Magical Society: Ecology and Culture PRAISE

[woodelf]

Well, I wrote the review and you would be mostly riught, I haven't seem many RPG books on this subject. The only one I can recall is the second edition Wolr Builders Guide and personally, I like this book better. So, what other gaming books are there on world building?

Planetology-type stuff (and metaphysics):

• Traveler: the New Era: World Tamer's Handbook Surveying star systems/planets; Colonial Economics & Infrastructure; detailing planets (deals with such things as the effects of axial tilt, density, atmosphere, and mass). It also has some stuff not of much use for world-building (mass combat system) or of tangential use (design/evolution of blackpowder weapons).
• AD&D2 World Builders Guide: I find this to be a bit shallow in content. It'sa good overview of several topics (approaches to world building, planetology, societies, cities, and history/mythology), but i didn't feel like it really tackled any of them. Everything felt sort of lie it was glossing over the topic. And definitely too much reliance on the creator and randomness: several sections read basically like "do what makes the most sense, and if you're not sure what makes sense, roll on this table", rather than "do what makes the most sense, and here's a whole bunch of info to help you figure out what makes sense if you don't already know". As a one-stop go-to it's not bad, but it's planetology sections are inferior to Wilderness Survival Guide or World Tamer's Handbook, it's sociology sections are inferior to Aria:Worlds, Fief, MMS:WE, and its mythology sections are inferior to Aria and The Primal Order. I don't think i would've bought it if it weren't shrink-wrapped.
• MegaTraveller World Builder's Handbook: i've heard much good about this book, but never gotten my hands on a copy.
• Aria: Several useful bits in this. First, it's got probably the best build-a-magic-system chapter i've ever seen. It provides useful labels that are very similar to the ars Magica structure, but for the world-builder classifying magic, rather than for the spellcaster using magic. In short, it lets you take the paradigm and metaphysic of your choice, and build the game rules to reflect them. Secondly, it has a fairly cool "Interactive History" system, letting you play things out at the level of society-as-character [or faction of society], rather than individual-as-character. Thirdly, it has nearly a hundred pages that're all about building/quantifying how society works: social class, vocations, personal freedom, inheritanc, etc. And the game itself is designed not as a "pull it out and play" system, but as a metasystem to create the world/setting of your choice, and then play in.
• The Primal Order: The guide to deities and their interactions with their worshippers and the material world. Can be used just as guidelines, or directly interact with whatever system you're playing, or as its own stand-alone system (if you want to play deities). Way better than Deities & Demigods.
• The Primal Order Chessboards: What Manual of the Planes should have been. It explores everything that MotP does, and then about 10x more. It talks abotu possibilities i've never seen in an RPG, and really cranks up the weird factor if you want it to. And it really explores the ramifications of planar interactions, with some very cool ideas--only multi-plane rules i've seen that make possible pretty much everything i've seen in books and movies.
• Fudge A Magical Medley: where Aria is a toolkit for building magic systems, this is a series of examples. All of them are good, some of them are awesome, and they strike a good balance between old standbys and unique twists.
• D&D3E Deities & Demigods: see my comments under The Primal Order, above.
• D&D3E Manual of the Planes: see my comments under The Primal Order, above.
• doh! forgot the one that ,for me, started this all off: AD&D1 Wilderness Survival Guide. The appendix on world design was short, succinct, but just enough to go on, and covered the basics of things like where to put deserts and so on (assuming you want realism). At least as much in this one area as the World Builder's Guide.

Sociology-type stuff:

• Aria: see above
• Aria: Worlds: Despite the title, this book has almost nothing on geology/ecology/etc., and tons and tons of content on societies and the like. We're talking well over 200p packed chock-full of stuff like: society age and philosophical orientation; technology and innovation scales; subsistence and agriculture; political structures/systems and kinship/inheritence; economic systems and trade; military types; societal tolerance; religion, arts, and schooling; status, social class, class mobility, and personal freedom; vocations. Plus an appendix that covers technological evolution from the Stone Age to the Renaissance in very good detail (only failing is that it is a bit Western-centric), and an appendix on "basic economics" and the marketplace. For the society side of things, i dont think there's a better world-building book out there (at least RPG-oriented--maybe some of the Writers Digest stuff is as good or better).
• Fief Very detailed look at what feudal society was actually like. From what i've seen, more actual numbers and the like than MMS:WE, but without any extrapolation or consideration of the effects of magic.
• Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe. Haven't read it really, yet. But based on reviews, a *really* excellent sourcebook both explicating real Medieval society and extrapolating what wolud happen if there were magic.
• The Primal Order Knights: explores what a church and its members are actually like, and what worship and other social elements of religion are like.
• There're a whole bunch of HarnWorld supplements that are very realistic and on various topics (feudalism, Medieval sailing/commerce, etc.).

