I looked over about a year of notes on a setting I've been working on. The progress here has been tyrannically slow, since I'm inherently indecisive, and it was all to easy to waffle back and forth between different design choice and design goals. Today, I feel I may have reached some learning experience, as I looked over my old notes, and finally thought: "Gee, most of this sucks." Seriously, it's very liberating.

Specifically, look at these elements of my space opera:

• evil slaver space pirates
• oppressive central governments
• a number of evil corporations (one for each industry)
• breaking up all "government types" into more or less factions, in a relatively splat-able fashion
• gaians who love green nature, and rockists who love, um, rocks.
• taking any interesting detail (i.e. cyborg augmentation, drugs, libraries) and turning it into some organization (the Cyborgs, the DrugUsers, the Librarians)



Too my credit, I'm making this sound a lot more boring than it actually was, and a lot of these are pretty commonplace genre tropes for space opera, and I'm all for that sort of thing. But: each of these elments were borne out of uncritically finding some stray thought or avenue of gameplay. and feeling "gee, I should fit that it". As in, I ought to give an avenue for having ninjas. I ought to have mafia. I ought to have multiple mafia, one for each ethnic mafia cliche. I ought to let players be fighting knights. I ought to let players be pirates, too.

Here's the cool part: I began doing this setting because I found many other settings to get my eyes all glossy. I really wasn't interested in hearing about yet-another-imperium/federation/grand-human-destiny-prohecy and damn creation myth and so on. And so, I created my universe, kitchen-sinking in everything I thought out to be there, for completeness. And I was surprised when I ended up with something that, yet again, made my eyes gloss over.

Do you see the parallel to a beginner's first shot at game designer, perhaps even in terms of those "heartbreaks" (Fantasy or otherwise)? I wanted something different, and kept on adding the elements that I expected in, and ended up with disappointment. Just as if I wanted a FRPG about family, and added in Hit Points, Levels, Critical Tables, and was finally frustrated with the result.

So, you setting designers: setting does matter, but it's not easy! The RPG culture often has to kitchen-sink its settings, perhaps under a mantra like "I want my players to do whatever they like / find whatever kind of game they like in my world," and I think that even sells in some cases, but it can also lead to major frustration if you're trying to come up with a fresh world. So, here's a part of my future setting-design aesthetic, which I'll have a hard time following through with (kitchen-sinking is an engrained tendency), but here goes:

The setting should have some purpose or locus of purposes: reasons you're not using something else, and reasons it's worth sharing. The setting focus should play into the character/situation, and more generally what you want play to be like: don't add a single detail to your setting if doesn't augment these play goals. For example, build powerful hegemons in the world, but if and only if each additional hegemon adds some feature to the player's gameplay (i.e. a new kind of challenge, or a different shade of moral question, or whatever).

Granted, there is world-building for the sake of creating a vivid world, and that has it's own purpose, stay vivid, and don't be afraid to just take an aesthetic stand and "take sides", so to speak. (This is a more vague criteria though, because at some point adding an extra interesting detail just because you find it "interesting" won't improve the exploration aspect in the players' experience.) Here's an example: the Firefly universe is cliche-ridden and meager, and yet it sticks heavily in fans' minds. I'd say a part of it is it has some very specific aesthetics - extremely strong western color with occaisional polyglot-chinese bent - layered on what's otherwise a Rebels and Empire situation. You don't find the Firefly universe offering "you can have western color, or samurai color, or cool cyborg color, or..." It's limited, and the advantage there is that it's loud and clear.

There is a flipside, being "polyglot" games, like RIFTS or TORG, where part of the fun is that everything really IS mashed in. I'm guessing the key to a good polyglot universe is not necessarily that it is extremely kitchen-sinked, but rather that even here, each elements expands the original play goals. If you're playing a polyglot RIFTS game with a gamist agenda, you won't really care if you're hopping from fantasy-world-with-elves to fantasy-world-without-elves; the extra difference between the worlds has to provide some new challenge for you gamewise (or for other agendas, the lack of elves should outline a theme, or should provide some intrinsic exploratory interest). Most polyglot worlds have some story going on beyond the individual shards of worlds - some metaplot or conceit binding this multiverse together - that itself is another focus which additional story elements must satisfy.

...

I think I'm out of writing, since I wrote that in one big burst; but I'm largely saying to use some methods similar to system choice in creating a setting, i.e. figuring out why your parts are going in. I don't want to immediately discredit what I just wrote, but I'd rather be the first to acknowledge that this could be a hard aesthetic to create by, since we probably construct a setting as something like a narrative, rather than justifying it piece by piece. Still, I think it's part of how I'll focus future world-building, and perhaps it will get me further towards finished product.

Dev wrote: The setting should have some purpose or locus of purposes: reasons you're not using something else, and reasons it's worth sharing. The setting focus should play into the character/situation, and more generally what you want play to be like: don't add a single detail to your setting if doesn't augment these play goals. For example, build powerful hegemons in the world, but if and only if each additional hegemon adds some feature to the player's gameplay (i.e. a new kind of challenge, or a different shade of moral question, or whatever).

Granted, there is world-building for the sake of creating a vivid world, and that has it's own purpose, stay vivid, and don't be afraid to just take an aesthetic stand and "take sides", so to speak.

John Kim wrote: The more leeway you allow in who the PCs are and what they are doing, the less you can assume about what is or is not important.

So, for example, Glorantha has lots of stuff that will be irrelevant for a given game. But the particular group doesn't have to use all of it.

