tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-392427526916288536.post1919924325909808230..comments2024-03-25T00:18:14.319-07:00Comments on Against The Wicked City: Minimalism and Maximalism (AKA 'do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the Lore').Joseph Manolahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05387275537008858939noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-392427526916288536.post-72951384196986888352017-04-24T08:33:01.041-07:002017-04-24T08:33:01.041-07:00An inspirational read, thanks! Coming at the right...An inspirational read, thanks! Coming at the right time, too, because I need to kick off something new next Tuesday and am asking myself these questions...DerKastellanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17108771318010984386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-392427526916288536.post-63475660367701963302017-04-17T14:42:56.828-07:002017-04-17T14:42:56.828-07:00Oh, wow, Exalted was an amazingly extreme example ...Oh, wow, Exalted was an amazingly extreme example of the minimalism to maximalism transition. It went from a wide-open world where anything seemed possible to feeling tight and cramped and desperately over-defined in about five years, which might actually be some kind of record...Joseph Manolahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05387275537008858939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-392427526916288536.post-90919433228359032332017-04-17T13:20:29.808-07:002017-04-17T13:20:29.808-07:00Belatedly, I think a good illustration of the gap ...Belatedly, I think a good illustration of the gap between designer intent and what the tool lends itself to with maximalist setting design is the difference between how developers talk about Exalted (big empty spaces on the map! make your own!) and how the fandom usually ends up talking about it (fixated on the parts detailed in books).Niciashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10115101731336180358noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-392427526916288536.post-21952177955160240462017-04-06T02:00:08.834-07:002017-04-06T02:00:08.834-07:00Hmmmm. It seems I am unlikely to ever become a Rom...Hmmmm. It seems I am unlikely to ever become a Romantic Protagonist.<br /><br />Not getting caught up in ancient disputes is one thing; but it would not be good to blunder into something half-cocked and unaware. Perhaps especially so on the tabletop, when our rag-tag band of adventurers is readily outnumbered....<br /><br />My mind goes almost instantly to the 1966 A Man for All Seasons, and Sir Thomas More's speech on the Devil and the Law (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDBiLT3LASk). Then I remember what happened to Sir Thomas More.<br />Solomon VKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11763252777153908412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-392427526916288536.post-14151916027804142092017-04-06T01:28:43.859-07:002017-04-06T01:28:43.859-07:00'The engineer knows that he has achieved perfe...'The engineer knows that he has achieved perfection, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away...'<br /><br />I don't want to be *too* anti-maximalist. There are some kinds of games you can only really have if the setting is sufficiently nuanced and concrete for the PCs to really get stuck into the details of how their world works. But I do think that minimalism is usually going to be more useful in actual play!Joseph Manolahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05387275537008858939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-392427526916288536.post-30784134096343074002017-04-06T00:31:00.645-07:002017-04-06T00:31:00.645-07:00Campaign settings have quite different requirement...Campaign settings have quite different requirements than worlds for vast series of fiction. A campaign setting has to be first and foremost give GMs the ability to run their own adventures in it. Metaplot and timeline advances are in direct conflict with that. It makes both players and GMs an audience to the writers, but in an RPG it's the GM who is supposed to be in charge.Yorahttp://spriggans-den.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-392427526916288536.post-30834299769657581622017-04-06T00:27:30.143-07:002017-04-06T00:27:30.143-07:00I feel that accessibility is a major factor in goo...I feel that accessibility is a major factor in good worldbuilding and setting design. Glorantha, Harnworld, and Tekumel all sound like really cool settings from what people say about them, but at this point I feel like I am decades too late to have any possible hope of getting into it. They appear to be so big that it seems impossible to find a point of entry to start making sense of it.<br /><br />I've been working on a setting for six years now and the entire time I've been constantly shrinking it and condensing it down to essential bits as I am getting more and more of an understanding of how many popular settings are constructed.<br /><br />I think in the end clarity of vision and accessibility beat everything else. A setting doesn't become better when it gets bigger. Often I actually see the opposite happening, with the thematic core becoming increasingly blurry, the magic disappearing and being replaced by clear rational explanations, and an increasingly growing of knowledge being required to have any clue what the movers and shakers are trying to do.<br /><br />I wouldn't exactly call my own worldbuilding minimalist as I am still putting a lot of effort into giving all elements some considerable depth. But keeping the number of moving parts down and making them easy to grasp is the main objective. Which can actually be quite labor intensive as well.Yorahttp://spriggans-den.