Technology books:
While not about world-building, per se, it is reasonable to assume that when you build a world you're gonna put civilizations on it (with the possible exception of some space-travel games), and with civilization generally comes technology.

• Traveller: the New Era Fire, Fusion, & Steel. Tech design book. Doesn't just limit itself to technologies found in the Traveller universe, but also explores both higher (and lower) tech, and branches/directions that the tech didn't take in the canon Traveller universe. Also does a fair job of explaining the science underlying the tech.
• D20 System From Stone to Steel. I've only skimmed this one, so i apologize if i'm giving it short shrift. Over all, i found it a decent read, chock full of real-world information. But i thought it's fantasy extrapolations were pretty poor. And my general impression was too much detail in the wrong areas, and not enough of the big picture. Like Aria: Worlds, it only covers up through roughly Renaissance technology. I think it does a slightly better job [than Aria: Worlds]of looking at alternative [to Western Europe] technological tracks, but i don't recall for certain. This is one book that i wish had a PDF version--i wouldn't use it enough to justify paying for hardcopy, but at half the price i'd probably grab it. If you can find it, i'd pick Aria: Worlds over this one.
• Guns, Guns, Guns, and it's various sequels. For those who want a build-system devoted to personal weapons, this (or rather, its latest iteration) is perhaps the best. Ultramodern Firearms gives it a good run for its money, however.
• CORPS Vehicle Design System. Best vehicle construction i've found yet for the gearhead. Though i've heard really excellent things about the one for Jovian Chronicles (which i don't have yet). Oh, and if you're not a gearhead, take a look at Big Eyes, Small Mouth for relatively-non-crunchy vehicle design.
• Of all these categories, this is the only one where, IMHO, the copious GURPS library is of much use. Check out Biotech, High Tech, Low Tech, and possibly others.

Tangential stuff:

• Amber DRP & Everway both have sections on creating worlds (as does Dream Park, IIRC), but these are very much oriented towards the narrative impact/importance of a new world, not the realism. They're the Feng Shui approach to world building ("how can i make a fight in (visit to) this world interesting?") as much as anything else.
• Central Casting: Heroes of Legend. There's also modern-day and scifi/space-opera versions (Heroes Now and Heroes For Tomorrow, IIRC). These books are mostly-excellent aids to fleshing out a character and tying her into the setting more. They suffer only from needing a bit of editing due to the heavy-handed conservatism that pops up from time to time (such as being gay being an unqualified negative, irrespective of the society you're in), but are otherwise really awesome. And it's rare enough that i couldn't easily find an example as i was writing this.
• AD&D1 Dungeon Master's Design Kit: Best guide i've seen yet to the practicalities of actually creating and running a scenario. Not perhaps of much use to the experienced GM (though i still use it as a checklist sometimes), but something every new GM should read.
• AD&D2 Creative Campaigning. This book does for how you run yoru game what the new Unearthed Arcana does for the rules you use. Quite a few sections on all sorts of different things. It only touches on world-building a couple of times in various chapters, but throws out some interesting ideas along the way. If you need to jump-start your creativity, you could do worse than this book. But it won't give you much in the way of how to actually implement the ideas once you've got them. Probably not gonna do much that a thread here or on RPGNet won't do, however.
• Universalis If you like the concept of actually playing through your setting to create the history and mythology, this is the way to make it a game, not just a writing exercise. The whole group can participate, basically like any other RPing session, but you'll be creating the setting, rather than playing within it. End result is that (1) everybody has some investiture in the setting and (2) everybody knows the setting equally well, so you don't have the usual hurdle of the GM being the only one who really knows her homebrew setting. It differs from using the Interactive History rules from Aria in that it's very much narrative-based, rather than gamist/simulationist.

