zompist bboard

I don't know if anything like this is already somewhere on the bboard and whether I can still join it. If so, I will delete this. Anyway, I wanted to create a conworld with a larger group, each of them focussing on their own country or people.

If we are going to start this thing, we have to decide on (by vote):
- What is the general technology level of the world?
- Is there magic? If yes, how does it work? (What are the underlying things that empower it? Gods? Energy fields in the world (like leylines)? Internal powers? And how is it activated? Words? Sacrifice? Objects?)
- What kind of beings live on the planet? Not only intelligent races, but also animals and maybe mystical beings. But the intelligent ones are the most important right now.
- How many protolangs are there? My idea was to create several protolangs collaboratively, and each of the collaborators SCAs their language out of one of those, borrowing from languages which are geographically proximate. We'll discuss this later.

Personal things, per country:
- Location: landlocked, coastal, peninsula or island?
- Climate.
- Size. Is it a large empire or little more than a city state?
- A basic idea of the culture to start with. Dominant caste? (Worker, merchant, warrior, priest?)
- Name? (May come later on, still)

Based on the climate and the shape of the land we are going to try to fit the countries into a continent (I think multiple continents might lead to unrealistically large countries or empires, but maybe I'm just creating problems )

Copy this to your post so we have all information where we need it:
Voting
Technology level:
Magic:
Intelligent beings:
Own country
Name:
Location:
Climate:
Size:
Dominant caste:

This is mine:
Voting
Technology level: Clockpunk (that is, technology based on gears and springs. More or less renaissance level, but more advanced, à la Leonardo da Vinci, as if steam energy and other sources of energy were never discovered)
Magic: None or only in some ancient artifacts
Intelligent beings: Humans only
Own country
Name: ???
Location: West coast of continent
Climate: Mediterranean
Size: About that of France or Germany.
Dominant caste: Merchant

This has been done on the board quite a few times, yes [I can think of at least five, with a few differences between them].
This isn't a reason for you not to do it again. The best reason not to do it again is that it isn't going to work.

However, if you want to try to make it work, please do have a go. If I had to give one piece of advice, it would be that it helps to have someone driving the project. I know the most succesful one around here (Akana) never had a single leader (it always seemed to manage to find someone willing to pick it up just as someone else was putting it down), but the biggest reason these things fail is that everyone loses interest and there's no one person going around whipping people. And if I had a second piece of advice, it would probably be that it helps to have a well-defined project (Akana began as the setting for a forum game). I think that getting people to complete their part of a specific project is probably easier than getting people to contribute to somethign open-ended.

I have a few spare ideas and language parts left over from some of my other projects. If this gets going, I'll join in with an isolate somewhere.

We'll see how this works out.

Yes, why not. I'll contribute some insanity to your project, because you need that.

Hallow XIII wrote:Yes, why not. I'll contribute some insanity to your project, because you need that.

Trust me, I don't. Muwuhaha.

Nation based conworlding is the way it has been attempted. Problem with it is that either each person does their own thing with minor interplay with everyone else's world, yielding basically a cluster of northkoreas, or someone leaves and the rest either loose faith and leave too or they find themselves unable to work in their thing because the guy who was doing the other thing didn't do his thing. someone has to be the last one to jump ship and no one wants to be that guy, so yeah.

Jussayin, but maybe it could be attempted to do a collab on some other basis? like you do the religions, you do the economies, you the cultures, you the langs, and so on and so forth ?

Anyway, regarding this one thing, I'm monitoring too.

Well, to make it work, everyone would all need to work on the cultures together. Else if one person leaves, there'd be a half-developed nation right in the middle of the action, like you said.

I'm monitoring this thread as well.

We had the Etheria project not too long ago, but that's slowed down to a trickle with only one or two people working on the wiki if any at all out of about 15-20 participants.

I kinda want to start that one up again, or at least pick up on my end.

But if this goes forward, I'm always happy to contribute.

I volunteer to be leader. My credentials are that I am merciless and the semester is almost over. Torco should be the Caesar to my Augustus.

Okay, the idea of having everybody isolated in one nation of their own is definitely bad. I don't really feel like doing something which is bound to end up with one or two people working on a wiki, either.

But a conworld based on this:

Jussayin, but maybe it could be attempted to do a collab on some other basis? like you do the religions, you do the economies, you the cultures, you the langs, and so on and so forth ?

Would reach to maybe even more disastrous results than a nation-based one: if anyone leaves, we'd have, say, a religion but no economy, and a set of insanely detailed languages, but only the outlines of a culture.

So, any division of tasks would lead to a few people working on an equal number of detailled parts of the world. No division of tasks would lead to... Dunno. Will probably work for a short time, and then... Don't know, actually. But some gut-feeling tells me it's a bad idea.

