Gardener Vs. Architect: Writing style as applied to Campaign Creation

[Sydius Mendoza]

Here is a question for the battle hardened ADRPG GM's on the forum. When you create your campaign setting are you an 'Architect' or a 'Gardener'.

In addition to being a huge fan of Roger Zelazny, one of my other favorite authors is George R. R. Martin. I have read numerous articles online, and have been at a signing where he frames and addresses this topic. GRRM's assertion is fiction writers can be divided into two categories. Some authors have a full and complete vision and outline of where the story will go. These are the 'architects'. They have a blueprint and they are deliberately building something. The other side are the authors that start with the elements that they want to use in the story. They plant seeds, they grow the story and they prune the leaves to keep the plant healthy, if you will.

So let's discuss this as it applies to the GM of a campaign. Are you an 'Architect' or a 'Gardener'? Do you try a hybrid approach? I am not asking for a debate of the two styles, so much as a comparative discussion. All opinions are valid. That being said, let's get down to brass tacks here.....
...1..2..3
Do it!

[Panjumanju]

Hm. I'm suspicious about the analogy's ability to transfer between authorship and game mastering. Personal novels make for poor games.

In the spirit of it - I suppose I must be a pre-game architect and in-game gardener. Aggressive and thorough preparation is wonderfully and tragically warped by player creativity. At least - this is the structure when things go well.

I'm not sure that anyone would fall too much in one category or the other.

But it is an interesting way to think about the creative process.

//Panjumanju

[Sydius Mendoza]

Hm. I'm suspicious about the analogy's ability to transfer between authorship and game mastering. Personal novels make for poor games.

//Panjumanju

This is the sort of feedback I was expecting. I do agree that personal novels make for poor games. Fully mapped out plans by a GM can lead to the PCs getting railroaded. My question was geared toward preparation more than anything else. How fully thought out is the pre-game? Do you have fully formed plot lines and hooks from the start?

In the spirit of it - I suppose I must be a pre-game architect and in-game gardener.

//Panjumanju

Makes sense. Thanks for humoring me

[The Butcher]

Architect - top-down campaign creation (start with big picture, e.g. a big world map, fill in details).

Gardener - bottom-up design (start with a small part of the setting, e.g. a small regional map, detail it just enough to get the game running, and expand the world as needed).

[LordVreeg]

Architect - top-down campaign creation (start with big picture, e.g. a big world map, fill in details).

Gardener - bottom-up design (start with a small part of the setting, e.g. a small regional map, detail it just enough to get the game running, and expand the world as needed).

On a few other threads, I advocate for my discovered opinion, which is start big and top-fown, then after I create a certain amount of molar stuff, I switch and go molecular.

[The Butcher]

On a few other threads, I advocate for my discovered opinion, which is start big and top-fown, then after I create a certain amount of molar stuff, I switch and go molecular.

This is how I used to do it but lately I end up never finishing it, throwing my hands to the air and using a published setting.

I've decided next time I sit my ass to create a setting I'll start with a big picture in very broad strokes (just enough knowledge about the wider world to get the game up and running), and then focus on a relatively small area as my initial campaign playground. To be precise, Rob's step-by-step sandbox generation alghorithm is what I'm thinking of.

I consider this essentially bottom-up since everything outside the borders of this initial region should be in a state of quantum indeterminacy, i.e. vague enough to be changed as one wishes until the moment it's "observed", i.e. enters actual play and becomes an actual object of player interaction. So in a sense, while you have a scaffold or skeleton of sorts for the world outside the starting sandbox, it's flexible enough until you need it determined.

[LordVreeg]

This is how I used to do it but lately I end up never finishing it, throwing my hands to the air and using a published setting.

I've decided next time I sit my ass to create a setting I'll start with a big picture in very broad strokes (just enough knowledge about the wider world to get the game up and running), and then focus on a relatively small area as my initial campaign playground. To be precise, Rob's step-by-step sandbox generation alghorithm is what I'm thinking of.

I consider this essentially bottom-up since everything outside the borders of this initial region should be in a state of quantum indeterminacy, i.e. vague enough to be changed as one wishes until the moment it's "observed", i.e. enters actual play and becomes an actual object of player interaction. So in a sense, while you have a scaffold or skeleton of sorts for the world outside the starting sandbox, it's flexible enough until you need it determined.

Don't mind me if I just say positive things about this.  I like Rob's steps, though I generally think it needs a couple more steps to determine racial and historical causal trickle down stuff.
I am also, as you very well known, sort of insanely concerned with how system affects even these early strokes.  
Let us know...or at least respond to your own Gothic thread...

[RPGPundit]

Inasmuch as the metaphor is valid, Gardener, for sure.  Remember that Zelazny himself was definitely more Gardener than "Architect" when it came to Amber.

RPGPundit

[Panjumanju]

Inasmuch as the metaphor is valid, Gardener, for sure.  Remember that Zelazny himself was definitely more Gardener than "Architect" when it came to Amber.

RPGPundit

A thing that worked against him later, in the Merlin cycle, I think.

//Panjumanju

[RPGPundit]

A thing that worked against him later, in the Merlin cycle, I think.

//Panjumanju

I don't know about that. I think you just wouldn't have had the same books if everything had been very carefully and rigidly planned out and crafted from the very beginning.
Nor would you have the same kind of campaign.

RPGPundit

[Sydius Mendoza]

A thing that worked against him later, in the Merlin cycle, I think.

//Panjumanju

IMO this only hurt things at the end. I personally love the Merlin cycle. The Corwin books are better written, no argument there. But the Corwin series being better doesn't make the Merlin cycle bad or weak. It's just not as good. The main failing of the Merlin cycle IMO is that the build up was so huge over the course of 5 books, that the pay off happening in like the last 5 pages (IIRC) just didn't provide an adequate payoff.

[Panjumanju]

The Merlin cycle has some of my favourite moments and ideas in Amber, and I really do like them. However, I think the gardener-approach worked out a lot better in the Corwin cycle. For Merlin, the twists and turns resulting from the story were convoluted and sometimes unnecessary. Looking back upon the end-of-book-twists for the Merlin cycle, the revelations of which were always so important in the Corwin cycle, in Merlin I do not feel they did not ultimately help bring the story forward to an exciting end the way Zelazny usually does.

I return to Erick Wujcik's own advice, paraphrased: the Corwin cycle was a book series, the Merlin cycle was an RPG campaign in Zelazny's head.

//Panjumanju

[Sydius Mendoza]

The Merlin cycle has some of my favourite moments and ideas in Amber, and I really do like them. However, I think the gardener-approach worked out a lot better in the Corwin cycle. For Merlin, the twists and turns resulting from the story were convoluted and sometimes unnecessary. Looking back upon the end-of-book-twists for the Merlin cycle, the revelations of which were always so important in the Corwin cycle, in Merlin I do not feel they did not ultimately help bring the story forward to an exciting end the way Zelazny usually does.

I return to Erick Wujcik's own advice, paraphrased: the Corwin cycle was a book series, the Merlin cycle was an RPG campaign in Zelazny's head.

//Panjumanju

Agreed

[RPGPundit]

I think the problem was the Corwin story was more epic; ultimately the Merlin cycle which could have been epic (had it been more about a "throne war for chaos") turned into a family squabble combined with a personal-spat with an ex-girlfriend.

RPGPundit