I'd describe Daddy Warpigs' Monte reference as Macro-to-Micro design with Finished Examples. I prefer Macro-to-Micro design. Though I appreciate Finished Examples, I agree with daniel_ream's concern that people can extrapolate cookie cutter assumptions from there.

What I found helps me is broad brush strokes to rapidly provide a Macro-to-Micro framework, but provide a smaller Finished Example or two on the scale of an NPC or singular Locale. Especially so when I have huge swaths of territory to cover, this technique I picked up from Birthright by experience helps save me time. I'd like to think it also conveys to players well, and thus would work as well with GMs, but then I play games not design products to be sold, so...

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;652378It sounds like you've hit on an approach that suits your needs: detail what needs to be detailed, at the level of detail necessary. That's a good rule of thumb, and there's no need to didactically follow Monte's ideas. (Not that I would have recommended that, in any case.)

I'm looking forward to seeing the final product.

We just did a public playtesting at Boston Gameday and it was quite succesful. Will probably be out in about a year. Most of the core mechanics are pretty much finished and it is mainly about refining, fixing and finding the weak bits. The setting is about half finished (i know all the broad outlines though). I did the first half while GMing a campaign. Now I have switched to being a player in a campaign run by Bill, which is giving me a fresh perspective for the second half. What we do now is I submit the material to Bill as he needs it for the campaign, and it works great because his first time reading the it is when he preps for the adventure.

I have a lot of the same decision making issues writing background stuff and mine isn't even for publication.

As far as detailed histories go I have come to the decision that I write about the place/person first and if I feel I need to mention something from the past like a murder or political uprising that will be more detailed in the history section but otherwise if it doesn't have a noticeable effect on present day circumstances I usually don't write about it history wise.

I think less is more is the best idiom. If I go to read it myself  during editing and find myself skipping some part then most likely that part needs to come out. If it bored me then I pity others

What you need, when writing history, isn't an encyclopedia entry. What you need is a mythos.

A mythos is "history as story" that explains your setting.

The mythos of Shadowrun is the Awakening — it explains how all these elves, dwarves, and dragons came to exist in the world of the future.

The mythos of Deadlands is the Reckoning, which explains where the monsters and powers of the setting came from.

The mythos of The Lord of the Rings is the tale of Sauron, the forging of the rings, and how he lost it.

This last is especially illuminating. The mythos is just a small subset of the history of Middle Earth, which is vast in scope and detailed. It even comes into the novels — when Aragorn tells Bilbo to include a green gem in his poem about Eärendil.

But for the novels themselves, the only story people need to know is the mythos of Sauron. And Tolkien summarizes it in the famous poem that opens the book. ("One ring to rule them all", etc.)

All you need for the setting as a whole is the mythos that sets up the present day campaign setting. Other pieces of history may be necessary in different places, but only the mythos is de rigueur.

Quote from: Piestrio;650512Fuck timelines.

If I see a timeline at any point in a book it goes straight to my "sell" pile. Do not pass go, do not get played.

Just curious, what is it about timelines that you dislike?

It looks like word count considerations will limit the amount of detail I can include (because I need to leave room for other sections as well, notably the monsters). I am going to be able to have entries for everything on the world map (turns out this is a lot more than I originally thought), and some will be quite lengthy as needed. Others will need to be smaller. Depending on the place, size will range from one paragraph to several pages. The smaller entries will be suggestive, serving to give the GM room to create and explore, but also giving a a small kernel of inspiration. The larger entries will go into some detail with political structures, religion, economy, etc. Even with some of the entries being smaller, the word count for the setting chapter is going to be quite large due to the size of the world.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;652490What you need, when writing history, isn't an encyclopedia entry. What you need is a mythos.

A mythos is "history as story" that explains your setting.

The mythos of Shadowrun is the Awakening — it explains how all these elves, dwarves, and dragons came to exist in the world of the future.

The mythos of Deadlands is the Reckoning, which explains where the monsters and powers of the setting came from.

The mythos of The Lord of the Rings is the tale of Sauron, the forging of the rings, and how he lost it.

This last is especially illuminating. The mythos is just a small subset of the history of Middle Earth, which is vast in scope and detailed. It even comes into the novels — when Aragorn tells Bilbo to include a green gem in his poem about Eärendil.

But for the novels themselves, the only story people need to know is the mythos of Sauron. And Tolkien summarizes it in the famous poem that opens the book. ("One ring to rule them all", etc.)

All you need for the setting as a whole is the mythos that sets up the present day campaign setting. Other pieces of history may be necessary in different places, but only the mythos is de rigueur.

I have to agree with this.  I can't always tell you a full list of what I hate but I can definitely tell you what I love.  I will buy an RPG book just to read the mythos and the possibilities related to it.

Quote from: Bobpool;663091I have to agree with this.  I can't always tell you a full list of what I hate but I can definitely tell you what I love.  I will buy an RPG book just to read the mythos and the possibilities related to it.

