make displays of new peace and progress, even though horribly assassinations/poverty/arms deals/deadly research/experimentation on underclass/slavery is still going on, and we just have to do interviews for local media, or make speeches about how life has improved? Or are we used to break strikes and protests, or defeat guerilla freedom fighters, or other ethically dubious things?
•   Is one of the character's family held hostage to ensure loyalty?
•   Negotiate with huge dragon would-be ally, once we have delivered sacrifice?
•   Do we have to rescue hostages? Or do we rescue people after natural disaster-type cataclysm?
•   Great sea journey
•   Does an ocean run with blood?
•   Demons possess all the children of village and attack their parents?
•   Do we lead forces in huge battle, including maybe one of us fighting against our own kinsmen? Maybe a great siege?
•   Face the Unseelie Wild Hunt
•   Do we enter underground complex, and have to escape in a tunnel that turns out to be the belly of a great demon worm?
•   Demonic doppelgangers posing as refugees?
•   Do we face fetches (when Unseelie steal children to take back to phae court as slaves or converts, they leave artificial children in their place, made of glamour, magic, sticks and blood and leaves and leeches – homunculi)
•   Do we have to infiltrate the Unseelie court itself? Or ally with them against greater threat? Or are we sent to them to negotiate peace, which our superiors believe will fail, and we were just sent as decoys whilst our governments prepare military strike?
•   Is an entire civilian city or region quarantined off and left for dead by its government?
•   Do we have to enter the dream sea, or climb the endless stair? Or delve into one of our nations' worst military secrets?
•   Visit a strange, maddening city, with its towers and architecture all jutting in impossible directions, and inside-out buildings
•   Monsters that draw water from foes' bodies, or manifest from air or water inside people's bodies and kill bunch of NPCs before we get magic protection set up
•   Visit/consult with the great elusive desert caliph, who is a spirit of sand and manifests from the dunes itself, surrounded by fellow djinn nomads, made of sandstone, burnt wood and blue firestones
•   Do we have to tame riding beasts, from flock of giant eagles, or pteranadon-types?
•   Encounters with talking animal people – maybe all the beasts in Unseelie infected area are possessed by spirits, or all the villagers have been shapechanged into beasts, and their personalities begin to change to reflect their new forms?
•   Do we have to navigate great underground twisting tunnels of water ways? Or visit hell to bring someone back? Magic-infected area where walls and floor and sculpture is infused with graspings arms and hands and teeth, and blinking eyes, and moaning voices, begging for release?
•   Do we have to do subterfuge work whilst great parade or musical carnival is ongoing
•   A race that only communicates in song, or through braille or sign language – or borrow others voices, or speak through musical instruments?
•   A being that constantly dies and is reborn every 6 hours
•   Deal with maze-like catacombs criss-crossed with deadly traps
•   Or are we possessed and forced to do horrible things, or do we have to hunt down doppelgangers and clear our names?
•   Does someone have to fight a duel, atop 30' high pillars, or leaping from platforms made of raised crossed swords, by a tribe of swordsmasters? Maybe the swordmasters gather once each year, mass bouts and competitions, and allcomers must join the sport and try to not get knocked out of competition – but also try not to win and defeat the royal champion (who everyone else allows to win, otherwise face repercussions and execution), but just put up a challenging fight, to get in his/her good graces
•   Race of medusa children, sort of like tieflings, in that they are distrusted and reviled, but most aren't evil, and are trying to make up for their ancestors' demon pacts
•   Bear or walrus-people ice nomad cannibals
•   A merchant people who don't trade in money, but in dreams or secrets or hope or emotion, or years of people's life
•   A religious people who consider it the greatest honour to be sacrificed to a blood thirsty deity, or ruler, who stays young and ever-beautiful, through bathing daily in blood
•   Rescue dragon or beast's lost children?

Opening Scene
Start in fellowship of the ring/council of elrond style meeting - all the races, deciding what to do
Place = like green zone in iraq, a safe-ish fortress surrounded by hostiles
It's a giant standing stone /ley line nexus/ancient meeting place - forbidden
Beastmen patrol it / it's under siege?
Get given the mission and sent off on their way

There's nothing in this description, first of all, that implies to me that its somehow a better result than if a single GM with an actual Vision of what he wants had made a setting.   There's a place to argue that it might be worse; or rather, that it may manage by sheer consensus to avoid some of the worst excesses of really stupid world-building (by bad GMs) but at the cost of never being able to allow the really great moments of genius that can only happen when you don't have to go along with what a committee wants.  Its always going to be middle-of-the-road and formulaic, and specific visions diluted by the need to make everyone happy and being forced to introduce bob's stupid idea about scimitar-wielding dark-elves because he really wants that.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;582730There's nothing in this description, first of all, that implies to me that its somehow a better result than if a single GM with an actual Vision of what he wants had made a setting.   There's a place to argue that it might be worse; or rather, that it may manage by sheer consensus to avoid some of the worst excesses of really stupid world-building (by bad GMs) but at the cost of never being able to allow the really great moments of genius that can only happen when you don't have to go along with what a committee wants.  Its always going to be middle-of-the-road and formulaic, and specific visions diluted by the need to make everyone happy and being forced to introduce bob's stupid idea about scimitar-wielding dark-elves because he really wants that.

