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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Brazeku" data-source="post: 3582261" data-attributes="member: 48916">Maybe I wasn't explicit or clear enough.  I'm not talking about high, high levels of simulationism and pointless detail, I made sure to put in the caveat that the details included have to be usable (this implies something that isn't too complex to understand) and interesting.For example: Making industrial steel isn't going to turn up so often in game (if ever), but if you need to work on some industrial history then a little knowledge of it can go a long way to producing something cool.Also, nothing I said precludes the ability to create stories.  This is about setting design.  Literature, comics, and films were designed to tell stories, yes - and in so doing you are provided as much background as is necessary to tell whatever particular story your source material presented.  And that's cool.  But when you treat the elements of background introduced to tell a particular story as a developed reality, any other stories you tell will necessarily come to resemble whatever the initial source was.  The logic will be internally consistent, but limited.Now the problem comes when people attempt to expand these simulations into their own settings.  Sometimes it can turn out well, if properly designed and care is taken in adding detail.  But often, the material isn't examined, and clashes with newer additions because the underlying assumptions of the original content aren't consistent.  Then you wind up with 200 page arguments on the nature of elves.Tolkien is a good example.  His literature has a lot of extra details which helped develop a complete world, which is why it was used as a great source for fantasy material.  The problem is that people took elements of that world (now tropes) and incorporated them into new creations which were inconsistent with the rules of Tolkien's creation.  So you wind up with an inconsistent mess.  If the tropes were properly modified to fit in with the new world, then they would be acceptable - and they would also, very likely, cease to be tropes at all.</blockquote>

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