Collaborative Worldbuilding Threads

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by Frost

OK, based on the posts so far my take away is that:

First of all that I shouldn't expect too much out of the project, question games and submissions threads will give me a lot good ideas but I probably won't get more than a very rough outline of a coherent setting.

Sure, but that's expected. Other people won't do all your work for you, but also you know best what you want in a setting.

I find good inspiration from the threads- for example, my unstated, ulterior motive for the space trader thread was to find an FTL method that was different and interesting, which allowed tramp freighters to be a thing, but which didn't dominate the setting flavour, so I was quite happy with the hyperplasma idea we ended up with. Collaboratively as well, we were able to work through how it would work and the consequences it would have on the setting. I could've tried to do that myself, but it would've taken longer and I would've missed a few angles. Also, just posting "what's a good FTL? Thanks!" thread might've had a lower buy-in from other posters.

Secondly I would be best served by using a mixture of approaches, probably guided + voting for building up some ground rules with a question game to add detail.

I'm leaning towards the question game, but with some groundrules- "I'm looking for an X setting that allows Y but isn't too Z". You could inject votes and things into it as you go to settle disputes, if needed.

Third if I want to maximise how long it runs for and how much stuff I get then I would ideally run it on this board to take advantage of the slower turnover (probably not practical if I want to use specific GURPS stuff). Even if I don't I should keep things close to the premise and try to keep some sort of clear lasting record of what has been decided.

Strictly speaking, most of the threads don't have a lot of GURPS crunch in them, so they probably should live here. I justify it by thinking that the implicit system and mechanics assumptions are all GURPS, and any mechanics talk that comes up would use GURPS. I think the extra traffic there is important though, and outweighs the chance of falling off the first few pages.

Have I missed anything that contradicts or should be added to this list?

Depends- what are you aiming to do?