Thread 96353704

Collective worldbuilding is so fucking stupid. Every few attempts I made it always ends up with the one guy saying "I want to have X" and the players basically just do all the work for him or someone hijacks the whole thing to be about his personal obsession. Am I just unlucky or do I hang around too many autistic retards?

>>96353704 (OP)
It requires someone who knows how to steer the ship and ask the questions in a way that creates coherence. Otherwise you're gonna have:
- Someone who takes everything as a joke
- Someone who is super-into it but explains their thought process so poorly that you don't understand what the fuck they're doing
- Someone who is writing out campaign ideas that they'll never run
- Someone who is trying to build a coherent world and is being handicapped by everyone else being an asshole who should shut up more

>>96353704 (OP)
Is that a Downie?

>>96353704 (OP)
>Collective worldbuilding
Sounds like "too many cooks spoil the broth" and "a camel is a horse designed by committee". No good worldbuilding was ever done by multiple people, the most you can have is a writing club where you can share ideas but otherwise are working individually still.

>>96355493
Camels are cool though

>>96353704 (OP)
I play a game where we collectively worldbuild as we play. Works fine, since there's one person that has a final say, but is open to make lots of things work and makes everything consistent with each other.

>>96353704 (OP)
Star Trek and Star Wars were collective worldbuilding, but always had one guy at the top managing things and vetoing the worst ideas so that the rest would fit into his vision properly. This is the best and probably only way to actually worldbuild in a group without it devolving into absolute slop perhaps the same could be said of governments, corporations, and pretty much any organization out there

>>96353704 (OP)
>>96356457
It says 'collective', not 'democratic' or 'anarchic'. Be the worldbuilding despot you were meant to be OP, and just collect advice from these other dudes.

>>96353704 (OP)
No, it's a futile endeavor that just results in either a kaleidoscopic mess of a setting or a bunch of people angry that their ideas got shot down. Usually both.

>>96353704 (OP)
Like Sandbox games, it's a dumb meme that nobody does /tg/ forces.

Make your setting and run it. If you know your friends (and if you aren't playing with your friends you're doing it wrong), then you'll naturally have something that encompasses your shared interests.

>>96353704 (OP)
Depends. Collective worldbuilding in totality is obviously retarded, but I always let my players worldbuild stuff that's directly relevant to their characters.
If someone's playing as a dwarf, I'd rather he tell me what his fort was like, rather than me telling him. I wouldn't let them add or change anything with real scope though, because obviously it's going to get fucked up.

>>96355493
>a camel is a horse designed by committee
I cannot imagine a more retarded perspective. Yes, they're both domesticated ungulates, but they're fundamentally adapted to different things. A horse would be awful at being a camel.

>>96353704 (OP)
We have a worldbuilding general.

>>96353704 (OP)
My group's done collective worldbuilding in several campaigns over the past decade or so, and it's worked great. The important thing, aside from having a decent group, of course, is for the GM to do his job at this stage. GM getting things started, giving the general outline of the setting and detailing parts of it, then letting players add their own stuff to it while giving feedback and keeping the right to veto things, is what works.

>>96356457
tbf star trek started to really excel when they ignored some of what rodenberry set down, but before they started doing whatever or outright ignoring vital concepts like the utopian element. He was an important guiding light but some of worse concepts needed to be made flexible. Probably the same with star wars.

Simply put in my experience having a central figure that can shut down other ideas, but also enough people with power to manage them as well, is the real element. Too many writers want to circle endlessly over their obsessions, but if it's too open it just becomes generic. The captain and his officers.

>>96353704 (OP)
It's true, comic books are a shit show of petty, self-absorbed, poorly coordinated authors constantly ignoring and retconning each other

>>96357566
Stop pretending to be retarded, it's not clever or cute.