I don't think that collaboratively built worlds are necessarily any better than those solely designed by the GM, at least not from the perspective of a third party. Both approaches have their merits. I think the advantage of collaborative worldbuilding is that the players are more likely to feel engaged in the setting (because they have had a hand in creating it and also by extension because it contains more ingredients that directly appeal to them). Amar isn't some Tolkienesque masterpiece, but it means something to us because we're the people who created it.

I don't think you can say it's middle of the road and formulaic, either. You may not like it, sure, and maybe it's not startlingly original, but it's certainly not just Tolkien or Forgotten Realms with the serial numbers filed off. At the very least it's a slightly unusual spin on some of the standard fantasy archetypes.

I'm the GM for this campaign. We brainstormed the key details but mostly it was a case of going 'Yeah, cool' and then building on each other's ideas. There weren't any votes or arguments or compromises about what to include. The races in particular were created entirely by their 'owning' players with basically no input from anyone else. As GM there's nothing in there that I don't like or wish I could change. No-one has put a gun to my head or to the head of any of my loved ones to make me go along with things. I enjoy being given a set of basic ingredients and then going away and shaping a campaign backstory from that. I have a ton of surprises up my sleeve about what's really going on and I believe the players are going to be shocked (in a good way) by some of the things that happen next.

I understand your line of reasoning when you say "players will be more engaged with their setting", but I don't think think its true.  I think you may be able to say "collaborative setting design means players will be less likely to outight reject the setting", that's true enough to be likely.

However, what happens in other situations, where the setting is created by an individual with a given vision, is that others will either reject or accept that vision.  They'll either like the setting or not.  But to do that, they'll also have to discover that setting.

Players who made a collaborative setting will of course like at least the parts they contributed to the setting; they might not like parts others gave to it, or they might. But they're not getting to DISCOVER the setting.
This takes something serious away from the game.  Even if its the Forgotten Realms or Middle-Earth, you'll be discovering the GM's take on the setting.  But when you are expecting that the setting was created by consensus, you don't WANT the GM's take on it, you want it the way you all agreed it would be.  It thus takes away from the possibility of being surprised, and is even likely to take away the possibility of Immersion.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;583304I understand your line of reasoning when you say "players will be more engaged with their setting", but I don't think think its true.  I think you may be able to say "collaborative setting design means players will be less likely to outight reject the setting", that's true enough to be likely.

I find that established settings are difficult to play in. Basically because no-one other than the GM tends to read all the material. This puts the players at a further remove from the setting and can also create a kind of analysis paralysis for the GM out of sheer weight of information.

This is a pity because detailed and engaging settings that everyone gets are fucking awesome. One way round it is to play in an iconic setting like Star Wars or Middle-earth where everyone in the group already knows it inside out. The second way round it is to make up the setting yourself as a group (so instead of reading a shitload of stuff you just have to be present for the worldbuilding session) and continue building on it as you play (so you can start out with something sketchy and only add the details you need as you need them). The third option, lending people all the sourcebooks or writing up your own potted introduction to Synnibar and expecting people to read it, is in my experience just a pipe dream.

A detailed 'GM vision' setting that only really exists in the GM's head solves the problems from the GM's side but not the problems from the players side.

Quote from: RPGPundit;583304However, what happens in other situations, where the setting is created by an individual with a given vision, is that others will either reject or accept that vision.  They'll either like the setting or not.  But to do that, they'll also have to discover that setting.

Players who made a collaborative setting will of course like at least the parts they contributed to the setting; they might not like parts others gave to it, or they might. But they're not getting to DISCOVER the setting.
This takes something serious away from the game.  Even if its the Forgotten Realms or Middle-Earth, you'll be discovering the GM's take on the setting.  But when you are expecting that the setting was created by consensus, you don't WANT the GM's take on it, you want it the way you all agreed it would be.  It thus takes away from the possibility of being surprised, and is even likely to take away the possibility of Immersion.

So far I've done four campaigns based around group worldbuilding and I don't find that the sense of exploration and discovery is any less than in our other games. The group worldbuilding bit sets the tone of the campaign and gives the GM their basic ingredients, but the GM still has a huge role to play in shaping those ingredients into an actual world. For example, in the fantasy setting outlined above, I've since made up loads of details about the unseelie (what they want, where they live, who their most powerful champions are and what they can do), the secret agenda of each race's rulers, the secret history of the last war with the unseelie 10,000 years ago, precursor races, a terrible secret about one character's origins, what's on this mysterious island, and a wide variety of other key NPCs and locations that they might come across. None of the players know about any of this yet, it will all be discovered by them during play. This is how I've done all 4 of my group worldbuilding campaigns and it's worked out fine.

Quote from: soviet;583825This is a pity because detailed and engaging settings that everyone gets are fucking awesome...

A detailed 'GM vision' setting that only really exists in the GM's head solves the problems from the GM's side but not the problems from the players side.

