Game out of World Building?

[schporto]

Has anyone made a game out of world building? I'm day-dreaming of something like a table top Civilization (computer game series). I think it would be fun to play this with several people and allow for advancements (technilogical, religious, etc) and then at some point the players say "Stop!". That is where they start playing DnD. This would let them build the world, and be invested in it. But instead of it being a group creative writing exercise, this would let it be play....
Anyone heard of such a product?
-cpd

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Well, there was Aria, but that was generally regarded as unreadable.

The closest I can think of today is Victory By Any Means - it is a very open-ended system for running stellar empires. You can define your own races, civilzations, technological advances, and so on - and it's even possible to run it with a "game moderator". The system is very flexible - it has also been adapted for Age of Sail campaigns, and while no variant for fantasy is out yet (though I've heard rumors about one in the making), it should be doable with some work.

 

[Henrix]

The Burning Empires RPG does exactly that. You start the campaign by jointly building (or "burning" as it's called in the game) the world it will (at least mainly) be based on.

A fantastic game, by the way. Here's a link to the main Burning Empires page.

 

[Herpes Cineplex]

Our group experimented with something like this for a d20 post-apocalyptic game. (I think we were swiping the node-and-link-generation part of an indie game called Verge, but I might be mistaken about the system's name.)

It was kind of a fun activity: each person at the table would take turns adding various things to the big sheet of butcher paper we were using, reinforcing the stuff they liked and occasionally vetoing the stuff they hated, and it did indeed have the result of making a setting that the players were fairly invested in. It also had the side effect of making the players fairly knowledgeable about the setting, which was nice. You could look at the big sheet and see what kinds of things people wanted out of the game and what they didn't want.

The downside of it was that ultimately it was a poor fit for the type of game we were after. We were in the mood for a more traditional GM-player arrangement, and this kind of setting creation system was better suited for a shared-narrative style of game. While our GM made a valiant effort to run a game using what we'd come up with, the bottom line was that it was not enough indians and a lot of spoiled broth: all that player input had pushed the game into this compromise state where the players sort of liked the setting and the GM sort of liked the setting but no one actually loved the setting, and for our group it turns out to be absolutely vital that the GM be really enthusiastic about the game. Without that enthusiasm, the GM doesn't get psyched about generating content for the game, which leaves the players feeling like it's all going nowhere and dissuades them from doing cool active-player things like coming up with long-term goals and agendas, and it's very unsatisfying.

So we canned it and switched to a game that our GM was genuinely excited about running (one where the setting was his own, created without player input), and it's been going really well. Our weekly session is packed with stuff to do, all the players are excited about their characters and very involved in the game, and it's really been a dramatic change for the better.

--
your mileage might vary, of course, but i don't think our group will ever try this again
ryan

 

[jdrakeh]

I've been using The Exquisite Corpse in this capacity for a while now, with each player contributing elements of a setting (e.g., cultures, races, locations, geographical features, etc) one at a time. Recently, we've been toying with it over at theRPGsite. . .

You can play it on VBulletin forums by utilizing your Ignore List to block out entries made by other players until the game is finished. Give it a spin -- simply set up spme basic tenets for the round/game (e.g., high fantasy contributions only, ten contributions per player, etc) and off you go!

[Edit: A while back, some RRPGnet posters were using Nomic (a game of mutable rules authored by Peter Suber) in this capacity, as well.]

 

[mythusmage]

Well, there was Aria, but that was generally regarded as unreadable.

I had no problems reading it. It is written in a dialect of Gygaxian, and I happen to be bilingual in English and Gygaxian.

 

[Ry]

Quoted from Deep in the Game (blog):



Most freeform groups I've seen:

a) Have one person make those decisions (GM or most forceful personality)
b) Have a group of forceful personalities make that decision
c) Agree (explicitly or implicitly) to never put anything at stake that people are invested in (including transferring authorship rights over various elements of play)

C would be most of the type of character/world development type play I've seen.

 

[Henrix]

Universalis is another game that could, and has, been used for this sort of thing.
Basically it is a negotiation RPG game where everyone is game master. Highly recommended.

Most freeform groups I've seen:

If you don't like freeform, don't freeform. I'm not a fan either.

But neither Universalis nor Burning Empires is freeform. BE in particular is far from freeform. They just have rules that make exactly what they set out to do.

 

[RedWick]

I once played in a diceless game at a con where everybody came up with a God concept and we role-played through creation under the direction of a GM. It didn't use any kind of published system though. I believe that we each had 100 points to divide up amongst as many powers as we wanted to have control over (we had to decide what exact power we wanted).

If two Gods both had power over Fire, the player who had put more points into that power would have more of a say in what happened if there was a dispute. If one God had a general power over Fire and another had power over something like Forest Fires, then the Forest Fire God would have more influence.

It was really creative and is still one of the most memorable games that I've played in. I've toyed around with the idea of trying to run something like it myself.

 

[schporto]

Well, just to note, I'm not looking for some of the 'freeform' ideas. The Exquisite Corpse and node-and-link ideas are not what I'm looking for. These seem more of a group creative writing exercise. And that's not really what I'm looking for. And I do need my players in the campaign. I've tried pushing worlds on them. But at this point that feels, awkward. The players couldn't pass a second grade history test about those worlds. To me that's not good.
I'm looking for a more board game like approach to world building. Like Risk. Or appropriately as it turns out Civilization. A friend has this and I'm gonna read it next week. See if I can fit it to my needs.
As for the other games mentioned - Universalis has a good description of how play works (which I'm still reading).
Can folks point me to a link about how play works (or describe it) in "Victory by any Means', and 'Burning Empires'. Thanks.
-cpd