At Valley of the Blue Snails, Canecorpus discusses setting design as a hobby. It's something I can identify with. I enjoy role playing and I enjoy setting design, and sometimes I enjoy them entirely separately from one another. In fact I might go so far as to say that I like setting design even more than I like gaming. It's a great way to express creativity, especially if like me you are a terrible artist (regular readers will attest to this) and cursed with a flea-like attention span (precluding novel-writing); moreover I would call it a pure hobby in that there's no way that a setting-designer can possibly be in it for the money. You don't sell stuff like Yoon-suin on its own, at least not in numbers. It's a labour of love, and that's that.
Today I had a godawful hangover and crippling aches and pains from playing football last night, so I spent most of the day making maps. For inspiration I visited the Cartographer's Guild, and from there came across the amazing Sorol, a one-man effort to collect the "accumulated knowledge about the planet [Sorol], its inhabitants, and its history". The creator is not a role player and as far as I can discern just makes it all up for fun. (He makes, quite simply, the best maps of nonexistent places that I've seen.) It's good to know one is not alone, and even better to know that there are people out there with such skill, energy and motivation. It serves as a kick up the backside.
Of course, world creation is a venerable practice. Tolkien originally made up Middle Earth as a hobby and a way of providing a history for his created languages. The tradition continues to this day: one of the most interesting modern examples of world creation, Ill Bethisad, has similar origins. First created as an alternative history to explain the existence of Brithenig (a made-up language based on the premise that Latin in the British Isles did not die out), it is now a highly detailed world all of its own, with several constructed languages and a complicated political structure. Believe you me, if I had the linguistic knowledge I would also be making up languages myself - probably right this moment.
Beats watching TV anyway, right?
I enjoy role playing and I enjoy setting design, and sometimes I enjoy them entirely separately from one another. In fact I might go so far as to say that I like setting design even more than I like gaming.
ReplyDeleteI generally feel the same way, although actual gaming has pleasant side effects on setting design.
I would call it a pure hobby in that there's no way that a setting-designer can possibly be in it for the money. You don't sell stuff like Yoon-suin on its own, at least not in numbers. It's a labour of love, and that's that.
That's why I've shunned any opportunity to try to sell a Thool supplement ... I don't see any way the miniscule amount of money to be gained would compensate for the associated pains in my ass and potential loss of enjoyment.
Scott: I think the only advantage to trying to sell (say) Thool would be that paid-for stuff tends to be played more than free stuff does. At least in my experience anyway. I must have downloaded a hundred free RPG things off the internet, but the number I've played (or even read properly) I could count on one hand.
ReplyDeleteThat's not because of the quality or lack of it of those resources, but because once downloaded they're easy to forget about. If I'd paid for them, though, I'd be more likely to put the effort into getting to know them properly.
It serves as a kick up the backside
ReplyDelete*Looks up from pad of graph paper*
Amen to that!
For me it's always been about World Creation with the gaming being a chance to allow others into that world.
ReplyDeleteThat's why whenever I've run a game in a pre-defined world (WFRP's a good example) I've generally only kept the feel of the place (gothic for WFRP) and just created reams and reams of stuff trying to keep in with the same look-and-feel that attracted me to the world in the first place.
I've no time for people who seem to want to learn every last piece of trivia about somebody else's world with the apparent fear that if change something or have to invent something to cover a gap, somehow it's all wrong and their world is full of mistakes. I always want to shake these people and say "Work out what you like about the setting and then riff on that.". The Battletech scene seems full of these people. Price of everything and value of nothing as my dear departed Great-Grandmother used to say...
That Sorol guy is crazy in all the right ways.
ReplyDeleteI lurk around there a lot.
ReplyDeleteFound it accidentally through
http://www.alternatehistory.com/
which is another interesting site - particularly because gaming is not
the main point.
I love setting design and it is
a different pleasure than gaming -
though I've really only ever designed
micro-settings.
Chris: Heh.
ReplyDeleteCoopdevil: I agree absolutely. Forgotten Realms is probably the worst culprit as far as that goes, but I suppose every setting has its fetishists. Edsan wrote an interesting post about it quite recently.
Matthew: The right side of the genius/madman line, I think!
Thanks for mentioning my site! I am not a role-player, but I have had a number of role-players ask to use my maps. I never anticipated that!
ReplyDeleteIf you are interested in creating your own languages (I'm not, but it's amazing how often the two hobbies overlap), http://www.spinnoff.com/zbb is a great place to start.
Thanks again!
-Rob
Thanks for the comment, Rob. The effort and skill that went into those maps of yours is pretty incredible.
ReplyDeleteThanks also for the link. I think I may have stumbled across that site before. Although I speak a couple of languages, I think that language creation (if it's done properly) is a quite different skill, and relies on a lot of specialist knowledge of linguistics that I unfortunately don't have. Who knows, I may give it a whirl one day.