The First Ever campaign setting
Calithena:
Quote from: Finarvyn on August 30, 2010, 02:24:42 PM
I'm kind of bummed in a way, however, to realize that there isn't a "Ron's World" that I could run my players through in the same way they could run through Blackmoor. Part of me was hoping for something like this.... :-D
I've been hoping Ron would give us more of this for years. Ron is good at making weird shit up. I am in this first and foremost for the weird shit. I also enjoy Ron's games and theorizing, but for some reason he seems to do almost all his publishing on this end, whereas what a lot of us are still clamoring for out here is Ron's Big Book of Weird Shit.
Just sayin'.
Ron Edwards:
Sean, what do you mean by "do all his publishing on this end"? That phrasing threw me off my horse.
Best, Ron
Calithena:
Your publications are mostly self-contained games, gaming theory, and how-to articles. These things often contain snippets of stuff (especially campaign setting details, but also characters, situations, magical imagery, etc.) which are really cool. 'Color' and 'setting' in the Big Model lexicon, perhaps.
I think that for theoretical reasons and as a matter of personal taste you often keep that stuff very minimal and only have it in your books to the degree that it illustrates what you can do with the game, technique, whatever you are discussing. In some cases (Trollbabe) there is definite color and setting provided at the game level, but only an absolute minimum, so that anyone playing the game is rather forced to make their own Trollbabe World (this can of course be done bit by bit in play). In other cases (Sorcerer), there are pieces of dozens of different colors and settings, mostly to illustrate the underlying structure of the game.
Which is all great! But you must know that there are many gamers, myself included, who would love to read/own/use things like "The Az'k'arn Worldbook" or "The Northern Isles: A Trollbabe Mini-Campaign" or even "Ron Edwards' Monstrous Compendium" - even if they were just systemless compilations of setting details and descriptions. In some cases such products could even be helpful sort of 'training wheels' for your games.
I suspect that you have little interest in publishing such things. But the point of my post was that I think you have a real skill at making up weird fantasy content. You mostly only publish that stuff in the context of game-making and theorizing, though, and only to the minimum degree needed to make your game or theoretical point clear. I can see good reasons for this choice on your part, especially 5-10 years back, in the fight to make clear space for clearly different approaches to roleplaying. But, I also wish I had these big books of Ron Edwards Weird Fantasy Stuff on my shelf.
So that's where I was coming from in my original post.
Ron Edwards:
Yeah, that's kind of strange to read.
I'm trying to come up with a response that isn't an attack, and isn't readable as an attack. There are some phrasings and assumptions in your post which I find problematic.
I also think that I provide a hell of a lot of this kind of content in my games, and most of the games I've done would be actively hampered by the inclusion of extensive setting material, so the observation seems to be about whether I should be writing and publishing gazetteers instead of games.
I guess I can accept the compliment and leave it there.
Best, Ron
Calithena:
I appreciate that. It is intended as a compliment, most definitely.
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