I'm pretty much a 'GM Vision' setting kind of a guy, and have not before considered letting the players create the setting. I was always under the impression that if players really wanted something in a setting they would put together a campaign setting themselves, and then run that campaign for everyone at the table. Doing it this way keeps GM burnout down as well, as there is a round robin series of games going on, so if a GM gets tired of running a game they can sit in and play for awhile in another campaign.

I also don't see any problem with GM's collaborating and sharing common elements (races, locales, unique features, etc.) between gaming worlds. This could get sticky though if a GM ever plans on commecially publishing the setting.

One other thing that may help, in introducing new settings, I always have some common touchstones that players are familiar with be it races, classes, equipment, or themes that allow them to easily engage the setting even if most of what is in the setting is new or unfamiliar to the players.

Quote from: soviet;583825One way round it is to play in an iconic setting like Star Wars or Middle-earth where everyone in the group already knows it inside out. The second way round it is to make up the setting yourself as a group (so instead of reading a shitload of stuff you just have to be present for the worldbuilding session) and continue building on it as you play (so you can start out with something sketchy and only add the details you need as you need them). The third option, lending people all the sourcebooks or writing up your own potted introduction to Synnibar and expecting people to read it, is in my experience just a pipe dream.

There's a fourth way around it - introduce the setting in small, bite-sized pieces that players can digest a bit at a time, but still stick to a single vision. In my experience, that's a much better way than the three you mentioned.

Quote from: soviet;583825So far I've done four campaigns based around group worldbuilding and I don't find that the sense of exploration and discovery is any less than in our other games. The group worldbuilding bit sets the tone of the campaign and gives the GM their basic ingredients, but the GM still has a huge role to play in shaping those ingredients into an actual world. For example, in the fantasy setting outlined above, I've since made up loads of details about the unseelie (what they want, where they live, who their most powerful champions are and what they can do), the secret agenda of each race's rulers, the secret history of the last war with the unseelie 10,000 years ago, precursor races, a terrible secret about one character's origins, what's on this mysterious island, and a wide variety of other key NPCs and locations that they might come across. None of the players know about any of this yet, it will all be discovered by them during play. This is how I've done all 4 of my group worldbuilding campaigns and it's worked out fine.
09-17-2012 09:07 PM

Just to clarify my previous comments here, collaborative worldbuilding is fine online, where you have a group of experienced people that will probably never play at the same table picking and choosing what they like from a thread (what I thought you were talking about). That can get epic. I'd rather read one of those threads than fifty edition war/OSR/kickstarter/gossip threads. Sadly there only seems to be the shadow of one on the main page at the moment, this is what I'm talking about.

What you seem to be talking about is the GM and players sitting down and putting a world together. That's a whole other condiment which I can't see working at all, it does tend to lead to design-by-committee, which is derivative and tedious most of the time.

I mean if you can't get players interested, engaged and involved in a paragraph or two the milieu probably wasn't worth much anyway. Part of the joy of reading a new book or seeing a new movie is tripping over weird stuff that everyone else takes for granted.

Quote from: The Traveller;583900What you seem to be talking about is the GM and players sitting down and putting a world together. That's a whole other condiment which I can't see working at all, it does tend to lead to design-by-committee, which is derivative and tedious most of the time.

Well, as I say, I've done it four times now and it's worked out every time. We've done a cyberpunk game, a victorian horror game set in an asylum, an alternative history WW2 zombies game, and now a fantasy game. If you look at the write-up of our fantasy game I don't think you can honestly say it's derivative and tedious. I'm not saying it's amazing, but I think it is proof that this approach can work with the right group.

Collaborative world building is an interesting concept indeed. I've, at times, had particularly active players present ideas to me on how the world could/should work and encourage players to come up with unique facets about their characters both when being presented with their backgrounds and during play. I do feel that the GM should be the final arbitrator as to what gets accepted and what doesn't as the GM is and should be the primary world builder. I don't see anything inherently wrong or inspiring about this write up and I'm going to assume it is a case of "you had to have been there" but if everyone involved enjoyed it then I say keep it up.

I remember one time I had a player who's barbarian character was... critically insulted by another character. So, on the spot, he made up a ritualistic duel of sorts that his tribe, according to him, performed in order to air out grievances between members. He even gave rules. You can bring whatever you want to the duel, size of the makeshift arena, no magical aid right before or during the duel, no outside help, etc etc. All of this, even the kind of "glove slap" you do to challenge someone to it, right on the spot. He ran it by me, I accepted and it was a go.

The funny thing about this story is that the opposing player decided his character was truly sorry about what he had done and, when he went to shake his hand before the start of the duel, he healed him in order to make it a more fair fight (the barbarian had been injured thanks to this character's buffoonery earlier). Now I was ready for the duel to commence but then the barbarian called it off and everyone at the table was confused. The player than recited his own rules, that no magical aid was to be given right before or during the fight. That meant that he just lost by forfeit.Having lost the fight, and having done so by dishonorable means, he now could not act upon his vengeance because of the tribal law he had just made up 10 minutes prior.

Its a story me and mine still tell to this day and is pretty much what had me start to encourage the behavior to this day.