Collaborative Worldbuilding Threads

[Daigoro]

The requisite six months has passed, so let's see if we can whip up some more frenzied interest in exercising our creative splurges.

The possible topic list:

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Full Settings
Straight-up Cyberpunk
We'd be building corporations, conflicts, smattering of world history, interesting tech, cities, space stations, powered armour squads and gangs. I think it would still need some particular theme laid down to focus our ideas a little. Nothing in the way of psi, magic or what-have-you's, but perhaps the possibility of a new super-science/super-tech.

Stratopunk
Cyberpunk, but above the clouds. The masses live with their feet in the mud, but the elite float above it all in stratoscrapers, dirigible-cities, up-draft towers and tensegrity spheres.

Biopunk Space Opera
Really dig deep into genetic engineering without the shackles of scientific plausibility holding us back... among the stars!

Urban Fantasy- Witches and Dragons
This Vote Up an Urban Fantasy thread got as far as deciding it was about witches and dragons, which is where I started to get intrigued, when it petered out. Can we flesh that out more?

Psionic Fantasy
There's no magic, but psi takes its place. Strains of Julian May's Pliocene Exile.

Fantasy Space Opera
Magic and dragons fantasy, done on a galactic scale.

Monster Hunter Setting

Single Town/City Projects
A Fantasy City
A Cyberpunk City
A Cyberpunk Corporation
A Space Opera Space Station
A DF Dungeon/Wilderness Region

Adding to these, there have been a couple of intriguing posts on the forums that might be cool to go into depth on.

Knurlkyth- (E)'s Dwarven City with as an agricultural model- there's a good seed for a localised setting here, so we could flesh it out around what he's done so far (permission permitting), although I do realise (E) might have done some more work that he hasn't posted yet.

Astromancer's Long-Way-From-Home Colonial Space Empires sci-fi setting seed- Astromancer seems to like making brief, punchy setting seeds, but it'd be a good exercise to flesh one out in depth somewhat.

Any other suggestions, either as fresh ideas or from recent forum activity?

[(E)]

Feel free to take the Knurlkyth seed and run with it, I would really like to see how it goes.

http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.p...&postcount=205

[Astromancer]

As I said on my thread, I'm proud to be picked. Have joyous fun.

[Daigoro]

Is there a preference for either of those, or should I toss a coin?

It might be take a couple of days to get anything started, as there's other stuff I'm meant to be doing at the moment.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Is there a preference for either of those, or should I toss a coin?

It might be take a couple of days to get anything started, as there's other stuff I'm meant to be doing at the moment.

I'm torn, but both of those are very good.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by (E)

Feel free to take the Knurlkyth seed and run with it, I would really like to see how it goes.

Thanks for going ahead with this, (E). I was going to get to it, but my work held me up until last night.

In the meantime, I've been thinking about the dwarven city a fair amount, so this was the one I was going to start with.

Originally Posted by Astromancer

As I said on my thread, I'm proud to be picked. Have joyous fun.

Then we'll move on to this one next when the other one runs out of steam.

[(E)]

Another idea to add to the list a LitRPG world. There is the added aspect of creating a pseudo-game system. Dungeons and other gaming tropes like levels and stats are natural occurring parts of the setting.

[(E)]

While it hasn't been 6 months yet, it is rolling into the holiday season in my corner of the world. So I'm just giving this thread a nudge in the hope that we have another good run. Given that I chose the subject of the last collaboration I leave it up to someone else to get the ball rolling.

[ericthered]

I wouldn't start a thread until after the Christmas to new years block. Some people have more free time then, yes, but they are likely to drop off after the initial flurry of activity, and many of us will be less accessible then.



The recent talk in the Gurps forum seems to be a lot of galaxy spanning empire, so it might be fun to build one of those.



I'd love to build a fantasy setting with the focus mainly on fleshing out interesting cultures and building their cultural conflicts


I'd also love to build a fantasy setting with some sort of geographical gimmic, like being all underground, built into the side of a bottomless pit, in an area of super-active volcanoes, or something crazy like that.

[Daigoro]

Expanding on my wishlist from post #41, these are some of my thoughts about what would be fun fun to try (even though I haven't finished my post from the dwarven city about how it was saved from a zombifying kobold-borne fungus by a halfling's wheel of stinky blue-vein cheese...):

1) Setting Ideas

a) Space fantasy - wizards riding warp dragons against the wolf-deity of Lupus-9 kind of thing.
b) Cross-dimensional fantasy - fantasy which isn't limited to one world, but can cross to many other mundane worlds as well as more supernatural planes of existence.
c) Agricultural theses - we've looked at how a dwarven mountain stronghold might survive, but what about hobbits, elves or nomadic orcs? Any one of these could be a sound starting point.
d) Non-Euro fantasy - fantasy, but with a different cultural basis to our default.

2) Campaign styles

a) Investigative campaign -
We set up a campaign framework where we can get the PCs to investigate different crimes or mysteries every mission. Might well borrow heavily from GURPS Mystery, but doesn't have to be a modern day setting (I'm particular to c-punk mysteries, myself).
b) Mission roster -
In older video games like Wing Commander: Privateer or Armored Core, the player was presented with a choice of missions with varying difficulties and pay-offs. A mercenary campaign might allow the PCs to do the same thing in a semi-sandbox style, but it would need a large number of available missions to choose from. A particular setting and team formation would need to be decided first, but the thrust of the thread would be figuring out different missions to present the PCs with, perhaps with a few story-arcs behind them.
c) Criminal underworld -
We'd work out a setting where you can play in a thieves guild, be pirates or smugglers, organised criminals or play small gangs in a big city. Exact genre would have to be decided first, but then we'd make a setting that such a group could explore.

A different approach for a collaborative effort:
3) Pantheons - Choose a genre and setting first, but the discussion focuses more on who the gods and titans of the pantheon are, with subsequent motivations and adventures for the PCs. It could be a pseudo-classical pantheon, elder things, an urban fantasy pantheon (such as the new gods in American Gods), or a fae or dragon-based pantheon.