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World Management
Topic Started: Jun 5 2009, 10:45 PM (67 Views)
weji
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I. Building a Good Foundation (here) - discussion of the importance of history and players in world building.

II. NPC Conversation Topics (here) - discussion of the use of NPCs to flesh out a world.
Edited by weji, Jun 12 2009, 02:31 PM.
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weji
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I. Building a Good Foundation

Your World. You know how you want your story to end, this should be a player guided story. The future is not up to you, it belongs to the characters who drive the roleplay. You should keep an ultimate goal mind; goals are essential to the progression of a storyline, but they don't always become reality. The key is to make sure everyone who needs to be is made aware of your proposed ending. Use an out-of-character thread or personal messages with vital players to guide the story towards its ultimate conclusion. The fewer who know the ultimate goal the better, it makes for a better story when the conclusion is reached naturally rather than by metagame meddling. However, when you create a world, you must realize other people will be living in it, shaping it and changing it with their actions. Plan for this and leave the future open to change.

You will need to decide on the scale of the action for the story. Are you dealing with individuals, a small group, an army, a nation? What kind and how much influence will the characters have in this world? Whatever the scale, giving your players a map, a historical time line of the world, and a brief overview of the level of technology, geography, and demographics of the land they will be living in will allow the players to develop deep, colorful characters that fit seamlessly into the world in which they live. Remember the more comprehensive the description, the more materiel they will have to build their characters from.

Then having provided them a world, scale and history, you need to give your players an overview of the current state of events, who is allied with whom, which countries are at war and why? Give them a solid foundation upon which to build their characters. When building the history of the world, consider what factors brought about the current state of events? Why would people care about what is happening now and how does it affect them personally? What would bring them into a position to affect the world you have created? You absolutely must embed hooks into the history of your world so people have somewhere to insert themselves.

Once you have a world's past and present worked out, post it in an out-of-character thread or as the thread opener. The hard part is over. Your work is by no means done, but now the people who have joined you become the storytellers. Now they will determine the course of history. The story is no longer just yours, others will control as much of it as you. Don't hesitate to use an out-of-character thread, be careful though not to let it become the driving force behind the story it will only weaken it. Use the thread to keep the other players informed of what you have planned, and where you would like the roleplay to end up. Don't be afraid to push the story if it becomes necessary, but avoid leading, godmoding or other meta-game tactics to guide your world. The more you leave to your players the more naturally the story will flow.
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II. NPC Conversation Topics

There are various ways to create a World. Stick to a single time period, and only move forward. Let us say that you seek to create a world, and start with a continent, a town, a day, and some characters. You are a group of perhaps ten avid writers, all looking to participate, all with equal pull as to which direction their world moves in. One way to go about it is to write, each creating lore, writing quests, beasts, enemies, events, and more of the like. Do not do this, you are not the lone writer.
  • Passive Writing, where your work is simply added to that of your fellows, is a killer of worlds. Your work does not engage your fellows, nor are they necessitated to read it, given that they too are people, with lives, with limited time, and are currently busy with their own Passive Writing.
  • Active Roleplaying, requires your fellow players to take heed of your character’s actions, and of any world-fleshing information you include among those actions. Active Roleplaying doesn’t always have to be quests, and most importantly doesn’t always have to involve PCs.
One mode of Active Roleplaying that involves only NPCs is called Conversation Topics. There is little description and there is almost no action. For any setting except for the travels of a quest, there is likely some location where several NPCs are likely to meet. Use them. Non-playable-characters Conversation topics can be revisited over and over again, or can be abandoned with no loss and no harm done. They give players a chance to stay active in the world between quests, while at the same time serving as spawning point for quests. As the world grows, they become perfect starting points for players new to the world. Most importantly, they give all of the players a chance to practice roleplaying with little consequence.
Edited by weji, Jun 5 2009, 10:47 PM.
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