Buy-In with Systemized Setting Design

[Lee-Anne O'Reilly]

Last week, our Primetime Adventures Director, Luke, had to cancel at the last minute. Instead of running pick-up TSOY, I told Scott and Tim about jonathan's nifty group setting design system and we decided to give it a shot.

Wow.

We were all amazed by the convergence of consensus, especially given that we started out with wildly different technology levels: Tim wanted iron age tech with rare powerful magic; I wanted mostly modern with some hybrid weirdness; and Scott wanted fusion and interstellar travel. We came up with a space opera rich with mageocracy, ether sharks, reality-bending music, and much more whacky fun. The most unusual bit is probably the religion; the gods are real, and the worship typically involves individual short-term contracts between a person and the deity(ies) of their choice. Clergy are lawyers and marketing staff, and contract terms can extend into the afterlife.

We had a lot of fun, and we agreed that the setting was great and we'd love to play in it, though I wasn't too keen on the premise that the PCs would be a ship-based roving team of trouble-shooters for one of the ruling mages. Mostly because our current PTA series is a Firefly spinoff, and I'd like a break from the ship-board trope.

When this week's PTA episode ran short, we gave the setting thing a second shot, both to show Luke how cool the process was, and to try it out with jonathan's original setting element categories, as I had misremembered a few the first time around. While things started out similarly, they quickly took a darker turn, and we wound up with a blasted world of isolated city-states carelessly plundering the spiritual essence of the planet to power their magic. Tribal nomads armed with (I LOVE Luke's description here) "stone age with a gooey steam-tech center" roam the dying landscape while the remaining free sentient spirits attempt to break the power of the mecha-mages. Fate and environmentalism underlie all.

Once again, playing design was a lot of fun, and we created a fabulously rich and exciting setting in under two hours. This time, though, there was a lot of hesitation about actually playing it. Scott said it would depend on the system, and the rest of us agreed. Tim pointed out that the first setting would play well with TSOY's system and volunteered to run it. It wasn't till after Luke left that I realised we were planning to play the setting that Luke hadn't helped design.

So we arrive at my concern. Will it work? Three of us are creatively invested in this setting, while the fourth knows it only through hearsay. What can/should we do to help him buy in?

[Andrew Cooper]

What was Luke's reaction when you described the outcome of the first session of world building?  Does he have a history in the group of having a hard time investing in a setting he didn't "vote" on or does he generally jump in with both feet regardless?  I don't know how long your group has been together or whether you have answers to these questions but they seem to be important to me. 

[Callan S.]

Hi Lee-Anne,

Are you sure you actually want to play in either of the settings? Was playing in them really the point of creating them? For example, while you were creating them, was there a sense of impatience anywhere, even in a positive vein, that people wanted creation to be over so they could play in it? Or not - people were happy doing the activity presented and were looking forward to nothing else - creation was all they wanted to do.

Was creation play itself - the settings aren't really intended to be played. Creation was play. Just cause you bake a cake, doesn't mean you have to eat it. Are you sure your not all forcing yourselves into playing the setting, cause you think once a cakes cooked, you have to eat it?