Milestones

[ravells]

My kind of embryonic idea is that we have some sort of 'living game' tied into the next CWBP project.

[industrygothica]

My kind of embryonic idea is that we have some sort of 'living game' tied into the next CWBP project.

That'd be cool.

[Jaxilon]

***** FYI - I am a pretty good brainstormer and think that even if an idea sounds crazy it might trigger a better one in the next person down the line. That said, I may go off here a bit but tis all for the benefit of the project ***

It really does sound interesting. It would take a really good collaboration to pull off. Then again we are talking about us and this is one of the few places that successfully has already done a CWBP and done it very well.

How did you imagine a 'living game' going on?

My first thought was that we'd need a lot more history and faction detail within an area and then we'd need people to represent some of these factions. They would then decide what they wanted to do and we could write the history and map the changes that resulted. This would take some real organization and a few committees to pull off.

A few of these I could forsee (I just made up names so whatever):

The Ancients (Basically they would say what comes into existance) - They who hand out areas to be mapped and make final decisions
Various Governors and Lords: Those who build cities and/or locations within cities or oversee such creations. City Lords I guess.
Adventurer Guild: Those who help determine the direction of the Heroes within the world. Heck if we had any VTT experts we could perhaps RP some of these events.
Historians or Bards: They would write history or events that occurred. Basically the authors to make sense of what happens.

There obviously would be all sorts of offshoots on this and folks could belong to more than one Committee.

I hope you have a simpler idea because to pull of what my first thought was would take a Herculean effort. I think it would be a blast to do but we would really need some good oversight to keep things from unraveling or ending up with two versions of the same story with opposite endings.

So in other words you have a community story complete with world and maps for all things.

Now, even if this seems preposterous to you and is WAY off what you meant, it should be obvious that you fired up a creative flow within at least one person here.

So, what did YOU mean

PS. I had to hold myself back because I was in danger of getting on a roll. One of those types of things I am want to do just so I can watch my wife roll her eyes at me, hehe.

[Jaxilon]

ROFL, sorry for this double post, but I just realized, when I replied to this I thought I was on page one of a new thread not page 3. Please take that into account when you read it so you don't think I'm completely out of my mind, hahah.

[industrygothica]

Honestly, that all sounds like overkill to me. I've been running a game in the Witchlight Strand for a bit, and just the simple act of running it has given it a life more than what is currently written. I've incorporated another small town and a barbarian region that aren't on the current incarnation of the map, and each of those regions have a history of their own. And I don't think the citizens of Port Magalie will soon be forgetting the day when a burning ship crashed into the docks. Never mind the heroic battle that ensued.

There are other things that I've got in mind as well; things born from the actions of those characters currently in the game. I won't get into detail there, but it is definitely something that could have an impact on the forthcoming history of the region.

In short, history needs to be made before it can be recorded. At least that's my $0.02.


-IG

[Jaxilon]

You are probably right, I tend to go big and end up with less

This would work for you because you are the designer of that section of map but what of others who might play in the Strand? Might they be doing things just the opposite of what you are? Then we would have two different histories. Regular old adventuring would be fine as stories for the backdrop of the map but anything that really shakes things up needs to be controlled or we will have a mess. For instance, kings being overthrown and major political events that contradict one another. At the very least I would think they need to pass "histories" on through you. Some will help some will hinder. Keep the former, chuck the later. I suppose you could toss adventure seeds out there for other gamers to use as a basis for their games and that would probably help keep things in line.

Is building more histories what is meant by making this into a living world or are we wanting more maps showing changes to cities/towns/regions?

[Redrobes]

We talked about this sometime back and I proposed that we all chuck stuff onto a temporary page of things going on and it gets arbitrated down. In a sense the GM does not have that overall mastery of the "official" copy of the world, just his own games version. I think I could spend ages on how we could mitigate it all etc but since we only have one big yellow star on the whole map after a few years, I am rather inclined to wait until this campaign contention is a real problem before we worry about how we can solve it.

We need more people playing in the world first !

[industrygothica]

You are probably right, I tend to go big and end up with less

This would work for you because you are the designer of that section of map but what of others who might play in the Strand? Might they be doing things just the opposite of what you are? Then we would have two different histories. Regular old adventuring would be fine as stories for the backdrop of the map but anything that really shakes things up needs to be controlled or we will have a mess. For instance, kings being overthrown and major political events that contradict one another. At the very least I would think they need to pass "histories" on through you. Some will help some will hinder. Keep the former, chuck the later. I suppose you could toss adventure seeds out there for other gamers to use as a basis for their games and that would probably help keep things in line.

Is building more histories what is meant by making this into a living world or are we wanting more maps showing changes to cities/towns/regions?

I understand what you're saying there, but I think it's something that could be solved as easily as assigning a small (2-3) panel of judges to the project. Simply, adventures would have to be submitted and then approved before becoming canon. If you've ever looked at any of the Living Worlds over at EN World, that's about how they do it, though maybe slightly more overcomplicated.

Regardless, Redrobes is correct in that there should be more people making their impact on the world before any of it is a real issue.

[Jaxilon]

I agree with exactly what you are saying.

[industrygothica]

We talked about this sometime back and I proposed that we all chuck stuff onto a temporary page of things going on and it gets arbitrated down. In a sense the GM does not have that overall mastery of the "official" copy of the world, just his own games version. I think I could spend ages on how we could mitigate it all etc but since we only have one big yellow star on the whole map after a few years, I am rather inclined to wait until this campaign contention is a real problem before we worry about how we can solve it.

We need more people playing in the world first !

Which may be sooner than we thought, considering the dire state of things in Hania now. Talk about round 1 going to the bad guys!

-IG