 

[woodelf]

Woodelf, with your background I wouldn't be surprised that you'll already be familiar with much of the scientific aspect of the book. What we think it could bring to you (besides the ideas Jürgen mentioned above) would be...

1: all of the info is compiled into one game-oriented source. We try really hard to not put in anything that isn't applicable for gaming. It is a gaming book, after all.

2: the appedixes. We've compiled a whole bunch of unique plants, animals, physical formations, magical creatures, and (perhaps for you most importantly) unique geological locations (like the Ngorongoro Crater and Okavango Delta) into short paragraph explications. This helps every GM grab real-world places and plop them down into his or her world. I've always found the hardest part about doing so is actually finding out about the cool place to begin with. Hopefully, this section would be very useful to one with a deeper knowledge of the subject matter already.

joe b.

Yeah, sounds really good. The only reason (at this point) that i haven't bought the PDF is that if i really like it, i'd rather have it hard-copy (and while $20 for hardcopy is perfectly reasonable, when i've already spent $10 on the PDF, it makes the cost of the book effectively $30, which feels a bit steep). Books like this are for reading, and i hate reading on screen. The books that should be PDF are all those damn books-full-o'-crunch, cause being able to cut-n-paste is actually really useful for them, and i'm not likely to ever read an entire book of feats (or spells, or whatever) cover-to-cover anyway. Anyway, i digress. I've heard so much good about MMS:WE that i'll probably give MS:EC a gamble as soon as i get around to it and the money is in the right place. And then i can tell all of you how it compares to Aria: Worlds (among other things).

--
On a tangent, there's a thought: the producer is basically not out anything when a PDF is sold, so what if the publisher offered a discount to someone buying the hardcopy who can prove they've bought the PDF already? Ideally, it would be equal to the cost of the PDF, so the end result would be the user paying full price for the hardcopy and getting the PDF as a freebie thrown in. But even if it were a smaller, but still significant, discount, it'd help. The way it is now, there's a significant disincentive for someone who has the PDF to "upgrade" to the hardcopy, and, unless i'm mistaken, the company wants us to buy the hardcopies, because if those don't sell they're actually stuck with eating costs. But feel free to point out why this couldn't work.

 

[jgbrowning]

On a tangent, there's a thought: the producer is basically not out anything when a PDF is sold, so what if the publisher offered a discount to someone buying the hardcopy who can prove they've bought the PDF already? Ideally, it would be equal to the cost of the PDF, so the end result would be the user paying full price for the hardcopy and getting the PDF as a freebie thrown in. But even if it were a smaller, but still significant, discount, it'd help. The way it is now, there's a significant disincentive for someone who has the PDF to "upgrade" to the hardcopy, and, unless i'm mistaken, the company wants us to buy the hardcopies, because if those don't sell they're actually stuck with eating costs. But feel free to point out why this couldn't work.

We're doing something similiar to what you propose with MS:EC, but going the other way. We're offering a $5 off coupon for the PDF version when you purchase the hardcopy version from our website. There's a couple of reasons why we did it that way as opposed to the other (buy the PDF at full, get discount on hardcopy).

1: Most people prefer hardcopy over PDF so we're trying to incentive people into getting the PDF version.
2: Retailers: They don't want you to offer a better deal at your website than a person can get at their store.
3: Distributors: It was hard for us to get picked up for distribution (the market right now is ROUGH for new/small companies) and I don't want to come off as trying to sidestep the channel by discounting (effectively) at our website. EDIT: In particular on a brand new product. Older products or bundles they're not too concerned with.

All of these things led us to offer the PDF coupon instead of a hardcopy coupon (which was our first idea). With the PDF coupon, our customers get some off of the total for both products and our retailers and distributors are fine with our arrangement.

As to expenses and cost, on MS:EC we spent about 33% of of our expenses outside of actual printing costs (Marketing, Art, Layout, Editing, Software). Ironically enough, we make just about the same (after expenses) from the PDF as we do through the hardcopy (when sold through the channel).

joe b.

