[tshiggins]

I dunno. I don't tend to work from "more specific" to "more detailed." Instead, I define the type of setting I want, create a framework for it, and then fill in the details.

On the "space opera" thread, we didn't do that, and the problem with "space opera" is that it's so broad. Star Trek is space opera, but so is Star Wars -- and Battlestar Galactica, and The Chronicles of Riddick, and Alien/Prometheus, and even Firefly. That meant everybody worked to create the "space opera setting" each of us wanted, instead of voting to decide the type of space opera (Plato's Republic in spaaace, or a hero's journey, or explorations into what it means to be "human," or a military/covert op campaign, or a bug hunt, or scruffy ne'er-do-wells trying to scrape by, or TOTALLY AWESOME GALACTIC POWER, or whatnot) that we would all work toward.

A shared understanding of the expected outcome helps keep people focused, and that helps keep them motivated, if for no other reason than those who don't care for that end result choose to opt out.