One person to be in charge of the project might be a good idea, mr. Patiku. That another conworld hasn't had one leader shouldn't be a reason we shouldn't try it. (Unless it has gone terribly wrong. But history is doomed to repeat itself anyway). If no better idea turns up this might be our best shot (or the worst, the second, third, and fifth emperor of the Roman Empire were all maniacs and psychopaths)

I think part of Akana's success was that the linguistics portion, which is the most major, is pretty abstract, so no one became really attached to some stupid idea like men riding tigers up trees. Also the, uh, modular way of doing things meant that someone could make one or two contributions and then move on without disrupting the rest of the project. Also again people want to crank out another Akana and get disappointed with the holdup because they haven't really processed the fact that that project has been in the works for years.

By the way.

patiku wrote:I volunteer to be leader. My credentials are that I am merciless and the semester is almost over. Torco should be the Caesar to my Augustus.

I'd object, but I'm not a good leader.

ALL HAIL DEAR LEADER

Edit: also, I suggest the following approach to role division: we progress through the making of the conworld in chronological and sensible order (e.g., first astronomical data, then tectonics, climate, geography, THEN life, humans, cultures and languages), and at each stage dear leader will divide the task as needed. We can do the country (well, maybe ethnicity would be better) thing once we're at that stage because by then the surroundings are pretty much there. Maybe even set the creation process in the past and then have a last stage to advance the clock to "present day", so that the eerily isolated proto-cultures will gain substantial common history and the recognizable a priori languages get their naturalizing sound changes.

also, I suggest the following approach to role division: we progress through the making of the conworld in chronological and sensible order (e.g., first astronomical data, then tectonics, climate, geography, THEN life, humans, cultures and languages), and at each stage dear leader will divide the task as needed. We can do the country (well, maybe ethnicity would be better) thing once we're at that stage because by then the surroundings are pretty much there. Maybe even set the creation process in the past and then have a last stage to advance the clock to "present day", so that the eerily isolated proto-cultures will gain substantial common history and the recognizable a priori languages get their naturalizing sound changes.

I have only one question about your approach:
"Why didn't I think of that?!?"

AND NOW PAY YOUR RESPECT TO THE GREAT AND POWERFUL PATIKU!

Valé á brandr ðín.

I shan't translate that.

Looks like this project is going to get going. I can whip up some astronomical data fairly quickly. A few questions would be: Do you have a star in mind? Or one not in our galaxy, as may be the case with Almea? Or don't you know? If one of the latter two, do you want it bright? What colour? What sort of year length do you want? What day length? How many moons? How fast do they orbit? How many other planets? Asteroid belts?
That's just for starters.

If this planet hasn't developed past the Renaissance, which I doubt it will be, then astronomical data like asteroid belts and the number of planets isn't very important. As for day length and whatnot, most people will probably not want something complicated like Torco's Suenu. I think Sol-like is the way to go.

Planets are still important, even for less advanced civilizations, as they usually can be seen just by looking up in the sky on a clear night in the right direction. Any moons around those planets, asteroids and other such stuff wouldn't be important until later, though.

The star would either be yellow or possibly red. Blue stars just don't live long enough for life to develop, unless some random aliens come by and terraform a planet in the system.

This sounds like an interesting project that may well turn in to something.

patiku wrote:If this planet hasn't developed past the Renaissance, which I doubt it will be, then astronomical data like asteroid belts and the number of planets isn't very important. As for day length and whatnot, most people will probably not want something complicated like Torco's Suenu. I think Sol-like is the way to go.

Actually, it is important, given the fact that celestial objects are immensely prominent in mythology. It's not about space travel or anything, it's about how the night sky looks.

Oh? How different would our mythology be if Uranus was visible to the naked eye, or Saturn didn't exist? But okay, let's say six planets, three terrestrial, including Collaborworld, and three gaseous planets, one of which is not visible.

Oh ho ho~! I do love me some collaborative conworlding.

Would reach to maybe even more disastrous results than a nation-based one: if anyone leaves, we'd have, say, a religion but no economy, and a set of insanely detailed languages, but only the outlines of a culture.

well yeah, but everyone can work on the politics, or on the religions, if the designated person leaves. the same could be said for nations, sure, but people will care more about the lack of a functional dimension of the world than about the lack of that nation <username> was working on. i guess... ?

Oh noes! patiku as leader! NOES!

Come ooon, Sol like is great, and Suenu has been a bitch to figure out the implications of its astronomical funk for... but at least put *some* funk on it... i dunno, no moon, or less axial tilt, or bigger gravity, or a nice orange star, or *something*.

A planet without a moon would have a more eccentric axial tilt, wouldn't it? The crazy weather might be the spice you're looking for.

Not at all: check it out; mars is practically as tilted as earth, and has no moon to speak of, just a couple asteroids it captured once on a drunk night on the town. Venus also has no moon and its more crooked than a coke-peddling priest; so crooked its actually straight. Jupiter, having no moons <or, rather, many moons that are irrelevant beside it> has almost no tilt. What moons protect planets from is bobbing, that is, that the axis go from current 23 to like 90 someday. This isn't a horrible prospect, though.