Grützi
Should be playing D&D instead
So now we've got our own little subforum ... let's get to it people.
As laid out in the inital post we have a few steps to fullfill on our plan.
Phase I
Phase I is well underway ... we've got people on board, we've got our skills all sorted out (or at least stated ), we have our own forum and we've got a thread to find a name and a logo for our group.
So Phase I is covered pretty well.
Phase II
With Phase I nearly done we need to look into Phase II, namely the definiton of the foundations of our work.
We, as a group, need a common baseline, a point of reference, a lowest common denominator to work from.
I'm talking about the basic themes and genre of our work, some basic parts of our shared setting, the system we will be using for our works and some fundamental questions of usability here.
So in this very thread here we will brainstorm, discuss and define these things together.
The next steps in this thread
First we need to talk about which genre and which themes we want.
I think it's safe to say, that whatever we will be doing here will fall squarely into the realm of OSR-style fantasy RPGs. I mean we are all part of the OSR (each of us with his/her unique flavour ) so I kind of see that as a given. (Please correct me if I'm wrong).
Still the realm of fantasy is a big one and we need to decide if we want to limit the scope of our work to any single subgenre inside this grand realm (dark fantasy, gritty fantasy, heroic fantasy, ... you get it). Maybe there are certain bigger themes (heroes journey, hope, fate, death,...) that might influence our work or that people want to have ... so we need to discuss this too.
To be clear: If everyone thinks this is superfluous, by all means say it, but I think it's worth talking about. Even then what we decide here isn't set in stone or the absolute rule. If we decide on dark fantasy we can still bring in funny or light-hearted elements ... always remember rule one: We are doing this for fun.
A common baseline we can all agree on will certainly help us get this all together quickly and will eliminate many problems before they become critical.
So heres how I think we should do it:
Each of us taking part in the project (we really need a name, I'm tired of calling it the project ) posts his preferences for genre and themes in this thread.
Together with genre and themes each one of us will also post one "Must have" that he/she would love to see in our work and one "Do not" that he/she doesn't want to see in our work.
With this we will each know were the others stand in the most basic manner and will brainstorm, discuss and decide from there on.
"Must Haves" and "Do Nots"
Good restrictions help the creative process immensely I've come to learn over the years. So defining some broad borders with a few "Must haves" and "Do nots" is something I do in nearly all my creative work.
These Restrictions can come in any form we like for now: You can define something about the minimal setting we will later create together, you can define something about the workflow or the design philosophy, ... it's all pretty open at this point.
The goal should be to give us all an idea what each of us wants and doesn't want so we can work from there.
We all want to create something together so we need to keep an open mind about things we normaly wouldn't do or things that are outside our "comfort zone".
Another thing to keep in mind is to not "kill" too much possibilities with a poorly choosen restriction.
System
With a common baseline established we can then talk about which system we want for our works.
Do we want to be system agnostic or use a specific system? Do we write our own homebrew? With a clear understanding what we all want from this it'll be much easier to decide here.
First broad strokes of the setting
After we have our common baseline and our system we can then, as a final step in this part, decide on the most basic parts of our shared setting (which we will create in another thread )
Some restrictions, the genre, the used system and other stuff thats going to come up will all inform our choice in how much setting we want and how detailed it should be.
As laid out in the inital post we have a few steps to fullfill on our plan.
Phase I
Phase I is well underway ... we've got people on board, we've got our skills all sorted out (or at least stated ), we have our own forum and we've got a thread to find a name and a logo for our group.
So Phase I is covered pretty well.
Phase II
With Phase I nearly done we need to look into Phase II, namely the definiton of the foundations of our work.
We, as a group, need a common baseline, a point of reference, a lowest common denominator to work from.
I'm talking about the basic themes and genre of our work, some basic parts of our shared setting, the system we will be using for our works and some fundamental questions of usability here.
So in this very thread here we will brainstorm, discuss and define these things together.
The next steps in this thread
First we need to talk about which genre and which themes we want.
I think it's safe to say, that whatever we will be doing here will fall squarely into the realm of OSR-style fantasy RPGs. I mean we are all part of the OSR (each of us with his/her unique flavour ) so I kind of see that as a given. (Please correct me if I'm wrong).
Still the realm of fantasy is a big one and we need to decide if we want to limit the scope of our work to any single subgenre inside this grand realm (dark fantasy, gritty fantasy, heroic fantasy, ... you get it). Maybe there are certain bigger themes (heroes journey, hope, fate, death,...) that might influence our work or that people want to have ... so we need to discuss this too.
To be clear: If everyone thinks this is superfluous, by all means say it, but I think it's worth talking about. Even then what we decide here isn't set in stone or the absolute rule. If we decide on dark fantasy we can still bring in funny or light-hearted elements ... always remember rule one: We are doing this for fun.
A common baseline we can all agree on will certainly help us get this all together quickly and will eliminate many problems before they become critical.
So heres how I think we should do it:
Each of us taking part in the project (we really need a name, I'm tired of calling it the project ) posts his preferences for genre and themes in this thread.
Together with genre and themes each one of us will also post one "Must have" that he/she would love to see in our work and one "Do not" that he/she doesn't want to see in our work.
With this we will each know were the others stand in the most basic manner and will brainstorm, discuss and decide from there on.
"Must Haves" and "Do Nots"
Good restrictions help the creative process immensely I've come to learn over the years. So defining some broad borders with a few "Must haves" and "Do nots" is something I do in nearly all my creative work.
These Restrictions can come in any form we like for now: You can define something about the minimal setting we will later create together, you can define something about the workflow or the design philosophy, ... it's all pretty open at this point.
The goal should be to give us all an idea what each of us wants and doesn't want so we can work from there.
We all want to create something together so we need to keep an open mind about things we normaly wouldn't do or things that are outside our "comfort zone".
Another thing to keep in mind is to not "kill" too much possibilities with a poorly choosen restriction.
System
With a common baseline established we can then talk about which system we want for our works.
Do we want to be system agnostic or use a specific system? Do we write our own homebrew? With a clear understanding what we all want from this it'll be much easier to decide here.
First broad strokes of the setting
After we have our common baseline and our system we can then, as a final step in this part, decide on the most basic parts of our shared setting (which we will create in another thread )
Some restrictions, the genre, the used system and other stuff thats going to come up will all inform our choice in how much setting we want and how detailed it should be.