 

[woodelf]

Problem is that while it is "perfectly readable", it isn't "readable". If you spend the time, you can parse through it. A few headaches sacrificed in the name of knowledge are nothing, yes? I've done much the same with many college papers written in an obfuscatory manner. Those were "perfectly readable", too... on the presumptuous assumption that one is willing to put in the effort to crack the stilted speech, polysyllabic machine gun, scholar's passive voice, and gratuitous self-referencing, all of which are present and self-evident in the Aria books.

What headaches? I'd owned the book for years before i ran into anyone else who'd read it. It had never even occurred to me that it was a "difficult read". It took no effort whatsoever for me to read it--it was like a hot knife through butter, to misappropriate a cliche. And at the time i read it, i'd hardly had any college courses of the sort that required reading academic papers.

Compare this to, say, the D&D3E PH. First, i found it immensely hard to get into. Second, i found it even more difficult to not put down--i just couldn't get very far before it simultaneously bored my and fatigued me. Third, it was downright difficult to read. I must've re-read the entire combat chapter 3 times, and re-read some sections even more than that, and i'm not sure i *ever* would've figured the whole thing out if not for the D20SRD (a model of clarity by comparison). And this is despite being thoroughly steeped in the jargon of RPGs, and D&D in particular, and having no problems with the words, just the grammar and organization.

"Education", in this context, means "esoteric liberal arts major jargon". RPG jargon is at least honest about its nature as jargon, and usually goes an extra mile to (a) only use jargon for things not commonly handled in the English language, and (b) have a glossary somewhere. Your sentence above says this to me: "Aria is easier for liberal arts majors to read, because it uses their language instead of gamers' language". That's not a rousing recommendation for readability in a gamers' book!

It depends what you're trying to do. If you want to make it easy for people who haven't read your game to get into it, you can borrow the terminology of an RPG they're familiar with, invent your own terminology, or pull out the dictionary and use terminology that "everyone" is familiar with (gamer or no). If the terminology from existing RPGs is insufficient (or has attached preconceptions you're trying to fight) or you don't know from which other game people will becoming, the first solution might not work very well. And i would've phrased it as "Aria is easier for bibliophiles to read, because it uses their language instead of gamers' jargon." I really don't consider the way it's written to be particularly specific to one style of higher education, and anyone who's a heavy reader (of non-fiction, at least) can probably parse it just fine.

In any case, i'd say the style of writing in Aria has much more in common with scientific journals than liberal arts journals [of those i've read]. But i wasn't talknig about jargon of any sort (academic, gamer, or otherwise)--if you can pull a general-language dictionary off the shelf, and find the meaning being used in your context, it's not jargon. As for RPG books in general: they use jargon in place of common English words all the time. The worst is when they take a word that *has* a common English meaning, and use it for something noticably different (the WoD games, especially the early ones, are much worse than most others at this).

Now, Aria did go overboard, much like some of Gygax's later efforts, in changing some of the established RPG lexicon that actually *was* transparent. "Character" is perfectly transparent, and sufficiently accurate--even if "persona" is more accurate, the former is familiar to RPers. But, for the most part, i found the terminology transparent in Aria, moreso than a lot of RPGs--it was a genuine surprise to me to hear complaints. Only word that tripped me up was "Aspect". Since it was capitalized, i kept trying to figure out the Special Game-Mechanical Meaning(TM), and it took me a couple chapters before i realized that the game-mechanical meaning of Aspect was "an aspect"--i'm still not sure why they chose to game-ize that term, since Aspects have no game-mechanical impact (that i can recall--it's been a couple years since i've run Aria).

 

[tauton_ikhnos]

Woodelf, I considered writing up a very thorough documentation of the Aria Worlds to buttress my point, but then I realized: why?

The fact is, you found it easy to read Aria Worlds, and so you have said, essentially, that "it's difficult" must be a myth. The fact that I found it difficult to read is not a myth. I didn't come onto these boards and decide to lie about it being difficult. I'm not making it up. I'm not fooling myself. I'm not somehow misinformed or undereducated. And neither is anyone else pushing your button by saying it's hard.

And the fact of the matter is, a lot more people found it hard than found it like a "hot knife through butter".