I am not sure whether our history and lore will be to your liking or not. It is a blend of the two. The lore aspect explains the rise and fall of ogre civilization and the introduction of magic into the world. There is also straight history as well. I wrote two sections, one for history in broad strokes followed by specific histories of key areas. There are only a few specific histories. After this is a lore section filled with less reliable oral traditions and legends (these are mostly used to explain things like how the elves went fom essentially being slaves to nomadic tribes and why there are three major groups of elves).

We want the book to be about three hundred pages. So this is the main thing limiting how much i can do in each area. The setting section was growing too fast and it would have engulfed other parts of the book if I hadn't allowed for smaller entries. The history section is similar, in that i had to reduce the number of detailed specific histories to make room for other chapters and the appendix. If we increased these two sections, my only other choice would be to go to about four hundred pages (because if we did a lower number between 320 to 370, the cover price would be too high for the page count). And at four hundred pages, the price would still be higher than I would ever want our books to be (plus i dont like the idea of a 400 page beast, 300 seems more maneagable for players and GMs).

Quote from: daniel_ream;650692I would also include in the material a note saying "This is typical for Fooistan. Others are not detailed, and for the most part won't ever be, so GM's should feel free to make up whatever serves their campaign the best."

If I were making a wish list, this would be at the top.  I don't want to retcon anything when your next book comes out, so if you intend to use a specific setting location and expand on it greatly, a hint would be great. Take RIFTS for example, a new book may plant a half million people in an abandoned wilderness.  Or destroy an entire city moments after describing it.  That may all be great setting material, but if you have detailed those parts of the world in a different way,  now future material has less value.  Paizo actually scares me quite a bit in the same manner.  You get a paragraph,  if you're lucky, on something that screams 'awesome playground'.  Now you have to decide whether to run the risk of fleshing it out only to be contradicted later.

Quote from: mcbobbo;663248If I were making a wish list, this would be at the top.  I don't want to retcon anything when your next book comes out, so if you intend to use a specific setting location and expand on it greatly, a hint would be great. Take RIFTS for example, a new book may plant a half million people in an abandoned wilderness.  Or destroy an entire city moments after describing it.  That may all be great setting material, but if you have detailed those parts of the world in a different way,  now future material has less value.  Paizo actually scares me quite a bit in the same manner.  You get a paragraph,  if you're lucky, on something that screams 'awesome playground'.  Now you have to decide whether to run the risk of fleshing it out only to be contradicted later.

If I understand your concern, you are worried about setting material being introduced, then taken away in later books through stuff like metaplot? If I misunderstood let me know, as I think you and daniel are raising interesting points.

In the case of Sertorius, we wont be releasing any metaplot books or altering the timeline of the setting. We give a shot of the world as it is now, with some suggestions for how it may play out in the future (because divination is a crucial skill in the game). So in the NPC section, each charcater has a past, present and future entry. But the future is presented as possibilities, it isnt written in stone. It may say something like "Veja's power is growing and if he makes the right alliances, he will secure his reign for several decades. However members of his family plot against him." This is both to give the gm adventure ideas, but also so he has something to hang his hat on if the players make a Divination attempt on Veja.

As to hinting at stuff, I did do a bit of that. Basically writing what I frlt I would find helpful or inspiring as a GM reading the material. I also stopped running the games myself and am having my business partner run them. That way, I hand him the setting text and he has to work with it to run a game. This is helping us find where to add material and where to eliminate material. I am still looking for more GMs to playtest the setting though. The best feedback so far has been from people who have never played our system or games.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;663168I am not sure whether our history and lore will be to your liking or not. It is a blend of the two. The lore aspect explains the rise and fall of ogre civilization and the introduction of magic into the world. There is also straight history as well. I wrote two sections, one for history in broad strokes followed by specific histories of key areas. There are only a few specific histories. After this is a lore section filled with less reliable oral traditions and legends (these are mostly used to explain things like how the elves went fom essentially being slaves to nomadic tribes and why there are three major groups of elves).

We want the book to be about three hundred pages. So this is the main thing limiting how much i can do in each area. The setting section was growing too fast and it would have engulfed other parts of the book if I hadn't allowed for smaller entries. The history section is similar, in that i had to reduce the number of detailed specific histories to make room for other chapters and the appendix. If we increased these two sections, my only other choice would be to go to about four hundred pages (because if we did a lower number between 320 to 370, the cover price would be too high for the page count). And at four hundred pages, the price would still be higher than I would ever want our books to be (plus i dont like the idea of a 400 page beast, 300 seems more maneagable for players and GMs).

That is a lot!  Do you think the 300 pages is just a self imposed limit?  If you hit 400 pages but everything is just insanely useful content to help GMs world craft, wouldn't that be more helpful than cutting out something important?

Here's the two rules of thumb I'd suggest:

(1) Try to avoid saying "never" or "can't". Shutting off a possibility is almost never as much fun as leaving that possibility open.

(2) Whenever possible, try to frame and present the information in a way which makes it immediately game-able.

There are obviously exceptions to both of these rules of thumb, but I find them useful.

You may be surprised with the latter rule, in particular, because it often requires less space to make something game-able than not. That's because making something game-able often means effectively showing instead of telling.