Dev, I heard a saying: "It takes two people to paint a good picture. An artist, and someone to shoot the artist at the appropriate moment."

I think I totally agree with what you're saying. That may just be a sign of how deeply I've misunderstood, of course.

Adding something to a world carelessly will damage and weaken everything that has gone before. For example, I haven't watched all of Firefly (yet) but I get the impression that adding space-ninjas would substantially disrupt what made the setting work.

God, it's hard. You get into the mode that designing an RPG is all about what you create. And then anything you create is your brain-child. You can't just throw it out, can you? But as you rightly point out, much of designing an RPG is choosing which things to leave out. The best thing you can do is to get a dozen utterly brilliant idea, pick the two that work well together, and throw away the other ten. Heart-wrenching, but true.

I think designing by free association is an exercise in exhaustion. Progress is made not so much by reviewing and refining as it is giving up in frustration. Then you start over from scratch. With each issue, you're very slightly more likely to get to the point, not because you've learned anything or made any choices going in; just because you're tired. Each time you take up the task, you're a little more irritated by the din of voices in your head whose ideas used to delight you. So you pay less attention and tend to complete your thoughts and write cleaner sentences. And your work flows more naturally.

Everyone has a different breakpoint. You can leave it as a cursed affair or an amusement for a phase of your life. Or you can press on, knowing the pursuit for what it is: what the process costs you and what it provides.

The happy ending for a designer who chooses the work as a calling is that he applies valuable principles, proven through experience, artfully combines his best ideas, confirming their worth in play, and ends up with something that is not dismissable.

Hey Dev:
I find this thread interesting, especially since it seems like you have a sort of internal conflict going on betweem "kitchen sinkism" and the one-hour game goals expressed in another thread.

As a suggestion, maybe you should go for the whole enchilada. Go ahead with the kitchensink, but break it into pieces usable in shortgames.

If you like the idea of space ninjas, why not wite up a scenario that really focuses on some aspects of space ninjas? You will need to consider what is really essential and cool about space ninjas, and create a situation that puts those aspects in the spotlight.

What you will not need to do is create an overarching rules set that covers everything else in your game universe. You won't even need to cover many things that relate to space ninjas, just the stuff that pertains to the ninjas in your scenario/shortgame.

Later, if say, spacepirates interest you, do the same thing with that idea.

As for a coherent setting, you might be able to go with really broad strokes, allowing the setting to blossom as a series of shortgames are played, and you get a handle on player reaction.

I think designers sometimes forget that settings and even rules go through a stage of development that occurs after the initial release of the "product" ( I mean after playtests and final draft release). That is when players start playing it, outside of the initial group. That play informs and alters the original product, especially when the experiences of those players creates feedback to the original designer, who then alters the setting to take the experience into account.

A couple of quick examples from bigname games where this has happened.

Skyrealms of Jorune:
As I recall the history of this game, it actually started out as someones variant Metamorphasis Alpha campaign. Eventually it became its own setting with a ruleset that the authors felt did a better job portraying the setting's nature.

Werewolf the Apocalypse:
I recently came across an old VtM module ( Milwaukee by Night, maybe?) that predated the release of WtA, but involved werewolves. The Loups are tribal and crunchy spiritual, with totems playing a part. WtA took those ideas and vastly expanded and altered them. The module is a neat artifact that shows the early thinking that later informed the setting of the Werewolf game.

So, in summation:
Go mad with brainstorming/riffing on ideas/ kitchensinking. But try to produce in small, bitesized chunks. Take into account that the feedback loop has everything to do with a game's development over time.

Related thought: The internet offers a really powerful tool for speeding up the feedback loop. Earlier generations of game designers were very limited in their ability to interact with game users, by comparison. A rules or setting suggestion from a player across the planet can be added to a site or download almost as fast as the game's author can type it up. The implications of that are staggering.

Robert

Dont create a universe. Create a small system in detail, then work out from there.

This seems closely related to the concept of Lasersharking.

Mike

This reminds me of one of the articles where Ron talks about over the edge (disclaimer, my recount of Rons is based on my bad memory). First he outlines how its nearly one fat tome of setting. Then he quotes parts where the writers talk about how with hardly any prep, many of the fantastic setting elements of the game were cooked up that night and how good that was.

Then Ron right mentions, if it was so good to make, so rewarding, why is there nothing to help us make our own material like the authors of over the edge did?

Now my own words: See, what I got from this is that they wrote tons and tons of setting and essentially blocked and blocked more input from gamer groups (while in addition not providing any system help making new stuff).

Here's the cool part: I began doing this setting because I found many other settings to get my eyes all glossy. I really wasn't interested in hearing about yet-another-imperium/federation/grand-human-destiny-prohecy and damn creation myth and so on. And so, I created my universe, kitchen-sinking in everything I thought out to be there, for completeness. And I was surprised when I ended up with something that, yet again, made my eyes gloss over.

Re: lasersharking? Quite close. I think lasersharking is more about adding more extreme things (going really over the top, like lasers on sharks), while I'm talking about diluting what you have to include too many options (so sharks, octupi, squid, zebrafish... when you want a game about lasers).

Anyway, I get the feeling that lots of you dig, and that makes me feel a lot better! "The best thing you can do is to get a dozen utterly brilliant idea, pick the two that work well together, and throw away the other ten. Heart-wrenching, but true." "Each time you take up the task, you're a little more irritated by the din of voices in your head whose ideas used to delight you." (Me too.)

And now its all made, what's left for your group to riff on?