Cyclone231
2007-11-06, 01:46 PM
In the October Roll Call thread of Tears of Blood, ten people posted. These ten people apparently get bogged down discussing minor details. For example, in August 2007, there was a discussion thread that was active, called “Feldarin Magic Universities”. For at least eight posts, there was a discussion as to whether the Baran magic university should be located above or below the sands, whether or not it should be surrounded by a sandstorm, and similar.
As you may have guessed from the above paragraph, I feel that the first community world-building project is petering off. On a fundamental level, it is finished: the races are decided, as are the various cultures, the underlying history, the technological level, the deities, et cetera. All that’s left is to wrap up the details, such as the precise names of the various secondary locales, write up the various races, and so forth.
The thing exacerbates is that, in spite of instating a wiki-based system for wrapping this all up, it still hasn’t been done. Although the [wiki] Races thread was created over four months ago, it has done very little. To take one of the worst examples, the dwarves? They have the following information on their page:
• Their name
• Their racial traits
The same holds true for the giantkin. The plaguetouched are even worse; they have no information. That’s right, not even racial traits. There isn’t even a page there.
My only conclusion is that the system is ineffective. While it is effective for laying down the fundamentals to a setting (the setting bible), it becomes completely ineffective for expanding the setting into a functional campaign setting book along the lines of Eberron Campaign Setting simply because it’s such a slow process.
This is why I recommend that someone start a new world-building project, with a key functional difference. After the groundwork is layed out - the philosophies, religions and cultures of the races, the brief historical timeline, the various important changes or new information (ex: paladins are any Lawful) - we select a person of admirable quality to write the chapter that the groundwork is laid out for, rather than having people propose and discuss and vote for umpteen pages about what the exact text of something should read. After this chapter is completed, it is discussed and perhaps editted, if necessary. Then, once everything is done, it is done.
The reason that this is posted in Homebrew is the Tears of Blood forum has a relatively small number of readers, and additionally, the application of these ideas would serve to finish it off, with little more discussion or interest, whereas beginning anew would allow the activity that originally surrounded Tears of Blood in it’s initial stages.
What are your opinions on this?
As you may have guessed from the above paragraph, I feel that the first community world-building project is petering off. On a fundamental level, it is finished: the races are decided, as are the various cultures, the underlying history, the technological level, the deities, et cetera. All that’s left is to wrap up the details, such as the precise names of the various secondary locales, write up the various races, and so forth.
The thing exacerbates is that, in spite of instating a wiki-based system for wrapping this all up, it still hasn’t been done. Although the [wiki] Races thread was created over four months ago, it has done very little. To take one of the worst examples, the dwarves? They have the following information on their page:
• Their name
• Their racial traits
The same holds true for the giantkin. The plaguetouched are even worse; they have no information. That’s right, not even racial traits. There isn’t even a page there.
My only conclusion is that the system is ineffective. While it is effective for laying down the fundamentals to a setting (the setting bible), it becomes completely ineffective for expanding the setting into a functional campaign setting book along the lines of Eberron Campaign Setting simply because it’s such a slow process.
This is why I recommend that someone start a new world-building project, with a key functional difference. After the groundwork is layed out - the philosophies, religions and cultures of the races, the brief historical timeline, the various important changes or new information (ex: paladins are any Lawful) - we select a person of admirable quality to write the chapter that the groundwork is laid out for, rather than having people propose and discuss and vote for umpteen pages about what the exact text of something should read. After this chapter is completed, it is discussed and perhaps editted, if necessary. Then, once everything is done, it is done.
The reason that this is posted in Homebrew is the Tears of Blood forum has a relatively small number of readers, and additionally, the application of these ideas would serve to finish it off, with little more discussion or interest, whereas beginning anew would allow the activity that originally surrounded Tears of Blood in it’s initial stages.
What are your opinions on this?