Re: Sphere Guides

--- David Shepheard <david_shepheard@???????.com>
wrote:

> > Wow. Mr. Shepherd described excellently how space
> > feels small to me, and great ideas about what to
> > do about it.

Yeah, gave me lots of ideas, too, to work with :)


> To be fair to game designers (both professional and
> amateur) writing fluff takes time and deadlines
> and/or page limits mean that you are going to have 
> to stop at some point.
> 
> So if Night Druid tried to do a planet in the same
> detail as the DLCS hardback, I would expect it to 
> take him about 2 years to finish it! And Night Druid
> is one of the best writers in our community - most
> of the rest of us take a lot longer to write things
> than he does.

Speaking from some experience, I can tell you that
it'd take (me) longer than 2 years to do that, simply
because I can't devote that much time to it per day. 
For a project the size of FRCS/DLCS, I'd expect 4-6
writers & designers to take 1-2 years to complete. 
For one man to do it alone?  3+ years or never (as it
would take so long to complete that the lone writer
would give up after a certain point & move onto
something else more interesting & less a headache).


> I'm not sure what SDF-1 is, but I see what you mean.

Super-Dimensional Fortress-1, from Robotech.  Its a
mile-long battlestation that transforms into a giant
robot.  A ship-city, as it has a city built into it.


> Writing is a learned art - not an inate ability. I
> think we *all* turn out poor quality material when
> we start off.

VERY true.  Writing is something you always improve
on, no matter how good you get.  As you learn, your
vocabulary improves, you find the style you like, your
characters become more 3-dimensional, your stories
mature.

For example, I recently reviewed the history of my
(10-years old) PC, and man, talk about terrible
writing/poor background.  After clearing it with my
DM, I pretty much re-wrote it from the ground up (it
wasn't like his history was important to the game) to
be something a little more adult and less
"angusty-teen-BSy" ;)


> This reminds me a bit of Greyhawk, where (in some GH
> products) the city seems to be more important than
> the rest of the planet Oerth. 

Nature of the beast; the way I look at it, GH is
written such that the area immediately around GH has
almost all adventuring environments within a few days'
travel (forest, desert, settled plains, swamp, hills,
mountains, pirate-infested coastline, city,
megadungeon, and even evil empire).  GH's central
location is also a bonus, as its literally at the
center of the civilized world, so that makes it a hub
of trade.  Its a perfect adventure locale.


> I think that wilderness areas are as important to SJ
> as civilised ports like Bral. Worlds in SJ seem to
> be classed as "spacefaring" or "groundling" worlds.
> I'd like to see "semi-spacefaring" worlds where NPC
> spelljamming ships are only interested in trading
> with big towns (maybe port towns) as they collect 
> together all the goods that they are interested in.

I think you're bumping into mixing an SJ setting with
that of "groundling" worlds, who(se gamers) are only
mildly interested in SJ.  With a purely SJ setting,
this problem can go away easily :)


> I know it is a bit of a fudge, but I think that we
> should copy settings like Forgotten Realms and
> Dragonlance and developspecific geographical areas
> on most of our larger SJ planets. As we add in other
> areas they can sometimes have similar cultures to
> the existing areas, but single-world governments 
> (like that on Thesalys) should be rare.

I've tried this; it can get overwhelming.  Its a
daunting task creating a setting as broad and
appealing as FR/DL/GH.

Adam


 
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