For example, I've recently been reading Eclipse Phase supplements. (They're pretty great, but I'm going to pick on them any way due to convenience.) In Panopticon the authors spend a great deal of time trying to explain just how incredibly pervasive sensor technology has become in the transhuman future and what that means in terms of day-to-day operations. They spend something like half a dozen pages on this. And the whole time I'm thinking:

"Just give me a set of tables that I can roll on to determine whether the PCs are currently being observed and, if so, what type of sensors are observing them."

Quote from: Justin Alexander;663455Here's the two rules of thumb I'd suggest:

(1) Try to avoid saying "never" or "can't". Shutting off a possibility is almost never as much fun as leaving that possibility open.

(2) Whenever possible, try to frame and present the information in a way which makes it immediately game-able.

There are obviously exceptions to both of these rules of thumb, but I find them useful.

You may be surprised with the latter rule, in particular, because it often requires less space to make something game-able than not. That's because making something game-able often means effectively showing instead of telling.

For example, I've recently been reading Eclipse Phase supplements. (They're pretty great, but I'm going to pick on them any way due to convenience.) In Panopticon the authors spend a great deal of time trying to explain just how incredibly pervasive sensor technology has become in the transhuman future and what that means in terms of day-to-day operations. They spend something like half a dozen pages on this. And the whole time I'm thinking:

"Just give me a set of tables that I can roll on to determine whether the PCs are currently being observed and, if so, what type of sensors are observing them."

I try to do the later. It is challenge, because I also want reading the book itself to feel smooth and enjoyable. My own personal preference is something of a mix. At a certain point, descriptions have too much text to be useful in play (it is hard to sift through paragraphs looking for the one piece of info you need). On the other hand, as a GM i find a bit of evocative text about thebsetting to read about between games helps get me excited about prepping material and gives me ideas. Right now some of the sections are bigger than they ought to be and I plan to edit them down some more. Some setting entries go into heavy detail, and if you are going to run those, it is best to read them before starting play. The are not flowery or anything like that, i just tried to pack them with information. Those are mainly the very important regions. So if you want to run something in the Caelum Republic, you will want to read that first. But if your players venture into Eshpar Province or travel to the Horgel Tribe territory in the south, those entries are short and to the point (usually or two paragraphs).

I am also hedging by creating a large appendix with lots of reference material. This is where encounter tables, political titles by region, king lists, glossary of terms and other details can be found (they can be found in some of the text of the book as well, at least in part, but this is where you go if you need that stuff at a glance).

Quote from: Justin Alexander;663455Here's the two rules of thumb I'd suggest:

(1) Try to avoid saying "never" or "can't". Shutting off a possibility is almost never as much fun as leaving that possibility open.

(2) Whenever possible, try to frame and present the information in a way which makes it immediately game-able.

There are obviously exceptions to both of these rules of thumb, but I find them useful.

You may be surprised with the latter rule, in particular, because it often requires less space to make something game-able than not. That's because making something game-able often means effectively showing instead of telling.

For example, I've recently been reading Eclipse Phase supplements. (They're pretty great, but I'm going to pick on them any way due to convenience.) In Panopticon the authors spend a great deal of time trying to explain just how incredibly pervasive sensor technology has become in the transhuman future and what that means in terms of day-to-day operations. They spend something like half a dozen pages on this. And the whole time I'm thinking:

"Just give me a set of tables that I can roll on to determine whether the PCs are currently being observed and, if so, what type of sensors are observing them."

I try to do the latter. It is challenge, because I also want reading the book itself to feel smooth and enjoyable. My own personal preference is something of a mix. At a certain point, descriptions have too much text to be useful in play (it is hard to sift through paragraphs looking for the one piece of info you need). On the other hand, as a GM i find a bit of evocative text about thebsetting to read about between games helps get me excited about prepping material and gives me ideas. Right now some of the sections are bigger than they ought to be and I plan to edit them down some more. Some setting entries go into heavy detail, and if you are going to run those, it is best to read them before starting play. The are not flowery or anything like that, i just tried to pack them with information. Those are mainly the very important regions. So if you want to run something in the Caelum Republic, you will want to read that first. But if your players venture into Eshpar Province or travel to the Horgel Tribe territory in the south, those entries are short and to the point (usually or two paragraphs).

I am also hedging by creating a large appendix with lots of reference material. This is where encounter tables, political titles by region, king lists, glossary of terms and other details can be found (they can be found in some of the text of the book as well, at least in part, but this is where you go if you need that stuff at a glance).

Quote from: Bobpool;663445That is a lot!  Do you think the 300 pages is just a self imposed limit?  If you hit 400 pages but everything is just insanely useful content to help GMs world craft, wouldn't that be more helpful than cutting out something important?

It is self imposed, but mainly due to not wanting to increase the price (and I dont think the additional info we could include with 400 pages would be worth the extra cost to most gamers). Certainly if we had an extra 100 pages of pure gold that I felt people would find useful, i would reconsider, but as it is I think there is going to be plenty we can edit down without losing much (in fact, this will probably improve the final manuscript and make it easier to read). My only real concern at this point is making sure there is enough room to have a lot of monsters. I can comfortable whittle down some of the other sections if I need, but that is a key reference section that should only gain weight as we get closer to release.