So tell you what: you've pushed my button, by claiming that it's readable despite the overwhelming presence of evidence to the contrary, your personal, singular experience notwithstanding. I'm glad you're a genius. For the rest of us, please stop shoving it in our faces by telling us it should be easy.

 

[d4]

Universalis If you like the concept of actually playing through your setting to create the history and mythology, this is the way to make it a game, not just a writing exercise. The whole group can participate, basically like any other RPing session, but you'll be creating the setting, rather than playing within it. End result is that (1) everybody has some investiture in the setting and (2) everybody knows the setting equally well, so you don't have the usual hurdle of the GM being the only one who really knows her homebrew setting. It differs from using the Interactive History rules from Aria in that it's very much narrative-based, rather than gamist/simulationist.

this sounds interesting. who publishes it, and is it still in print?

and FWIW, i have Aria (both books) as well, and although i found them very useful in ordering my thoughts on building societies and other cultural aspects of my worlds, i'll agree with those who found it difficult to read. however, i did find Aria worth the effort!

(conversely, the 3.0 Player's Handbook was like the "hot knife through butter" for me -- read it cover to cover (except for the spells) in a day or two after it first came out and thought it was a marvel of a well-documented manual.)

 

[woodelf]

Woodelf, I considered writing up a very thorough documentation of the Aria Worlds to buttress my point, but then I realized: why?

The fact is, you found it easy to read Aria Worlds, and so you have said, essentially, that "it's difficult" must be a myth. The fact that I found it difficult to read is not a myth. I didn't come onto these boards and decide to lie about it being difficult. I'm not making it up. I'm not fooling myself. I'm not somehow misinformed or undereducated. And neither is anyone else pushing your button by saying it's hard.

And the fact of the matter is, a lot more people found it hard than found it like a "hot knife through butter".

So tell you what: you've pushed my button, by claiming that it's readable despite the overwhelming presence of evidence to the contrary, your personal, singular experience notwithstanding. I'm glad you're a genius. For the rest of us, please stop shoving it in our faces by telling us it should be easy.

Hmmm...i guess i did get a bit carried away there. I certainly wasn't trying to belittle anyone--i obviously misread you because i read it that you, too, found Aria perfectly readable. And i definitely didn't intend to question anyone's motives or integrity. I was employing disproof-by-counter-example, but then got riled up and began giving supporting arguments, when none are needed (and, indeed, they don't help, they just obscure the point). And you're obviously using proof-by-majority, and those two simply don't counter one another--we're using different standards. So, yeah, agree to disagree is probably the easiest: i found it an easy read, the majority find it a hard read.

--
The part that i find interesting is that these things aren't linear, but are apparently multi-axial. That is, i'm not at all surprised we have different ideas of what is "hard to read". I'm surprised that we can read the same books, and one of us think X is a harder read than Y, and the other think the precise inverse. I would've thought that reading difficulty came on a nice neat line, like the grade-level ratings imply it does. We wouldn't necessarily agree on "how much harder" one thing is than another, but i would've thought we'd all agree on which direction something was (harder or easier, that is). I'm a little baffled by how, frex, i can find the D&D3E PH a difficult read and Aria an easy read, while d4 finds Aria difficult and the PH easy. To be clear, i'm not questioning these assertions, just trying to reconcile them.

 

[woodelf]

this sounds interesting. who publishes it, and is it still in print?
[/quote
Universalis, the Game of Unlimited Stories
Ramshead Publishing
http://universalis.actionroll.com/

(conversely, the 3.0 Player's Handbook was like the "hot knife through butter" for me -- read it cover to cover (except for the spells) in a day or two after it first came out and thought it was a marvel of a well-documented manual.)

A friend of mine made an interesting comment that may be relevant in this context: he said that the D&D3E PH is designed to be read cover-to-cover, not to be referenced a bit at a time. That may have been part of my problem--i didn't read it in order. Though, in my case, even after i'd read all the bits (except for the spells), combat was still pretty fuzzy.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

(Big list of world-building books)

I'd recommend two additional books:

GURPS Traveller: First In: Has a very nifty system for rolling up planets and the creatures who live on them.

GURPS Uplift:Has a very nifty system for creating sapient creatures based on the environment their ancestors grew up in.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

What I like is that it isn't written for Joe Average, it is written for the intellengence gamer.

That's ironical!