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-392427526916288536.post-6766212948816105482017-04-05T16:26:37.383-07:002017-04-05T16:26:37.383-07:00Well, the thing about history is that you can go a...Well, the thing about history is that you can go as minimalist or as maximalist as you like. You can go super-vague (e.g. 'The setting is the Roman empire, there are centurions and gladiators and shit, let's go'), or super-specific (e.g. 'The setting is Roman-occupied Dacia in 68 AD, you're playing auxilliaries in a legion loyal to Vespasian, here's your preliminary reading list'), but they're likely to be very different sorts of games!<br /><br />Like you, I've always found over-developed settings stifling. It's one reason I've never tried to run a game set within my actual period of academic expertise...Joseph Manolahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05387275537008858939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-392427526916288536.post-44539860564191602592017-04-05T16:17:12.255-07:002017-04-05T16:17:12.255-07:00I think that's true, and that it's a big r...I think that's true, and that it's a big reason why people often prefer the earliest versions of settings, where the archetypes are likely to be present in their purest forms. The Empire are Nazis. Vader is a dark knight. Obi-Wan is a wizard. Han is a cowboy. Once you start trying to explain what a 'Jedi' actually is, and how their religion works, and where it came from, and what it believes in, you inevitably lose some of the conceptual clarity, and thus some of the appeal, of the original...Joseph Manolahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05387275537008858939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-392427526916288536.post-87882642336540869362017-04-05T16:12:51.622-07:002017-04-05T16:12:51.622-07:00The last point is the really crucial one. It's...The last point is the really crucial one. It's actually traditional for romantic protagonists to be outsiders, for precisely this reason - they're the ones who see through to the heart of the situation, rather than getting lost in all the details. So while everyone else is muttering about 'legal precedents' and 'upholding traditions' and 'maintaining social decorum' and so on, the romantic heroine just cuts through all that and says, look, these people are *suffering* and that is *not right* and I'm going to *do* something about it.<br /><br />(And across the room somewhere, the hero is like: 'Who *is* that girl, who refuses to accept what everyone else here takes for granted?' And so a thousand romance narratives are born...)<br /><br />I mean, you *can* do the insider perspective version and work to reform the system from within and all that. But the reverse is much more common. And approaching situations as a complete outsider can have a diplomatic value of its own...Joseph Manolahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05387275537008858939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-392427526916288536.post-21961033946332620312017-04-05T11:44:18.723-07:002017-04-05T11:44:18.723-07:00i guess early in gaming more ppl made own settings...i guess early in gaming more ppl made own settings and advntures - i found in my club i had loyal gamers but most original settings seemed a turn off.<br /><br />I cant play a setting where players have read every novel. I don't like overly mapped out settings. Some like rq3 glorantha and mutant epoch leave blank areas amongst hyper detailed settings for GM creations. Im going through boxes of old settings and maps of mine and hope t0 publish some on my blog. Historical settings have comparable issues but at least i dont feel like im wasting my life reading history rather than a poor fantasy setting.Konsumterrahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18170560484656800416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-392427526916288536.post-82722181818101958532017-04-05T11:23:47.984-07:002017-04-05T11:23:47.984-07:00This is where archetypes become a really useful to...This is where archetypes become a really useful tool to make significant shortcuts in explaining the setting to the audience. Star Wars excells in it. There is very little exposition of any kind and pretty much anything you need to know is communicated through elements the audience already recognizes. The Empire has officers wearing Nazi uniforms and skeleton armor, and their boss is a huge guy in black armor with a skull helmet. Their ship is massive and angular, while the rebell ship is tiny with rounded shapes and red color. You don't need to be told anything about what kind of Empire the Empire is, or how well the war is going for the Rebells.<br />"Don't be too proud of this pileup of lore you constructed. The ability to be truly original is insignificant next to the power of recognizable archetypes."Yorahttp://spriggans-den.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-392427526916288536.post-10544554261557421262017-04-05T04:43:56.369-07:002017-04-05T04:43:56.369-07:00A fascinating post - particularity as someone who ...A fascinating post - particularity as someone who posts an awful lot of reheated lore!<br /><br />The minimalist position has it's advantages, it would seem - but I wonder how it corresponds to the Romantic Fantasy that has partially inspired you?<br /><br />After all, if I am to sit down with the Ruritanian ambassador to avert war, having a notion of Ruritanian cultural norms would be useful ("Never serve pork before fish; the ladies must be served before any of the gentlemen."); likewise any relevant background ("Our ancestral claim to the Jotunsberg Mountains, where several promising veins of Orichalchum have unearthed....").<br /><br />Of course, individual motivations are likely to be more complex ("Pah! An ancient superstition that I place no faith in!") and an Outsider need not be unsympathetic to those on the inside. <br />Solomon VKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11763252777153908412noreply@blogger.com