who wants to make a world?

[Gamerprinter]

well, now that im outta school i've found myself with an abundance of free time on my hands, so i thought why not make a map. I'm still learning how to do this in photoshop, but i do love making worlds and such, so i my idea is to have people make their own section of the world and then combine it into one map. Then as a group make a collaborative history for the world and such. So who wants in?

Honestly, as already mentioned this particular board is dedicated to a World Building project already, that's two+ years old, with hundreds of man hours involved and its not even 10% complete. Really if you want to get active, this community project already has legs and people are even campaigning in it already. It would be in our interests if more people got involved in this world building project - which means your participation is warranted.

Do we really want to start from scratch all over again, throw out the countless hours put in to start anew? I really doubt many here would be interested in that prospect.

To get to the real truth in the matter, I think every world-building game master is bit like "god", where we each want to create our own worlds. Participating in other people's worlds is less inviting, but does build a community as in our own Cooperative World Building Project - the CWBP. However, my lack of participation really hinges on the available geography doesn't fit my creative needs for cultures and nations I want to build. I tried working on my Japan analog in the CWBP, but none of the available island groups fit my needed geography, climatology or distance to available continents. So I've hardly dabbled at all.

Do I want to get involved in somebody else's new world building project? Answer, never again - its my world or its no world. I will update aspects to work I've already done in the CWBP, but my interests are in my own worlds mostly.

Ultimately, I doubt you'll find many volunteers for starting a new world. I think you will get more participation by joining in our world build.

GP

[Spectre216]

yeah but why come to a cooperative world building forum with a big cooperatively built world, and say you want to start something which is essentially exactly the same as what is already happening?

because this is a cooperative world building forum, where else would i go to get a team together. And why would i want to start something new? Because it's something new, i don't want to edit something another group has worked on, because i'd like to work on something new. I understand where you're coming from, because the projects would be the same, but why not have a little competition?

[Redrobes]

Your perfectly fine to post about starting a new world and doing all that and it would be welcomed and we would help out, provide tips, sensible critiques etc but its been such a slog to get all the tiles done on this small section that we have here and to be honest it has not had huge participation. There's a number of people who have done several tiles in the 30 sectors in Ansium which can be offset by a few tiles which have had multiple participants but its not like its had barrel loads of people piling in with maps. We have had to scrape it to get where we are and its been a struggle and I don't think that people will want to go back and start anew unless there's some really unique and special reason for doing it.

You say that you don't want to edit something that another group has worked on but a community map building project like you describe is exactly that. You don't get to map it all in the way you want it and you have to give and take a bit. I think your not explaining why other people would want to edit your map. What is it about an unmapped bit of the CWBP world that's not agreeable with you and what is it that your proposed map is going to be that this one is not. Only then do I think we can start to think about plans to work on making it.

[Ascension]

He wants a different project, nothing wrong with that. If he gets some takers then more power to them and have fun with it.

[Jaxilon]

I think he's wanting to head up a world building project which is an ambitious task. I say more power to him. It is a rough bit of road to travel as evidenced by how many few community world building projects are out there. Still, the more folks who attempt it the better chance of someone coming up with a slicker way to pull it off. I would say Spectre, some of the points mentioned could help you in your endeavor. For instance, it seems you need a plan to pitch that would sound appealing so others would want to join. I don't think anyone here is against the idea it's just that the CWBP here represents a huge labor of love and is still a long way from finished. It looks like it will remain that way too.

I also think, a lot of people here have their own worlds they are working on so I think the CWBP gets the left overs, as in when they don't have anything to do of their own they might whip up a map for it. This happens every now and then.

You might get a few who would like to try helping you build this but if you can show a unique twist to how you are going to do it, or something that makes it different I think you would get more helpers. There is nothing at all wrong in wanting to try your hand at doing the same thing either so don't feel like you absolutely have to make if different in some way.

You may also be finding that most of the old timers around here have burned a few candles on this CWBP and likely do not want to reinvent the wheel without a really good reason. There are still a lot of newcomers to the site though so no harm asking.

It is also a little like showing up to a playground basketball game that has been going on for hours - everyone is covered in sweat, unlacing their shoes, drinking Gatorade and you all full of energy say, "Hey who's up for a game of full court press!" <-- hehe, if you understand what I mean you might see how it could be hard to find a lot of takers, although there are usually a couple.

Finally, while I agree with pretty much everything said, some of the posts could seem a bit discouraging which I do not believe any of them were meant to be. Nobody here is a dream killer because we would be long gone from this site if we were. Keep up the good work and stick around, you will find many helpful folks here even if your project takes some time to get it off the ground.

Good fortunes on your endeavor Spectre, whatever you decide to do.

[rdanhenry]

Let me put the question another way: If I were to find myself with the time and inclination to work on a cooperative mapping project, why would I want to choose yours in place of the existing CWBP, which has a proven track record (it's already much more developed than most of these projects ever get), already has several skilled contributors who would probably be extra-ready to help me out if I had any difficulties, and which would probably get me more recognition due to the existing development and presence on these forums of prior contributors? What's special about your project that would outweigh all of that? "It's new" isn't a selling point; it's reason to suspect this will be just another "neat idea" that fizzles in the face of the difficulty of cooperative world-building.