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Old 02-13-2017, 02:47 PM   #371
ericthered
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Default Re: Ideas Are Easy

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I like this one a lot, I would second a lot of what you were saying about AI.

The other thing is that this has a hell of a lot of scope for possible settings this could be anything from strict hard SF to (new) Space Opera according to taste.

Maybe one to float on the GURPS board as a 'build a shared setting' project?
We'd need a mechanism for making choices. Most the projects I've seen are either a guided dictatorship, a voting mechanism, or the question game. If you don't have a way of making things canonical people go all over the place.
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Old 02-14-2017, 11:17 AM   #372
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Default Re: Ideas Are Easy

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The other thing is that this has a hell of a lot of scope for possible settings this could be anything from strict hard SF to (new) Space Opera according to taste.

Maybe one to float on the GURPS board as a 'build a shared setting' project?
Next one I was thinking of doing was straight-up cyberpunk, but I might be a bit busy for a little to get too involved. Of course, another poster could go ahead with a biopunk project.

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We'd need a mechanism for making choices. Most the projects I've seen are either a guided dictatorship, a voting mechanism, or the question game. If you don't have a way of making things canonical people go all over the place.
Don't think I've seen any guided dictatorships- got a thread you're thinking of?

The voting ones, I have to admit, were a bit tedious. They took forever to settle each decision and reading pages of voting scores wasn't much fun. They also took a lot of effort from the coordinator, so they couldn't move much without him. Having said that, the urban fantasy one got some good ideas before it fizzled out.

The question game works fairly well, though sometimes it's a case of people asking questions you might not be interested in. This can help the creativity, but it ends up a bit patchy as a world building exercise.

Ideally, the output would be a setting wiki, but I'm not sure of the best way of guiding content for it. How does the Orion's Arm setting handle that, I wonder?
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Old 02-14-2017, 11:36 AM   #373
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Default Re: Ideas Are Easy

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Don't think I've seen any guided dictatorships- got a thread you're thinking of?
Myriad incomplete ones. Guided dictatorship is when someone says "I have a setting, I need ideas in this area." Then all the forumites start posting ideas, and the OP takes one or more as "cannon". Its a brain storm of sort. The full structure usually isn't used, I admit. Here is an example:

Weird War 1

The trick with those is you once again need an administrator type figure. Its probably not as bad as the voting method, but its still puts a lot of effort on one.

Orion's arm I think is a guided dictatorship (or oligarchy) with a very light hand, a lot of work up front to set guidlines, and a large enough universe that the chance of collision is low. It might also have a wiki-type setup, which functions similarly.
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Old 02-15-2017, 12:47 AM   #374
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Default Re: Ideas Are Easy

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Myriad incomplete ones. Guided dictatorship is when someone says "I have a setting, I need ideas in this area." Then all the forumites start posting ideas, and the OP takes one or more as "cannon". Its a brain storm of sort.
The other model I've seen is what happened (a while ago now) with the space opera and fantasy settings in my sig. Basically a theme is suggested, then people discuss strategy on the forum while posting content straight to a wiki, reporting back to the forum with "I've added a new city on the west coast" and so on. These were probably about as productive as the question games, but would also benefit with some shepherding.
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Old 02-15-2017, 10:54 AM   #375
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Default Re: Ideas Are Easy

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We'd need a mechanism for making choices. Most the projects I've seen are either a guided dictatorship, a voting mechanism, or the question game. If you don't have a way of making things canonical people go all over the place.
This would be the reason I didn't just go ahead and do it.

Having taken part in a few collaborative settings and being somewhat disappointed in how they developed, guided dictatorship doesn't strike me as particularly collaborative (even though it is a model I have used), question games tend to be somewhat unfocused and peter out quite quickly. Voting is probably either the best or the worst option it let's you have a certain amount of direction while still being collaborative but it takes a lot of work and can be daunting to ocasional posters particularly if they miss the early parts of the process.

You have done a fair bit of this, which model do you feel worked best?

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Old 02-16-2017, 01:47 AM   #376
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Default Re: Ideas Are Easy

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You have done a fair bit of this, which model do you feel worked best?
I don't mind the question game model. I think it's important to realise that it's just a creative writing outlet and not a serious attempt to generate a usable setting. I've only once seen anyone say they'd actually use one of these settings in a game, and that was tshiggins about the recent steampunk effort, for a stop-off on a world/timeline-hopping adventure, so I don't know if he'd need that much depth from the setting anyway.
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Old 02-16-2017, 02:50 AM   #377
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Default Re: Ideas Are Easy

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I don't mind the question game model. I think it's important to realise that it's just a creative writing outlet and not a serious attempt to generate a usable setting.
That would be another problem for me, I get involved in these projects is to collect new ideas preferably to try and find a draught setting to build upon.

I am very tempted to try running one of these, probably using the voting model all I need now is to work up a decent plan.
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Old 02-16-2017, 05:08 AM   #378
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Default Re: Ideas Are Easy

A model that might be worth stealing and abusing is that of Microscope. I've only used it once; we ended up largely departing from the "this is now player X's turn" model, but it seems like a potentially viable way of resolving conflicts.
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Old 02-16-2017, 07:32 AM   #379
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Default Re: Ideas Are Easy

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Originally Posted by Frost View Post
This would be the reason I didn't just go ahead and do it.

Having taken part in a few collaborative settings and being somewhat disappointed in how they developed, guided dictatorship doesn't strike me as particularly collaborative (even though it is a model I have used), question games tend to be somewhat unfocused and peter out quite quickly. Voting is probably either the best or the worst option it let's you have a certain amount of direction while still being collaborative but it takes a lot of work and can be daunting to occasional posters particularly if they miss the early parts of the process.

You have done a fair bit of this, which model do you feel worked best?
I think the best work came out of the submission threads in the voting projects. Which is unfortunately, an edge case. I've actually used the VUASO world in play, so by some standards that's the most successful, but I'm also not sure how well that hangs together.

The observation that the question game is a creative writing exercise is a pretty good one: in generates a seed, not a finished world. It also is good at unusual twists.

Guided dictatorship's main flaw is it often loses momentum as people loose interest in someone else's project. But it can get some real interest, as long as people feel that their input is being actually used, and as long as the problems to be solved are interesting.

I might favor a combination of the voting and dictatorship to create a shorter turn-around time, plus make multiple 'curators'.

The wiki idea is interesting, but I've never done much with it.

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A model that might be worth stealing and abusing is that of Microscope. I've only used it once; we ended up largely departing from the "this is now player X's turn" model, but it seems like a potentially viable way of resolving conflicts.
Microscope is very good at creating history, but terrible at creating setting. The two overlap to some degree, but you don't usually mess around with what is possible much: you start with a genre and work from there.

For some setting generation it might be worthwhile, but I don't think it would work well for the project that spawned this tangent. At least until the ground rules are in place.

Though you know, we do have half a genre selected...
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Old 02-17-2017, 12:42 AM   #380
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Default Re: Ideas Are Easy

I think this discussion is interesting but a bit beyond the purview of this thread. New thread is over here.
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